Head in the clouds

Slovakian engineering ... They've certainly made a lot of progress since the last version which took more than a kilometre to get airborne due to the hopeless position of the 'landing gear/wheels' preventing any kind of rotation for take-off. They seem to have improved that situation with variable wing incidence which is not a simple engineering undertaking. Some pretty clever CGI incorporated into the video, which is a bit disappointing. The projected price of "several hundreds of thousands of Euro" might be a bit of a showstopper though, methinks ...

Thanks for the report Sue. I quite agree about the "Spot" thing for several reasons - EPIRBs seem to regularly fail to go off for various reasons. The cost of up to 17 helicopters and 5-8 planes as well as the two Dorniers to spend more than two days searching in the wrong place must have been astronomical and accurate last position information would potentially have reduced the search to a matter of an hour or two with a couple of helicopters. Most particularly, anything that reduces the time taken to find the crash site would make the difference between life and death for any seriously injured occupants. I'm not saying we shouldn't have EPIRBS, but that we should use the Spot technology as well, anything that gives position information and isn't a risk in itself (eg adds a lot of weight perhaps) is welcome on my flights ...

With the greatest respect Mike, the way it 'feels' at any particular speed really has nothing to do with it. It'll feel quite different at 115kts in turbulent conditions compared with smooth conditions and it'll feel quite different at 115kts in turbulent conditions when heavily loaded compared with when it's lightly loaded. You really can't make any assessment of the safe manoeuvring speed (Va) by how it 'feels'. I'm sure it'd feel fine at 250kts too, or even 350kts, if it was heavily loaded and in smooth air. We had a good discussion about this in the Va - Manoevring Speed thread, there was a fair bit of pre-amble at first demonstrating the difficulty many of us have with fully comprehending the implications of Va and a couple of explanations in laymens' terms in later posts

Or if a fluttering wing comes off at low level ... No I don't have any inside information except a momentary glimpse of aerial footage when the wreck was discovered. Since then I've only seen pics of one wing in trees but the 'glimpse' showed large pieces spread over 500m or more. We've discussed my flight in a Jab with a friend before, who was happy to exceed VA in all conditions because the Jab is "built tough". Similarly this unfortunate pilot previously mentioned in the media his 8cyl 4ft chord big wing (which presumably has a lower Va) having a cruise speed of 130kts - which is the Vne I think, and it was a windy day in mountainous terrain.

I stumbled upon this site which has photos and information about a lot of unusual aircraft designs, many of which I've not seen or heard about before. Well worth a look for the enthusiast - Extraordinary Aircraft

A few pics of the Gulf country and beyond from a trip I did Brisbane to Darwin and return in 1989, sorry for the poor quality, the images are scanned from old and very heat-affected prints - Upper reaches of Lawn Hill Gorge Lunch and refuel at Hell's Gate on the Qld/NT border NW of Burketown and Doomadgee Hell's Gate - so called because of the horrific state of the road for decades Lawn Hill Station airstrip, i worked there for a few weeks teaching the head stockman to fly Upper reaches of Edith Falls on the escarpment at Lawn Hill. Used to fly the Drifter out to places like that, plonk it down short and then kick rocks and cut scrub out of the way to be able to take off again. Usually with fish or something tasty slung underneath. Lawn Hill Station shed and yards at the Homestead Lawn Hill Homestead, it was owned by Sebastiano de Meyer back then, a Brazilian/Argentinian cattle baron. More of the Homestead, in its heyday it housed more than 60 stockmen, fencers, boremen, mechanics, farriers, saddlers, cooks and the station carried over 60,000 head. By 1989 it had one plane, one helicopter, two pilots, four stockmen, one boreman, one cook, one drunk no-hoper that used to be a saddler, used contract fencers and still carried 30,000 head of cattle. Lunch stop on the road north of Hell's Gate on Robinson River Station. Refuelling at Tindal Airforce Base near Katherine NT.

Interesting image Bex. It's exaggerated by about 100,000% as a rough estimation but I guess it gives some folks an idea of topography. What's the source? In reality I guess most of us had one of those classroom black and white chalk-friendly globes at some time during school? Well, the thickness of the single white paint layer on the 600mm/2ft diameter globe was proportionately higher than Mount Everest ...

The patterns on the northern Australia mudflats are wondrous. I'd flown over them for years before the special-ness of them was brought to my attention. During a heli safari in the Kimberley a lady client got all excited as we came back over Wyndham after five days further north. It turned out she was a dress designer from New York and a few weeks later she booked me solid for a fortnight and flew back to Australia. I had to spend hours on end at 5-10,000ft with her harnessed and hanging out the open door taking vertical photos with a large format camera. Instead of two weeks she ended up staying about eight or ten weeks to get enough haze-free days and days without spring tides to allow the flats to dry enough to provide the wide range of colours shown in your pictures. She used the images to create unique fabric prints for her fashion label and did quite well with them.

