Head in the clouds

Yes, but you may have mis-interpreted my meaning when I said "flat-wrapped". The Savannah is what we would call a flat-wrapped windshield, meaning it's a flat sheet wrapped around the front, and in many aircraft it's also wrapped over the top of the cabin. So although it starts as a flat sheet it is actually curved in two directions when installed. This does mean it is under constant stress, so as you said, unfortunately it will crack if fuel is spilled on it. At least it's cheap to replace, and excellent protection if you have a bird-strike, or similar. That's an article I wrote. Not sure where I posted it, probably on HBA. I note that the video above disproves one of the things I said in the write-up, about the shot-gun. When we tested it we used No.8 shot IIRC from about 5m away and firing at a flat sheet, perpendicular to the impact. That blew a fairly large hole in the sheet. The video above is probably a better representation though, because it shows an angled windshield more like the aircraft we fly. However, I am surprised that the curvature didn't seem to make it more prone to shattering from impact. Good stuff that polycarbonate.

An interesting video supporting the views of those of us who like to use flat-wrapped polycarbonate windshields, regardless of their pitfalls (can't/difficult to buff out scratches, sensitivity to rapid cooling when curved etc). I was quite astounded to see how well it resisted a shotgun blast too - at the 3min mark.

I don't know about 'everyone' FT, obviously you don't know. Dick Smith sold Australian Geographic Magazine to Fairfax 21 years ago ... he only owned it for 9 years, from 1986 to 1995.

Excellent thought pylon! I haven't been entirely happy with the detente pin method as you'd have to be certain the pin was engaged after folding/unfolding so it's not foolproof. Your hinge method is foolproof because it doesn't need to be disconnected to fold the tail. Thanks for the input, much appreciated, the 'pylon500 hinge' it will be!

Hi Pylon, I'm sorry but I can't actually see what you've photoshopped. I do appreciate the input though, and your compliment, thanks. This is actually a screenshot of the CAD model before it had a bit of modification in that area because as you noticed, the access to the hinge bolts is a bit limited and the nuts also would clash with the saddle clamp so they've been changed to cotter pins and the hinge sections shortened a little to provide clearance. I'm not sure how obvious it is from the image but the centre section is quite separate from the HS each side because the HS folds up at the red hinges. Also, there is a fairing that covers the top of the HS centre section and extends up to the underside of the fin, it is removable for inspection and maintenance, so access in that area is better than it at first appears. Ahhhh - I've just seen what you're referring to, and your 'cuff' suggestion. It's a good thought but the 'nutless bolt' you refer to is actually a fixed pin (or it may end up fixed but sprung) that auto-disconnects and auto-connects when the HS is folded upwards prior to folding the wings, which might happen on a daily basis, so there's no nut involved. Thanks for keeping a watchful eye out for me though!

Erm - where did you get that one from Robbo? The way you state it as fact, I imagine you can support it by providing a reference? On one of the Australian Geographic expeditions I spent a week or so with Dick and discussed his sale of DSE to Woolworths - there was no mention of any ongoing royalties that I recall.

