IBob

A good mate of mine told me 'they' were looking at confining us all to within a few miles of our town/village. In fact they may be already trying it.....somewhere like Cambridge, he thought. No thought to how that could be achieved and policed, quite apart from the likely reaction of the populace to any such thing. But he did express surprise and horror that some of his informants....including people he knows.....think Putin is a nice man.... What can ya do???

Some folk seem to be magnets for that sort of stuff....with no apparent ability or tendency to do any sort of reality check. Just about everyone knows at least one of those folk by now: sometimes they are good friends or family. And nobody has yet figured out what can be done about it, since arguing over the 'facts' seems to have no positive effect at all.

Good points, Skippy. Regarding the balance tube, I'd be curious to know the specific function it was designed for. It is a skinny little tube and I find it hard to imagine much mixture travelling through it: I don't think I would be relying on it to compensate for mismatched throttle openings. As for the Bowden cables, I'm sure you're right, though my kit came with DIY cables you cut and thread yourself, and I doubt they are very high tech. I should probably have added that I am looking for smooth free operation of the levers and cables when checking them, and especially as the standard setup is only positive when closing the throttles: on opening, we are relying on the carb throttle arm springs to pull the cables.

It was just a suggestion for a very simple check that has worked well on my 912ULS. If it was vibration free before (?) I would be looking at what has been altered/replaced in the work you mention.

I would be doing a simple check on the balancing of the carbs: someone (here?) recently said that the main problem they had come across with balancing Rotax carbs was poorly installed or maintained throttle cable/lever systems. I do a static setup (engine stopped) where I push to full throttle, and check that both throttle levers have gone to the full throttle stops on the carb bodies. I then very gradually close the throttle, watching to see both throttle levers come off the stops at exactly the same time: I do this several times, as it's hard to look two places at once. I then check the same for throttles fully closed, but it is the fully open I am focused on, and any adjustment of the cables is done to get simultaneous action there. I have done this from new, and have very smooth running: several minor adjustments were required in the first 40 or 50 hrs, but none since then. I also keep all throttle linkages and cables clean and lubricated to maintain free movement.

Thanks for that, Skippy. So, as suspected, a good deal more than the 2L/hr figure that has been bandied around for so long.

Hi Steve, my insurance is Avsure through Crombie Lockwood, I've found them very good to deal with: [email protected]

BC, how big and where is the Viking header tank?

Hi Steve, you can search by aircraft type at the CAA registration website: https://www.aviation.govt.nz/aircraft/aircraft-registration/aircraft-register-search/ And a very good source of detail where you can search, for instance Avid Flyers of New Zealand is: https://nzcivair.blogspot.com

The vent pipe from the 6litre collector tank comes across to the LH side and up through the front LH corner of the parcel shelf. From there up inside the LH rear door column, and enters the wing at the rear of the wing root rib. From there into a fitting high in the side of the LH inboard tank. The two corrugated pipes in the pic are this breather pipe, and the electrics for the wingtip strobe, which both come up the door column. (The fuel supply lines have all been carried over to the RH side of the cockpit to a valve block, allowing individual tank selection, as per Mark Kyle's build. If you have the long range tanks, this is a very good system, for all sorts of reasons.)

BC, the general layout of the fuel system is shown in a drawing in the POH, which is in the back of your manual. The fuel return line is piped out of the bottom RH corner of the control panel, then up through a solid pipe, supplied, inside the RH door column. from there it goes into the wing root at the front to a fitting high up in the side of the RH inboard tank.

Very neat, Marty. You must be well pleased with that! Yep the cap is a bit stiff, but probably less so once you get a bit of oil on the seal.

Skippy, if the airbox drains are after the filter (as they should be) surely air is coming in through them during engine operation? My build has one drain only, small diameter, presumably to reduce the amount of air coming in that way. And as a a separate suggestion: I wonder if what you are seeing is the result of (a small amount of) fuel vapourising in the float bowl then condensing in the air box? It seems very unlikely, but for the miniscule amount you mention (approx 3 drops per minute), whatever is causing it is a minimal. I would be reluctant to be dismantling/swapping bits on a new Rotax engine unless absolutely necessary: they are manufactured to a high spec and usually just bolt in and go flying. Question: are the carb vent pipes to the airbox sloped up, down, or level?

The top pic looks like a Rans S6 Coyote?

And here are the underwing inspection hatches. Again they have a doubler riveted inside. In this case there is no lip and the cover sits on, rather than flush to, the skin, secured by rivnuts and hex head screws.

FWIW, for hatches in the 6061 panel, they supply a doubler with a slightly smaller hole, which rivets inside the skin. This stiffens the edges of the skin, and provides a lip so the cover sits flush to the skin. This is the rear fuselage side hatch, gives access to control cables and used to be where the battery was, you can see the doubler:

And here is a very tidy DIY hatch on a VG, probably a better fit for you. 100mm wide at the midpoint of the sides, 125 from hinge to fastener side. (These are the dimensions of the final hole: note this also has an inner lip, so the cover sits down flush).

Here ya go Marty. This is on the S, 190mm wide x 105mm deep (IF the recessed lip was carried all the way round. Since it's not, 115mm deep at centre). Doesn't need to be that wide, I'd guess it's supplied like that to cater for different engines/mounts.

I'll measure up and take some pics tomorrow, Marty.

.075mm is approx 3thou. .335mm is 13thou.

ICP use Dzus on the cowls (and tail hatch) but Camloc on the oil inspection hatch, and also on the belly hatch. The oil hatch is opened every preflight, and the action of the Camloc maybe lends itself better to those frequent openings?

There's something here I'm not understanding Skippy: 0.075mm is about the diameter of a medium thick human hair. And if you have gone from 0.52mm to 0.075mm, the cross sectional area of the port has been reduced by a factor of 48. I thought you were going for a #15 jet, which is 0.335mm? Maybe take the micrometer/vernier callipers to the oxy cleaner?

That sounds a lot better, Skippy. (I'm guessing you meant 0.275mm, not 0.025mm.) Look forward to hearing what your return rate is!

The standout Normalisation of Deviance has to be Lt Col Bud Holland's behaviour, which finally led to the B52 crash at Fairchild AFB, costing him his life and killing his 3 other crew members: The man had a whole history of pushing the limits..........

OME, in this instance, it aint crap: The subsidised rollout of ADS-B in NZ has been under way for 2 years now. And while the #1 eyeball needs to remain our first defence against midairs, a common experience has been this: our ADS-B is showing us aircraft out there that we haven't seen. And furthermore, even armed with the ADSB-B data on location, height and direction, it can still be helluva hard to see 'em. I was initially reluctant to install the gear, but my view now is that we need all the tools at our disposal. Not convinced? Consider this from a study by Andrews, J.W., Unalerted Air-to-Air Visual Acquisition. 1991, Lincoln Laboratory, Massachusetts Institute of Technology: Lexington, MA. p. 1-21. "In a striking illustration of this point, Andrews performed a study in which unexpected airborne intercepts were deliberately arranged during cross-country flights by 24 general aviation pilots. Pilots were accompanied by a second (safety) pilot, and were asked to call out all sighted traffic as soon as they saw it. Pilots were informed that the aim of the study was to “add to our knowledge concerning how VFR pilots actually fly”, and to “determine how you allocate your work-load resources”. A total of 64 intercept encounters were arranged. Twenty eight of these intercepts were not seen, representing a miss-rate of 43.8%. Because pilots were aware that their performance was being monitored, it is reasonable to assume they were making an active effort to maintain an active and vigilant look-out. Despite these efforts, pilots failed to see another approaching aircraft on more than 40% of occasions."