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Ian

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Everything posted by Ian

  1. The whole paper based licence system is archaic, and having instructors tack rating on the back just dumb. One step removed from stone tablets.
  2. As I've stated, I don't mind obtaining and carrying one if they create something useful. A smartcard that works as a long term credential containing photo id Your licence with ratings etc Provides access to all airports instead of the stupid pin codes. It should be cheap or near zero cost and last for more than two years. I've worked in industries with many processes of differing efficacy over the years. I am willing to put up with processes that work to control dubious risks if they're lightweight, however heavyweight processes which don't actually work at all are a different matter. ASIC in it's current form is just that. Either make it useful or ax it. I'd encourage everyone to knock on their local members door with an ASIC to explain why they are shit.
  3. There is a risk. Airplanes have been used as weapon by terrorists. As a control, whether strong identity checks around airports actually mitigates this risk is up for debate. It does have some appeal. With strong identity checks and other processes you can minimise interactions between high risk individuals and groups and your critical infrastructure. What I'm saying is, in it's current form the ASIC card is pretty much worthless, it doesn't provide a strong identity check, is costly, burdensome and the other processes are missing. I suspect that the main driver for the ASIC card was simply customs, border protection and drugs at major international airports. The rest is just collateral damage.
  4. Actually a birth certificate in an of itself is not veracious. It is easy to manufacture one. It is the fact that it can be referenced against an existing Government database which provides the strong binding to an identity. But that is a slow and cumbersome process. Similarly an expired ASIC card can be used to verify someone's identity, it just depends upon what you're trying to achieve and the level of assurance you require. However a smartcard, through cryptographic operations can be veracious through real time cryptographic operations. That is a claim relating to identity can be verified in real time by anyone with a device such as a mobile phone. An ASIC card is a dumbcard, it has a couple of holograms that can be cloned, is issued by groups which don't have great physical or electronic security. There are multiple levels though which the process could be compromised either electronically or through social engineering. I think that in a risk assessment it would be probable that one of these issuing authorities has already been compromised or will be compromised and the identity documents exfiltrated.
  5. ASIC cards as they current stand don't provide the benefits they're meant to. They are simply expensive security theatre. To make them useful Make them a good credential such as a smartcard not a dumbcard with a photo on it. Make it cheap. A Tesla "key" is about $25, a replacement bank smartcard is free, so a 10 year card should be less than $100 Centralise supply and make it a Government service. Not outsourced to well meaning but clueless subcontractors. Because the costs have been externalised by the Government there is zero economic incentive to fix them. Make them cheaper and longer lasting. For example a Government security clearance can be valid for 10 years, why not ASICs? Resource security checks on all relevant airports Resource a phone based app with NFC for checking card so cheap forgeries are easily detectable. Escort all non card holders at all times. This includes foreign air-staff. Incorporate your qualifications and checks such as flying credentials and medicals onto the card and ditch the current paper based system. There is a non-zero risk associated with aircraft and terrorism which increases with the size of the aircraft. However this risk should be viewed in the context of other systems which can be weaponised such as fuel tankers, water supplies etc. What we have now is a chancre.
  6. This is it in a nutshell. How effective are medical checks and what risk do they mitigate. Reviews of pilot incapacitation during flight show that the most likely reasons are food poisoning, illness and diabetes. You see the occasional stroke, heart attacks etc but they're rare. Even if you argue that these occur after medicals have culled the weak. The rates in Australia UK and US appear to be about the same so medicals don't actually appear to do much and they're inconvenient as buggery.
  7. Out of curiosity what are the current fees into Coffs? Generally your gut feeling about security is correct. When the security measures appear to be out of proportion, they probably are.
  8. Security is not a bad thing however it needs to actually add value, the current system does not. I'd be happier if the ASIC card was a 5 year entity with self reporting at the same price. I could see greater utility if ASIC cards were a contactless smartcards with a cryptographically attested photo, fingerprint, iris etc which can be read by an electronic device such as a phone. At least then forging would be difficult, and by the way this should be the job of the Federal Government not private firms. A card like this could actually ensure that air-side access auditable and relied on the credential. The current cards can be forged a on low cost printer and the holographic stickers can be bought. Currently most airports are secured by a pin code which is written inside the gate, it rarely if ever changes.
