sfGnome

But, have you ever been inside one? It makes a Jab feel spacious. Disclaimer: the one I’ve been in was not in a flying state. Still, in my dreams… 😍

Mark, are you talking about factory and amateur built, or only factory? The Sling agent told me that as a home-built, it will be able to be registered as group G despite being limited to 600kg for the factory built (LSA) versions.

Sorry, I think that was a poor paraphrase on my part. I was meaning that the autonomous car is expected to handle any craziness around it without ever resulting in any accidents.

My favourite example of that was the Avro Vulcan (a beautiful looking aircraft). It was designed to fly high and (relatively) slow, on the basis that it was too high to be shot down. Then, not long after it was introduced, Gary Power’s U2 was shot down over the USSR, and the Vulcan became obsolete overnight. The only service it ever saw was one bombing run on the Falklands/Malvinas.

Elon Musk made an interesting comment regarding full automation in motor vehicles. Paraphrasing, he said that getting self drive cars up to the same standard as human drivers was setting the bar very low. Everyone expects other drivers to make mistakes, but fully automated ones are expected to never do so.

Pretty spectacular scenery, but, geez, you wouldn’t want the engine to go quiet on you… 😳

Apologies if this question has already been discussed in the past, but how much do people set aside for painting (both do it yourself or commercially done)? I’m not talking anything fancy; even plain white, no stripes. I noticed on a kit supplier’s page an estimate of USD20k for a plain job in a local car shop. Is that fair dinkum?

Aeropup.com lists Rollo McKinley in Gympie as a distributor. I’m assuming that’s up to date.

I’m confused. The Zenith website gives the MTOW for the 750 (& the 650 for that matter) as 1320lbs (600kg). Is there something that I’m missing.

Along these lines, are there any kits that a) have an mtow that can utilise the newly available weight limits (the beloved hated the limited luggage we could take when travelling under the 600kg regime), and b) are reasonably completely specified (I don’t want to be flying something that is built based on my guesswork). The RV12 satisfies the second point but not the first, while lots of kits (based on questions I see asked) appear to fail the second. Apologies in advance for the possible thread drift, but I’d really appreciate it if you could think of those points when answering the original post. 🙂

I’m amused (call me shallow) by a couple of waypoints near Alamosa - “Bloke” & “Aches”. I can identify with that… 🙄

We had* an iPad mini mounted on a Ram arm mounted in the centre of the panel. It didn’t get any airflow from the side vents and it was under a bubble canopy, but we never had any issues with overheating. * sadly now in the past tense… 😔

I was fortunate to have a good instructor from the beginning. Everything was always calm and well explained (although during one rather tentative landing approach, I will admit that he yelled “will you fly the f***ing plane!” 🙂). It wasn’t until I had to fly with some other instructors (BFRs, hiring at other airstrips, etc) that I discovered just how fortunate I had been. Some people will respond well to the drill sergeant type, others (myself included) won’t. It’s your money and your time. If you’re not comfortable, go find somewhere where you will be.

Awesome!

Couldn’t have been me. I couldn’t afford insurance back then! 😝

I had a battery wire short out to the firewall in a Mini many years ago. The car instantly filled with impenetrable smoke and I bailed quick smart. I’d hate to have that happen at altitude…

I’m not sure about all Tecnams, but my old one had a fully moving stabilator. I expect that a mechanical trim on it would involve a fairly complicated mechanism, so a small motor and a couple of electrical wires seems somewhat simpler. Having said that, we did have a problem where the pot that sensed the trim position got corroded so the indicator became flakey and we had to replace the whole subassembly, so nothing’s perfect. 🤨

Don’t outboard motors rely on the constant intake of water for cooling?

Generally nothing to do with aviation, but that “Smarter every day” channel is worth watching (and they seem to manage to get at least one explosion in most episodes 😛).

Not sure how to practice not panicking. 😛 When I was still learning but up to solo work, I managed to bump the throttle in a bit while landing. Panicked when the aircraft was not stopping, I did what any car driver would do and put my foot on the brake… Immediate left turn and off runway excursion resulted, but thankfully no damage was done. If you’d have asked me what I’d do in that situation, I’m pretty sure that pressing the left rudder pedal would not have been high on my list. 🙄

Took the camera up to the strip today for a bit of a play... No, there aren't any aircraft in this one. I just liked the picture.

Don't have any pretty pictures of my last two flights, so you'll have to put up with a description. Talk about chalk and cheese. First one was supposed to be on Boxing Day from Cessnock to Mt Beauty. Sydney weather beautiful, southern weather not so (wife was driving down the same day and said the rain was so heavy she couldn't see the traffic in front of her on the highway and the lightning was spectacular). Following day, southern weather lovely, Cessnock weather crap. I had two choices; out west and then turn left, or down through Sydney and across past Canberra. Area forecast had high winds and turbulence down the coast, and clear weather out west, so I took the western route. Area had cloud bottoms at 1000', so that should have been OK for the half hour to get out from underneath. Unfortunately, someone forgot to tell the clouds, and I'd barely got to Singleton before they were down to 500. Damn. Back to YCNK. Re-re-check the weather. Area had just done a new update indicating that things would clear in a few hours, so by watching the rain radars and checking with my son back home, I was able to leave and take the Sydney route only an hour and a half later. What a ride. Bumpy as hell under the cloud, but even when I cleared Sydney airspace, it was still too solid to climb through. Just as it was breaking up, I had the Canberra steps coming up, so I still couldn't climb... Finally (finally!), I cleared Canberra and started to climb to clean air, only to find that the cloud bottoms were at 6,500, and the tops were at 8,500. As I was on an 'evens' track, I had to suck it up and go back under the clouds again until I got a clear run for the last 30 miles into Tumut, and thence to YMBT. Stopped at Tumut for a splash of fuel, and demolished a couple of sandwiches; it had been just too rough to eat and fly and it was now mid afternoon. By comparison, I took a mate for a late afternoon mosey around the Victorian alps today and it was smooth and the views spectacular (albeit somewhat hazy) and we were in no hurry to be anywhere or do anything. Just magic, and wouldn't miss it for quids! :)

Sorry to maintain the thread drift, but this reminded me of some that really surprised me recently. My son took a photo of me checking the oil during the preflight, and posted same on facebook. One of the comments (from a paraglider pilot, of all people) was "that can't be good if he's looking under the bonnet!". It had never occurred to me that an onlooker may consider that inspecting the engine would be an indication of something wrong rather than being good practice, but now I explain *why* I'm "looking under the bonnet". Oh, and two other things. If I have someone who's never landed in a light plane before, then long before I get to the airport (generally around the 10 mile inbound call) I talk about how I slow the plane down a lot in the circuit and demonstrate how it doesn't fall out of the sky when the engine goes to idle. Last thing I want is someone getting a sudden shock and reacting badly at circuit height. The other is that I always start my pax briefing with "I'm required by law to tell you that smoking is not permitted in this aircraft, and in the event of an emergency, the exits are there and there". It always seems to relax them and then they listen to the real briefing. :)

Got a happy surprise to see 4669 in amongst the photos. That was the aircraft I learned in. It was converted to Rotax when Paul had something like (I think) 4 engine failures in 2 years. Cost a bomb to do because he had to go the full engineering route to maintain its '24' status. Good to see it again. :)

This dipstick managed to leave our calibrated dipstick on the wing during the preflight yesterday. Sadly an extensive search of the surrounds didn't locate it, so I'm faced with the task of making a new one. To hopefully save me from laborously draining and refilling the tanks, does anyone have a marked dipstick for a Sierra with 100L wing tanks. If so, could you please tell me the measurements of the markings? Thanks!