Area-51

Contact Customs, but generally once they apply their fees and charges they like to keep them and have a stock of reasons readily available to present upon request.

Well it succeeded at something at least... Not a good submarine, not a good aircraft. (They probably failed the drug test) Just like...; Not a good car, not a good aircraft. Or... ; Not a good motorbike, not a good helicopter.

Bears love plexiglass canned meat; just tear the lid off here, here, and here....

$500k for a little plane... I just don't get it... This will be fun to watch... 🤔.... maybe i can buy that island and bulldoze a strip across it with a D9, and build a secret Blowfly lair underground... with the change left over i can buy a new Europa XS kit and stick a 916 in it and fly at 300kt to my other secret lair in Siberia!!! The rest of the $500k can be squandered on Netflix, whisky, vodka and hookers...

Thanks for asking, yes... the aircraft was built by a senior Ansett engineer and performs on spec, however the battery location is at the firewall instead of aft of the luggage well; a common Mod on the europa; even if it was in the factory position would still require 5-10kg at the luggage station to balance out for 1 or 2 up from 2/3 to empty fuel load. To answer the earlier "what ever it takes" rebuttal by someone else there... Every aircraft has a precise performance envelope and anybody flying an aircraft without knowing it intimately is a fool and a tragedy waiting to happen... If "what ever it takes" means a full aileron roll at 150' off the deck to avoid catastrophe i'll do it... if it means purposely turning incipient to avoid a catastrophe i'll do it... if it means full power at 50' flat and low until i see a known required climb out velocity i'll do it; and a 30% reduction in Vx/y on a stinking hot humid 36c day means pulling back trying for 60kt Vx while two up is a great way to end your day with a stick stall scenario (the aircraft was already at 65kt and not responding sufficiently to pitch command). Go fly a 130kt cruise aircraft and time how long it takes to gain 500' from 65kt full power and then do the same from 90kt full power. Pretty sure you will find one way is quicker than the other; somewhere like 30sec V's 10sec.

Yep, correct, they sure are...

I will add this as well.. Had I not recognised my inadequacies as a fresh GA/Raa pilot and taken myself off to gain more advanced EMT training that day being described above would probably of ended very very tragically...

"What ever it takes". As one great instructor of mine once answered above to a question presented during EMT training regarding emergency situations and keeping the aircraft flying, away from the ground, and heading in the opposite trend of any, of any unusual attitude occurring... "What ever it takes"...

90kt in a 80hp europa mono will normally be looking at 1600fpm sustained climb out... Go-around on this particular day had us just under 300fpm off the deck; and it probably could of been more but with the CG on the forward limit wasn't going to pull the stick back to near stall position to find out or try for VX at 65; thing sinks like a brick once the flaps are retracted... so incremental staged retraction was required and 90kt level ahead was the safest quickest way to reach a safe altitude on this occasion. Had i been one of those others that brushes aside W&B and the pax weighed 100kg instead of 75kg we would of been into the ground, on the news, or both. And AUW is not always where things go wrong... if i'm lining up to fly solo with too low fuel reserves at the end of the flight then the CG is going past the forward limit; hence the 10-20kg pack strapped in at the luggage station during preflight depending on other factors. Having the battery up front with the engine doesn't help things any.

It depends what is considered thorough... My RA training covered it within the theory books; and the GA training went into it a lot deeper, but both i thought covered the subject enough. The responsibility is on the commanding pilot, and i'm amazed how many take off without really checking. As someone mentioned above, many pilots are weekenders flying the same fuel and pax loads... I was one of them once; calculating in my head my AUW Fuel and CG; knowing the combined limits from using charts in the beginning... Then one stinking hot humid day with a pax on board a go-around was elected and with full power the bird was not climbing, so instead of panicking and pulling back on the stick i let the training take over, kept it low and clear of obstructions until 90kt came up and we were away for another circuit; it wasn't a laughing moment. After landing i checked the W&B and found the CG was right on the forward limit due to lower fuel loading; and the humidity didn't assist any either. So as a result every flight now gets checked for W&B for T/O and Final before taxi; even if i know its well within the box, it's part of my preflight. And if i need to strap 10kg of dead weight somewhere to balance things out i do it; what ever it takes.

2 stoke diesels are generally supercharged to ensure enough air gets forced up through the ports to achieve required compression ratio and the turbo charger is there to restore and add to the drive energy the supercharger requests and robs. It appears a well thought out piece, but it could be junk; hit n miss with yank built stuff often with disappointing quality seldom meeting expectations or advertised greatness.

Agree... that's why the only important everything answer to remember to explain everything imaginable is the word "electricity"... that should screw the wingnut's brain for a few hours... after the fourth hour the wingnut's memory has reset to zero, and it has an empty brain again...

