Garfly

A couple of vids and stuff here but you've probably found those already on the Tube.

https://www.pilotsofamerica.com/community/threads/optimum-cg-test.141807/

No, not valid at all. The 2022 Sling TSi is at least 10 times safer for such a trip. No need to count the reasons why. Anyway, I'm more interested in comparing the human spirit involved.

Well, the Sling 4 TSi is double the AUW and double the speed of the Ranger (and has a heater) just for starters. Anyway, either type can prove that the adventurous spirit is alive and well. That Ryan of Lindbergh was way out of its envelope, too.

How much more one could question when the U/L concerned is not a Sling but a Skyranger. Below is one of the videos about French aviator Thierry Barbier's round the world Skyranger adventures. Sadly, he did crash fatally, in the end but, ironically, not on one of his high risk legs but due an EFATO on a local flight in Kenya in 2016. [A rough english translation is available via YouTube's Auto-translate function. ]

But Durandal and Glorieuse are the names of the prop types.

Hell, yeah ... as the tag line of the first film puts it: "Taking off with a 1000lbs of fuel is TERRIFYING" (cf. The Spirit of St Louis which was carrying 1000lbs more fuel than it had ever carried taking off from Roosevelt Field in 1927.)

This video explains how the Sling 4 TSi high wing (145 Kt TAS / 950 Kg AUW) was (re)designed around the 915 iS with its 141 available horses.

No, indeed. As they were acutely aware, as we find out by way of the amazing dialogue scenes, cutting in (sort of) real-time between the 3-cockpits. I don't think there's ever been a video quite like it.

Yes, they were an exceptionally brave little trio wandering out into the Atlantic. One of the PICs involved was an American airline pilot who came over to Joburg to build her own Sling High Wing kit (in a hangar near the Sling company HQ) and, rather than have it shipped back, decided to join the others on their epic voyage to Oshkosh.

Another time, place and type ... same lesson.

Yes, good point Ian. I've heard somewhere that a drawback of locking wire is that it can allow that first little bit of loosened clamp load. So maybe loctite, nordlock AND lock wire for critical bolts??

Yeah, that guy was surely exaggerating a bit, but, for all that ... a pretty funny - and relatable - rave of everyday exasperation. LOL

Anyway, if we reckon we're hardly done by, having to manage multiple time zones, imagine being a programmer writing time-related code that'll work for the whole world:

I don't think anyone here really has problems with UTC/local time conversions. I think Thruster was setting a trick question to get us thinking - about the trustworthiness of NOTAMs. RFguy tipped the wink above with "NO No NO !!! the question here is not about how to convert UTC to local but that the NOTAM was issued in LOCAL time not UTC !!!"

All very true. But it's good to keep in mind that with our worst PA-31 crash (Whyalla Flt. 904) blame was finally laid at the door of Lycoming. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whyalla_Airlines_Flight_904 "The safety implications arising from the accident were subject to a recall by engine manufacturer Textron Lycoming which saw close to 1000 aircraft grounded worldwide while defects were rectified at an estimated cost of $A66 million."

Yes, if ever I was caught in such a situation I think I'd do the same. I'm not persuaded that attempting an immediate 180 is the way to go, at all.

Actually, there's little incentive not to speculate on a fellow pilot's 'error'. Notwithstanding our precept about innocent till proven guilty. Some will argue that there's a public benefit in doing so (rarely argued by an involved party). Truth is, most aeronautical types can take a guess as to the probable cause as soon as they hear the basic facts about an incident. After all, we haven't found too many new ways to crash planes in the past century. (Old Dan Gryder certainly does, even if sometimes he's forced to eat humble pie due his high profile.) So if you've no scruples about pointing fingers you will very likely be (partly) right. And anyway, by the time a properly responsible investigation is done, your premature gaff will likely be forgotten. (Except, probably, by aggrieved innocents - and unless they decide to sue ;- )

Fair enough. (Over on pprune, though, they're pretty hairy-chested with their speculatin' ;- )

BTW, the writers of that AVweb article (Surviving VFR into IMC) reckon that this US AOPA online-course is the best education aid on the subject they came across: https://www.aopa.org/training-and-safety/online-learning/online-courses/weather-wise-vfr-into-imc

There's a story behind that 178 seconds notion which is told in this article: Surviving VFR into IMC VFR into IMC events have a distressingly high fatality rate. Here's why they happen and some strategies for surviving based on research into reports from pilots who successfully handled the challenge. https://www.avweb.com/flight-safety/technique/surviving-vfr-into-imc/ EXCERPT: "Perhaps you’ve seen the widely distributed aviation video 178 Seconds to Live. The narrative starts: “The sky is overcast and the visibility poor. That reported five-mile visibility looks more like two and you cannot judge the height of the overcast. . .” It continues: “. . . You find yourself unconsciously easing back just a bit on the controls to clear those none- too-imaginary towers. With no warning, you are in the soup. . .” And then, dramatically, “You now have 178 seconds to live!” Or do you? As a survivor of a Visual Flight Rules (VFR) into Instrument Meteorological Conditions (IMC) incident that lasted a lot longer than 178 seconds, I often wondered about the veracity of 178 Seconds to Live. It certainly wasn’t true in my case. Where had this video come from? Was it a follow on to those old “scare ‘em straight” propaganda movies they fed us in high school? A post about the video on a social media site mentioned a “study with 20 subjects.” I started doing research. The oldest reference to the phrase “178 seconds to live” in a VFR into IMC narrative I located was an article with the same title published in the January/February 1993 issue of FAA Aviation News. I then discovered that the “study” was really part of an experiment—the results of which had nothing to do with what eventually became 178 Seconds to Live. And, after the research I conducted into surviving a VFR into IMC encounter, I can’t help but wonder whether teaching that a pilot has but 178 seconds to live has caused fatalities because some who got into what is a frightening situation gave up rather than do what was needed to survive. In 1954, the University of Illinois published a report entitled The 180—Degree Turn Experiment. The objective of the experiment was to see if 20 non-instrument-rated pilot subjects could be taught a technique for making a 180-degree turn and controlled descent in instrument meteorological conditions. In order to document the progress of the subjects, there had to be a baseline established for the abilities of each at the beginning of the project. Each pilot was evaluated on his or her ability to maintain control of an airplane under simulated instrument conditions. During his or her initial flight, each subject eventually placed the airplane into what the report referred to as “an incipient dangerous attitude.” The minimum time to reach an incipient dangerous attitude was 20 seconds; the maximum time was eight minutes. The average was 178 seconds. 178 seconds was the average of baseline measurements taken for the purpose of evaluating the results of an experiment. I think it is also important to note that most of the subjects had little or no experience with the type of aircraft used in the experiment, a Beechcraft Bonanza, and that they were flying it with only a bare minimum of instruments—what we would call partial panel. Over the years, that baseline measurement took on a life of its own. It morphed from being the initial evaluation of a subject’s ability to control a complex aircraft in simulated, partial panel IMC into an urban myth that an unwary pilot can survive for less than three minutes in an inadvertent IMC encounter. Variations of “178 Seconds to Live” have been promoted by the civil aviation authorities of both Canada and Australia. Are pilots who encounter IMC on a VFR flight doomed as the video claims? Hardly. While they are seriously at risk, a look at the NASA Aviation Safety Reporting System reports finds that pilots can and do survive VFR into IMC encounters ... "