Planechaser

Man I love that noise!!

I have been watching alternate power in aircraft with great interest, be it solar, diesel or electric. Looks like EU is going Jet and Mogas all the way, perhaps in front of the rumours that the blokes in the UK making the Tetraethyl lead for Avgas are stopping production at the end of the year. I noted the other day that Broken Hill does not have an Avgas truck anymore; no BP card for the bowser, no fuel. The aero club is in the process of getting a card to help people, but plenty are getting caught out. Time for a 98 bowser, me thinks;) I also saw that Pipistrel is talking Hybrid and all electric for the Panthera. Interesting times......

I toyed with the idea of an oil therm, but it is so much easier to tape up 1/3( and up to 1/2 in peak winter! Desert mornings!) of the oil cooler. Especially as an oil therm will not speed up the morning warm up time, so I have been told. I can't see that a few extra clamps and pipes would change the reliability terribly much. When put on from new it all looks very visible and so easy to check for leaks. I have not had an oil pipe leak in 600hrs and I have no reason to believe thermostat piping would be any different. Extra pipe liability is the argument the Jab/O-200 blokes use. ;) I have been told that the aftermarket oil filters have a faster flow and so the warm up times are reduced, but I do not know the brand, and have not tried it. Higher oil flow in a filter the same size says less filtration to me, but may be I was being a bit of a nanna about it...!! 6min is my average to get oil to 50C; 10min in the longest I have ever waited. I also agree that oil temp is measured on outlet of the cooler so you are always reading on the cool side.

I would agree with rdarby. I have got about 550 hrs in my A22LS and 85-90 is comfortable. If you are in rough air, anything over about 92kts for mine is pretty rough. That thick wing picks up all the bumps!! Back it off to 85kts and its smooth as the proverbial. I get 85 at 4800rpm( which is where I cruse and muster. Well 4800 t0 4950.) with the blunt tipped rigid warp drive set to "Homesick Angel" A Warp cranked around for cruse, or probably a Kiev cranked around for cruse would tap 100kts ease IMHO, but keep in mind the ride goes from tarmac to corrugated iron in the low 90s, if in rough air. I asked about the in flight adjustable unit out of NZ when we bought it 18 months ago, and old mate the designer in the Ukraine was very scathing!! Reconed the extra weight would counter act the prop pitch and neuter any extra speed. I have heared they work well on Sav's though, so it would still be worth a thought..... Also, my fuel consumption and oil blow off increase expidentally when I push over 4900rpm, so the extra 5kts is not really value for money, but that could just be my particular bird.

Hard to beat the Yellow....!

Don't know if this counts as recreational aviation, but it is aviation none the less. If the Wright Bros. had cliffs instead of beaches.......

So how many blokes/girls started their training in a 150 or a Tomahawk, or a Cub or a Moth for that matter? So how different is a Tomahawk( which I did 35 of my 50 Hrs training in) to a Foxbat/Jab/150/Eurofox, whatever? Now befor you all say chalk and cheese, I know that, but seriously, we are talking about light to very(ultra?) light, two seat training aircraft with two places and 100 to 120 hp donks. It comes down to the attitude of the trainee and the trainer, in my opinion; nothing to do with the aircraft. All I ever wanted to do was low level single stuff, but old Jack was still trying to push the idea, gently of course, of twin convesion and IFR because, in his words, he had me measured for a pilot and that's what pilots did! On an other tack, in my short 500hrs( actually, within 200hrs) I had been in comand of a Tomahawk, a Cherokee, 3 models of 172, a Foxbat A22 and an A22LS, and I will be shortly doing my BFR in a Grummen Tiger, and perhaps going for a spin in a trike. I consider myself very luck to have a broad range of experience, no matter how short it is, as it all adds to the bank of knowledge.

Thanks Ruff; I hadn't caught up with the fact that S.A. had an agent. Don't know about the truck Turbo, 180 nm from home to Gawler Airfield; leave at 6am and drop in off at 8 at 90kts! Just keep it below 1500 coming in or the RAAF might use you for target practice!!

Thanks Phil, I will give him a call. Busy is a good sign!

I am looking at take the Foxbat abroad for her 400 hourly in the next few months, just for another set of eyes to go over her and to do some light electrical work with guage swapping. Broken Hill is the closest option, but they can have quite a backlog of planes from up North,( and going further afield is a good excuse for a flying trip!) I am thinking Swan Hill, Murry Bridge, perhaps Goolwa, but like Shultz, I know nothing. No controled airspace as no transponder. I am quite happy to pay fully qualified dollars for a fully qualified job. A semi-qualified job I can do myself! Any suggestions.......?

Put in a diagram of the panel, Kyle. I havn't had any bother with the MGL stuff. It cost my about $260 over the standard stuff to have them put in. I find it much easier to process the raw number than a dial. I thought because I waould have a set of numbers in my head( Vne Vf Etc etc) That instead of decifering a dial or slide bar every time, much better just to see the number. The big 'ol ASI is a dream when doing low level technical stuff! Ditto the RPM and oil temp/press. I love seeing the number at a glance. I like the look of their EFIS gear. A bit of over-kill for my job but that dosn't stop me trying to convince myself every now and then. I've done 350 hrs/12 months flying so far and I can't fault them. Would find it ard to go back to Dials!!

I've got MGL Digital dials in the Bat, and sometimes you will see the RPM flick up to 5400 if you are running around the 5000-5100 mark. Seems to happen when it's gusty, so I am guessing that the wind gusts feed back through the prop and move the RPM around, and with and old school dial with propper damping on it, it just never shows up. The bat is flat out at just under 5300 in normal conditions. Well, that's my theory anyway....

