Mike Gearon

Wow, that’s a good idea! I know just enough to understand that it’s that exit air that’s most important if the inlets are sized okay. That and the air is ramped up on the inlet and not leaking anywhere/ everywhere. I believe the plan is to do the minimal and then test. Pic here from today. We are choosing if the spinner area should be lowered or lower the top cowling and raise the inlets. The cowling provided from UL USA obviously needs a bit of massaging.

True. But I’m very sure of what’s happening here. I’m living it. The blue area has virtually no protection from westerlies. As you go up the hill it changes quite dramatically. The whole orange shaded area is low hills and trees. Other bonus of the extension is there is nearly a km to sort where the cape barren and water hens are to land before or after them. Useless buzzing them with low passes. They ignore the aircraft. I’ve been flying here long enough that a number of them will have been born in the runway area and grown up with the big noisy bird as normal. I’ve made landings where the pair ahead of me as I slow down don’t move at all. I have go around them. Makes juggling the idiosyncrasies of a tail wheel even more interesting.

I might become a repeat offender. Already looking at the RV14 to replace the RV6. Everyday is definitely the way to go. Entirely agreed. It’s a bit difficult when you’re feeling overwhelmed. Daughter 2 added a new project a month back. 1.2m x 2.4m spotted gum table. That was in top of the farm season stuff, runway extension and Asian trips/ projects. Thankfully they are all under control. Home Monday and a business partner arriving as I get off Qantas flight. Meeting him at Moorabin airport for project then flying him to French island in the RV. He’s staying the night and I’ll still make sure some S21 stuff happens! So, it’s now finally a priority again. It’ll help next week when Nic and I start flying the S21 with build,enthusiasm. I guess that’s if it’s passed final inspections and it should. With balance in mind I happily dropped aircraft building while making daughters table. I fly the RV6 up to the family farm at Wangaratta and help with seasonal work. Return was help with the table. It’s getting a penny in corner and other pic was assembly on the way to airport for Taiwan trip I’m on now. Daughter will have this table for life and maybe a grandson will have the S21. So, it’s all relative. Re build time. I get that it’s like a house. At lock up stage a house looks done but it’s half built. Time….. I think in a few weeks it’s going to be painted gray underneath, white sweep with white tail and all the rest red sitting on wheels and looking excitingly finished. But, of course it won’t be. Avionics are near done. Nic is my savior here. I just do what he says. It’s right in his wheel house. He and I will hook into the build in between flying the UL520t. Really hoping it is going to be a great engine and we can report only good stuff. Reality is probably going to be a bit of work on getting the cooling sorted. Our plan is to just do our best. Fly and modify airflow until it’s sorted.

Aircraft 1 We have a prop. Just waiting on inspection and getting the cowl done and we are flying. As Rfguy mentions it needs cowl. We’ve gotten away with the baffles topped with cardboard for now. No engine temp problems. Run it without the cardboard on top simulating a cowl and it’s quickly hot. I’m travelling at the moment. Looking forward to getting in and flying…. Next week? Aircraft 2. Well……sitting in the record cutting studio right now in Taiwan. Only here a few days and then into aircraft building pretty much full time unless something gets in the way. I’m keen to build now like I was last year. Hoping when Nic hooks in with me we have it built by…. Christmas? Other pics above finishing up a runway extension. Not having easy access to road grader we are using the 8 ton excavator as small bulldozer. Bucket takes out hills and fills holes. The traversing backward and forward and angles really levels the ground. The tracks press the freshly cultivated soil down. Overall a win against the 6k it’d cost to bring the family road grader back down with barge and float costs. Runway now finished and as soon as the grass grows it’ll be fly straight out of the 2nd hangar up the hill for northerly take off. 600m and that uphill is a huge help for landings from the south. I should have put the runway there in the first place. Realised the mistake when landing about a month back with a 20kn direct cross and battling in with the geese and the uphill downhill and 3 goes to land. Total runway length is now 1km if you don’t mind a dogleg from the south at 500m then it’s another 500m uphill to arrest excess energy, Bonus I hadn’t realised with the extension is that instead of facing the full force of westerly/ north west winds the uphill section is protected by topography and trees. Thinking I might now list it as an uncertified airfield. I’ll discuss pros and cons with people. With the extension take offs and landings can all be done to the south and not annoy neighbours. It’s also less challenging now. I got over having people in after watching a few very hairy landings. Particularly a jabiru that looked perilously close to dropping a wing on the ground at the apex of hill in a crosswind. Scared the bejezeesus out of me just watching. I said to Nic this morning the key to aircraft building is (IMO) having an end date in mind to be flying. That gives you the enthusiasm to power on. I started prepping yesterday to paint the fuselage and when back from Taiwan end this week it’s pretty much full time building aircraft 2. I think it’s been a year off. Have achieved a hell of a lot as making that worthwhile.

