old man emu

Some VH- registered aircraft have the capability for the wings to be folded for storage. Take the Comper Swift as an example.

It's a one-man job to unfold the wings and secure them for flight, but how does one comply with the requirement for a dual inspection of flight control systems when they have been separated? Does the same need for a dual inspection arise if, in folding the wings fuel lines have been separated?

Regarding the DH Comet. The impression from the history we are give is that the Comet was the first aircraft with a pressurised cabin. While it is true that it was the first jet-powered commercial aircraft to have a pressurised cabin, the concept had been experimented with, and applied in several cases since the 1920s.

The aircraft that pioneered pressurized cabin systems include:

Packard-Le Père LUSAC-11, (1920, a modified French design, not actually pressurized but with an enclosed, oxygen enriched cockpit)

Engineering Division USD-9A, a modified Airco DH.9A (1921 – the first aircraft to fly with the addition of a pressurized cockpit module)[43]

Junkers Ju 49 (1931 – a German experimental aircraft purpose-built to test the concept of cabin pressurization)

Farman F.1000 (1932 – a French record breaking pressurized cockpit, experimental aircraft)

Chizhevski BOK-1 (1936 – a Russian experimental aircraft)

Lockheed XC-35 (1937 – an American pressurized aircraft. Rather than a pressure capsule enclosing the cockpit, the monocoque fuselage skin was the pressure vessel.)

Renard R.35 (1938 – the first pressurized piston airliner)

Boeing 307 Stratoliner (1938 – the first pressurized airliner to enter commercial service)

Lockheed Constellation (1943 – the first pressurized airliner in wide service)

Avro Tudor (1946 – first British pressurized airliner)

de Havilland Comet (British, Comet 1 1949 – the first jetliner, Comet 4 1958 – resolving the Comet 1 problems).

Those  are commercial aircraft, but there were several military aircraft with pressurised cockpit/cabins. A prime example is the B-29 Superfortress (think Enola Gay). One would have thought that the fatigue problem would have been sorted well before the Comet was designed. Note the rectangular windows on the Boeing Stratoliner

2 hours ago, kgwilson said:

Absolutely the best and least expensive way to fly is to build your own aircraft especially an approved design.

That, of course, would be true for those who could do it, but remember there are more pilot's licences and/or certificates than there are aircraft in the country. The majority of those wishing to be the PIC have to beg, borrow or rent. 

I doubt that anyone here would accept that the aircraft we use should be safe to use, and the others who share the air with us are competent to be there. This topic isn't really about those things. It is not even about the system that is in place to ensure both those things. It is about the pricing of services that seem to be set more under the influence of the ideas of commercial concerns for profit than simply meeting what really are acceptable standards. Standards that the users themselves see as the ways and means to meet the goal of safe participation in an activity.

We don't run a modern organisation with Bob Cratchit's workstation  or typing pools  and store data in a compactus 

Why then must an organisation charge such great amounts when all these things have been replaced by a workstation with a computer accessing a data storage device?

Do you pay as much attention to your car's engine as you do to your aircraft's engine?  Because pilots know that when the engine stops Life gets testing. 

Provided the manufacturer is strict with quality control of everything from the raw materials, through casting and machining, to component assembly a modern ICE with regular attention is hardly likely to have a failure over a long service life. I'll add the rider to that statement by saying anything is possible, but modern metallurgy and manufacturing standards have reduced to probability of a failure to almost insignificant levels, despite how hard the engine is pushed.

Do you really think that manufacturers are telling you the absolute truth when they tell you that their engine produces maximum horsepower at a certain RPM? Just look at WW2 military aero engines, especially for fighters. Pilots were told that maximum power that could be used for takeoff was such and such RPM. But if the need came to get the F out of danger, just crash the gate to get combat power for a maximum of 5 minutes for most engines. Then when you get home, tell your crew chief that he needs to do an engine swap.

Like car engines, aero engines are built for reliability. The aviation workhorse, the Lycoming IO-360, only has a compression ratio of 8.5:1, which is low enough to enable it to use 91/95 avgas. Power is quoted at 180 HP at 2700 RPM.  But the  POH says . Normal cruise is 65-75% power, 2200-2700 RPM (no more than 75%)with 65% as the conservative setting. Operating the engine like that wouldn't raise a sweat in a sauna.

One of my professors once told me that a little bit of data, no matter how doubtful, is better than no data at all.

Before the hoary old chestnut of Jabiru engines comes into this - and I think you should not have excluded them - have all those problems in the early engines been resolved in the newer engines? 

When did this MARAP come in? Was it after RAA became a SAAO? I ask because I can remember replacing props on Jabirus that had become damaged by raindrop strikes and other normal things that wreck wooden props.

5 hours ago, RFguy said:

It would not take much effort to change the organisation if we wanted to by getting active before the AGM.

Its an org elected by members so we can change it if we want to... just takes a little effort.

Methinks you have identified the problem. If I recall, there wasn't a groundswell of activity amongst the members when there was the major change to the the organisation's structure a few years ago.

