Bruce Tuncks
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Everything posted by Bruce Tuncks
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I never thought about embedded thunderstorms... thanks for the information. You are right about the instrument being useful there. And I like the foxbat, I always called them Russian, wow that was wrong huh. I have a Jabiru 230-d which has replaced the SK jabiru I built from a kit about 20 years ago. I really recommend the 230, there is a good write-up in the latest magazine, where it is called the flying ute. It can carry as payload and fuel, more than it's empty weight of 370 kg. I have never had any problems at all with any Jabiru stuff, although the builder of the J230 did. He lost a case about the 3300 engine, and now there is a Camit engine on the plane. I am happy with the engine, as the changes ( eg running a belt-driven alternator ) all make good sense to me.
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And, I am a believer in electronic gadgets.... right now, I am trying to install a landing-system setup in my plane. Look up the video of Enginebridge lidar landing system. My hope is that it will make landing easier and better.
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In more than 40 years of summer glider flying, and being attracted to towering cu's, I have never felt a need for such a device. Thunderstorms which produce lightning can easily be seen for 50 to 100 km away. Just once, north of Gawler, a guy was flying in the club's new open-class glider which had carbon spars. The pilot asked what would happen if it got struck, and we told him the spar would explode. Not only that, it would attract the lightning to begin with. I still wonder about this.... there was a Ventus in the US where the lightning went through the fuse and exploded the canopy and welded the controls up. The pilot survived to tell the story. For many years, the metal glider, based in Alice Springs, which held the altitude record of 50,000 ft, sported discharge burns on the trailing edges. The pilot, who officially climbed up the outside of the cu-nim, said that in Sweden all was legal, and anyway the zone of risk in the cloud was smaller that we thought. They took his record away in later years. I thought that this showed a lack of sense of humour.
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There is no Taxi as far as i know. -
Turbs, the town could be walked to, but if you arrive and call me, i will be delighted to look after you.
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I really liked the idea that a bbq be held to discuss the whole thing and recommend solutions. At Gawler, we have not had a fatality in about 55 years, and I think we would have done this.
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I like nev's comments about airlines though, and I reckon we can learn a lot from them. But I agree about the axe.
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You can get help here if you need it, just ask. There are a lot of well-qualified people on here.
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If you do as jackc suggests and copy a commercial design, making sure that if it is in a cyclonic area then you copy a similar one, then you should be safe. I hope you don't come across an insane buildings inspector like we used to have down here. He is famous for rejecting square footings, even though they were heavier than the round ones on the plan. Regarding the dome-type of building, it was good advice to work out the potential uplift from wind and to make sure it doesn't lift on you.
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Weight is the issue here and the weight is mainly in the axe head. I would rather try and chop down a tree with the longer handled one, but the other ideas seem better, like the small electric chainsaw and the hand-chain with two handles.
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Quite right kasper about high voltage. A long time ago, somebody died when the high voltage arced across about a meter or so to get a control-line model flier. He had been careful to make sure that he wouldn't touch the lines, but the ability of extremely high voltage to jump was something that caught him out.
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Hi morihom and welcome to this site.
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I once was in my own Jabiru and the instructor said he smelt exhaust fumes. It turned out that he was correct. The fumes were entering at the tail, where some tape under the subfin had fallen off. This enabled some fumes to enter through the control-cable holes and travel up the fuse to exit at the doors. This is counter-intuitive but in agreement with Bernoulli. These days, at the annual, I take the sub-fin off to check these holes are properly sealed.
