Markdun

How many of us have lost rc gliders? Like Bruce I lost one, but about 20 years ago. Hooked it up to the bungee, let it go. ...ooops, forgot to turn the power on in the glider. ..not to worry it will just come off and land nearby.....wrong! It came off the bungee in a nice right turn straight into a thermal. I lost sight of it as it disappeared into the base of cumulus about 2500' above. No lithium batteries though, just nicads. For those wanting a 'soft start', how about a mechanical decompression lever....works ok on hand start diesels? Or compressed air, shotgun cartridge...that would be cool. I'm now getting worried about fire from my lithium batteries; i think I'll mount them in a stainless insulated box with a quick release pin attached to a servo & temp sensor so if the tempersture exceeds, say 120C, it automatically drops out of the aircraft. And if it looks like a difficult outlanding, I could manually pull the pin to jettison the battery before 'landing'. Thinking of avoiding battery started fires on crashing, how many people have a battery fuse mounted on the battery box or positive battery terminal as motor vehicles do? I also wonder how many lead acid batteries explode from the explosive mix of H2 and O2 generated when they are charging? Or structural and corrossion damage aircraft caused by the weight and acid electrolyte? I've see at least one 24 xxxx registered aircraft with cracking on the firewall from the lead acid battery mount....it was quite difficult to rectify.

Mike, the stator windings melted. We removed the stator completely before another flight because we couldn't exclude a short circuit developing in the melted stator windings which could lead to more smoke & hot stuff dripping on the carbie. At 2900rpm the alternator can obviously deliver a current that exceeds the capacity of the stator windings. The starting of our diesel firefighting pump with a very tiny lipo battery also starts off slowly and as Old Koreelah said, then it cranks it with some violence. No landing lights on my planes, and my LED strobes are hardly likely to warm up the battery.

Bruce, be careful with the human voltage regulator. My comment about a destroyed Jab stator comes from experience on a delivery where the Jab/Kubota regulator failed and the voltage started to creep up towards 17V (this is with a lead acid battery on my side of the firewall just near my toes). The aircraft had a nifty switch in the cockpit (Alt) that open circuited the charging wire from the regulator. So I did what you do; as soon as the voltage reached 14, I switched it off. But I also switched it back on when the voltage dropped to 12.5V (it had a big panel with old instruments)...big mistake. ...blue smoke etc at 7500' and drops of molten copper dripping on the carb (we discovered that on the ground). Skippy, the slow start is only from an early black Jabiru starter motor which is a bit underpowered. I think its just that the lithium battery doesn't deliver the current until it warms up a bit...the same as a lead acid battery...but to warm those batteries up I understand you roast them in a camp fire for 15 minutes -- well that's what I saw on the TV series Bush Mechanics. The other thing is that lithium batteries' voltage doesn't drop away as you extract energy like a lead acid battery. I'm not that fussed about it as starters are pretty robust. ..i once drove about 250m in 3rd gear in a Mazda on the starter motor across a floodway on the Nullabor when the distributor got wet. And I've seen a few times people endlessly cranking a Jabiru refusing to start (because the rpm was enough for the ignition system to fire)...This would be far tougher on the starter motor compared to the few seconds it takes to get my motor going.

I assume you have installed a sliding track from a front car seat for your wing attachment so you can easily adjust your CoG. I wish I thought of that when i installed a lighter Jab engine to replace a VW, requiring moving the engine forward 50mm, new engine cowls, and then 1kg of lead in the tail because 50mm forward was too much!

I just splice in an automotive blade fuse holder on one of the two wires that go from the engine's alternator to the voltage regulator, and put in a 15A fuse. These fuses are designed for vibration. I don't use the glass tube type fuses in an aircraft as the unsupported fuse wire inside the glass tube can fatigue break from vibration. The Powermate website probably has a diagram of the details.

I think the big practical issue is the charging of the Lithium batteries. If you forget to turn off your master switch and find you've a flat aeroplane battery you can't just 'jump' start from your car as you will exceed the charge rate for the lithium battery (depending on the battery management system in the lithium battery). Or if you hand start, or manage to get a start from a nearly flat lithium battery, the standard Jabiru voltage regulator will also not regulate the charge current and this could see the battery's charge rate exceeded, or the Jabiru's stator destroyed (if you have no fuse in the AC side), or both. The Jabiru/Kubota voltage regulator might also have a too high upper voltage .... one of mine was at 14.4V which was a bit over the 14.0V recommended for the lithium battery. I've installed the Powermate regulator -- it regulates the charge current to a max of 8 Amps and my voltage never goes above 13.9V now. The big difference I've found in use is that on a cold morning when you press the 'start' button the starter rotates the engine to the first compression and really struggles to move it through TDC, this occurs on the second compression too, but then the battery seems to finally wake up and gets the message that it is required to deliver lots of Amperes and voila, the engine spins like crazy & starts. And it does deliver lots of Amps....I had to increase my battery fuse from 100A to 125A.

