sain

There are some other not quite so cool apps you can use. Check out OruxMaps, or OziExplorer for android.

Well, don't forget they need to pay their accoutant to figure out how not to pay tax on it.. and the IT guy to make sure the system that sends out the bills doesn't get to hot. Joking aside though my understanding is that a lot of the renewable energy sources can cause problems for the electricity producers. The grid has to take what energy they are pouring out, and because they are so variable (cloud band moving across sydney, fluctuating wind conditions etc) it can cause problems as only certain types of power plants (hyrdo and gas) can spin up quickly enough to cope with the changing conditions. As all the power plants sell their electricity into a wholesale market, the electricity suppliers may find they have to pay through the nose in order to make up shortfalls. But yeah, more than triple sucks, especially as you have to pay for the privilege of being connected.

*snip* Edit: decided I wasn't contributing anything useful. Get some solar panels and some batteries and disconnect from the grid. Then grin everytime somebody complains about their $1000+ electricity bill for the quarter. spend the money you save on avgas and have a great time flying.

The thing I find deeply sad are the signs up at Sydney airport warning people not to make jokes about airport security. From memory it even says something stupid like "its illegal". It'd be fascinating to see them attempt to prosecute it There are reasons why they do most of the stuff.. the laptop take apart thing came about origionally because of explosives being packed into one. Eventually they wound that back to take it out of the bag (so they can tell that the "internal" bits they are seeing arn't just copper/lead foil in the bag). These days the scanners are high enough resolution that they can determine that anyway. *shrug* who knows why they are still doing it.

sorry to hear about your hummelbird experience. I was intending to build one myself in a couple of years time, but I'm not that keen if they prove difficult to talk to. Make sure you get a refund from them.

I've had a bit of an issue with mine. In the plane I normally fly I get a lot of noise coming through from the intercom (impossible to squealch out) when I've got the recreational flying headset plugged in and a different headset is plugged into the other jacks. It makes it pretty much impossible for the passenger to be plugged into the intercom because you can't hear the radio when they are. My David Clark DC-10s are fine in the same aircraft. Apart from that issue they are a good headset. excellent noise cancellation etc. Good to take if your going solo.

actually with the ultracruiser, and all the hummelbirds except the ca-2, are typically configured with a closed canopy. They can be operated with an open canopy though.

Oh, I forgot to mentiont that the reason why Hornets, CH701s and Savannahs are all only-their-owner-could-love-them ugly is because they are built to be draggy as all hell so they'll slow down fast. This allows them a steeper approach angle and shorter run-out on landing. If your just after Short Take Off performance you can do away with a lot of that and go for a lower drag fuselage. Take a look at some of the really small single seat low wing aircraft (hummelbird, CriCri etc etc). Take off distance can be suprisingly short, given they are not designed specifically for it. Cruise speed is pretty decent on those as well. Its amazing how fast you can get off the deck with a decent power-to-weight ratio.

rather than stuffing about with the wing, why not use a in-flight adjustable prop? You could also look at using devices that improve your wing's performance near the stall, such as leading edge slats and vortex generators. Both have a slight negative impact on cruise speed, but can (if done correctly) significantly reduce stall speed and low end performance. To reduce the cruise speed impact there are devices that allow you to extend and retract the leading edge slats. Wouldn't be hard to do the same for vortex generators, although probably not worth the effort. Pegastol used to make retractable leading edge wings for the CH701, but I think they went out of business.

Zenith CH701 on floats. Probably the Savannah's too...

Personally I found the claims that the neighbours wouldnt be bothered because we'd all be flying electric planes more than a little ridiculous. Robs the cause of its credibility old chap.

at least you let the rest of us know....

Damn, I missed that one. Another episode well worth watching (if you can find it) is the Centenary of Flight Special. They had 3 teams (UK, France, US) competing to build and fly early model planes. The Bellario the french team built was a work of art.

