Mike Gearon

I’ve enjoyed coming on this journey with you. Great post.

I’m flying out of Tyabb Friday morning for first time in pushing toward a year.
 

Just completed my 14 days stay at the pleasure of the NSW government in Sydney Hilton. It’ll be interesting to fly again. 

On 03/10/2020 at 1:32 PM, RFguy said:

Hi Blueadv. XC/passenger not yet, that's next. i'm going to do a little flying at another field shortly just to get look and feel of a different airplane and field.  

 

So, per your 10% note. Well, I would say that once you get "behind" the aircraft (instead of staying ahead of the aircraft) everything starts stacking up... almost need to stop and reassess how and what you are going to do if the final is not stabilized well into it ... (assuming you have choices) - glen

Agreed. 2 of the best pieces of advice from my CFI.

1. Stay ahead of the plane.

2. In circuit if things start to pile up and you’re feeling pressured just leave the circuit. Fly away and rejoin when you’ve regrouped.

Looking forward to your next post. Just noticed your comment on Taiwan... haven’t flown a light aircraft here so no idea on ATC. I’d say with fair certainty it’s English at the larger airports and Chinese would be spoken at the uncontrolled airfields which are bugger all. 
 

Paragliding is challenging with the language barrier and with the mountains. No gentle slopes. Just about 10 to 20 feet of run from the top and you’re out there. It’s all very strange. Cracked 2 ribs with tandem flight. We were climbing the mountain and I was watching the black clouds and going... no, I’d not fly a light plane in this. Turns out we definitely shouldn’t have been flying a paraglider. 
 

just had qantas cancel my Australia flight yet again. Now 13th December and another maybe flight. Hopefully corona free Taiwan and Australia will establish a traffic bubble like New Zealand. 

All good. Just to clarify. I’m only talking not looking at ASI after let’s say a wings length or 2 above ground.

On 10/07/2019 at 8:00 AM, pmccarthy said:

Returning to topic.

 

the Leigh Creek accident has similarities to an incident I have written about for Flight Safety. It happened many years ago, I had about 200 hours experience. The features were_

 

multi-day trip involving two aeroplanes

 

delay after lunch time with anxiety to get away

 

arrival after last light to find near ground level it was totally dark.

 

the main cause for me was that I assumed the other pilot was monitoring things. He had more experience.

 

we were saved by people who cut locks on the airfield gate and drove cars in for headlight landing and aiming points.

 

the landing was then uneventful, but the half hour circling in the dark was stressful and dangerous for me and three pax.

 

the main lesson for me was to take responsibility for all aspects of your own flight when flying in company.

 

 

Wow, right there is experience I’d have been caught by. I’d have trusted a much more experienced pilot and followed. Lesson learned!

I tracked back to incidents part of forum via research on Brumby via RFguy and then seeing these planes made in China. They must be assembled in Australia as final stage. Correct me if I’m wrong. Just going in the Chinese characters in factory pic. So, seeing China I thought about quality. I’m in Taiwan where quality is much closer to Japan standards. Just ask somebody about machine tool purchase. Taiwan or China... Taiwan every time and granted china’s quality is always increasing. It’s still to be avoided if possible unless very well controlled and this must be the case with Brumby.

So, research sends me back to the dreaded incidents section that sent me packing last time. So difficult to respect the pilot, passenger, friends and family and also provide us all with more experience. That story is a gotcha moment. Amazing. At that point if they’d not had lock cutting I’d expect you’d just ram your car through the gates. Well done by all involved. Your experience sits in my back pocket now. Cheers.

On 12/07/2019 at 12:20 PM, Yenn said:

I did some night flying years ago and never once used landing lights. I was trained to use the runway lights and found them OK. That was just what I was taught and could well be wrong.

 

 

I was nearly going to post this earlier in response to Facthunter discussing landing lights. The landing lights are almost a distraction. When you’ve spent endless hours learning to look down the runway for landing perspective and then at night you’re presented with a beam aimed at your landing point it’s distracting. I was warned about it and still managed to fixate on the beam first landing and was given the not too gentle reminder to look up the runway. 
 

