Smokey

Hi Maj Do you happen to know the reason it was moved to Oregan ? Some historical reason or just circumstances at the time ? Mark

Hi Bilby, Had a somewhat similar incident a while back at The Oaks. I was doing circuits in my Superpup and as I turned downwind I heard a call, '5 miles south, inbound', we were using 18 at the time so I thought they'll be joining looong downwind, no problem, my next call was 'turning base' whereupon the same voice came up 'so am I, where are you ?'. Rocking the plane I found a low wing, bubble canopied aircraft about 200' directly below me going maybe 10kts faster than I was. In the pup downwind would take me maybe 2 min, so that would mean the other aircraft must have been doing around 180kts to get where it was from it's reported 5 miles out, yes, it was a slippery aircraft but 180 kts, don't think so. What really scares me is that a low wing, bubble canopied aircraft came from behind at a lower altitude and failed to see me even when they were only 200' below me. If I'd been in the Lightwing I would have started decending earlier, now that could have been really interesting. Mark

Hi Guys FYI Spruce have these detectors for $US129:95 each. http://www.aircraftspruce.com/catalog/pspages/co300.php Perhaps Ian can get a good price through his contacts which should save on freight costs. Mark

Hi All, Does anyone know somewhere to find Pilot Opertating Handbook aircraft performance figures, not the ordinary stuff like max speed, range etc but stuff that would interest pilots eg what's the stall speed of a 747, the max rate of climb of a Fiesler Storch, take-off roll of a C-130, roll rates and max G for aerobatic aircraft etc. Mark

Hi all, apologies if this is old news but I couldn't find any references to it. I just went onto the Bureau of Meteorology site to check the weekend weather and noticed they have a survey running 'Review into the Provision of Aerodrome Forecasts (TAF)'. Not sure how long it's been there, my bookmarks normally bypass this page. Aviation Weather Services Closing date is 21st August. Mark

Matt, octave is right, it's very important what the public perceives, this drives political direction and if we want our few remaining facilities to remain we need the public onside to tell the pollies. If the only 'mass' voice they hear from their electorate is the a hysterical, 'get rid of those dangerous aeroplanes', they will do it to buy the votes. If we can at least get the public educated enough to understand that what the press is telling them is a load of cobblers then we might have some people who are at least neutral rather than totally opposed to aviation. How do we do this ? I don't know, sorry. antzx6r suggested getting 'good news' stories, good luck, I'm all for it but there's no sensationalism in it so those same press people won't buy it. Perhaps someone with a PR background could make some suggestions. The good bits you do see on the box (docos etc) are usually watched by people like us, preaching to the converted. Mark

Hi Gary I don't know your knowledge level so please forgive me if I'm telling you how to suck eggs :-) Not all cigarette lighter adaptors have regulators but in this case, unfortunately, it looks like it does. I don't have an A6 but I just looked at the manual from the Icom website and on page 3 it shows the input socket with 11 volts written right next to it, this is a pretty good indication that it would not tolerate the nominal 12V from the cigarette lighter socket which, with a good charged battery will actually be sitting at about 13.8V, charging voltage can be up around 14.5V. (Very general rule, devices marketed 12V or 13.8 V are often designed to be tolerant of a car type power supply, if it's got a different voltage marked, don't try it. If it is marked 12 or 13.8 it will probably work but unless it's specifically marked as compatible it's at your own risk.) Regardless of whether you need the regulator, I personally would not consider connecting a radio to an aircraft power supply without some sort of filter to knock out any noise or power spikes to protect your radio, a properly designed regulator circuit will do this. All in all, unless you know what you're doing or know, and trust, someone who does I'd recommend biting the bullet and buy the approved cable, at the end of the day it's cheap insurance on an expensive bit of kit. If you know a good ham radio operator, they may be able to help if you still want to go with the home brew approach. Mark BTW email protocol is that typing all caps is SHOUTING. You may want to turn off the caps-lock before someone takes offense.

Hi Bigglesworth There have been a couple of discussons about PLB's, I think this is the more recent. http://www.recreationalflying.com/forum/radios-transponders-gps-units/11006-dual-use-406mhz-epirb.html Mark

Supapup or Aeropup ? I have the Supapup drawings, if that's a help PM me your email address. Mark

Hi Isaac, this thread may interest you. http://www.recreationalflying.com/forum/aircraft-knowledgebase/5360-rotax-spark-plugs.html

Hi Geoff Does the comment about metho crazing apply to acrylic, polycarbonate or both ? Mark

When I was learning in a GR912, usually with Pylon500 in the right seat, I had an aquaintence express his horror that I was learning in a taildragger, 'why would I even want to get into one of those terrible machines'. He seemed genuinly terrified of them. Never found out why, he'd never flown one but he's still prepared to run them down to anyone who'll listen and this is a supposedly very intelligent bloke. i_dunno

My father used to fly air taxi in England in the early sixties. There was a paddock with long grass at the end of the runway at Luton, apparently the sight of bare bums going up and down was reasonably common. Makes you wonder, didn't they think they could be seen from a plane, didn't care or maybe they did know and kept going back Mark

Low flying over nudist beaches or nudist colonies ('xxx')

hi Brian There was a discussion about these systems last year. http://www.recreationalflying.com/forum/general-discussion/822-aircraft-proximity-warning-device.html Mark

