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Bruce Tuncks

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Everything posted by Bruce Tuncks

  1. Bruce Tuncks
    In Adelaide, it was noticed that the airport firemen had never been used in earnest in 50 years, and they got disbanded. This was bad news for a mate of mine who used to sleep there and work as a barman at night. A bit like the ambulances I reckon. I would be busting to go to the airport if I were one. But as a person who can just imagine needing an ambulance urgently, I would be angry about them wasting time at the airport. At Gawler, once we had a first-flight engine failure ( A volks type engine in a sonex ) and the pilot elected to do a circuit from 300 ft and he landed so hard that the sonex caught fire. So many police cars came that the main effect would have been that you could have gone speeding and no cops would have caught you, they were all looking at the burning sonex. Well I guess that was the most entertaining show around .
  2. Bruce Tuncks
    It is the alignment of the 2 pulleys that matters. I this is not always perfect, then the belt will want to creep sideways. The old flat-belt drives had domed pulleys for this reason. They rarely stayed dead center.
  3. Bruce Tuncks
    I think I saw one and saw struck by how the toothed reduction rubber belt was destroying itself by running into a flange... was this the Kingaroy Pawnee?
  4. Bruce Tuncks
    That's great news PMC. I'm embarrassed to say I always referred to the foxbat as "Russian" , Wow wrong huh.
  5. Bruce Tuncks
    At the Adelaide Soaring Club, it's a lot more than $85. club fees and GFA fees add up to about $500 I think.... I used to pay hangar site rent too, well the wife did and she complained a bit. I ignored her complaints. But RAAus training is by volunteer instructors, so it is only the aircraft hire rate, which is ( I think ) about $100 an hour. Check them out directly. We used to have a level 4 maintenance guy at the field but he died. I reckon he kept busy, he did everything including radios and instruments. cheers and welcome.
  6. Bruce Tuncks
    Not answering the question I know, but yesterday I heard that the foxbat lot are not effected by the war and they now have a spare parts operation based in Poland.
  7. Bruce Tuncks
    We come down to the test which will tell if a motor is about to fail. I sure would like to know of these tests. Leakdown?.....Nahh Compliance with AD's.... nahhh So, what is the best I can do?
  8. Bruce Tuncks
    My son has a chinese ute which has gone for years and still is ok. It is a Great Wall, and he reckons he could give it away for nothing and still be way ahead of those who paid double for a "known" brand. Here on the farm, I use a chinese tractor and it is much better than the US-brand-name ( Massey Ferguson ) one which preceded it. The US one turned out to have been made in Mexico, and among other problems, it was controlled by a computer. So while I agree to be wary, I reckon that you could be wrong to assume that the chinese motor will be inferior. It may even be better! The only problem so far with the chinese tractor is that the hydraulic fittings are not standard, so I can't buy spares locally. I had to buy them online and wait a week for delivery from WA.
  9. Bruce Tuncks
    I have seen a gliding gaggle of a dozen or so gliders all landing together. They made it look easy and I don't think it was that dangerous. It was from a straight-in and they had no height to do a circuit anyway. It was into the sea-breeze however. I reckon OME that you just need to spell out the dangers and recommended procedures( all in accordance with the regs of course ) and mail these to the participants , then enjoy the show.
  10. Bruce Tuncks
    I reckon it depends on the amount of other aircraft who are using the radio. If it is none, then calling "turning left onto base for 36" is a good idea. If there are lots of other planes, then ( anytime) calling " following blah" would do the job. The important thing is to not have a collision due to a misunderstanding. If there are people doing straight-ins, then it is really important to speak up.
  11. Bruce Tuncks
    I reckon we need some "certified" mogas which is of guaranteed quality and properties. I dunno where you get that .
  12. Bruce Tuncks
    Is the material removed measureable with a micrometer? or just because the cross-hatching is visibly worn there... and you haven't said about avgas or mogas
  13. Bruce Tuncks
    As I said earlier, I bought a "smoother" for operating a radio from a 4wd. It worked fine for 20 years and it was cheaper than the powermate. I would have been happy to use a powermate but I'm so cheap that I thought he spent too much on advertising. I reckon I need something similar for the microair on the 230... Size doesn't matter, but cost and weight sure do. Any suggestions will be most welcome.