Excellent mystery plane kasper! Not a KJ design was it? If so I didn't think he was an aero Eng, though he's still alive and flying last I heard, at about 84 years young. I guess I'm wrong though as I don't think any of KJ's designs offered plansets. And his infamous 72kg Joey motorglider had a pylon mounted engine. Musing - Australian aero Engineers that designed ultralights - Whitney ... I don't think it's one of his ... was David Betteridge qualified? (Anyone got a pic of his Hornet?) Um ... Dafydd L has many design parts but no whole aircraft I think (wish he'd design one, it'd have some clever aspects I'm sure, based on what he's done with the Seeker). Swanson ... It also looks a little like the Resurgam copy, the Rouseabout, but that also had a tubular rear fuselage although it was kevlar composite I think, rather than aly tubing. OK, I give up, for now :-) As far as the rudder is concerned - the lower the flying/stalling speed of the aircraft the greater the rudder 'volume' has to be to manage crosswinds for takeoff/landing management (i.e volume = larger fin/rudder for short rear fuselage, smaller fin/rudder for long rear fuselage). This one looks quite appropriate in area/length to me and would probably still have the usual deflections of 25-30 degrees each way. The aerodynamic counterbalance might be more than ideal though, perhaps leaving the pilot with very little control-force feedback.

I find a lot of what 'john' posts, purporting to be humour, to be thoroughly objectionable. Is this really the sort of content we want on a recreational flying forum? Moderators?

Mr Google indicates this one happened three months ago on January 3rd. Is there still no more information about it? What kind of plane is it? Looks like some kind of homebuilt judging by the nosewheel(?) which looks like a plastic very light industrial wheel of the wheelbarrow genre. With three PoB, do UK regs allow for homebuilts with more than two seats?

Update - the project is much delayed due to funding issues, I imagine a project like this chews up the dollars faster than anyone would anticipate. However - progress continues and the big day is not that far off now. Two days ago the engines had their first test run with all systems normal so the wing will be re-attached and the props fitted next, for full-power runs. Here is a link to the build thread, it's well worth a look if you haven't seen the progress for a while, it's a fascinating aircraft.

The prang-a-wingtip-first theory might sound OK but in practice I think it's likely to be a showstopper. For one thing I doubt you could get sufficient slip angle and wing-down angle to plant the wingtip of a high-wing plane so the theory might only apply to a low-winger with minimal dihedral and I think the tip might just be deflected off the ground, hard ground in any case, and the next thing to contact would be the gear leg which might not produce any great benefit. Further - if you stop one wingtip suddenly the other wingtip will double its speed in an instant and rather than cause a flat rotation, when the similar event occurs with a float-plane or floating hull plane that dips a wingtip inadvertently, the opposite wing's doubled airspeed lifts it to the vertical and cartwheels the plane tip over tip. That's bad enough in water but would slam the nose of the plane into the ground much harder than might result from most other crash-landing methods. This is not an uncommon scenario in gliders/sailplanes when tip-stalled near the ground and they dig a wingtip in, and frequently fatal. I'd also imagine that it'd be harder to get the high slip/bank angle that you seek at the slowest possible speed. In my experience the biggest slips are achieved at quite high speed and I wouldn't really fancy flying myself into the ground that fast ...

Half an hour with Mr Google searching for explosion/fire/smoke/toxic/fumes etc + Lipo/Lithium polymer/Lithium Ion etc and then searching for explosion/fire/smoke/toxic/fumes etc + LifePO4/Lithium Phosphate/Lithium Iron/Lithium ferrophosphate etc - and then filtering the results to get rid of the content from those who don't know the difference between them ... for me produced hundreds, or perhaps thousands, of 'events' on Lipo/Lithium Ion and exactly zero 'events' for LifePO4/Lithium Phosphate/Lithium Iron. I couldn't find a single reported fire, smoke, explosion or other 'event' for a LifePO4 battery/accumulator on the entire internet, can anyone else find any? That tells me something about the real-life operational dangers of each type especially considering that the LifePO4s are used in competition motorsports and so are presumably of as small capacity as possible and therefore working hard during cranking, use and charging, and are also subject to regular impact trauma, vibration and g/acceleration forces, whereas Lipos are predominantly used well within their supposed capacity on electronic devices without high-drain periods or significant shock events and they still have a large percentage of failures. In high-drain usage such as RC models Lipo failures become even more prevalent and destructive. To resist change from lead-acid batteries just because those have been used for decades, and only because LifePO4/Lithiumferrophosphate batteries have a name (though not chemistry) that is a little similar to Lithium Ion, with respect, suggests to me that some people might have a rather Luddite attitude toward advancement. Add that the LifePO4s provide a massive improvement in power and energy density/weight and that they don't have a dangerous or corrosive electrolyte such as lead-acids do, and you'd be missing some terrific benefits that could be gained by changing to a new product. A search for 'lithium iron phosphate dangers' (that's iron, not ion!) brings up loads of informative and helpful articles from industry sources, like this one - The LiFePO4 batteries are the safest type of Lithium batteries as they will not overheat, and even if punctured they will not catch on fire. The cathode material in LiFePO4 batteries is not hazardous, and so poses no negative health hazards or environmental hazards. Due to the oxygen being bonded tightly to the molecule, there is no danger of the battery erupting into flames like there is with Lithium-Ion. The chemistry is so stable that ...

