KRviator

Easiest way I found was to grab an adapter cable from one of the pilot stores and record it to my phone. It plugs into the headphone socket, and your headphone then plugs into it with a 3.5mm male plug going to the phone, so everything you hear is also recorded. Intercom, radio, EFIS/EMS/AoA warnings, etc.Something like this is what you're after. If you want to video it, one of those adapter cables and a GoPro with a Combo Cable will do you right. The combo cable has a 3.5mm female socket to plug your adapter cable into.

The early Lear's are not certified for single-pilot operations, IIRC. Factor that into your costings. RVSM compliance might be another hurdle if not already fitted

After a year flying my RV-9 for a year with nothing more than a sewed-by-yourself set of seat cushions, I was on the lookout for a new set of seats to begin the process of finishing off the RV. Unfortunately though, a nice pair Classic Aero seats are out of reach for the moment, so the search began. An epiphany was had one day recently when being driven around by the KRviatrix. She has a fluro yellow Suzuki Swift Sport (which, by the way, is the only thing besides the Great Wall of China that can be seen from space!) with those form-fitting bucket seats. A tape measure was brought out, and with fingers crossed, measurements taken. Give or take an inch, they looked like they would fit, and as she forbid me from knocking off her seats that day (wimmen! :p), a set was purchased from eBay for $300. The obligatory before shot. Now, first off, a word of warning: these seats are fitted with SRS Airbags on the outboard sides. I would recommend you carefully remove these before putting them in your plane. Cut the wire near the base of the backrest, and you can unzip the upholstery from the backrest, and unbolt (2 small nuts) each airbag & set them aside somewhere safe. To use the seats in your RV, you have two choices depending on your height. If you are tall, you will need to remove the seat base cushion from its' steel frame and simply sit on it as you would normally. The foam holds its shape quite well without it. For shorter pilots, you can leave the steel foam base in place, it only weighs a pound or two, which has the added advantage of keeping a pair of steel hoops in place to hold the seat foam against your thighs as well, but you do tend to sit up 1-1.5 inches higher than otherwise. If you are choosing this option, remove the height-adjustment mechanism and as much extra weight as you can. You will need to drill out 2 x pop rivets on each 'side-track' as well, until you are left with a thin sheet-metal form that does nothing more than hold the foam in shape. Either way, you will need to trim about 2" from the rear of the seat base to enable a better fit, and you will also need to remove a 6" x 6" portion of foam from the forward-centre portion to allow full aft control movement. The seat still looks normal by doing this, but you would be better served by having an automotive upholsterer sew a U-shape there - something I will be having done in a few days. For the back rest, remove the steel frame completely by unzipping both sides, unclipping the headrest sockets from their steel supports and removing them and then removing the entire steel frame from the foam. It is then a simple process to insert your normal backrest into the seat foam, and install that in your RV. Working on the Coey's seat. If you find they are a little too high, you can trim an inch or two from your aluminium seat back to bring the backrest down to suit you. You can use the Suzuki headrests with these seats if you so desire, by using a pair of Adel clamps rivetted to your seat back at the appropriate spacing to capture the legs of the headrests, then installing the plastic sockets for the factory look and finally sliding the headrest into position. One benefit of these seats too is they come with a map pocket sewn into the back side. You will need to trim a little foam away from the outboard shoulder area if you have a tip-up, to allow the aft canopy frame to clear without snagging the seat fabric & tearing it. For a little more backrest angle, you can also cut away a little bit of foam from the seat where it rests against the F-705F channel. I didn't weigh them, but would guess the total weight was no more than 10-12 lbs. Once you have done this, which will take you all of an hour for both seats if you're having a good day, you will end up with something like: And for eagle-eyed readers: NO - I do not have them in backwards! The canopy lock is on the right because I fly my -9 PIC from the right side.

I saw a couple of spotters at Cessnock one morning. Googled my rego a few days later and sure enough there is the photo they took... at least I wasn't picking my nose!

I pay $300/month at Somersby, up from $130/month at Cessnock, but a much better deal overall as it is an hour closer!

