kgwilson

When I was doing my GA to RA conversion at Coffs after the tower closed at 5pm I was taxiing and heard an RPT inbound call at Red Rock about 21 NM to the North. By the time I'd got to the holding point I could see the landing light probably about 10NM away. We'd acknowledged positions & intentions & was very easy to watch the approach and touchdown. I can't remember what it was just it was a twin RPT & on touchdown the pilot called me & advised he was turning off at an early taxiway & I could line up.

When I built my aircraft I installed LED strobe on the wing tips. They are very bright to look at and most aircraft have LEDs now as the old tubes were expensive, caused radio interference if not adequately suppressed and required a lot of power. I've seen strobes in the air but very rarely. See them on the ground always. Two landing lights in a wig wag configuration are very easy to spot when an aircraft is on its glideslope. The very powerful landing lights on commercial aircraft can be seen from a long way out.

I imagine that there will be a post mortem, however without any crash investigation results are not likely to be made public.

If there was a control system failure taking over from the rear seat would probably not have any effect. At 500 feet it is all over in a few seconds. Reaction time to an unexpected event is about 3-4 seconds so if this was the case it would be too late.

Sadly i have to report a fatal crash today at around 11:30am at Palmers Island near Yamba, Northern NSW. The pilot was a friend of mine and had his aircraft hangared at South Grafton. He was well known, well liked, very experienced. My sincere condolences to all of the family. There were a number of witnesses and we will know more in the days to come.

RAA public liability insurance is not $10 million, it is $20 million. Passengers are only covered for 250k though. I don't insure my hangar or my aircraft. The aerodrome floods and the cost of premiums soon exceeds the cost of building a new hangar. Premiums for insuring the aircraft hull would have been about 25k since I finished building it so i am well ahead. If I crash it I will either rebuild it myself, scrap it completely or i'll be dead.

The US has been in decline for some time like all "empires" before it. Their once great auto industry is now a basket case. I checked out a video the other day of the cars NOT to buy in 2024. The first comment was everything from the US that is not a Tesla. They are at war with themselves. Capitalism gone mad. When Telsa awards a salary of $US 65 billion to Musk with the approval of shareholders & Trump wanting to dismantle the justice system among many crazy ideas, the fuse is well alight.

Things are changing all the time and quite a number of media outlets are now saying it was likely shot down by a Russian missile similar to the one used to down Malaysia MH 17 back in 2014. That one, a Buk M1 also had a proximity detonated warhead. The reports now seem to agree that the GPS was jammed by Russia as there were a lot of Ukraine drones heading their way at the time & that the Russian operators were both poorly trained & pretty trigger happy. I think that Juan Brownes report will be shown to be pretty accurate in the end.

And the Russians say it hit a flock of birds. How pathetic. They always under estimate the ability of people around with smartphones and cameras to reveal the BS. I imagine they will eventually try to pin this on Ukraine.

The Skyecho 2 passes data to whatever navigation software you are running and it is up to that system and device to determine what warnings should be provided based on location altitude & track. The transponder only advertises its location to ATC not other aircraft. If in CTR ATC will have established contact with the aircraft and issued a specific squawk code to the aircraft & then it is tracked by ATC & the pilot provided with traffic information via radio.

Unless you know other aircraft are in the circuit and therefore the runway in use through listening on the CTAF frequency for that aerodrome you should always overfly at 500 feet above the aerodrome & observe the conditions like wind sock and possible obstructions like animals, aircraft, mowers, vehicles, trees etc before letting down on the dead side to circuit height after making your joining call. While this is not compulsory it is always advisable even if the last aerodrome you were at is close and conditions do not appear to have changed. I do this every time I have been away more than 10NM from my home aerodrome. Kangaroos seem to like the grass there and not just at dusk & dawn and any animal that has died becomes a mecca for wedge tailed eagles. The sea breeze can arrive and change the wind direction 180 degrees in less than a minute when before it may be less than 5 knots to 15-20 knots in the opposite direction.

Both aircraft were at circuit height indicating both thought they were in the circuit . However only one is known to have made radio calls which were heard. The C182s radio may have failed but it must have been working when it performed circuits at Camden. This will be confirmed in the final report.

The 2 major issues from a communication and electronic perspective as far as I can see are. 1 The C182 made no radio calls and no aircraft detection equipment either in or out. 2. The Jabiru did have a working radio, made calls on the correct frequency, appeared to be keeping a lookout and had a conspicuity device in and out. Comments. The Jabiru had already established the active circuit. The C182 made no radio calls & if they did on the Camden frequency why was this not mentioned? The C182 had a mode A/C transponder only visible only to ATC, not to the Jabiru. Why did ATC not see both aircraft? Why were the aircraft on opposing circuits? I hope the final report will establish reasons/answers for these comments. It is really hard to see any aircraft coming towards you as the frontal profile is small and the closing speed would have been well over 200 knots. as far as I am concerned the SE2 should be on all the time even though it may not be of a lot of use in a circuit scenario, at least it will tell you if another ADSB out aircraft is around. Sadly not the case here.