We had a thread about this a couple of years ago. To prepare yourself for a male inflight #1 emergency get a bottle of fabric softener. remove the easy pour spout thingy and the fabric softner you should have a bottle with a nice wide neck thats uh.. "easy to get in and out of". Reasonable capacity too. If fabric softner bottles arn't made that way where you are then you need to chat up a friendly nurse at your local hospital and get one of the ones they give to male patients. Please note the additional hazard of getting you in trouble with your significant other and take appropriate steps. For #2 emergencys buy yourself a pair of brown trousers. For the female pilots I believe devices are available, but I'm sure it wouldn't be comfortable putting them on and doing your business in turblence. And as a final alternative, get yourself a telescoping fishing rod and a pair of hip/chest high (dependant on needed capacity) fishing waders. The fishing rod is just a disguise, so its important to actually research local fishing spots at your destination, so when somebody asks where your going fishing you can give a halfway intelligent answer. Of course that final alternative may make you look like a bit of a goose at some landing sites. "What, Lake Gairdner doesn't have any water????" *edit* now I feel like a goose, Lake Gairdner does have water - but apparantly Dry Lakes Racers Australia hold their speed week there. That'll learn me to research stuff properly.

looks like it. Have a look at the manual for the Vertex VXA-150 (available on the Yaesu site here). The circuit in that that include an external ptt include the resistor (see pg 30). All you really need to do is solder the resistor onto one leg of the switch, then the wire for that leg to the other end of the resistor. You can get 8 of the resistors from jaycar (here) for about 46 cents.

what radio is it? that may help us somewhat.

$100/hr is well within the reach of a reasonably skilled IT contractor. Your not going to get a lot for your $10k.

Thanks turbo, well aware of that (well, not that getting lost is an offence, that was news to me. I thought getting lost could be an offence depending on where you strayed into). I also wouldn't be keen if the gps was the sole source for the nav... most people don't seem to do that however.

I'm curious about the wont fly with anybody who uses a GPS for VFR comment (and likes). Any particular reason for this? The way I use the GPS it just makes life a little easier. If it fails you just keep on doing what your doing with the map, compass, whizzy wheel (e6b), watch etc. You'll still have everything marked on your flight plan, including updated ETA etc. Whats the difference if the GPS is there or not? For example on the flight I did on the weekend my GPS crashed and shutdown (I was testing new software on it). Getting it going again would have been a minor irritant and distracting while I'm flying, so I didn't bother and kept going using the manual methods.

Hi Solomon, shall do on the books. I'll set something up with Ian or Motz so you don't need to give your address out. There is a stack of good building information available on the web fortunately. Check out the forums over at http://www.homebuiltairplanes.com/forums/forum.php, but I'd suggest lurking for a while to get a feel for the place before posting. If you've got the internet bandwidth to cope with the videos then the eaa hints for homebuilders channel is well worth a look: http://www.eaavideo.org/channel.aspx?ch=ch_hints Good luck with it all.

Hi Solomon, I like the concept of your aircraft, but as the others have mentioned it looks really closely coupled to me. You'll need to build yourself at least one other wing to do the load testing on. I've never done it personally, but most of the photos I've seen of the process end up testing a number of loads (i.e flight loads @ 1G, 3G, 6G), and then continuing until failure. There are some nice pictures of the Xenox undergoing its stress testing here: http://www.sonexaircraft.com/aircraft/xenosdev/xenosarchive3.html I'm also curious what aircraft design and/or engineering books you've got access to? I'd like to send you a copy of a couple of the books, but I want to make sure you havn't already got them. I was thinking of sending Raymer's Simplified Aircraft design for homebuilders and his Aircraft Design: A conceptual approach. Anybody else got any suggestions for good books?

Apparantly its still visible if you approach from the SE (I think). I wonder if the Marree community will organise somebody to redo it. You should do it Alan... it'll raise the profile of flying cows everywhere.

Congratulations Jake, excellent stuff.

Sweet - thanks guys

stop feeding the troll guys.