kodiak74

Rutans Boomerang - the asymmetric twin designed to combat asymmetric thrust in an asymmetric engine fail.

Oh hell - and go ahead an recommend ones for typing as well ...

As I have moved well past the wrong side of 40, the long sightedness issue is beginning to kick in - not enough that its affected the medical yet, but I can see a time when I will need to get glasses for flying (just to be able to read the inner scales on the CR3 if nothing else !). From what I can tell, the two options are bi-focal or progressive - which one have you found to work better ?

Have read an interesting suggestion on PPRUNE relating to the throttle friction, and return spring. Basically saying if the friction is not set right (potentially after maintenance) the throttle can kick back to idle as soon as you take you hand off (say to raise the undercarriage). Obviously pure speculation - but also raised in around a similar crash in Witchita - King Air reporting left engine failure on take-off.

Has just hit the news ... Melbourne Express: Tuesday, February 21, 2017

Morning commute takes me past Essedon - saw large plume of black smoke, never a good sign at an airport. Fired up Ozrunways at work and in the Notams its saying airport closed due to aircraft accident....

Hard to evaluate this one - everything I have read about aerial combat points towards maintaining a higher airspeed as the key factor to a successful engagement - over to the fighter jocks to argue the point. If we are just comparing the radar and weapon systems, then the airframes become less relevant, if however it was a guns only engagement then it would be more interesting. The F16 has a high thrust to weight ratio (1.095 vs 0.87) and lower wing loading ( 88.3 lb/ft² vs 107.7 lb/ft² ) than the F35, and has a MTOW significantly lower (42,300 lb vs 70,000 lb) - all of which would suggest it to be the more agile of the two when it comes to a dog fighting scenario. Now if we want to get really interesting, the Gripen, with its forward canards can match or better the F35 AOA, and has a thrust to weight ratio of 0.97, wing loading of 58 lb/ft² and a MTOW of 31,000 lb ....

Not wanting to flog a dead horse, but... "As it stands, the official estimate for a fleet of 65 F-35s is that they will cost $9 billion to buy and almost $37 billion to operate over the next 42 years. So, a total of just under $46 billion. If Boeing's figures hold up, the Super Hornets would cost about half that. " (so around $23 billion). "Saab has offered to sell 65 Gripen NGs to Canada, with 40 years worth of maintenance costs for under $6 billion. $92M per plane for 40 years - compare to F35 $46 billion for the same number of planes - $707 mill per plane around 7 times that of the Gripen." So there are cheaper options out there, that are operational today, and with the extra cash, we can save up for a fleet of stealth drones (Northrop Grumman RQ-180 - Wikipedia), or buy more airframes and have a low hour fleet with spares. Heck if we go with the Gripen option we could have one for every day of the week !! I'm not sure I want our government to waste the taxpayers money on an aircraft thats looking like having an operational availability worse than the Collins class subs !! Snippets from: BEST FIGHTER FOR CANADA

Well for starters -> http://www.couriermail.com.au/news/national/army-pilots-stage-mutiny-over-chopper-fears/news-story/3e05b763489080527b5943f3d8ea7ee2

The trouble with taking quotes from the RAAF pilots is that it would be almost impossible for them to say anything close to a personal, honest opinion if that was contradictory to the RAAF's position on the aircraft. Essentially the guys being trained would be faced with - "here is the F-35, its going to be the aircraft your flying, do you like it ?", hard to be picky when you only have a choice of one. Fast forward a couple of years to when (if ?) we get operational aircraft, and we might get a better idea (thinking of the Tiger helicopter...) of what they think. And taking the reports comment further - its not the looks of the aircraft that are important, rather its ability to perform the role(s) its intended to serve, and the cost compared to other options - so far the F-35 isn't doing too well on either of those measures.

No apologies required - its all a matter of perspective. You clearly have the good fortune to spend more time in the cockpit than some of us mere mortals. For those of us who haven't had the training (either quality or quantity), or hours of experience, we will take all the help we can get ! I think the crux of our differing arguments is that your position is to make every pilot "stall safe", which we can all agree on, however that takes time and money that may not be available to all. My point is if the plane is "stall safe" we cover all skill levels of pilot, and have an additional safety warning system for when we forget our training. Yenn - Having watched most of the Air Crash Investigators there was only one deep stall crash I can remember - BEA 548 - and that was fitted with a stick shaker system, but I'm sure there were other alarms going off as well. Anyway the amount of alerts and warnings on airlines puts most/all GA aircraft to shame, and I wouldn't expect anyone to be able to fly one of those by feel at 5 knots above stall without them!

Umm, a lot of GA aircraft (ie Cessna's) use a pressure based system for the stall warning - no electrics required. From a quick internet search, the stall switch on the Beech 18 is hot wired (bypasses master) so that it will work always. Given how important a functioning stall warning indicator is, I would suspect that this would be the case on a lot of aircraft. But I don't know that for sure, so it is up to each pilot to know how the systems on their aircraft operate. Putting a blanket statement like "most stall warnings will not function when you really need them" in a public forum is downright irresponsible. By all means highlight aircraft types where this is the case, but a generalisation like that helps no-one. Aerobatic endorsement - seriously ? - basic stalls and recovery are covered in the GFPT - the real question is how often do we practice them. The one thing that would make me think about doing the Aerobatic endorsement would be spin recovery training - but thats a different discussion. Just to set the record straight - I'm not saying that one should rely solely on the stall warning indicator, its part of the sensory inputs (like stall buffet, instruments and gauges, and wind/engine sound) that you use to build up your awareness of your situation. Given a stall is not a good thing to have happen, and little friendly reminder from time to time is a good thing. Likewise everyone benefits from stall training and improved handling skills,etc.

