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fatmal

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  • Aircraft
    Texan
  • Location
    YPEF
  • Country
    Australia

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Well-known member (3/3)

  1. The flight and maintenance manuals for the 2x new Air Force 1 B747's will cost the US taxpayer $84,000,000. At 100,000 pages, that's $840 a page! https://www.defenseone.com/business/2020/04/owners-manual-trumps-new-air-force-one-cost-84-million/164651/?oref=DefenseOneTCO
  2. https://www.theregister.co.uk/2020/04/09/frenchman_ejected_fighter_jet_retirement_jolly/ This reads like a comedy of errors - luckily no one killed, but I'll bet a few French airmen & ground crew got a bollocking! Check out the comments for some insight (and quite a bit of humour!) mal
  3. FAA study finds cause of 64% of engine failures due to henchmen https://www.theonion.com/faa-study-finds-64-of-engine-failures-caused-by-henchm-1829871348 For those of you not familiar with The Onion, yes they are taking the mickey! mal
  4. Researchers show what can happen when a drone collides with an airplane Uni of Dayton 'fired' a drone at flying speed at a static Mooney M20 wing - damage was significant, including to the spar. mal
  5. I stumbled across this video, which is both hilarious and frightening! An engineer accidentally engages the afterburners in an English Electric Lightning and has no option but to take off. While a licensed pilot, he had experience on only two types - the Tiger Moth and the Chipmunk - quite a bit different than a twin engine fighter that'll get to 36,000ft in under 3 minutes! mal
  6. Not by default. Go to Applying for an aviation reference number (ARN) to apply for an ARN - it's quite painless :-) mal
  7. Many years ago I saw a television interview with Juha Kankkunen (sp?), at the time World Rally Champion, and the interviewer asked him "When you go for a drive with your wife, who drives?" His response - "She does, until she gets sick of me telling her to brake later, turn in here, gas it now - and then she lets me drive"
  8. Stumbled across this on TheAtlantic - Photos of the Week: Transport Mishaps, Epiphany Blessings, Sheep Riding - if anyone here is a surfer, have a look at photo 5 in that link. mal
  9. Not strictly aviation, but it is (a long way) off the ground - the ISS transiting in daylight
  10. I know it may be bad form to respond to my own post, but I just HAD to steal this comment I saw on the same story on theregister.co.uk. Top Brass quoted as saying, "This wasn't deliberate, it was a c*ck-up in the sky". mal
  11. Maybe Jeremy Clarkson was flying? US Navy apologises after jet draws giant penis over Washington mal
  12. Slightly off-topic, but I was once peeking inside a helicopter at Echuca, and the engine instruments looked like they'd been thrown at the panel - nothing was straight, with some instruments up to 45 degrees rotated. It all became clear when I asked the pilot about this; at normal pressures & temps, all the needles should point straight up. This allowed a much quicker check on P's&T's. mal
  13. How to Escape a Death Spiral Politicians and economists often use the term 'death spiral'. Maybe there are some lessons from aviation for the market - just like aviation checklists have helped surgeons not leave instruments inside people! And for all of us who (rightly) complain about journalists knowledge, Toni Wall Joudon, who wrote the story linked above, has done a LOT of research! We need some journo's like her here in Oz! mal
  14. Hi Weejah, I used to own an Allegro, and have approx. 75hrs logged in them. Mine was the long-wing 2000 model – tapered wing, with a 100hp donk. MTOW was 522kg. Let’s start with the bad – or less good anyway. Control balance a little odd at first. Roll is quite slow – a symptom of the long wing, while pitch is quite sensitive. It took me a few hours to stop overcontrolling in pitch – including having to having to remove grass from the tail skid a couple of times . Yaw weight is somewhere between the two. Range, with the standard 55 litre belly tank is OK, but in an Australian context (I see you’re NZ-based), I would have preferred having the wing tanks also, so I didn’t have to source or carry extra fuel. Because of the rather laid-back seating position, the view on climb-out is limited, with the cowling seemingly well above the horizon – again, something you soon get used to. Ergonomically there were some issues. The flap and carb heat controls on mine were in the middle of the panel, so with the centre stick I had to reach across with my left hand to operate these. I should have just moved them to the left of the panel. The good. Fuel burn at 90knots/4,400rpm was 11l/hr, 100knots/4,900rpm was 17l/hr, so it’s cheap to run. With the 50-degree flap (stage 2) you can land very short. Putting out full flap (65-knot limit) is like slamming on the brakes! Stalls are reasonably energetic, only breaking at what seems like a very high deck angle (probably due to the aforementioned laid-back seating position). The nose would seem to drop well through the horizon! To get it to stall you have to be positive about it – if you’re too gentle with getting the stick back it just seemed to sink at 1,500ft/min at a high deck angle without ever breaking into a stall. You can fit a range of sized people in it – I had people up to 6’4” fit comfortably. I’m nowhere near that so I fit very well! Overall, I think that the Allegro, when bought at the right price, is a bit of a bargain. It’s safe (well, as safe as any light sport), cheap to run, fast enough when you want it, and slow enough when you need it. Happy hunting! mal
  15. Lou, Your post got me looking at their website - if you go to the catalog (http://www.betteraircraftfabric.com/flyer.pdf), on the last page it seems that there is an Australian aircraft flying with this covering. It may be worthwhile trying to track them down to see where they got their supplies (and their experience with the fabric). mal
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