Jan 2nd - Jan 5th 2016 A bit of time spent welding in the parts I made previously, shown in post #81, then it was back to making more parts. This time it was brackets, and rather tricky ones at that. I've been giving thought to them for some while because I couldn't think of an easier way of achieving what I need, i.e. easy removal of the entire tail-feathers if that should ever be required. On the surface the brackets look simple enough. However, since they don't have any available adjustment, and when they're bolted up they determine the alignment of the horizontal stabiliser, they have to be made and installed absolutely accurately. All the other bent brackets on the fuselage have been quite simple and not overly critical so I was able to just clamp them to the edge of a part of the workbench where I have provided it with a gently radiused corner, and judiciously fold the plate with taps of a hammer, back and forth over the length of the bend to prevent stretching the metal and making an inadvertently curved plate. The CAD screenshots below show four brackets in grey colour holding the front and rear tubular spars of the HS. There is a vertical bracket with two vertical folds in it and three curved brackets like the saddle clamps that are used to hold electrical conduits to walls, or plumbing pipes to masonry. Unfortunately I couldn't use those kind of commercial items because they're generally made from cheap material rather than chromoly, and in any case you'd never find one to fit exactly - The brackets are made from 1.6mm/.063" chromoly sheet and it's quite a hard material to bend without the proper machinery. If I had a brake press or sheet-metal folder I could make the vertical bracket easily enough, but I haven't, and I didn't want to go to a metalwork shop for single items, it's far too time consuming (well ... so is making the tooling yourself ... but anyway) and it's far more satisfying to have made anything you can on the project, than to have it made for you. So .... I made myself a tiny version of a brake press to use in my toy 6T shop press, and it worked a treat. It's only 100mm long but will also serve to make lots of upcoming brackets I'll need while making the wings. Below are pics of the little brake press, and the vertical bracket I made with it - Emboldened by the success of that I had a think about how my old mate Bazza the toolmaker would go about making a press-tool to make the saddle clamps. At first I imagined making the main curved part in one pressing action and then having a second forming tool to make the return bends but I couldn't think how to make them accurate and consistent. Then it occurred to me that every press-tool that Bazza made did the entire job in one action. Some of his tools used to shear and press very complex shapes in one action, straight from sheet material fed into it. I recalled that his watch-word was 'control'. Every part of the tool must prevent the material from going anyway it shouldn't go. If you were folding a part, the material just beyond or behind the fold would always want to react outwards as you folded it, so you needed something pressing against that area, resisting that reaction, and that support had to remain throughout the pressing process until the shape was complete. That often meant having parts sliding against each other as the top and bottom tools closed into each other. Armed with that knowledge the tool design for this became relatively simple, and would have been simpler still if I'd had a milling machine to make it with, but I had to settle with fabricating all the bits and welding them together and a bit of flap disk relieving of them at the end. It took a day and a half, a bit expensive in time for a small step forward on the project, but the main thing is they came out very accurate so I am happy with them - Another 37 hrs - a total of 601 hrs so far.

If that were true I don't think they'd have been the most populous and revered ab initio training aircraft, military and civil, over a period of, what, two or three decades? Like any high drag/low inertia aircraft they simply have to be operated appropriately. To suggest that having an engine failure in any phase of flight and in any type of aircraft means "you're pretty much screwed" is a bit odd, to say the least, unless you habitually fly in a manner which leaves you without options.

I don't think anyone's getting paranoid DR. Since the press have apparently printed - "The Australian Transport Safety Bureau are investigating the incident and will pass their findings onto the Civil Aviation Safety Authority, who then decide whether the pilot is fit enough to keep his license." I would have thought it's plainly intended to indicate his fitness regarding aircraft handling ability rather than fitness regarding medical condition, contrary to what your interpretation of it suggests. They really don't seem to be talking about his current injuries do they? Or am I missing something here? And - whilst you say "CASA cannot use ATSB findings as evidence when they see a copy of the report. They have to do their own investigation and gather their own evidence. This is very strictly controlled under the Transport Safety Investigation Act.", that doesn't mean that they wouldn't take the ATSB findings into account when deciding whether to carry out their own investigation for the purpose of gathering their own evidence, or building their case. In fact they most certainly would, and do ... Frankly, I can't see why anyone would expect that CASA wouldn't take a very active interest in a commercial operation having an occurrence which results in a fatality from what, as I said previously, from first appearances should perhaps have resulted in no more than an off-field glide landing. If a family member of mine was the unfortunate passenger in this case I'd be very concerned if CASA were to provide no more scrutiny of the events that led to their demise than to check that the pilot was healthy enough to resume his flying duties. One would think that they'd want to check his currency and proficiency on emergency procedures at the very least. I'm not suggesting that there is anything amiss, but it is the duty of the regulator to ensure that there isn't, particularly where someone has lost their life.

