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Powerin

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Everything posted by Powerin

  1. Powerin
    For myself (still a student), I think knowledge of angle of attack helped me no end. Flying becomes a bit more intuitive if you know why something happens. But that's just me...I like knowing how things work. If I were an instructor (if I can be so bold) the first lesson would be to take a student in a car, travel down the highway at 100km/h, and get them to stick their arm out the window and experience how much lift they can get just by holding their flat hand at different angles to the airflow (it's amazing how much force there is in 100km/h air). Then show them how the elevator does exactly the same thing for a wing....vary the angle of the wing into the oncoming airflow.
  2. Powerin
    Ahh...I see. Like this? In the end though, aren't all these different elevator systems achieving the same outcome? That is, adjusting the angle of attack of the wing? Aerodynamically the above pitch adjustable HS does exactly the same thing as a trim tab, albeit over a far wider range. Also, you could fly a small aircraft with elevator trim in an emergency couldn't you?
  3. Powerin
    To relieve the control force the trim is creating an opposite force (either by spring or servo tab) to hold the elevator at a desired position without further pilot input and thereby maintaining the desired angle of attack (or attitude if you prefer). So I've always seen trim as an integral part of setting angle of attack (but of course not as a primary flight control). But I see your point...thanks. Off topic now (sorry)....as far as I understand it, stabilators don't actually have much control forces as the whole horizontal stabiliser always flies horizontal to the airflow. Aircraft I have seen with stabilators (Piper, Tecnam) always have an anti-servo tab to give the pilot more control force. The stabilator trim control moves the anti-servo tab out of the airflow to reduce control forces whereas an elevator trim tab moves into the airflow.
  4. Powerin
    I guess it comes from the sort of stuff I had read before I started to fly, but I've always thought of the elevator (and trim) as the angle of attack control and pitch as the "by-product" of angle of attack. I think it's helped me to understand the dynamics of flying a lot better and how trim/elevator and airspeed are interrelated.
  5. Powerin
    I'll probably die of cancer from the chemicals I inhaled...but marking for spray planes was really fun back in the day! One of my favourite feel-good flying videos is by Recfly member Friarpuk with a classic Aussie rock and roll soundtrack....
  6. Powerin
    Tax deductible trip Dex? ;)
  7. Powerin
    Kiwi, the Brumby website lists tailwheel as an option on the low wing, but can't see anything about high wing. The high wing Brumby is 2 inches wider in the cabin than the P92 and looks to be taller too. Any Tecnam P92s (all Eaglets) that I have flown have easily done 110kts if I recall correctly. Last Saturday was the first time flying for many months and I did some ccts in a near new Eaglet. 5000rpm on downwind saw 100kts.
  8. Powerin
    Start with someone tripping over one of your tent pegs/ropes and breaking their skull and go from there. Do you have an urn in the tent for cups of tea? A petrol generator for your site power? Does it have a residual current device on it? Insurance also has to deal with the lowest common denominators. When you work at events like these you realise just how many LCD type people are out there :(
  9. Powerin
    It's a shame, but this is pretty standard practice for larger exhibitions these days. The agricultural field days I am involved in and and all the major ag field days in Australia certainly have this as a condition of being an exhibitor. So does Avalon Airshow. The conditions I have read are nearly word for word the same as the one quoted above. I suspect the recent scrutiny of RAA insurance has highlighted this as an issue. I bet you'll find that RAA will have something like a $50million public liability policy and that a condition of that policy is that individual exhibitors also have a $10million policy which specifically indemnifies RAA (and by extension their insurer). Not saying it's right...it's just the reality of today's litigious society. I wonder what all the small country town agricultural shows do?
  10. Powerin
    This thread has made me feel grateful. Sometimes you forget how lucky you are. Thanks. My line of work is far from stress free, but at least my battles are with nature and the weather rather than with people intent on playing the corporate game with $ signs in their eyes and the greasy pole firmly in their grasp. True, I have to deal with fickle world markets, wet and dry, and prices for inputs and machinery that would make an aviation dealer blush. But it all pales into insignificance when you see your crops growing strong, or when the calf you just helped a cow to give birth to draws its first breath and opens its eyes. My turn to cook tonight, and it was T-bone steaks on the barbie, grown here on the farm, and 4 fresh veg. At 48 years I have a bit of a middle age spread going on, and I'm short, but not going too bad at 71kg.
