Old Koreelah

The only Warrior I’ve been in impressed me. A Kiwi farmer took me into some short, rough paddocks without a worry.

Good point, Flighty. I almost never do, but sometimes we need some practice in case things go quiet. On Wednesday I did a few approaches on full flap and managed some nice short landings. While focussed on nailing the aiming point, the ASI slipped way back to Vs1.2. Luckily there was no winds shear or turbulence.

Alan I’ve done a lot of mucking about with fuel vent locations and have learned that the tank must have positive pressure. Rearward-facing vents may result in air being sucked out, leading to fuel starvation. Besides the direction it faces, the location of the vent is also important. I once took off without properly securing the cap on one wing tank. The low pressure around the cap sucked out some fuel and when I switched to that tank the engine spluttered. Even my wingtip vents have been affected by vortex currents; I had to find the best spot and align the vent into the airflow. Another aspect to allow for is fuel flow if you end upside down, which is why my vent are as far from me as possible. Despite all that experience, some designers seem to get it right. I was amazed to see one European aircraft has a pinhole vent on the trailing edge of each wing

The Provost looks almost identical to Australia’s Winjeel, but I can find nothing written about this. Even more interesting, the Provost’s designer, Henry Milicent, migrated to Oz after working on the Provost, but his Wikipedia profile contains no mention of him being involved in the design of the Winjeel.

This discussion belongs on the Off Topic site.

APenName… is right about recent aggression by China, which is perhaps understandable given the couple of centuries of humiliation they are emerging from. I believe China claims they are just reclaiming territory taken from them in the past by aggressive colonizing European powers.

Mostly because Australia lacks the forward-thinking of the Nordic nations. Norway owns it’s mineral wealth and now has over a trillion dollars in national savings. Australia has a national debt of around a trillion dollars, despite having massive mineral wealth. The difference: Whitlam’s government was crucified for trying to get control of our mineral wealth, while Norway’s government managed it.

Thanks for injecting some realism into the discussion, KG. We have been raised in an ocean of US propaganda about the “Soviet threat” with outrage that a few “Russian Trawlers” might be eavesdropping on western military exercises, while our side conducts massive surveillance on them.

Lots of alpacas are employed around here to guard sheep.

Yep. All the Way with LBJ is the basis of our defense strategy. Spacey China hasn’t invaded distant lands like other great powers have done, but plenty of countries on their borders have been subjugated and flooded with Han Chinese immigrants: Tibet, Mongolia, Sinkiang… Despite the claims by the CCP that they respect and protect minorities, there are some disturbing stories leaking out that don’t. Their neighbour are pretty nervous about massive miliarisation of the South China Sea. China can claim some historic connection with these territories, but that also applies to Vietnam and other lands on its borders. What future claims will the new emperor make?

I’ve been searching for some evidence that John Thorpe was influenced by the Jodel wing. Couldn’t find any, but discovered that he designed the Fletcher as a light attack aircraft. Another of those designs that adapted well to another function. I love the bent wings for a number of reasons, one of which is that you can side slip until almost on the plurry deck!

I totally agree, Spacey. But we are not just dealing with the Chinese people. The Chinese Communist Party is quite nervous of any threat to its control; 1.3 billion people can be a handful if they get riled up, so the CCP wants to keep the economy stable. At the same time, like any government, they like to build up the perception of an external threat to unite the people behind them. (America has been doing this for generations: remember all those movies about the Russians invading USA? Ridiculous.) In China’s case, it has happened too often. China has a long history of being exploited and humiliated by the west (Australian volunteers flocked to fight the Chinese during the Boxer rebellion) and the communist government loves to remind their people of this. Interesting times ahead.

Bent wings are best!

…or that the ensuring Japanese vengeance cost a couple of hundred thousand innocent Chinese their lives.

My question for that pilot (spoken in an Aussie accent): “With such a mundane day job, what do you do at the weekends to give yourself a bit of a challenge?”

Jabiru did oodles of spin tests on their various models, probably more than any other rec. aircraft maker. An ex-RAAF test pilot gave a talk about having to take sick breaks while doing 80 separate spins tests in various configurations. That probably means the manufacturer’s handbook is worth following.

Dafydd Llewellyn has built some impressive instrumentation to do this sort of testing. Inspired by this I built an articulated pitot extension to correct for AoA and slipping; it was much simpler than the one above, but used the same principle. It worked well for years until it got broken by ground vegetation.

Like this one I photographed over Darwin years ago:

That makes sense, but is opposite to my experience riding in rain and 100% humidity, when I’d always get my best fuel economy… But maybe that had more to do with more careful twisting of right wrist.

Very nice. I found the planes interesting as well.

This historic clipping turned up recently: about our well-know local Dr. winning this race in 1975. Abe was a keen aviator and set up a small airline at Quirindi Airport. His small fleet of aircraft carried passengers between Quirindi, Gunnedah, Tamworth and Sydney for several years. His hangar is now used by our local air spray business. John Henry, also mentioned in the clipping, built our club’s hangar and used it as a flying school. This clipping will be a useful resource for our History of flying in the Quirindi District which I am researching with a couple of other locals. This is something many places should do before too many more old hands fall off the twigs and their precious memories are lost to history. Like many other places, our little town had a visit from Smithy, who landed The Old Bus on a local hillside and took people for joy flights.

That can happen on the ground. Coming home from the Alpine Rally thru late night fog, the fairing on my Ducati and my helmet quickly built up a thick coating of very rough ice.

Can we have a pic, Yenn?

If you need somewhere to test it, YQDI needs a camera and our neighbour is building a new hangar, the perfect mounting point.