extralite

Jesus christ why is everyone so touchy! I never saId he was a dill. Just that in my opinion i dont find it hard to 3 point them. Is that so offensive? And i dont believe you have flown ours Fact hunter. But you are trying to tell me whether they are in trim or not? Honestly, i reckon you could say the sky was blue on this forum sometimes and there would be some who say it isnt and be totally offended by the statement. Im done with it..have fun.

The tail wheel on the ground first part...I have never heard of it being a problem but perhaps others have a different opinion? Anyone want to comment> It does require progressive stick back until it is all the way back, but that is similar to many tail draggers The problem we would like to fix is the nose heaviness due to the extra weight of 582 engines that require constant back trim. It is not bad, but to seek thruster perfection would be for them to fly fairly hands off, neutral trim, around cruise speed. They will never be totally hands off as they dont seem to be laterally stable.

Sorry...i guessed thats what you meant after the editing time had elapsed 🙂 Most people i know find they 3 point fine and also require quite a positive check forward to get the tail up when taking off, so i personally would not describe it as hard to get the tail on. But it is subjective i suppose.

Thanks, Yeah there is a lot of up elevator trim which is essentially a bungee that pulls up on the elevator so up elevator . This is needed to keep it close to hands off in pitch. Still a little nose heavy. What do you mean by don't like getting the tail wheel on the ground? They are really heavy to lift by the tail and move around. For Blue adventures, if you are still reading this...do you think moving prop and engine a few cm's back would affect the "thrust prop effect"? In what way? I had never considered it but honestly, they are far from the best handling aircraft ever built (partly why i love them) so i wouldnt have thought it would make much difference but here to learn.

? No idea what you found aggressive about that.

We were lucky to get the right cables, bolts etc.. Your old one has a different weird flight characteristic and i doubt that is the one least used. Maybe new tighter skins will fix that. They all fly a lot better now than when we got them but want to get them just right.

The ones we have, have the batteries in different places because some owners moved them forward of the rear "firewalls" so they are not adjacent to the fuel tank. As for fuel tanks...they come in all different sizes too. Fuel tanks are slightly behind the C of G. Seems so nose heavy that a slight movement of the batetr wouldnt make much difference. The easiest way to do it would be to have a scale under each wheel so c of G can be calculated (or suspend it of course) and check where it is reference the manual. That is what we are going to do when we have a day spare. Thruster88...was that you that volunteered to help? I was just interested to hear what went wrong for the others that shortened the boom. I suspect it is because they shortened it by too much, but perhaps there is something we hadnt thought of.

oh thanks for explaining the moment of inertia and distance squared, silly us. Have you ever tried to spin a thruster? They have literally no weight in the wings, a huge tail. they dont spin past incipient. (So i am told) Your forget that the things are already modified in the front end by the addition of the heavier engine. And as it turns out, the solution was done with the help of a qualified military and civilian test pilot and does fly better. But it is still too nose heavy, and so requires constant back trim, and this means overall less elevator authority. You are pretty quick to jump to the conclusion we don't know what we are doing. And you arent invited to get in it anyway 🙂

Reference the boom shortening. These thrusters are definitely nose heavy with the 582 and their flight characteristics are improved by adding weight to the tail wheel. (about 5kg), but are still a bit nose heavy. So it is hard to understand why shortening the boom by a small amount, maybe about 5cm, wouldnt help? A neighbour said they used to do it to all their mustering thrusters with 582's. Hasn't been much Thruster flying here lately due to the heat and farm spraying required, but it would be good to have a get together some weekend. This popped in from Lake Keepit (near Tamworth) the other day and greeted by a thruster. 330km using only a tow to 2000 feet to start. Has a Rotax 503 that pops up to enable a takeoff the next day which used a total of 5 litres.

Quod erat demonstrandum

Things are a bit slow so Il stir the pot. One of Zuck's minions sent another meme along the lines of "Normal Pilot in a conservative tshirt vs a tailwheel pilot dressed in a coloured jacket and crazy cowboy hat doing something crazy because they are a wild and craxy tail wheel pilot. I'm always perplexed at why some would think being tail wheel endorsed is a personality. Similarly when you see an advertisement for any nosewheel aircraft, the chances of someone saying "the tail wheel is at the wrong end" is about the same as someone commenting "That will buff out" to a pic of a totaled aircraft. (Incidentally, has anyone noticed a facebooker "philip" who comments on all for sale ads along the lines of the price is too high. or they are dreaming or the world has gone nuts?.Lovely.) Anyway, back to the rant at hand. Flying tailwheel is not much different at all after a short time to anything else in my opinion. It is not special in any way at all but some people treat it as if they were in the space program. As someone who swaps between types, there is a lot more different things to keep in mind about handling other than where the 3rd wheel is. Id love to never see another tail wheel meme. (yeah i know, if there are comments here they will be tail wheel memes 🙂 ) Thanks in advance.

