Bruce Tuncks

I was shocked at the idea of paying more than $200 for a replacement battery for a ResQLink plb. Is there a cheaper way?

the earth curves down at 2/3 ft per mile , which is about 6000 to 1. So it's not true that a 60 to 1 glide angle is better than the earth's curvature.

I think I read that the 747 had a max glide angle of 17 to 1. This is a lot better than the Jabiru which has 12 to 1 but not as good as a 15m glider which has about 40 to 1. Some open-class gliders are approaching 60 to 1!

We need to reduce inequality , there is research around now to show that it costs a country about 5% of gdp to maintain a level of inequality like we have now in Australia.... and there would be a lot more inequality in Saudi Arabia than here.

I myself have a fear of heights which appears when I haven't been up high too much . When I was building a house on stumps then the roof was high enough to scare me till I got used to it. Ever seen the skyscraper guys eating lunch at 1000 ft? There is a famous photo of them. Apparently when one did fall, they would have a minute of silence before continuing.

My father had no fear of huntsmen spiders.... he used to pick them up and they would run up his arm to his shoulder. He said they didn't bite but I reckon he was wrong but lucky.

And yet he came in the Jabiru SK to look at the remains of a fire...he spent nearly an hour in the plane at quite low heights, looking at the blackened paddocks from the Pinery fire. Buggered if I can understand anything here.....

This mate was also horrified that airliners could overfly Gawler and we were still allowed to fly. In vain I tried to tell him that 30,000 ft of vertical separation was more than enough.

Yep, all of the people I know who have died did not do so from a flying mishap. ( they mostly died medical deaths) But my wife , like most people, is negative about flying. So I'm one of derekliston's lot. Well I possibly would not have a wife if her father had not been too airsick to be a Catalina gunner. He was made an armourer instead, and while he went overseas in 1945, I don't think he ever came within a thousand k of a live Japanese. I still think there is an unwarranted fear of flying out there. A mate, who was really smart in his careers, was fearful of flying to the extent that he wore non-synthetic clothes to fly on an airline.

I've said for a long time that the only inbuilt fear that we have inborn is the fear of falling, which explains a lot about the excessive regulations we live with. Lately, I read that babies also have a fear of loud noises, well I guess that this is reasonable. I would like to hear from anybody who knows more than me about this stuff.

Flying into Gawler, I was taught to call up at about 5k out " Because if you call too early, they will disregard the call and anyway they will have forgotten you by the time you arrive" But thanks Ken. I like that they had some reasoning after all.

And there was no midair possibility for most of those other planes. That's why we need an automatic computer system to process the information that is causing stress right now.... I hope you are going good there rfguy. One problem the flarm had... it stopped working ( I think yearly ) until you paid them more money, and the other aircraft needed one too. The money was not the problem, it was the way it just stopped working.

I currently have a samsung tablet with ozrunways.... is SE=skyecho ? is it just another program to add?

I actually don't care what system I will finally be forced to buy and install. But I am a cheapskate and HATE being forced to pay an exorbitant amount. How much is an SE system , for example, and will I have to pay heaps to get it installed by a dope with a bit of paper?

Gliders have a much higher risk of a mid-air because there can be many gliders in the same thermal. They use Flarms which are gps/computer radio tx and rx. They cost less than $1000 each. Does anybody know the reason why they have been rejected by CASA? My personal opinion has been that flarms are just too cheap to be liked by bureaucrats. Not that I have ever been near a mid-air myself, the sky is really big compared to our planes. Flarms sure do alert you to all sorts of things you never noticed before, so I suppose they are a good idea. In two mid-air collisions I know the details of, they would have prevented one but not the other. ( the "other" was a gaggle of gliders which had left a thermal. they flew into what was probably just a hint of lift, it lifted the RH wing of one glider and the LH wing of the other, and they turned towards each other... bang! )

They called it a "pump-syphon" which means to me that you can use it as a pump and lift fuel up higher than it started. If this is so, it looks good.

