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kgwilson

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Everything posted by kgwilson

  1. kgwilson
    Aerodromes can be vey lonely places. Sometime I go up to my hangar on a perfect day for flying. Get some fuel, preflight and takeoff for a great local flight. I hear little on the radio, sometimes just the odd person at a far away CTAF with a 10 mile or joining call & if I'm monitoring centre just one or two RPT or IFR calls. I make a 10 mile and joing call, land and put the plane away. I have lunch and do something around the hangar, then drive home without having spoken to anyone all day. Then on another day there are aircraft and pilots all over the place. Visiting aircraft come and go and the airwaves are full of chatter. That's just the way it is.
  2. kgwilson
    Well that brought all the dinosaurs out. Plenty of opinions but no evidence.
  3. kgwilson
    It doesn't have zero emissions though. Diesels are the worst emitters.
  4. kgwilson
    There are many manufactures working to produce viable elctrically powered aircraft with plenty at the prototype stage and hundreds of battery technologies under development. I just bought an electric car. It is fantastic. Instant torque power, no noise, no vibration, & more high tech functions than I can count. It will be old tech within a few years due to the massive increase in battery and electric motor technology and everything that surrounds that. 7 year unlimited warranty with CATL estimating 1 milliom kM before battery degradation will require a replacement. 1000 kM range and more is already here. Sodium is replacing lithium at 1/3 of the cost with the energy density now rivalling lithium. Internal combustion is on the way out and fossil fuels will run out in 30 years or so. I predict that many of the current electric propotype aircraft will be in full production in 5 to 6 years. Ignore it if you like but it is coming, like it or not.
  5. kgwilson
    You cannot get more energy than you use unless there is some other energy source like gravity or kinetic energy from the mass of the vehicle already in motion. Hybrids generate power to charge their battery but use the energy of the petrol engine to do this. There are huge advances in battery technologies happening right now though most that have huge energy density have problems with longevity. There are many companies working on the issues now. Eventually some of these technologies will enter production. Already sodium batteries are being put in to EVs in China & the cost is about 1/3rd of lithium and an Australian Lithium Sulphur battery promises 500% more energy than existing Lithium ion batteries at half the cost. There are many more.
  6. kgwilson
    The Pipistrel Electro Aero Alpha made quite a splash when it was introduced in 2019 in WA. From memory it has about an hour endurance and the battery can be swapped out in under 15 minutes. Good for initial training and circuits etc. They will have made quite a few improvements by now I'd say
  7. kgwilson
    Ah the secret of perpetual motion. I had a discussion about this with a bloke at the aero club & he couldn't accept that my electric car would not charge as it is being driven. I tried to explain regenerative braking but he thought that it should continue to charge as it was being driven as well. Even after some time the penny failed to drop.
  8. kgwilson
    Polycarbonate is the same. Mr Sheen is a furniture polish & works OK but it isn't anti static and doesn't last long.
  9. kgwilson
    The best window cleaners IMO are just a few drops of dishwashing liquid in warm water, applied with a soft cloth or sponge and squeegeed off well. No streaks or smears. Vuplex is good for anti static and cleaning acrylic, lexan & other plastics.
  10. kgwilson
    I am constantly amazed at many of these oddball one offs etc as to why they were actully built. Many are just butt ugly and that never leads to production and sales. It is that old saying that they only flew because they were so ugly the earth repelled them.
  11. kgwilson
    That is a pretty beefy looking front mounting plate. What does that weigh?
  12. kgwilson
    In this case that is not relevant anyway as the engine has fuel injection
  13. kgwilson
    I think you said this before Nev. A cup of petrol with the right oxygen mix is enough to blow your house up.
  14. kgwilson
    That doesn't fill me with confidence to fly in a SR20. It is like saying "If you can't land this aircraft you can't fly with me".
  15. kgwilson
    Towering CUs (if there were any) are extremely dangerous. Vertical winds of over 200 mph have been recorded in them. If one was entered inadvertently and at the airspeed of a Cirrus it would be at the core very quickly & at that point there is nothing that can be done if it is a powerful system. The system has control and structural failure the likely outcome.