Yeah, carbon forged sounds interesting! It was a spell correct from fibre that I missed. Temps. Yes, limited ground running was shut down as the rear cylinders heated up. CHT on all cylinders. I think we may cobble together something to direct the air downward or be more patient and wait on finishing up the engine cowls.

Aircraft 2. i have replacement fuel tanks. Started work on these sort of…… Last year the aircraft was moving forward fast. This year I’m yet to commit to the build again. Every week so far it’s the week where I get the fuel tanks finished, tested and installed then paint the fuselage that’s sitting in a rotisserie, paint the wings and other parts. Get the wheels on then the wings and get really enthusiastic. I’ll put pictures up when that happens. At the moment huge effort has gone into wind turbines. Pic here in China last week visiting a supplier. I’ll have the generator shipping to my Taiwan factory where patent applied items are being fabricated. It’ll then come to French island for testing before early production runs. Not time consuming now but patents and CAD work have been huge time consumers. At least the wind turbine has aerofoils. It’s sort of aircraft related The VAWT (Vertical Axis Wind Turbine) pictured is interesting. It’s 3kw but the reality is it’s half the efficiency of HAWT’s. (Horizontal axis…. ) The VAWT are IMO beautiful and they are low maintenance so some will be built. The company is named… WWW.IN2WIND.COM I liked WINDY but on advice from trademark attorney there are too many conflicts so it’s IN2WIND. I was third largest supplier of rowing machines in the world with a company started when I was 42. We will see if at 66 there’s the energy to make it happen again. Maybe and I don’t have a divorce or need to put children through private school education so no pressure or self induced pressure I guess. Maybe if I don’t blog about it would be less pressure? Also AEROBATICS. This has dominated my time with ground and air the last month. I think it can be done quite quickly or thoroughly. I’m doing the David Pilkington course out of Moorabbin. OZAEROS. It’s thorough! Ground completed today and total 8- 10 ground hours. Probably took longer because I ask lots of questions. Next flight is recovery from unusual attitudes. Being upside down and chosing the correct course of action to recover is bloody difficult. Lots of chair flying going to be happening. Hammerheads are my favorite thing. Loops not so much. Stomach doesn’t enjoy them. At least I’ll be able to do a few barrel rolls and wing overs in the S21. Not quite sure exactly how aerobatic it is. The Decathalon is +6g and -5g. The S21 is plus 6g and -2g. I’ll find out more before attempting maneuveres that rip the wings off in negative g’s. The David Pilkington course heavily emphasizes the POH and AFM of your aircraft as opposed to the Decathalon setting the rules. Wife home from Nebraska next week with Rans parts and RV parts in her suitcase so I’m looking forward to her return.

Update. Aircraft 1 See pic. We had the UL agent out with a really switched on guy. Jason. Jason really knows his way around electrical. Nic and Jason have a similar background in electronics. Between Nic and Jason they managed to solve a few glitches. Well worth the visit. The UL520t is running. Sounds fantastic. We have the Titan Whirlwind prop on for now and have limited running to some 15 minutes. Can’t run it much more until we can get it up to operating speed. The old dilemma of wanting to do ground testing and needing it in the air WOT to prevent glazing. Might tie the bastard down and run WOT once cowling is done or we run some temporary top on the engine to get air to the rear cylinders that will run hot without air directed downward is my thinking. Prop has been a huge drama. We had a prop from Sensenich that looked tiny in comparison to the Whirlwind. We’d ordered and received this a year ago. See pic and you’ll understand why we’ve been reluctant to put the Sensenich on. I talked with Don from Sensenich just this morning and had a great download on props. Turns out big isn’t better. Big props for STOL and smaller props for cruise. Also, the pitch distribution along the blade plays an important part. We decided to return the prop to Sensenich and have on order a Sensenich carbon forged 3 blade 79.5” that’s suitable for Lycoming 360 up to 220hp 2800rpm. That’s our sweet spot with the 220hp turbo normalised max 2700rpm and we suspect the 220hp is above actual available hp when you crunch the numbers on engine size. So, in 3 weeks time we should have a great prop and time to get the cowling sorted.