Modifications to the air intake on the side of the cowl (& its position) made a big difference to EGT spread on my Bing carbed 2200. So I concur with Hyundai. I ended up settling on a port mid height (ie. widest part of cowl just under the join) about 75mm forward of the firewall. I also have a small deflector on the forward side of the hole that extends outward about 1 cm. After lots of experimentation this seemed to give the best results at cruise & WOT throttle settings. Although I have to throttle back at WOT (rpm ~ 3100 FF 23lph) to avoid exceeding 700C egt on my rear cylinders (particularly #4) at the cost of about 50rpm, & at cruise (15lph) my #4 runs at around 640 to 650C when the others are around 710-720C. No data on manifold pressure unfortunately. Why the inlet matters I don't know as I would have thought the air filter and the little rubber flap on the air filter box would remove any significant pressure effect on the carb. Carb inlet vanes made bugger all difference, except when a 'vane' obstructed one of the pressure sensing ports of the Bing. My limited experience on a Rotec carbed 2200 with a J&H filter attached directly to the inlet drawing warm cowl air with no carb heat 'a la' many Rotax 912s is totally different. EGTs are evenly spread irrespective of carb rotation. Carb temp has never been less than 30C even on a 5C OAT day, and has seen 50C+. I do worry about vapour problems as there is no float bowl in this setup.

Can someone explain why a compass is still important when in most cockpits we have 3 or 4 gps devices (EFIS, handheld gps, tablet/ipad, phone) & its unlikely all will fail? If the gps system collapses there are far bigger probs afoot than landing in a paddock 'lost'. I have a 'steam powered' ASI as a back-up, but know I can fly & land the aeroplane sans all instruments. And I carry a handheld compass, but really, if all my gps went out, I'd either land as soon as possible or navigate by eye, the sun & terrain.

Would love to. Waiting for the changes from CASA that will enable us to install a cheap version easily. I have an AIS marine transponder in my yacht (simliar to ADSB but without the ground stations/satellite links &;a lot slower). Its great...ships 'see' you, and if they don't you can ring an alarm in the bridge through their vhf radio. I did see an official marine rescue vessel once going 15kts sternwards from the AIS...they had made some installation error.

Just to be different I like to use the area frequency. My airstrip is about 5nm south of Lake Bathurst and Canberra controlled airspace LL is at 6500'. I have 3 other airstrips within 2nm of mine; one is commonly active with gyros. Also I'm directly on the flight path for military aircraft going backwards and forwards from Canberra to the secret airbase Albatross at Nowra, and many of their helicopters and fixed wing aircraft fly at around 1000'agl or below.....my normal circuit height. On a couple of ocassions listening in to the class G area frequency (which is actually Canberra Approach east) I have heard vhf aircraft circling at 4500 waiting for clearance into Canberra, and a quick call to the ATC has enabled us to maintain better seperation. I find listening in to the appropriate area frequency gives me better situational awareness, including on cross country flights and it also makes it easy to terminate or extend Sarwatch. However, the military is another beast. I have had to take evasive action to avoid a blackhawk when I was on downwind. I have emailed them about this but have not even had a reply...no idea what frequency they were on. I even suggested they could land at my place for a coffee so we can better arrange how avoid each other. I thought the old concept of ALAs was ditched many years ago when the rules changed to require pilots to make a decision whether they could land/take-off from a location and that ALAs are now only relevant because some insurance company's will only cover the plane if it is operating from an ALA???

I'm with Bruce, you should be reasonably confident flying without instruments. I did that test when gliding in NZ; we not only had to report to the CFI in the back seat every couple of minutes on our speed and altitude, we also had to do an outlanding into an unfamiliar paddock more than 10nm away from our usual strip. I was never told whether my estimates on speed & altitude were close, but I was cleared to fly cross-country. Air noise probsbly makes it easier in a glider. My primary navigation instrument is a pair of eyeballs mounted on my head. Passengers are warned that use of a mobile phone could interfear with this navigation system. Mike is correct in that assessing your speed by referencing the ground can result in stall and spinning, particularly on downwind, turning & close to the ground, but I dont think this is the case if you have the aircraft's attitude set correctly for the amount of power the engine is producing. When it comes to the engine, I am far more dependent on the gauges....I know I should be able to assess the engine on the noise & vibration, but I'm a nervous Nelly with the iron thermal up front. So I'm thinking an ipad panel connected as you suggested would be fine, as long as you are confident you can fly the plane if it goes pear shaped. But I would suggest you think about engine monitoring too. We just need someone to make something like the MGL RDAC with wifi connectivity. FWIW, on my panel I have one MGL Xtreme EFIS/EMS & a mechanical ASI with legacy fuel flow, compass and electric vario/vsi (from pre Xtreme time), & I have a handheld GPS & an Android tablet sort of running OzRunways. I also take my little Silva orienteering compass & paper WAC....I have used that compass for steering across oceans (in a boat) with legs exceeding a thousand nm in pre-gps days...probably unecessary now.

