kgwilson

I saw the TV report. Bent in the middle but not too bad. Would have been hard on the spine I imagine. The passenger was uninjured according to the report.

Just out of curiosity do any of you 912 drivers do a mag check at idle before shutdown & if so what is the a) idle speed and b) rpm drop? I've done this all my flying career with Lycoming, Continentals & now the Jab 3300. It can identify a faulty plug.

There were no RA rego numbers either before or after the restoration. There are unregistered aircraft all over Australia, some that have never been registered, those that get put in the back of a shed and forgotten about and those including GA that live on farms and have not been inspected or maintained correctly for years. Plenty of these are still flown illegally but never get close to populated areas or aerodromes. The only time we hear of them is if one crashes and the pilot &/or passengers are killed or severely injured. I don't see how that can be a RA issue or even a CAS

How do you know the original owner was approved?

Maybe Boeing didn't use cable ties but they essentially did the same thing by covering up serious flaws when whistleblowers (who were then sacked) laid complaints about component suppliers producing sub standard fuselage ribs. 3 or 4 737s made with these parts fuselages broke into several bits when they crash landed. Deliberate crash landings of earlier aircraft showed the fuselage stayed in 1 piece. This was all detailed in a SBS doco produced back in 2011. Boeing successfully managed to ensure the doco was not shown in the US. All pre the 737 Max debacle.

You don't have to be a structural engineer to make sure you have an airworthy aircraft. You just need an attitude towards the integrity of the build and if you do not have the skills find someone who does and complete a full structural inspection especially where welds and joins are concerned. I am an Engineer and I built my aircraft so know every nut, bolt and rivet. I still got a Lame to look at the build at various stages & of course needed him to check my work when doing the final inspection. We even disagreed on some issues but worked through those till got to a resolution.

Only 5 years behind everyone else but they are just starting the process. How long will it be for any change to see implementation? Based on the RPL which came 10 years after NZ, UK US & Canada & was then a completely different abomination another 5 years would not be out of the question

Windy for some reason is the most accurate Weather app available. It is strange being based on 4 different worldwide systems, the default being ECMWF. BOM is so convoluted and hard to follow and often wrong & NAIPS, well, not worth the effort really but that is what we are supposed to use. As a volunteer with SES I make my predictions mainly based on Windy data which conflict with what the highly paid hierachy say quite often. The last 2 major events that were supposed to happen according to our glorious masters failed to materialise and my (Windy) predictions which I even put in writing t

Low pressure is associated with rising air. Air is always moving from a high pressure area to one of low pressure and accumulating moisture along the way. The Coriolis effect of the earths rotation makes it move in a clockwise direction in the Southern hemisphere gaining speed as it moves towards the centre of the low pressure area. By contrast high pressure is associated with descending air and is dryer moving down and outwards in an anti clockwise direction in the Southern hemisphere towards lower pressure areas. There are lots of very good books on how weather works.

If they made anything simpler they would not be able to justify their large numbers of staff. In the UK CAA surveyed pilots and looked at 45 years of evidence and concluded that the class 2 medical had provided no benefit finding only 4 fatalities that MAY have possibly contributed to the crash but not one of the 4 had any conclusive evidence so it was scrapped in favour of self certification as per RAA. CASA could have done the same but making things simpler is definitely not in their MO. Quite the opposite it seems.

The most expensive and possibly the worst military jet fighter ever to go in to service. More than 10 years later than planned it was obsolete before it even flew with an initial price of over US$200 million. It's performance envelope is poor but according to its exponents it can do everything. The problem is it doesn't do any of them very well. The total development cost over the lifetime of these white elephants is around US$3 trillion.

The loss of aromatics in 98 petrol does not affect the octane rating in under 6 weeks. In fact the Octane rating increases as the aromatics evaporate off in the first 5 weeks. In the BP study they found the RON octane rating went from 98.1 after 1 week to 99.5 after 5 weeks. Vapour lock is usually only an issue at low barometric pressure of 10,000 feet and above and in a high wing with gravity fed and electric pump supplemented fuel supply it is not an issue at all. The issues that you may have with ageing 98 petrol is starting difficulties and detonation with high revving engines

I started my conversion in a Gazelle at Skyfox in Caloundra. Easy as pie to fly. I did 3 hours with an instructor then & another 2 1/2 solo but didn't get round to the flight test. Then I spent 4 years building my plane & had to do the whole lot again in a Jabiru 170 at Coffs. The Jab was not as easy to land but a couple of circuits & I was OK. Then about 3 hours going round in circles & flight test. The whole thing is designed to cost you money for F all. Even after a few years with little flying, it only takes a few circuits to get everything right so it should ju

I've said it before but the main difference between Avgas and Petrol be it 95 or 98 RON is the composition. Avgas is based on paraffin and Petrol based on aromatic hydrocarbons. Aromatics stink and evaporate quickly. Paraffin which is the flammable component of candle wax has a light odour but they have had to add tetraethyl lead which is poisonous to it to get its anti knock (octane) rating to a high enough level to reduce the likelihood of detonation and it is less susceptible to vapor lock at reduced barometric pressure. If you use petrol and fly higher than 10,000 feet you just need a fuel

2 strokes are less reliable, run on fossil fuels, produce more polluting exhaust, are less fuel efficient and noisy. At the small end of the scale for example chainsaws, battery saws are taking over. At our SES unit we just replaced 2 x Stihl 194T Arborist 2 stroke saws with 2 x Stihl MSA 160 battery saws. The battery lasts up to 2 hours, there is virtually no noise and no fumes & no fuel mixing & they don't need to be primed or started (sometimes with difficulty) with a pull cord. They do a superb job. I'd never go back. It is easy to see why battery power is take over from ICE.