fly_tornado

first few pulls on a 503 engine is just to get fuel into the bowls, on my 503s they have a manual primer that pumps fuel directly into the carb. probably need to buy an electric fuel pump for redundancy and easier starting

O-320s where a lot more common back in the day, they would all be starting to get long in the tooth and expensive now though

this new software

not good

not good

radial engines are inherently designed to fail. The sound great but they are just a bad idea for an aircraft engine like air cooled two strokes.

UL Power make a few engines that weigh less than the O-320 for about the same horsepower, an option if you can afford a new engine http://ulpower.com/en/engines

would they be flying it above MTOW and got into an uncontrollable spin?

have you got a budget Jack?

John Monnett Announces Retirement from Day to Day Operations; Seeks Buyers/Investors while Business Continues Strong SOURCE: SONEX AIRCRAFT JUN 1, 2018 John Monnett with SubSonex JSX-2 N241SJ after completing the second JSX-2’s first flight in October, 2015 | Share | Share | Share | Share After almost 50 years of involvement in the kit aircraft industry, Sonex Founder and President John Monnett has announced his retirement from Sonex Aircraft, LLC effective June 2, 2018. "I am retiring from Sonex Aircraft but not forsaking my passion for aviation," remarks Monnett. "I will continue to contribute where I can into the future but will be leaving day to day operations in the very capable hands of my staff." John Monnett continues to own the experimental aircraft and engine company, but opportunities for alternative ownership of Sonex Aircraft, LLC lie in its future. Monnett invites offers from qualified individuals and/or companies who are interested in continuing the successful heritage of Sonex Aircraft into the next generation, or in assisting Sonex Aircraft with transition to an employee-ownership succession plan. "Current and prospective customers can rest-assured, however," comments Sonex General Manager Mark Schaible, "that Sonex Aircraft is still going strong! In the midst of its most successful period in recent years, Sonex Aircraft has a full order book of kits including several new customer-owned SubSonex Personal Jet Quick Build Kits along with many additional delivery commitments for traditional kits & sub-kits, and many traditional and Quick Build kits already delivered this year-to-date." In addition, Sonex Aerospace, LLC has been contracted by Navmar Applied Sciences Corporation (NASC) to construct two additional Teros UAVs in 2018. The Teros Group 4 UAS is derived from the Xenos Motorglider, and offers Medium Altitude Long Endurance (MALE) UAS capabilities to government and civilian customers. John¹s roots in experimental aircraft date-back to 1968 when, as a young school teacher, John began building a highly-modified Midget Mustang project and was first introduced to legendary aircraft designer & builder Steve Wittman, laying the groundwork for a long friendship with Wittman and the development of Formula Vee racer Sonerai I, John¹s first design. The Sonerai eventually launched John into business, and he has many designs to his credit including several iterations of the Sonerai design, the Monerai sailplane, Moni motorglider, the world-record-holding Monex racer and the complete line of Sonex Aircraft models. John is an inductee into the EAA Homebuilders Hall of Fame, is a two-time winner of the Dr. August Raspet Memorial Award, has received the EAA Freedom of Flight Award, the Society of Experimental Test Pilots Spirit of Flight Award, the Oshkosh Wisconsin Key to the City award, and many more distinctive honors throughout his career. Those interested in learning more about John can read his biography, "John Monnett: from Sonerai to Sonex" written by Sonex builder Jim Cunningham and available for purchase from Sonex Aircraft, LLC. Sonex Aircraft, LLC is a leader in the experimental kit aircraft industry, providing a series of sport aircraft along with the AeroConversions line of products, which include the AeroVee engine, AeroVee Turbo, AeroInjector and ancillary aviation products. Sonex Aircraft's Sonex, Waiex, and Onex sport planes, the Xenos sport motorglider, and the SubSonex Personal Jet, offer outstanding performance in an easy to build, easy to fly kit package that can be purchased and completed with full technical support at an unrivaled price. Highly regarded as an engineering company, Sonex has diversified its offerings to include Sonex Aerospace LLC, producing the Teros UAS for unmanned and optionally piloted civil and defense missions, while developing other UAS airframes in conjunction with Navmar Applied Sciences Corporation. Sonex and AeroConversions continue to invest heavily in developing new products. Our team is committed to providing simple, elegant and low-cost solutions for sport flying. Simply put, Sonex Aircraft and AeroConversions products provide the Best Performance Per Dollar. Check us out at www.SonexAircraft.com, www.AeroConversions.com and www.SonexAerospace.com.

