kgwilson

The government should instruct CASA to work with Uavionix and fast track approval for the Australian FLARM frequency to be included in a Firmware upgrade. That is far simpler and would be considerably cheaper.

Try Enroute Flight Planning. Works on anything (phone/tablet IOS or Android) Simple, Free and very useable. Created by a bunch of German Aviation University students & is constantly being upgraded but they have avoided adding lots of fancy unnecessary features. It is a bit like back in the 70s when VCRs came out. Everyone bought the ones with the most features & then only used the basic functions.

No, only if you have the premium version of Ozrunways which is pretty poor given free Nav systems have the functionality.

The cost of upgrading Mode C transponders to mode S with the installation of ADSB out equipment was ridiculously high at $5-6,000.00 installed. The Skyecho 2 was conceived by some ex RAF pilots/electronics engineers & the Uavionix company set up in Montana in the US. They now have a raft of innovative navigation equipment. The US mandated all aircraft to be installed with ADSB by I think 2020 but they had to extend the timeframe. They also came up with their own unique frequencies so SE2 will not work in the US. FLARM functionality was added in 2018 for the UK & Europe but Australian compliance (ADSB) was not added till 2020. Adding the Aus FLARM frequency would only require a firmware upgrade but the biggest problem would be certification and compliance costs. In other words CASA. SE2 is small, portable, weighs only 200 grams and is ADSB in and out & with the current rebate scheme costs only $500.00. Local GA pilots who have spent 6k for ADSB out only are also buying them. They just disable ADSB out on the unit. It will interface to any number of NAV software products including Avplan & OZ runways as well as free software such as Enroute Flight Nav & Airmate. I fly with mine always. I am amazed at the traffic I see that I had no idea was probably there before. I have never had a conflict. Other traffic shows on my Nav system as green (no conflict), yellow (possible conflict) but a fair way off and red (change course now). Even with its low power traffic up to 40NM or even more away can be seen. They are never going to be fully subsidised, so buy one now while you can still get one for 1/2 price.

The tow aircraft was not involved in this crash.

SE2 can see all FLARM equipped aircraft in Europe as their frequency is different. It would seem the market here is not large enough for them to add the Australian FLARM frequency. Neither of the aircraft in this incident may have had FLARM or ADSB.

Perspex and plexiglass are just a brands of acrylic and it is easy to restore and remove scratches. There are plenty of branded products but they charge a lot for a few squares of wet & dry, some cutting paste or cream and then some acrylic polish. My bubble canopy somehow got scratched & it was basically quite simple to remove them. When you start with the coarse (about 600 grit) W&D it looks terrible, just an opaque mess. Then as you get finer 1000, 1500, 2000, 3000 it gets smooth and you can start to see everything fairly clearly. After the cutting paste it is almost perfect and then a polish at the end and you would never know there ever was a mark there. Deep scratches can be got rid of the same way but you may end up with a little bit of distortion due to removing a fair amount of the acrylic to get back to a polished surface. Just check out you tube. There are dozens of clips that show you how. The same process is used to completely restore old yellowed headlights and most of these are polycarbonate so the process works for both materials. They come up like new.

It is a prehistoric payment method inscribed in hieroglyphics on a stone tablet upgraded 100 years ago to paper but still used by a few dinosaurs.😁

The whole system is a crock. Initially a kneejerk reaction to 911 with cards being issued by CASA & RAA. Then an industry in extorsion was created & CASA & RAA removed as issuers. I have never had one & never will. I was asked once at Ballina for it & was told I could not go in to the cafe but went in anyway. What can they do? I can't show a card to anyone when flying in. It's too late when you are on the ground and ALREADY INSIDE THE SECURITY FENCE. Then they tell me I can't go outside of the security fence where Joe Public is in the millions. WTF. Run by a bunch of money hungry morons supported by an even more moronic government department and politicians.

A midair? Terrible news. So sad if two died. My condolences to family & friends. I assume more details to come.

If you get accosted tell them to pi$$ off and do something useful. If that doesn't work tell them you will send a cheque, then actually send one for $2.22 but don't actually sign it. You can keep them running around for months with stalling tactics. It can be a fun game.