What is the most important thing about the Bleriot X1 that excited sfGnome so that it became his pin-up? At eight years of age, I doubt if it was the intimate details of the construction and power plant. I bet, that to him, it was simply a thing of beauty.

Henri did not have the materials and the engines that have been developed since his day. The airframe was a box-girder fuselage built from ash with wire cross bracing. What would be wrong with replacing the wood with aluminium tubing? One could always paint the aluminium the colour of ash for a bit of simulation. As for the engine, why revert to one of a primitive level of metallurgy? Since the idea is to be able to get the thing into the air and experience what those early aviators did, what is wrong with using a small engine of modern design? It wouldn't look the same as a 3 cyl Anzani, but once in the air, who could tell?

As for the undercarriage, Bleriot had the wheels mounted in castering trailing arms which could slide up and down steel tubes, the movement being sprung by bungee cords. This simple and ingenious design allowed crosswind landings with less risk of damage. A sprung tailwheel was fitted to the rear fuselage in front of the tailplane, with a similar castering arrangement. Nothing much changed in the materials for that setup.

The hardware to join the bits together hasn't changed much. A bolt is still a bolt. A hinge is still a hinge, as time goes by. You could cover what needs to be covered with Dacron, which is likely to be lighter that the linen he probably used.

Strewth! you might knock so much weight off by using modern materials that it could be Part 103 

Clearly the major problem with ALL heat engines is that of dissipating the heat. Wear/sealing problems are the product of failing to adequately solve the heat dissipation problem. 

The ways that have been tried to deal with this in ICEs have been: moving the cylinders through the air (rotary engine); moving air over stationary cylinders (radial and boxer engines), and thermal transfer using a liquid ("water" cooled).  In each case, weight has to be added to the basic 'cylinder attached to a box containing a shaft' design. 

We know from thermodynamics that a 14.7:1 air/fuel mixture will produce a known amount of heat. The amount of heat is dependent on the quantities of fuel and air that are burnt - using a large diameter cylinder will provide more heat than a smaller diameter one (all other things being equal).

What gets me thinking about heat dissipation in an engine where opposing pistons move towards each other to create a "combustion chamber" is 'how do you get rid of the heat produced in a space buried in the middle of the mass of the engine?'. 

Everything old is new again!

The idea of cylinders being arranged around the crankshaft, with the pistons moving away from the crankshaft, is a design that has dominated automotive, aero and stationary engine design for a century and a half. It has led us to believe that such is the only way to produce reciprocating motion. We are well acquainted with the typical system whereby the piston is connected to the crankshaft by a rod. That connection can be direct as we normally see:

or it can be done with a slotted rod called a Scotch Yoke. Watch the first bit of this video to see how the system works. The op engine seems to use something similar to the design of the machine on the left end of the second row in the picture. The operation of that system is shown at the end of the video.

2 hours ago, facthunter said:

When do you read good soothing news in Newscorpse stuff.  Nev

They can usually get the date right.

37 minutes ago, spenaroo said:

I feel like the "those noisy airplanes" argument is somewhat redundant these days. when was the last time you were in a building and heard an aircraft overhead that wasn't a low level police helicopter? jets are getting quieter all the time, not louder

Well said, that man!

I said that I thought the report in the Media would be another sensationalist beat-up. Just wait until the penny drops with these scaremongers. The next series of headlines will drag out that hoary old chestnut of a verb, "plummet", as they start to describe house prices to the north of the airport. And we all know that property prices to a Sydneysider are as footy is to a Melbournian. 

7 minutes ago, skippydiesel said:

Is it my poor understanding/imagination that  the aircraft departing to the NE will be taking noise abatement tracks whereas those departing to the SW will not.

It is an annoyance that those diagrams don't come with a scale. It seems to me that the Media has once again made a mountain out of a molehill regarding these noisy aeroplanes. I haven't seen anything about the climb/descent gradients of the aircraft associated with the airport, and how far from the airport a 2000 ft lower limit would intersect with the gradients.

While it is true that the predominant wind is the WSW, and is why the runway alignment is 05/23, you have to consider the summer afternoon nor'easter from about 3:00 pm, which would suggest the use of the 05 runway.  But would the velocity of that wind, which is not really a roaring gale, prevent heavy aircraft from conducting downwind landings and takeoffs on Rwy 23?

As a pilot flying at night, would you rather approach a runway flying towards the dark with the bright lights of the city behind you, of from the dark towards the lights?

That's true, but what does the student learn during that transit flight? 

Let's say that it's 20 Nm from Bankstown to the training area. At 100 kts, that's 12 minutes out and 12 minutes back. 24 minutes in transit, plus let's say 6 minutes for take off and landing at Bankstown. That's half of the usual one hour lesson time. I'll admit that the student would be practising straying & level and course holding, as well as discussing the proposed training exercise and debriefing during that time. You also have to take into account the fact that most early flight training is done in the circuit as during one's early learning, landing in the various wind conditions is something to be focussed on. 

18 hours ago, facthunter said:

Wouldn't be much harder to build the real thing. I've always wanted a Bleriot Xl.  Nev

You won't be able to do it under Part 103 because the Bleriot XI had an Empty weight of 230 kg (507 lb) and would a wing loading of 3.38 lbs/sq ft meet Part 10 requirements?

