cscotthendry

Jerry: Our plane cruises around 110KIAS. Flight times varied, but the legs between "pit stops" was generally around 2 to 2-1/2 hours. If you all have PPLs, then GA aircraft would be the way to go. You cannot fly RAA aircraft on a PPL and I don't think there would be many RAA aircraft that you could hire for a trip like this. Most of our group were RAA aircraft, but privately ownd. Speeds ranged from around 140KIS (Virus) to 75KIAS (Savannah). I may do a public version of the William Creek - Broken Hill segment in the future ... If time and inclination permits. For some reason, the link that I am able to post on the forums here doesn't link up the other videos in the sequence. Best just to go to my You Tube channel and view them directly. If you have the bandwidth, select the HD versions. The easiest way to get to my channel is to go to my web site and follow the link from there.

Jerry: Not all the scenery out there is boring. Here's a link to our outback trip series. We didn't do too much on ground filming (we were having too much fun!) but there's plenty to see on the way from A to B out there. We were with the "short form" group and we were away for just short of two weeks. Our trip took us from Brisbane to; Roma, Charleville Charleville, Windora, Birdsville Birdsville, New Crown Station, Ayers Rock Ayers Rock, Kings Creek Station (Kings Canyon) Kings Creek Station, Cadney Homestead, Coober Pedy Coober Pedy, William Creek (with a fly over Lake Eyre) William Creek, Leigh Creek, Broken Hill Broken Hill, Bourke, Moree Moree, Brisbane A couple of the legs of our trip are missing from the series; We had some issues with cameras on the Kings creek to Coober Pedy leg, and the William Creek to Broken Hill leg is not for public viewing.

Umm, that would be Netflix in the US! Sadly, not available on Netflix here in Oz.

Sad. I have flown with Bruce and landed on that beach with him. There is nothing inherently dangerous about landing on that beach (if you know what you're doing) and he and Woody have done it many times. I send my condolences to the family of the deceased, and a shout out in support for Bruce and Woody. I hope the others get well soon also.

The way that thing was wobbling on final, it looked pretty gusty and swirly. Would have been a scary landing, having already bent the nosewheel. Glad it turned out ok for the occupants.

Haydn & Alicia: Another great video! Thanks for that. Our flying group is planning a trip down that way this year. They will be very interested in this.

The cabin width will surprise you. I ran the measurements of my cabin against the specs in the Cessna manuals. The Legend, measured at the door just aft of the instrument panel (this is where Cessna measure their cabins) is 160mm wider than the 172 and 106mm wider than the 182. I haven't verified the Cessna measurements against actual airplanes, but if their manuals are to be believed, our little "Cessna without the rivets" is roomier than the 182. I will admit that the Legend cabin is not as tall as the 182, and the Legend has no back seat, so overall volume of the 182 is more than the Legend, but for two people ... edit chevy: sorry for the late reply. For some reason I am not getting update notices on this thread, even though I have posted to it.

One of the reasons I wouldn't own a low wing bubble canopy airplane. If you ever have to put one in a rough paddock, it will most likely end up like this. Even a tail dragger can end up like this, so that would not save you in that situation. There are other reasons I don't care for these aircraft too, but this is one of the main ones.

Mike: We're based at Watts Bridge, so there's every chance we'll be at YCAB at some point. I'll PM you before we come over.

Mike: As far as I know, Silent Wings are still importing the Legend. We had ours down at OzKosh on show on the dealer's stand and there was a LOT of interest in it. Give Greg a call if you're interested in it. So far, there are two in Oz but more may be coming after the turnout at OzKosh. Marty: Yep, I get a thrill every time I open the hangar. I always considered the Cessnas (152-182) as what a small airplane looks like, especially when they went to the shark fin tail. Edit: And it flies like it looks!

Toumbaal plains in NSW near Yamba. Kind of expensive, but very nice house to rent with its own private airfield. toumbaal-plains

The BEW of my Legend is 313kg, that leaves 287 for payload. Fuel capacity is 130lt which translates to 93kg, that leaves 190 odd kg for pax and baggage. AND the Legend is the LSA Cessna should have built

Yes, RIP Ross, but has there been any word from RA Aus on what happened?

I really hope we do find out what happened here so that we can learn whatever lessons are appropriate from the loss of our good friend John Cresswell ... But I'm not holding my breath. As far as I know, we still don't know for sure what happened to Ross Millard, or Rob Pavan. Ra Aus investigate these accidents, but do they then publish their findings? If I've missed these reports I'll be happy for someone to point me to them. If I haven't missed them (because they weren't published) I think now might be a useful time to bring some pressure to bear on the organisation to publish.

