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Old Koreelah

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Everything posted by Old Koreelah

  1. Old Koreelah
    Spacey that might work for most people, but I’m 1.93m tall. After my new hip joint was fitted, I couldn’t bend my leg enough to fit a standard wheelchair (that leg also has a dodgy knee that’s survived five ops.). I bought my own and modified it. That took me days and cost money. The result was worth it and sure made a difference on my recent trip. Much of the time I used it as a walker and loaded it with my baggage. In fact, it helped me avoid a potentially crippling fall on the uneven pavers and cobblestones common to where we went.
  2. Old Koreelah
    Yesterday I was one of those returning ‘roos and my faith in our national carrier took a further hit. The CEO laid off heaps of experienced staff to get the company thru Covid then must have expected them to miraculously join up again when it was over. A little more loyalty to staff might have saved the recent sucession of stuff-ups by Qantas. Before my recent overseas trip we made phone calls enquiring how I’d go with limited mobility after a hip replacement. We were pleasantly surprised to be promised that not only was my wheelchair welcome, they’d bring me right to the plane on it, then have it ready at the other end. That never happened and I guess inexperienced new staff are the main issue. Instead, we’ve discovered how far apart passengers and their luggage can be unloaded. Somehow, wheelchairs come off the plane last. Yesterday morning we beat the rush at Sydney, but lost an hour or more just searching for the plurry chair. The CEO does not deserve any bonus.
  3. Old Koreelah
    OME is absoloutely correct about airports being given to local governments. I believe John Anderson was the minister we can blame for this short-sighted blunder. Our Aero Club bought a hangar that had been built to house a small flying school. It has bunkrooms upstairs, toilets, shower and kitchen. When council officers heard that an apprentice had camped overnight there for a few days they went ballistic; it’s not zoned residential! We bought the building with big hopes of establishing a “safe haven” for southbound pilots. Despite pointing out to the council officer the many fatalities caused by cloud and turbulence over the Liverpool Range, it took a long campaign for us to be allowed to use the bunk rooms for “emergency overnight accomodation” only.
  4. Old Koreelah
    Trucks in Australia are different to what you see elsewhere. Never saw a bullbar in Canada, but lots of triple-axle drives- presumably for icy roads. In southern England I’ve seen lots of single-axle drives, with a second axle of single wheels sometimes sharing the weight, sometimes retracted. In London a few prime movers with such short wheelbase the axle just in front of the drive axle has steerable wheels.
  5. Old Koreelah
    Another aspect is engines overheating while takeoffs are delayed- a big issue where small batches of planes are marshalled to backtrack before TO. When it’s happened to me, all I needed was enough space to pull out of the line for a cool-off period.
  6. Old Koreelah
    Easily done. Tool weight lots, cost sqillions to boost into orbit. Last week I flew half way round the globe with my new wheelchair on board. Yesterday I walked miles to find a shop selling basic tools to re-tighten it’s connectors.
  7. Old Koreelah
    Get ready for the media frenzy against allowing fast taxi runs of a national treasure in such a small space.
  8. Old Koreelah
    So true Nev. Like the stupid cities built on dredged-up sand along the Persian Gulf, they are only a poofteenth above rising seas. Largely inhabited by trump loving climate change deniers...to be indundated and abandoned during this century . Poetic.
  9. Old Koreelah
    Another factor I hadn’t considered is that direct-drive props, like Jabs, would cop much more conducted heat thru the crankshaft than via a gearbox.
  10. Old Koreelah
    Many of us in the land of long weekend might get time off to do this, but I suspect that inflexible work contracts hinder many of our American counterparts.
  11. Old Koreelah
  12. Old Koreelah
    Looks like the designers were faced with an oversupply of analogue instruments. Like the Bristol Two Litre, a sleek aluminium car produced after the war; it had a plethora of gauges right across the whole dash.
  13. Old Koreelah
    How often have I spoken to people keen to invest in their new venture or business expansion. The common theme is local government finding never-ending impediments to put in their way. Any government fair dinkum about supporting economic growth should appoint a single person to facilitate, guide and advise anyone willing to invest...and hold them responsible for the plurry delays!
  14. Old Koreelah
    In some parts of Europe the pubs are supplied via pipelines from breweries. If they can install beer pipelines across historic cities, why can’t we install fuel pipelines before it gets congested? Clever country.
  15. Old Koreelah
    Unfortunately this hasn’t proven to be true: most diesels seem to be adapted from cars, for which application their best output is when spinning a bit faster than the ideal prop revs. This means to save the weight of a gearbox you never use all power available-unless you prop is doing 3,500+ rpm. Noisy. Or maybe they need smaller diameter aircrews with big paddle blades?
  16. Old Koreelah
    …who had imigrated from Germany. A few hundred were built in Australia, but thousands were mass produced in America. At war’s end, acres of shiny new Mustangs were bulldozed into piles for scrap.
  17. Old Koreelah
    Good to hear you are safe, Meglin. We in Australia and around the world are impressed that your country can carry on manufacturing and exporting under war conditions. Just a suggestion: you and Bilguun seem to have quite a bit in common besides interest in aeroplanes. Many of his countrymen in Mongolia would have a better grasp of Russian than English, so perhaps you could communicate directly with him.
  18. Old Koreelah
    Smaller profits? It’s Un-American to not use made-in-USA machinery! The Americans have only ever adopted British designs when they had nothing remotely suitable; The Canberra (still in use) and the Harrier.
  19. Old Koreelah
    It’s well known that American mass production was a major factor in winning the war. Strangley, Germany didn’t fully mobilise their population and introduce round-the-clock production intill late in the war, when it was too late to keep up with the thousands of aeroplanes being built in America, where women were a major component of the workforce. This lady was the PR pin-up girl:
  20. Old Koreelah
    Is that aircraft a two seater? Yonks ago we watched one land while storms passed by. The pilot’s young son was shoehorned into the front seat and very unhappy about getting back into the air!
  21. Old Koreelah
    Both of them working flat out at opposite edges of their respective flight envelopes!
  22. Old Koreelah
    There was a pic of three generations of British fighters; each had a major AoA difference as the jet struggled to not fall out of the sky.
  23. Old Koreelah
    That doesn’t seem to happen with my setup; I guess the fine spray nozzle in front of the carby mouth doesn’t see enough pressure drop for it to require a shut-off valve.
  24. Old Koreelah
    Nothing adverse noticed; remember the water is only being injected during full power TO and climb, so only a minute or so. It’s main purpose is to keep head temperatures under control, but hope it will also clean out the carbon. Sorry Ian, can’t take pix; I had a fall onto concrete that resulted in a new hip being fitted, so climbing into plane is verboten for another month or two. Can’t drive and SWMBO is already overloaded with all my jobs, so won’t be asking her to take me to airport. Installation is dead simple: mounted reservoir as low in cockpit as possible (so it doesn’t syphon) and ran fine tube into air filter box, where it mates up with a spray nozzle pinched off my wife’s ironing bottle. Connected pump’s (+) wire to main bus, ran (-) to an alloy strip riveted to side of cockpit, where throttle lever will earth it only on full throttle. Agreed Nev. Next version will inject into a hole drilled in the carby-manifold rubber. I also plan to install a variable control on the panel (next to the CHT gauge) so I can much about with the mixture, plus a few other features.
  25. Old Koreelah
    That’s the main reason for the water; years of AvGas has deposited lots of stuff, on top of the carbon buildup from running slightly rich. Air-cooled 4 strokes are only a short step up from 2 strokes in relying on over-rich fuel to cool the hot bits.
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