Actually no. Running out of fuel was the result of a series of other far more concerning problems. In CASA's view, and perhaps the views of others but they are irrelevant for the sake of this discussion, the pilot had developed an 'attitude' which resulted in frequent questionable decision-making. The pilot was aware of the low fuel status while still a long way inbound, and continued the approach regardless, one of the reasons being because the pax had a schedule to keep. Another was that the aircraft was booked for other work after that flight's completion. Keep in mind that being a helicopter a landing could have been made at any time and this whole incident would have been no more than an embarrassing delay rather than a potentially fatal crash. The pilot might just have got away with it and landed at Darwin airport with virtually zero fuel in the tanks. It would have been illegal to not have the required reserves, of course, and it was later shown that the flight distance could not have been conducted whilst maintaining the required reserves, let alone with the strong headwind that was forecast and existed that day - and had the landing been uneventful the 'indiscretion' would probably have gone undetected. The pilot clearly did not anticipate the controller's request to hold orbiting while in CTA to give priority to an arriving military aircraft - although requests to hold were not unusual . Darwin is a military control zone, not a civil one ... At that stage the pilot should have declared a 'requirement' for an immediate landing, and it would have been granted, but the pilot was aware that 'requiring' anything would have raised questions later, so the pilot elected to comply with the hold request and hope for the best. Within a minute or so the engine quit. An auto-rotation to landing in a swampy area was made, the aircraft was damaged but the pax were uninjured ... and the pilot went home without making a report to the company. As CP, after the emergency services (if involved) and the controller, I should have been the first informed of the crash (crash - there's no such thing as an 'accident') but the pilot never reported it to me. The first I heard was from CASA when they called me the next day asking where the aircraft was. They knew the answer, of course, but wanted to know why I hadn't been in touch with them the previous day, immediately after the crash. I had to say I wasn't aware of the occurrence. At the time I was in Kununurra, some 800km away, so the only way I could have known was by the pilot following proper procedure and reporting direct to me, which they didn't. So, as you may appreciate, the running out of fuel wasn't the real issue, it was actually a case of the pilot having developed a personal 'culture' of ignoring proper procedures because they' 'knew better'. I was also disciplined for this occurrence (quite correctly, in my opinion, hard though it is to admit it) because it was deemed that I should have recognised the problem earlier and either fixed it, or if couldn't do so, reported it to CASA as part of my responsibilities as CP. The reason I say I was correctly disciplined for it, is that I had recognised the problem and had been trying to fix it for a long while but I should have recognised that it wasn't fixable, and therefore I should have reported it. I remain grateful and relieved that when (not if) the crash occurred, the pax were not injured - or worse. I quite respect what you say DR, but the way CASA happens in the airline industry where the pilots and personnel are supported by strong unions and large management organisations is quite different from how it happens to the small commercial operators. Whilst you are quite correct about what powers CASA actually have, they wield far more than their strict entitlement, and there were many cases of discipline by CASA rather than by the Court process. Admittedly I have been out of commercial operations for 12 years but from what I see things haven't changed much during that time. The only cases you get to hear about are the ones, often as not embarrassing for CASA, which go to Court and are dealt with there. Behind the scenes though (and this is why I have more respect for CASA than some do) CASA have to deal with a large number of occurrences that are way outside the rules and which are, by some pilots, repeated as long as they can be got away with, and with the full support of their operations management. The big problem for the regulator is sorting out the wheat from the chaff. In my experience there were two types of 'small' operators, those that did all they could to cheat the system and those that did everything by the book. I didn't come across much in between. Without going into the specific details of how they went about it, the irony is that those that cheated the system were by far the 'stronger' companies because they had much more money, so paid their pilots and engineers better rates and thus gained more loyalty from their personnel who stuck together and made the indiscretions far harder for the regulator to discover. Consequently when an 'occurrence' such as that I described above takes place in a 'clean' company, it's very easy for the regulator to apply enough pressure to the pilot and the company for either or both of them to agree to whatever disciplinary action CASA feels is appropriate. Any resistance can easily be overcome, if necessary, by veiled threats of suspension of the company air service licence 'pending review', which is a power that CASA can effect immediately and indefinitely ... and which the 'just surviving' operations can't afford. Where 'stronger' companies are concerned it was far more difficult for CASA to prevail but when they did have a clear case the pilot was often persuaded by the rest of the staff to just 'take the fall' and would receive the full support and pay entitlements from the company until the suspension, or whatever, was lifted. This apparent obeisance appeased CASA who could appear to be effective, while the rest of the company's crew carried on in the same manner as previously ...