If the lights were more car headlight style maybe. This was a fairly old Cessna 172 with what seemed to be spotlights.

On 09/09/2020 at 10:15 AM, RFguy said:

 

Ha ha Rob is very frank with me 🙂 ...

You know, originally I learned to fly to to enable a utility- getting places, But now I love to fly because it is a complex task with continuous time variables.

 

What I don't have a feel for yet (although i could probably calculate it), is for example, how much vertical decent and airspeed I can turn into a given amount of deceleration, speed reduction etc near the ground for a specific set of parameters.

Nice to meet you RFguy. I’ve been quiet for a while holed up in Taiwan and looking forward to Australia and flying. just getting back a little into reading this forum. Enjoyed reading your detailed discussion. You’re way ahead of where I was for hours. Impressed! Also makes me think about what Facthunter says... fly the plane.|

Saying this because I can get caught up in all the tech and at the end of the day it’s still seat of the pants on controls with an eye on airspeed. Then, as mentioned above somewhere near the runway it’s all seat of the pants. Can’t have an eye on airspeed indicator.

I’m just about up to solo in Mandarin. It’s the same challenge as flying in a way. Learning characters and tones and trying to stay ahead of the plane or in this case the bad tempered teacher. I’m 30 hours a week improving language skills while stuck here. By solo I’m about to solo paragliding and the radio control is in mandarin. Could be English but I’m thinking my communication with instructor will be clearer in Chinese. We will test both. If it doesn’t go well you won’t hear from me again.

2 hours ago, Admin said:

Can you take a screen shot and post it...it is probably something to do with your own device

Mine looks like this. It’s an iPad Pro. Seems way too spread out and to be honest I can’t be stuffed looking for how to fix. By the time you move between email, website searches, Facebook, Amazon and some other stuff you really get sick of clicking shit. Just need to be simple.
 

On 24/09/2020 at 10:15 AM, Old Koreelah said:

That’s a whole story in itself; plants communicate among themselves about the approach of grazing animals and release toxins into their leaves/blades of grass to encourage animals to bugger off in search of better-tasting fare.

 

Good luck with that, Mike. Cattle tend to wander in front cars and trucks, so why not your plane?

The other problem is after you’ve parked your precious aeroplane they are likely to gather around for an inspection, or to rub their itchy bits on its extremities.

They ate my motorbike seat when I was 12 years old. Seems fitting we both work our way up to larger and more expensive items. Enjoying the discussion on crosswind. Not enjoying the idea of zero forward velocity/ kinetic energy and the wind just disappears as RF discussed. That dropping sensation would be annoying.

On 24/09/2020 at 9:22 AM, old man emu said:Ground speed will be (35 - 5 =30) kts, so you have to add power to get the airframe moving faster.

but....the airframe still has 35 knots of air moving over it and doesn’t care about the ground speed.  Compounding factor being the aircraft is moving down the runway wanting to slip into the windward side to maintain heading with roll countered by opposite rudder. This means extra power just to maintain airspeed because the pointy bit isn’t pointing the right way. 
 

Is this more related to the added power? 
 

 

I thought the higher speed was more related to extra command of the control surfaces. I guess the dipped wing and crab angle are bleeding speed. Also set up to float longer with the speed when you’d really like the ground and at least one wheel in contact with runway. Are any of us here good enough to run the plane down the runway on a single wheel? I’m not. That’d be a nice skill set for cross wind capability (IMO)

Giving up grain space for runway is relative to total planted. If it’s .001% and the farmer isn’t an x orchardist it’s probably ok.

On 9/22/2020 at 7:05 PM, Old Koreelah said:

Some of our farmer pilots might tell you the cost in (lost revenue) of leaving a strip of paddock uncultivated Is considerable. 

Who can afford a whole paddock?

Guess it depends if you farm grain or cattle. Cattle aren’t a problem for whole paddock landing and productivity. Except I guess keeping the runway short. Cattle also love new grass the best. Must be tastier when new shoots so they’ll intensively graze the mowed area anyway.

