rgmwa

Would that chuck be at take-off or in the cruise?

I agree. That’s how I understood it. What’s the next question?

Being in good company always makes me feel less of a failure. 🙂

OK, how about this. Since it's a nice day and I'm not in a hurry, have plenty of fuel. and the missus has fallen asleep, just out of curiosity I'll turn 180 deg and backtrack for ten mins, then do another 180 and resume course. If I'm not back at my first turning point after ten minutes, I know the wind has come up and I'm flying into it. Therefore nothing wrong with the aircraft. In that case, I can also time how long it takes me to get back to the starting point, use my map to work out the distance (old school), and figure out the wind speed.

Ground speed less than expected so need to speed up a bit if I want to stick to the plan.

Applying Occam’s Razor leads me to conclude that the simplest explanation is “something’s gone wrong”. However as it’s a minor problem and I know where I am, I’ll just add a few more revs to make up for lost time and enjoy the flight.

Radio a request for an area QNH and check the altimeter setting to see if you're flying at the altitude you think you are.

You are flying lower than the altimeter is reading so your indicated airspeed is higher than than you expect you TAS to be for your planned altitude so you are slower over the ground than you anticipated.

Winds have picked up and you've now got a headwind?

Funny you should say that! When I was about 9 or 10 I’d spend school holidays at a farm owned by family friends in southwestern Victoria. I’d look over the cowyard fence in the early morning as the sun came up and watch the magpies landing in the paddock by the swamp exactly as you describe. I imagined being able to fly like they did. Six decades have passed since those days and I’ve been lucky enough to learn how to fly a plane and also to build one. Since then I’ve done a couple of long trips that have covered a lot of Australia, but I’d still like to cross Bass Strait to Tas one day.

...and me.

I’ve always wondered how engineers on Catalinas tolerated the engine noise when they were stuck up on their elevated perch between the two of them. They’ll must all have gone deaf.

Vans have two RV12 demonstrator aircraft, one with a 912ULS and the other with an iS. They found similar results for fuel consumption to that described in the article.

If the aircraft weighs 600 kg then as a minimum your two wing tie downs would need to take at least 300 kg each to keep it on the ground. I think I read somewhere that tiedowns should be able to take 500kg.

Being tightly strapped in should help to stop you from hitting your head on the canopy or panel, but even with an effective roll bar and a canopy breaker of some sort it won't be easy to get out without help.