What keeps anything in the air, or upon water, is the "stickyness" of the fluid medium and its ability to support a specific mass divided across the surface area of both object and fluid (this is called the "wetted surface"... a boat floats because all these individual items have reached a point of equilibrium i.e everything has cancelled out to zero, so the object floats; (equal force against force equals zero) the vessel may be 100kg, and the volume of water it displaces is 100kg, so it floats at the zero point... if any single factor is altered the "buoyancy" will alter. A 100kg fixed wing aircraft moves through the fluid of air.. if the volume weight of sticky air it tries to drag along with it is 100kg the aircraft will float at the zero point (this aspect and angle of drag is complex, however the combination of this angle and the stickyness of air allow the aircraft to float)... When the stickyness of air is torn away from the surface of the object acoustic noise is created. When it is severely ripped apart the aircraft falls from the sky. High and low air pressure, fast and slow air velocity are all a symptom/result of the "stickyness" of air... Air does not like being seperated; it is chaotically lonely, and violently codependent...

Thanks for the correction... personally i would, and do, go for Parker products for hoses purely because they are designed and rated for Commercial Aviation use... not sure about Gates other than their Barricade Greenline fuel hoses... but as one ither poster mentioned its not a pressure situation, however the oil pump supply on the Rotax is a suction pipe... check the specs is always required.

Wow... somebody asked about "what oil hose" to use, and we got about 8 pages of unrelated verbal rugby!!! 1. This topic has been covered thoroughly in depth about 16 months ago. 2. Oil hoses are required to meet a specification based upon environmental employment; Pressure, Suction, Bend Radius, Temperature, Fluid Chemistry. 3. Rotax factory Continental oil hose is not available to purchase. 4. Both Parker and Eaton can supply over the counter equivalent to the Continental product at a fraction of Floods pricing. Search the forum for Eaton or Parker; all the specs and info are here. Reputable hydraulic house such as Enzed will make up any length hose you require with any type steel fitting required. when asked whats it for just say "oil cooler"

Its just a proofing platform. A fair achievement... 300kt, must at least be punching out 300hp, for 8 minutes... T/O, gear up, punch full power, reach target speed, turn around, call 10m final, gear down, land to rolling stop...

Read somewhere else that iphone ipad etc while in wifi mode will search for networks if not already connected; creates a real racket... noise disappears as soon as wifi connects, or wifi switched off, or after about 40sec but will search again and again... Have installed similar jaycar unit to Kyle above (same but with led volts button)... works well, but again wifi devices such as iphone and gopro create a real racket while looking for networks to handshake with...

That's Eddy!!! Where is he working now? Lost his number and been trying to track that bastard down for years; still owes me a set of valves...

You use the Californian online parts catalogues to get part numbers; their State Laws require public freely have access to this kind of vendor information.

Still struggling with this page... can't work out which nation had the best drugs being freely distributed around...

Just buy a new arm from local BMW dealer 🤷🏼‍♂️

The pigtail vent you describe is employed to mitigate the risk of fuel escaping and pooling under the fuselage in the event of a rollover during ground ops or crash landing and is the correct method for aviation related purposes.

One thing recently noted after fitting a header tank to an AC, and everybody should be aware of if running a Rotax. The fuel return line has been plumbed back to the header tank rather than one of the wing tanks. As a result, under extended full power the low level lamp for the header is activating; after purging the header tank the low level lamp went out. What was found was the header tank was being pressurised by the return line preventing fresh fuel from entering the header tank under gravity; basically an air lock; however the system is functioning exactly as designed by purging, and warning points are performing correctly... so take this into consideration if you are running 912 and return is to the header. Happy fabricating...

Skippy its easiest to use something like 2.5mm braising rod; its a bit more robust... make the template up, make sure you can feed it through everything in the airframe afterwards, it may not be possible as a single piece line... You lay the template out next to your straight pipe and just follow along one bend to the other, checking backwards that the fresh pipe is correctly orientated before you lay the next bend... give yourself about 8" -10" more length than you calculate from the template, it will get eaten up as you form. Practice some bends first on scrap and mark where the bend starts and ends by placing a marker line every 10mm on the fresh straight piece... do the bend (90,45,75...) and measure the linear length along the centerline.. get to know where the bending tool actually commences the bend on the pipe... then you know how much length a bend requires... its a bit of a mathematical nightmare but it prevents stuff ups... its all done by knowing the bend radius and linear length, and adding/subtracting from the distances between bends... I generally just run a piece of string along the template and add 8-10", then start in a very methodical way; and still manage to stuff up! Double, Triple, and Quadruple nested pipes; all hand fabricated and laid out to mm tolerance according to prior design... took weeks to complete.

Unless you want to spend the time learning and enjoy making a lot of frustrating mistakes along the way its quicker and cheaper to just pay an experienced operator to do these sort of tasks... in the end its about knowing your tools and their limitations. Things that mostly go wrong: - forgetting to put the nut on before the flare (make the pipe again) - bending the last bend the opposite direction to required (make the pipe again) - bending the last bend while the flare nut is on the wrong side of the bend (make the pipe again) - running the corner bend too early or too late (make the pipe again) - running a bend too close to the last or to the end and the flare tool will not fit (make the pipe again) - wrong thread on flare nut pulled out of storage bin (make the pipe again) All you need is lengths of coat hanger wire soldered together as a template for the fabricator. if all the bends are 90deg you measure out through the centreline of the pipe; add 8.0mm to each end for the flare. Take your sketch and measurement to the fabricator and come back to collect and fit... often it takes two goes to get it right... So if you still want to do the job yourself and experience any of the above don't think you are special, the stuff ups are totally normal. 😃