kasper

It seems Armidale Is having a few bad weeks. I don’t think this mornings is due to tie down failure though ...

Afraid the editor/publisher died. The magazine continued for I seem to recall 2 years after his death and then ceased. Was a nice magazine, wish I had not lisplaced by collection in the moves over hte years - I had the full set

My view is that recreational aviation is going along pretty well ... but it has shifted from where it was 30 years ago and is more aligned to where GA was 25 years ago - not just commercial GA but the whole of what was commercial GA + GA clubs + SAAA homebuild - with the add on of low mass high performance airframes that were not available 25 years ago. What has changed is operations becoming centralised (bigger clubs/schools but fewer and much further between) and ultralights are effectively dead in terms of new airframes being replaced with much higher performance and much higher cost aircraft. I am personally saddened to see this as I preferred the SAAA/AUF scene as it was 25+ years ago when I started but I am only 1 person and so long as I can continue to tinker in my shed with my homebuilts without crushing costs and oversight I am just likely to continue on my path of becoming a middle aged fart seen by many as mr ultralight bar humbug.

Last light was 7.35 and Carcoar is only 30nm from orange. If they were planning on overnight in orange then there is adequate time to get back there and on the ground before last light plus. if they were aiming for Bankstown then it would have become night vfr before they got back but it may have been planned at that - it’s GA not RAAus so that is possible depending on permissions.

Yep, As one of the people who saw the company structure change as poor and the documents to create it even poorer and who owns 4 self designed and built airframes I am spitting chips over the changes within RAAus and in particular the changes in the recent 95.10 changes ... look out all you 95.55 experimental home built ... when CASA get to redrafting that one it will be impacting a whole lot more people than just us old farts still tinkering and building within 95.10 limits.

Not quite no need for the RAAus it just would require a change to the structure of the operations: 1. register airframe with CASA once in lifetime and get issued VH- registration to display. 2. operate and maintain airframe under RAAus techmanual and opsmanual with: a. annual certificate of validity on airframe registration b. annual certificate of validity on pilot certificate 3. 2a. and 2b. only available as services to members of the raaus (because you can only fall under disaplinary processes as a member otherwise its just on/off pull the certificates) Simple structure and easily achieved if there was a political will to do it within CASA. Not gonna happen though as there are only 17,576 aircraft reg combos available at any time in VH-XXX series and I doubt CASA want to move the VH-XXXX to allow up to 450,000

SplitS - "official story is not quite right" ... I nearly coughed a mouthfull of coffee all over the PC with that one ... that 'official story' issue is nearly always the case as the 'real story' gets fixed before anyone official gets informed in SO many cases.

Yep Armidale airport. Happened not on the Thursday storms -it was on its legs when I left at 6 but kneeling down next morning around 9 when I went past. Nothing here in Kentucky to speed of ... or my sheds are stronger than I thought.

But we already have that available in 95.55 ... it’s just the single engine prop requirements there that are the issue. hyt given the redraft if 95.10 and the insertion of design requirements as a possibility in the raaus tech manual now I think everyone in raaus with any aircraft not rolled out of a factory should be seriously questioning the direction of travel for microlights ... ultralights are no more and raaus becoming GA lite is more than just scare mongering

I’ve seen a few of these over the years fold the nose leg but this is the first time I’ve seen one fold up whilst tied down at the airfield. I feel for the owner.

Exactly. And if the deforming blade variable pitch blades system in IVOProp were effective then it would be a relatively simple mod to remove the spinning motor, remove the electric slip rings and the rod mounted brushes and insulator plates and use a push/pull rod through the gearbox with a suitable turned collar on a sealed ball bearing ... or just buy a non-inflight and modify to make it in flight adjust - same blades and cheaper as youre not throwing away bits. By doing this you would remove rotational mass on your prop shaft, remove most of the failure points on the electrics (all the rotating sliding bits) - win win really. see pic below for the IFV setup to see which bits you would remove and the single gold slip collar that would need to be manufactured for the dn of the through box pushrod.

