Seal

Two doctors were attending the funeral of a colleague, a prominent heart surgeon. The ceremony was elaborately staged with the casket arranged on a trolley in front of a huge heart. A succession of people got up and extolled the virtues of the great man, his skill and how many people he had helped. As the procedings drew to a close, the music rose to a crescendo, the two halves of the heart parted, the casket rolled through the opening and the heart closed. "My o my", says one doctor, "wasn't that impressive? A fitting tribute I thought". "Hmmm", said the other, "I don't know that I'll have that done, it may not work so well. I'm a gynaecologist"!

What's the difference between a merchant banker and pigeon? The pigeon can still put a deposit on a Porsche!

What do you call a man with rabbits up his backside? Warren.

Current reports now talking "15 or so" serious injuries and blaming severe clear air turbulence for a rapid altitude loss.

Fifty injured in mid-air incident Font Size: Decrease Increase Print Page: Print By staff writers | October 07, 2008 UP to 50 people were injured when Qantas Airbus carrying more than 300 people made an emergency landing in Western Australia. The flight - QF72 from Singapore - made the landing at Learmonth Airport, near Exmouth, just before 2pm. Police Media's Inspector Wayne Silver said the flight had landed safely, but preliminary information suggested there had been some sort of "instrument failure" and turbulence. Insp Silver said there were reports of passengers sustaining severe lacerations and broken bones. Emergency services and medical staff are at the airport.

To paraphrase the factory blurb, the Lightning is a sleek low wing kit aircraft designed with the following goals in mind. 1. Generous Margins forSafety and Strength 2. Simplicity of Systems for Quick Easy Construction 3. High Performance per HP 4. Excellent Flying Qualities The Lightning is purely a kit built aeroplane, there is no factory built option. If you want to find out more about this plane the factory website is : Lightning Sport Plane by Arion Aircraft The Australian Distributor is: Lightning Aircraft Australia There are around 18 kits flying or in build in Australia and I think somewhere around 80 all up. I hope that, in time, we can develop this area of the forums into a valuable resource for Lightning builders and fliers. Cheers, Selwyn

Sealed his fate did it?

What do you call a blind reindeer? - - - - - - - No idea? Oh well, try this one. What do you call a blind legless reindeer? - - - - - - Still no idea? Ah well, think about it for a bit.

A little more here: http://www.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/story/0,22049,24346703-5001021,00.html including comment from AusSAR spokesperson "the aircraft was heading into a storm cell when it disappeared".

To Macnoz. Yeah, I have no idea but that was a spectacular blow up wasn't it.:raise_eyebrow: Yenn, I don't know what was behind your post but if there is any sense of reality in it or if anyone else thinks its as simple as that sounds then I urge you to find an IFR instructor and go flying in real IFR, in cloud, in the dark and then tell us all what you think. From experience I know it is hard and requires an enormous amount of discipline. I've never held a rating but I was working towards one years ago and I still remember an hour of holding patterns over Yarrowee when my brain was screaming that up was somewhere over my left shoulder. Two things stand out, the effort it took to believe what was in front of my eyes rather than what felt "right" and the speed with which the world righted itself with the first tiny glimpse of city lights as we came out of cloud on descent to Essendon. Two things of relevance here come out of that. Unless you are some kind of superman you will not be able to follow the needles, GPS or otherwise, without some serious training and, doing it under the hood in VFR is mickey mouse practice at best. You just cannot stop the visual cues creeping in around the edges and it takes very little to keep your internal gyros from tumbling. Be safe. Selwyn

How about a set of type specific forums? Lightning for one.

I think that was sort of my point. These things are sent out as advertising and IMHO it is not much help to have them posted holus bolus here. A better approach may be to post the link to the article and then add any comments you may have on it.

My question is "who cares"? I mean, we have some people sitting in unusual positions in an a cockpit which may or may not be airbourne, may or may not be carrying passengers and may or may not actually be an aeroplane. We are supposed to be in aviation for fun and recreation and here are people debating the ins and outs of the regulations. Who gives a rat's if people play musical chairs in an aeroplane that is perfectly capable of flying itself from takeoff to landing? A better question is why are we having thinly disguised adverts for a commercial news (sort of) site posted on this forum?

Yeah well, that seems like a pretty pointless display of envy, just joking of course. :raise_eyebrow: By the way, we don't walk around with out trousers in our right hands and most of us have more brains that to buy over priced I phones.

Its a bit sad when we can't take the Michael out of coppers any more on a thread devoted to jokes! Have we all lost our sense of proportion to that extent?

Oh no, now I have big screen envy.

Now that is an erection with a difference:big_grin:

Hi Redair, I have just begun my build and I'm not using a commercial build log program. I had a look and couldn't see the value for me. My thinking process was roughly as follows; Why do I want to keep a build log? The answers were basically: 1. For interest. To keep track of how much time and money I spend 2. To have a record to show that I have actually done the work 3. Because the powers that be say I have to, which is much the same as 2. Next question. What do I need to do this? Answer, not much really. I chose to use a simple spreadsheet with four columns; date, aircraft system, description of task, time spent. The "aircraft system" column is so I can classify work by airframe, engine, electrical etc. Not necessary but it keeps me happy. I have another page to record expenditure with date, description and amount. A third page is a summary of hours and dollars. Using a few simple spreadsheet functions this keeps running time and money totals, broken down by system if that is your bag. The other part of my record keeping is digital photos kept in a directory for the project. These can be related to the work diary via date. A refinement would be to put links to the photos in the spreadsheet but that's bells and whistles rather than basic functionality. Cost of all that? Fifteen minutes setup and zero dollars. I'm using the Open Office spreadsheet so its really zero dollars. If you have another spreadsheet then that probably cost money but the marginal cost is still zero. Some of the commercial products provide a path to web publish your build log. I believe there is additional cost for this but it might be a simple solution if you want to publicise your trials and tribulations ;). Me, I'm putting mine in a blog on this site and that's not much more than cut and paste for text and adding some of the pictures I have already taken. Pretty simple really and actually helps enforce a bit of discipline in writing up the log and organising the pictures. Cheers, Selwyn

Bit of a moot point really as nobody seems to be producing Esqual kits these days. No doubt a lot of similarities between the two but a different engine, different wing section and a lot of detail differences between the two. Specs and kit info are here http://www.flylightning.net/ Australian agent is here http://www.lightningaircraft.com.au/

Yeah, clay soils and spats don't mix well. It's even more fun with cracking clays, if you don't break them by filling them up with mud in winter then in summer the cracks open up and eventually you drop a wheel down one and smash the spat that way.

Umm... Which queue is that, the near queue or the far queue??

That is undoubtedly true and the Captain's post also contains a warning about a trap for the unwary. Around the time of sunset and after, the available light changes rapidly with altitude. Although you may be stooging along at 5000', or even 2000', thinking "what's all this last light stuff, its still broad daylight" beware that as you descend it will rapidly get darker. On final you will be peering at a dark ground against a bright sky and it will be difficult to see obstacles or judge your flare and holdoff. If you happen to be landing anywhere towards the sunset then it will be even worse. Cheers, Selwyn

Looks like three assorted Jabs (at least) from Horsham. That's another half a dozen for the BBQ

19.6 mm to be exact

I don't know why anyone would bother. After all, anything more than a handful is a waste! :big_grin: