Jump to content

Bruce Tuncks

Members
 View Profile  See their activity

  • Posts

    3,477

  • Joined

  • Last visited

  • Days Won

    19

 Content Type 

Everything posted by Bruce Tuncks

  1. Bruce Tuncks
    I agree with kg about electric chain-saws. I use one from total tools and it is just great. I can start the electric one every time with no worries.
  2. Bruce Tuncks
    On rereading that post, I fear I have implied that the older Jabiru cylinder heads were no good. This is not my real position, which is that the older cylinder heads must be kept cooler than those from harder alloys. Kept cool, they run fine for many years. I have two at 20 years old and going well.
  3. Bruce Tuncks
    Yes he did, he said that lycoming etc used "fit for purpose metal" therefore implying that Jabiru did not. I don't really disagree with thruster too much on this matter. If you tap something hard onto a Lycoming head ( or even a volkswagen for that matter) you get a sharper ring than with the old jabiru head. I am sure that a hardness test would also show a big difference. But I also suspect that the gen 4 heads are made of a different and harder material.
  4. Bruce Tuncks
    I just converted mike Bush's "sweet spot" temps which he has from 350 to 400 F. On my conversions, this translates to 176 to 204 C, which I reckon is 40 degrees too hot for a Jabiru CHT. Thruster points out that the Jabiru stuff is not as good as the Lycoming metal, and I agree. I think the gen 4 engine has different metal, does anybody know about the gen 4 head metal?
  5. Bruce Tuncks
    Recent experience with the gen 4 engine on Avgas has also demonstrated that Mike Busch is also right about the too cool side. Some engines were clogging up with lead-looking deposits.
  6. Bruce Tuncks
    Don't agree Bosi. Years ago, Jabirus lowered their redline from 200 C to 175 C. I agreed with this even before they did it. My personal aiming temp is 160 degrees C I think manufacturers feel under pressure to come up with good numbers, like the 200 C was, and some naive people get into trouble by trusting them. There was a woman who had terrible trouble with her Jabiru engine, and I think this was part of the problem.
  7. Bruce Tuncks
    Thanks for posting that Garfly. I wanted to see it but missed out at the time. My son has an IO 360 in his Lancair so it was exactly relevant.
  8. Bruce Tuncks
    Thanks Markdun. I take your point and I will look at the plane soon and tell you.
  9. Bruce Tuncks
    I have used LiFe batteries in my Jabiru for more than ten years and I agree they are much better. I only have a standard Jabiru voltage regulator which would damage the battery if left on. So I use a digital voltmeter in the panel and shut off the battery when it is back up to pre-start voltage. The battery is no more in the circuit then than it is sitting in the hangar. The only 2 problems with this setup are that the master is OFF during flying and I have to remember to cut out the charger manually.
  10. Bruce Tuncks
    That paper was very interesting Ian. Is it applicable to a Jabiru with a compensating carby and no mixture control?
  11. Bruce Tuncks
    please tell us more rf. I think you mean that the wire could short at the firewall. Is this your point?
  12. Bruce Tuncks
    Just because lots of us old guys can afford things does not mean that all costs are reasonable. In particular, I don't like many of the "safety compliance costs" which we didn't have to pay years ago. Like the ASIC card costs. But my main gripe is that too many younger people seem to stay away because they can't afford the high costs of the high-end of flying. I lament that they don't seem to want to try the cheaper side of flying.
  13. Bruce Tuncks
    I reckon that battery was illegal for sure in a VH plane, but it may also have been illegal in a 19 reg Jabiru. I think the article I had said that the guy had built the plane from a kit. The wife read the article and got angry with me for saying how he caught fire unnecessarily. Mind you, the quality of the report was poor and there may be misleading bits there. It was obvious to me that the reporter knew nothing about batteries, for example.
  14. Bruce Tuncks
    In the latest weekend herald sun insert, there was a story about a tasmanian 19reg Jabiru with a li-po battery which caught fire mid-air. Does anybody know about this?
  15. Bruce Tuncks
    No wonder they get iron and ion mixed up. My worry is that a coroner or CASA will be similarly ignorant of batteries 101 and come up with ignorant rulings.
  16. Bruce Tuncks
    I have often wondered why 2 strokes are not better than 4 strokes. The flimsy valve business with 4 strokes should wipe them out in comparison. The failing of some 2 strokes has been the need to mix the oil in the fuel, but this is not a 2 stroke thing but a cheap thing. Yes, the fact that crankcase compression systems cause some of the incoming charge to go straight out the exhaust is a downside. But the extra mixing of fuel/air is an upside. What about a diesel 2 stroke? It sure has been done and it should have taken over but it didn't. I have never understood why not.
  17. Bruce Tuncks
    Weight-shift aircraft operated from Gawler some years ago. They flew at dawn and dusk, making our neighbors upset, because they didn't like the wind and turbulence and thermals of the main day. I am pleased to say that their importer has moved onto expensive but real planes. His real planes only cost about 130,000 but I bet that is not the end of the payout you would be making. Besides, the weight-shift planes were not that cheap, although I can't give an actual price. But I would bet you could buy a Boomerang ( Schneider wooden glider of 30:1 performance) for about $6000. You could still do a 500k flight in one of these.
  18. Bruce Tuncks
    If the RAAUs was developed to foster affordable flying, I reckon the stupidity of the population has beaten them. First, a digression: Gliding was once the cheapest way to get into the air, and it still can be if you will accept winch launches in a wooden glider. Very few do this. The result is, if you look at glider sales nowadays, you will see a tiny number of 1/2 million dollar things being imported by the rich. The scene I grew up with, where working guys could buy a syndicate glass 15m glider, has also gone by. When I bought my Jabiru kit, it was cheaper than the sales tax on a self-launch 17m glider.... so now RAAus had the cheapest flying for me. But the new aircraft mainly seem to be factory built 1/4 million things for the rich. What is happening? Why do the younger generation seem to only want things they can't afford?
  19. Bruce Tuncks
    Take for example the 5mm . . countersunk-head machine screws which hold down the Libelle seat-pan. There are about 20 of them, each with a cup washer. I bought a set from a fastener warehouse place . They worked just fine and so what if one or 2 failed ? Even if they all failed, there would be no good reason to crash. The alternative would have been to buy stuff from Europe at hundreds of times the cost. And in 15 years, there were no failures of these screws.
  20. Bruce Tuncks
    Good onyer flightrite. I guess you already know that the Wright Bros were very illegal by today's terms.... not a single aircraft approved part in the whole plane. Actually it's silly to use expensive bits where a hardware shop item would be just as good and where there are no adverse consequences of a failure.
  21. Bruce Tuncks
    I reckon the methanol absorbs the water nicely and makes it less likely to go to the carby bowl and build up there like facthunter says to avoid.
  22. Bruce Tuncks
    Good onyer old K . I agree with what you have done and will be keeping my fingers crossed that it works well. Take-off and climbout seem so hard on a cooling system that I think it would be an obvious thing to do.... best wishes from Bruce. Sorry but I have no idea of what the ideal fuel/water mix should be, but any improvement will help so the main thing will be to see what happens with a smaller amount like you are going to do.
  23. Bruce Tuncks
    I agree Waraton. As long as we don't get charged for the "services".
  24. Bruce Tuncks
    I don't think it helps Ironpot. What we don't need is for government departments to impose "services" onto us which we will have to pay for.
  25. Bruce Tuncks
    In 50 years of flying, I have never seen a situation in which a first-aid kit would have helped. In the hopefully 3 or 4 years I have left , the odds are that these years will be similar. Gosh I hope you never need those scary injections, Pen-name. The nearest things to emergencies I have heard of were when well-meaning passers-by mistakenly thought that an outlanded glider had crashed and the pilot must be badly injured.
×
×
  • Create New...