You're not quite right asmol. There are very significant differences between the standard required for a Private licence and for a Commercial licence. For example - during my helicopter training I, like everyone else doing it, had to practice engine failures in all sorts of situations. For a private licence the requirement is that you be able to get the machine on the ground after an engine failure without there being any fatalities. It's accepted that there may be minor injuries and it's accepted that the machine may be destroyed. In essence, following an engine failure in any situation (hovering, after take-off, in cruise, in the circuit, on final, while hover-taxiing etc) as long as you can get the machine back on the ground arriving at a low speed, then you have done sufficient. The standard for a commercial licence is quite different. In any of the examples given above you must nominate an exact place where you will land the machine under auto-rotation, and you must land it exactly on that spot with no damage to the machine. Similar is the case for aeroplane private and commercial licences but I gave the helicopter example because I have a commercial helicopter licence but only a private aeroplane licence, so I can't speak authoritatively about what is required in the aeroplane commercial flight training and testing. Further - an engine failure doesn't result in an accident. It either results in a successful landing, which should always be the case if you have commercial training and licence, or it results in a crash. Regrettably this one was a crash which resulted in a paying passenger's loss of life. If you were the brother or father of that paying passenger wouldn't you think it would be appropriate for the commercial pilot's credentials to carry passengers for hire and reward, to be examined following an incident which, on first appearances, should perhaps have resulted in no more than an off-field glide landing? While I was Chief Pilot of an operation in Darwin one of my (commercial) line pilots ran out of fuel in the Darwin Control Zone without declaring an emergency, and had a forced landing into a swamp - with some damage to the machine. There were two passengers and no-one was hurt but the pilot's licence was immediately suspended as a matter of course, pending further examination of the circumstances. In the final event the pilot's licence was cancelled and the pilot had to attend counselling, re-sit the commercial BAK exam, and complete a full commercial flight test before the licence could be re-validated. That pilot was lucky to avoid a lengthy suspension, fine, and/or potentially, gaol time ...

Ah, thank you again kind sir, but I don't think I can take credit for the design of the clevis ends. I've been making them like that for a long while but it wasn't an original idea. I must have seen it somewhere years ago, most likely on a glider, or some production tube and rag machine, maybe Cubs or Bellancas do it like that. I agree, though, it's a very elegant solution, and easy to run the weld around the outside without ever having to try and get a weld inside the clevis plates. I know Oscar will know this but one tip for those new to welding, that I didn't photograph while welding those plates in last evening, is to have a spacer the same width as the rod end between the clevis plates and an expendable bolt clamping the clevis against the spacer, so that after it's welded the side plates of the clevis are still nice and parallel and with the bolt holes aligned, otherwise the welding will pull it out of shape again. About the linseed oil or Boeing anti-corrosion product ... well I've never really known whether it's necessary or not, but am well aware of the internal corrosion problems that some types have had. Consequently I put the question to those many knowledgeable people on that 'other homebuilding site' to see what they had to say. On there, there are many aircraft maintainers and repairers with plenty of experience repairing damaged tube and rag aircraft, so they get to see the inside of the tubes of aircraft of various ages and types, and presumably are the best knowledge on the subject. What came out of it was that of course there's no harm in doing it, but to do it properly we're looking at around 3kg of additional weight, which is significant so we want to be sure it's needed. The long and short of it is that if the aircraft are MIG welded, as many/most production aircraft are, then it's essential because pressure testing of MIG welded tubes tended to show that they were rarely properly sealed, the main reason being that with MIG production they tend to keep the weld amps as low as possible and rely on a larger fillet and good 'to the node/avoiding moment connections' design to prevent blow-throughs during the welding process. The consequence of that is occasional poor penetration and weld overhangs which conceal unsealed sectors of the weld, and hence 'breathing' of the tube interior with every daily temperature change. In a coastal environment that very rapidly leads to internal corrosion. TIG and OA welded structures, if done carefully, tended to be fully sealed and showed no signs of corrosion in even very old airframes. So, DooMaw being a TIG welded airframe, and me being a bit pedantic about the welds, no I haven't injected any fluids into the tubing. Also - not familiar with the term 'vpi medium', is this some kind of self vaporising thing that might be lighter? I'm certainly not averse to injecting something before welding up all the 1/16 breather holes in the tubes. Thanks Gareth, the offer is much appreciated, as is that of Geoff a while back. I'll certainly keep them in mind as there will be a great benefit to having more hands to help when it comes to the wings and rigging stages. I could have done with some help making parts too, but have never got ahead enough with the design work to have parts and materials waiting to be made, I was too keen to get out from behind the computer and into the workshop. It won't be long before I'll be making the engine mounting and having to dangle the engine in place for tacking that up, so would appreciate some extra hands then too, if you have the time? Perhaps PM me your phone number and/or email and we'll keep in touch about it? Thanks!