  16. kgwilson
    Veryt sad. Grandfather and 3 grandchildren. Condolences to the family and friends. ADSB data shows a steady climb out with fluctuating speed indicating some turbulence. Based on the photos of impact scene I think it will be very difficult to determine the cause.
  17. kgwilson
    A WORLD FIRST!! That's an indication that CASA has been asleep at the wheel. UK pilots have been able to self declare since April 2016 for any GA aircraft up to 5700kg. Once up to the age of 70 & then once every 3 years after that with no upper age limit. UK CAP 1397.
  18. kgwilson
    I had to look up what a tight end is as it sounds very uncomfortable.
  19. kgwilson
    The term ultralight is not a recognised name anymore. The restriction does not specify that RA registered aircraft are not allowed. I'd like to know what their definition of "ultralight" is. Many RA aircraft have transponders and ADSB in/out and better avionics than many old GA aircraft and almost every modern aircraft from powered parachues and up is far better than old Tiger Moths and Austers.
  20. kgwilson
    You couldn't hide an airtag on a small item like a SE2. At 32mm x 32mm & 8mm thick t's the first thing that would be discarded and left where the SE2 was stolen from.
  21. kgwilson
    The hexadecimal code provided by CASA is linked to the serial number of the SE2 so if the robber tries to use it it can be tracked. They cannot get another code for it and by deleting the code it will not work so it will be completely useless to the robber. You should report it stolen to CASA.
  22. kgwilson
    I still don't know why anyone would turn the radio volume down to do a runup. Even with ANR you will still have some (even if only minor) engine noise and anyway you are looking for RPM drop and if the engine runs rough at runup you will feel this. I'd really like to know the reason for doing it. There are holes beginning to align with decision making and communications but the proverbial straw is the Cessna taxiing across the runway intersection without communicating this intention and the crash happens as a consequence of this.
  23. kgwilson
    There are sometimes comments like the nosewheel is a training wheel etc. I don't know why. As FH says the tailwheel is inherently more directionally unstable on the ground so tailwheelers are good rudder users especially in crosswinds. Then the same can be said for castoring nosewheels. Virtually all commercial and military aircraft are nosewheel types but there is still a lot of tailwheelers in GA and of course they come in to their own in STOL aircraft. Nosewheels are generally the weak point in the undercarriage with wheelbarrow landings causing nosewheel collapses often after a series of porpoises. Horses for courses I reckon and personal preference but one is no better than the other. Once in the air the aircraft fly pretty much the same.
  24. kgwilson
    Only the US & the UK use MPH & a few tiny places like Jersey, Isle of Mann & Guam. The Metric Act of 1866 decalred metrics to be lawful in the US for all business dealings and court proceedings. The US metric association was formed in 1916 dedicated to the adoption of the metric system The US passed a law to voluntarily metricise their measurements in 1975 & in 1988 this was amended to declare the metric system the preferred system for US weights & measures for trade and commerce. Typically some people threw a hissy fit and politicians jumped on the bandwagon declaring metrics to be un-American. They are unlikely to change given the size of their internal market place even though their military uses metric measurements. There is little hope for any place that can elect a President like Trump. Sportpilot is an Australian publication and should have used measurements appropriate to the Audience. The Risen is Italian so all the measurements from them are metric and have to be translated for a US audience, It is only historical that we continue with Knots and feet in Aviation and with imperial measurement due to the source of a lot of hardware. Would you be happy to return to miles, gallons, fahrenheit, fractions, etc? I wouldn't.
  25. kgwilson
    If the article in the latest Sportpilot written by Michael Halloran, the new CEO of Jabiru aircraft is how the future of Jabiru pans out, then the business is in safe hands. Whether Rod and Sue have any shareholding in the company is not stated but Michael has been associated with Jabiru and Rod since the 1990s. There is a photo of him with a Jabiru taken in 1994.
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