sain

points well made - the take off roll distance for the CH701 at least is listed as almost double (115ft as oposed to 60ft) for 2 on board. Take off over 50ft obstacle is 180ft (55 meters) I think - probably for 1 up, no luggage.

Looks like ACT Government is supporting them for this one though.

Plenty of 701s doing short takeoffs:

Thats a little more reasonable and makes sense if you apply ye-olde 1.5*stall=landing speed to what people were reporting as the "over the fence" speed. 22kts pulling the nose up doesn't really mean squat - as others have mentioned the pitot tube is in turbulent airflow at that point and wont be giving an accurate reading. Very nice aircraft design from what little i've seen of it.

I had one similair to shags. I was extremely recently solo and I was doing circuits with a bunch of other aircraft. On the downwind leg I spotted a plane in the run up area (presumably doing checks) and thought it was a bit odd as I hadn't heard a taxi call. I decided to keep an eye on it and kept going round my circuit. About half way down the final leg of the circuit the plane taxied towards the runway edge before stopping. I gave a short finals call to indicate I was there and not far from landing. As I crossed the airport boundry fence the plane taxied out onto the run way and gave an entering and lining up call. I promptly gave a "going round" call, as did the plane coming down finals behind me. Unfortunately that wasn't quite the end of the episode, as after saying "oh was that me, sorry" he took off anyway, coming up straight underneath me (much faster climber than the gazelle). Fortunately he turned onto his crosswind leg at a below-legal height, which occured shortly before I reached 500ft agl and commenced my turn. This gave me one hell of a shock when I did a deliberate traffic check look out before doing my turn and spotted him still in mid turn through the clear pilot side door not very far away.

Thanks for the info on the no-soldering rule guys - much obliged. I'm curious though - isn't the crimp connector body rigid, so wouldn't a properly crimped connector have the same issue with the rigid/flexible joint?

slightly off topic i'm afraid: can anybody tell me why is soldering considered a no-no? I would have thought it would produce a stronger joint, to say nothing of the improved electrical connection over the connectors...

Sounds good major - a beefed up, heavier, faster lazair. I'm not familair with the airfoil (or wing really) on the Lazair - its a custom designed airfoil isn't? My understanding was that the wing had been designed for good very low speed handling. Is that still one of your design goals? *edit* damn but i'm an idiot. I should have read your design goals more carefully in the first place - it would have answered the question for me.

So your looking for something with a decent cruise speed, flying out of regular "prepared" airstrips? And with a reasonable luggage capability...

I'd forgotten about the sonex. It was one of the first kit planes than I came across when I was thinking of learning to fly. The build description of the sonex on the RA-Aus site (Jarvis Sonex 1) turned me on to the whole concept. It doesn't quite fit the flying I want to do though, so I'd discarded it fairly early. Very nice aircraft though, and the design team at Sonex appears to be doing very good work. Shags have you thought about what sort of flying you want to do with your plane?

It was a couple of models in the 601 and 650 range (xl?) that had the issues,not the 701. The zenith guys put out some fixes that address the problem area in the wing. The 701 has a different wing.

it might be worth getting in touch with the Zenith agents here in aus (ad in latest RA-Aus rag). The various zenith kits can be purchased as component kits, and its very common to start with an empennage (tail) kit and build that first. That allows you to build a bit at a time, as funds allow etc. Or to not fork out too much and then find your build skills arn't up to it. There are also a number of tutorial DVDs available for the Zenith range which will walk you through the build and provide lots of hints and tips.

One thing to keep in mind is neither of those planes can be registered under RA-Aus rules. So if you have your heart set on them you will have to get a GA ticket sooner or later. Give your instructor a heads up early and you can probably save quite a bit of money (and time). I found that my aircraft desires changed a lot as I progressed through my lessons and I started to get a better feel for what sort of flying I was likely to be doing "most of the time". Origionally I wanted a fast two seater for touring round the country in, now its go anywhere STOL plane (CH701). Its not to say I don't lust after the gofastys, they just arn't practical for the flying I want to do.

I don't know. Its probably bollocks, but the situation itself is not that improbable. I shared a circuit with a IFR flight doing a radar vectored approach and had absolutely no idea what the other plane was going to be doing. Fortunately we both had working radios and the other pilot was helpful and polite (i keep writing that as pilot) and we were both able to figure out what the other was going to be doing on the conflicting circuit. Now the plane I was in had a working transponder and Radio, and we were both on the right frequency but apart from that you've got the situation the guy described. Not a great danger to either aircraft, but easily described as a near miss. I could, with no particular stretch or exageration, be described as having no idea about the basics of flying circuits in poor weather conditions (being a fine VFR day it wasn't particularly required). I was, and had been for a while, established in the circuit before the other pilot gave his 10nm inbound call. From his point of view though, I would have been flying against the circuit direction. The only part of it that really strikes me as as a load of horse manure is the "significant littoral airport". Anybody aware of a significant airport in Queensland that is beneath the high water line? Seems improbable to me. I call bollocks. Or perhaps the need for a dictionary.

mode S doesn't provide ADSB. Its a standard that predates ADSB. ADSB provides a GPS based location reference and a unique identifier. I think Mode S provides a unique identifier and a wider squawk code range. I don't think mode s is a legitimate mode for Australia, so it'd be wasted money. Its probably best to check that information with somebody who pays attention more than I do.

