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dutchroll

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Everything posted by dutchroll

  1. dutchroll
    Imagine a world where the possession or non-possession of various forms of weaponry by rebels, separatist groups, and rogue states as claimed by western military officials was always accurate! I can only dream of what such a world would be like!
  2. dutchroll
    By airworthy WW2 fighter standards, P-51s are a dime a dozen and rather commonplace.
  3. dutchroll
    I think he was joking (given the title of the thread). Or at least I hope......
  4. dutchroll
    Depends what you're flying! I have to take that cassette out and tuck it safely out of sight & mind in the bottom drawer when I go to work! ;)
  5. dutchroll
    While being based at Cessnock, I was offered a hangar spot at Warnervale not long ago which I rejected. The hangar was nowhere near as good as the one I'm in. I did a tour of the airstrip and never realised the unsealed taxiway was gravel, which is just a recipe for multiple propeller repairs on my "low clearance" plane, and although I knew the runway was narrow, I never quite imagined it being that narrow! If Wyong Council honestly cared about improving the airport, they'd seal the taxiway properly, and widen the runway properly while they lengthened it. Then you had the recent legal threats to boot all the club aircraft out, and various other politics. I can do without that crap. Then the Council charges (which make Cessnock Council look generous, which they're not!). Honestly, I'd rather drive the extra 45 minutes. I believe Wyong Council would love nothing more than to subdivide the airport and sell the land under industrial zoning. In the meantime they have nothing to lose by fleecing users for whatever they can get.
  6. dutchroll
    Yeah it certainly is worthwhile. Loss of control situations are very intimidating especially to low-experience pilots (heck even to high-experience ones!). A picture or video is worth a thousand words and shows that these situations can almost always be recovered, with the correct recognition and technique, and sufficient space between you and the ground. Very many fatals involve missing one of these 3 essential ingredients.
  7. dutchroll
    Not sure which forum to put this in (Mr Admin can change it if he wants). I did this video a few days ago for the educational benefit and info of others generally, as well as to de-mystify the apparently scary reputation of this Experimental plane. I show a "standard" spin recovery from 2 different angles, followed by a "Beggs-Mueller" ("hands-off") spin recovery from the same angles, and also in slow-mo so people can see the sequence of events. Why spin recovery in a RA forum? Well just to show how it's done, what happens, and for general interest. At the end is just a circuit, demo'ing landing a taildragger which you can't see out the front of! I'm hoping for my next one to be inverted spin recovery, with audio commentary as I go (audio recording was attempted but failed on this flight including the stalling vid I posted earlier in another section, which turned out to be "pilot error". It is now resolved!)
  8. dutchroll
    Yeah everyone is pretty much on the right track here. The pitch attitude shown by the camera relative to the horizon is not necessarily indicative of the angle of attack. Also wing incidence is a factor, and the attitude required for level flight also varies according to a number of factors. As a matter of interest, the upper and lower wings also interact in their production of lift by virtue of their proximity to each other. Curtis Pitts designed his biplane aerofoils so the upper wing stalls before the lower one and creates a pitch down moment before both wings can stall.
  9. dutchroll
    Thought I'd put this up on the off chance anyone was interested. This shows an extended stalling sequence I did 2 days ago for the benefit of demonstrating controllability and recovery (particularly related to the Model 12 but it could equally apply to many aircraft). Yeah my lips are moving - I had intended to provide a running commentary counting off speeds, altitudes, inputs etc, but my brand new intercom-iphone connector failed to record anything but a blank audio file. Some troubleshooting is required! Stall is conventional with buffet onset immediately before, then a small pitch down. Full backstick was held until recovery some time later. A couple of small banks were made with aileron while fully stalled (note, aileron is not effective in all aircraft during a stall, and may be quite counter-productive in some! It was just for demonstration - do not oppose wing drop with ailerons in a standard stall recovery!). Applying opposite aileron to roll out did result in a wing drop (the precursor to an incipient spin) but this was easily controllable with opposite rudder, which you can clearly see. Big engine, big prop = very rapid recovery upon applying power and releasing the backstick. Stalling with bank on (e.g., a "base turn" config) yields much the same results. No big surprises in this aircraft.
  10. dutchroll
    Good to see guys here aware of their airspace! I've heard a number of calls on my area freq where controllers have asked an aircraft to turn around as they're heading straight towards a restricted area or controlled airspace. GA guys not checking their charts or notams and just figuring they can go in a straight line to wherever they like. So yeah I think ATC gets a bit gun-shy sometimes. Can't blame them for it and it's good to know they're keeping one eye on the unidentified traffic skirting area boundaries. It's embarrassing to hear "err no I thought I was clear" when their reported altitude & position clearly falls smack in the middle of the area limits depicted in big red ink on the chart (and which have been the same limits forever!). It also takes 10 or 20 seconds to call up the Centre FIS freq and get the status of a restricted area if you're not sure and controllers are always happy to answer the question.
  11. dutchroll
    Yeah those numbers don't exist anymore. The requirement to avoid controlled airspace and restricted areas is simple: do not cross the boundary, and do not bust the airspace altitude depicted on the chart! I regularly fly up to about 3nm from the eastern boundary of the Singleton restricted area (but I know exactly where it is). The controllers are usually pretty good - they know I'm doing aeros & manoeuvring and continually turning away from it. Once in a blue moon one will call up on area freq and ask me if I'm aware of it and when I say "yeah no probs", they're happy with that and leave me alone. If in doubt as to the boundary, go to the Designated Airspace Handbook and get the exact boundary description! Give yourself 500' below the lower limit of controlled airspace on the charts, and give yourself at least a nm or 2 from a restricted area boundary which you know, or more than that if you're not familiar with it. Just common sense.
