ianboag

OK. It's probably a bit easier for me to keep on top of things if you post errors and/or strange bits to me at ian.boag@gmail.com. IB

It's not this one then .... ? DEVONPORT (YDPO) TAF AMD YDPO 100342Z 1003/1012 33010KT 9999 BKN005 PROB40 1003/1012 0500 FOG RMK T 24 23 21 19 Q 1018 1017 1016 1017 Amended Forecast issued 10th 2:42 pm TAST valid from 10th 2:00 pm to 10th 11:00 pm TAST Wind: gentle NW (330°) 10 kt Visibility: 10 km or more Cloud: broken at 500 ft there is a 40 % probability that from 10th 2 pm to 10th 11 pm TAST Visibility: 0500 m Weather: fog Time 2 pm 5 pm 8 pm 11 pm no remarks Temp (° C) 24 23 21 19 QNH (hPa) 1018 1017 1016 1017

You're showing up my ignorance :-) I made the original page with Coffee Cup Web and Form builders. Forms were done with flash which was not phone-friendly. So I did it again with Blue Voda (another wysywig freebie) so the form was non-flash ..... Sorry I'm not the world's smartest html person - the hard work of course was the PHP in behind it. Anyone who wants to hack the html to fix these problems is welcome and I'll upload it. IB

phone-friendly weather is now at http://www.pemet.com.au IB

Back on the (oh so well paid) job. I cut a new page that works OK on my Nokia and I think should be OK on an iPhone (no Flash used). The test version is at Australian AVMET Let me know if it works for you and I will in due course move it over to pemet.com.au .... Ian B

I got all hot and bothered about the oil temp thing when my J200 had the original small cooler. Sustained effort on a hot day would get the temp up to 110 deg C (just below the redline). This seemed a bit disturbing as it felt a bit on the hot side (although not over the redline). I asked around about what was a "reasonable" value for the oil temp and got a confusing range of opinions. There didn't seem to be a lot of science or hard data behind most of it. 80-85 was widely deemed to be "good". My first fix was to get a second cooler and sandwich it on the front of the one that was already there. It worked fine until the older cooler sprung a leak. I think the leak was related to it having been on and off too many times. Anyway I got all carried away after that and fitted (at no small expense) an Aero Classics cooler. Jabiru now use this and the Positech equivalent as the standard fit on 3300's. Pioneer 300's with the Jab 3300 have the tiny oil cooler. I asked the NZ Pioneer dealer what he thought - he told me about flying round all over the place in Oz with the cruise oil temp between 100-110. Nothing broke. I guess anything below the redline is OK or Jabiru would have put the redline lower. It's a reasonable guess that the redline is probably conservative enough that a few minutes at 10 degrees over won't break anything ... Here's something else I found on a site dealing with Lycomings ... >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> For maximum service life, maintain the following recommended limits for continuous cruise operation: (a) Engine Power Setting - 65% of rated or less. (b) Cylinder head temperatures - 400°F. or below. © Oil temperature - 165°F. - 220°F. >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> 165 F is about 75 C, 220 F is just under 105 C. Go figure. IB

For what it's worth - my guess would be that the second cooler wouldn't need a lot of airflow through it. You could hang it just about anywhere.

I have moved from a J200 to a J160. I'm normal sort of height and in both planes I just did "seat adjustment" with a cushion beneath and one behind ..... IB

It's like this ... the rate of heat flow out of a cooler is (thermal conductance) x (oil temp - air temp) x (cooler area) (just like Ohm's Law in electricity) Thermal conductance depends on the cooler geometry and the air velocity flowing through it. You can influence it by blowing more air through the cooler, but not by a lot if there is already a "reasonable" flow present ie doubling the air flow does not double the thermal conductance. The oil temperature adjusts itself so that the appropriate amount of heat is transferred. If the oil temp is too high increasing the cooler area is a relatively simple way to sort it. Jabiru have actually been round and round a bit on this one over time. The 2200 originally came out with the small SuperCheap transmission cooler. When I got my early J200 with a 3300 engine it had the same small cooler and it didn't really work. Relative to the 2200 engine there was 50% more engine power and therefore about 50% more heat to get rid of - thermal conductance was the same, area was the same so (oil temp - air temp) had to be 50% greater. And it was .. Jabiru now supply 3300's with Aero Classics coolers that have HEAPs more area then the one I originally had. In fact the Aero Classics one that I finally fitted is over-spec'd for the job and I have half of it taped off. So if you have an oil temp problem adding area is a relatively easy fix. Fitting a new and bigger cooler is a drag (how do I know that?) but adding a small one in series is not all that hard. In fact if you think about it, that's what you're doing when you aim air at the sump .....