If you're worried about standing load on the remote motor just do what we did with electric movable hang points for flexwings - use a linear actuator. They are generally rated at 1500N force, have ranged of linear motion from around 50mm to 200mm and weigh next to nothing. The eletric in flight hang point adjuster I had on the Raven cost under 50 pounds UK in parts (including the two machined mounts and all switiching and hang position display in the dash) and installed added under 2kg to the airframe. Gave infinite position change between the two stops (not stepped) and that set up moved 55kg of wing mass whilst in flight lifting 450kg of aircraft all on the standard nylon frame collar. A quick ebay search throws up 12v linear actuators for under $15 so some of the componetry is inexpensive for manual adjust - its the electronics and sensors to link manifold pressure to the actuator to make it CS thats tricky. If you had a variable prop hub with a slip ring on the blades in the hub remote back to a linear actuator mounted to the engine gearbox you have removed much of the mass on prop hub issue and have removed roational electric components and this would be relatively easy to do as a manual adjust in flight. Just a thought.

Oh there is another problem with this from a usable system - how to have seperate variabble control of the spin of the drums and the propulsive engine - you cannot have a fixed link between the drum rate and the forward prop because it will then become a single speed/altitude aircraft. Why? The lift is proportional to forward speed at a set drum rotation speed ... increase forward speed and lift increases so unless you can slow the drum rotation speed as you add forward speed it will not increase airspeed just go up and down at a set airspeed speed. Ideal would be to have the drums rotate on electric motors as they are very controllable and have the forward speed on a seperate engine/motor prop. Then you can have the fun of the mixing control for the 4 drums on 4 motors to give you pitch control (different drum rates fore/aft) roll (differential drum rates for left/right) and automatic alt hold to allow for different airspeeds (variable drum rates all around) ... mix it all with a good RC onboard autopilot and you can fly if by joystick control fly-by-wire. Even more fun would be to add two forward thrust electric engine outboard at the front/rear and get yaw control by differential thrust. You'd have to do this in RAAus becuase the CASA guy/gal faced with this nightmare will run screaming in the distance when you try to explain its a 6 motor fly-by-wire autostabilised magnus effect lifting device with no wing area and no stall speed cobbled together in my garage and managed with $300 of electronics from Hobby King I programmed up on this laptop 😁

Have always loved this concept but for human fun I would want a full airframe recovery parachute because if/when the engine stops no spin = no lift = no glide. But I think it would be right up there with the UFO flying disc if someone could have a go at getting one flying and registered in the RAAus system.

Drone sales are not going to keep them afloat - there are fewer than 150 Turkish drones this thread is about. There are very few USA drones that used them - they got retired and replaced with heavy fuel engines as per us requirements for all engines. the number of sport aircraft built even now will be many times the number the drones ever used.

Hilarious to see people quoting from breitbart in general discussion- there is a whole section for comedy and made up stuff

My two cents in summary - a CS prop will provide a modest imprvement in TO roll over any fixted pitch/ground adjustable unless that prop is absolutely optomised for take off (and has crap cruise) - most aircraft coompares I can find only give around 10% improvement in TO performance ... useful if you need 800m to get off the ground, do so great if you get off in under 250m already - a CS prop will provide a modest imprvement in cruise speed over any fixted pitch/ground adjustable unless that prop is absolutely optomised for cruise (and has crap TO) - most aircraft coompares I can find only give around 5% improvement in cruise performance ... useful if you need to get somewhere 3 minutes quicker per hour of cruise ... - as far as I can see all available CS props are 4-5 times or more than the equivalent ground adjustable prop and involve another system to monitor and maintain I can only comment on the variable pitch proprs I have tried over the years - thats in my posts above - but my position stands that I would rather take the $8k plus saved in the ground adjustable prop and either put it throgh the engine as fuel or use it in other operational ways on a fixed pitch/ground adjustable prop.