  9. Though we're going a long way off topic. You give tax breaks to industries you want to thrive and grow. Speculative buying and selling homes isn't an industry that produces anything apart from debt so we really shouldn't be encouraging it. There are no exports, no ongoing returns, no job creation, just debt and inflated asset prices. The Government has pumped lots of money, changing from a 3x to a 10x leverage policy in banking industry, effectively printing money and funnelling it into the economy through the banking system in the past few decades, however the vast majority of this money has been spent on property speculation so that banks property portfolio is now mostly housing their debt compared to 30% a few decades ago. Lending money to businesses which make things creates a whole stream of beneficial effects such as ongoing employment and the growth of wealth. Lending money for housing just creates debt and isn't productive use of capital. In combination with reduced capital gains on property and negative gearing it has created a property bubble. Interestingly, by pumping money into the economy in this manner it has created a wealth transfer to the existing property owners on a scale which has never happened before, basically house price values have simply soaked up the extra capital that's been made available. This has created multiple issues, firstly this process has starved business of capital, it has made our finance systems exceptionally vulnerable to interest rate increases and inflation, and thirdly you have a younger cohort who instead of looking at 3x annual earnings to buy a house are looking at a 10x multiple. This is one of the real reasons why very little made in Australia. So in essence tax breaks should be to encourage investment in business, instead there's no capital gains or reduced capital gains on housing inflating the assets of those with zero ability, but a successful business owner will pay capital gains. It should be the other way around as massively inflated house prices are a drag on our economy. This is an interesting read "Bank Lending Behavior and Housing Market Booms: The Australian Evidence"
  10. There are higher risk activities and news worthy events, it's worth noting that the two are different. GA flying is a high risk activity, as is scuba diving, motorcycle riding, drinking, smoking, taking IV drugs and obesity. Dying of obesity or drug overdose in your thirties or forties isn't a newsworthy event unless in connectivity with a priest or other luminary however any or all of you who have an incident associated with a plane will probably make headlines. Where there's a business model where money can be gained by increased risk is where things tend to become a bit blurry. However the key thing associated with this endeavour is that it always was a high risk activity. It was an experimental one off design It's continued operation clouded by economic gain by the operator. It was operating in an environment where the materials science associated with its construction was poorly understood. It carried people who may not have understood the risks, including the operator. I'd like to see the analysis of why it failed and I'm saddened by the unnecessary loss of life. However it was and remains a very high risk activity, once they've done this 10000 cycles or have 50 units operational not so much. I think that there's a significant different in risk between flying in an experimental one off design and proven designs vs general GA aircraft. There's a good article here however the bottom line is that the numbers are higher for experimental airplanes. https://www.kitplanes.com/homebuilt-accidents-comparing-the-causes/ https://www.kitplanes.com/homebuilt-accidents-comparing-the-rates/ In terms of refugees, I'd like the world to have systems which ensured that people could escape political persecution. On the flip side maintaining high immigration during a housing crisis and period of high inflation seems ludicrous. The young pay with high interest rates on their mortgages. In association with this I'd like to see negative gearing on property removed, or at least on existing dwellings as this would also spread the pain across a greater segment of the population and deflate our overpriced housing market.
  11. Not really true, android has version number and device capabilities which you just target for compatibility reasons. The reason that they target apple is that That's what they're primarily familiar with, and Most people who own planes are have apple phones. To develop across both platforms requires a completely different codebase so essentially you're doing twice the work. That's not a business proposition which is particularly appealing. However it's not worth ignoring completely as a competitor might jump into that spot. So you make a half arsed effort at it, just enough to keep the competition away.
  12. Essentially from Ozrunways perspective, apple is a first class citizen and android is a second class citizen. It's a little bit the office apps on a mac or MS teams on linux. The updates are late, some features don't work and they might just stop supporting it at some point. It's simply business, most of their users now have apple devices and their competitors are also focused on this app. What might drive change is another vendor focussing on android.
  13. While I would have preferred to use the android version I found there were too many features missing for it to be viable. It's worthwhile on a phone or tablet as a backup but not the main version. However then you're dealing with two different apps. You need to buy the more expensive ipads with a phone sim as the standard ipads don't have GPS. I suspect it's because most older people who own planes uses apple devices.