Oh, don't apologise about the latch-on. I am the OP and am delighted to learn of all the opinions, right or wrong, and the extraneous information that this thread has generated (no pun intended). Just to throw it out there for those who have an in-depth knowledge of the subject, or those with an opinion of course, where does (and/or, should) nuclear power fit in for Australia? We have the core materials, after all ... And yes, the morning glory, I've had the fun of 'surfing' its front a couple of times, in a C172 and a B206. I first saw it when in the Gulf with a Drifter and so much wish I'd then thought to fly with it and an open cockpit. It looks large-ish from the ground but when you're just ahead of it, it's mountainous.

I was aware of some that used to do so in northern WA, and they thought they were rather clever. One of their 'group' was rather timid about following the example but since they all had massive diesel procurement bills for generating their own power, pumping water and all that, they considered it was unlikely that they'd ever be caught so the odd man out (woman actually) got a pasting for being a wowser. It took a few years but inevitably the rampies ended up on the local highway and a couple of the group got their Landcruiser tanks sampled and lo and behold the diesel dye wasn't the right colour. Not only did they get a massive fine (around $20K IIRC) and very damaging ATO audit, they were 'excluded' from being able to claim the Primary Industry fuel subsidy for five years as individuals and/or for any Company of which they were a Director. The wowser had the last laugh ... Don't ya love thread drift ...? It's OK, it's my thread, go for it, this all much more interesting than a few bumps downwind of a windmill

In the 1980s two of us went for a five month tour in my Drifter so I wanted to make it more comfortable in the back seat. The first two pics below show what I did. I just shaped up some 4"/100mm polyurethane foam and fibreglassed over it then ground out the foam, smoothed the outside of the GRP shell and painted it, very simple, light - and made in a weekend. Having the pedals and lower body sheltered like that completely transformed flying in the back as it stopped all the buffeting and was so much warmer than before. There was no noticeable change to the aircraft handling. After I returned from the trip I made a fully enclosed pod for the Drifter as an experiment. The next two pics show it. It worked quite well but I never went any further with it as it completely destroyed the whole 'open-air' aspect which makes the Drifter so special. It did change the handling considerably. It was unpleasant if you flew even slightly unco-ordinated and it made the rudder exceptionally sensitive. The positive aspect was that it improved the cruise speed by about 5kts which was a big bonus and it increased the glide ratio noticeably. It was ugly though!

Though we don't have many wind-farms in Oz I hadn't considered that they might be a hazard other than crashing into one. This is a bit of an eye-opener for anyone that does have one in their region and could be flying downwind of it one day. The link above provides an interesting read about the hazards and the picture below gives the general idea.

