cscotthendry

Want videos? I got plenty for you. Try this one to start https://youtu.be/Hh_I6W5vpAY

I agree that a good quality noise cancelling headset is a must, and a starting point for good cockpit audio recording. But that is not the whole story. Another very important element is to find a recorder that doesn't have Automatic Gain Control (AGC). This is the hard part as most cheap recorders have that feature, but won't let you disable it. The problem with AGC is that when there is no audio present (from speaking or radio reception) the AGC essentially turns the volume up full in an attempt to capture some audio. In a noisy environment all this does is capture electrical noise and cockpit noise. Another source of noise is the power source for the recorder. Analog devices such as voice recorders are very sensitive to power supply noise. The electrical systems on airplanes are notoriously noisy and cheap recorders usually have poor power filtering. So don't try to power your recorder from anything connected to your airplane's electrical system, like USB charger ports etc. Best to run it off its own internal battery. Finally, if you're recording your cockpit video on a gopro, don't try to capture the audio on that by connecting the camera to the intercom system. You can't disable the AGC in gopros and the resulting audio is HORRIBLE. BTDT!!

Brokers work for the broker. Full stop, end of story. Viewed through that lens, it is easier to understand the motivations of the brokers, that is protecting their income by obfuscating rego numbers, selling dodgy stuff with minimal or no documentation, and savage discounting for a quick (and dirty) sale. That is the most important thing, closing the sale. Any problems that arise after that are the buyer/seller’s problems. I avoid brokers and agents like the plague where possible. That also goes for lawyers. I've done plenty of real estate transactions in my time and every conveyancing lawyer has stuffed it up royally somewhere along the line. You have to double check and triple check their work. Which begs the question, “what am I paying them for?”.

Have a look at the Flight Data FC-10. It's about the cheapest one available. What Skippy said is the case. It costs very little extra for a manufacturer to put those extra features in the software. The expensive part is the sensor.

Do you have to ring for PP before landing there? I would like to try that out sometime.

A bit of a mixed bag with this one. Yesterday we went to the Gatton Mothers day “brekky”. The flight from Heck field to Gatton and back was a dream. Smooth as silk even at low levels. The “brekky” was another matter entirely. Officially, it started at 7:00 am. We arrived just after 8:00 and they had run out of food already! There was still a queue waiting for food, and, starving, I joined it hoping for a nice hot brekky. After 30 minutes it became apparent the line wasn't moving at all. There were people “cooking” but no one was walking away with meals. After another 20 minutes in line, I saw about 4 people ahead of me walk away with their meals. Then the line stalled again for another 15 minutes with nothing happening. By that stage, I completely lost patience with the total lack of organising and got back in my plane and went home. Not good enough Gatton. If you put on a fly in brekky, you should understand that the people aren't there just to try landing on your runway. If you can't organise the food, then you don't have a “fly in brekky” you just have a “fly in”. I heard from someone that there was a bigger turnout than the organisers expected. That surprised me. A look at the weather the night before told me that there would be a large turnout and the “organisers” SHOULD have seen that coming. Even then, when they had food (I could see people cooking something) it took a very long time between meal deliveries. I've been to many fly in brekkies and I know it can be accomplished even with the uncertainties of weather and the whims of pilots. Also, I've been to other brekkies at Gatton which went well. Whoever did the organising for this one though needs to have a good look at what went wrong, and it wasn't the fault of the number of flyers that turned up.

Fantastic! Thanks for the update.

Yep I did! Thanks for reminding me.

At one stage he was flying directly over the tracks with wires either side of him. Not clever at all IMO

Went to the Watts for breakfast flyin last week. The weather cooperated and there was a really good turnout with some nice formation flying from the Yak crew.

My instructor always told me to “fly in the middle of the air. It's dangerous around the edges” He also used to say that he didn't do low flying because he had a back problem. That usually prompted the question “What's wrong with your back?” To which he would reply “I have a yellow stripe down it”

If the fuel pressure gets too high it could conceivably overpower the float valves. I'm guessing thought that, that kind of pressure would manifest itself in a number of forms. One of those would be flooding the engine with attendant bad running. Another might be fuel running out of the carby vent tubes. Did you have any of that when you had the proper size restrictor? As Thruster said, with the Rotax fuel pump, it will determine the fuel pressure based on its internal mechanisms. You can safely assume that unless the pump is faulty, the pressure would be within safe values. More likely from a defective fuel pump, is low pressure. If your fuel pressure IS too high, the more likely culprit is an oversized boost pump. Check the model of your boost pump and look up its specs against the Rotax specs.

