Markdun

Why is ‘ID’ so important? You need ID for contracts (so you know who to take to court for breaching the contract). I can’t see how the government knowing who they issue an ASIC card to makes a brass razoo difference to ‘safer skies’. The only part of the ASIC process that might make a difference is the bit about providing a reason for having one. Is it like the declaration you sign on the entry card to the USA that the purpose of your visit is not terrorism?…..I’m sure that really is an effective deterrent (sarcasm). And it’s not a ‘high security’ vetting process. I had a Top Secret clearance as I was routinely dealing with federal cabinet papers and preparing briefing for a Minister for each meeting. That involves the spooks actually interviewing my associates, my GP etc etc etc. And even then I was asked to explain why I hadn’t divulged my criminal convictions…which was easy as I didn’t have any…but according to the hapless AFP, I did. I told them to provide the court details or shut up…they shut up. Also I reported to the spooks when asked about a lower security clearance for one of my staff that I believed had an allegiance to a foreign power, regularly attending their High Commission etc, and that prior to my arrival thought nothing of accepting the loan of a Porsche motor car from the peak private industry association relevant to the Department I was in. They still cleared him. BTW, the fact that you already have a federal security clearance is irrelevant when applying for an ASIC. As for providing jobs…ffs. Yes, providing jobs is something governments can do, but surely the jobs should be doing good…. Like planting trees, running the railways or airlines and other sheltered work places. In my view if ASIO is doing their job, they should be identifying potential threats (aviation or not) which the ASIC would not help, rather than us collectively expending significant amounts on the ASIC and the imposed burden on us flyers.

Interesting. Here at Mt Fairy oat 20C at 5500asl at 9.00am and 25kt NNW. Nah, sink is not as strong as up from thermals….. But it can easily be in wave/rotor or hill lee. Don’t you have GNAV or GLS to maintain the runway track after T/O instead of the runway bearing?

Skip, I think there is a big difference. The reqt for an ASIC card is regulatory reqt and not subject to either ‘consumer law’ but admin law. The fact that you buy it from a private firm means that is subject to the laws of contract, which does require a ‘consideration’ from both parties. However, legally the fact that a consideration is useless or isn’t value for money does not mean it is lacking. It’s been some decades since I was knowledgeable of the federal Trade Practices Act, But I would think that the usual ‘ consumer’’ protections would not apply as it is not a service or good for sale to normal householders. In any case successive LNP govts & the ACCC since Fells left, have been gradually hamstringing consumer protection. For example, many sugary fruit drinks are labeled as having ‘no added sugar’ or as ‘nectar’, when in fact the drink has a high sugar content (from the fruit) and for the ‘nectar’ is not actually nectar (which from flowers) but from pulped fruit….. And despite this being factually wrong and leads many consumers to erroneous conclusions about the products, they get away with it. It’s worse in relation to health claims on processed food. As to Qantas tickets issue, it seems to me the issue is not contract law but either equity law or consumer law, in particular, the concept of deceptive and misleading conduct, unconscionable conduct or equitable estoppel. Qantas’s written contract (terms and conditions) is probably water tight. In assessing deceptive and misleading conduct the legal precedent is pretty clear: if the conduct of the defendant would lead a consumer of average intelligence (not to dumb, not too smart) to make a false conclusion, then that the elements of the ‘offence’ are made out. It has been held that even factually correct statements can be misleading given the context etc. Courts also give short shrift to all those small print and end of advertisement assertions. Equitable estoppel is when a court will put aside the terms of a contract if one party makes representations, or by their conduct, that the other party doesn’t need to comply with the contract. The most usual thing is a representation that the contract doesn’t need to be completed in the specified period. The key elements are that the offending party has to know that the other party would rely on their representation and that party did actually rely on the representation. I once (20 years ago) ran a case against Telstra for selling unclassified porn to a minor through their 1900 premium call agents, and many of my claims were based on these sort of principles…it gets very complicated and in the end the judge found a technicality (that I had not argued) to give me a win and which let him off from making a decision that would have been a huge problem Telstra.

Skip, you pay and receive the card, and the issuing company has supposedly done a check. So the contract would have sufficient ‘consideration’ to be valid. My whinge is why it is not ‘user pays’; ie. If commercial operators of RPT want the theatre of having apparent but ineffectual security to mislead the travelling public, why don’t they ensure their aircraft are guarded whenever on the ground by their personnel? Why pass on the cost to us? It’s just yet another example where regulation is misused to provide an opaque subsidy to corporate interests. I suppose to be expected given the corporate voice to parliament.

