RFguy

but.. if they permitted rotax engines in their airframes, they'd sell more airframes than they could build.... and apparently there will be no changes. So, perhaps he's not fully informed.

6 circuits. 4 normal + 2 glide. both glides from downwind went well in Xwind. which means the work I did 2 weeks ago on them was useful . (were I failed on the first 3 glides from downwind) . Observation : 2nd glide was onto the grass cross : - feeling of loss of depth perception about 100' up down to flare height on featureless wide green carpet. The grass cross at cowra is 90m wide and 1km long , and the edges are not marked, so it might as well be 500m wide.... . out the sides, you see same green world. Now what is interesting is when you get close to the large wide strip that looks completely featureless -- IE no visual differences in my whole field of vision. - I felt that I lost vertical speed and depth perception when I got close to the flare. Of course, coming down at 850 fpm the ground comes up fast. BUT - compared to coming onto a narrow strip- IE narrow strip with various visual cues, edges, maybe edge markers strip lines, these all assist in providing spatial cues for height and location. IE narrow strip I feel better depth / height perception. Landing was fine, smooth.... there's another weird thing also, there's a (not sure if it is good) part of me that enjoys the rush and adrenaline of the ground coming up quick at the same time you must execute a precision maneuver to get right as you turn straight and throw out all the flaps with a very serious feeling of commitment to land without option. The feeling of it all happening very fast in the last few seconds may be reduced by doing this more regularly. (IE becoming more adapted / current by repetition) .... I do - do glides once a month....

number of satellites is not so important as to where they are in the sky. Think of multiple rubber bands pulling the one item around. and how biases pull the fix - specifically items like ionospheric delay, sat drift, height in the sky. 8 sats is fine if they are well distributed. ....the shading you describe isnt too bad for shading. and horizontal posititive errors are different to vertical position errors. again, diversity of what you can see.

just filled out my two casa surveys- class C/D for sport and the class 5 medical OMG what a smouldering turd the class 5 proposal is ? OMFG. And std medical- a heavy vehicle driving medical should be sufficient to fly anything anywhere except ATPL.

You're not considering that if the GPS antenna cant see a considerable portion of the sky, errors can be significant. 200-300m easy. That goes for ANY GPS, doesnt matter how good it is. If it cant get diversity of SVs (spave vehicles) , it will result in poor transliteration solutions. "Every consumer GPS I have seen calcuates its own potential error" - YES, HDOP and VDOP some only show HDOP, most consumer stuff wont show VDOP, and also, there is a stat associated with this number. Different engines report different stats (IE % confidence that the displayed fix is within xyz)

""Just confirming I have got this right; there was a 1500 ft vertical error in the GPS position sent from the Skyecho ?" YES that easily can happen. I have seen up to 500m error. Skyecho can be TERRIBLY inaccurate- the GPS antenna has a terrible look at the sky in general and can be hundreds of meters out in any direction.... It depends whether the accuracy metrics from the skyecho are interpreted, or not. Same could be for a tablet GPS accuracy is transmitted on adsb, but many apps like FLight radar, flightaware ignore these values, also.

AND when route flying, ideally should be flying (with validity period) AREA QNH. Skyecho does know baro pressure. - IE absolute pressure. just like a normal transponder. Ozrunways I am pretty sure says GPS altitude. When I have been flying through busy routes 6k-10k feet with other traffic around, ATC always provides me Area QNH to set my altimeter to (they request) . This way, we're all flying withing 50 feet of where we should be for separation.

Well. I just found a small mudwasp nest up behind my Directional Gyro !!!!. way up behind everything.....A 1/2" cube of mud.... During the annual , we found one fuel tank breather was partially blocked with debris.....