its a great time to be buying a single seater, there is a ton of cheap aircraft on the market

I think a lot of the clubs are being swallowed or merged into flying schools. The biggest fear of most pilots is being grounded for some minor infringement of the rules, it doesn't help when the regulators have vague or contradictory interpretations of the rules.

I do find his columns interesting. Its a shame he's not really interested in complex discussions about the RAA

I just thought everyone would instantly know its not my dysfunctional ranting and appreciate it for what its worth

this is from this month's Sport Pilot written by Michael Monck, he's referring to the Australian fly in with the same name. I'm just putting it up here for the benefit of those that don't like reading the magazine as a PDF

Don't laugh Kasper, an 80% increase in flying hours year on year is just the beginning.

Why worry? I've got no ambition to involve myself in the running of the RAA, after all it seems to be going better than ever. If the RAA team can maintain an 8 percent growth rate that means the RAA will have 20.000 members in less than 8 years.

Sounds like the RAA should be taking over CASA

IF I stood in front of a crowd of aviators and declared that aviation was thriving, I would no doubt get shouted down. It’s a ludicrous statement, right? If I instead announced that aviation was dying, I would probably get a much better reception. That’s how Trump got elected. It’s controversial, eye raising and attention-grabbing stuff. We are wired to pay attention to things which might adversely affect us, so we stand and take notice of these types of comments. RAAus grew by eight per cent over the past year. RAAus has been getting safer over the past five years. RAAus has created more than 10,000 aviators in the past 10 years. These are all very impressive numbers if you ask me. Not exactly riveting material and certainly not the sort of thing that creates headlines. It is just the plain and simple truth. But despite this good news, we seem to be obsessed with the falsehood that we are dying. We’re convinced someone is killing us and that someone is CASA. We’re told GA in the US is thriving because of its different regulatory environment. None of that is true. We tend to give it more emphasis due to our natural tendency to try and protect ourselves. Let’s start with the US and get the real picture. In Australia, most general aviation is conducted by piston powered aircraft. Sure, we have turbo props and so forth, but these are fairly small in comparison to the rest of the fleet. Of course, this changes when you consider commercial ops, but the share for GA is fairly small. The number of aircraft in the US which fall into this category peaked in 1984 at 197,442, according to AOPA. Its data, which is freely available on its website, then shows a steady decline from that year on. The latest published figures show the total number of piston aircraft at 155,180. That’s a decline of 21 per cent. In absolute terms, the fall in numbers is more than 42,000 aircraft. To put that into context, at the time of writing this there were 15,518 aircraft on the CASA register and a further 3,500 on the RAAus register. So the US market shrunk by more than twice the size of the entire Australian fleet. If we shrunk by that much we would have minus 23,000 planes in Australia! If we were to base our arguments on this, we would conclude that the US market is struggling not thriving. And it doesn’t end there. In 1984, the same year piston powered aircraft numbers reached their peak, the ‘Experimental’ and ‘Other’ categories totalled only 6,275 aircraft. Now it sits at 37,610 aircraft and I am sure this will continue to grow. So, adding the two categories together, the US has actually seen a small decline of around 5,000 aircraft over the period. That’s hardly thriving, but I don’t want to be a fear monger and suggest it is dying either! What this says to me is that the landscape is changing. ‘Experimental’ and ‘Other’ includes LSA aircraft, home built and so on. ‘Other’, on its own, is a category growing strongly. It has doubled in the period for which AOPA publishes data. While it isn’t as pronounced as the transition from the horse and cart to the motor car, it is certainly a transformation which is impossible to deny. So why do we believe the rumours about the US thriving and Australian aviation dying? Because we are only hearing one side of the story. Why? I honestly don’t know. The important thing though, is that if we all run around telling people that aviation is a dinosaur and that