Friarpuk

I ended up putting a VDO gauge back in. Went for a 1.5 hr fly this afternoon, and yes very satisfying.

All you folk will be happy to know that I have put the old girl back together and all is running well with no oil spewing out of the engine. Had a "fun" time yesterday washing all the oil off the under side of my plane after plenty of test running.

The 360.004 in this list is only 75psi where as the one I ordered from Aircraft Spruce was rated at 150psi. They have obviously changed in later products. Floods quoted me on a 360.081 which I believe is 150psi. Regards Heath

Hi folks I have discovered on further investigation that the new pressure sensor is not leaking after all. I have not realised that the thread is tapered and have put the new gauge in too far and split the housing. Der to me So to get a new one costs about 900 from Floods. But I can get a secondhand one with the NPT thread for about half that from Floods. I do feel like a twit. Floods tell me I'm not the first to do this, but that doesn't make me feel any better. An expensive lesson learnt. Heath

Hi folks Got a vdo 360.004 sensor from Aircraft Spruce and installed it. Unfortunately it failed on engine start up. Oil spewed out of the sensor where the outer shell is pressed over the inners which holds the stud. I am waiting to hear back from them to see what they can do. My next door neighbour who is a mechanic and also flies says I should source one through a auto electrician. Might do that next week. Floods in Melbourne quoted me $223 for a vdo 360.081 and I thought that was a bit too expensive. Attached are a few pics after the engine was started and run for no more than 30 seconds. I'm just glad it didn't fail when I was flying. Heath

In the words of my kids "der" Replacing is obvious but are they known to spring a leak?

Is this the original sender that Rotax used for their 912 uls engines?

It is the VDO type.

Hi folks Have been trolling around in the threads and seen plenty about 912 oil pressure senders not sending the right info to the gauge. However my question is, has anyone had a sensor that has begun to leak. I think mine is leaking a bit of oil, although it is had to discern exactly where it is coming from as it get blown around a bit. Thoughts....?

Indeed! Already on the list for the bank manager.

So I went out to the airport and had a look. The Skyranger has many endearing features but it aint that easy to get a good look at the back of the engine. I think it is a 6 way male plug and a 6 way female plug. Not all the plugs have wires running through them. I gave everything a wriggle and nothing obvious stood out. Started the engine ran rough for ten seconds while rpm was around 1500 - 2000 pushed her up to about 2500 and it came good. I could not fault it in the run up so I went for a fly and as per usual did not miss a beat for the 1.7 hrs I was up. I constantly checked magies while up there and just the usual expected drop on both. One of these days I am going to have to pull the engine out to fix it and the wretched oil leak I have that drops enough oil down onto the spat when the engine is cooling but is not enough to reach the bottom of the spat. The seal on the back of the engine is the culprit so the LAME says, along with it being a real bugger of a job and it needs special tools. Which translates into the LAME telling me it's going to be expensive. The silly thing is at this point in time I am only putting about 500 mls of oil in the engine between each 100 hrly. BTW I did enjoy the flight yesterday. I circumnavigated the Bunyas to look at the wind farm emerging out of the nth western end of the range near Porter's Gap and then to say g'day to dad and my brother with flyovers at their places, a circle around Bell before flying back over the Bunyas before landing back in Kingaroy just on sundown. Puk

I I have a chance to go and check it out a bit more tomorrow. Will let you know. Thanks Heath

I built my Skyranger in 2009 after purchasing the engine from Flood Imports in 2008. I believe it is a 6 wire plug.

No problem re battery not being charged. I run a solar panel to trickle charge the battery, keeping it topped up all the time.

Thanks for taking the time to tell me of you experience. I will look into it. I suspected that it might be something like that. Wiring those plugs to the magneto switches in the cockpit, I recall, was a bit of a pain in the posterior. Regards

I have not been on here for a while and I am dammed if I can find the video section in the media. And videos I have uploaded in the past now only appear as pics. Not sure what is going on.....????

Hi I have about 500 hrs on my Rotax 912 and recently on startup it one of the magnetos is dead for about one minute and then comes good. Has anyone heard of this or had this issue? Any pointers would be appreciated! Thanks Friarpuk

Remembered when it was too late. Was out L plating with my son on Saturday.

Check out my first attempt at VR 360 video. Enjoy Friarpuk

G'day Joe Welcome to the forum. You probably have many more hours up flying than I do, so please forgive me if it sounds like I'm telling you to suck eggs. As a padre I have flown in and out of interesting paddocks quite a bit. I have a Skyranger Swift, a very simple plane to build and with a 100hp rotax get 85-90 kts in hot weather and 90-95 in the cooler months. She gets in and out of tight spots easily and although you don't want to build, it is a very easy plane to build and maintain. It has a good solid commanding rudder so it will go were you point it. There are a few variants around, the latest being the Swift 2 and the Nynja which has more fiberglass on the fuse than the Swift and the Swift 2. Some of my mates that have dedicated stol aircraft don't get much better performance than what the Skyranger delivers but their stol aircraft get belted around much more than my Swift does on turbulent days. I also believe the Bushcat, which was once called the Cheetah is a copy of the Skyranger. FWIW Oops too late just saw you bought a plane. Friarpuk

In 2013 I flew Myrup (Esperance) to Caiguna to Nullarbor RH to Ceduna in a skyranger swift (100 hp Rotax) with plenty of reserve to spare. The strips were in no way rough either. Flying to Forrest is a long way round especially when you are not flying from Northam or Perth. See my video in media folder

Growing up on a farm that had couch and grew lucerne neither would be very good. Lucerne gets very clumpy after it has been cut a fair few times. Couch may cover well and be low resistance to wheels but its tolerance to traffic is poor and it allows weeds to grow though quite easily. If one hasn't done much preparation to the soil under the grass (i.e. some sought of fine gravel base) it wouldn't take too much to go through the grass and get bogged if the soil gets slushy when wet.

What's a MPC certificate?