I can think of three other things off the top of my head that will get rid of money faster :)

N registered. Sometimes it would be nice to live in a can-do country rather than the petty bureaucracy of Australia. Except for the guns and homelessness.

Wouldnt surprise me if chopper is blamed as it fits the narrative. However it seems to be a high risk training exercise (4 ship, low level, over water, night). Experience levels in the fleet are a bit low. The Taipan i believe is fitted with a radar altimeter that can be set to a min altitude, however this may not be used on some sorts of training missions. It has been a long time since the last military aviation fatality as far as i can recall. For the RAAF even longer which is remarkable given the type of exercises they both do. KG wilson above seems to be on the money. The army wants the Blackhawk now, not the Taipan, and it gets fingered when the faults may lay elsewhere.

Hmm good point. I have a Certified test pilot friend who could calculate if that's the case. To be pitch unstable the c of g has to be behind the centre of pressure I think? Wouldn't be moving it that far back. Just enough so it flies without needing weight on the tail wheel or full back trim. I have been told it was routinely done due to extra weight of the 582 but don't we all get told a lot of things.

Good weekend in the Central West. Dropped into Rabbit Trap hotel in Albert for lunch and then next day a trip to Trundle. Highly Highly recommend the cafe in trundle, great salads etc. Working them all out still and gradually ironing out some issues. They all fly a lot nicer with some weight put on at the back. Obviously with a 582 it would be better to shorten boom at front. Not sure how far. Interesting comparing the different machines. Matey from Leeton somehow managed to make one go about ten knots faster than the others. Not sure how just yet. Unfortunately that one also had the fuel level sighting tube plumbed opposite the fuel line at a t junction off the fuel pump. Discovered this when in the cruise, noticed the fuel level dropping very fast, from 40 liters to 20 to 10 in a few minutes. I thought it must have been a huge fuel leak but at least had a bit of time to make sure i was over a great paddock when the inevitable happened. The good thing about the Thruster glide performance is no wasted time trying to choose which is the best landing field. It looks like at some stage, the engine decided it was easier to draw fuel from the sighting tube than from after the fuel line itself. Whether it was a fuel pump issue or filter not sure yet. It ran fine after that but will replace both and change the sighting tube pick-up. Fun machines, everyone that has flown one around here loves them.

I first flew one in 1990, just got back into them. Speaking of dust devils. A local farmer says he used to be part of a mustering team in central QLD using Thrusters and would fly until it was about 38 degrees, down low of course. So dusty they used to wear our the control bushes pretty fast. Not something I would feel that comfortable doing..

I have heard of it, but didn;t find anything on Google...what is the Arthur Butler Trophy. 100nm equals about 2 hrs in a thuster. Doable on a tank just i think.

Pulled 3 thrusters out of the shed this week and washed the layers of dust off and had a few flies. Keen to do a trip somewhere. The "Sydney Social Flying Group" has a fly-in to Trundle on the 13 May. Weather permitting might head out there to make the Cirrus and Cessna drivers envious. Anyone else in Western NSW up for some flying while the weather is so nice. Pictured one of the old girls after a bit of fire spotting during a burn off.

I think you misunderstood the point entirely. In any case, lets hope for safe flying for everyone. Not a good day for it unfortunately.

Look no offence. I did read it but it isnt exactly martin luthar king stuff. Sure it was hot. Just saying, there are a lot of jab incidents on this forum, and there are always those that will come out and say the atomic lifters were pre Engine model number 54321 and now things are much better, they should have used some different oil or did some thing different, that if you look at the stats in this particular period it is not so bad, shouldnt have flown through rain etc. SHould have maintained it differently. All that may be true. I am just saying you would have to be nervous. And i can totally understand if you own a Jab and it hasn't quit on you that for you they must all be reliable. Fact is, like it or not, a lot of them seem to end up in paddocks. Nobody doubts they are a good airframe.

Thanks boys...on cue. If you aren't nervous, good on you. I bet this fellow wasn't either before this flight. Just saying most people that follow this forum for a while probably would be. Now after we get through the lies, damn lies and stats, we need the "most incidents are those not properly maintained" crew to step in. You see it is such a regular event that there is a template to how Jab incident threads play out.

I know all the jab supporters will chime in but wow..you would have to be nervous flying a jab powered aircraft around or else completly fearless. For reports on loss of power incidents on this forum, the word Jabaru is hardly even needed in the title.

Had a good weekend getting the latest Thruster together and airborne. Quite nose heavy so a weight and balance check next. That's 5. Ready for a get together soon. Has anyone managed to get good VHF coms in their thruster and if so how? The VHF aerials for 2 are placed back behind the cockpit, on the centre boom, but still very staticy. One is an ICOM in dash, the other hand hand with remote aerial. They receieve well, lot of noise on transmit. Any tips appreciated.

Related to the "weak bolts thread", the seller of a thruster I just bought forgot to include the bolts on the main wing spars where they bolt on to the roots. I bought some high tensile bolts from a reputable shop that match what is needed. (not Bunnnings.) Would these be okay or would the forum suggest a different spec?