Dick Gower

11/29 was cinder covered (not sealed) but only on a short portion of the western end; the rest was grass. The remnants can just be seen in the photo. The use of the letter identifiers for taxiways is a relatively recent thing. Under the GAAP (General Aviation Aerodrome Procedures) before Class D, there was no need for taxiway letter identifiers because there was no requirement for a taxi clearance to the active runway. 09/27 was quite wet most of the year and barely used. Interestingly, 04/22 was originally much longer. The new airport owners promised to re-align it when they built warehouses on the 22 approach but, of course, that never happened.

I think the answer to your question may lie in your swinging the compass with the tail up in the flying attitude. That would change the relationship between the compass and the stray fields in the aeroplane and there are many of these. As well as electrical instruments that contain permanent magnets (EGT gauges in particular) any wire carrying a current also generates a magnetic field (which is why the wires to a compass light are always twisted together). All of these fields must be present when the compass is swung. A surpriusingly common source of stray magnetic fields is steel engine mounts, particularly when the engine grounding cable is dodgy and the mount becomes magnetized by starter motor current.

It gets easier if you remember that (a) the altimeter indicates the height in feet from whatever pressure level is set on the sub-scale on the basis of 30 FT per hPa (roughly). (b) a pressure of 1013.2 is only the pressure at seal level in the standard atmosphere and in real atmospheres this pressure will be something else.

The answer is no. Firstly it would be highly unlikely that you would emerge just at cruise speed, more likely Vne or more. Secondly, the rapid acceleration would continue until you got the nose attitude back above horizontal. By that time it would have broken up in flight ("the wreckage was found scattered over a large area") or completed the manoeuvere underground.

Lots of nostalgia there thanks Phil. Dave Squirrell still has a Facebook page and I get reminded of his birthday every year. A very skilled instructor was Dave I watched him one day teaching crosswinds on 30 with about an 18 knot component. He believed in chucking them in at the deep end! Dave started overhauling magnetos and generators in Bankstown in his later years. TIGgy Tiger is in my logbook somewhere also. I went to Keith Hatfield's closing down auction and bought two of his C150s for RVAC; they weren't too flash! Thanks for the reminder of simpler days.

The origin of safety wire was to prevent the loosening of turnbuckles on control cables in earlier aircraft. With a left hand thread at on end and a RH thread at the other, combined with the direction of wrapping the cable strands during manufacture and the varying and reversing cable loads in flight, there are constant torque loads applied to the turnbuckle and lock-nuts at each end. Many lives were lost as a result of the turnbuckle unscrewing. Soft iron wire was used at first then brass became the convention before the Americans introduced stainless steel. The lives saved would probably be in the 100,000's not including the Australian example where the cable end fittings failed and the only elevator control was via the safety wire alone.

All taildraggers want to go down the runway backwards. Fancy footwork is therefore required. Any drag that you can add at the back reduces a taildragger's natural directional instability. Having the stick back during the ground roll helps a lot. The raised elevator provides aerodynamic drag and downwards lift which increases tail-wheel friction with the ground (particularly if it is a tail-skid instead). During the takeoff roll ground loops are less likely because the thrust force is adding stability, the rudder effectiveness is increasing with speed and the influence of any crosswind component is diminishing. One exception to this is when the tail is raised too early: the drag at the back is lost and the P effect from the propeller does the rest. (So you can do it if you try hard enough!) Ground loops are most common late in the landing roll in light winds where the rudder effectiveness is diminished by the lack of headwind. An earlier transition to the brakes is therefore needed. A "wheel barrow" in a trike is actually the beginning of a ground loop but the nose wheel usually breaks off before any big change in direction.

The change that is causing all of the confusion was made by CASA in May 2013 via AIP amendment #75. The change required broadcasts at aerodromes not on charts to be made on the Area VHF instead of the MULTICOM (126.7) as previously. There was no stakeholder consultation and therefore no opportunity for users to point out to CASA the unintended consequences of the change. There was no education process either so very few knew about it and we had the ridiculous situation where ATS were telling pilots to vacate the area frequency when making broadcasts. So not even ATS knew what was going on. The idea of using the area VHF is flawed and dangerous in the view of many. This is because, over large areas of the country, ATS has no VHF coverage at the lower levels of G airspace so pilots making these broadcasts do not realise they are jamming ATS transmissions and ATS do know they are being jammed. Traffic at flight levels however hear the entire cacophony. The RAPACs (a user consulting group in each region) have been battling this for three years. There is a presentation available to explain the situation. It is too large to upload to this site but if you would like a copy, email me at: [email protected]

Since symptoms are the same with two radios, it all points to the aircraft side. The most likely problem is RF feedback from the antenna into the mic. input during transmit. This is usually results from radiation from the outside of the coaxial cable during transmit The ferrite filters mentioned earlier are a good precautionary measure but do not address the cause which is usually the antenna and ground plane and particularly the quality of the electrical bonding between the two. An SWR check would rule out the antenna/ground plane (but probably rule it in) but it is easier to routinely remove the antenna and clean the connection to the ground plane. Remember that the antenna mast is only half of the antenna. The ground plane is the other half and the connection between the two is extremely vulnerable to any added resistance due to even mild corrosion. The other common problem area of vulnerability to RF feedback is the MIC input circuit and, in particular, the outer shield running from the headset to the inside of the radio via the MIC ground input (which is not the same as the other grounds such as power and should not be connected to any other grounds). In extreme cases it is therefore necessary to insulate the MIC jack mounting to achieve this and stepped plastic washers are available for the purpose. Plastic and rag aeroplanes are particularly vulnerable to RF feedback. Good luck!

Jerry Atrick already Lance? Looking forward to catching up next year then. Thanks for the response. Cheers, Dick.

Yes I have a bunch of them Phil although some of them get a little dated with changing regulations. I have since located a real Carruthers flying around in an A380 so the need for caution. Try the attached for starters. Prop- IT'S CLOSER THAN YOU THINK 1992-08.pdf Prop- IT'S CLOSER THAN YOU THINK 1992-08.pdf Prop- IT'S CLOSER THAN YOU THINK 1992-08.pdf

Yes, that is quite true. Since writing that article I have read that Pratt & W state this with respect to their radial engines which really do have an issue with hydraulic-ing . The reason for winding backwards in the Tiger Moth days was purely for safety: because the impulse coupling did does not work backwards, there was less chance of an accident start and the aircraft bolting. Now days there is an additional reason: many dry vacuum pumps have trailing vanes and these easily break when rotated backwards. Frankly, I have always rotated it forward but the Tiger drivers I notice seem to almost always rotate backwards. Thanks for the comment. Cheers,

Thanks Kaz.

Please do not trust your life and limb to the structural integrity of a zip-tie Dave. There is some serious and knowledgeable advice in the above responses. Good luck, Dick.