the comet is about to hit, it is a sure-fire way to turn aviation into a dinosaur and cause the sky to fall in. It is not in the interests of aviation at all and nor is the mentality we seem to employ to promote ourselves. I often hear arguments that we need to unite as an industry. Indeed, I made the very same argument some years ago, which is how AirVenture came to be. We do need to unite. The problem I also see is the way we conduct ourselves is very different to what we say and we forget the old adage that our actions speak louder than our words. In my view we should have a fly-in somewhere in Australia every single weekend. An aviation event should be going on and we should participate in it. It doesn’t matter whether it is a large or small gathering, an Avalon or a Wings Over Illawarra style event, as long as it happens. What also matters is that we support each other and not try to win at all costs, to the detriment of others in our industry. It’s the reason I worked with fellow aviators to start AirVenture and the same reason we relinquished control of it. The structure of AirVenture is such that no single entity can control it. It is a legal entity in its own right and has multiple beneficiaries, of which RAAus is only one. In other words, we have a strong interest in seeing it succeed, but we do not control it. It is, by design, an event for aviators by aviators. If it doesn’t succeed then you, as an aviator, lose. All aviators lose. Despite us stepping back from having an RAAus centric event and putting aviation as a whole before our own organisation, some people seem determined to undermine it. This is what is causing aviation grief in Australia. It has nothing to do with people moving on from the proverbial horse and cart and into something new. If it did, we’re all going to be shocked when personal aerial vehicles such as those being developed by Lilium, Kitty Hawk, Volocopter, SureFly, etc. become mainstream. Because there’s going to be another shift. We need to stop pointing fingers and focus on real issues. If we don’t get to the root cause of our problems and start to understand that the industry has to accept a role in its own destiny, then we truly are doomed. Crying foul at the regulator and blaming it for all our problems is like a kid jumping up and down crying ‘it isn’t fair’. The kid is right in that regulation does cost us money and life is not fair, but that is only half the story. GA businesses recently revealed that aviation agencies, of which CASA is just one, account for just four per cent of their operational expenses. There are clearly other things going on and the current approach won’t succeed at fixing them if we ignore them. It’s a not a smart strategy. A steady handed approach, with some rational thinking and argument, is the way to make progress. Understanding the real issues is also key. We have seen many airports closing over the past decade. It’s creating access problems, cost pressures and other difficulties which are, in my mind, more significant than the four per cent cost of regulation. Yet no one is doing much about that issue. There are also other significant challenges ahead and no one is paying attention. Things need to change. Next time you’re in a forum, at the local club or just chatting with other aviators and something controversial is said about our passion, ask that person what their view is based on. What is their background? Why are they qualified to make that statement? Where is the evidence? Is it just a rumour which is distracting us from the real issues or is it really something worth worrying about? If it is the former and it damages things like AirVenture, then question it and push back. After all, if we don’t stand up for an event for aviators, by aviators, then who will? And if you stand by and let someone destroy aviation, then we will all be dinosaurs, waiting for the comet to hit.

its a trade off, more weight will mean its less likely to collapse at speed, less weight means you get up to speed faster

no 2mm is fine, it won't crack when you bend it around, the weight difference is miniscule

Get 2mm sheet

can't go past the mosquito for an outstanding fighter come fighter bomber

the way I see it going with aircraft wiring in a single light aircraft just creates so many issues, like five years after you have built your plane you are on your back in the cockpit floor trying to read a wiring diagram on your back whilst holding a torch in bad light. that 6 point font on your wiring will barely be readable for your old eyes.

people seem to go a bit weird when it comes to wiring