Nancy Bird Walton Airport  is located near Luddenham, near the A9 sign. Due to the massive amount of residential development to the east of the A9 from Luddenham to Narellan, training is not possible east of the A9. In the past the airspace over the current site of the airport was the main training area used by schools from both Bankstown and Hoxton Park. The area was agricultural land and provided many locations for simulating precautionary search and forced landing practice.

Currently, the most residentially unoccupied space in the southwest is within this area:

This is too far to be economically viable for training operations out of Bankstown. It is 20 Nm from Bankstown to the area between Orangeville and Camden.

Today that released the noise patterns expected from operations at Nancy Bird Walton Airport. The diagram gives a fair indication of airspace restrictions associated with it.

It would seem likely that the airspace available for training will be restricted to that area bounded by a line Camden to Theresa Park, then southwest from Theresa Park, parallel to the 05 runway of the international airport. So long, Bankstown as a training airport.

4 minutes ago, turboplanner said:

We've been through this before; if in that process you injure or kill someone else

So we have, but jackc is referring to the pilot of a single-seater becoming a lawn dart without injury to any other person.

If the Transition level was FL115, the area QNH could be as low as 997 hPa, in Australia the weather on the ground would be pretty nasty. Think of the August winds.

The transition altitude (TA) is the altitude above sea level at which aircraft change from the use of local barometer derived altitudes to the use of settings based on 1013.5 hPa. When operating at or below the TA, aircraft altimeters are usually set to  (QNH) Above the TA, the aircraft altimeter pressure setting is normally adjusted to the standard pressure setting of 1013.25 hectopascals. The transition layer is the airspace between the transition altitude and the transition level. According to these definitions the transition layer is 0–500 feet  thick.

Looking at things from above the transition altitude, an aircraft flying at the 'transition level', in this example FL115, would not have adequate separation from traffic flying on QNH at the transition altitude. Instead, the lowest usable "'flight level'" is the transition level plus 500 ft.

Consider the TA to be a line in the sky. Below it, QHN prevails. Above it 1013.25 prevails. The connection between "transition altitude" (TA), "transition layer" (TLYR), and "transition level" (TL) is

TL = TA + TLYR

7 minutes ago, facthunter said:

In some' delightful"  places suicide is illegal. Perhaps they could make it a capital offence?  Nev

It used to be an offence, making attempts at suicide an offence as well.

2 minutes ago, jackc said:

And if you kill yourself on your own property,  by your own behaviour  posing no risk to anyone else.  Its death by misadventure?

Assuming that we are talking about a happy chappy who dies a result of an impact, and investigations fail to indicate suicidal tendencies, then yes, the Coroner will mark it as "Death by Misadventure".

The problem is determining a person's state of mind at any time. I was involved in a fatal involving an ultralight (something like a Thruster of a Drifter (doesn't matter). Background investigations into the deceased raised the question of whether the reason for the flight was suicide. That question could not be given a firm answer, so the Death by Misadventure was probably the Coroner's conclusion. (Not to be confused with coronary occlusion, which is often a Coroner's conclusion.)

2 hours ago, aro said:

where do adventure flights fit in the freedom vs regulation range?

One could say that the ultimate adventure flight is a parachute jump.  One would expect, given the inherent danger that the adventurist is facing that the regulations relating to commercial tandem jumps would be pretty complex.  However, do those regulations prevent a person doing a solo jump? Look at the numbers who jump from cliffs with the intention of conducting a parachute-assisted flight. I dare say that no pilot associated with parachuting would countenance taking up someone who could not show proof of training. That's the pilot's bit of the Duty of Care saga.

I know that Air Combat which does jet flights in L38s conducts a thorough pre-flight briefing before putting a customer in the plane.

10 hours ago, BrendAn said:

australia with the nanny state attitude here

The crux of the argument going on here is "where does Nanny step in?". Those seeking the introduction of something similar to Part 103 say that a person has the right to self-determination in all aspects. Those who oppose that view say that a person has a duty of care to others, so Nanny should step in.

I think both are equally correct, and Part 103 shows this. Part 103 basically says that a person can get themself into the air in any sort of powered, heavier than air machine. That takes care of self-determination. Part 103 then becomes Nanny and sets some limits which go towards protecting other people nearby, but which don't prohibit the person from getting into the air. Those limits also have the advantage of offering a modicum of protection to the person engaging in the activity.

It's like Nanny saying, 'You can climb the apple tree to pick some fruit, but don't drop any on the kids below, and don't climb too far out on a limb."

It it unfortunate that in this country we have a Nanny who has never experienced climbing an apple tree and refuses to listen to those who have.

2 hours ago, jackc said:

you can drive legally without a licence on your OWN property, just like you should be able to fly your plane…..

Me thinks that there is a great deal of that going on. 

Whatever happened to the gyrocopter craze of a few years ago when property owners were using basic gyrocopters when doing the basc stock, fences, water inspections over bit acreages?

There's always three sides to a story, his version, the other bloke's version, and the truth.