I have quite a few hours in the two seat Osprey 2. Frankly it was the only aircraft I've flown that was worse than the original short KR2 with 2PoB. I've not yet seen one that can be, or has been, built to the design weight and as a result the stall speed is way faster than advertised (surprise, surprise). The stall is sudden with a rapid wing-drop and can have you inverted in an instant. The water landings are tricky to say the least, attempting to land slowly almost always results in a bounce and ending up six feet off and fully stalled - not a nice situation with a high wing-loading, necessarily quite small prop diameter and a low aspect ratio wing. Water landing fast is also tricky because the very low wing results in huge ground effect making it resist settling. On-land landings tend to be a matter of ka-thump as the main gear is a bit further aft than optimal (to allow the wheels to retract with simple geometry behind the main spar), so to manage a gentle landing you need the mains below the CG at touchdown and to achieve that you need to be quite nose high and consequently quite near the stall which is uncomfortable and risky in anything other than very smooth air. We found 70kts to be an absolute minimum safe approach and landing speed, 75-80kts felt better, and given that max cruise speed was only about 90kts it doesn't have much of a performance envelope. The high thrust line doesn't produce the large power-on/power-off pitch change that might be expected as the HS is well positioned and at a good trim angle, so that's a rare positive for the design. On-water ops (taxying) are also difficult in anything other than flat water. Because it opens from the front and the cabin has very minimal freeboard you can't have the canopy open in even a very slight chop or else you flood the cabin and panel with water. If you taxy with the canopy closed in a chop the canopy gets covered in droplets and you can't see where you're going so the only option is taxying fast, up on the plane, which can be quite dangerous in confined areas. Overall, it's a dog, but that's just my opinion. It's notable that a high proportion of them have been destroyed while making water landings, as was the one I knew. It was cartwheeled on a Queensland dam after a bounced landing by a many-thousand hour instructor. I'm not sure if it's true or not but it's well rumoured that after flying one Paul Poberezny (the founder of the EAA) suggested that George Pereira might do better to go back to designing apartments ... For someone interested in a kindly handling floating hull aircraft the Thurston and Volmer designs are generally highly regarded, but once again that's only my opinion.

I don't have any gripes with the existing menu system on PC (Win7, Chrome) or mobile (Android Galaxy Note 3) but I find the proposed new menu to be counter-intuitive and very 'busy' to navigate. Perhaps that's just because I'm familiar with the old one or perhaps it's because the old one is the same as the majority of websites on the net, whereas the new one seems to be a complete departure from convention. On that basis I imagine it might be very confusing if every website had its own unique menu system. If this change somehow benefits some then I'm sure I'd get used to it but I'd prefer to stick with the more conventional one, so I vote against the change.

I agree mkennard, we all make mistakes however careful we are. I'd just like to commend you for posting here about this, it's easier to just keep quiet when we trip up and save the embarrassment but by bringing this to our attention you will quite likely save others from making similar mistakes and the outcome could be much worse than it was for you. I certainly hadn't considered the consequences of not connecting the starter earth cable, the natural assumption would be that it just wouldn't crank, not that a disconnected cable might cause a fire ... Thank you.

I've taken to doing something that some others may find helpful. These days there are so many connections to some devices that I have become a bit fearful of getting the wrong wire on the wrong terminal. Recently I bought a second-hand intercom system that has all sorts of clever interfaces for phone, flight radio, music, annunciator system and so on. Unlike the old simple intercoms with power and a couple of mono-jack inputs, this thing has more than a dozen identical spade terminals on the back plus a couple of interchangeable multi-pin plugs and a few others to boot. The thing came with a wiring loom attached but naturally it wouldn't fit my installation so I needed to pull the loom apart and re-make it. To do that I would have to disconnect all the terminals and plugs and it didn't come with a manual ... Initially I drew a large diagram and started labelling all the terminals and wire colours on it, then had my 'bright idea'. It's so obvious I don't know why I didn't think of it before, and given that we all have mobile phones with cameras ... I just took a few photos of it. Now I do that with anything and everything I'm about to work on and I find it very re-assuring to check the photo(s) against the re-assembled item before hitting the 'go' button. Maybe I'm just getting older and the memory's not quite what it used to be, but it works for me.

Yes, all interesting stuff, but note that the articles describing the two more promising concepts, IMHO, the first and last, are getting on for two years old and not been heard of since. This is the problem with the vast majority of genuinely impressive new developments, they might work but are prohibitively costly to bring to market or they're too demanding in production technology. I wish them well and sincerely hope that something useful is developed in the near future but I've been following EV technology for years now with a very great interest in developing something using a series hybrid power-plant but not yet found anything at all encouraging as far as significant battery development is concerned. Not saying it won't happen but I've had too many disappointments along the way so far.

I have to agree with you about the electric motors development - but batteries ...? What do you know that I haven't come across yet? As far as I understood nothing at all of any significance has happened for many years. For any reasonable power density we've been stagnated on Lithium based batteries for a long time with no plausible real developments likely in current technology since Lithium is the lightest metal. Hydrogen fuel cells might have a future but they're not cost or weight efficient yet as far as I know. I'd be very interested in your take on what battery power/weight advancements are likely to come about in the foreseeable future. I'd love to think that you're right because it'd be wonderful to see electric flight develop much more quickly than it has done so far.

Just to clarify for some folk - there's no restriction in RAA about running a turbine engine. 95.55 specifies that qualifying aircraft must have a single engine and a single propellor, so a turbine turboprop would be fine, but a turbine jet (like the Subsonex) wouldn't qualify due to the lack of an airscrew. I agree with SDQDI, there'll be a big place for a STOL turboprop when a small powerplant becomes available ...