  14. I'd like to see SAAA move into the 21st century, ditch the magazine, improve the website and run the majority of courses online. The current view that they need to appoint a paid GM and paid staff rather than leverage volunteers makes me think that the currently management can't use modern communications technologies. I'd actually like to know what happened with Peter, the letter conflates his actions with murder which is salty stuff, it may actually have been more mundane. Personally I'd like to see AGM's being held online with the contact details of members being made available for those wanting to be elected in a similar manner to the way that electoral roles are available to Australian citizens. The current approach is a bit of a joke.
  15. I know it's easy to be dismissive however I think that a half decent understanding of Bernoulli can lead to a significantly better understanding of how things like radiators should be designed and installed on planes. Just sticking them out into the airflow or trying to force air into it may not lead to the outcome you want. A little bit of theory can help you avoid some of the more obvious mistakes however aerodynamics is complex, add a bit of detail or parameter into a CFD model and you run time can go from days to years.
  16. I think that the fuel burn of small turbines is what stopped most everyone in both cars and planes. Everyone knows that wankels are thirsty, but they're practically tea teetotallers in comparison to turbines.
  17. They can makes planes climb pretty well Maybe you weren't driving it properly 😉 Compared to a cylinder piston the area of the seals is significantly larger and the geometry is more complex. It's pretty obvious that these things are going to struggle to seal however there's also research out there which also estimates the efficiency losses due to the seals. Modern rotaries such as the renesis are better but still nowhere near good as standard cylinder engines. Just compare the rings of a piston engine to those required by a rotary.
  18. No not at all. The engine is light weight with high power output and can run on diverse fuels. I'd think that the military would be a key market. If you look at their history the military has given them grants. However they will have issues with all of points that I've mentioned above. It will be less efficient than your run of the mill diesel engine and cooling will be an issue and sealing the combustion chamber will be difficult, however that doesn't mean there not a market for it. It just like saying that, all other things being equal, a conventional diesel engine will be heavier than a conventional piston engine for a given power output. This is because the pressures are higher in a diesel engine so you have to make the engine stronger by putting more material in the block or using tougher, heavier material like Compacted Graphite Iron. Also diesels revs slower as combustion is slower as it relies on the diffusion and ignition of the fuel in the combustion chamber. You can get around this to some extent by forcing more air into the cylinder through turbocharging however then you need an even stronger heavier engine. Most engines are air pumps.
  19. Are you talking about internal engine pressure? If more energy is released and more power appears at the crank the only way it can get there is through increased pressure or faster rotation. Work = Force x Distance. So if the distance remains the same the force must have increased. The area of the piston head has remained the same so the pressure acting on it must have increased. So more pressure.
  20. But we have come a long way from the original thrust of this thread which is talking about modes of failure and the fact that a failure in a more complex electrical system can be bad. This failure can be put into the same basket as someone running an engine at the wrong air fuel mixture and having an engine failure. Single points of failure can be managed by in most cases by design and procedures, and I think that electronic systems can manage engines and other systems better than people. However poor design and a lack of effective redundancy can lead to poor outcomes. I think that the key question here is whether someone is likely to take off shortly after jump-starting an engine. Engines like O-360s operated with fully electronic ignition, fuel injection, knock detection and oxygen sensors running in a closed loop have the ability to significantly increase the reliability of aviation powerplants and reduce accidents. But most if not all of these advantages will be lost by DIY implementations. Wouldn't it be nice if engine telemetry was good enough to warn you that your engine was likely to fail 10 minutes in advance.
  21. As facthunter pointed out, the rotary has are a high surface area to combustion volume so lots of heat gets lost from the engine. This engine suffers from the same issue so it is at an efficiency disadvantage. Combustion gets quenched close to the cylinder wall, and because of the more of the fuel remains unburnt contributing to emissions and lower efficiency. It also has a single piston doing all the work, the other does the exhaust gases so you're going to get differential heat, similar the way that just one side of the rotary has to eject most of the heat, however because it's a piston it's much more difficult to cool. It's still a cool looking engine though, but the fuel intake through the crank reminds me of the early airplane rotaries. That being said wankel rotaries are less thirsty than turbines and have a significantly better power/weight and power to volume than conventional piston engines. They have many fewer parts and a rotary rather than oscillating cycle so there's always been the hope of turbine like TBOs. But other mechanical issues have been intractable. Oddly enough Hydrogen as a fuel solves some of the rotary's problems, but I still don't like hydrogen as a fuel.