  11. Powerin
    Yes DBI, the CEO needs to be called to account. We've missed a big opportunity there, and something we've been crying out for. But I will be the first to admit to belonging to boards which have directed a CEO to do something he/she didn't agree with. The CEO sort of puts it on the backburner for awhile or waters the resolution down, and if it wasn't too important the Board gradually forgets about it. That doesn't make it right of course, and in hindsight I've been guilty of bad governance, but I can understand how it happens with a strong willed CEO (and most CEOs, by virtue of having gained the position, are usually strong willed).
  12. Powerin
    LOL! My speciality. Also not putting the plastic collars for plugs on to wire leads before soldering the plugs on to them. Thanks for that Louis, might have to try that.
  13. Powerin
    Ok, thanks Motz and Tubz! So the lesson is to stick to landing ahead, because you can learn to do that subconsciously. If you introduce variables you have to weigh up options and make decisions and you waste precious seconds that you probably can't spare. And for the record that's what I always have and always will plan to do
  14. Powerin
    Because the safety of the flight, and the prior planning necessary to ensure this, is YOUR responsibility, as Pilot in Command.
  15. Powerin
    OK...another hypothetical scenario as I'm curious. It seems the biggest danger in turning back is stalling in the turn because the pilot is trying to maintain height to make it back to the actual strip. In the C182 video above you hear the stall warning all through the turn. Scary. But what if you are not trying to make the strip, have difficult terrain ahead, within a 30deg turn (say trees or rocks), but have a suitable space below you, next to you or just behind you. Is a 90-180deg descending turn still dangerous if you are willing and able to accept the height loss to maintain airspeed? Disclaimer: I will NOT take any answer as being something I would ever try. But I like to arm myself with any knowledge as to cause and effect in these situations.
  16. Powerin
    The ATSB, with its limited resources, only investigates incidents that have the greatest safety outcome, mainly for the general public. So they tend not to investigate any RAA incidents and some GA incidents that are inherently high risk such as those involving aerobatics. My guess is that the Old Bar incident did have the potential to impact on quite a few of the general public and so was investigated. An incident involving somebody practising aerobatics (GA) out in a training area will probably not be investigated, but an aerobatic incident at an air show probably will. As RA flyers we can only carry on passenger, we're not allowed in controlled airspace, and we fly very low weight aircraft so the risk to the general public is perceived as lower...therefore investigations are left up to the police/coroner who are legally required (I think?) to investigate any death.
  17. Powerin
    Tomo, in this case we have a cfi as a witness so perhaps he will shed some light on it, although I'm sure the poor guy is pretty devastated at the moment. It's surely got to be medical or mechanical.
  18. Powerin
    I always think in terms of angle of attack rather than attitude, because an AoA within the limits is what keeps you flying, so to me AoA is king. Elevator/trim is what controls AoA. But I take your point that attitude is usually your best indicator of AoA and that's what you use to fly with. And yes, it would only be in an emergency that you would fly with trim, but the same idea would be valid if you had an indicator scale to tell you exactly where the stick was in it's elevator travel. I often wonder if the same thing would be a good stall danger indicator as you could tell where the stall stick position was. However, I didn't think about CofG...which puts paid to the idea of dialing in an airspeed with trim/elevator if you don't have ASI. In the end I guess you need to use whatever tools are available to fly the aeroplane! Sorry for the thread drift.
  19. Powerin
    Being low hours I must admit checking that airspeed is alive is about the only check I can spare the concentration on between throttle and liftoff. This is probably silly, but I've always wondered why you couldn't calibrate the elevator trim for airspeed. A given trim should result in a given airspeed (or more accurately trim=AoA). If you somehow marked your trim indicator/lever for approach speed (or cruise, or climb), when ASI failed, you could dial in approach speed on your trim and use power to control attitude. Would that work? I'm guessing spring/bungy trim might not be accurate enough to be able to get the same trim each time you put the lever in a certain position, but trim tabs should be reasonably good?
  20. Powerin
    As they say in the EAA mag: "Not alone into the sunset, but in the company of those who went before him" Sincere sympathy to the family and the community of friends and pilots who knew him.
  21. Powerin
    DBI, I would come all the way to Narromine just for a ride in that beauty!
  22. Powerin
  23. Powerin
    It's funny, when Scotty first said he was making his own cables this is what I thought he meant
  24. Powerin
    It's not so much turbo being pedantic with spelling...it's just in the future if someone does a search for a thread about "Jabiru" 160s, one titled "Jabaru" will not show up in the search.
  25. Powerin
    Most of those threads and the constitutional research, time and thought that went into them are now gone.....
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