I can hold my aircraft on the Matco disc brakes at full power on bitumen but it will skid on grass. I wouldn't do it for any sustained period though, firstly because of possible overheating and secondly because my calf muscles would get too tired.

Have you downloaded and read the FAA Amateur built Aircraft and Ultralight Flight Testing Handbook FAA AC 90-89. This is a question I'd ask any potential test pilot. This has the most comprehensive test flight information available. RAA put one out but it pales in comparison to this. I followed this guide and successfully test flew my own amateur built aircraft. It was always my plan to do everything and following well documented and proven procedures is the way to go.

My Mother-in-law was born in Donetsk after the Bolsheviks won the civil war and annexed Ukraine. Her family was from a long line of Cossacks & were aligned to White Russians. She was just a toddler when the Russians burst in to their house and shot her father and grandfather at point blank range and left. She spoke fluent Russian but hated Russians till the day she died. She remembered how the Russians under Stalin took all their grain in the 1930s because their socialist collective farms failed to work and then left the Ukrainians to starve. When the Germans came in 1941 she was taken as forced labour until being liberated by the Americans in 1945 but hated the Russians more than the Germans even after all that. She returned to the Soviet Union in the 1980s flying in to Moscow but only to get a train to see family in Donetsk. My wife still has cousins there. When the Soviet Union collapsed & Ukraine became a sovereign state again I remember the joy she displayed when getting the news. During the Soviet era hundreds of thousands of ethnic Russians migrated to Crimea, Donestk and Luhansk & this gave Putin his excuse to support the separatists almost all of whom are Russian migrants or their descendants. Every nation will experience growing pains as political rivals and corrupt officials jockey for positions with the most corrupt becoming the most wealthy. No surprise there but when Putin an ex KGB autocrat who sees himself as a modern Tsar uses genocidal tactics it has the simple effect of unifying Ukrainians. The Ukrainians are fighting for their very existence. The Russians have no answer militarily so they are destroying Ukraines infrastructure and civilian targets to try and break their spirit and destroying everything they can as they retreat. The war will drag on with the cost becoming unsustainable and many more Russian conscripts dying on the battlefield or shot for desertion. Putin is becoming weaker and more frail. He may just fall down some stairs or out of a window some time, hopefully soon.

All the Honey Eaters around here can land on anything & turn themselves upside down & sideways to get a bit of nectar. We have some 6 metre tall bamboo & they can fly in & land on the very top when it is being thrashed around by the wind. They hang on and get bobbed around all over the place. I think they enjoy it. It would be a bit like being on a roller coaster.

Avgas is paraffin based (the flammable component of candle wax) whereas Petrol is aromatic hydrocarbon based ( all the ene's like toluene, benzene xylene etc). They have completely different compositions

No not necessary. My fuselage tank is 100 litres and will drain by gravity to the engine. Both Wing tanks feed in to the fuselage tank via auxiliary 4-6psi electric pump and a L/R selector. The main electric boost pump sits under the main tank in the fuselage & pushes fuel through the in line filter to the engine driven mechanical pump & on to the carburettor. When it is on, it keeps the line pressurised to only 1.5 psi. There is no point trying to force more fuel into the carburettor than necessary. It would just put pressure on the fuel line and float intake valve. This all ensures there is no possibility of vapour lock. I always run the electric pump for 10 seconds before startup. Jabiru recommend this. This is especially important when the engine is hot after shutdown for a while. If I do not do this the engine may start and then stop after a few seconds. This has happened a few times so I always run the electric boost pump every time prior to startup but always start with the pump off. This proves the mechanical pump is working. The engine heat is the likely cause of vaporisation in the fuel lines in the engine bay so once the fuel in the carb bowl is used, it sucks vapor and stops. 10 seconds of the electric boost pump solves this entirely.

