Old Koreelah

I never liked the look of wheel pants; to be effective, they need to be large and carefully designed. I built mine as part of streamlining efforts. Got the glide ratio up from about 1:7 to almost 1:10, which should make a difference if things go quiet. Testing with and without the spats showed a respectable reduction of over 10% in fuel burn and about 4% more speed, so they work. But… if I land on a black soil paddock they might block up with mud and lead to a nose over. One reason all this wet weather has put a dampener on my flying.

Westlands did; bloody ugly result:

…That’s why my Jodel wings are bent up at the ends!

Not many super-rich do. Too busy making money.

Insanely intricate design and machining! Much simpler to copy birds, with a few large feathers making up the outer wing. Able to be slightly twisted to control roll and to be spread to massively vary the outer wing area. Now all I have to do is develop incredibly light, strong, self-repairing feathers…

A female engineer fixed this problem, helping to win the Battle of Britain. https://www.kenleyrevival.org/content/history/women-at-war/beatrice-shilling-revolutionising-spitfire

Perhaps. I totally agree about the historic context, but lets not forget the complete stuff-ups by the communists which led to tens of millions dying in famines. I’m sure that without a strong central government there would have been great turmoil and loss of life, but also great innovation and enterprise- in both of which The Middle Kingdom has led the world. To see what China might have become without a communist government, just look across the water at little Taiwan; 25 million people who rapidly built an economic and technological powerhouse while the mainland communists wasted decades with ideaologically-driven economic disasters.

Cursed with a brain that refuses to adapt to someone else’s way of thinking, I developed my own flight plan form. It has way too many columns, but enough space for all the important stuff, especially if the iPad dies:

A Constant Velocity carb is even more interesting because (as I understand it) the slide is pushed up by the pressure of incoming air and falls down again under its own weight, or is pushed down by a spring; the slide pulls the tapered needle up and down in the main jet, automatically adjusting the mixture to the varying velocity of incoming air (hence the name). The slide would therefore pulse up and down at half the speed as the piston (assuming one carb per cylinder). It’s amazing that CV carbs with a rubber diaphragm don’t need a new one every week.

Kasper I fly with a pair of leather driving gloves cut so the two main fingers are free to feel stuff; bit cold, but works okey. These are my new rescue gloves with special finger tips that work my iPad and phone screens:

This one wasn’t me, but it was someone’s latest flight: https://www.bbc.com/news/av/technology-57660603

Can’t see the windsock.

Hotel air conditioning systems were never designed to isolate individual rooms. They would most likely spread the new, more contageous variants like wildfire.

Australia has several empty mining towns with airport, lots of accommodation and facilities; easily turned into quarantine facilities. As well, we have similar facilities set up for refugees and illegals; why has our national government not made use of them?

I too enjoyed watching that project. I had a tiny role in the building of another Hornet at the Taree factory (they allowed me to pull one rivet) and was impressed by the happy, unhurried workers doing a meticulous job. The fuselage is built as solid as a landcruiser.

Bruce think about it from the air’s point of view; it’s rushing in at high speed and expected to suddenly change direction and slip down thru narrow orifices to cool all the hot bits. Gull wings below the barrels seem to be sensible, but probably best to make them enormous, to hold cooling airflow close to the hot metal for as long as possible, but always allowing that rocket-nossle-shaped outlet underneath.

A lot of assumptions there, T88. This is an enormous continent, with many flyers far from ATC. How many of us would appear on Air Services radar?

We have become very dependent on the latest hi-tech gizmos, all of which are vulnerable to interference by bad guys. It would be prudent to keep some of our proven, older technology available as long as we can. On a parallel tack, the current Covid crisis has severely disrupted world trade and shown us how dependent we have become upon global supply chains. We often hear of how desperately backward things are in North Korea, lots of Africa PNG, etc. True, but people there have had to be much more resilient and self-reliant than us; they are likely to cope with the next big global disrupted far better than we will.

Bruce has mentioned Lithiums, which because of their much lower weight, are attractive for aircraft. I tried small AGMs for several years and found them only just up to the job, especially in winter. When I fitted a LiFePO4 (which claimed a 400 CCA rating) I also fitted a PowerMate regulator which seems to have mated up well with this battery. As Bruce says, a lithium may not be a drop-in replacement for a LA battery; the charge regime is different and their much lighter weight may cause you CoG issues. Besides its very light weight and ability to keep its charge for months even in the cold, Lithiums are attractive because of how they deliver their power; on cold winter mornings my Li battery cranks incredibly slowly, like its flat. After a few seconds the cranking rate picks up as it warms. That gentle start is kind to Jabiru flywheel bolts, but re-starting when it’s hot is not.

I still have every computer I ever owned and most still work (they’re Macs). Nor me, but one day the screen will go blank...so I recently did a proper job of swinging my compass and now it’s pretty much spot on.

When people drive down to the beach, the crocs call it Meals on Wheels.

The first fax was sent in the 1860, but it took a while for the technology to spread.

It was a joke.

We have a TV from the 1960s, in good working order, but these days the picture is a bit washed out. The point of my post was that we have mobs of workable gear which is routinely tossed out as new technology is introduced. The new stuff is much more prone to hacking. I know of container-loads of emergency service radios which were destined for the tip, yet might be a lifesavers in the very likely event that our new digital networks are attacked.

Our local airport is one of the few still with an NDB beacon. We also have a rare old type of PAL unit. Both are way past their replacement dates. Is there still a role for this Stone Age gear? Criminal gangs and foreign agencies have demonstrated that they can disable our fancy high-tech stuff at will, paralysing companies and whole industries. Is it wise to throw out old, still usable stuff?