Uodate… it’s working again. Tried a new combination of USBc’s and outlets. Friend also pointed out the manual says it only likes USB A to C. It’s not USB PD compliant and won’t handshake. If all else fails read the manual. I guess the main point still holds and I’d been meaning to post it. Power brick solves the random power on and power off SE2 problems.

I was having problems with the SE2 not turning on and also not turning off. 100% solved by not using the cigarette lighter and always plugging into a power brick. I was in China last week on a 24 hour mission and airport security liberated my admittedly fairly large power brick. New visa free travel is great. Just don’t bring your bigger power brick! Just replaced with a fast charge power brick with 15w, 45w and 100w outlets. The SE2 is dead. I’ve tried various USBc cords and still dead. Seems 100w or 8.3ah cooked it which is very annoying.

I was trained in the USA. I’ve just been trying to google “pattern” because USA uses this in place of circuit. So, googled pattern, directions of turns dead side. Gave up in the finish but did find this. It’s a turn in the wrong direction. Then I found the discussion below where the FAA was quite responsive to the ambiguity in the depiction and FAA Regs. FAA have all turns within the vicinity of the airport to the left unless specified. The turn to the right before left pattern is considered to be outside the ‘vicinity’ of the airport. Also found the statistics in that graph that show the least number of accidents are downwind. It’s quite annoying when statistics don’t agree with one’s hypothesis. However, downwind calls are made in USA. Downwind calls are probably not going to be made in Australia unless the PIC is situationally aware of conflict or sticking to the old 3 calls in circuit method. So, our Australian stats may be different. Reference to that article here…….https://www.aviationsafetymagazine.com/airmanship/traffic-pattern-entries/ Note….. I had coffee yesterday with another pilot and tales of close conflict downwind due to lack of downwind call. I also heard that at some flying schools instructors have been berated for making downwind calls “unnecessarily”. I think that’s at the crux of problems. If the instructor feels unable to make downwind calls it certainly isn’t going to be instilled in the students. I’ll return to the point I’ve made previously where an instructor at a local airport called his o’clock position to my aircraft downwind as a workaround to making downwind calls. That’s happened a number of times

I just met up with a school owner from well north. Almost all the way north…... Asked the usual topic on calls in circuit. Answer was base is called and less calls are better. However, it was stressed that when there is other traffic nobody is scared to talk on the radio to assist situational awareness. It’s encouraged. Conclusion I’m coming to is that Australia wide it’s base. I’m also sure the problems myself and others experience at some airfields is related to way too much stress on minimizing calls. Direct result is a lack of downwind call that creates a dangerous gap in situational awareness for incoming aircraft. This will end badly one day! There has to be a compromise between the all calls school and almost no calls school of thought. I get that this doesn’t seem to be something that CASA mandates can fix. I think the schools need to be turning out new pilots with a better awareness of incoming aircraft and the student pilots responsibility to make appropriate calls.

That’s interesting. Caloundra for circuits at 22 minutes into the clip and they aren’t calling downwind. Instructor is just explaining they won’t be calling downwind unless another join is going to be in conflict. I’m starting to suspect there is no downwind only call instructed in Australia. It’s likely all calls, base only or base and final. I did note the instructor saying that the base call was a chance for joining aircraft to know what the intentions of the aircraft ahead are. Touch and go. Full stop etc. That makes sense but… same could have happened when they turned downwind and the crosswind joining aircraft would have then known perhaps they should conduct an orbit on the dead side. Does that orbit on non active side require a radio call? I don’t believe so but happy to be corrected. Do we want to make a call? I think that’s obvious. If the orbit is going to potentially cause a conflict make the call.

Youtube just served me up CTAF radio calls from inflight . I think it’s been served up because I was checking once again how to get into Moorabbin. See the captions here. Instructor is just saying “you don’t need to give departure calls because we’ve just given our intentions on rolling unless there’s a conflict” Has me wondering a couple of things… Maybe I’ll reduce the outbound calls. However, unless there is a conflict is a difficult one. We can’t know there isn’t an aircraft inbound from our departure direction that’s only changed to our CTAF frequency after we made the rolling call. ADSB in and out along with OzRunways/ Avplan helps here.

Where to call for one call? I had a really good catch up with a pilot yesterday and another set of experiences of no downwind call leading to a close call. Makes me wonder just how many of us around Australia are experiencing this and the potential consequences. USA is primarily all calls and it’s up to the pilots individual situational awareness/ airmanship to reduce calls. As with my discussion with a senior American (Master) instructor yesterday, it’s the downwind call that’s likely to stay in place if Americans are going to drop calls due to heavy radio traffic.