Big topic drift, but lots of metals burn, not just Mg… just need the right conditions. I ignited a solid fuel rocket (with a parachute flare) for the King of Tonga in Nuku Alofa harbour in 1985 by lighting steel wool (mostly Fe) with a 12V car battery. The steel wool was packed under the solid propellant. The original potassium chromate igniter was too wet. I’ve also read that DC3 aluminium alloy wing spars didn’t last too long after an engine fire. That all said, there’s still a lot of advantage in an aluminium aircraft structure in terms of fire resistance vs composite. The only really big disadvantage of s metal structure is the heat conduction issue, particularly for fuel tanks; that can be important. I’ll certainly be relooking at everything firewall fwd in my J200 for sustaining a fire, and reviewing procedures, including immediate shutting down of engine (no fuel, no rotation) to stop supplying fuel or oil to any fire; no ‘nearest airstrip’ diversion, just land asap.

Aluminium better for sure, but it burns too. Ask the British navy about that.

Danny, I dunno too. There was also that Jab at Wagga a few years back that landed with a fire, & then completely burned and both occupants escaped unharmed. And I feel the Jab might perhaps provide 30 seconds to a minute more than my all wood (mostly large matchsticks) Corby, or my fabric covered steel Cygnet. It would be good to have some analysis of what data there is. I also know of a guy (& his wife) that were left standing in just their swimmers when their 11m sailing catamaran caught alight. They parked it on a sand bar in the Gulf of Carpentaria as you do. While doing a little bit of fiddling the commutator spark from a 12v fan to keep them cool in the cabin while waiting for the tide to come back in, ignited some acetone vapour used to clean a paint brush. Despite having fire extinguishers and sea water and two fit and active ppl to hold the hose/toss the bucket, the whole thing burnt down in minutes.

Three points. First, from my boating, the explosive combustion mixture range for petrol is extreme; not so for diesel/kerosene. Second, from my repair of a Jab flap where I wanted to determine what the fibreglass reinforcement was in the layup, I burnt some small damaged segments. It pretty much caught alight like a candle; the epoxy melting and wicking along the fibreglass fibres…self sustaining very very quickly, not as quick as Stits doped fabric for sure, but fricking quick, and much harder to blow out than a candle. Three, how much combustible plastic firewall fwd eg. airbox, starter motor cable insulation, plastic relay housing, coolant overflow bottle. Don Kendall always said the main decision for an on flight fire is whether to jump out to have a short, certain, sudden death vs the alternative.

He only recently had the Gen1 3300 in his J160 replaced with a Gen4 by Jabiru at Bundaberg (3 months ago). He was selling his old Gen1 3300 which has 860 hours on it. So unlikely to be lacking experience or being current. Moderator edit: Comment posted 3 times. Extra copies deleted.

Glen, if it had a glass panel there maybe data on a chip ( that’sa very big maybe though). I know ATSB has some skills at trying to recover data from chips burned and smashed because my brother did a course on this prior to retirement. He was amazed at what could be recovered. Still there focus was on heavies and it’s most likely they won’t consider it worthwhile for a GA non-commercial flight.

There were lenticular clouds over Mt Palerang ( 15nm south) earlier in the morning. My view is that there were two different air masses: lower down light winds from the WNW, unstable and moist; higher up (over 6000’) winds from the SSW and stronger. On my EFIS OAT at 5000’asl was 2C at 11 am. I’m told that turbo prop commuter services between Canberra and Sydney were stopped because of the severe turbulence.

Yep. If it was an engine failure at 9500’ he would have easily glided to Dick Smiths place or to Currendooly or the other side of Lake George, or the quarter horse race track at Collector, or the hwy But the ADSB data shows the plane went down from 9400’ baro. Glen, the track prior to the problem seems to indicate the AP was not engaged as the track meandered quite a bit…. Maybe it was not a GPS track AP but was on a heading. He lost some altitude just prior to the crash, then regained it, then terminal. My first thought was catastrophic structural failure, then perhaps a w&b issue (wife in back with one of the kids…& then unrecoverable stall & spin), but I agree with Glen that it could be flight into IMC and then a spin. Seemed a very quick loss of 6500’. Bad, the whole thing.