For anyone interested, I have found a new perfect replacement for the display for this autopilot . Backlight function is OK . Display contrast is good and is a transreflective display so it can work in full sun. Fits just fine, just reverse the standoffs (order = SCREW > washer > plastic standoff > PCB ) and put the display against the panel. chop/ disconnect pin 1 on the connection (backlight aux ctl) Display is a NMTG-S12232CFYHSGY-10 by Microtips, AVBL from Mouser. You'll need either magnification or a microscope to change the LCD over since the flex cable is 1.27mm and quite tight on spacing.

The locals tell me they overfill the tanks daily and spit fuel out the breathers which kills anything living in there....

Jabiru's are readily repairable by those moderately competent with fibreglass. Carbon fibre is NOT, it requires specific layups and (usually) ovenized, resin cures , and an non factory repair likely requires a ultimate load stress test. You dont get something for nothing (IE super light weight for no down side ) and just remember, for a given load factor, the slower the stall speed, the slower you need to fly in anything but super smooth air. A 140 kts indicated aircraft is not much practical use if it needs to slow down to 72 kts in moderate turbulence.

Skippy said "I would speculate that laser v punch likely have diffrent metallurgical outcomes " Skip you are fantastic at stating the obvious. You should go on Mastermind and give Barry Jones a run for his money. Certainly there is heat treatment going on. The internet is full of stuff on this- all metals LASER cutting leads to substantially reduced fatigue life compared with other (cold) subtractive processes.... there are advanced post LASER cutting heat treatments but they are exotic.

I dunno if you can blame them that much for this. If it was to get volumes up, not prices down. More interesting, what's the issue with the laser cutting ???? That's interesting. I gather prior kits have been stamped/ punched ?

I'd say I was fortunate that I had a headwind, which slowed down the transition of descent , to following the runway up-slope . Although that has to be traded off with the hazard of the abrupt wind gradient .....but I was anticipating that one... Try to to do this though with a shorter runway, say half , well that would have a high degree of skill and danger, not for me..... Certainly, a hazard checklist is a good thing. I can see how this though is rolling a dice. if you didnt think about it before you tried it, that could be trouble. A couple of years ago there was fatal nearby to here (Combing Park) - a fatal GA accident , was a training touch and go, where they attempted a go around with a hill ahead just like this one and crashed. The report concluded they tried and failed to outclimb the hill. I am beginning to think , it was as simple as they just didnt think about it , before doing it , didnt do the numbers and consider the possibilities. IE not a flying skills problem, a decision making problem.

Bush strip today. 650m long. DA=3000' OAT 6 ....Piper nice and light today. Deep valley at the approach end, obstructions at the other end, top of windy hill. half of runway is 'uphill' at 5% ! rest is 1%.... all in the lee of a big mountain , lots of turb. but turb was OK once I slowed down in the vicinity, 90 kts 1st stage flap. I calculated the hell out of it before setting out. rehearsed a few scenarios in my mind. final was into 15kts I guess wind .. Landed into the ~ 10kt wind, on the uphill section about one third off the way in. (on the steep bit) . no issue. Experienced high wind gradient as got into the flare and aircraft went below the top of the hill - experienced down draft as I got near the ground and also sudden 8 -10 kts ish loss of airspeed (as expected so I came in with 10kts to spare) . I had done a PSL immediately before on it so I had some idea what the wind was doing over the hill. complex. nose down , jesus the end of the runway and obstruction is coming up brakes on ...... and taxi , hmm with 300m to spare, (used half the runway) . so that was good. Went for a walk with my GPS and barometer to meausre height one end to the other...., measured strip length and surveyed the height and gradients and estimated tail wind speeds at different regions for takeoff downwind. Determined a 'decision point' . ....wind now 15kts minimum. on my tail. Did what I needed to do at the site, back in the plane.... went off with a short fielder , 25 flap..... got past the decision point with only 55kts. geez we use up runway fast with 15 kts of tailwind ! Back pressure and now flying but not climing, still acceleratinginto ground affect, flying down the hill. golly does the speed build.. climbing.... 75 kts time to dump some flaps.. 85 kts, dump last 10 deg. climb more .... off we go. Colleague made an observation that the other hazardous thing about taking off downwind AND downhill is that once I climb from the 'sheltered' region where I have say 10 kts of tailwind to where I suddenly have 20 kts of tailwind, and consequently 10 kts less airspeed, that is potentially hazardous and a good reason to continue to accelerate to and beyond the T.O.S.S in ground effect flying down the hill to have plenty in hand..... Go around probably couldnt be done if it was hot. photo of hill.... doesnt look like much but downdraft from wind over the hill and hot weather would be trouble looking downwind, and down hill. You can only see HALF the runway before it heads off the side of the mountain . uphill , and upwind. Top is 500m away from strip end. needs greater than a 1 in 10 climb to get over it.