I'll try to answer that red, even though I see your point.... 1. Electric has a lot of advantages over IC. it is more reliable and potentially cheaper. I no longer fly IC engine models because the electric ones are easier. 2. Electric is cleaner than IC. No oil stains etc. ( I once watched in awe as a model plane got stuck in a spin and went into the ground. On examination of the wreckage, we found that the fuse rear contained oil-soaked balsa , so the g of g was too far aft.) 3. electric is the way of the future.... the big carmakers will make their last IC engine cars in about ten years 4. electric suits flying in that it can provide a lot of power to take-off and then go to cruise mode. I reckon electric dragsters would beat IC ones depending on the rules. Electric could burn rubber as much as you wanted. 5. It would be wonderful if there was a big breakthrough in batteries.... we would all go electric quite quickly. Billions are being spent on the search right now. 6. you can replace electric energy with solar panels or wind generators. I want to do some of this at the farm, mainly for the fun of it but also because I'm a cheapskate and I like solar hot water. 7. We may see the day when fossil fuels are difficult and expensive to get hold of, partly because of greenie legislation and partly because of diminishing markets.

I reckon they still do trial instruction flights everywhere and a power plane would be a lot cheaper than a glider flight. I'd ask if you could log the flight if you plan to continue.

Yep, I flew at the Hilton ranch near Yerington. ( That was the first time in NV and then went I back to fly shotgun for my mate Kempton who wanted to do 1000km in a standard Libelle glider. ( I was in a Ventus) . I saw area 21, where certain lunatics think that the government is hiding UFO bits. I only saw Vegas as a smudge in the east . We had a few days of 12,000 ft cloudbase, but this was not so high over the 7,000ft ridgetops. Alas, that was all a long time ago ( 1996 was my last visit to Nevada ) but I have happy memories. I never met an unfriendly person in the US. Yes, aerotow is the common launch method here too at the bigger gliding places. We use winches at the smaller clubs, just like in germany. In South Australia, there is a lot of german heritage, a bit like the US. I owned a Glasflugel mosquito glider and then later a Libelle. Then I got old and these days I live in western Victoria and fly a Jabiru 230 plane. My gliding days are over, but they were great fun. You should try a ride out one day.

Hi Natalia, I have flown gliders up and down the Whites in NV. It's a wonderful place... we stayed at Tonopah . Anyway, I like your idea of trying flying for real. You will find it different from even the best simulators. For your first Cessna flight, I suggest you choose a time when the air is still, like early in the morning. Best wishes, and welcome here.

Once, during a gliding competition at Gawler, a woman complained that the gliders had flown up to the Murray and loaded up water there and dumped it, complete with blue-green algae, on her washing. I think she was placated to be told that the water was just Gawler tap water. Yes, water ballast will help a glider go faster, but the same does not happen with a power-plane. Lighter will always be faster, other things being equal.

please tell us more nev... As a jab 230 owner,, I will go the cheapest way, and this could well be via VH and CASA. But I am 77 years old, and I reckon any GP could "find something " to deny me a license. I have noticed that GP's relate to the people who give them their exalted place and not to the poor guy who is paying their bill.

I once read that quantas etc found it cheaper to get servicing done in singapore where a licensed person could have ten labourers. In Australia it is only 3. This I find hard to believe, surely CASA etc are not that bad... does anybody know?

In Adelaide, it was noticed that the airport firemen had never been used in earnest in 50 years, and they got disbanded. This was bad news for a mate of mine who used to sleep there and work as a barman at night. A bit like the ambulances I reckon. I would be busting to go to the airport if I were one. But as a person who can just imagine needing an ambulance urgently, I would be angry about them wasting time at the airport. At Gawler, once we had a first-flight engine failure ( A volks type engine in a sonex ) and the pilot elected to do a circuit from 300 ft and he landed so hard that the sonex caught fire. So many police cars came that the main effect would have been that you could have gone speeding and no cops would have caught you, they were all looking at the burning sonex. Well I guess that was the most entertaining show around .

It is the alignment of the 2 pulleys that matters. I this is not always perfect, then the belt will want to creep sideways. The old flat-belt drives had domed pulleys for this reason. They rarely stayed dead center.