M61A1

46 minutes ago, Downunder said:

I'd be hesitant to drill holes to secure the P clamp without mfg approval personally......

Use two clamps...One shaped to fit the square section and one in the size of the hose, attached to each other.. Common practice. Drilling holes never comes into it.

26 minutes ago, onetrack said:

Silicone rubber hose is superior in every respect over "natural" rubber hose, as regard both low and high temperatures, has higher pressure ratings, is more resistant to UV light, and stays supple for longer.

 

Probably the weakest point of your installation is the cable ties. Make sure the cable ties you use are UV-resistant, and able to cope with the Australian sun. The white nylon ties do not have the UV-resistance of the black nylon ties.

 

https://swiftsupplies.com.au/nylon-uv-resistant-cable-ties-range

Agree....Get rid of the zip ties altogether and use some P clamps. It would make that look way more professional and last for years (and safer). If you get the correct size, they could also be shaped to fit the square section. Reuseable too.

I've been using it for about 450hors and two and a half years without any problems.

Have you looked at adjusting the mic gain on the lightspeed headset? 

12 minutes ago, facthunter said:

What's wrong with the usual anti seize products?  And just tension the plugs properly as other engines recommend? The main thing is to not grab on the aluminium threads and wreck them when you take the plug out. Nev

It's just what Rotax specify....I work on a lot of Euro stuff and every manufacturer of every different component has their own specification for everything from threadlockers to paints and primers. So one aircraft has a heap of different products....something special for most different components, even though it will be the same colour the brand and spec of the paint is different. Sealants that do the same thing are different, and adhesives which do the same thing are different.

It drives you insane have a consumables locker full of stuff that does the same things, but you aren't approved to swap them around.

4 hours ago, pylon500 said:

We're open to ideas to remove plastic from alloy, but often the problem is UV degradation caused, believe it or not, by fluro lighting, which make the plastic brittle and can no longer be peeled off as it just breaks into little pieces.

•Heatguns work to a fashion, but a very narrow temperature is needed between having no effect, to becoming a (hot) sticky goo.

•Thinners and metho do absolutely nothing, except maybe dry the plastic and make it harder.

•Turps will attack the adhesive and will sort of work on very old plastic as it becomes somewhat permeable, but if only 'partially' baked, will only attack the edges.

Going to paint strippers, petrol and the like are not guaranteed, and make an even worse mess sometimes.

I think I remember having some success with 'gunwash' once upon a time...?

 

Meanwhile we're dealing with lots of little fiddly bits;

 

Good old Turco or Ardrox strippers Work well. They have become my go to method. Best done in batches..one small part at a time becomes annoying. 

More P-40 flying.....

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jJZ5x-zUx28

I reckon that big wide track undercarriage might have something to do with that.

This is the sort of damage I found after stripping back the conduit which had no visible damage.

Very similar symptoms....Working just fine the wouldn't start one day. No spark. Changed modules....still no spark.

4 hours ago, dan tonner said:

M61A1  -   one amp; wiggle the wires....got it.

That's 1 ohm (resistance) one other check also would be to put the meter on one of the cables at a time and the the other meter probe on the engine.

That will tell you if they are shorted to the cases.

By "vey low" I mean less than 1 ohm. Also, it changed when wriggling the cables.

22 hours ago, Roundsounds said:

No wonder there are so many accidents involving inadvertent low level stalls.

I'd lay money that it's got more to do with the lack of low level training in the syllabus.

From what I've seen a lot of the low level stall/spins are after an event like an engine fail and being very uncomfortable manoeuvring close to the ground, make serious mistakes.

I may be wrong, as I don't know what other instructors teach these days, but the ones I use insist on competency with slow flight, stalls and recovery, and such.

Do a resistance check on the stator, the two wires that go to the ignition units. I had a similar issue a while back. The flywheel/rotor had bee removed and the stator inspected IAW the SB with no visible damage noted some time prior.

I did all the things you have done and found nothing....until the resistance check, which was very low. I removed the flywheel/rotor and there was no obvious damage, but them I removed the sheath from the two wires to find that both of them were extremely munted up. Once separated the resistance check was normal.

