Peter Anson

I have never had to show my card in 4 years. Incidentally, I refueled at Thangool last year and needed to use the facilities in the terminal but couldn't find a code for the security gate, but since the fence beside the terminal was only a little over waist high, it wasn't an insurmountable problem. As to the question of which airfields are security controlled - lots, in fact most of the airfields with 24 hour fuel pumps are also security controlled. OK, I know there are exception, but I have done a couple of trips from Victoria to central Queensland and about half my stops were at security airports.

One of the very annoying aspects of the ASIC is that having paid for two years, it's not even for two years. It took so long to renew last time that I got in nice and early. My old ASIC covered up to August 2017. My new one only goes to June 2019. My grumble to RAA was basically answered with "tough luck, not our problem". (not their words but that's what they meant)

Here's Aub just after he had done the first flight in my Sonex when he was just 86 years young. I know he helped many other home builders get their aircraft into the skies. He made flying a totally unfamiliar aircraft look easy. He was a wonderful pilot and a great guy. Peter

Hi René, another really interesting report. I also learned more about Arado 234s than I ever thought possible. I almost overlooked the "slideshow" link. Peter

Hi Roger, don't know how I missed seeing this before, but nice video. Peter

Thanks Alan. I have just caught up with your most recent exploits in the Ugly Duckling. For anybody else reading this I'd like to recommend the Black Sheep blog and especially the much earlier account of your flight to Norfolk Island theblacksheep: NORFOLK ISLAND SOLO 1996 I don't imagine I'll be doing anything as adventurous as that in my Sonex.

Here's why you may need some sort of restraint. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IBGFuBTxsy0

I did a similar trip to this last year in my Sonex (Kyneton to Rockhampton) but this year I managed to fit a fly-in with my family visit. You can read my blog at http://www.ansoneng.com/sample-page/sonex-trips/old-station-fly-in-raglan-queensland/. Ok, it's a similar trip but I've tried to spice it up with some new "alternative facts".

I couldn't resist the opportunity to take this shot of a cute little biplane beside my Sonex at Lethbridge a couple of years ago. [GALLERY=media, 3944]IMG_20170513_152602 by Peter Anson posted May 13, 2017 at 7:48 PM[/GALLERY] My guess is that tricky engine oil top-up would be a pretty frequent job.

Another great report René. I especially like the Elbphilharmonie building. Nice aerial photographs too. Peter

For lengths up to 6 ft you can buy from Aircraft Spruce as UPS will ship up to that length. The price is almost negligible compared with the shipping though. For longer lengths, consider using 2024. The price for 2024 used to be about the same as 6061 and sometimes cheaper. You just need to take more care with corrosion prevention.

It's on again. Bring your wallet. The purpose is to raise money for the Cancer Council, but it's also a great meet and greet day. For more details go to http://kynetonaeroclub.org/wp/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/AMBT.png

You can't have driven a VN Commodore.

Hate to suggest practicality, but first decide what what sort of flying you want to do and how much money you are prepared to spend. If you are never going to carry a passenger and want something fast you can't go past an RV3, and they do appear on the used market. If the panther looks the goods you'll have to build it yourself. If it must be registered RAA and you want to be able to carry a passenger there is a huge range. Here's my option: The Sonex is good fun to fly and it's faster than most of the plastic fantastics but it's not to everyone's taste. The price for the performance is a compact cabin and limited load but the financial cost is lower.

Aircraft Propellers and Spares at Moorabbin make and proof test cables. If you want to make your own they will supply the parts and do the proof testing. I have found their prices reasonable and they are good to deal with. See Propbits – Home builders

I think the Viking uses a non-standard ECU so they might have addressed this problem. Well, 140 kmh in a Honda Jazz is still only 4200 RPM, but you might be right. The engines may run happily for years at 5000 RPM, but we'll really only know when there's a large number flying.

Just a couple of extra thoughts on the Honda and Suzuki auto conversions: Honda and Suzuki both make good engines but in cars they spend most of their lives at fairly low speeds, typically 3 to 4000 RPM, not running continuously at 5000 RPM. I have owned both a Honda Jazz 1500 and Suzuki Baleno 1500, cars fitted with these engines, and while they were fine, neither was impressive for their outright power. You really have to rev them hard to make them go. Neither of the conversions appear to have a backup ignition system or indeed a backup control system for the fuel injection, and it's not unheard of for those things to fail. One of their big claims for the Suzuki conversion is fuel economy at 55% cruise power of only 4.2 gallons per hour (15.9 litres/hr) but on a 1900 nautical mile round trip I did to Queensland last year my Jabiru 3300 averaged 18.8 litres per hour while running at about 2800 RPM. (If you have time to wade through it, see more details at http://www.ansoneng.com/sample-page/sonex-trips/kyneton-to-rockhampton-part-1-930-nautical-miles/) The auto conversions can do that on much cheaper mogas of course, but I can only think of two airfields with mogas pumps, Lethbridge and Goolwa. That's fine if you're not going anywhere. Finally, the price of the 117 HP Suzuki engine is US$12K which would probably be getting up towards A$20K by the time you landed it. I guess all that means I'm skeptical.

