Thalass

It runs Windoze

Hello from northern Ontario!

It was in the US. He was ground staff for the airline, though I don't know if he was an engineer or not. But he definitely knew how to start the q400. From the audio he knew what the consequences would be, and decided to crash rather than be arrested or shot down. And from the audio he was completely done with life, so it was suicide. I feel for the guy and his family.

Ottawa pilot dies in North Bay plane crash

I work at the North Bay airport these days, and live near the Trout Lake seaplane base. It's terrible to hear such news. Obviously the Canadian TSB investigators haven't released any findings yet, but I've heard from my colleagues that this aircraft had a heavy landing on a lake the day before the crash. It was parked overnight at the main airport (presumably for inspections) before the fateful flight.

This is all hearsay of course, but it gets my engineer's sphincter all bunched up to hear of something that might have been prevented if this alleged heavy landing contributed to "the wing fell off" as I heard. (and I don't know any more details so I could be full of it - you'd think the wing would come adrift on takeoff, not approach to landing)

I guess my point is to be diligent with these kinds of things.

Damnit. Because of this thread I've been eyeballing the Fisher Flying Products range, and several of their planes can fly with a Hirth F-33 engine - Motenergy produce electric motors with similar weight and power outputs. Urge to build... rising...

There is one disadvantage of electric aircraft: In a conventional aircraft the MTOW is normally higher than the max landing weight. The designers save weight by reducing the strength of the airframe - safe in the knowledge that 99% of the time the aircraft will land after burning many tons of fuel. An electric aircraft will weigh the same on landing as it did on takeoff.

With a stronger airframe this wouldn't be a problem, but that means a heavier airframe and so less payload.

Agreed, but lets face it the quoted cycles are not real or base lined - they are often related to a certain % of total loss in capacity to hold charge ... and not even then is there a specific % generally used or tested to allwo consistency. On a very small scale this can be seen in mobile phone batteries - iphone batteries s are supposed to not last nearly as long as they do in fact last and the degraded charge capabilities is not noticable to most users ... my iphone is coming up for 5 years and there is not a noticeable battery issueThe real stumbling block to use of battery power is recharge time - the new pipistrel battery plane is running an hours flight time and addressed recharge time by having short time swapout of battery packs. The real improvement will come with a fast recharge battery - the aluminium graphite battery claims a 60 second recharge cycle without thermal or chemical issues ie it does not become damaged by fast recharge nor does it have heat issues on recharge and its energy density on the test cells written up in Nature is not fantastic the possibility of building a couple of hours flight time of batteries into the airframe and recharging faster than you can pour petrol into the tanks would be a game changer.

 

If I could get that sort of recharge time on a system that has a system life cost (electric + allocation of battery costs) that was even equal to the current two stroke petrol engines then I would jump at it and go. I just can't get that ... yet. The engines are there, its the batteries that are still coming along.

Well I can get an off the shelf direct drive electric motor in the 447 power range (30kw peak, 25 continuous) with controller for under 10kg ... its just the batteries that stump me ... price n weight ... oh and the personally required parachute just in case the LiPos go a little 'fire happy' in the air :-/If it were not for the fact that I already have the F23 and the cost of the batteries/motor are so high I would be happy to give the old sapphire another make-over and turn her electric instead of just moving from 28hp to the 50 of the F23 conversion.

 

As its a 95.10 low weight thick wing sapphire (just under 135kg with 28hp engine) it both has the lift to fly on really modest power and the depth within the wing to put the batteries but I just can't justify the spend so the electric sapphire is sitting in system drawings and specs with costings ... maybe one day.

But for future-tech I'm really excited about these cells: https://news.stanford.edu/news/2015/march/aluminum-ion-battery-033115.html

http://www.wired.com/2014/03/boeing-bird-of-prey/

An interesting design. The CoG must be way aft to have the wings that far back, and this kind of tailless configuration needs computer mediated fly-by-wire controls, I think (I am biased, of course, but y'know). It'd be neat to see something similar as a homebuilt aircraft. I suppose Airservices Australia might object to the stealth aspects of the design :P

The only thing i see wrong with that video is that they've got a couple of guys in the tray of the ute filming. One slip and you're not only tumbling down the runway on your arse, but you're doing it in pieces since you went through the prop on the way down. hahaha

I'm an avionics LAME so this is really my kind of aircraft:

That twin is pretty strange looking. Good access to the donks, though, i would guess.

There are plenty of threads about home-made LiFePO4 chargers on http://www.diyelectriccar.com/

With plenty of far more knowledgeable people than me to answer questions. :P

The batteries in the 787 are lithium-cobalt-oxide, which apparently at the time were the best available. LiPos have more energy, and can handle more cranking power, but have a fairly short life (~500 cycles?). Electric cars nowdays have lithuim-iron-phosphate (LiFePO4) batteries, which have less energy than LiPo but a much longer life (~5000 cycles). I suppose for an aircraft it's a matter of trading off more power for the weight, or longer life.

Still waiting for lithium-air cells!

