Bruce Tuncks

RF guy, weight and balance are quite easy arithmetically. Much easier than a lot of electronic stuff. The worst mistake would be to not have the fuselage at the right fore and aft angle. This can grossly change the calculated c of g position, especially with a plane on legs like a Jabiru. If you weigh it properly, post the figures up here and lots of us will check them out and I bet we will just confirm your sums. Don't forget to measure the distances too.

I don't think that they are allowed to test cleaners and baggage handlers at major airports. They are not allowed to search them, even if they are related to known drug people. The reason is that the airline objects to paying a salary while the person is being tested or searched. The total effect of this is that lots of drugs enter the country from crooked cleaners.

I'm happy to accept him moving on, as long as it's not to CASA , taking his inside knowledge with him. We got a letter from him, but his destination was conspicuous by its absence. And Turbs, it is very unfair to blame ELAAA for the fact that CASA is stonewalling them. My guess is that they need to go political, but alas there are too few votes in it for most pollies.

I do admit to being a cheapskate.For me, the plugs are ok but I get tangled up with the cord. I notice there are lots of cordless headphones at Officeworks etc and one of these might do the job one day.

I currently have the standard Jabiru setup with 2 plugs down near each seat . I wish I was better at soldering but if needed, I can do it. Is there a kit bluetooth thing I could use?

I don't want the government to have anything to do with me. A few years ago, a German couple got stuck near lake Eyre . One died because they believed the book they had filled in at the pub would lead to their rescue. In reality, they would have been far better off telling their parents their plans. Nobody looked at that book anymore. So my advice is to tell somebody who cares where you plan to be.

I reckon I would like a bluetooth headset. Those wires and plugs are a real nuisance. Alas, I am a bit too cheap to shell out at the current aviation prices.

Yep, that radiant thing looks good but it is too expensive for me. there is an Arduino ultrasonic thing too at about ten percent of the radiant price. Mind you, a ready-made thing would be a lot less work. And a meter on the panel would look good. RF guy, the liquid level sender I was thinking of would be like the XKC-Y25-T12V which describes itself as a " non-contact liquid level switch" You can buy 3 of them for about $30 from banggood. Would these each drive a led on the panel? I would imagine one at 20 litres, one at 10 and one at 5 or 6. How do they work?

I'm emotionally on the side of the "ignore regulations " guys. I just hate how, under the banner of "safety" we are letting fascists into power.

My logbook is a GFA one. Chosen on the basis of weight. Headings altered to protect the guilty. I was dumbstruck when my next door neighbor Ludwig ( of the time ) produced his old Luftwaffe logbook! It was the same except that his had a big swastika on the cover.

Even 2 years would be better than nothing. I still say that requiring an agreement to not go to CASA is worthwhile. Even if it turns out to be not enforceable, at least with some particular judges, the person doing the double-cross would be exposed. Is it not interesting that there has not been movements the other way? Maybe the million dollars in benefits has something to do with this.

Downunder, that is a horror thing happened to your mate. Could you tell us more? you may need his permission.

The airlines are a good example of deciding what to do about the conflict between safety and practicability. Airliners do not provide their passengers with parachutes, for example, even though there has been at least one incident where they would have saved many lives. They don't provide 4 or 5 point harnesses either. Or mandate that you wear a helmet. ( You need a helmet to legally ride a bike around here. This has had the effect of making bike riding a rare thing to do ) In all these things, the extra weight is a safety negative which is there all the time, lowering structural margins and increasing stall speed and reducing fuel capacity. But a polystyrene helmet would have saved this guy I knew from a minor injury. He up-ended his Jabiru and cut his head on something sharp. Except that he would not have had time to put it on, and as Nev pointed out, padding would have been a better option. If you fly in good weather in daylight then you can always aim the ( 40 knots ) fuselage between the trees and after the wings are ripped off, the impact will be nothing like some of the amazing things that race car drivers ( helmets, roll-cages, suits and 5 point harnesses ) survive, from about 100 knots. Another guy I knew came down in mulga-tree scrub, in the dark, in a glider with a 4 point harness. He said that just when the altimeter read ground level, the wings got ripped off but he was unhurt himself. I think the glider was a write-off.

How do you connect those "liquid level " senders to an indicator light? I like the look of them , but as has been said, they may not work on avgas. The reversing camera is a good idea too. My new car has one and I like it. It sure saves trying to swivel your neck through 180 degrees. Putting one behind the tank means that luggage in front might block it. If you put it too close to the tank it might not focus enough.

Once at Gawler a pilot turned on the electric boost pump on pre-landing checks and the engine stopped! He turned off the electric and restarted the engine and he hasn't used the electric pump on landing ever since. This is exactly the situation where a good fuel pressure gauge would help. If the mechanical pump has a higher pressure than the electric, as yours has Ken, in theory there should be no more fuel pressure at the carby with both pumps on. The fact that engines can flood-stop can only be that there is in fact a higher pressure and this forces the float-valve to open when it should be shut.