I have run mine on Mogas since new. Leakdowns 80/80. Borescope shows clean pistons, heads & valves. Plugs are always black but that may be due to the long taxi back to the hangar. Jabiru cooling is air/oil/fuel. Don't try to run the engine lean. 400 hours and no oil needs to be added between changes at 25 hours and the oil stays fairly clean right up to the change. It is hard to see the level on the dipstick. I add 3 quarts of Aeroshell 100+ only & a new filter each change. This brings the level to about 3-4mm below the top of the knurled section which is about right. Any more and it gets thrown out into the oil catch bottle. The level drops about 3-4mm over 25 hours.

I guess addine landing gear would complicate it more but I am sure that will come one day perhaps even the ability to move the toes to clasp on to a branch.

Mimicking flight of birds, bats and insects has become achievable with micro electronics and lightweight materials. The bionic swift in this clip even has synthetic feathers. Then there is the bat and dragonfly.

Some pilot/maintainers I know are what I call fiddlers. They constantly fiddle with things and tweak this and that to try & get everything perfect & get worried if their fancy all singing and dancing electronic engine monitoring is showing slightly different values for each cylinder. I try to work it out first get it right & then never touch it again. If it aint broke, don't fix it.

I had dual probes and gauge initially on No 5 & 6 cylinders. I have a bulbous cobra head between the airbox & carburettor which sits horizontally with the air from the airbox exiting on the left with the cobra head expansion chamber about 350mm long and it narrows to the diameter of the carb intake and clamped on directly. I have installed a vertical vane at the carb end to split the air left and right and with a combination of moving the carb itself in the horizontal plane and bending the vane I got the airflow through the intake plenum and induction tubes almost spot on so the CHT & EGTs were even. Once I got it right I didn't need the EGTs & didn't bother replacing the probes when they failed. Jabirus just have a bit of scat hose between the airbox & carburettor. This is the cobra head set up. This is the vane installation which is curved vertically to get the R/L airflow laminar. When I got it right I sealed the top.

The Gen 3 6 cyl engine installed in an airframe that has decent airflow through the heads and ability to climb at 1000 -1500 fpm at 80 knots (aka my aircraft) means you don't need to monitor all cylinders or have any EGT gauge at all. All the early Cessnas & Pipers had terrible rubbery gauges, some with no CHT or EGT at all and were flown all over the world in scorching and freezing conditions. Now everyone is obsessed with monitoring every cylinder and freaking out when they all show different values. I've got news for you all. They always have and it hasn't made them all fall out of the sky. I decided on a Jab 3300A when the Gen 3 was released. I got number 14 I think in early 2013. At the time overheating seemed to be the big problem with Jabiru engines. In reality a lot of the problem was new recreational pilots had never been taught how to treat an air cooled aero engine, not warming them up properly and assuming you could just climb out at full power on a hot day or idling in for a glide approach without thinking about shock cooling and everything would be fine just like driving a car. The rest was poor airflow in Jabiru airframes. At one point Jabiru had a negative pressure lip kit to install on the lower cowl air exhaust to try & suck more air through. I did something different. I did some research. The best information came from NASA and it was produced in 1981. It is the NASA Contractor report CR3405 entitled "An Experimental Investigation of the Aerodynamics and Cooling of a Horizontally-Opposed Air-Cooled Aircraft Engine Installation". The 152 page document has everything you thought you knew but didn't and everything you had no idea existed. So I spent a lot of time making sure airflow was right, sucking it through with good air sealing, appropriately located and angled vanes, a huge air exhaust with negative pressure lip and keeping the oil cooler completely separate with its own cool air intake and exhaust. I have 1 CHT which I have shifted around all cylinders & finally left it on No 3. I had 2 EGTs & they were on Nos 5 & 6 & were close all the time till the probes failed so now I have none. Oil temp, oil pressure & CHT is all I have and is all I need.

P76 was a much reviled car but most owners loved them. I remember the TV ads where you could put a 44 gal drum in the boot.

No mechanic, sorry "automotive technician" gets under cars any more & haven't for a long time. They walk under the hoisted vehicle but still get a stiff neck.. I gave up any home mechanicals 10 years ago but won't let anyone near my aircraft & still have to turn myself in to a contortionist to get to stuff under/behind the panel.