If you go to SuperCheap and buy an oil cooler (their smallest transmission one) and mount it anywhere that you can inside the cowl - in series with the one you have - it will fix the problem. Adding more cooler AREA is a simple solution to your problem.

Also worth remembering that these (DR9EIX) are resistor plugs and so help out with ignition noise in radio etc circuits.

I think I just need to make the form (the selection bit) without using flash. I did the screen using CoffeCup Form Builder which uses flash - as far as I can tell it isn't all that hard to make non-flash forms if I can be bothered figuring out the details ..... the form here is a pretty simple one.

Hmm. Dunno. I'm a bit of a "monkey-see-monkey-do" web cutter so I did the form using a WYSIWYG form builder. I've tried the site on my Nokia 6110 and it has the same problem. When I get back from holiday I will solve it. Don't exactly know how, but I'll get there. It's a pity that Bom (Aus) and MetService (NZ) couldn't see their way to doing PLM. It's a bit odd that it's being run by an amateur :-) IB

As the person who wrote the translator I'm not the best one to ask. I have been for a visit to MetService (the NZ BOM equivalent) and watched forecasters writing TAFs straight off the top of their heads. Use of the ICAO codes by the forecasters does ensure a degree of consistency in what the forecasts mean. A plain language translation of the (consistent) codes ensures a degree of understanding of what the forecasts say. Choice is good. Those who are most comfortable with Met-jibber and UTC can read their weather that way and be happy. Those who prefer English can have it like that and be happy too. Whatever works best for you ... it's like Catholic Mass - Latin or vernacular. Horses for courses .....

It's done in PHP and works more or less as you describe. ARFORs are quite a job as they have lots more scope and cover more ground. My point about mistakes was I can pull out FMddhhmm OK and translate it, but it gets a whole lot harder when I run into FMxxxx and have to write code to guess which two characters are missing and what "reasonable" values should be used for them. So I don't bother - if there's a mistake (like this one) I just leave it in uppercase ......

Yeah - realistically - a human can make a pretty reasonable guess at what it means, but it's a dog of a thing to make a computer program do. There are so many possible errors that could happen ......

Friggin brain fade. Comes with getting old. FM0930 would be the 9th of the month at 30 hrs with the mins unspecified. Hmm. I think not. Looks like the METAR author slipped a cog .... Perfection is such a rare commodity these days. This was a YSSY METAR a couple of days ago that someone pointed out to me as containing stuff the xlator didn't know what to do with ....

The syntax of <FM> is <FMhhmmdd> ie FM-hour-minute-day. The group there is missing "day". I agree that one could make an intelligent guess ......

Just to clarify one more thing for me in that Sydney METAR ... .... FM0930 ... I suppose that having just a 4-digit group here is an error ? And it's UTC of course? "Today" whatever that means ....? In which case my translator will just leave it alone .....

Thanks. Sounds as reasonable as anything - I'd never seen it before despite running heaps of METARs through the translator. Someone at YSSY had a bit of a brain spark it seems. I'll educate the program some more.

What does the 1AC140 and 6AC160 etc bit of this METAR mean? RMK RF00.0/000.0 1AC140 6AC160 FM0930 MOD TURB BLW 5000FT Is it something to do with an incoming flight of six Jabirus and a single Cherokee 140 ...... ?

So how does a Kiwi find out the answer? It's colder here ......

Or you can go to Supercheap and buy a 1m (or so battery cable). Hook it to the battery +ve, run it down the firewall (secured with cable ties here and there) and out the bottom. Hold it with a P-clip bolted into the cockpit floor. To boost the plane on a cold morning put the +ve jumper on the cable end and the other one on an exhaust pipe. No need to remove cowls or any of that. Worked for me .....