Check out the cockpit - they're using a Dynon D100, not even a SkyView system. Really? A multi=million dollar fighter, and you use a legacy Dynon display? And where's the EMS? 3 x EFIS but no engine monitoring?

You can't live in the hangar, unfortunately. There was talk of allowing it for short-term events for your mates, provided you had a dunny, etc, but I'm not sure if that came to fruition. A hangar would set you back around $65,000 for one similar to mine, with the 6m height allowing you to DIY your own mezzanine to suit your specific needs, but that does not include the big door, but does include 2 personal & 1 roller door for your car. I've lost the quote for the slab, but IIRC, it was around $21,000, including earthworks. If you budgeted $100,000, you would have a couple thousand change, when all is said and done.

Cheers, Kununurra, you're right. I didn't want to include the price in post as I didn't want to be seen to be putting up a classifieds-type ad in the general forums. All I am after is to break even to be able to put the $$ to a better use, but it would be in the region of $195,000. Or $305,000 with a free RV-9A thrown in! I need 4 seats now...

Talk about raising the dead, but rather than double up threads, I'll use this one. A couple of years ago I was suffering AIDS - no, not that one - and used a small inheritance to buy a block at Temora and build a hangar on it, with the intention of living there and commuting to Warnervale/Somersby to see the kids. Only problem is, the KRviatrix and I reconciled our differences and things have been going great, but she is not a fan of Temora as a town - dunno why, something about it not having a Myer or that a Target Country does not count as a department store... So I can't see us moving down there anytime in the next decade. That being said, I'm looking at putting the block on the market sometime in the near future and was wondering if there is still any interest in pilots moving down there, or would I be better to hang onto it. It is #37 Tigermoth Ave, but it shows up as #33 in Google Maps for some reason. The hangar is 15x15x6m, concrete floor, with a 10x4 door opening facing the taxiway. The block is the usual 1250m2, being 50m deep and 25m wide. Power, Gas, Water are all available as you'd expect. Given the weather - and that I broke my right arm & leg after being hit by a kid on his motorbike so haven't flown in 8 weeks - I haven't been able to get down there to get new photos since it's completed, but if there's a consensus that it might sell, I'll look at options to do that & chuck it on Ian's classifieds section, but I wanted to see what the feeling was first.

So RAAus pilots have to see a RAAusCFI to authorise their ASIC renewal even though the ASIC may not have been issued by RAAus? What's up with that?!?

And given this, we still have people out and about without so much as an ELT, yet alone something like this which is cheap enough - but genuinely useful. And not just pilots either, but boaties and 4wd'ers - at what point does AMSA and the Government say "enough is enough, the tech is available to allow us to instantly find you if you need help, but you chose not to use it - here's the bill for an 18 hour search, Merry Christmas?"

It comes down to the individual owner too. I have a Dynon SkyView system that records flight, autopilot, navigation & engine information to the datalog twice a second. To supplement that, I installed an automotive dash camera to the rollbar looking over my shoulder & out the canopy, so if I do come to grief, not only do they have the data log, but HD video of my actions leading up to, and during, the event.Now, not everyone can afford, or wants to install, a similar EFIS setup, but even something as simple as the dashcam costs less than $200 and could provide valuable information in the event of an incident.

No no, I did read exactly that, and I also read that you appear to be "leaning" towards the Jab based on it having fewer reported incidents in 3 pages of accident reports than the Rotax - but you also didn't specify your search term, if you simply plugged "Rotax" and "Jabiru" into the search box, then your comparisons are even more meaningless than simply saying "there was only one Jab engine failure compared to 9 Rotax failures". You will get failures of 503's, 582's, 618's, 914's and the gamut of 912-series. Which ones do you want? Did you break down the failures of 912's into UL, ULS, the early models, etc...The point I am trying to make is, without knowing why they failed (you can't really blame a SkyGod running out of fuel on the engine), and how many hours were flown across the fleet by aircraft fitted with the engines you are comparing against each other, then your investigation will give a flawed result, no matter your best intentions. If you want the most reliable engine you can put in an RAAus aircraft, it is a Lycoming. Why? Because there have been no, that's right, zero, reported failures of lycoming-powered RAAus aircraft to my knowledge. But there are probably only 6 RAAus aircraft actually powered by a Lycoming that might fly a combined total of 300hours a year versus 10 Rotax failures in 10,000 hours. See where I'm coming from?