Wow it looks great! The Pietenpol is a really nice aircraft.

My condolences for the family of the pilot. It's a sad day. :(

And, of course, the news ended their report with "It is believed the man had built the replica... himself" with an ominous pause. Typical.

Everything i've been told, right from being a wee little apprentice, is that CASA will only protect you in cases like your employer trying to coerce you into releasing an aircraft into service that should be grounded. Things like that. Not the other way around. I don't know how it is in bugsmasher land, mind you, and if someone is doing that sort of thing then everyone should know so they can be avoided in future. Or something. The S word is your weapon as well as ours.

That's not a bad idea. Kent St high school in Perth built an aircraft on the last couple of years. Never did that at Melville! :(

Indeed. When i started my apprenticeship in 2000 an avionics LAME was getting over 100k with two a/c types and three categories each (EIR). Now when i get my licence i'll be in the 90k range. 100k with two types. We've stayed still for 12 years while the cost of everything has gone up! (As an AME i'm on 60k)

Also, i should say that i did not mean Ultralights should be maintained by LAMEs with part 145 costs and all that. The whole point of RAA is to get away from that red tape, at the cost of being unable to fly in controlled airspace and such - a fair trade i think for the fun of buzzing about.

However what should be the same whether you're flying a UAV, an ultralight, an airliner or a 1000 passenger space shuttle is the quality of work from the guy doing the maintenance. Doubly so for a trained LAME with the apprenticeship, 25+ exams, and hundreds of hours of exp in the SOE book. If it's broken, and it can't safely fly in that condition (a light bulb is no big deal, a broken axel or corroded spar is) then it doesn't fly. Simple.

Every Annual inspection of my Cessna that was done over 9 years I found a fault, I am a Motor mechanic. I maintain my RAA aircraft, I am a L2, I find no faults after my services or repairs. Lame's are not perfect and some places use unqualified people and then sign it off and are protected by CASA. I will never own a GA plane again unless I build it and maintain it because I do not trust all that are protected by CASA. rather take it to the local auto mechanic.

While obviously we aren't putting our own lives on the line, they are still lives and any LAME that fobs stuff off to go down the pub should be shot. Two of my cousins FIFO on planes i maintain, not to mention the hundreds of other people. As far as i'm concerned an aircraft should be as close to new condition as possible when it leaves the hangar. Which is probably why it's good i don't run a business - i'd go bust. :p

The best way of preventing maintenance errors is the military way.But is wouldnt work due to cost in the civilian arena. Ie- Technician does the job & signs that he/she has completed the task IAW a section of the maintenance manual , Progressive inspectors - inspects the work of the techo then if satified, they sign off the job . If it is a critical maintenance task eg- Flight control job.The a 3rd person inspects the job .Known as a independant inspector. With up to 3 different peeps inspecting a maintenance task.Having said all this- Working on airliners ,choppers or fast jets.The jobs are bigger & more involved than your run of the mill LSA or cessna type. Getting a second guy to look over your work is a great idea.They may find something that you have missed.Ps- I grounded a LSA aircraft during a prefight due to finding a elevator trim mounting bracket cracked right through.It had been out of its hundred hourly for about 2 hours. I dunno how the L2 dude who did the hundred hourly missed it.I think it was the same dude who left a ring spanner on the engine mount.TRUST NOBODY

Of course i don't have to pay for the parts i change, so think nothing of swapping out a $10,000 computer or something. Aviation aint cheap.

As an avionics AME i'm all for shiny technology. But i still check the route my gps has picked for me, and memorise the street latouts so i have sone situational awareness. I don't like just blindly following instructions from a machine. The same would apply in the air. Note that a particular hill should appear at a particular time or distance, etc, so i have some idea what to expect. The same that you would do with a dead tree format map. Of course my flying experience is minimal so i can't talk much.

Thanks guys. I can't seem to find anything on this Bush Cocky. It definitely looks fun.

Hey guys. I saw this video just now, but was wondering about the two aircraft that aren't Drifters. What are they? The little single seater looks kinda neat. I even tried looking up the rego on the register search here, but it's tricky to read with such a low resolution video. And it's been long enough that it may not be registered any more.

Here it is:

Looks like a lot of fun. :)

When i first read the article i pictured an aircraft with two mainplanes, both mounted high, with conventional controls mixed for the flapailervators - that is pull back on the stick and the forward flapailervons would drop while the aft ones rose. With a standard flap position input causing both to droop. Much like flaperons. And like that i thought it was ok, though there is quite a bit of hippy artist dribble in the description.

Reading again i come to the same conclusion as Head In The Clouds did. Assuming nothing goes wrong0 and you only want to fly in a straight line, it should work. Bit if you need a major change in pitch like recovering from a stall, you're out of luck. And while you may be able to change heading with rudder, the flapevons seem to be a single peice across the whole span - so no roll control. (i could be reading the diagram wrong again, i'm on my phone.)

An aircraft that swaps a horizontal stab for second mainplane should work fine - i've seen a picture of a larger version of the Osprey that was like this. But in the real world you need control of all three axis.