Your own post Several after mine shows it - stall speed around 40 is ONLY if flown solo ... therefore it’s only raaus possible if it were solo so much less than the 300kg possible load

But you are not comparing apples to apples. The soneri that is the speedster is limited to 300kg for people and fuel - it is a single seater in effect. And it gets down to the Raaus stall area with full span electric flaperons. And it’s damnably clean in particular the engine cooling etc. mid you have bugger all drag increase with speed increase then your advantage of cs over fixed is limited and the relatively low wing load at the 600kg mtow with full span flaps Means it’s really nothing like your aircraft in terms of lift n drag. You limit yourself to a low wing load and get full span flaperons then your sort of comparing apples and apples.

You will not get insurance coverage as the fact is you took off overweight. And your own flight plans and fuel plans will clearly prove it as would a backwards call of take off weight based on what they can see. It’s insurance - they will deny coverage and you will be put to shouting and showing in court how you were not. Not likely to be well received if you try claiming I was under and the 912 only burned 4lph for the flight as might be required to have legal take off weight.

And the reason people do not openly talk about overweight flight in RAAus aircraft is ... the heft of the bricks that can be thrown at you if you admit to it and who can throw those bricks. If you are overweight your aircraft immediately falls outside the exemption allowing RAAus to issues registration and pilots certifciates for legal operation... and your RAAus insurance coverage for third party damage immediately ceases so be extra careful not to hit anything expensive while breaking the CAO exemptions. So if you are flying overweight for the CAO exemption you are immedaitely flying an unregistered aircraft in breach of the Act and Regs and unless you hold a valid PPL you are in addition an unlicenced pilot flying that unregistered aircraft ... but if you are a PPL holder you are in trouble under that licence for flying an unregistered aircraft - you are in double breach of aircraft and pilots requirements no matter what ... and the only people who can throw bricks at you are CASA and they are enforced by courts. The worst that RAAus can do to you in response is to suspend your pilots certificate and/or cancel your membership ... slap in the face with limp lettuce compared to CASA. I'd love to talk openly about unusual operations eg. T500 thrusters can take off so long as the doors can be forced closed but I have a PPL and RAAus pilots entitlements I'd rather keep so sorry but this topic is very dangerous given it is a public forum and we do not know who is trawling through ... a UK board had a similar thread years ago and CAA enforement were watching and did act on what they read.

Strangely there has not been anything from RAAus on the replacement to one of the CAOs that came into effect at the start of October. in another thread I was asked to comment on why I thought there was risk in the structure of RAAus governing docs and the CAOs - I was too busy with work to write up the issues but the changes in CAO95.10 Increase my concerns and if these changes roll into the republish of 95.55 next year the number of members potentially impacted is much larger than are actually impacted by this months 95.10 change. ill write up a summary off my iPhone this evening but the concerns are that the definition of the RAAus tech manual is fundamentally changed in the new CAO: RAAus Technical Manual means the manual, approved in writing by CASA from time to time, which is issued by RAAus and contains RAAus’s rules, consistent with the requirements of the civil aviation legislation, for initial and continuing airworthiness of aeroplanes registered with RAAus, including: (a) airworthiness, design and maintenance standards; and (b) aeronautical practices, test procedures and processes. this is really new in terms of allowing design standards and that is both a stretch to coverage and remains in even greater contrast to the same CAO that retains the requirement of having the no responsibility stickers. sorry RAAus and CASA you can’t have it both ways and someone will take it up fairly soon in court. oh and on top of that all 95.10s have been renamed as microlights. RIP the AUF heritage - ultralights are no more. and watch RAAus ... going down the design standards road with CASA will end up with more liability on the RAAus and potentially more steps towards GA lite for all.

Not under 95.10. It needs 1m^2 per 30kg it mtow. A cri cri has 3.1m of wi g so a mtow in 95.10 of 100kg. The plane weight is 78 so not possible.

Well either your picking up added pulses - tiny tachs run off the tripper wire coiled around the spark lead to a plug - or you have the wrong type fitted - they used to come in two stroke or four stroke and of course one reads 1 pulse = 1 rev while the other reads 1 pulse = 2 rev. but a jab engine is four stroke so I’m guessing the pulse wire is on the wrong lead or - and I don’t know this - the jab fires every rev and throws away a spark on the exhaust stroke and therefor need to be set to two stroke mode even though it’s a four stroke. 😛

Not that much longer. About 25seconds but I suppose every second counts.