I know that area pretty well. Ground is around 3000’asl; Canberra control lower level 3500. So if you are VFR there’s not a lot of room and not many paddocks, but the new and old Federal Hwys would be suitable. I flew today on the other side of Lake George a couple of hours earlier: cloud base was at 4200’ (11 am) and rising with 6/8 coverage with cloud tops at 5500. Quite unstable air. Wind on ground was less than 10kt westerly.

Sounds good. Having radiators in series like you describe means you need twice the pressure differential (entry minus exit pressures) for them to work which would be hard to do, particularly at low airspeeds. A friend’s Tecnam has the oil and head cooling radiators facing the airstream (like my J200) which gives you plain ram air pressure at the entry and engine cowl pressure behind on both radiators. Lots of air leaks, and with two small cheek vents and a small exit, it’s not surprising he has high OT two up in the summer. Its 24 registered so no playing with it.

That’s good. There are some articles on this in either Kitplanes or EAA (RV focused). Seems the critical thing is not having the inlet too big, having a smooth transition as the inlet expands so the airflow stays attached, & having a big expansion chamber. The Jab standard cooling plenums apparently fails on all three. It’s also a factor for the cooling air exit; but there it is a matter of accelerating the now slow warm air up to your airspeed. Theoretically you can gain thrust with an exhaust augmentor, but I think the practical goal is to reduce drag by providing for the exit air to accelerate (as opposed to putting in a large ramp/skirt angled down fwd of the air exit). Some racers put streamlining on their bottom engine mount tubes and ensure all fuel/oil tubing is neatly tucked away so as not to disturb the exit air smooth flow departure. We are talking about a 100-200kias aircraft aren’t we? Another point to keep in mind is that even though ‘the radiator is the only exit for the air’, it will only work IF there is a pressure difference. If the air pressure behind the radiator is close to ram pressure because you have two large cheek inlets filling the engine cowl with air at ram pressure, then it’s doomed to failure. When I did the LCH conversion on the J200 I had to reinstall the jab fibreglass cooling plenums, because without these the pressure behind the radiator was too high (as well it left the cylinders not well cooled). When I find a round tooit that I’ve lost I’m gunna halve the cheek inlets’ aperture and construct lighter cooling plenums from those cheek inlets directed to cooling the barrels. I might also then halve the exit air outlets & chop 15cm off the exhaust so the exhaust can help accelerate & extract cooling air.

Skip, maybe some semantics. Stay away from ‘mat’, like ‘chopped strand’ mat unless you are building an anchor. You want cloth fabric with warp and weft around 200gsm or less. For larger surfaces go the woven rovings but I’d say 600gsm is way too much. Your goal is that fully wetted fibreglass/ carbon/Kevlar with epoxy has less than 50% epoxy resin. If you want more stiffness in the layup do one or all the following: increase compound curve, introduce a layer of foam, even 2mm between two layers of cloth glass (Jab do this on their cowls) & epoxy, or use carbon cloth or lay on some ‘stringers’ (strips of poly rope with a layer of cloth on the bias laid over it). My LCH J200 has a Gen3 Jab3300 in it. ‘Pressure recovery chamber’ is where you have an expansion chamber after the air inlet to reduce the kinetic velocity of the ram air which is converted to pressure as per Bernouli to increase the air pressure differential across the radiator (which is the beginning and end of liquid cooling). The RV racing guys are the full bottle on this for their engine cooling plenums. It allows you to reduce cooling drag to a significant extent if you are going fast. A simple scoop (or a radiator facing plain ram air like mine) is like a dragging a flat plate through the air like a parachute.

Try some vinyl hose ( say 10mn od), cut a longitudinal slit in it and fit over edge, hold it down how you want the radius to be like with fine safety wire or hot glue…. Coat in pva release agent. Another method is to supa-glue light braided polyethylene ‘rope’ to the edge and just wrap the fibreglass around it, leaving the ‘rope’ in the layup. Remember also that in laying woven fibreglass cloth, it will go around small radii if you lay it ‘on the bias’, ie the warp and weft go +45 and -45 degrees to the edge. It’s a real bugger if you have any fibres aligned 90 degrees to the edge. A ‘scoop’ is going to be draggy & inefficient. Why not have a pressure recovery chamber? Is space an issue? Not that I’m fussed about this as my LCH J200 has the radiator full frontal between the prop and oil cooler inlet. Mark

Glen, I’ve put aside a large diameter 1 litre plastic bottle for you, although I’ve heard others had had success with ziplock polyethylene bags (including inside their sleeping bag to avoid going out of a tent mountaineering). I’ve always found avoiding inflight service or failing that landing at an alternate has worked for me.