Range is one component, Wh/kg has improved dramatically as has the chemistry and longevity. Also safety has improved considerably and the cost has plummeted. There are a number of EVs from China that have 1000km or more range. Global sales are heading for a record 16.7 million units in 2024 up from 13.9 million in 2023 and in line with forecasts at the beginning of the year.

Battery tech is improving at an exponential rate and good battery equipment is not cheap but with modern chargers with battery management software built in should last 10 years or more. My Riobi One+ battery drill set I bought nearly 10 years ago with 1.5 & 4 Ah batteries are still going strong & these 2 batteries are used on a line trimmer, a blower, angle grinder, hedge trimmer and a vacuum cleaner as well. The bloke who rents part of my hangar had some AEG battery gear and all his batteries died over a few years. Despite AEG being a recognised German brand the batteries were rubbish. There are now plenty of qood quality battery powered mowers from small 450mm cut to 2 metre cut or more zero turn units some with over 2 hours run time on a single charge & quick change battery packs. Check the warranty period. Any with only 1 year should be avoided. Even the Riobi One+ gear provides a 4 year warranty with an additional 2 years if you register the warranty.

When your mower is ready for replacement get a battery electric one. No fuel, no oil just press the switch & it doesn't annoy the neighbours.

I heard some comments that there were a lot of parts etc that just disappeared. I don't think they went to the tip.

Why do they want to upgrade this old 747 anyway? An A380 would be far better, bigger, quieter, cheaper, etc but that would be unamerican. Given it is supposed to be Airforce 1 why not use a real military aircraft suitable decked out like the C5M Super Galaxy. That should be big enough for Trumps ego. I would only add a few billion to the US debt now over 35 trillion.

It was clarified later that the published clean stall was 56 knots not kmh & full flap 50 knots which seems more realistic.

Once you have established contact with ATC and have a squawk code ATC have your details on their radar screen from your transponder. Also an ADSB transmitter transmits your rego number among other details so they have it from this as well. Aviation radio is VHF and there is no capability to transmit station ID information.

I forgot to mention the other article on the future of aircraft batteries by the same author. He hasn't done much research at all. He seems to think the only viable technology is LiFeP04 and comparing phone and portable devices is just plain ridiculous. I own an electric vehicle which has a NMC (Nickel, manganese, cobalt) lithium battery. This has considerably better energy density than LiFeP04. The battery is warranted for 10 years and in China & Thailand the battery is provided with a lifetime warranty transferable to subsequent owners. The fire risk is miniscule being at least 20 to 80 times (2000% to 8000%) less likely than an internal combustion engine and in the last 10 years, only 570 fires out of more than 40 million EVs on the road worldwide have endured a thermal runaway, almost all due to a major crash. Compare this to aircraft crashes using volatile fuels. This is due to very high manufacturing standards and battery management software which over rides human stupidity. CATL, the worlds largest battery manufacturer is already producing an aviation lithium battery that has an energy density of 500Wh per kilogram compared to the best NMC batteries at around 200 Wh/kg and between 90 & 160 Wh/kg for LiFeP04 batteries.

I set mine close to 126.7 as that is the most common CTAF frequency. It receives all other frequencies and of course area have much more powerful transmitters so no problem there

Well I finally have my latest Sportpilot & in general agree with Skippy. Apart from some basic stuff from RAA the rest is pretty boring. There is an emphasis on young pilots of which there are very few and their training or aviation journey and there are no technical articles for those of us who have built aircraft or enjoy this stuff. The round the world article is about a flight 9 years ago and the next article about a flight that hasn't happened yet after 16,000 hours of build time. The fuel article is just poor. 95 & 98 RON fuels do not contain Ethanol but the regulations allow up to 1% to account for cross contamination at refueling stations & that makes no appreciable difference. I have used 95 & 98 RON automotive fuel (it isn't called Mogas) in my Jabiru 3300 since new with not a single problem in over 400 hours. A number of other operators at our airfield finally switched after using Avgas for years enduring plug fouling and other issues with deposits. I filter my fuel through a Mr Funnel & have never detected water & with Vinyl Ester tanks no condensation either. The down side is the smell which does penetrate Vinyl Ester walls so when I open the cockpit I smell petrol. This is because the light components (toluene, benzine, n-hexane etc) which evaporate off first) It goes away quickly with air circulation but the fuel does not last as long as Avgas. That doesn't matter as a small amount of fresh fuel on top of what is in the tank will normalise it. I developed Shingles in early August & didn't fly for 3 months. I put 5 litres of fresh fuel on top of 35 litres of old & it started & ran perfectly after a single crank. As for articles I agree this would be helpful. I have responded to articles through letters to the editor & the last about ADSB & Skyecho 2 when it was claimed ATC cannot see you. That was false but the response was it wasn't what the editor was told so no checking or retraction.

Aviation frequencies are VHF & very prone to interference & these were recommended by the radio manufacturer as well as a number of publications on radio installation. I also installed a power filter. The Microair radio I have does not have a good reputation & some of this is due to poor installation techniques. Mine works very well and pulls in transmissions from great distances. I also tuned the antenna to the main CTAF frequency.