I guess at the end of the day it came down to a personal preference. I had been mooning over the Zen 701 for a few years, and then discovered the Sav. All looked right with the world, and then when the opportunity cameup, so did the Foxbat. When I lined the two up side by side, the Bat won, but nothing you could really put your finger on. One thing surprising me at the moment, and it is more my impression than any strong facts, is the number of Bats Vs Savs used for flight training. I wouldn't have thought there wasn't much between them as aircraft, and the Sav is cheaper, or was last time I looked.

Don't know who liked it more; me or the 4 year old and 1 year old watching with me!

Always interested in the Sav thread as I all but flipped a coin between the Foxbat Ls and a Sav. Trawling through the thread I am a little surprised at the quoted speeds/power settings, like 87kts@5400. I was under the impression that the Sav lined up with the Bat for TAS. What I mean to say is with full fuel, 10kg in the back, and me( say 100kg! :{) ) I regularly get 87kts-90kts @ 4900rpm. Morning, no wind. When I say average I mean average, so 25 hrs into a service as regards oil, air filters, bug factor etc. The prop is set not far back from a crackle, for STOL ops, tundra tires, no spats. This is my standard config for a water run, which happens around 8am. Two other points to add to this are unless conditions are like skating on glass, anything over 90kts in academic, as the horse spends all it's time trying to buck you off, if you know what I mean!! The other is that wind always seems to slow me down more that it speeds me up. A head wind of 15kt will always turn into a 12kt tail wind. Gets me every time. Perhaps the Garmin Gremlin just likes bending my head! ;)

Or the profesonial. I have will have done 350+ hrs with my 912 in the first 12 months, and the fuel saving plus no carb rebuild/balance is a big factor. Once apon a time blokes like me had to fly 172's, but no more!!

If they ever were.......

Looking on a rotax owners site, the big US dealer in the chat said retrofitting injection only(new heads and fuel system) would be out as the 912is is a new motor in it's own right. More that two thirds of the bits are new, including the block. Seems like Rotax has taken the opportunity for a full facelift. Smart boys.

I would have gone to the dead side, to make sure everything else was ok for landing. If I knew the instructor had pullled the flap fuse, then flapless landing, no drama. But I don't think the instructor was after just a flapless landing. This is a simulated situation. In the real world you would have gone for flaps and found none. There is no way I would just go " Oh well, must be the fuse" and keep lined up in that situation! In the first place, how will you check the fuse as you are turning from base to final, calling and watching the rest of the plane? What other fuses may have popped?? I am a low hour( 450 ish) non instructor, but I have had my share of machinery that goes wrong at the vital time! Aircraft, for all the maintenance, are no different.

Yeah, that was my take as well. If, (and it's a big if in the real world) the iS can use 17L/H where the ULS uses 19L/H thats 4000L over the life of the engine. At $1.50/L, that's $6k, or the extra cost of the engine. So the fuel economy alone should pay for the extra buy in cost, over the life of the donk, let alone the fact that you can fly further/longer on your tanks. The hour savings, especially if you are paying someone else to do it, of balancing and stripping/rebuilding the carbs may be eaten up else where, but so what! The costs are already covered long term.

Yep. I recon this is how they will sidestep the extra weight. They couldn't do extra H.P. right off the bat though because so many light aircraft have the 912 100hp as the max motor.

It brings to mind the old aviation joke of the grandmother who approches the Captain while disembarking the plane after a hard landing and asks "Did we land, or were we shot down?!"

Hi OME, The funny thing to me is, Take off is the really dangerous bit, because if it goes wrong, you are doing the opposite of what you need to do, and your area to do it with is getting shorter, or has gone! I was always ( and if truth be known, I still am a bit. It's hard to shake!) freaking out about my landings, and never fazed about my take offs, and my instructor set about changing that!! We went up, in the Tomahawk, on a hot, gusty, semi-stormy afternoon in Mildura and did circiuts for over an hour, and while take off was hairy, landing was something akin to bull riding!! What it taught me was, the plane will always come down. It can be out of shape, slipping, skidding, bouncing, bucking, floating and all of the above, but when you finally chop power, guess what......it lands. Take off is always full of danger because there is always a point where you are too far in to abort, and not far enough to get back. And it's all well and good to say "Set up the glide, look 30deg either side and and bring it back in," but in my limited experience, the kilometer or two out the end of the runway is never a good spot to put a plane down! Landing, it is all in front of you, and it doesn't have to be pretty. That comes later. All you do is set the plane up, and it lands itself. It's the knowlege of the minor corrections that makes it pretty or not, but like I said, that comes later and is not manditory to getting on the ground.

Hey Howard, Long, but very nice! Thanks for sharing.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=xmlAW_1hgT8 Now, I don't know about you guys, but I did not ever have a dream where I was flying and it was in a plane before I got my licence, so does that make this the real thing? I also wonder if these blokes are the perfect blend of the Art and Craft of flying, because I am certain they don't just role up and jump of a cliff, or they would all be dead. You simply can not fly like this fella does on luck and raw skill, so imagine the calculations of wind, air pressure, slope, temp, your weight on the day, and then cross reference it with the raw info they have about speed, altitude and rate of decent streaming on the head up display in the helmet. As a pilot, it bends my mind. These blokes are like fast jet fighter jocks that couldn't be bothered studying physics at school....