Hah ! - I should have realised there was an ambush waiting on that one. But seriously - anything that improves situational awareness (& safety) is good to have. There could be any number of scenarios where attention could be diverted leading to the aircraft getting into an undesirable state & approaches stall. Depending on the aircraft you may get some physical warning, or maybe non at all, but with a buzzer you get a audible prompt to get things under control.

"I prefer silence" - like that eternal kind of silence you get after a low altitude stall without any warning ?

Just out of curiosity mnewbery, what do you use to mark the plastic - I've tried various 'B' pencils and only get a faint dot - wondering if chinagraph is the way to go. Have adopted the erasable pens for map marking - produce a much more distinctive line than pencil - though not sure how they would go on plastic ...

Just a quick personal experience note - early in my training days I got the E6B flight computer - big solid metal thing, that is pretty neat, but completely un-practical in the cockpit. Just got my CR-2 (pock size) and went through the manual last night - the wind calculations are a bit more involved, but nothing too scary, and 1-in-60 type calculations are a doddle. Will need to spend a bit more time getting the process down, but certainly looking forward to being able to use it instead of trying to do mental calculations in the cockpit. One downside is the size of the numbers on the scale, as the eyesight is not as great as it use to be ...

As a former climber I want to elaborate on this point... There are a couple of dangers you face - the first is suspension trauma (Suspension trauma - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia ) where you are immobile for more that 20 minutes (i.e. knocked out after a fall) and your blood pressure drops. The second is if you end up hanging in a position that prevents circulation - usually it is the legs. When you get moving again there is a whole heap of "stale" blood that gets moving again and you end up with toxic shock.(Rescue death - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia) Note: These conditions can develop not matter what attitude you are at !

I second cscotthendrys' post - I started with a cheap headset, and was really frustrated in missing or not being able to hear radio calls, as well as conversations with the instructor - I tried a friends Bose A20 - and was sold. My next birthday present to myself was a brand new pair of A20's ! I went all in and got the bluetooth model - which means I can use the mobile through the headset as well - handy backup in case of radio failure - and with Siri on the iPhone you don't need to take your hands off the controls. I consider them a lifetime investment - and a safety item - not hearing a vital call, or worse mis-hearing it could really ruin your day, and at the very least result in a lot of paperwork, and the comfort factor makes flying even more enjoyable, and the initial pain of purchase quickly fades :)

Just found an (old) interesting article about how the F35 handles temperature management. Apparently it uses the onboard fuel as a thermal sink for cooling its electronics systems, which means if the fuel is too warm the jet must be shutdown or risk overheating. The US has resorted to painting its fuel trucks white (very tactical !) to keep the fuel temperature lower than the traditional green trucks to prevent thermal shutdowns. I wonder how the will cope in the top end ... and in the years to come with global warming !!! http://foxtrotalpha.jalopnik.com/the-f-35-cant-run-on-warm-gas-from-a-fuel-truck-that-sa-1668120726

Before you go ahead with the changes I think you should read this article about the Alexa site rankings -> Alexa Rank Dropping Fast in April 2016 - [Case Study] Apparently Alexa changed their ranking metrics earlier in the year - which has seen a downturn in many sites rankings - and the bottom line is Alexa gives incorrect traffic estimates. So I wouldn't put my faith in the downturn having anything to do with the nature of the discussion - its merely a coincidence. I think part of the appeal of the current site is the mix of aviation stories from around the world - visiting multiple sites to get the same stories would not be the same experience, and the extra effort would be a barrier to most people. I think anyone frequenting forums will appreciate that the discussion/visits/traffic ebbs and flows based on current events, end of financial year, elections, and other worldly events, and that fundamentally the growth of a site will be limited to the growth of the aviation community, both here and overseas. Another effect of splitting the site is that you will dilute the traffic to each sub-site - thats not going to improve rankings at all !! Not to mention the extra overhead of administration, hosting, patching, etc that will be associated with running multiple sites. I applaud your efforts in providing and maintaining this forum, and being in the IT industry full appreciate the effort and commitment required to do so, however I believe in this case you are wrong to consider breaking up the site. My 2 cents.

Hah - good spot - I actually copied the title from the Popular Mechanics page where I first saw the article ... http://www.popularmechanics.com/adventure/outdoors/a20364/lucky-photographer-narrowly-avoids-getting-hit-by-a-plane/ And, like pmccarthy, I didn't pickup on the omission.

The lengths people will go to get a picture ... http://petapixel.com/2016/04/11/video-tourist-nearly-decapitated-taking-picture-landing-plane/ and endanger everyone in the process.

The submissions made to the inquiry are available online here -> http://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Committees/Senate/Foreign_Affairs_Defence_and_Trade/Joint_fighter/Submissions Some interesting reading.

Re: Oil/Fuel production - we do actually produce our own - mainly from the Bass Strait oil and gas fields, but its not much, and decreasing. http://www.aspo-australia.org.au/introduction/oil-production-decline.html As is our capacity to refine that crude oil into fuels... http://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/mining-energy/global-supply-crucial-as-local-product-lost/story-e6frg9df-1226436191805

Interesting "what if" article.... http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/special-features/in-depth/the-next-war-can-australia-put-up-a-fight/news-story/e014be236655857052fbd521e3534ba7