  14. Bruce Tuncks
    What is the best way to protect a micro-air radio ? External spikes should be easily fixed with an add-on bit to the power supply I reckon. My old Jabiru has an X-com with a power supply thingy from a 4wd shop. The power supply thingy has a big coil and a red led indicator. My new Jabiru 230 has a micro-air which works fine and has been there for years. It was listed as first flown in 2011.
  15. Bruce Tuncks
    I truly doubt about the vertical dive.... 20,000 ft in under 2 mins is not a vertical dive, but it is believable. Gosh they are well-designed planes. That's a vertical speed of 100 knots. I think that they had to change the airbrake rule on gliders from a vertical dive to a 45 degree dive. Now 45 degrees sure feels like vertical, but it would be a lot less likely to cause flutter. Wheels down are draggy and stronger, but their doors would rip off too. Even if you had the plane in a dirty configuration, would not the flaps rip off first? My Jabiru has 85 knots max flap speed, and I sure could exceed this in a dive.
  16. Bruce Tuncks
    In hindsight, they should have sent a car up the road a half hour earlier, or as soon as they started hearing from the glider.
  17. Bruce Tuncks
    Those oil-pots would not have worked at Bond Springs when Bert was returning ( with a world record if he landed safely ) from 3 ways. The was no lighting, but there were car headlights on the strip... But poor Bert was too far out to the west and the cars were behind the scrub. If only somebody had used the Stuart highway earlier! As soon as he saw the lights, he turned towards them but he was too low and when the clock said 2,400 ft the wings got ripped off.
  18. Bruce Tuncks
    Thanks OME
  19. Bruce Tuncks
    I would like to know more about medical standards. What percentage of septuagenarians would pass? What is group G? A guy I knew who got old and subsequently died owned a current VH medical certificate. ( Before dying, he had not flown for a couple of weeks because he felt unwell, he told me ). I always took this story to illustrate why we, who fly for fun in good weather, can actually be safer than those professionals who have to fly all the time. I would also like to know the money side of moving to VH.
  20. Bruce Tuncks
    When I built my first Jabiru, ( 1998 kit ) I needed to belong to the SAAA for certification. The permissible weight was only 430kg total. A guy who also had an identical plane noticed that they had increased the stall-speed and so he got to fly at 480 kg. I dunno just what the legal maximum is these days, although I am quite sure that the structure is ok at 480 kg. We have the " who is carrying the risk for an idiot " problem. Anybody who certifies an aircraft may find that they are deemed responsible for an idiot who crashes.
  21. Bruce Tuncks
    I have had 3 broken wires in one launch attempt( we had winch launches on one side and aerotow on the other. After the three broken wires, I pushed over to the aerotow side.) It is quite correct to point out that the airbrakes really help make a glider circuit easier. You can be anywhere on downwind and still do an accurate landing with a glider.... the Jabiru is much harder to land, and you need to be accurate for much longer. One overcast day, the solo pilots were having an impromptu competition of who could be highest over the fence and still taxi up to the take-off point, which was about 200m past the fence. The winning height was 1500 ft, the glider was a Hornet which had big flap-brakes. I was told that it looked like the glider went past the vertical before rounding out and landing. Needless to say, this whole event was frowned upon and never repeated.
  22. Bruce Tuncks
    We even have some oligarchs in Australia, old K. I reckon though that after the war, those who fought it will make the ukrainian oligarchs pay some tax. I read of one guy ( head of military construction) in Russia who has millionaire mansions everywhere and a very fashionable wife in Paris and a daughter at some finishing school somewhere expensive. Tax them all real hard, say I, and the pommy royals too.
  23. Bruce Tuncks
    destroying that antonov was to me one of the worst crimes imaginable. And so stupid.... it would have sat there unflown and only if it was used by the military would there be any excuse. I recommend confiscating oligarch's money as reparations.
  24. Bruce Tuncks
    I don't have an ASIC to honor my grandfather who fought in WW1 to make the world a better place.He too hated excessive bureaucracy. I find it easy enough to avoid such places which "require" one or else just fit around the rules... for example, in Mildura I once had to find somebody else to fill my plane up. Since then, I have found Wentworth to be a better place. ( I only think Mildura is an ASIC place, I never asked ). The worst thing about the ASIC is the expiry and the cost. As a 5th generation Australian, I object to being treated unfairly.
  25. Bruce Tuncks
    peter081, do you have info about the plane? I assure you that I am not a journalist and I am puzzled why anybody would think so. I'm just a retiree who lives on a farm in the west wimmera and flies Jabirus for fun. I have been doing so for more than 20 years now and never had a problem in the air.
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