kgwilson

Flying on none will be a fairly short flight.

The A380 may not be the most efficient aircraft but it is the most popular with passengers. It is the quietest and (obviously) the largest passenger aircraft ever built. Technology improvements and innovation mean everything becomes outdated and less efficient than the new designs like the A350 family, I think now the most efficient jet aircraft ever.

It seems Bonzas problems stem from being financed by 777partners a US based private equity company that has been also investing in loss making football teams including Melbourne United with their latest efforts to buy in to the English premier League team Everton with investigative journalists exposing the business failures of 777 partners when they unearthed a swag of court cases, mostly for default on loans. Sounds like it is straight out of the Trump song book. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-05-04/777-partners-the-private-equity-firm-behind-bonza/103802624

That was quick. Absent for 24 hours & it's now a motorbike forum.

This whole affair smacks of a cover up by RA-Aus. Jill Bailey advised that she had inadvertently signed the pilot Certificate papers and stood down for a week. The deceased instructor would have submitted them with the recommendation that an RPC be approved. I reckon some heads will roll at RA-Aus based on the Coroners comments. The instructor may have been highly experienced and well regarded but a lot of experience in a paraglider counts for very little when flying a powered aircraft. I flew Hang Gliders for 20 years and also powered aircraft at the same time. It's chalk & cheese. I have flown an early paraglider & I know one thing for sure, you can't fly them in strong wind conditions. Modern versions are obviously better than when I flew them but after all they are modified parachutes. Why he chose to fly in such terrible conditions we will never know & can only speculate on the possibilities. Maybe a false sense of security in a heavier rigid aircraft weighing 5-600kg compared to the light flexible paraglider he could carry in a backpack. Whatever, that is not the issue that the coroner is going to be looking at, it is the process of the issuing of the RPC that is now front and centre of this inquiry. Did the process become a box ticking exercise based on history rather than due process requiring professional judgement and oversight? This could become very messy and very embarrassing for all at RA-Aus who were involved.

It has been announced that Bonza has entered Voluntary Administration which is what I expected would happen. It is possible that they will be able to restart but this will depend on the extent of the debt. The process is pretty much the same as Chapter 11 Bankruptcy in the USA that VANS Aircraft is currently going through as discussed in another thread.

So is $40.00 from Brisbane to Melbourne. These were ridiculously cheap and not every seat was this price. The aim of these airlines is no frills & full aircraft and to gain customers offer super cheap starter prices. Eventually they have to raise the prices as they are losing money but their business model runs so close to the wire that any hiccups that occur, increase the debt till they fail. Often their aircraft leases are cheap when there is a glut of aircraft available but next time the lease price increases so their fares have to go up too but then the market begins to shrink. From there it is a downward spiral, sometimes starting slowly and then coming to an abrupt halt when the bank says "no more".

Budget airlines have been boom and bust since the 1980s. Some like Easyjet & Ryanair have survived but then their market is huge. Several startups in the 90s between Australia, NZ and Fiji were great but eventually all folded. I used to fly between Australia & NZ for $200.00 return.

It was a nice day for flying. I went South to Coramba at 2000 climbed to 3800 through the Mount Moombil gap down to Bellingen to check things out, coastal to South West Rocks & returned coastal past Coffs turning inland at Brooms head (it was raining around Yamba) & back via the Clarence to South Grafton. The Coffs tower was grappling with some Chinese students but managed to figure out what they were saying (I think) as I couldn't.

What is the point of a 68 inch prop when efficiency gets lost with the 3300A. The Jabiru Scimitar props for the 3300A engine are 60" diameter. My Bos 5 is also 60" & a little better than the Scimitar. No problem with supersonic tips & less engine stress.

The claimed power of the 3300A engine is 90kW or 120HP at 3300 rpm not 3500 rpm. 3300 rpm is the maximum rated power setting for continuous operation. Some individual engines have produced 128 - 130 HP on a dyno. I have set the Bolly BOS 5 prop pitch on my Gen 3 3300A engine to read 3300rpm at full power S&L at cruising altitude. This has reduced the full power climb to about 1200 fpm but that is more than adequate. At 5000 feet in my home built Sierra I have IAS of around 120 knots at full power which is a TAS of 132 knots.