The hydraulic valve lifters bottoming out (out of adjustment) and holding a valve slightly open is a not uncommon problem with the 3300 with the older longer pushrods (Gen3) and which have suffered some head recession. What I was advised by Jabiru to do was to check at each oil change whether the rockers could be moved by hand fwd and bkwd (sliding) along the rocker shaft a fraction of a mm at TDC power stroke. No need to rotate valves. If the rocker can’t slide along the rocker shaft a smidgen (it will also swipe the top of the valve stem), then you need to investigate further. Also when assembling the engine extract the oil from the lifters so they are all bleed down and measure the tappet clearance when assembled. There’s only 3mm working movement of the lifters so to be in the middle of the range you should have about half of that (it’s not exactly half because the rocker aren’t 1:1). I’ve found in most engines you can swap around the pushrods as they are not of identical lengths to get a pretty consistent set up. In a couple of engines I’ve found a couple of pushrods significantly different in length…obviously mix ups with early and later versions. I think someone (Jabiru) should produce a colour card for the rocker boxes colour, like spark plug manufacturers. I’ve come across some totally black ones: real doosies. I too, expect shiny ‘silver’ aluminium and have my CHT panic alarm set a bit higher at 155C. Cheers, Mark

Sorry Skip. I think my main point is that if you’ve got wing tanks the fuel level sensor issue is not easy…. hence go for calculated fuel remaining with a good fuel flow sensor & EFIS and beer prepared for the effort to get it setup/calibrated. The low level warning in my book is a distraction. All builders know about the free fluid effect and the need for baffles…. Still shallow flat tanks are much harder to ‘gauge’ even with baffles than say a cube.

Yeh yeh…you can never have too much back up. How many of us fly with a parachute? I haven’t removed the 3.5 l header tank low fuel warning light (might save a 100 grams) in the J200, but I wouldn’t have made the effort to install it. Really a 20 minutes warning because you didnt plan the fuel reserve properly? The risk is that with that system you don’t plan your fuel because your know you have the 20 minute warning .. its like ignoring the risk of dingo attack on Fraser Is because you know the bad ones have been killed. As it goes if I’m flying at 2500agl I’ve got 3 minutes at 700fpm sink rate to do an outlandiing…. So to the chagrin of my snobbish GA mates whose Lycosaurs never fail, I fly with an outlanding paddock already picked out & I might actually diverge from the straight line course to ensure it is within gliding distance. Perhaps it’s that NZ gliding hours experience with instructors pulling the tow release at 150’agl, or deploying the spoilers to drop one below the ridge between you and the airfield and calmly saying, ‘it’s your aircraft’.

I’m not a great fan of the low level warning light, because if the light comes on, it’s just confirmation and proof you’ve already fucked up; a bit like the mirror found on many magnetic compasses—-its there so you can see the fool that’s lost. The problem is that wing tanks being shallow produce a lot of surge and waves and a small vertical distance means a lot of fuel…as opposed to say a cube. That said, I’ve had experience with a Tecnam that has wing tank resistive float sensors which were very good, although I didn’t rely on them using fuel flow ‘calculated’ and the bit of paper & Flight time times estimated fuel burn from the POH every 20 minutes to cross check when we flew it across from Kal to Forrest. We also checked the fuel in the tanks with a graduated stick before taking off as well. I am pretty much sold on the calculated fuel from fuel flow using the EFIS with cross check to a window to see the fuel sloshing around. Once the fuel flow transducer is calibrated AND you have sorted the Jabiru voltage regulator pulses problems, they are very accurate and the computer happily calculates nifty things like ‘fuel remaining at next waypoint’ and fuel burned per nautical mile (enabling you to adjust throttle for best efficiency. Skippy, the problem with seeing the fuel level in the hose is an issue. Most fuel hose has reinforcing and that makes it even more difficult…but it does work. And if you play around with the size of the holes you can get some damping if it’s subject to surges.