yeah if you are both connected to the radio and you can both talk OK on the radio, then all the connections are OK, seems odd, will have to read the manual later. I have one to install in the next week or so.

good stuff. Sounds like the SIDETONE etc in the intercom setup is not right. You are using the TRIG internal intercom, yes ?

Suggest gettintg them on the phone, or going down and seeing them in person.

yes.... An IO-360 is pretty simple and reliable...

I would not buy a fuel injected Rotax product. I'll leave it at that.

here's a good example of a busy rotax... https://www.facebook.com/groups/796324257055294/permalink/7003877179633273/?sale_post_id=7003877179633273#

Nev are you talking about holding some power in the flare to slow the whole transition down in gusty condix instead of power to idle in the flare when in benign condix ? Certainly to fly and down a wheel down first, I am not sufficiently skilled yet to (quickly) put the aircraft wing down on one wheel in one flare movement at IDLE..... I will fly it under some power into the wingdown, one wheel down flare in Xwind. Same goes for straight down the runway gusty condix, I will fly maybe half flap or no flap with some power on to slow the transition down..... In EFATO, well you dont have that option so its all going to happen quick anyway.

It's not unusual to find a 1000 to 1999 hour rotax you can afford which has plenty of good hours on it and put a big bore kit on, (yes aftermarket) There are a couple of major players that have variations. Mark Kyle might chime in..... An inflight adjustable prop can also get you a bit more ability.... worth quite a bit of HP for TO and climb I think. Read the heavy maintenance manual of the series, also (both the MML and the MMH ) to get some engine background. If a rotax is specified then a Lyco might be too heavy to go with a Lyco. depends.... There is plenty to learn, find your way around the internet, lots of enthusiasts doing big bores, turbos etc. Much to learn for sure. Of course, as soon as you go away from the out of box crated item, you are a test pilot, which doesnt bother me for certain uses, but just saying.

Turbs, and J170C as you probably know did get a ventral fin to improve the tail authority. I reckon that aircraft might have been too much 'she'll be right'. Tail- yep, same with LSA55. ALthough - I think, if you can fly those airplanes which are arguably less forgiving than the Piper, it puts you in a place where other planes are easier, or at least "better different". Those planes are very much lower inertia, I feel there is more scope to muck it up in the light, slow flying , low inertia airplane in the landing phase.

"Hours and lots of experience help, but do not guarantee the sure outcome in a risky situation we might expect and hope for. " Well said Nev. I wonder how many low altitude stalls occur with abrupt OR swift creeping pulling the nose up in a 30deg banked turn. In a banked turn, it's not as obvious the nose is pointing at the sky unlike straight . Even if you have 'good airspeed' for the turn. If you pull the nose up (with plenty of airspeed) , it goes into a stall because you exceeded the AoA (and die) . I think that's not particularly well understood IE 10 knots above stall for your 30 deg banked turn is not a guarentee of safety. Again, pulling back on the stick is the problem. In the EAFTO and turn situation, lots of sh1t going on, this might be a good time to have an AoA alarm. The piper has one, but it's next to useless as it dimmly lights on the far left when it needs to be routed as a woop-woop into the audio system.