A local Mooney owner just got a bill for 18k for his annual. Apparently a number of ADs from years ago had not been done.

SD you are obviously a Rotax evangelist and that is your right but when I commented in another thread that I liked the simplicity of the Jabiru engine compared to the complexity of the Rotax 9 series you disputed this. I mentioned that the failure rate of Rotax engines is actually higher than for Jabiru engines in Australia in 2023 plus a catastrophic failure in a Sling locally. I thought that would be like a red rag to a bull but no not a peep. I don't care that there are Rotax engines with 2. 3, 4 ,000 hours on them. Plenty of jab engines make the 2000 hour TBO as well. None of these I would guess are owned by private pilots unless they were purchased from a flying school. The Jab engines restrictions imposed by CASA back in 2014 was pushed by some disgruntled FTF owners who ended up as CASA employees and the numbers originally quoted were way over the top but it led to some pretty nasty comments on this and other sites back in 2014. Nowhere else in the world had any issue with Jab engines at the time. Tall poppy syndrome alive and well again. Jabiru is easily the most successful aircraft and engine manufacturer Australia has produced. We should be promoting local industry and innovation not denigrating it. Well there are over 2,000 Jabirus flying around the world, half of them in Australia and they are exported to over 30 countries with over 7,000 engines having been produced and installed in all sorts of aircraft and even drones. It costs me about $45.00 to do an oil and filter change every 25 hours, about twice a year. How may private owners fly 100 hours a year? Most will still need an oil change annually anyway. How many purchased by private owners are going to make TBO given the low annual hours. Most will be out of time well before they reach TBO. Your cost comparisons are irrelevant. All the plumbing has to be replaced at 5 years. The jab engine only has the oil cooler hoses.

Crankshaft or prop flange are possibles. I'd expect oil pressure to drop if there was a crankshaft fracture. I hope we find out what it was.

I have always run my Gen 3 3300A on 98 PULP after it became harder to get 95 PULP. A lot of petrol stations changed to 94 and stopped stocking 95. 94 though is just 91 with ethanol to boost the octane. Avgas and 98 PULP are quite different chemically. Avgas is based on Paraffin which is what you find in candle wax & TEL is added to boost the octane whereas 98 PULP is based on aromatic hydrocarbons & uses xylene, benzene, toluene & other light enes to boost its octane levels. The problem is that the light ene products evaporate off first so it will only store well in sealed full containers. 98 pulp also keeps your engine clean as it also contains detergents & there is no lead to foul plugs and valves & heads. In a study done in the US related to developing lead free Avgas it was found that over 80% of all piston engined aircraft in the US were capable of running on unleaded petrol but few did mainly due to it not being available at aerodrome fuel depots. The only down sides to 98 PULP are shelf life in the tank is much shorter than Avgas, vaporisation risk at high altitudes over 10,000 feet & that it stinks & permeates through the walls of my vinyl ester fuselage tank though it is only a problem when opening the canopy & clears fairly quickly.

Yes from the BP document published in January 2010. Crikey that was 14 years ago and we are still debating it. I'll get me hat & coat.

Electro Aero based at Jandakot near Perth manufacture charging equipment for the aviation industry & have had an electric training aircraft since 2018. It is a Pipistrel Alpha. It has 1 hour endurance & recharging takes 45 minutes & costs about $3.00 in electricity for an hours flying. This was the first in the Southern Hemisphere. The technology is not new & the original Alpha was built in 2015. I believe they created a quick replaceable battery pack at some point which takes about 15 minutes to swap. In 2015 watt hours per kg of a Li-ion battery was less than 200. The latest Li-ion batteries can achieve 360 WH/kg and the new semi solid state battery from TNE can achieve 720 WH/kg. The same weight of battery using the new tech should provide 3-4 hours endurance for the same aircraft. That is pretty good progress and pretty good endurance for this aircraft.

The flying schools at Coffs & South Grafton ran their Gen2 & 3 engines solely on Avgas & still made the 2000 hour TBO so with correct and timely maintenance they were OK. Whether heads came off for decokes or whatever during that time I could not comment on.