I am no battery expert, but ALL lithium batteries have lithium ions and can be referred to as lithium ion batteries. All (or nearly all) lithium batteries on the market have porous carbon anodes. Lithium iron phospate batteries are one type of lithium ion batteries, where the cathode is made of compound containing lithium ions; there are others, eg. Lithium cobalt oxide, lithium titanate etc. My understanding is that the term "lithium ion' is used to distinguish these types of batteries from early lithium batteries that had metallic lithium in the cathode....and these batteries had a particularly high fire risk because during recharging you would get dendrites of metallic lithium growing on the cathode and these dendrites could reach the anode, resulting in a short circuit and thermal runaway leading to a fire. This is not to say other lithium batteries are immune to fire. And of course lead acid batteries can also develop internal shorts from lead dendrites (but no thermal runaway). Have a look at this site for more info Lithium-ion Batteries Information - Battery University I would suggest that SSB are correct in referring to their batteries as both lithium iron phosphate and lithium ion. What would be good is if the battery manufacturers published the detailed specs of the battery management systems so we can compare. Skippy, you may want to check Lithiumax batteries....similar price to SSB, and they are advertised as suitable for aircraft. I have both and I can't really tell any difference but the vibe I get is that the BMS on the Lithiumax could be better...but that is just a guess in the absence of specifications and measurement.

Bruce, the 'bluesmoke meltdown' was in a friend's plane I was delivering. It had a rather large and very heavy lead battery with the original Jabiru/Kubota voltage regulator. There was no fuse in either the AC side of the regulator nor the DC side. (And I might add, despite being previously VH registered there is no main battery fuse either) The aircraft had both an ammeter and voltmeter and a toggle switch that could open circuit the DC side of the alternator (ie. you could switch off battery charging). In my familiarisation flights I found the voltage was creeping up to 16V as indicated on an anologue gauge (auto quality). The aircraft had a good avionics panel, transponder artificial horizon, turn & bank etc..almost IFR, but no glass EFIS/EMS. Being worried about damaging the electronics & the battery I thought it wise to turn off the charging whenever the voltage increased to 16V and to turn it back on when the voltage dropped to below 12.5V. Not a big task as the battery was huge...maybe it needed about 5 minutes every hour. However, I have subsequently read a Jabiru advisory that it is possible to exceed the current capacity of the alternator at high rpm with a voltage regulator failure and a battery that will absorb a heavy charge current. Their advice on noticing a regulator failure is to isolate the charging circuit and land and replace the regulator. The approach we have now taken is to install the Powermate regulator which should limit the voltage to 14.2 and current to 8A and to install a 15A auto fuse on the AC side of the regulator (plus a lot of re-wiring as well). This means if the regulator fails, at most you are up for the cost of a new regulator plus a 50c fuse, and not have to contemplate rewinding the jab stator or buying a new one for $500. And more importantly you will not get molten copper dripping onto your carburettor. This is all a bit off topic though. My understanding is that the lithium batteries like the SSB are able to deliver heaps of current for little voltage drop, and so can crank an engine really well, right up to the point of total discharge. However, the electronic battery management system does not tolerate high charging currents...so if you do substantially discharge one, you can damage it by charging with a standard lead acid battery charger/regulator and particularly by 'jumper' connecting it to a charged lead battery or running car's battery. I'm no expert in this, but this is what the battery suppliers say. I think my Lithiumax 400 battery has a maximum charge current of 8A, but it easily delivers 60A plus to crank the Jabbie 2200...real fast. So the one downside of the Lithium batteries are no jump starting.

I'm not sure that problem is limited to lithium batteries. ...plenty of cases of melted alternator windings and escaping blue smoke (blue smoke is the thing that makes all electronics work) from Jabs with lead batteries. I'm now a firm believer in having a fuse/circuit bre a ker in the AC side of the Jab alternator after experiencing blue smoke in the cockpit and then a subsequent ground inspection showing molten copper dripping around the carb...with a lead battery - & the failure was the voltage regulator, not the battery, nor the alternator.