I have constructed or modified several fuel tanks: all have fuel level gauges. First one was in a Minimax low wing aircraft with a 20 litre tank (fibreglass) above one’s knees. Fuel level sensor was a stainless wire (from an old Teleflex cable) with a cork glued onto the lower end. The wire passed through a copper tube brazed on the fuel cap. The amount of wire seen in front of the windshield indicated the fuel level. It failed once when the cork fell off…fixed with some safety wire. Very accurate; very reliable. Slight drag (but whose to say in a 65kt Aircraft). Second was a 67 litre tank in my Cygnet SF2A. This tank was composite construction: plywood with epoxy coating and joints filleted and reinforced with fibreglass. The tank is mounted behind your head. It has two fuel level sensors. The primary one is a clear fibreglass ‘window’ facing forward with calibrated markings going vertically up. Absolutely the best. The second is a translucent fuel hose (& vapour return line) which is good but not as good as the ‘window’ sensor. Over 1000 hours & 23 years there’s been no failures or problems with the ‘window’. Like I said it’s the best. The translucent hose one requires frequent replacement of hoses and it’s difficult to see the fuel level sometimes. It also has a good fuel flow and calibrated fuel remaining which you can cross check with your visual and manual calculations as I do (I’m a nervous flyer). Third is in a Corby Starlet with a 40 litre aluminium tank which is also ‘above the knees’ like the Minimax. In this aircraft I installed a high tech resistive float sensor designed for a motor scooter. I calibrated it (tail down and tail up) and programmed the EFIS accordingly, including fligging around with dampening to reduce wild fluctuations from fuel waves in the tank. It works, but I ignore it & rely on an old Navman fuel flow transducer connected to the EFIS which gives ‘calculated’ fuel level. I’m thinking the knitting needle with a cork would be better. Fourth, is a J200 I recently restored. It came with the wing root ‘window’ gauge, the wing root mechanical gauge (little round unreadable display) and resistive outputs to the EFIS. None of these work reliably, despite careful calibration and dampening. One minute I’ve got 70 litres remaining, the next it’s 15 litres. A piece of paper noting the estimated fuel burn and flight time is a thousand times better. In addition I have calculated fuel level from the fuel flow sensor (expensive ‘Aircraft’ one); but this too is total crap as the fuel flow reads 60lph until the bus voltage reaches 13.9V and then reads as it should…so I trust it as much as I do a politician’s promise. In the 100 hours in this aircraft I rely on the window sensor, although whenever you climb the fuel sloshes to the rear and you see no fuel in the window…. and I’m thinking a fuel leak and where’s that big paddock? In summary, first preference is the window in the fuel tank so you can actually see what’s sloshing around. Second preference is the knitting needle with a cork. Third is a piece of paper recording estimated fuel burn and flight time. And by the way, the plywood fuel tank in the Cygnet has NEVER EVER produced any water in the fuel…. Unlike the aluminium tank in the Corby. Just saying. Cheers, Mark

Was it a meteorite? Brings to my mind when I was sailing from the Percy Is to Great Keppel a few years back and at 3am I saw what I thought was a red parachute flare. I was about to radio in a relay mayday except the red flare appeared to accelerate over me along with a sonic boom and roaring noise heading south east where it disappeared. Definitely was not an hallucination as it was a typical dead flat inside the reef QLD sail, so no need for the coloured dreams scopolamine patches.

Consider installing a smoke system which you turn on in the circuit…that might make you more naked eye visible to others. Glen, the other thing with a passenger is to enlist their assistance in eyes out of the aircraft, because as we know, most ppl are doing pre-landing checks on downwind (distracted) & mainly concentrate on outside visual observation for other aircraft just before turning onto a circuit leg. Yeh I know that even that, as is all ‘see & avoid’, will be crap because the human eye/brain is just not effective in picking up ‘non-moving objects’ in the sky; ‘see & avoid’ fails at the ‘see’ because you just don’t see intercepting traffic. Raymarine and Lowrance also produce low power(digital) 360 degree 10nm radars which ought to pick up other boats/aircraft ~$3k. The radome is a cylinder about 50cm dia & 15cm high. They are normally bolted onto a yacht mast spreaders, but I’m sure you could fashion a streamlined fairing to mount above the fuselage in front of the vertical stabiliser.