How the hell are you supposed to satisfy the "face to face" requirement given the vast distances between the issuer and applicant in the majority of cases? I bet the charter guys in Kunnununra are loving these changes...

Those figures didn't come from any article, they were used as an example that you cannot rely on simple "x number of failures in a calendar period" as a means of proving, or disproving, reliability. You need to compare apples with apples, ie MTBF as a number of flight hours across the fleet, and without those numbers, any statistics showing Engine A is more reliable than Engine B is both meaningless and misleading.

But why did those Rotax's fail? And what was the total hours flown in that period vs the Jabiru engine? Eg, it there were 9 Rotax failures, and rotax's flew 9,000 hours, vs just 1 jab failure, but the total jab fleet flew 500 hours, the Rotax's are still twice as reliable as a Jab. Without knowing figures like these, it is impossible to make an informed decision. That being said, unfortunately Jabiru engines have a stigma associated with them know, whether deserved or not, so everything else being equal, resale is likely to be significantly better with a Rotax, but again, that is only part of the story. What about performance figures between the two? Overhaul intervals based on fuel anticipated fuel usage?

It certainly is when you see the price, see the purchase agreement and see the performance (or lack thereof...) and see the payload - or lack thereof...Put two average Aussie blokes in it, and you don't have enough fuel for VFR reserves!

I self-studied using the Bob Tait PPL books and sat the PPLA exam last week, scoring 93% on the first go, so naturally recommend them as a reference!

C looks like an LP4-3 rivet D possibly a CS4-4, a bit hard totell if it is countersunk from that angle. A3, possibly a MK-319-BS? Check out page 5-31 of This document, courtesy of the good folks at Vans.

"FNxx" is a 'Fly Neighbourly' note, usually created to keep local residents happy. In this case, it is for the Symbio wildlife park. Fly Neighbourly notes can be found in the ERSA, GEN-SP.

Partially correct, but not so in this case.The Asterisk only indicates a Navaid limitation when coupled with an Aerodrome/NavAid info box. A small black asterisk offshore/otherwise in water indicates exposed rocks. The red star does not indicate a VFR approach point at all - this is indicated by the purple/white diamond, if necessary with a tail pointing to the actual location. The red asterisk refers to a note in the margin of the chart, in this case, cautioning pilots operating in the vicinity of SY CTR of the possibility of other traffic awaiting clearance into the CTR near Parramata, Long Reef and Helensburgh.

I'd prefer to maintain something myself than have a LAME sign off on an annual with some of the photos I've seen of corrosion that was found as part of the Cessna SIDS program, on apparently 'airworthy' aircraft! There is nothing intrinsically wrong with maintaining an aircraft, or boat or car, yourself, so long as you recognise the limitations of your knowledge and skills and seek help when required. For RV's, there is the VansAirForce website, for KR's there is KRNet, and I'm sure a whole host of other type-specific forums where expert advice may be sought to help you. ISTR Canada even allow you to maintain and sign the MR for a range of certified GA aircraft yourself under an "owner-maintenance" scheme.Besides, the feeling when you realise you're at 10,000' flying in something you built in your back shed is both incredibly satisfying and momentarily terrifying and gives you great bragging rights at work!

Bit harsh I reckon, check out this video from the current comp.And as for the glider pilots, I have this to say: "You fellas are effin NUTS!" That many gliders in one thermal, it's no wonder you guys wear chutes...I'll stick to my RV thank you very much...

Personally, for long legs, I would use the grid point winds, they are more likely to better compensate for wind variations throughout the flight rather than assuming a 'one size fits all' that you get using Area winds exclusively. But in saying that, if you're not going out of the area forecast, they shouldn't be significantly different?

Another option is a set of Bose QC15's from Ebay and add the UFlyMike microphone adapter. I used them extensively until I upgraded to a set of AV100's. Now the Coey gets them.