  22. I'd be inclined to disagree with this statement. Most engines of this period were massively under-square with long strokes which generally isn't as efficient as modern oversquare designs. Piston engines underwent rapid development in WW2 as well as the understanding of alloys and tribology. The tolerances used in the manufacture of modern engines is significantly better than that used in the 1950. This is obvious when you consider oil consumption, old engine designs chew through oil, modern designs do not. Inspection methods such as xray etc. provided the ability to virtually eliminate flaws in castings and forgings which were a significant source of failure in old engines. Because quality controls are higher there is no longer a requirement to overbuild so in many cases a modern engine is significantly flimsier than an equivalent 1930s engine however they will generally run longer. Engine castings are generally more complex as techniques such as lost foam casting techniques were developed in the 1950s allowing more intricate water galleries and reduced machining. This has allowed effective temperature control at significantly higher power levels. Sir Harry Ricardo was heavily involved in engine design over this period and was the reason why a significant number of engines during this period used sleeve valves. His research indicated that power outputs beyond 1500HP wouldn't be possible with traditional valved engines. However higher octane fuels and sodium filled valves allowed traditional designs to go significantly above this. He also did research on fuel octane and the octane improving qualities of water injection. That being said my favourite engine design is the Napier Deltic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Napier_Deltic which evolved from the Junkers Jumo 204 aircraft diesel engine. The part of the design story that I like is that a senior draftsman suggested that one of the crankshafts needed to rotate in the other direction to make the piston phasing work.
  23. As far as I'm aware the pace of innovation has been particularly slow. The alloy used in lycoming engines castings appears not to have changed in the last 50 years and that alloy closely resembled the one used in the 1940s. Sodium filled valves are WW2 innovations. Roller tappets or liftes are the latest innovation, this became commonplace in cars in the 1970s. Unleaded fuels are only just being approved in some Lycoming engines. Chromium or nitrided engine bores are very old technologies. I haven't seen BAM, hypereuctectic pistons, sintered pushrods or other technologies which have appearred in the last 30 years in car engines either increasing longevity, lowering costs or decreasing weight. I'd interested in knowing where you think that the innovations in engine design have actually occurred. Water cooled planes were commonplace in WW2 the spitfire and the P38 were both highly efficient water cooled engines. Most of these engines also had reduction gearing.
  24. The concept that auto engines can't cope with high load for extended periods is a bit of a furphy. High constant load is often significantly easier on the engine and water cooling as all car engine are now keeps the temperatures lower. All modern automotive engines are tested at full load for extended periods and also in start stop cycles where the engine is allow to get up to thermal equilibrium stopped and actively cooled to room temperature across hundreds of cycles. One of the best examples extended high loads is https://www.torquenews.com/1084/subaru-history-how-they-set-2-world-records-and-13-international-records-set-same-time-video Subaru drove multiple vehicles with their turbocharged engines at full throttle for 100,000km with an average speed of 223km/h If you look at the failures of automotive engines in airplanes the vast majority of the failures are related to installation, cooling and gearbox reduction units. When the engine fails almost invariably the engine has been rebuilt and tweaked. These engine fail in planes because they're on off installations. If you look at marine engines such as outboards in many cases they're simply modified car power plants, for example Honda outboards pretty use the same parts as their automotive engines with things like sump modifications and special coating on the coolant channels. They went after this market because it was large enough to be worthwhile and it didn't have the liability issues of the aviation industry. I have no doubt at all that given the right incentive modern car makers could product an aircraft engine with a reduction gearbox which would be significantly better than our 1950 tech air cooled clunkers in all the measures that matter such as power, weight, economy, price and reliability and this would probably be an automotive clone. Unfortunately the market returns don't justify the risks, so we're stuck with either expensive clunkers or DIY. The one aero market which might make a difference is the drone market for long endurance flight. Turbine engines don't throttle well and fuel economy really makes a difference if you want multiday missions with extended loiter times.
  25. Aluminium can be worthwhile from a weight and cost perspective however you need to be mindful of its weaknesses. The piper issues appears to have been with bimetallic corrosion, if you really want to save weight look at lithium batteries first. You can buy aluminium to copper crimps. Bimetal corrosion is still an issue however oxidation within the cable lug is prevented by protecting the internal surface with a specific grease with a very high dropping point.
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