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Years ago, some naughty guys used to go into cloud in their gliders. They used a Bohli compass as an a/h, and they caused the Bohli to be banned from competitions. They told me that it was quite easy to thermal up under the dome of a big cu, then fly through the cloud keeping things straight with the turn-and -bank gyro plus the asi and the compass. When all gyros were banned, they did the same thing with just the ( non-Bohli ) compass and asi. ( the gyro instruments might have been banned before the Bohli compasses, I don't remember which came first. ) The lesson I got from all this was that "clouds aint all the same" and there is a HUGE difference between a benign cu at 10,000 ft over flat land and a mean cu-nim which can suck you in and spit you out battered with hail. There is a story about a Canberra jet over Qld which entered a cu-nim at 20,000 ft and was spat out , all battered, at 50,000 ft. There is a CASA video ( 180 seconds to live or similar ) which shows a foolish GA pilot flying low and getting caught out by rising terrain and narrowing valley, while trying to stay under the ( lowering) cloud. Again, this is quite different from the 10,000 ft medium cu. Mind you, a whole flight under IFR would be beyond me for sure, especially the landing, so good onyer Mike and Matt. Thanks for sharing the story.
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It didn't look like there was a fire, so was the fuel tank mod a factor? Condolences to all concerned.
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There was a story about the top Me190 pilot who had a strong ability to withstand negative "g"s . He used to escape by thrusting the stick forward and doing a bunt. Of course he was helped by the fuel injection, instead of a carburettor.
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Nev is right as usual, but I have wondered for years about the in-laws caravan and now I know more, so thanks turbs.
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My in-laws were talked into a 4 wheel van, with a wheel on each corner. It was road-trains that convinced them it could be done. Well it towed terribly. It swayed so badly that you had to go really slowly, like 50kph. I have seen road trains where the last trailer was kicking dust from each side of the road, alternately, as it sped up the stuart highway. I do know it can be done to make them behave, it must be black magic.
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While appreciating the constant speed prop stuff, for me, with a fixed pitch prop, I like Yenn's idea that if you are not seeing the proper rpm then you have a problem and should abort.
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OME, whats a YAF ? Once I was at the magistrate's court and there were people getting fined for speeding in school zones... they were mainly on their way ( they said ) to a funeral and therefore understandably too distraught to care about school zones. This cut no ice with the grumpy old beak.
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what is a fun RAA plane to learn in?
Bruce Tuncks replied to hkaneshiro's topic in Student Pilot & Further Learning
The cost of getting a plane certified for aerobatics would be prohibitive I reckon. Personally, I find altitude to be too expensive to chuck away on aerobatics, so I would not pay more for the certification business anyway. In other words, the extra price would put me off. But aerobatics done at the beginning and end of the day, with a lightened plane in still air could not be as hard on the airframe as fully loaded at max speed through turbulence. There were rumours about a guy "down south "who was doing loops in his Jabiru.... Ho Hum we said, till we heard that he was starting to do a bit of inverted at the top of the loop. So then we predicted disaster, on account of negative loading of a strut-braced wing. Well the disaster never happened, and I reckon he just got bored and moved on. -
a lot of wrecked aircraft in florida.
Bruce Tuncks replied to BrendAn's topic in Aircraft Incidents and Accidents
I find it hard to weep over a rich man's toy. But if the plane or car was just inundated, surely it can just be cleaned out? I have a farm buggy and the chinese driver's manual says that following inundation, you need to change the oil and other fluids. And, I guess, clean out all the mud etc. I wonder how much that Mclaren will sell for.... still be out of my reach I reckon. -
Once, I watched in awe as a semi-driver backed into a roller-door in a narrow alley. He didn't have the room to get straight first, so he had to have the whole thing at a curve. I was awed by his skill.... how common is that as a driving feat?
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Rf guy, I once read that in the US, somebody lost his insurance because he had tried out a carby mod. It was not even on the plane when the crash occurred. When I posted the story here, I was told that in Australia, that would not happen.
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Not 2 bits of metal in the old Jab prop... the prop itself is wooden covered with glass, I'm pretty sure that it was heat that caused the blackening, there was other damage too including splitting around some of the drive-bushes. Now I wish I had taken a pic at the time. My new Jabiru 3300 prop is a black-painted scimitar one and this has a metal hub with tight bushes. I have not yet put a blob or 2 of movement indicator on the hub/driver intersect but I will soon.