After being quoted a ridiculous price for a new stator, I removed the old one and de-soldered the two damaged wires and soldered in nice new ones with high temp silicone insulation complete with good quality heatshrink and fresh wire braid.

Haven't had a problem with it since.

On 17/11/2020 at 1:38 PM, planet47 said:

Man there is nothing more painful than scraping baked on plastic off aluminium - grrrrh

paint stripper makes it easy.

19 hours ago, APenNameAndThatA said:

The answer is that I'll get more out of it if I think about it before I do it. Also, as far as I know, Foxbat don't have a specified method of spin recovery, so it's going to have to be generic.

I suggest having a read of the POH. Under "EMERGENCIES". You will find a procedure for unintentional spinning there.

Well, if you look on the bright side....If anything goes wrong they are the only casualty.

It makes absolutely no difference to the rest of us.

If that's what they want to do, let them go.

🤣🤣 

50 minutes ago, Rastus said:

Tugmaster

🤣🤣🤣  Well at least someone at the gliding club has a sense of humour

58 minutes ago, SplitS said:

Also R22's use air-cooled engines just saying.

R22s also have a well designed fan forced air cooling system and is unlikely to experience high power followed by shock cooling as they are generally at a high power setting the whole time the machine is airborne, very much unlike the average Lyc powered glider tug that gets many high power then back to zero cycles in a day then self destructs in less than a thousand hours.

5 hours ago, antonts said:

typical behaviour of electrical high-pressure fuel pump without primary (feeding, lowpressure) pump or gravity feed. Dry run kills them very fast, and there is very little sucking if output (high pressure) is full of air. Especially risky if petrol evaporates due to heat, it never pumps out all these air bubbles and sometimes stops even by itself as it creates petrol vapor bubble in sucking line. Many years ago I had it on my truck with homemade injector modification with freestanding petrol pumps under frame, not inside tanks, where they had to create some vacuum to suck petrol. As temperature is above 35 and tanks are close to empty it could stop any moment  and required to drain air from high pressure line, so finally I installed special electrical drain valve there.

 

Yes, there's a reason most vehicle manufacturers put the fuel pump in the tank.

5 hours ago, SplitS said:

South east of Melbourne (I think) Rotax powered coolant leak into cabin crashed into tree's

That one was a Subaru.

One also has to consider whether the engine failed or the installation caused a stoppage.

13 hours ago, JEM said:

iIRC a continual power loss issue ina rotax powered Alpha suspected to be a fuel flow issue turned out to be a blocked muffler

I had that experience...Took me a while to diagnose because it was intermittent and difficult to reproduce the fault on the ground.

1 hour ago, Jabiru7252 said:

I'm not saying the plane has sat dormant and locked away for a year so wasps and demons etc. can invade the plane. I am simply asking if something that was done 5 flying hours ago should be redone. hells bells, it's not rocket science.

Well, If it's your aircraft, do what you like. Just make sure you document that.

You might get away with skipping torque checks (not with a wood prop), but checking and lubricating hinges and pivots, general deterioration and oil changes need close inspection if they've not had much use. There is nothing worse for a machine than infrequent use.

You might also notice that oil/engine manufacturers will specify so many hours or months. Oil oxidises and loses some of it's properties.

16 minutes ago, Jabiru7252 said:

First up, forgive me if this has already been thrashed out somewhere. You do a yearly inspection. In a years time the yearly inspection is due again, however, you have only flown (say) 10 hours. What do YOU do? The entire inspection again, just a cursory check, completely ignore it or what? 

If you've only flown a few hours it probably needs a thorough inspection anyway.

The less it's flown, generally the more there is that is likely to be wrong with it.

The bare minimum is that which is spelled out in the engine and airframe manual. Generally be more thorough if you value your life.

On 19/10/2020 at 2:42 PM, Jim McDowall said:

It seems that Airbus is looking for a new way to crash aircraft. Their track record on complex systems is not great.

That said, interesting concept - maybe I will try it on the Jab!

Actually, their track record is pretty good....I'm pretty sure virtually every A series crash investigation I've read about involved pilots flying a perfectly good aircraft into the ground because they didn't know what they were doing.

A waist-gate.  🤣