Hargraves

Welcome ET and good luck with your drifter hunt their great birds. l,m thinking you may be an aussie expat, part quoting as you do one of our much less respected ex leaders. Cheers Hargraves

Hey ibob if you liked "fate is the hunter" try " Sagittarius rising" theirs no bullshit or posturing in this WW1 aviation diary, that he did,nt get to finish himself, but for individual shear guts and dedication as well as the revelation that at least some people involved new how stupid and futile the whole war was you won,t find a better account, official or otherwise. Tallyho hargraves

G,day Alan welcome to the forum, thats a nice bird you,ve got their. I,m just back last week from a darwin holliday and would have liked to see her. Iv,e only just got a storch muster myself in january and what an amazing ole girl she is too and just right for dry flood planes and beaches with the undercarridge design she has eh. I just upgraded the maule solid tailwheell to a phenmatic 9" and what a differance that makes as well. Keep us posted on your adventures up their as i,m very interested in returning to that magnificent country soon. 6

I think i,d have to aggree with you in that regard Oscar. After all statistically they need to be.

Very glad to hear the pilot is only lightly injured. In reference to airframe structural integrity, on the limited available footage of the wreckage their appears to be very little frontal impact force affecting the cockpit space with the engine dissplaced at 90 degrees inverted to the horizontal axis which would indicate a very fortunate completly inverted forward energy dissipated short fall to the ground allowing final impact energy to be dissipated over both the fuselage and the wings, as most all high wing monoplane configerations would do in the same circumstance, and with hopefully the same result for the occupants. A very lucky result for our fellow pilot for certain but nothing that could not be expected in a well designed type airframe, cheers

Now thats a 150 as they should have been all along. very nice sir

Nice alright brett whats the red and silver bird with the heavy duty undercarridge cheers mick

Congatulations Debra. (Now you know why birds sing)

Jabarax maybe eh Geoff ?

Thanks for that Geoff that makes even more sense as well. I don,t think theirs an australian pilot out their that would not want to see the problem finally nailed once and for good for every ones piece of mind,theirs enough to do staying safe as is without any other question marks i think. Re the semi seziure it sounds like a typical cold seizure encountered by very well cooled very high preformance engines but without the afforsaid cooling. As a guess (only) i would look at ring gap settings being not to specs and critically tight as a starting point at least. But just a guess after all. Cheers Hargraves

I,m fairly sure that beauracratic weight restrictions would have been the driving force behind those design decisions and i,m very sure that those restrictions on our fledgling aircraft industry designers have every bit as much cedibility as 300' ceilings and no road overflights in days of yore. Good weather lately up here sir. So i,m going night night To catch some early air in the morning. Cheers again

Your quite right David it is just a simple (old mug storch driver opinion) ONLY, but i have to disagree in that the differance between the two alloys or ferrous casts is that simple. And, to add a little lightness to it, it,s quite possible that the theory behind an aluminium cricket bat is very sound engineering but they did'nt work out in practice due possibly to too much resonance as well. Cheers Hargraves

That is a very interesting piece of engineering development and i do hope its a winner for all jab engine owners. But i still can,t get my head around the point that other certified horizontally opposed aircraft engine manufactures use cast iron air cooled cylinders dispite the obvious weigh penalty incured and continue to manufacture their new engines the same way. It,s easy to have a critique in hindsite and I in no way rubbish all of the work and effort thats been done by jab but i still think liquid cooled alloy cylinders or cast iron aircooled ones would be the final fix of the base design. Cheers Hargraves

Exactly Bruce. The thermal expansion properties of aluminium alloys is and has all ways been vastly greater than steel alloys, and remains the eliphant in the room from the start. At least thats what I was shown during my apprenticeship when building and repairing aluminium and steel warships.

Welcome Peter send some more pics through please love to see new birds comming along with the wheel at the right end. Cheers Mick

Spot on little roo thanks for the book info i just ordered it cheers Hargraves

When the Imperial Japanese Army was "pushing" to Port Moresby they still had plenty of ships and many of their warship classes were superior vessels compaired to the allied ones, most naval engagments with IJN units, except for their carriers, and especially at night, resulted in a japanese victory including after the coral sea battle, until radar was available to the allies. Their destroyers in particular were standouts with enclosed and protected bridges for one thing, while all else were still chewing salt water on weather bridges. That their immediate intension was to neutralise our unsinkable aircraft carrier and not to follow up with an invasion straight after that, has much merit which is vastly due to post campain intelligence that was not available to anyone actually on the front line at the time. So yes, our CMF and AIF soldiers believed they had "no choice but too" fight as hard and tenaciously to the death as they did in many clashes during the kokoda track fighting. Cheers Hargraves

Well done those men ( and gals ) a lovely turnout with good organisation, company and weather great to be their Brett.

When Hargraves was hanging from his tethered box kites in the winds comming off bulli tops at wollongong, without which R&D the wright flyer would not have been possible, I wonder how many people wanted to reduce the risks to a managable level and stop this foolishness then.

If you apply the posts title to encompass all arms and services in all conflicks you would have to augment "dispare" to include "no choice" as well because in many cases throughout history that has been the case. Australian CMF forces in new guinea during the japanese push to port morseby stopped their advance and were the first troops to do so up till that time, I believe because they veiwed it as "no choice but too" because the next target was going to be home. In a similar way our combined intervention in the vietnamese civil war was unsucsessfull due to Gaip,s whatever it takes and however long it takes "no choice" determination to be a soverin country not a colony again. So I think the more spectacular examples of this attitude in the form of one way attack aircraft and vessels largely overshadow and cover up by their nature what in actual fact has been going on all through history.. cheers Hargraves

Hello and welcome sir. love those 500,s just sold mine after 4 years of great flying and ferried here again last wednesday to give her new owner some consolidation practice at childers strip.Though I admitt to beine extremly biased I consider these birds to be the ideal first aircraft for starting pilots when all aspects are considered (pricing factory backup and build quallity) ps the new company is working well to. What caused me to sell her was buying my storch which is an amazing bird its self. Isis club at childers had a great breakfast flyin yesterday with 15 birds of all types attending and great company its a quarterly thing and you should consider comming on down probably as a campover due to the distance as I think their is common ground in relation to bureauracy as well. Regards Mick

Hi people i,m posting this in reverse and looking for an invitation to meet Raa members in and aroud the Darwin area. I,m traveling up their for my first visit in the first week of June for a week via comercial air. Having a lifelong Australian military history interest I would like to get in contact with fellow pilots up their with a view to possibly viewing the same harbour topography and terrain as our current trading partners fathers did, from the air, in their quest for their "greater southeast asian co prosperity sphere" during the second word war. I fly an SS 4 storch muster out of elliot field bundaberg and any interested pilots up their would be great to meet up with you. Regards Hargraves

This guy did this in a backyard worshop with an obviously very limited bugget. And no R&D team to back him up, their appears to be no attempt at pitch or yaw control just " proof of concept " prototype testing. Given that the yanks currently fly front line combat aircraft that are incapable of controled human flight if the computers shut down and have spent billions getting to that stage alone. I think this chap should be comended as an example of what people that actually have spirit and drive can do despite the nasayers