  12. dutchroll
    On my aircraft it's strongly recommended to switch the boost pump on when changing tanks, though theoretically it should still changeover ok without it. If you have aux tank fuel, during climbout or initial cruise - boost pump on, switch to aux tank, check everything running nicely for a minute or two, boost pump off. Just before aux tank runs dry, or when pressure fluctuates - boost pump on, switch back to main tank, ditto as above before switching boost pump off.
  13. dutchroll
    The A330 has numerous inputs to the LGCIU (landing gear control interface unit) and weight on wheels is one of them to determine "air" or "ground" status. This can normally (I'm fairly sure) be overridden through the maintenance computer to test certain systems. I saw this done on a B767 once to test the GPWS system, as the aircraft needs to think it's in the air before certain things will operate. And just to clarify what I wrote previously, this is an interlock on the gear lever to prevent moving it up on the ground, but there's not a physical override catch like on some aircraft.
  14. dutchroll
    No physical catch or lever lock on the A330. However the system air-ground logic won't let you retract on the ground.......unless you've overridden it for maintenance tests! In which case you should have the gear pins in.......which I believe they did not! It is possible/probable that the mains did not retract due to the weight on them and the way in which they need to move, plus the park brake was likely on too. The nose gear simply has to roll forward to retract, and it's not braked.
  15. dutchroll
    You sure you weren't witnessing my namesake? Dutch roll? I flew C130Hs and they were very prone to it. Actually I flew all the Herc models the RAAF ever had except the "A" which was well before my time and they all did it. The Boeing 767 and the Airbus 330 do it too, but it's pretty subtle and you can barely notice it. Usually the autopilot would be in "Nav" mode coupled to the INS and flying the ground track but it didn't matter what mode you had it in, it would still dutch roll. If you looked out at a wingtip it would prescribe a small circle as the plane was rolling and yawning. This is an aerodynamic roll-yaw coupling and the autopilot just spends the whole time trying to correct it (almost like a dog chasing its tail). It could often be dampened out to a good degree by adjusting the rudder trim.
  16. dutchroll
    I have to say the prop manufacturers are getting a bit ridiculous with their blade sizes. I can't imagine the harmonics this one causes.....
  17. dutchroll
    I think most people probably know which facet of "no fuel getting to the engine" I meant.
  18. dutchroll
    Cessnock today, looking over the upper wing.
  19. dutchroll
    Semantics and fuel system nuances aside, it's historically pretty hard to dress up fuel starvation as anything but pilot error.
  20. dutchroll
    Happens......
  21. dutchroll
    Never used to be quite so strict until some years back when QAR data and a major audit flagged some really horrendous (eye-watering) approaches by a minority of cowboys. They're pretty big on it now. Late landing clearance is no problem and not uncommon as they pack arrivals and departures in tightly.
  22. dutchroll
    Visual approach: Must be stable by 500' radar altimeter or mandatory go-around. Instrument approach: Must be stable by 1000' radar altimeter or mandatory go-around. "Stable" = all checklists complete aircraft in landing configuration (flaps, gear etc) tracking the extended centreline (unless prescribed by instrument approach) on the normal approach path (3 degrees unless otherwise specified) speed, thrust and rate of descent appropriate for the conditions The big companies are very strict on this and violation of those criteria in ours will flag the QAR (Quick Access Recorder) and earn you an invitation to tea & biscuits in company HQ with the Fleet Manager or Chief Pilot, so RPT do tend to try and get setup a fair way out compared to the little guys.
  23. dutchroll
    IAS. I think you're confusing the effects of the same structure when it's acting and moving in two quite different ways. Yes it's the same physical piece of metal but it's not being moved in the same way (even the basic control surface deflection is different depending on what you're doing with it) and it's not putting the same critical stresses onto the same area. Asymmetric movement like ailerons puts large torsional stresses on the wing. Just extending them symmetrically into the airflow and leaving them there subjects them to a continuous air load. Because flutter is rarely a phenomenon experienced at the lower speeds which flap extension is normally limited by. I say "rarely". There have actually been cases of flaperon flutter being highly significant. The Nomad was one of them. Don't forget too, that "flutter" when you're talking about Vne is not "flight control surface flutter". It's any flutter. It's an aeroelastic oscillation induced in any part of the aircraft. Could be the entire wing (and often is). Or the fuselage, or anything.
  24. dutchroll
    No. Reason: flap and gear limiting speeds are determined by air loads on those structures. Air loads on the airframe are dynamic air pressure related. which is what IAS is measuring. Vne is a different beast. There are many factors engineers consider when calculating Vne. Air loads is one of them, plus flutter calculations (which are TAS related), and others. Vne is expressed as an IAS (conservatively) simply because IAS is how we fly. Go into bigger planes which fly much higher however and you get more complicated pictures of Vne which result in a max speed "envelope". For small planes < 10,000ft, a single Vne expressed as a conservative IAS is close enough and good enough.
  25. dutchroll
    5 in the circuit is fairly busy and to be honest I personally wouldn't taxi out intending to stay there and make myself #6 only because it's going to be a PITA. However if you're arriving, you are meant to be listening on the common freq some time before you get there and if everyone just makes one standard circuit call you should have a pretty decent picture of who is there and where they are, so you can go about identifying them. In the military we were taught from day 1 to visually identify all circuit traffic before joining it. It didn't matter much what their callsign was - just where they were. Anything less than that would result in an unpleasant debrief. Flying up the dead side before joining on crosswind allowed you time to spot everyone as you flew past the field if you hadn't got them on the way in, and to slot into an appropriate gap.
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