I guess what I’m saying is keep your main runway to prevailing wind direction mowed and otherwise just land in between the cattle on the less rough stuff. That’s my plan.

 

Practice

Several iterations (at altitude) in a Mooney 20E yielded average altitude losses in a 180° turn of:

360′ lost at 30° bank,

270′ lost at 45° bank, and

200′ lost at 60° bank.

The only certainty I’d have is that pulling the stick back kills you. That’s not an option. Only level or descending flight scenarios and 30 degree scan looking for the clearspot/ the softest friendliest looking spot (between the softest looking tree trunks).../ the spot that’s not putting other lives at risk. My paragliding instructor is telling me Taiwan trees are softer so I’m big on soft spots at the moment.

These without power obviously or not much point. What was air speed reduction

I’m going to practice these. Good idea. With and without power. Will do with CFI as plan.

It's tailwheel for sure but there's been plenty of these flying and they look basically a good structure, triangulated and good load paths.. Yeah I don't think you need the wheel spats. It makes pumping tyres difficult and mud a no no, as they can fill up with it and the wheel locks if you are unlucky. You'll get a bit of STINK from the exhaust location. till you get a bit of speed up. I'd be happy to fly one, (as long as the wind is not too strong) Nev

Another test pilot. I just know I’m not flying it until somebody else does. Hadn’t thought of mud or pumping air.

I’m keeping the Nynja as latest plan. Been a difficult journey for all of us through the covid crisis. Well, still of course going through it. Haven’t seen my wife in 8 months now and never been away so long. Good part has been how safe Taiwan is. Bad part not getting a dose of Australia. Started watching Rake on Netflix in desperation for some Australian accents. Bloody surprised how good it is. Well written and acted. Bloody stupid of course and that’s part of the fun.

Early in the year the plan involved monthly or even weekly trips to the Phillipines from Taiwan and flying quicksilver aircraft with a fun bunch of expats and locals at Angeles. Nights at the Clarkton hotel with pool, quality food and a sleazy nightlife on tap right out the hotel door. I’m pretty boring so tended to swim then work by the pool and finish up with great food and booze served to the pool side tables....happy wife, happy life!

Every few months back to Australia.

That didn’t happen. Just worked in Taiwan in the 2 companies I’m associated with and improving mandarin with 16 contact hours a week and 5 different Chinese teachers. Sort of saved my sanity and some female contact time.. each teacher is a character in her own way. Rounded out with foot and back massages by the gym lap pool. Happy wife, happy life as mentioned earlier.

The good part is my main business activities of exercise equipment and vinyl records are booked out into next year and both businesses right now getting capacity expansion by 50%. Mandarin is a bugger of a language. Always had get around Chinese but not fluent. Still not fluent, barely fluent in English. Written and spoken is haltingly improving. So, can’t complain too much or st all really compared to so much

However, looking forward to end October back to French island for 3 months.

Back the the Nynja. Was always convinced this was the right plane. Just unsure about everything else...Might upgrade to an A32 fuel injected Foxbat at some stage. We will see how the 3 planes settle on French Island. Will purchase the greenhouse mentioned elsewhere and minimal runway infrastructure to test all this.

Vince is happy I’m keeping his plane. Looking forward to catching up and meeting others from the forum.

The Quicksilver has been around a long time. The original was weightshift controlled and I flew one that was imported in to NZ in 1978 or thereabouts. It was nice to fly but a bit noisy. I think it had a single cylinder 2 stroke engine & at that time I was a purist flying hang gliders. The airbike just looks like fun. I like the idea of riding it like a bike with your legs on footpegs outside the fuselage.

So, we have a test pilot. Excellent.

I admire you, but you can fly that by yourself.

I’m not sure. I think it’s just the legs out instead of in as the point of concern. I have same concern. The quicksilver just seems safe because I’ve flown them. Like an armchair that slowly makes its way across the sky. This does look precarious. No copilot either. Solo is really solo from the get go.

I once had to free the body of a bloke off the gearstick of a Fergie which had rotated around its rear wheels as he was trying to pull and old car out of scrub.