These devices aren’t good at turning on as Papafix mentioned. I think a work around was effective today. Didn’t turn on. Pulled power source for a few seconds and plugged back in and it worked. That was twice today this allowed it to turn on. Let me know when you want to come to Taiwan for manufacturing of electronics. I have a guy and he won’t send it to China as some will. It’ll be done in Taiwan.

Can you build us something better? This is quite ridiculous that something we use to assist safe flying can be cut price manufactured. What’s your rough estimate of their savings to put our lives at risk?

I’m going to add this to my lack of downwind radio call defense list. Already brought in an early downwind entry at appropriate speed and circuit height (subject to traffic). That’s a huge help for both myself and the school aircraft compared to an oblique downwind entry. Adding a 5 or 3 mile (subject to number of radio calls being made by other aircraft) if as you said something doesn’t seem right makes huge sense.

Are we opening the stop watch and timing these? I just did my usual inbound to Tyabb. Tyabb traffic RV TUP one zero miles south east five hundred feet on climb two thousand five hundred inbound eta circuit 56 Tyabb. 11 seconds. That always sounds long winded to me and I try to rattle it off fairly quickly. I call the 500ft or so climb out because it’s going to be unexpected to have an aircraft taking off from the French island training area. I see the aircraft overhead with avplan or ADSB out and that helps. Probably about every 20th flight there will be another aircraft loitering around the south coast so the climb out call helps us both.

That’s a third of the time you can be stepped on or step on. Airmanship and situational awareness of all the other calls positions is perhaps saying reduce your own calls with radio calls this heavy. With inbound aircraft in mind downwind only makes sense in heavy traffic then bring in base or base and final depending on what’s happening in front of you. (IMO)

French island is getting wet.

1. FAA experience. I’ve gone the other way and talking right now with a senior flight instructor in USA for advice. 2. “Rather than seeking supporters on social media” I must admit that one threw me for a bit! Was I seeking supporters? Well, I’m happy to be agreed with as we all are. That’s why social media is so successful in politics. You find news feeds that agree with you so there’s no challenge and end up in the echo chamber. That’s sincerely not the case here. I’m seeking and found useful information. I also weighted your information as a flight school owner. That’s not the case as I now know. It doesn’t diminish the quality of your input. It’s been appreciated even if at times uncomfortable as above quote demonstrates. I sort of wish I could put this away but it doesn’t seem to be in my nature. As with patent writing I seem to gnaw away at the bone until something falls into place no matter how frustrating the process. Right now I’m on wind turbine patents and going back to the 1860’s. A huge long body of work and what chance I have something original and more importantly something that’s going to be useful to people? I think I have it and hope the Chinese company I’m going to see next month end up being suppliers and not competitors. Also, I don’t think at this point it’s helpful (Turbo) to further point out existing VFR guide reading and legislation. It’s a bit like a religious fundamentalist pointing out bits of the Bible to end the discussion. My position is that the Bible looks like it needs a bit of adjusting. So… to continue. I’ve chatted with a senior instructor in USA just now. Responses below. You aren’t required to even have a radio in usa so we can’t require any radio calls. Head on a swivel here. I like down wind calls and final personally. It can be scary when someone You aren’t required to even have a radio in usa so we can’t require any radio calls. It can be scary when someone isn’t talking but it is legal so we just deal with it. Personally i don’t think one call always in same place will increase safety. 1. You still have planes with no radio and 2. What if you just finished your one call and then another airplane switches to your frequency one second later. They don’t know that you exist until your next call

I sometimes wonder how you keep posting when you add really insightful things and they seem to be ignored at times. I’m hungry for information and value your input.

I’ll PM you for discussion. I’ve just emailed Luke the Oz representative about this.

I have an ongoing battle with the sky echo. It refuses to turn off with 3 red lights. Doesn’t matter how many long or slow pushes you do. It isn’t related to usb power coming in. Random and annoying. Seeing this makes me think there are bugs in the thing. It’s nice when it works!

I had a similar emergency in USA over New Mexico in the motor glider while ferrying it to Arizona. No prep for such an event and I took the aircraft docs out of large plastic pocket with letter type opening top. That top V then formed quite a good funnel entry. No drops spilled and managed to exit the contents out slide vent in passenger door/ window also using the V.