I'm devastated to find out that Crezzi was one of those lost in this crash. I knew him fairly well and talked with him many times. We will sadly miss him. RIP John and my condolences to his family. What a loss!

My experience with tech support has been very good. It's just that I seem to have had a few problems with the GPS. The first problem was "finger trouble" that I resolved ( the techs didn't pick the fault). The GPS used to lose lock on all the satellites, but still show good strong signal level on the GPS status page. It turned out that I had the WAAS option turned on, and here in Australia, we don't have the WASS/EGNOS ground stations. I think the GPS was sometimes picking up correction data from the satellites that were over Japan and it confused the software. When I turned the WASS/EGNOS option off, that solved that problem, but like I say, tech support didn't pick that up, I did. Now, the GPS heading line freezes and it will show me pointing off track and if I turn to correct my heading, the heading line doesn't update. Then some time later it will update and show me pointing off track in the opposite direction. Now, I monitor the heading info on the GPS with the heading info on the iPad and I can tell when the GPS heading has frozen. But I shouldn't have to do that.

I had an Avmap EKP V installed in my aircraft by the manufacturer. I have had a fair amount of trouble with it. Some of the problems were operational problems resulting from not knowing how to use it properly, because of a very poor user manual. But there are other problems ongoing, like the heading line freezing. I am still waiting for tech support to find and fix the bug. I couldn't reccommend these GPSs.

Are you suggesting that might have been Robbo?

Yep, that one bugs me too.

Biggles: LOL, the crimper is not really tiny, but it's understandable that someone might guess that it is. The crimper crimps the pins on the wire before they are inserted into the plug. There is also a special plastic tool for removing the pins from the plug. This is what the crimper looks like It has 4 pins inside that close on the socket of the pin and secure the stripped wire end into the socket of the pin. These are what the pins look like Male and female pins And this is what the connector looks like And here's the pin removal tool WARNING, the crimper is very expensive (around $300.00US) so it's best to borrow one or get someone to do the crimping for you.

Biggles: Nope, that would not be fair to assume. The reason being that radios sometime have multiple power and ground pins in the connector, for the purposes of carrying the extra current requirements during transmission. If one of the power or ground pins was broken or had strands broken, this reduces the current input capability, but wouldn't necessarily completely de-power the radio when you transmit. Also, heat shrink can be useful stuff, but it can hide a lot of nasties too. If the pins are heat shrinked, I'm betting the connections are soldered rather than crimped. While you have the connector out, it might be a good time to re-do it with a crimped pin connector. Unfortunately, they are not as cheap nor as readily available as soldered connectors, and they require the used of specialist crimping tools.

All great advice above. The thing to remember is that the format is specified so that what is said is predictable to other pilots who also have a lot on their mind. The radio calls follow a cadence that you get used to in time and are able to filter out the important ones from those which don't concern you. Case in point is 126.7 . When you're operating into an airfield that uses that frequency, there WILL be other airfields that use the same frequency within the range of your radio and you will hear pilots doing calls at those fields but you can ignore them within a couple of words of the start of the transmission. For example, if I'm overflying Kilcoy, and I hear "Gympie traffic..." my brain switches that call off straight away. In any case, don't get too heavy on yourself, it will come with practice and time.

THE FLY! Beware ...

A Harrier perhaps?

Biggles: If you've swapped ou the radio, headsets and antenna cable there is not much else. This could be a simple case of too much mic gain. If there is a setting in the radio for mic gain, try adjusting that to see if it improves things. If you are using non-ANR headsets, you will get noisier transmissions than using ANR headsets. However, ANR headsets sometimes have powered mics which might overwhelm the input to the radio. Also, you didn't mention if your aircraft has a separate intercom system. If it does, try adjusting the mic gain and output levels to the radio on that. You listed several aircraft on your profile, but I'm guessing the Jab is the only one with a microair radio. Was the radio always this bad or has it just started? (Or have you just found out that you probably always were transmitting garbled?) Another possibility is a poor ground connection to the radio. This will be a bit harder to check as you will have to dig into the wiring and visually inspect the wiring to the radio. I've forgotten how the Microair radios are connected, but I think it is with a computer style DB25 connector. That being the case, there will probably be 2 or more pins used for ground connections into the plug. They should ALL have good solid wires on them and the wires should be connected to the main aircraft ground bus bar or common grounding point. When airband radios are transmitting they draw more current than when receiving, so they need good solid power connections with plenty of current capability.