Hi scotsman, Yes there are a few of us, we generally keep our heads down as we're considered a bit whacky by the uninitiated, but what do they know eh ...? I started in hanggliders and trikes in the 1970s, went to fixed wing in the 80s, commercial rotary in the 90s and 00s, now back to fixed wing, building a STOL to try and get into some of the types of places I could visit before ... Welcome to the forum.

December 23rd 2015 =- January 1st 2016 Being the festive season break I was hoping to get a lot done on DooMaw but Murphy did his bit instead and my wife and I spent most of it getting over minor injuries from a car smash and all the resulting palaver that goes with it, in terms of insurance estimators, tow trucks, getting her a temporary vehicle and so on. Not much fun at all. In between it all I did get some time on DooMaw and it was enjoyable work, having got past the last of the contortions required for welding in the inside of the fuselage structure, now most of it is making bits separately and welding some of them to the outside of the fuselage, much less tedious than it has been of late. Ten days ago I'd just started making the parts for the control stick and aileron torque tube - see last photo in post #69 above - the three small tubes and one longer one, not shown, form the triangular support for the rear aileron torque tube mount and also part of the progressive failure structure for the seat-back. Those four tubes should be the last bits that needed welding to the internal part of the the fuselage, so I got on with those first to get them out of the way. Then I had to add three flat plates to attach the HDPE triangular torque tube support, and tack them in place without harming the easy-melt HDPE. A bit of thin PTFE sheet for insulation and fast tacking and I got away with it, just. Then could fit the front torque tube mount that carries the split square block which resolves all the thrust loads from the elevator push-rods. The front mount needed some delicate welding procedure and order to keep everything aligned but it did end up pulling so that I needed a 0.020"/0.5mm shim under the front two bolts, which irked me a bit. Making those blocks has been a bit of a trial as I got rid of my large milling machine a while ago intending to replace it with a much smaller one but haven't found what I'm after yet, so have had to make those parts with a pillar drill and flap disks. Not very professional but they came out well enough and accurate, so it was annoying that I underestimated the welding pull and needed to adjust them. In the end I decided it was time to service the linisher, all of it's bearings and the drive belt died some years ago, so I spent a day on it and found the required parts and that meant I could linish half a millimetre off the bottom of the block at the required angle and avoid the shim, so I was happy again. And the control torque tube runs smoothly in it's two bearing blocks. Next I set up the tube to add the cheek plates which carry the pair of bearings which attach the joystick, they needed to be very accurately aligned so that the elevator pushrod runs centrally down the middle of the torque tube, so I jigged it simply in steel V blocks and with the bottom edges of the cheek plates on a pair of parallels. Next I added the thrust washers, stitch-welded to the torque tube to avoid distortion and aligned by using a split sleeve of the torque-tube material held in place with a hose clamp, to back it up while tacking it in place. I had to split the sleeve into two to tack the second thrust plate, so that I could remove the sleeves afterwards. Last I added the brackets for the adjustable control stops on the top and bottom. I made and fitted the flat plate that the HS front spar will bolt to, and also the bent plates that will carry the elevator bellcrank. Then I started to make the hardware for the elevator bellcrank and pushrods. I needed bent clevis plates to weld into the ends of 3/4 tubing that will form the arms of the bellcrank, and the elevator control horn. A ball rod-end will fit between the clevis plates. I've tried making these previously and it's not easy to get the bend in the plate even and to drill the holes after bending and welding the plate in, but that's the only way to get the holes properly aligned. So this time I decided to make a simple press-tool to make them. I measured and marked out the plates carefully and cut and drilled them first. Then made the press-tool to fit into a 6 tonne toy shop press, and it worked a treat. It took a bit of careful consideration to line up the top and bottom press-tools accurately enough and the plates didn't fold fully parallel but a little extra squeeze in the vise afterwards and some judicious adjustment with a piece of 1/4" silversteel rod and I had three quite closely matching clevises ready to weld into the tube ends. Another 36 hours for the log, making 564hrs so far.

