old man emu

I'm trying to build a scale model, so what I need is something that replicates the appearance of the engine. You can't 3D print anything that you don't have in a 3D digital file format. Also my 3D printer is in an packed box somewhere amongst the crockery, linen and old vinyl records.

I'm hoping to build a static 1/3 scale Comper Swift for the Artur Butler Museum. I'm hoping to get the plans, and I can make everything except the engine. 

I was wondering if anyone would like to donate their time to the Museum to make one. 

6 hours ago, IBob said:

One wonders just what it is OME is needin' to say to them up there............😬

It's for ground marshalling at Tooraweenah when we have a chez nous and lots of our neighbours fly in from all over the place. We'll need one for the 12/13 November 2022 because we are having a celebration of Arthur Butler's arrival in Tooraweenah to seek the hand in marriage of a fair damsel. He had to set an England-Australia solo flight record to do it.

Looks like the -15 has now been replaced by the -16. Thanks for the advice. I'll chase a -16.

I'm looking to buy a hand held transceiver radio for communication between ground and aircraft within about 10 nm of the ground location. The radio only needs to be able to send and receive. It doesn't need all the bells and whistles like GPS and navigation assistance. Obviously it will be used in Australia, so needs to comply with Australian telecommunications rules. 

Your advice on a suitable, low cost unit would be appreciated.

The lawyers have killed my idea of getting fuel supplies. 

Basically, if you called ahead to me and asked me to get you some fuel from town and bring it out to you, I could not guarantee the purity of the fuel. If you put it in your aircraft and later crashed as a result of fuel induced engine failure, you or your family would be after someone to blame, and guess who would be in the lawyers' sights? 

23 hours ago, Thruster88 said:

OME, the ERSA shows Gilgandra council as the operator, has this recently changed? 

The ERSA is correct, but trying to arrange anything through Council would be a waste of time. That's why the locals are working to see if they can gain some responsibility for it. That result could be a while coming, or Council could see it as a way to reduce its costs.

23 hours ago, Yarraroo2 said:

A landing area with easy access to 95 Mogas  would definitely be on my list of landing locations, particularly if also close to food and accommodation.

The provision of food and accommodation are lesser problems than getting mogas. But since the airport is not being run with all eyes on the bottom line, I think that procedures will be developed to ensure that mogas would be on hand when needed. 

Runway condition report - Monday 16/5/22

The runway was inspected on Monday and found to be in good operational condition. 

The runway was constructed to handle regular public transport aircraft. A Dragon Rapide and two de Havilland Heron Mk Is (VH-AHB and VH-ARB) took passengers from, e.g. Coonamble to Tooraweenah, where they transferred to a DC-3 for the rest of the journey to Sydney. It has been constructed so that no water courses flow across or along the surface, and rain falling on the strip itself rapidly drains away. 

Tooraweenah will be an unlit airport, so 24/7 doesn't occur. More like sunrise to sunset, or 8:00 to sunset. The idea is to draw aircraft to the town to boost tourism. Since it's a private airport,  any landing fee might amount to a simple reliance of pilot's good nature and appreciation for having somewhere to stop on a long trip. 

As for mogas, I suppose that it could be available with prior notification. If you don't ask you don't get, and a pilot would know pretty accurately how much would be required upon reaching Toora.

How attractive does an airport become if fuel is available 24/7, even if you have to do your own fuelling?

The locals at Tooraweenah, NSW are looking to revitalise the privately owned grassed 3,800 foot long strip with a view to incorporating its use into tourism development in the local area, which includes the  Warrumbungle Mountains. They figure that a strip without fuel is like a fish without a bicycle. The owner of the strip also wants to develop a museum to tell the story of one of Australia's commercial aviation pioneers - Arthur Butler. The hope is that the museum will be a place for aviation-minded people to visit.

Here's how to make the hub plate. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tqas0oyUI5U

Keep in mind that this bloke is simply making something to hang on his wall as a talking point. However, every step he took would be taken by someone making a prop for an aircraft. 

On 03/08/2021 at 8:10 AM, Bruce Tuncks said:

I also reckon that the glued laminations could be more refined to cut down on the removal volume.

