Old Koreelah

I have a disused oil injector tube running from cockpit to the rubber collar between carby and plenum; that seems the ideal location for an injector, if I can get the spray properly installed. One advantage is access for adjustment is easier than the current location inside the air filter box. One advantage I’d lose is the before-carby spray cools the air intake probe, giving me instant notice that the water injector is working. That display also shows how much the carb heat is warming the intake air (not much at present).

I remember when a gaggle of rag-n-tubes (Drifters from memory) turned up at Narromine for Natfly. They’d come all the way from tropical Qld and formed up into an impressive squadron for their late-afternoon arrival, with a single radio call announcing the whole group. Impressive.

One aspect possibly overlooked when topping up tanks with fresh Mogas: if there’s still fuel in the float bowl(s), that’s got to spark up first, before the fresh stuff gets drawn in. Regarding reliable suppliers of Mogas: we’re lucky to have a local servo managed by a young bloke from a respected family, who knows how important it is for us to keep dodgy stuff (including ethanol) out of our aeroplanes. His brother trained as pilot and he makes sure there’s always a range of aviation oils on his shelves. That gives me confidance in his 98 Mogas.

I gave up trying to get my Dzuss fasteners from aviation suppliers; they wanted part numbers for every component, and their catalogue bamboozled me. I got mine from rally car suppliers.

A gutsy generation.

Wow Cosmic, good to hear. Do you know how much water it’s getting? That water/fuel ratio is one I’d like to get a pretty good idea of.

This morning the rain held off so I got to test my water injector. After taxiing up and down to warm up, I tied the baby to a post and did some full-throttle tests, with a fine spray of pure rainwater down the carby throat. Results: intake air dropped 3 degrees C, but no discernable change in anything else. At least the water didn’t put out the fire. Next test is to open up the nozzle to max flow. That would deliver about 120ml/minute, or about a third as much water as fuel. Beyond that, the next step is to adopt Arron25’s windscreen washer pump, which should deliver much more water.

So, you’re installing one LCH where the air doesn’t reach?

Today I finally got to install my water injector, which I hope will cool the heads during climbout on hot summer days, as well as decarbonising my combustion chambers. Made from a half-litre spray bottle (SWMBO had been using it while ironing my shirts) and a little fish tank air pump (total cost $14) At full power, the throttle arm earths out the air pump, which pushes water out of the bottle. The spray jet is mounted inside the air filter box and aims a fine mist into the airstream as it is sucked into the carbie. Haven’t much control over the flow rate; a fine spray delivers only 50ml per minute, full squirt is about 160ml. I’ve dialed in a narrow spray of about 80ml/minute. My Jab 2.2 burns about 400ml per minute at full power. That’s a water/fuel ratio of 1:5. An ex-Jumbo pilot tells me that on early 747s the flight engineer used water injection for extra boost and to keep the turbines from overheating. On takeoff it burned about a tonne of jetfuel and 1.8 tonnes of water. That’s a pretty damp water/fuel ratio- far more than I would dare with a piston engine. I presume one purpose of the methanol in the water is to prevent carb icing; Since my injection rate is so small, I might start off with pure water and see how that goes. If anyone knows the ideal water/fuel ratio for a pistone engine I’d be interested.

Glen based on your posts, I’ve become a bit more conservative and adopted 160 as my TNE- Temperature to Never Exceed. The hottest bits are a fair distance from the sensor, so may not register on the gauge. My CHTs were quite acceptable until I installed shrink wrap on the first 200mm of the sensor cables. Since then, some will sneak over 150C on climb, but stabilise at around 135 on cruise. After lots of testing I discovered these readings are pretty close to the temp underneath the exhaust ports. A good argument for updraught cooling.

One of our locals, an ex-commercial pilot in his 80s, flies around the district every Saturday morning. I don’t need to go outside to identify his very noisy pusher.

Impressive vest with almost everything you need, but make sure you can wriggle out of it in a hurry; it could easily get caught on something while you’re trying to squeeze out of a damaged cockpit. Yep, that’s the one.

We had an extensive discussion on that very topic a few years ago, but my search skills cannot locate the thread; maybe someone else can. Lots of suggestions were made and we came up with a pretty sophisticated survival kit in case of a forced landing in remote areas. One of my suggestions was a CD- with its centre hole for aiming, it makes and excellend signalling mirror. In the event of an in-flight medical problem, I can’t see how I could do much with a first aid kit in my cramped cockpit.