I've had one in my Jab powered aeroplane for 2 years. It weighs almost nothing. Still going well. Really cranks the engine fast even on minus 5C days. I did put in a Powermate regulator because of a negative voltage spike isdue that resulted in weird fuel flow numbers on my EFIS/EMS based on advice from the EFIS people who said they had a few issues with Jab regulators. Previously the bus voltage at cruise settled at 14.2V but now it's 13.7V. I can't tell the difference other than reading the voltage numbers onnthe EFIS. All works well.

Yes Bill. I ran an Bing 64/32 CV carb for 700 hours or so on my 1835VW which I scavanged off an old BMW R100 boxer, but replaced it with a Rotec 34mm diaphram carb (its not really an injector). The engine started easier with the Rotec (hand start) as it has a primer function, and I easily got another 100rpm on full throttle. And of course it had mixture control, though I never used it. ...I just left it at full rich. My set up used gravity feed. The Rotec also gave better EGT spread. I've now installed it on Jab motor. Cheers, Mark

It's actually a vapour return line from a header tank (about 2l) mounted on the aft side of the firewall... the VW installation was gravity fuel flow. But the line can be used as a fuel level check. ...my plane also has a translucent epoxy/glass window in the fuel tank and a sight tube on the tank....and a calibrated fuel flow meter for a computed fuel remaining. You can never be too sure on fuel reserves. Mark

Visibility is fantastic. Compared to a Tecnam Bravo, Jabiru or a low wing, Cessnas etc its just tickety boo. On the ground and in the air the visibility is good.....the nose and dash are low, so superb fwd and down. Side windows allow visibility above and under the wings. Bubble glasshouse means up and to the rear up is good. Only blind spots are directly down and down towards the rear. I've never found the shoulder wing an issue. Checking out landing areas doesn't require a roll like is needed in many low wing aeroplanes, and its not difficult to check for aircraft on finals when taking off (unlike many high wing aeroplanes). Handling is very docile; roll is not fast, and the long fuselage means its not twitchy on elevator. Friese ailerons means you don't need big input on the rudder. No flaps, but she sideslips super well for glidepath control. Also it has pIsitive stability. ..you can fly hands off and while a thermal may give you a bump, it settles back down. Matt, I find your fuel burn at cruise difficult to accept. Do you just divide your added fuel by your Hobbs hours, and therefore include climb, warm-up and descent? My numbers are from a calibrated fuel flow meter, and with the 1835 VW and with two people on board I was getting 16.5 lph @ 75-80kts and rpm say 3100 and this was with egts around 650C, so it wasn't running rich. Here's a pic of my planes.

Matt, I built and still own a Cygnet here in Australia. It first flew in 2000 and had about 750 hours, nearly all of that with an 1835VW engine with a shrink fit prop hub, a single vertex magneto and a Bing cv32mm carb removed from a bmw r100 motor bike. The prop i carved myself (58 x 32) and it was a tad smaller than Bert's suggestion to get the rpm over 3000 at my elevation. Hand start. My empty weight was 245kg and performance was pretty much as per Bert's, though climb with a full load on a hot day was probably around 200fpm. It now has a Jabiru 2200 and I now cruise at 92kts @ 15lph. Cheers, Mark

We came East in a Tecnam in Jan 2017. It was a delivery and we didn't have experience of the plane's fuel burn/speed. 100 litres fuel, 20lph @ 100-110kts. Northam-Kalgoolie-Forrest-Border Village-Ceduna-Port Augusta-Mildura-Hay-Goulburn. Most nervous leg fuel wise was Kal to Forrest. Lots of strips to land on next to the railway line, but you would need to wait a long time for fuel (maybe weeks). We had a fall back option if fuel burn was more than expected to cut across to the coast. In the end we laneat Forrest with 30 litres in the tanks. Most expensive fuel was at Border Village (and the roughest strip). Best and friendliest service by a very long shot was at Forrest. Plane hangered for the night, lunch delivered, and a fantastic evening with the hosts and some fellow aviators, well lubricated by wine. Forrest really is a must stop-over.