Makes good sense hiho, Mugabe the Eternal (when will he pass on - must be the oldest southern african on the planet by now) has always been happy to switch loyalties with the change of the tide - any straw, sinking ship, all that. Makes you wonder if the average African still thinks he/she are now better off than under the 1960s Smith UDI regime.

It took me a while too ... I concluded that's what Scotsman was subtley and very humbly saying ... what his 2c was worth - very droll His observations are worth the full 2c in any currency though, I'd say. As I understand it Mugabe the Despot eventually capitulated and has now accepted the use of $US because currency printing costs became prohibitive and international commerce and trade relations had become completely stalled. I was over there earlier this year and very disappointed to not be able to collect another 3 trillion dollar note for 5 bucks - twice it's face value - instead I had to settle for an uncirculated 100 billion dollar note for ten bucks ... not happy!

Yes I think you're right, GM was the AUF's founding President in 1983 and I think he did award himself an Instructor rating - organised training had to be shown to be starting somewhere ... Bazza was Barry Hughes, a bit of a legend up in the Sunny State and he trained a heap of people to fly in single seaters. When two seaters became available he was advised to request a CFI rating and it was given so he became first CFI in Queensland (Qld, not Australia), not long after that I think Bill Morris did the same up at Giru, it was the first step in getting legal schools here. Following that Bill Dinsmore became the first (I think) operations manager and came up here in about 1986 to run a week's course for those of us who had flying schools, and about 4-5 more of us became CFIs.

This is such a lovely example of thread drift, but no worries, I'm the OP and I couldn't give a rats ... but really, it was about the wing structure, not whether God or survival of the fittest evolution produced the best wings or less-than perfect wings. It was actually about whether anyone knew what had happened to the fella's experiment with building wings the insect way because he had demonstrated that it was a way to build wings much lighter and less strong than they needed to be when doing it the conventional way i.e. by having wings that could 'spill' air they didn't need to have a 6G or more capability because they could never see that kind of loading. Anyway ... now it's my time to weigh into the believer or non-believer discussion, so I'll tell the tale of my old mate Bazza who I miss dearly, he passed away at this time of year two years ago. Bazza was Queensland's first ultralight CFI and he was a very confirmed atheist and had a lot of trouble understanding people who wanted to go around believing all sorts of 'nonsense' about 'superior' beings and all that. At one stage he'd become so frustrated by it that he had decided it was near impossible to teach anyone to fly if they held sway with these strange ideas of religion and similar. He used to say "what hope have they got of learning to fly if they are grown adults and still going around believing in things like Father Christmas, the Tooth fairy, God and the Easter Bunny?". It made me laugh anyway.

Quite correct about matching impedances and all that Ungrounded, and the handheld Icoms are intended to be used with 'normal' aviation headsets, I've had quite a selection of aviation headsets over the years and they've all worked fine with the Icom handhelds. The reason I say they're 'intended' for use with them is that one of the standard accessories for the handhelds is a cable which plugs into the handheld and on the other end of the cable(s) is a velcro-strapped PTT switch to attach to the control column and a set of sockets to accept the standard aeroplane headset plugs and an adapter for the NATO single plug helicopter headset.

Not sure how much rotary wing time you have Fairoaks Flyer, but I'd guess not a lot ... sure the helicopter is landing tail to wind but that's not at all unusual. On helipads like that one you'd always choose to do so rather than expose waiting pax or people filming the landing to your tailrotor. Also, you may not know, but helicopters have a tolerance to wind gusts that fixed wing flyers couldn't imagine, it'd take a sudden 150kt gust to do anything like what is shown here. If you pause the video and then move forward in freeze frame while watching the swashplate you can see a large input which immediately precedes the nose pitching down. I can't see the input to the cyclic stick inside the cabin but there's no doubt this was caused by someone or something shoving the cyclic forward, the pilot has then reacted by hauling collective. If the tree hadn't been there he might have got away with it.