Obviously you would trim the width of the boards to suit before gluing them up. The biggest cost would be buying all the clamps needed to ensure good adhesion between boards. I notice that he is using a PVA glue (Titebond), which is OK for his need, but if I was doing it for aircraft use I'd use an aliphatic glue like Sika Techgrip. 

Here's a good, detailed article on DIY props http://acversailles.free.fr/documentation/08~Documentation_Generale_M_Suire/Helice/Construction/Design_and_build_your_own_propeller.pdf

6 minutes ago, jackc said:

Now, those sand hills are flatter than a Woolies car park 😞

I'm not a member of the First People Gweagal clan, which inhabited the Kurnell area, I am of that country spiritually as I was conceived and grew up there. It breaks my heart to see that those massive sand hills are laid flat, and covered with tar and cement. This song expresses how I feel 

8 hours ago, onetrack said:

The only problem is - they're storing it underground (in salt caverns) in the U.S. - because we don't have any major storage capacity here.

And the US descends into anarchy and we lose the oil we paid for. 

Whose fault is it that we don't have the petroleum resources? Well, little Johnny Howard sold off our natural gas at 5 cents per litre. The international oil companies in the 1950s/60s failed to foresee the growth in the use of motor vehicles in Australia, so failed to develop refining capability. And finally, the NIMBYs then the Greenies whinged and moaned about having industrial plants within cooee of their dung heaps.

I remember when the Caltex oil refinery and storage facility was built at Kurnell on Botany Bay, my father saying that if it caught fire it would be like an atomic bomb. We lived 5 kms from it across Botany Bay. That was in the 60s, and he had seen oil storage facilities blown up during WWII, and then the atomic bomb tests, so they were his points of reference for that statement.

Wait until the USA collapses into civil war due to its racist culture. Every other country will have learned from the USA's interventionist mistakes and will sit back and watch to slaughter. The only reason that the British stuck their noses into the US Civil War was because the British cotton millers wanted the South's cotton which the North was blockading.

Fortunately, despite being thrown out of work through the lack of supply of raw cotton, Britain's mill workers declared themselves on the side of the North and anti-slavery. Workers condemned British “capitalists and journalists” for their support for the Southern states. The British bourgeoisie distrusted “Yankee democracy” and sought to preserve their profitable trading relationship with the South. https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2015/01/05/linc-j05.html

3 hours ago, willedoo said:

If we focused on one thing, ie: defending the country, then we would have a chance of doing something right and building a decent defence system.

Like Charity, Defence begins at home. We relied on Britain to defend us from Japan, but when the need arose, Britain was unable to meet the call due to its own home defence needs. 

If the whizz-bangery of Cyber warfare can knock out our infrastructure's control mechanisms with a click of a mouse key, then we should look at basic weaponry. It works in Afghanistan and any other number of economically restricted countries. 

We might live to see the USA suffer the same meltdown that happened to the USSR. Who says that Russia is a powerful military threat? Perhaps since the dissolution, the philosophy has changed to one of providing social benefits to its people through the ancient means of trade. All we hear of life in the former USSR is American propaganda aimed at propping up the US military-industrial complex. 

2 hours ago, danny_galaga said:

Harley make electric bikes

Harley stopped making decent bikes in 1969. 

A 1968 Harley   A 1946 Harley   A 1946 BSA 500 

The use of electricity as a power source for aircraft it totally dependent on the weight: storage capacity, and the recharge time: storage capacity. I'm sure that world-wide there is a massive amount of time being put into solving the weight: storage capacity conundrum.

One point in relation to the motors is their design - inrunner or outrunner. 

Brushless Outrunner:  

The brushless outrunner motor has the output shaft, connected to a propeller in this case attached to the case of the motor.  The motor shaft when spun would spins the outer motor case. The permanent magnets on the outrunner are placed on the rotor and the rotor spins on the outside case. On the inside of the motor are the stator windings which do not rotate, they are fixed in position.

Brushless Inrunner:

On the inrunner motor, you essentially have the complete opposite. On the outer side of the motor is the case. The case in this situation does not rotate and is fixed. The stator windings are placed on the inside face of the case. When you spin the motor shaft of an inrunner, you are spinning the rotor which also contains the permanent magnets much like the outrunner. The difference of course being that they are now at the centre of the motor.

