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Student Pilot

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Everything posted by Student Pilot

  1. Student Pilot
    The first solo has changed a lot over the years, olden days it wasn't unheard of to solo with 3 hours. When I learnt about 10 hours was the norm, now 20? When I learnt the instructors were hour building for airlines and not interested in in the students progress, one of mine used to read a book and smoke most of my training. It's also common now to milk the student all you can, 40 or 50 hours before solo is also common. As usual there has to be a middle road, find a career instructor who cares about the job rather than just adding hours and maximizing the flight school income. Are they still around? Solo is a step in many towards gaining a license, an important one yes but just another step.
  2. Student Pilot
    Watch a person who flies a tailwheel aircraft for a living, they always wheel them on. A tail low wheeler doesn't use anymore runway than a three pointer. Yes a good three pointer on a grass runway feels pretty good. Every landing I do try, I might just be a bit slow at learning 😁 I try to land on centreline, on the spot where I'll roll through to taxi off without braking. Last of all I try to get a smooth touchdown at the slowest possible speed, a tailwheel low wheeler. At a guess I'd say maybe 175,000 landings, maybe six what I'd call perfect landings. Maybe I need some dual with you Nev? 🤓
  3. Student Pilot
    Right again Nev, the Sabre wuzza bewdy engine too! H pattern 24 cyl sleeve valve. With all those moving parts what could possibly go wrong?
  4. Student Pilot
    I have run Lyc's, Continentals and PW engines on mogas, I dislike it intensely. It was a few years ago now, the fuel was always variable and not consistent from lots of suppliers. Hot weather made for problems, there was always a stink from the fuel. At one stage I was using 1000 litres a day and I still used avgas, I was prepared to pay more for decent fuel.
  5. Student Pilot
    That last sentence is the truth of CASA Ian......................things will never change until CASA makes flying safe, that is no aircraft flying.
  6. Student Pilot
    Agreed unless it's a Napier Sabre diesel 😜
  7. Student Pilot
    Yes but no soul.........☹️
  8. Student Pilot
    Has the rest of the world changed hemispherical cruising levels?
  9. Student Pilot
    It makes too much sense for everybody to use the same system. In reality it makes no difference if your speed is knots, MPH or K's. The Yanks have a hatred for anything metric, using furlongs, bushels, rods, ounces, acres, chains makes so much more sense 😁 Makes hard work and room for error in the likes of Canada where they are supposed to work with the metric system but the rednecks want to be Amerrycarn and have a mixture of US and imperial measurements and the products like fuel and chemical are supplied as metric recommendations. I wouldn't have any problem with using K's for speed, metres for height.
  10. Student Pilot
    What a great machine, a true minimum aircraft. A delight to fly.......
  11. Student Pilot
    Colt for under 20K? Surely you jest?
  12. Student Pilot
    A -67 PT 6 is worth a lot just for the core.
  13. Student Pilot
    VERY expensive toy!!!!
  14. Student Pilot
    Agreed Nev, I have never heard anybody call an Airtuck handsome. An Ag Cat with a 985 and the hopper converted to a couple of seats would make a good Sunday afternoon cruiser. Except maintenance and the 100 litres an hour fuel flow might be a bit spensive!
  15. Student Pilot
  16. Student Pilot
    A bloke called Neil (ex navy pilot with a grey beard,) used to fly for Transavia and demonstrate the Airtruck, his party piece was to put 2 passengers in the rear seat and do aerobatics. The Airtruck was a nice machine to fly, light harmonised controls and pretty efficient with a 300 HP. They came with all sorts of engines from Continental 250ish HP, also 540 Lyc's. There are a few still flying I think they are 720's.
  17. Student Pilot
    They used to fly the Airtruks from there
  18. Student Pilot
    A design from the 80's was the Kitten, Jessie Anglin designed it as an ultralight. There are a few flying in Oz, the design was copied given a turtle deck then called the Pup. Both of those originally had triangulated undercarriage and reasonably small wheels that worked well.
  19. Student Pilot
    Light aircraft have been using triangulated steel tube for undercarriages since the 1920's. Depends on the welding process and the welders skill as to any need for heat treating/stress relieving after welding. Chromemoly tube is very strong 1.2 mm would be ok, what thickness do the plans call for?
  20. Student Pilot
    Everything said is spot on. That's the reason why nobody bothers to make submissions, CASA will not listen.
  21. Student Pilot
    You blokes think too much 😬
  22. Student Pilot
    It's easy to get discouraged with CASA, they won't listen to experienced people. You only have to look at what they have done to businesses over the last 40 years. Doesn't matter who you are or what you say, they will not listen they know better. That's why people will not make submissions, waste of time. Admittedly CASA are just part of the problem, Federal gov, local councils, sacred military airspace have all contributed to the elimination of GA. It's just getting too hard, too expensive.
  23. Student Pilot
    Wasn't a big fan of mogas in Beavers, fuel used to have trouble feeding the carb. Mainly ground handling and part throttle, in hot weather there would be vaporisation pulling the fuel up from the low tanks. Mogas stinking stuff compared to avgas. 985 in a Stearman is a wonderful thing Nev 😁 Admittedly I have only flown a Stearman with a 985 but is was a very nice machine to fly, fast at around 110 in cruise. Docile yet responsive, ground handling a delight, aero's gentle. The stories about how hard a Stearman is to fly are wildly exaggerated. The machine I flew was a rebuilt Ag aircraft, in the hot weather you could still smell malathion wafting 🤓
  24. Student Pilot
    Nev the 985 wazza good engine, yes some would use a bit of oil. The main reason for that was maintenance and running over time. It was considered normal practice to run over 2000 hours on AG aircraft when the TBO was initially 1200 then 1400. On Ag use it was mainly topdressing or super, a load every 6 minutes or so, that's full power (36" and 2300 revs) back to max continuous a touch of cruise then landing, every 6 minutes for 2000 hours. I have seen 985's run to 3000 hours, it wasn't much good for overhaul just throw it away. At the time you could get an overhauled 985 for under 20K so some treated them as a throwaway engine which was a shame. I used to pull mine at 1400, most were burning less than a litre an hour. The worst I have flown was working for a particularly dodgy operator I had to top up the oil during flight, the oil was running very low before the the 2 hour fueling. Used to have a watering can of oil on the passenger floor. Oil tank used to hold 20 litres. The only aircraft with a worse oil burn was a Dromader, all of those used to burn/leak/throw lots of oil. The oil tank on a Beaver was inside the cabin for arctic operations you could refill the oil from the cabin after using the oil dilation function to get a quicker spinning engine in the cold temps.
  25. Student Pilot
    The one's I saw operating used to leak less oil than 985's, Alvis were a geared engine and swung a huge prop. They were around 600 HP. The engine was considered for powering the Beaver when they were designing it. There was one that flew with an AL powerplant.
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