The flasher LED is certainly an interesting idea, and would probably be a very simple way of making an oscillator. However that circuit, as shown on that page wont work even if you do sub in a pnp transistor. The designer has put in all the LEDs backwards for starters. Check Simple LED Circuit | TechDose.com for a guide on how to hook up an LED.

There are a couple of people who have posted here saying they can't think of a reason why they'd need one. To me thats structure failure in flight. The CH601XL wing structure failure in flight issue is a pretty good example of a situation where they are useful. Not wanting to restart the debates on that, essentially a bunch of them had wing foldups in flight despite analysis not indicating any problem with the plane. (fixs have now been released). A number of deaths were the result of this problem. Would a BRS have saved any of them? I call that as a maybe, and that maybe makes them worthwhile to me.

ummm... have you bought those yet MicheL? the datasheet (http://www.bridgelux.com/assets/products_portfolio/BridgeluxLEDArray_DataSheet.pdf) gives a minimum voltage of 15V. You may need to build a boost converter to go with them.

hmm.. a bit wrong with that schematic. First of all, a 2n2222 is a NPN transistor not a PNP as shown in the diagram... A PNP transistor would work from that schematic though. Secondly the brightness level required to get near to compliance with standards means you need a LED much like the one 4aplat has specified. A 2n2222 will turn itself into a gas if you hook up any more than 1 of the CREE XR-E 7090s to it. Interesting use of the flasher LED though, that wouldn't have occured to me. *edit* actually I'm pretty sure that circuit wont do squat - try building it with http://www.falstad.com/circuit/ Roughly speaking LEDs will be at the peak brightness when they are supplied with the current they require. The LED driver MicheL is using will provide that constant current despite the variable voltage of the aircraft's power supply. Essentially it wont matter if hes talking on the radio or starting or whatever, his LEDs will still put out their maximum brightness.

Bill, I'm not entirely sure why your harping on this stuff so much - those rules arn't such a vast change from how we operate now. The closest thing in those rules that I can think of that would be a problem for a device like this is 167 1 b) i): Given that these devices will trip and mute the ipod or whatever as soon as the radio's own squelch trips and maintain the muting for longer than the de-squelched period I'd consider that they would be legal under that rule.Some of your other concerns arn't really valid either - these arn't a modifcation to VHF comms, less so even than an intercom. They operate purely on the audio output from the radio, and have no path to the audio input section. I'm interested in why you don't think they are legal though - could you perhaps list why you think they arn't? (in another thread, so we don't hijack this one any further - general forum maybe?). Some pointers to relevant rules/legislation would be nice. I'd note also that ANR headsets fall into the same problem bracket - they introduce noise into the audio stream in order to dampen ambient noise. Congratulations on your 2.8 years aloft btw.

Ignoring the rules side of things. Andy quite a while back I designed a circuit to do what your after. You can find the schematic and parts list over in the kit general discussion section: http://www.recreationalflying.com/forum/kit-gen-discussion/7300-electronics-project-audio-mixer-headsets.html It will mute the non-entertainment-system-mp3-player whenever there is noise from the radio. I designed it shortly before starting my Navs. At the time I was pretty much restricted to the often quiet radio environment around Goulburn. Once I started my Navs I realised that normally the radio traffic was far to high to allow for enjoyment of even a very short song. Please note that it has never (to my knowledge) been tested in an aircraft, or with an aircraft radio. It has been tested with an aircraft headset, but thats it. I got my navs in the period between having the initial concept and figuring out how to design and build it. I'd suggest checking out some other designs for audio amps etc - I'm an electronics newb and I may have missed something. Actually thinking about it I've missed termination resistors on each of the inputs. This should be a resistor between each input and ground. The resistor value should be the same as whatever your radio/mp3 player expects. Oh, adding a filter to the power input would probably be a good idea too. Let me know if you want me to update the schematic with those details, or if you need a circuit board layout or something. Alternatives to my design can be found in a couple of places. I think Jim Weir did one for kitplanes (don't remeber the date). S53MV's aircraft projects pages are probably worth looking at too (http://lea.hamradio.si/~s53mv/avionics/avionics.html and specifically (http://lea.hamradio.si/~s53mv/avionics/intercom.html). Also look for vox intercoms for motorcycles.

You might want to try firing up your radio from the same voltage source (battery) and seeing if there is any interferance before bothering to make the filter. I suspect it'll be necessary, but your radio may already have nice filtering. Nice job though MicheL, it looks like that will work very well.

It'd depend on what high brightness LEDs you used. Essentially the voltage into that LED driver has to be 2 Volts higher than whatever the combined forward voltage drop of your LED chain is. I think (guessing a lot) that MicheL has some Cree EZ1000 LEDs, which have a typical forward voltage of 3.3 (max 3.8). So his numbers are pretty much bang on. That said you could always use 2 LED drivers in parrallel. not sure what the cost of those drivers are. probably fairly cheap. MicheL did you build the specified input filter?

Wow, thats nice and bright. I take it your using the kitplanes schematic to provide power, and the 555s to pulse the lights on and off?

yah, but MicheL can probably build 3 from that schematic for the cost of one of those.