I was lucky and checked before I turned it on, I figured there had to be something wrong if I'd never even heard of it. Interesting thing, when I looked it up I saw a pic of one of the planes which looked familar, one of those internet info emails went around about 6 or 12 months ago with pics obviously taken out of the film claiming the plane was a new, secret prototype with the comment was "check out the test pilot" who it turns out was actress Jessica Biel. And I thought someone had wasted a lot of time on a really good photoshop job i_dunno

Glen Personally I think if you're going to invest this amount of money in safety not to invest in the GPS just doesn't make any sense. Please see my answer to Marius in post 'Recreational Flying Forums > Cockpit talk > General Discussion > Need Help Digital emergency beacon' regarding survival time statistics which I found in an magazine (I think it was Pacific Flyer). As I said in that response, the difference in precision between the GPS and non-GPS units could mean if you come down in the mountains they could actually start a ground search in the wrong valley. Mark

Hi Alan, thread seems to have wandered. Last week I bought a GME 410G and registered it online, the system allows you to register multiple aircraft, cars and boats. When you go somewhere you can simply log-in, select the particular plane/boat/car you're using and add any usage/trip details that might help SAR should things go pear-shaped. You can also add/delete any vehicle, contact or modify your own details at any time. The actual initial registration simply consists of putting in the unit hex code, basic supplier info, basic details about yourself, contacts in case of emergency, and details of the vehicles you want to initially include. Took maybe 10 minutes, including poking around to see what's what. As I said, you can set-up multiple vehicles, I had my aircraft plus my 4WD registered, as an experimet I just went in and added the 2 club aircraft which I also fly, no problem. Appears, however, that a total of 4 vehicles of any type is the maximum but of course you can log-in and change those at any time. If you were a club with multiple beacons, you can also register & manage them all under one log-in, it would appear that every beacon would have up to 4 vehicles. If you want any more specific details PM me. Mark

You're a brave man suggesting that Ian, since ds got taken over by woolies they've been steadily dropping all links back to the store's roots and replacing it with consumer electronics. All woolies wanted was the name. In fact, out of curiosity I just did a quick search of the website and no swr meters came to light. Yenn Be careful about getting hold of a 'cheap' swr meter. check what frequencies it's designed for, most of the cheap ones were made for the old 27MHz CB radios, these could give misleading numbers at 120+MHz where we work. If noone at the airfield has a suitable meter you could always try ham radio operators, they will usually have a multi-band swr meter that covers airband and I'm sure they'd looove to help you out with an excursion to an airfield, especially if there's the prospect of a hop. They'll probably also be able to look at your installation, just remember, like us they are amateurs and the knowledge of any individual could be anywhere from non-existant to encyclopiadic (is that a word?). You'll find ham clubs listed on the Wireless Institute of Australia website (www.wia.org.au). If you particularly want to purchase one, check the ham radio mags for ham radio dealers, they should be able to source one that will suit without going to a unit with unnecessary bells and whistles. Mark

Hi Marius There have been a few articles appearing in the last couple of years re EPIRBs or PLBs. Afraid I don't have them with me to search just at the moment. Probably worth a google or hunt through your old magazines. One thing did I notice in your initial email is that you were quoting a GME MT410, this unit does not have a GPS, the MT410G has an internal GPS. Basically this means if you are ever in the unfortunate position to need it the 410 will give SAR a 5 km radius to work within whereas the 410G will give them a location down to 120m to search for you. This might not make a huge difference in time taken to find you if you're on the open plain with your aircraft clearly visible but if you're in the valleys in the Blue Mountains where the trees make it almost impossible to find anything except on foot it could make a huge difference. They could easily be searching in the next valley if you don't have the GPS version. To put this into context, I've read your chance of surviving an aircraft crash if found within 8 hours is 60%, after 2 days it falls to 10%. I think if you're investing this sort of money on your life the extra is worth it. GME, Aussie company and in my (limited) experience they make good equipment, I'm buying the 410G :-) BTW A couple of months ago I had a look around at pricing and found the cheapest place to buy them were the yacht chandlers, www.Whitworths.com.au / www.BiasBoating.com.au, they both have the 410G for $589. I’m now waiting for the Sydney Boat Show (a couple of weeks away) to see if I can pick a show special otherwise I’ll be ducking up to ww or bias (but only after I check Ian's contact at Essenden :-) Mark

With that headwind the RPT's were probably VTOL.

Hi Ozzie Problem is that I'm getting 19.9Mb of a 20Mb file and then the download freezes. This is with Mozilla and 2 different versions of explorer,one of which (mine) I know is patched right up to date, the one at work has patches pushed by IT so I don't know exactly how up to date it is but regardless they all have the identical problem. The only commonality is that all 3 machines are running XP. I'm rather reluctant to install new software on the off chance it might work, especially when it appears the problem is at the other end. What i'm really asking is have you, or anyone else, managed to download one of the 'complete month' files, if so, must be my end and I need to do something, if everyone else is having the same problem I'll follow it up with the EAA. Mark

John I've sent you a PM with some POH info on Superpup & Foxbat Mark

Geoff I have a sweetappple, made by Richard Sweetapple in Qld, his props seem to have quite a good rep. I seem to have misplaced his phone number but I know some contact details were posted here. If he's still in business I'm sure he could make a prop to your requirements. Mark

Gimme, gimme, gimme All things considered, $US139k doesn't sound too bad, if I win the lottery. Wonder if they'll do it as a kit. Mark