sfGnome

Big day! Well done. 👍 

3 hours ago, onetrack said:

the company Wealth Creation, obviously hasn't been paid for a debt owing and due - so, they've used a standard corporate technique by applying for the winding up of the company that owes them money,

Yep. Years ago, while working for a reasonably large company, I hired a contractor to do some work which he didn’t do. When we refused to pay his invoice, he issued a winding up notice on the company. Needless to say, he didn’t get very far… 99% of winding up notices are meaningless. 🙄

Who know what changes CTA access will bring, but for OCTA, group G is the same as group A as far as medical is concerned - just self declared. 

The stall will occur if the actuator can’t reach the limit switch for some reason (eg too much load).

I bought tefzel wire recently from a performance vehicle supplier (Performance Motorsports) on eBay. Cheaper, but no guarantee that suppliers there will have the size/colour/length that you want. 

It amuses me to think of how ‘slapped together’ the final result would be to do it in 400h. No deburring, no corrosion protection, no checking, no good. 🫤

How to get depressed quickly. In the latest Kitplanes magazine annual roundup of kits, the ‘beginner’ build time for a Ventura is listed as 400 hours. I’m up to 380 and I’ve only just started on the fuselage… 🫣

p.s. I’m not really bothered; I just found it amusing. I know I like to take things slowly, but there’s no way a beginner is going to get anywhere near finished in 400 hours!

Is it possible that the POH is in miles per hour, not knots? Regardless, contact the factory directly. They’ll sort it quickly. 

9 hours ago, danny_galaga said:

My plane now has a Permit to Fly Test Certificate 🙂

Congratulations! 

I’ve got a Victa 72V mower and edger. About 5 years old now and going fine. Good wide cut (unlike the 18V Ryobi one my son was given which is absolute rubbish), and much lighter and quieter than my old 4 stroke. However, now that I have 1500 sq m of very fast growing kikuyu to mow, I got an electric Toro ride-on about a year ago. I can’t see me ever going back to petrol. 

First time I had to drive on the ‘wrong’ side of the road, I kept trying to change gears with the door handle. It’s surprising, though, how quickly you switch.

My beloved gets to choose our car colours, and her choice is normally red. However, her current car is white because she hated the ugly dark reds that seem to be the only option these days. Definitely a vote for nice bright fire engine red! 

I used to use the foldable ones (no longer have them, sold with our plane). Never took them up when loaded, but really handy for getting fuel when away from home as they take diddly-squat space in the luggage area when empty. However, do check that you’ve tightened the cap properly before carrying them (full) I someone else’s car! I think my daughter has forgiven me… 🫣

Only time I’ve flown into Milawa (long time ago, so may have changed), I had to get written permission in advance. 

Double post

Frank and Thruster’s posts struck a chord with me, and could possibly be summarised as:

Things that I think will kill me

1. Midair collision 
2. Structural failure 
3. Engine failure

Things that will actually kill me

1. Unintentional stall
2. Flight into cloud
3. Low flight/hooning

Don’t know if this helps (as it refers to a different headset), but my Lightspeed headset has a physical microphone volume preset control built in (somewhere, hidden under a little cover that I could tell you about if I looked up the manual again… 😛)

2 hours ago, Mike Gearon said:

Daughter 2 added a new project a month back.

I can identify. 🫤 Just as I’m really enjoying building (every day!), one son wants me to build an office in his garage (new progeny means he’s running out of room in his quite small house), and daughter wants a fairly complicated new interior for one of her built-in cupboards. Happy to do them, but it’s really hard to get started on them when the shed is calling…

If you’ve watched a kid who’s been struggling to keep up in life suddenly be able to function after starting medication, you may not be so dismissive of either the diagnosis nor the treatment. No, it doesn’t need to be a ‘forever’ drug, nor does it turn her/him into a zombie. If you’ve experienced it, you’ll understand. If you haven’t, then please ignore all the mindless crap you read in the media and socials. 🙂

2 hours ago, KRviator said:

if you're able to accurately describe what you want in the first place.

That’s the trick though. I am (was?) a software engineer, and if the marketing types/customers could actually define what they really wanted instead of complaining when we couldn’t interpret their vague handwaving, then life would’ve been so much easier. However, given that 99% of software engineering comprises just regurgitating, the same patterns over and over, I think AI will do a pretty good job.

I’m staggered that ATC could see it. They aren’t big. I was driving (not flying ☹️) on a fast winding road down on the Monaro (the locality, not the car) and came across an echidna waddling across the road. I pulled over and went back to it, whereupon the idiot marsupial rolled up in a ball right in the middle of the aforementioned thoroughfare. I ended up rolling it gently over to the side with my shoe (thus being missed by a burst of traffic that came through), at which point the animal displayed its supreme intelligence by waddling to a small clump of grass into which it stuck its head. Body completely exposed, but apparently working on the basis that if it couldn’t see me, then I couldn’t see it… 🙄🫣😁

Reminds me of when the (then) new Brisbane airport was nearing completion. They’d installed a newfangled fibre-optic system for all the control/data/speech/etc from the British parent company of the company I worked for, and it didn’t work. Despite us Aussies having nothing to do with the system or its installation, it was cheaper to send me up there than to bring someone out from head office. Thankfully, it was a 5 minute fix (the installation technicians thought they knew better than the engineers who wrote the manual - they didn’t 🙄), but it mean that I spent the next few hours getting a guided tour of the as-yet-unopened airport, including driving at high speed down the middle of the runway which seemed to go forever. For a young bloke who always looked up whenever a plane flew over, it was heaven. 

Looks like a bought one*! 😁

* as the leading hand used to say when I was an apprentice…

The bloke I learned from swore blue blind that Mr Sheen was the go for aircraft windscreens. Used it for years and it seem to work well.

Oh, it gets better. The manual does make a big deal that the 2.5mm rivets that hold the captive nuts in place must be countersunk, but neglects to note that two other nearby rivets also must be. If you haven’t looked many chapters ahead to find what mounts against that area, then you’ll be drilling those rivets out again one day. I caught this one, but how many of those kind of things am I going to miss? Lucky I’m not a fast worker… 😛