Yes, I have a DVD copy of the movie and there is never any mention of the backspin mechanism, and the shape of the bombs is wrong, but I think the "trial" sequence movies are genuine test recordings that are spliced into the movie, and in those you can see that the bombs are spinning as they fall. When I was a kid in the 50s I had several opportunities to have a look inside Lincoln bombers at Laverton and was always astonished at how crowded they were inside. The bomb bay and wing spars meant that some part of the journey through the fuselage was done at a crawl. It was pretty dark and in my shakey memory everything seemed to be black. Reaching an exit in an emergency must have been a nightmare. The design can't have been too bad though. The UK only retired it's Shackletons in 1991.

I have seen a Viking fitted to a Zenith 601 in Australia. I thought it was somewhat lower power, 110 HP, but I think they have made various changes to the electronic controls so the higher power might be attainable now. The installation looked very neat and the owner was happy with it, but it was fairly new at the time. I also know a few Sonex builders in the US who are fitting them and one of them should be flying within the next couple of weeks. It's not a simple bolt-in installation. For a start the engine is considerably heavier than a Jab 3300 (about 20 kg heavier installed) and you would need to do a lot of work on the cowling and fitting radiator etc. The engines are not actually new, but salvaged low-distance engines, which is OK. The Viking web site claims that the engines have less than 5000 miles although one I know of had closer to 20,000 miles, still sort of OK. I read one account of a builder who was drip-fed the engine parts over a 2 year period, hopefully not the case now. It may be that Eggenfellner has turned a successful corner. If he is wonderful to deal with for the next 10 or 20 years he might eventually wipe the slate clean.

If you have a look at Tullamarine on Google Earth you will see that there are already two different rail lines that run within 5 kilometres of the airport. The Broadmeadows line could be extended via a 6 or 7 km loop through open land under the eastern approach. There is also a freight line which goes through Footscray which could be extended from the south which would cause disruption to a large industrial area. An 8km branch could be built off the Sunbury line going around the southern side of the airfield through open land. It's all possible but just keeps getting put in the too hard basket.

Been doing some recycling? My new prop was checked dynamically but we didn't need to change any weights from my static balance as the peak IPS was less than 0.1 I guess sometimes you can just be lucky.

Hi Skip - I had done what I thought was a careful static balance but still had the bad shake at 1500. It could be that my prop had an out-of-plane couple, the sort of effect you'd get with a badly tracking propeller but wouldn't show up with a static balance. More recently with a new prop, (my old one got very out-of-balance after a ground strike), my static balance proved good enough so that I didn't have to change any weights.

Hi Skip, The reason it is not so important to run the engine at cruise speed during the test run is that the aim is simply to find the vibration amplitude and phase. That vibration will obviously always be at engine speed even though what you feel in the cabin will probably be different at different rpm. In my case, there was a bad vibration in the cabin at 1500 RPM as I pulled the power back. The propeller out-of-balance wasn't worse at 1500 RPM, it just felt worse in the cabin because that is probably the resonant frequency of the engine mounts. The picture below is the vibration spectrum output of the vibration analyser. It plots peak inches/sec against frequency (plotted as RPM) while the engine was running at 1850 RPM. You can see the obvious large peak at 1850 due to prop out-of-balance, as well as a smaller peak at 5550 RPM, (3 x engine speed) due to 3 firing pulses per rev, and a smaller peak at twice engine speed which is possibly due to propeller blade beats. Fortunately most of that vibration doesn't get through to the cabin. The picture below shows the vibration spectrum measured by a second transducer attached to the instrument panel. Presumably if we had run the test at 1500 RPM the vibration would have been much worse. The following picture shows the vibration spectrum with a "near enough" set of weights fitted. Brian was able to tell me the optimal weights and locations required, but the Sonex is a little unusual in that it doesn't have a conventional spinner and backing plate. The only place to attach weights is under the propeller bolts. I used a combination of aluminium spacers and AN washers to achieve an approximate balance. Even this rough balance made a dramatic improvement. My 1500 RPM shake was completely eliminated. Later I made and fitted the accurate weights Brian specified. We got together a couple of months later and recorded the following vibration spectrum at 1825 RPM. Note that the vertical scale is larger than in the earlier graphs. The peak IPS value at engine speed is down to just 11% of the starting value. The other peaks are not worse, just magnified by the graph scale. This didn't take multiple runs and gradually zeroing in on a minimum value. The analyser came up with a suitable correcting mass and location and it worked. The only way to use a smaller balancing mass would be to locate it further from the centre, not an option on the Sonex. The balance mass had to be on the propeller bolt pitch circle. In my case, the correct balance mass location was part way between two bolts. Again, Brian was able to tell me exactly how much mass to attach to which bolt.

If you read Brian's article linked to my earlier post you will see that it is not necessary to run the engine at cruise revs, and while it is possible to get a small improvement with in-flight vibration measurements, the gains are small and probably not noticeable in the cabin because the engine mounts damp out the vibrations. I fly a Sonex with a Jabiru 3300, so close-cowled and prone to overheating on the ground, but this presents no problems for doing a balance run on the ground. It also takes just 3 runs of about 30 seconds: one run to get the base data, one run with a trial weight attached and a check run with the final balance weight. We did the engine runs at 1900 rpm, a fairly arbitrary figure that is above engine mount resonance. In truth, my crappy Azusa brakes are barely capable of holding the Sonex at higher RPM.

For more information on propeller balancing, here's a link to an article by Brian Rebbechi that first appeared in "Airsports" http://sonexaus.wikispaces.com/file/view/Propeller%20Balancing%20-%20Airsport%20Winter%202016.pdf/609193595/Propeller%20Balancing%20-%20Airsport%20Winter%202016.pdf