No they aren't. They are all owned by Stellantis based in Amsterdam. This is a conglomerate of the merged Fiat Chrysler and PSA groups. They also own Vauxhall and Opel shed from GM when they went bankrupt & got bailed out by the US government & Peugeot.

Avgas will not be available in the future, well after 2030 or thereabouts. The point is that battery technology is increasing dramatically with this latest innovation doubling energy density. The future in aviation may not all be electric but there is a lot of investment already being poured in to short haul electric passenger aircraft, piloted and unpiloted. Unless we get fossil free low emission fuel, i.e. no CO2 emissions piston engines have a pretty limited future. There is a lot of development going in to very low emission with zero CO2 turbine fuels though.

Chinese startup battery manufacturer Tailan New Energy has recently unveiled a semi solid state battery providing 720 Wh/kg. That means a 100kg battery would store 72 kWh of electricity. The very best Lithium Ion batteries produce 1/2 of the energy density of this new battery and are able to propel the new Nio EV more than 1000 km on a single charge. The new battery of the same weight will double that to 2000km. EVs don't need 2000km of range, they need lighter batteries and this breakthrough will halve the weight or more of the battery for any given EV with its current range. The Nio ET7 EV with a 150kWH Li ion battery with half the energy density has a 1000km range. This will make single engine electric aircraft a viable cross country option. Given that the electric power train can produce 5 kW per KG (& this goes back to 2015) means a 90 kW (120 HP) electric motor would weigh only 18 kg. Add 100kg (72kWH) of battery and you will have very good range.

Rotaxes that have 2,3, or 4000 hours on them aren't owned and flown by a private individual. They are operated by flying schools hence the high hours. Most weekend pilots fly 50 hours or less a year. That's 20 years of flying with the same engine to get to 1000 hours. The 2 flying schools in my area have J170s and the engines are replaced at 2000 hours, some after 1000 hours when the top end overhaul is due. Why? It is cheaper to install a new engine of the latest generation than to get the original one overhauled. The time taken for the overhaul also means the aircraft is out of service for that time and cannot be used losing the school money. All that is required to achieve these values is the correct regular maintenance as per the maintenance manual. I have a Gen 3 3300A engine. It was the 4th off the line in 2013 with roller cam followers. I maintain it per the book and at a bit over 400 hours it runs as well as it did when it was new. Leak downs are 78/80 and I don't add oil between changes every 25 hours. I like the simplicity of an air cooled direct drive engine that can run all day at full power if required. That aside the failure rate of 912s in the last year exceeded that of Jab engines. It may have been a oil line, radiator leak or some other minor issue but that is partly due to the 912s complexity with 2 carburettors, lots of plumbing, liquid cooling, a reduction drive and external oil tank. The 912 is a great reliable engine but it is far from perfect and as it, like every other engine is man made it will fail at some point. A Sling landed on the beach not far from me a while ago suffering a catastrophic engine failure. The original 80HP version is considered by many as the best and most reliable. Now with the latest pumping out 160 HP from the same 1.4 litre displacement I'd be a bit cautious. Then there is the price. Wow.

Once a circuit direction and runway are declared it should be adhered to by everyone joining the circuit. That is standard practice and good airmanship. If there is a reason a pilot cannot land on the designated runway they should stay 500 feet above the circuit height as a minimum and declare intentions and their landing order number so aircraft joining later know and note the change. When I flew in to Parkes for Airventure in 2019 on the Friday aircraft were arriving from all points of the compass. I'd never been there before and didn't even see the aerodrome till i was almost over it 2000 agl. There was a lot of chatter on the radio and the runway was easliy established as the wind was 15-20 knots from the East. I easily spotted the 3 in front of me & joined downwind as No 4 & making a call as each touched down in front with my new number. They had a ground frequency at Airventure and it was needed then as I joined a queue of 8-10 aircraft & there were several different ground destinations, mine being the under wing camping parking spot.

Crikey 450k is getting up near Cessna 172 territory. Then again the price of new aircraft has gone ballistic since the pandemic. Kits, engines and avionics prices have all gone through the roof. Good for me though as resale prices have also gone up proportionately.

There is no indication of anything on the Bushcat website or from GAP. They have dealers in 12 countries. GAP Aviation on the Gold Coast is the Australian distributor.