I can also show you a dozen well-thought out, sensible submissions that were ignored. Yep Turbs, been there, done that. It’s great that you have done the work and acheived success with many submissions, but please don’t assume the rest of us have had a fair hearing. It grates just a little on those of us who have done also done the hard yards, for nothing.

No Kev, I did actually mean down. I’ve noticed Jab elevators have very limited movement below horizontal, and guessed that the up-elevator movement wouldn’t be great either. They put a lot of work into testing them, so I presume the elevator travel works just fine for their normal range of flying ops. (Compared to my barn doors, with a huge range of travel, that is)

I guess the aircraft needs to be designed for these sort of operations. Jabiru elevators have very little down-movement; maybe there was also insufficient up-movement for this slope. There are several STOL aircraft in my local area and one often lands on a nearby hillside. His tyres sure don’t get much wear, I guess he has excellent brakes to hold it on the steep slope.

Given my experience of making submissions during “public consultation” processes, Jackc’s conclusion is understandable.

A new word? An excellent addition to our vocab, particularly useful when describing bureaucratic hassles. When our kid was young, our little family has had experience of severe asthma attacks and I religiously carry a Ventolin puffer in my right trouser pocket, just in case. Never needed it myself, but it’s been there at the right time for several other people. (After she took up swimming, the kid never had asthma again; following that black line took up a lot of her time, but might have saved her life.)

Another element of difficulty with landing up a slope: soil creep often results in what looks like horizontal cattle tracks across the hillside. Livestock may actually walk along these lines, accentuating them and making for a rough-as-guts arrival. I’ve had a Jab undercarriage leg fail (inner bolt broke) on much smoother grass.

Here is another Lancaster story (missed the anniversary by a few days): 🇦🇺 Interesting date in history yesterday, 78 years ago Lancaster A66-1 was flown under the Sydney Harbour bridge, here a bit of the story............ On This Day - 22 October 1943 - Lancaster 'Q' for Queenie illegally flown under the Sydney Harbour Bridge. On this day, Lancaster B111 ED930 “Q for Queenie” -- with the RAAF tail number A66-1 -- made an unauthorised flight under the Sydney Harbour Bridge while on the 4th Liberty Loan tour (see 5 October). Originally sent to Australia as a prototype for local production (which did not eventuate), the aircraft was used after its arrival in June 1943 to promote sales of war savings bonds around Australia. “Queenie” arrived at Richmond on 20 October in preparation for carrying out a series of exhibition flights over Sydney. During one of these sorties, the crew -- captained by Flight Lieutenant Peter Isaacson -- decided to ‘buzz’ the building housing the headquarters of RAAF Eastern Area at Edgecliff, on Double Bay, before taking A66-1 beneath the Harbour Bridge in defiance of a 1931 regulation banning such flights. The Lancaster was not the first aircraft (nor even the last) to break this prohibition, but it was the largest. Isaacson later recalled that 'I was threatened with a court martial. Two authorities wanted to court martial me: Eastern Area in which the crime was committed and Southern Command to which I was attached at the time. I was told later there was a great fight among the bureaucrats of each of these commands as to which would court martial me. Apparently they could not agree on which should be the prosecutor and the idea either lapsed – or maybe is still being pursued by the successors to each of these commands!'�Peter Isaacson was also awarded the Air Force Cross, gazetted on 27th August 1943. The citation for this award reads: "Flight Lieutenant Isaacson was captain of the Lancaster aircraft which recently flew from England to Australia via the Pacific and subsequently carried out direct flights between Melbourne and New Zealand (both ways). This is the first occasion on which an aircraft has flown to Australia by this route and the direct flights between Melbourne and New Zealand are the first of their kind." Post-War he ran the news publishing companies including the "Southern Cross" and the "Sunday Observer" newspapers in Melbourne and the Asian Business Press Group. He was also an honorary aide-de-camp to The Queen from 1963 to 1965. In 1991 he was made a Member of the Order of Australia for services to the print media and the community. His biography, "Pathfinder", was written by Denis Warner. Peter Isaacson died in Melbourne on 7 April 2017. :

https://www.phototimetunnel.com/the-runaway-plane-and-a-midair-collision-a-bad-month-at-bankstown-airport-august-1955

Where do u get it from?

A neat design with lots of potential.

If you’re determined to not have any suspension, then at least add a decent layer of polystyrene (or similar) under your seat.

This bloke couldn’t afford flying lessons… https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-10-23/gold-coast-simulator-inventor/100560112