What we want from any motor or engine is Torque. For an aircraft, the torque is applied to the propeller.  The brushless outrunner motor will generate more torque as a general comparison against an inrunner motor. The relationship ties in with the fact that outrunners do have a lower RPM per volt. The relationship with Kv and torque are inversely proportional. As RPM per volt (Kv) increases, torque of the motor decreases.

SOURCE: https://www.radiocontrolinfo.com/brushless-inrunner-vs-outrunner-motor/#:~:text=Generally speaking brushless outrunner motors,and typically larger in length.

10 hours ago, APenNameAndThatA said:

The correct bits, the last two paragraphs, come from Wikipedia. 

Next time I'll post references to the sources.

1 hour ago, kgwilson said:

Ground effect affects high wings far less

There's not a lot of difference in distance between the bottom of a Jabiru wing and the bottom of a Moran Sierra wing. However, it is not how close your bum is to the the ground that brings you into ground effect.

 When an aircraft flies at or below approximately half the length of the aircraft's wingspan above the ground or water there occurs an often-noticeable ground effect. Ground effect is the reduced aerodynamic drag that an aircraft's wings generate when they are close to a fixed surface The result is lower induced drag on the aircraft. This is caused primarily by the ground or water obstructing the creation of wingtip vortices and interrupting downwash behind the wing. 

A wing deflects the oncoming airmass (relative wind) downward. The deflected or "turned" flow of air creates a resultant force on the wing in the opposite direction (Newton's 3rd law). The resultant force is identified as lift. Flying close to a surface increases air pressure on the lower wing surface, and thereby improves the aircraft lift ratio because the deflection of the air mass increases the density of the air local to the wind - like a hovercraft. If the angle of attack and airspeed remain constant, an increase in the lift coefficient ensues, which accounts for the "floating" effect. Ground effect also alters thrust versus velocity, where reduced induced drag requires less thrust in order to maintain the same velocity.

49 minutes ago, Roscoe said:

i asked  was if a LAME had to be an RAA member to act as an L2

If you go back the very beginning to the bit about RAAus being the administrator of all things to do with maintenance, then the RAAus has the call on who can maintain an aircraft under the RAAus umbrella. The tech manual says that a person carrying out maintenance has to have approval to carry out maintenance at the level they wish to be. It also says that to be approved at L2 by RAAus a person needs to be a member of RAAus as approval to carrying out maintenance at an L2 level is a benefit of membership. 

Those LAMEs who decide for whatever reason to regularly maintain aircraft under the administration of the RAAus will become non-flying members. The cost of that membership (~$120) is insignificant if there is a good flow of work from operators of RAAus administered aircraft.

6 hours ago, cscotthendry said:

I post this every time someone has radio interference issues so here goes again.

I think someone has dropped himself in!

It hurts more when the victim is more than "an 18-year-old man" in the media report, but is "my friend ..."

Seems that what is needed is someone with the training and experience to write up an explanation of possible sources of radio interferences and the methods one could use to eliminate interference. 

2 hours ago, skippydiesel said:

True! there may be a little more required but its an idea.

Don't you know that it is unacceptable on this forum simply to state an idea? You must lay out the whole project, Chapter and Verse, with full technical, economic, environmental impact and indigenous involvement reports? 

10 hours ago, Bruce Tuncks said:

it was the nitrate-doped linen which was the worst culprit.

During the documentary they hit aluminised doped fabric with a spark. It did catch fire, but the burning was slow, much like the amount of burning you'd get from an ember dropped on a carpet. It is true that a mixture of aluminium powered, cotton fabric and dope could be explosive, but only if all the ingredients were powdered so that there was a massive surface area for combustion to occur over. 

When you add aluminium powder to dope and apply it to fabric, the dope will react with the fabric, but the aluminium is locked in the mixture with the dope. The air can't get into the mixture quickly enough to have it combust (explode) instantaneously. Think what happens if you leave a snag on the barbie. The outside will burn to charcoal, but if you cut that away the filling is still edible.