Here's my two bobs worth. I've been to 4 Narromine fly-ins and 2 at Temora, flying my Minimax, Cygnet or in a Thruster. I went for the flying there; to have a sticky at other planes, particularly homebuilts for ideas and to see how others had overcome tricky or not so tricky problems; to fly in different planes and to take people for a fly in my plane (obviously not the Minimax); to meet people and socialise and in the evening to tell and listen to lies, mostly about flying, over 1 maybe 2, 3 or 4 alcoholic drinks in evening. I didn't go to be hectored, berated and lectured at about safety (I'm from the tribe that reckon flying in small planes is bloody dangerous and its just pissing into the wind to think otherwise). And I didn't go to Narromine last year because it was unclear to me whether it was a fly-in or not...it was billed as an 'airshow' with heavy fast aircraft, there was no information about camping under the wing etc etc, and it was even unclear it was a RAA event. By the time i learnt otherwise i had made other plans. I'd be keen to fly in to Cessnock, but the interest pull is not that strong if it's just a bunch of commercial shops without lots of interesting (homebuilt or unique) planes. Jabs & Tecnams are great planes but I'm not that keen to look at 20 of them that are all much the same.

I too have built and flown a low wing Minimax, but with a 1/2VW engine. It had zero washout as per the plans and CoG was in the mid range. The aircraft was at the designed empty weight. The plane was easy and a joy to fly and was very forgiving, but being open cockpit it was bloody cold and one got wind burnt on any cross-country. My Minimax had over 30l in additional fuel in wing tanks (& when full made climbs kinda slow, or more accurately slower than the already slow climb rate), an 'Occy' strap trim on the control stick, and it cruised around 60 kts (65kts if you porpoised). It did climb like a rat up a drainpipe in a thermal. ...Stall speed around 20kts! It definitely fitted the bill of maximum fun, minimum cost (pity ra-aus didn't stick to this ethos).

Nope. I still fly homebuilts and don't trust planes that are built by hundreds of cheapest tenderers. Jeez, they are just engine failures that require an outlanding. What's the problem? It would be a while lot different for an aeroplane with say a stall speed over 50kts and a mass greater than a 1000kg (all that kinetic energy to dissipate), or an on board fire, control circuit or structural failure. What's a Lyc and Conty? I havnt seen those. Are they two strokes, or copies of Jabiru or VW conversions?

Well I've had six. First was in a glider when the thermals stopped on the way back to our strip in NZ. At 400' i could see my chosen outlanding paddock had a fence, so then a fallback was a school oval (150m long and over power lines). Greased it in. Second was a head bolt failure in a 1/2vw powered single seater on takeoff at around 100'...landed straight ahead weaving between trees. No real time to do anything but fly the plane. Third and forth in the same plane (broken rocker bolt and the crankshaft) at altitude. Stall speed of that plane was around 20kts, so basically it could be landed on any cleared ground, of say 40m, as long as the approach was clear. If any long grass you had to stall just above the grass, and it would plonk down and not flip (tail dragger of-course). Last two were both prop bolt related in a homebuilt. Had to land in a rape seed paddock after shutting motor off due to vibration. Biggest issue was having to explain numerous times in the pub while we were waiting for a lift home why we had a prop with us. Last one the prop departed just after i joined base after i had pulled the motor to idle due to vibration. I made a bad decision to continue with my planned landing rather than land in a paddock straight ahead with fences, was far too low and was reconciled with having to land in a forested creek about 150m short of the runway. Somehow we got over the creek (due to wind gradient), one wing touched some leaves, i then held off about 10' above 3m high scrub, but stalled onto them a bit short of the strip. The plane came to a sudden stop...Definitely no skidding. Damage was: undercarriage ripped off and a few dings in the engine cowling; a bruise from the seat belt; nightmares for a few months; and $ and time to fix the plane. Main lesson is the benefit of staying current. ...i misjudged a no power circuit because i hadn't been doing a lot of flying, and i think our tendency to do larger circuits as if or aircraft have a l/d of better than 20/1 instead of tight ones you need with an l/d of 11/1.

Get some quotes. It will depend which State/Territory you are in. A few years back there was a lot of liability law reform intended to reduce insurance premiums. ...They didn't. But what they did do is make it very hard (almost impossible) to sue a medical doctor for negligence or someone engaged in recreational activities that are inherently dangerous such as flying light planes. Have a read of the NSW Civil Liability Act. Some law shops have published layman's summaries. You may find that showing these summaries to the landholder might do away with the need for insurance. Its not quite true that you can't hand over tort liability...you can agree with the landowner to indemnify him or her for any losses (this is what insurance companies agree to do) ..but of course the kicker is if you don't have enough money. As i said previously, unless you are running commercial flights (not just a flying school), the Civil Labor Act should be sufficient protection. It always annoys me with this liability stuff.....with the exception of the tort of nuisance (which is generally about environmental damage to another person's land), you have to do (or not do) something wrong or bad to be liable, that is you have to be negligent (such as breach a standard) for negligence, or do an positive act (such as tamper with an aircraft) for a trespass. Is just an insurance company scam.