nomadpete

I apologize for the thread drift. My experience with the power industry, and even my own profit/loss of my grid feed PV system. My only defence is that I got sucked in by preceding thread drifters. Back to electric ultralights......

Somewhere above, there was a passing comment regarding the cost of building HV transmission lines to bring power from remotely located alternative generators (wind/solar), into the existing grid. This is indeed a significant influence on economic viability of ANY kind of new generator. As an example, I'm pretty sure that Queensland grid company spent around half a billion dollars on a 275Kv grid expansion out to Roma. The spend was over a period of about 3 years, and was solely done to provide power to the new CSG industry. That's a lot of money that doesn't help citizens, it only helps us wash and pump our gas out of the country. Hopefully the gas industry will be buying power in large enough quantity to pay for it. However, once the gas is all gone, who is going to pay for the continuing maintenance of hundreds of K's of transmission line and the 30 or so substations along the way? My only hope is that some bright spark builds a big solar farm and uses all that infrastructure to bring energy back to the cities.

Sailors have the same problem. It seems to be a rigid rule of physics. I'd call it 'The perversity of nature'

RF Chap, What is really missing is the increased safety that would be brought to aviation by changing from antiquated AM, to FM. Can't see why shipping has a more functional VHF system than aviation. Marine radios can instantly add GPS coordinates to a voice transmission.

He's a politician. Maybe he got a new script writer?

Marty, I'd be taking off the bonnet every time I prefight the aircraft.

On my lightwing, cowls overlap the fuselage. It only had two clips on the top section. I'd use dzus wingnuts. They should be easy to visually check, easy to release/refasten without tools, and difficult to drop in long grass. The lower cowl was fastened to fuselage by three csk screws on each side, with csk washers and captive nuts. This setup adequately kept the cowlings in place.

Hey Marty. Looks like you've got an aeroplane in your shed!

Absolutely awesome, Phil It shows their great skill, with mounts, tracking mechanisms cameras and post processing. And to think it's the work of so called 'amateurs' in their back yard, with modest sized telescopes. Galileo would be so stoked! Thank you.

Note that Rotax 91series motors don't windmill when they run out of fuel in flight. (Don't ask me how I know)

Nev, I think you might be over complicating things. Gliders teach energy management better than powered flying appliances. After all, gliders don't have the luxury of extra energy on tap. And most gliders ideally land in a three point even though their nose doesn't point as skyward as noisy tail draggers. As you point out, proficiency in one machine sure doesn't assure competence in a different machine. I'm no instructor, but I really think that glider experience greatly aids progression to powered flying.

Risk takers........ My tale is not of an accident. Rather its about an accident looking for somewhere to happen. So maybe it does qualify as 'hooning'. I live on a hill half a kilometer from a river. My front deck is 700' ASML, but our driveway is along a narrow valley which rises to an end behind our house, at about 1000'AMSL. So, when I heard what sounded like a Rotax coming up our little valley, I started scanning to see the aircraft. I spotted it through the tree trunks, still below me, and it was heading up our narrow dead end valley. As it went past the last possible U-turn point, couldn't believe there could be a reason to drive into narrow rising ground. I heard the throttle open up. I lost sight of it and started listening for the sound of breaking trees. The pilot managed slightly more than a 90 degree turn on full climb and just cleared the hundred foot gumtrees behind our house. It had my adrenaline going. It looked like maybe a Foxbat. Human factors? Showing off? Poor training? If I had my camera, I would have identified the aircraft and made a complaint to RAA because, apart from flying at less than 500' over houses, it looked like reckless behaviour of the sort that gives us all a bad name. I hope there wasn't any passenger.

Just picking up on the Discourse on Victoria's proposed mileage tax for electric vehicles..... As proposed, it is a clear disincentive to EV users. If they want to implement this tax in its present proposed form, they will cop a beating. If they want to revise vehicle registration costs wholesale, and I suggest it is a good idea to do so, all they have to do to gain acceptance, is to charge ALL vehicles a tax per kilometer (relative also to GVM). It should fit in with the right wing concept of 'user pays'. Why should my mother-in-law pay the same car registration as me, when she only does a few thousand k per year but I do 30,000k per year? Clearly she shouldn't have to shoulder as much expense toward road maintenance as me?

BTW, I don't really think NRMA sponsors electric rag'n'tube aircraft either. Back to topic?

Did I hear talk of Joe Blakes? Ever since my pet tiger snake came to guard my shed door, I haven't seen a single taipan, death adder nor red belly.

Don't forget - Eve was Adam's second wife. The first one fell out of favor by demanding equality. After that, god made a supposedly more compliant woman out of leftovers. I don't think this worked out so very well for the rest of us. If it was up to me, I'd prefer Adam's first. I don't think she promoted fruit.

Its just low speed data that lacks justification and error correction

I blame Noah. Did he really have to put a pair of fleas on his ark?

Happy Anniversary to you and the missus, Spacesailor

Let me know and I'll catch up for a coffee and a gossip about all things aviation.

Drat. I was meaning to follow Gareth's visit up. Sorry Gareth. Good intentions and all that.

Good to see you are posting ok now Phil

Linux has never let me down but Window$ sure has a habit of doing constant updates and security patches. And then more patches to fix bugs that the previous patches cause.

Aaah the war wounds! Mine are fading now, too. My darling wife keeps trying to mother me. Recently during a break between the neighbours trefelling activities I grabbed my chainsaw to deal with a couple of saplings. Her good self, ever watchful, screamed out "Put that f........en chainsaw away!". Of course, cowed, I put it away. So did the other bloke half a mile up our valley! Take care, Bex, that's the only body you get to live in, so make it last a lifetime (well, as far as we know. And that's when the fight started)

Well, Kyle, thanks for that info. Neither my surgeon nor my cardiologist told me that about the sternum. When I saw the x-rays, I thought to myself 'why do they leave the wire in forever?'. (Now I know). Then I thought 'gee I'd be ashamed to do messy lock wiring like that!'