sfGnome

Ski thermals (long sleeve and legs) under your normal warm clothes. If you’re lucky, Aldi might be doing a Wednesday special. Uniqlo also do good stuff relatively cheaply. The only down side it that you’ll rapidly overheat if it’s warm on the ground, although then it’s just a matter of removing the outer layers. 

8 hours ago, Blueadventures said:

Gloves were handy in the Queensland winter of 11c

11 degrees? Luxury! We were -2 C on Saturday morning, and that wasn’t abnormal. The heater is being built in from the word go. 🥶

On 22/6/2025 at 10:34 AM, BurnieM said:

What has been other peoples experience of GA schools for RPC/RPL conversion ?

If you do find somewhere in southern (or south of) Sydney, be sure to tell us where. It might be something I look at one of these days.

Is the cooling cap a Sonex thing or a Skippy thing? Where are you picking up the airflow that you’re feeding to it?

Most of the planes I’ve flown have had motorised flaps, but the Jab 55(? - very early model) had the flap handle over your head and I really liked that. Easy to get to and very easy to operate. 

yep. Here’s the rules from the horses mouth.
 

2 hours ago, 440032 said:

A day late and a dollar short, but the rebate has nothing to do with CASA. Not one thing.

Fair enough. I’ve always read about it on the CASA website, but yes, it is some other government department that’s running the show. 

It seems that units that handle both IN and OUT are a rare breed (except possibly when you get to the really high end of the spectrum - a place I don’t inhabit!), so yes, if you want both autopilot and ADSB IN, then the iLevel might be a good choice, but it doesn’t replace your transponder. You still have to get a separate OUT unit. Given that you already have a transponder, you perhaps should just go with a Sky Echo for your ADSB? Alternatively, if you really want to upgrade your transponder, then getting an ADSB OUT equipped one will halve its price courtesy of the rebate. You still have to get an IN device though, which doesn’t attract the rebate (they don’t care if you can’t see others, they just want to make sure that others can see you).

As an aside, doesn’t the iLevel autopilot rely on adding extra trim tabs on the wings? Would that cause problems with your 24 reg? I haven’t looked at the iLevel lately, so perhaps it has changed. 

On 21/5/2025 at 9:47 AM, Bill said:

I was one of six … who enjoyed an 808nm five day trip around NSW (& briefly VIC) last week.

This is bucket-list stuff. One of these days… 🤔

8 minutes ago, skippydiesel said:

The Donald policies

I was just in the process of hitting the buy button for my engine and prop then the Donald pulled his tariff trick. The price went up $3k overnight, so I held off, and thankfully the exchange rate improved and recovered most of that. I’m still many thousands worse off than if I’d bought before his inauguration, but if I could predict the future then I’d be a very rich man…

21 minutes ago, dlegg said:

If all the material costs have gone up roughly 3X then surely the flying planes will have to at least double in value. 

Nup. Their value is only what people will pay for them. The idea that you’re building an asset may not apply any more. I’m resigned to the possibility that I won’t be able to sell it for what it has cost me, but the fun has been well worth it. 

Well, I’m up to about $160k, but my beloved thinks it’s worth it just to stop me moping around the house whinging about having nothing to do. Actually, if it wasn’t so blinking expensive, then I’d aim at doing another when this one is finished. I haven’t had this much fun in years. 

Making the wild assumption that ICP supply the same stick grips for the Savannah as they did for my Ventura, what did you Sav owners do about mounting a PTT switch? The hole in the top is very rough, and about 15mm diameter and straight through, so there is nothing to hold a switch in place. What am I missing?

I’ve flown Ryanair a few times. The photo has a ring of truth… 😛 (but gee it was cheap!)

Do you have a bit of counterweight on the tip (red bag in the 2nd photo) to assist in the balance? Given that I generally work solo, this method is very interesting. I’m not sure how I’d rustle up the 3 helpers that the manual recommends. 

1 hour ago, skippydiesel said:

Why would you have the SK2 OUT capability turned off???

As I understand it, you can’t have the SK2 and the transponder both transmitting ADSB at the same time. One of them has to be disabled, and if your transponder can send SIL>1 and with higher power, then it doesn’t seem to make sense to use the SK2’s output. 

For those of you who have bought a transponder with ADSB out (for the sake of argument, let's say uAvionix tailBeaconX) AND an ADSB IN-capable device (say, a SkyEcho, so you can see other aircraft), were you able to claim both devices from CASA as part of the one installation, or do they classify that as being two devices and not cover one of them? Note that in my example, I've specified the SkyEcho and not a pure IN device like the Ping on the basis that it is OUT-capable even though in this instance it would be turned off.

Or possibly he saw them, but the “I’ve got to get this rented plane back, so I can’t risk getting stuck by stopping” thought process took over. Another form of get-there-itis.

‘Tis a good story, but apparently the graphite off the pencils caused problems with the electronics as it just floated around the cabin. 

Ok, so Boeing, a technology company brought down by having business people in charge instead of engineers, is selling these parts to a company which has business people in charge instead of engineers… 🫤 The blokes who developed OzRunways have done well for themselves (well done and congratulations), but watch it now slowly start to drift. 

On the topic of the phonetic alphabet, I was asked recently to provide a list of the phonetic alphabet for a group of people who were going to be using radios to control a sports event, and I got in trouble from one of the organisers claiming that I’d misspelled ’juliett’. On further investigation, I found that the extra ‘t’ was added so that French-speaking people didn’t pronounce it ‘juli-ay’. 

I did all my training on a Jab 160, and I can still remember the near heart failure when it transitioned from nose pointing up and wings level to nose pointing down and me in total panic. However, I think your instructor is right. Do it enough times that it doesn’t stress you any more because you know you can recover (and then keep practicing it - at altitude - for the rest of your flying life), and then you’ll know to keep away from that speed/attitude/power when you’re near terra firma. 
 

p.s. During my last BFR, I was demonstrating a power-off stall recovery, and, just as it was about to stall, the instructor helpfully(?!) blipped the throttle to add some rotational torque. Now *that* flipped it quick smart and pronto! 🫣

Maybe I have the wrong end of the stick with where this discussion has drifted (ie away from Skippy’s original issue with being charged for overflying), but I can’t see any issue with an airport charging whatever they want for you to use it. If they’re too expensive, then you just don’t use them, like any supplier. That being the case, it’s far better for them to bill you based on ADSB data than on radio calls. No more false identification. No possible charging for Skippy’s overfly. Incontrovertible proof that you did or didn’t use their services. 

21 minutes ago, turboplanner said:

The real question is why are the 9000 others, not saying anything?

Possibly because, to take a current parallel example, orange man tearing everything down isn’t going so well, is it? Revolutions such as you and a few others are proposing generally don’t end well (and the tear-it-up folk were soundly rejected at the last elections, so it seems that your 9000 would prefer stability).

1 minute ago, 3rd harmonic said:

Aggravate, vibrate, tap things

An engineer’s most important tool - aka ‘percussive maintenance’.