Good stuff. I still think your return quantities bears investigating. From the figures you quoted, it sounds like more fuel is bypassing the carbies than they're consuming and that doesn't sound like it should to me. I'd check that the restricter is there, that it is the correct size, and is in the correct path. BTW, the local Rotax dealers suggest a carby jet insert as the restricter. From memory, it is an M5 thread and will fit nicely in the end of a brass T that has been threaded with an M5 tap. Rotax sell a cross connector with the built in restricter, but it's very expensive! Good luck.

I just reread the fc10 manual. It seems like adding a second sensor should be pretty easy. The cube has 3 wires, 2 are for powering the sensor and the other wire is the signal back to the FC10. The second cube gets its power from the same connections that power the first cube ie, their power connections are paralleled. Then the signal wire for the second cube connects to pin 8 of the FC 10. But now you have two k factors to adjust. One for the supply sensor and one for the return sensor. The K factor is like a “slippage” or fudge factor for the sensor. Since you say you get accurate numbers by turning the return off, I'd guess you have the K factor about right for the supply sensor. If you mount a second return sensor near the first one and in a similar orientation, you could use the same K factor for the second sensor as a starting point. By leaving the number of engines set at 1 in the FC 10 setup, I'm guessing that it will subtract the second sensor's readings (adjusted by its K factor) from the first sensor's readings. HTH

Holy crap! $1,300 worth? And what if that doesn't solve your problem?

My Legend has a weird system. It's not like Rotax specify, but it works. Essentially, I don't have a return back to the tank. What is there is a return (fed from a restricted tap off the feed to the carbies) that feeds back upstream of the boost pump. The upstream line feeds from the fuel selector valve, essentially connected back to the tank in that fashion. Like I said, it's unconventional, but in 5 years of flying, I've never had a vapor lock and my fuel flow sensor is upstream of all that so I can measure the fuel flow with one sensor and get pretty accurate consumption figures. To set up my FC-10, I started with their standard K factor, then measured my fuel post flight and used their formulas to adjust it. I get consumption figures that are as accurate as I can measure with a fuel dip stick. I'm happy enough with the figures I get as I NEVER start a flight with JUST enough fuel for the duration. I always operate such that I should have about 40L left after a trip. I don't like worrying whether one of my fuel pickups will uncover and stop the engine.

Another factor might be the location of your sensor. If it's in a high vibration situation like mounted on the engine that might affect the accuracy. From the numbers you quote it sounds like you're getting 33lph fed back thru the return line. That doesn't seem like what it should be. It should only be a trickle. Do you have an 912iS engine?

The limitations of the “see and avoid” bring to mind those who steadfastly refuse to have a radio in their aircraft, yet insist on flying into high traffic situations like the drifter pilot who flew into the middle of the mustang's demonstration flight at Evans Head a few years ago. Also, I've seen too many comments along the lines of “I don't want no stinkin' radio in my plane” in the forums here.

I looked at buying one of these a few years ago. I went to the dealer and flew one. Unless they have improved the quality, my only comment would be “They look good in the pictures ...”.

What about having the iPad within 1 meter of the radio itself. This is the case in just about every cockpit out there. And yes, I know the radio case is a Faraday shield but I've had this issue on 2 airplanes I've owned so far, 1 home built and one factory. BTW, I'm an ex USAF avionics tech and I know that RF is like water. It can get into some strange places.

I post this every time someone has radio interference issues so here goes again. If you fly with an iPad, make sure wifi is turned off if it is not communicating with another device otherwise it will search for a connection and its transmissions will play havoc with the radio. BTDT

Very sad to hear two people lost their lives while doing their day job. I always thought they used helis exclusively for line inspections. That would seem the safer option as helis can fly slower horizontally than fixed wings and forward airspeed is not critical. I have done a bit of flying around a point, whale watching and photographing landmarks etc and I'm always paranoid about my airspeed. It's very easy to get distracted positioning and lose focus on the airspeed.

Something I discovered with my Nynja and I've had it in the Legend as well. If you're running OzRunways on an iPad, make sure the wifi is turned off. If you have the iPad's wifi on and it is not linked to anything, it will drive the radio crazy unsquelching the receiver intermittently.

Further to what tillmanr posted, if your ipad can take a sim card, it has inbuilt GPS. You don't have to have a sim card in it to use the GPS though. If your ipad doesn't have a sim card facility, it doesn't have the GPS circuitry and you'll need an external GPS unit to use it. Phones have the GPS circuitry and you might think that bluetoothing to the phone will allow you to use the phone's GPS. It works, but not very well. The phone will only send GPS updates about every 30 seconds to a minute apart. BTDT. I bought a “cheap” ipad (without the sim) to replace my old failing one. I saved about $200... Then realised that I'd have to spend about that much for the external GPS. The people in the apple store were VERY keen to sell me that ipad. Too bad they didn't tell me about the GPS.😡