I have quite a number of hours in the 2 seat 503 Thruster Gemini and just a few hours in one with the 582. About the only improvement with the 582 seemed to be a bit better climb rate. I was talking to a friend the other day who has re-engined his with a 582 and he preferred the 503. His comments were about the extra weight and more forward CG chewing away the performance, and the even worse glide (if that is possible) due to the forward CG and the extra frontal area from radiator(s) increasing the drag. He found that he had to increase his approach and landing speed or would not have sufficient elevator authority for flare/round-out. He said that he had tried adding weight aft to correct the CG but it didn't make any significant difference. Last time I enquired, about 12 months ago, Rotax Rick in the USA was still supplying zero-timed 503s (long or short engine) and he seems to have an excellent reputation for quality as well as price and after-sales service. He could also re-build your own engine with new parts if preferred. Welcome to the forum duongkhue84

Champion Geoff, good onya, and all the others involved. Donation made, thanks for bringing this great event to our notice and sharing the donations link. C'mon Recflyers, it's Christmas, get behind this, make a donation, any amount will help. This has been a long and terrible drought, the conditions out west are indescribable. The Farmers need our help - and We need them!

I'm delighted for you Dp, you've been grounded far too long. How long until she'll be airworthy?

Just my opinion but if I had to make a categoric statement about whether it was a gust, of even say 70 kts, I'd say no way ... In my comm heli years I did have a few hairy moments and more than a fair share was pax induced. Doesn't matter how well you brief them and how much you distrust them and keep an eagle eye on them, they seem to have a constant supply of new ways to try and kill you - it's still pilot error though, if it results in a gotcha. He was certainly landing tail into wind in gusty conditions and that's tricky but the sudden pitch down plus leap into the air could IMHO only happen because - 1. unless repeatedly briefed to not do so, the pax nearly always want to start unbuckling in the hover prior to landing - they don't realise they're still flying. 2. When the skids then touch, particularly in blustery conditions, they reach out and grab something. Frequently it has been the collective, and if they pull it up you get a sudden leap into the air as we see here, in this incident they still had flight rpm. 3. Having touched down the pilot may have been looking toward his rear seat pax - that's not unusual, most of the pax are behind - if the machine suddenly leapt upward he may well have grabbed at the collective and momentarily lost concentration on the cyclic, pushing it forward - just 30mm or so would be enough. He'd have had plenty to think about afterwards ...

Ain't that the truth. Back in the good old days before locked cockpit doors and airline flight marshals I used to ask to visit the flight deck on every long-haul flight and was very rarely refused. I used to pass a note to the Captain via the Flight Director expressing my interest/qualifications in aviation and sometimes spent the majority of the flight on the deck. On one memorable occasion after asking about the apparently low airspeed indication they explained the huge difference between IAS and TAS at FL350 and thus I came to understand the benefits and effects of high altitude for airliners - in particular that being up there allowed the aircraft to fly at best L/D, which meant that a 747, as this was, might be crossing the ground at 500kts or so, but was flying at the apparently low indicated airspeed of only 1.3Vs1. Somewhere over India (it was QANTAS flight QF1, Singapore to Heathrow) I was invited to 'feel' the controls, as long as any movements I made were kept minimal enough to not be noticed by the pax. With the autopilot dis-engaged I was astounded to find that the controls were quite mushy, I'd expected a very positive feel, after all we were travelling at not all that much below Mach 1. A slight easing back on the controls didn't produce the expected climb at all, in fact it just changed the attitude a little and then, due to the less efficient flight 'regime', the thing tended toward a descent rather than a climb. A slight pressure forward and the nose lowered and the beast definitely started to descend and had I not had the controls whisked away from me promptly, that descent would have been hard to arrest without application of power and a definite positive attitude change to accompany it. Roll was positive but required definite and sustained opposite application to arrest the rolling. It was very quickly obvious to me that no novice could just jump behind the controls of a large liner at high altitude and fly it, as the movies might have you believe. Years later I was in Darwin and they needed a replacement hovercraft pilot for the 10pax machine that was up there doing harbour and river trips. It took me a lot longer than expected to get a hang of it because everything happened some while after the control input. For example, the pax loaded at the top of a launching ramp, being rather steep due to the large tides in Darwin. You'd lift the machine up into a high hover then point it down the ramp. At one of the bases there was a narrow creek at the bottom, running at right angles to the ramp, so you needed to make a sharp left turn at the bottom. This meant giving it heaps of left as soon as you left the top of the ramp, and full thrust power at the same time. As soon as the thing hinted it was turning left you gave it full right and gunned it again - and kept the power on. If you didn't, it'd keep turning left until you ended up hitting the water backwards and wiping out a few mangroves on the other side. Ask me how I know about that ... That hovercraft reminded me a lot of that flight high over India.