 

Long, long ago there was a farm safety poster whose message was "Hitch high and die".

 

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I managed this once at 15 years old. Remember jumping on the clutch at a fair angle. 3 point linkage was in the up position. I could even take you to the spot it happened. Clyde north Victoria. It’ll have houses on it one day soon so I’ll have to show the house it happened at.

I'm a simplicity with functionality adherent too, Mike. I worked on degrees of automation in various high maintenance industrial settings, and we maintained a belief in the strong correlation between simplicity and reliability.

Maintenance staff at one of our plants even invented a name for it: "Tractor Logic", alluding to the old Fordson or Massey Ferguson tractors that you just turned on at start of day, and they kept going and going and going......)

You’re my guy then :) I’m daily in our record plant tinkering with automated plant.

Grew up on a farm with the little grey fergie. Can’t remember how many times nearly killed by it. Favourite method was the tie something to rear 3 point linkage and be surprised when tractor started to turn over. Makes sense of course. If the wheel can’t turn the tractor does!

Fair comment but then why have a spinner and spats of the main wheels. Neither are necessary & are there for looks and streamlining.

I’ll ask Pat :) Pat has 2 lake houses “as you do” and flew the quicksilver with floats between them. Cool guy. Same height as me and 60lb heavier so,the aircraft will work with my lanky frame.

I think,the answer is that they wanted to push the limits a bit. Still, this aircraft gets along at a fairly leisurely 55 knots. The quicksilver has almost 90hp. I was flying the, in Phillipines with 50hp. That’s going to be interesting. Still, I think around 50 knots. It’s all about open air and no rush.

I have always wondered why Airbikes don't have a bottom cowl half? I think it would look better with one. Is it to do with cooling airflow or is it just the rugged look?

I’ve reviewed YouTube videos on these aircraft. The designer was all about minimalism. KISS principle. I design product and I was watching video with one of the original guys talking about how hard it is to do simple. It’s way harder to design for simplicity. I’ve made a living trying always to blend simplicity with functionality. Most engineers I’ve worked with just keep adding bits. So, yeah, I think it’s the simplicity deal.

I was also talking with the owner today. He said that for the USA they have to keep ultralights under 65 knots. So, that’s also saying a bit less streamlining is a good thing.

I purchased this. My new buddy Pat is already putting the quicksilver in container. Can’t think of anything else that’ll fit in with a plane nicely other than another plane.

Anyone own one of these? I did a search and noticed somebody managed to crash one...

This is I’m told the best if the airbikes in USA. It didn’t sell at auction and Pat and I reached agreement at 10k. Not something I planned on. We will see. Will need tail dragged endorsement as well as finish LSA conversion when I eventually get back to Australia. End October booked and hope I can return and quarantine on French island.

Bold method also good.

The property you’re referring to used to have an airstrip. Quite a few properties did. I’d not be putting a plane down there unless no choice. Yes, I’ll post here when runway available and I’ll have to check legal implications. I’ll look around rec flier for info on this. Miss the old days when you just did it. Whatever it was.

I was in the 40’s if I Reiner

On my 2nd PPL navigation flight (~35hrs) to the never been before aerodrome (YOLA with narrow runway compared to YMMB) with the instructor, my landing was so bad (hard) that I offered my RPL licence back.

 

However instructor just tapped me on shoulders, smiled and said, don't worry you'll be fine:)

I like your candour. Another pilot I’ll get along great with. I had a similar experience on return from cross country solo. Was super tired coming in late evening for 3rd and final landing and ran the plane half off the runway. Got it back in the middle with a bit of persuasion. Didn’t flare enough and my big feet had been busy riding up the pedals over the long distance flights to be almost on the brakes. Double problem compounded by super tired.

Really upset and I told the chief flight instructor I’d managed the worst landing at his airfield in 3 months. He just said “I very much doubt that”It’s not that bad of you haven’t taken out a runway light and I’ve taken a few out. This was South Dakota so no Ozzie flight instructor implicated here...

Now I see why you can take the poles away. Will phone these guys tomorrow. Looks like a great option.