I want a 0-5psi gauge. Most of them are 0-15 psi which is too much given that you are often operating at 2psi. NEVER over 5psi. On the net, there is a Winter 0-5psi gauge. Are there any others in use? I have a digital pressure gauge which I wonder if it is compatible with fuel. Maybe there is something similar that is designed to work with fuel .

I used to use rechargeable Ni-Cads in model plane transmitters, but these days I prefer the cheap Varta AA from Bunnings for $10 for 30. I sure agree that it would be nice to know the mAh figure AND the "shelf life" figure. The manufacturers sure know these figures but don't tell us.

Gosh I hope that it was just a joke about him going to CASA. You would think after the Ungermann business they would make it a condition of service that you would not go to CASA for some 5 years or so after leaving the RAAus. Just about anywhere else would be ok, but I am open to suggestions about other banned transfers. This is a standard requirement in any industry where a company does not want inside knowledge going to a competitor. If he IS going to CASA, I will be emailing Monck with a complaint along these lines. It is hard to blame the person concerned, after all he is about a million dollars better off over the rest of his career and retirement. But for RAAus to have no agreement about this at the time of his employment is unforgivable. After all, he could have gone to CASA instead of coming to RAAus if CASA thought he was that good.

The new magazine shows that RAAus is following the same path as the GFA. The massive input of sleek and expensive and high-performance aircraft serves to demoralize the people who can't afford such things. They ( the non-rich )may well react by finding something else to do with their time and money. To some extent this is going to happen anyway, but as an association, we should try and delay this by making a fuss over the older and cheaper planes. I do have some sympathy to the magazine editors , the sleek new expensive stuff sure looks good. As does the magazine... but as always I reckon we need more nuts n bolts maintenance stuff.

Interesting variations... I have never seen more than 17 l/hr actual consumption but this would include some fast cruising. I flight plan on 15 l/hour and generally do better than this with an actual use 13 to 14 l/hour. This is except when I am worried about the fuel remaining and then the consumption can be higher, and this is when you see 17 l/hour. So my experience is in line with the first table but I can see the sense of the "full power" figure of 28-30. It is better to be a pessimist for fuel consumption I reckon. There was a story from a guy who had an embarasing landing in his Jabiru from it using more fuel than normal just when he was pushing the boundary a bit. My theory is that when faced with a nasty headwind, you fly at higher rpm and of course you take longer to get there.

My Jabiru is so old it has the fuel tank behind the seats, from where it won't gravitate. It would be possible though to pressurize the fuel tank a bit and this would make flow happen. Here's the test results I did yesterday, and I am perplexed to say the least. NOTHING was changed between the tests of 3 days ago and yesterday, but the pressures are significantly higher in the second lot of testing. Here's what I did.. Test1- pressure from electric pump alone ( engine not running) = 2.4 psi Test 2. Flow from electric pump ( engine not running ) measured by taking the line off the carby, so the impediment to flow of the mech pump was there. As was the fuel filter. Flow = 56.5 l/hr and the spec is for between 50 and 60 l/hr. Test 3... The motor was run directly off the electric pump and the flow from the mechanical pump was measured. This was 1.2 l/min at 1200 rpm, or 74.2 l/hr at 2800 rpm. ( the max the engine uses in practice is 18 l/hr, so there is plenty of spare capacity there.)( and yes the plane was tied down for this test with the engine running) Test 4. Mech pump ONLY ( ie elec pump turned off ) pressure=3.68 psi .This was at the smooth idle of 1200 rpm, but the pressure is not changed by rpm, only the flow. ( the pressure is determined by the spring. The flow by the number of volumes per second) Test 5. Mech pump PLUS electric pump at 1200 rpm idle = 3.72psi. These are the sort of figures I expected and I am unable to explain why I got less pressure a few days ago. The manual says fuel pressure is ok between 0.75 and 3 psi, so the flight the other day had the fuel pressure (down to 1.2psi ) within specs, even though I didn't like it at all. One caveat: the flow readings were taken without the flow impediment of the float-valve. If this were included, it would reduce the flows , I don't know by how much. Of course you could only measure the electric pump flow as you could not run the engine with the carby bowl removed.

Imagine how hard it would be to work out electricity without the metric system. I think even the US uses amps and kW etc. But...Pints of beer were a corrupted measure even before metrication. In many pubs, a pint is not that big a glass. I find the best way is to ask to see the glass first before you decide on a pint or a schooner... My father used to drink Butchers, quite a small glass, on the theory that a smaller glass refilled more often gave you fresher beer.

I never got my head around slugs. Or roods.

A decaNewton... is that ten Newtons? if so it will be real close to a kilogram, on earth anyway.

I reckon the building trade converted and used the conversions to pare a bit off . For example, a 4 by 2 should be 100 by 50 but what you see is 90 by 45. With steel, I for one think of 75 to 200mm deep c section. Nobody refers to c sections in inches. But I have to agree about tyre pressures. I too still think in psi. And I like having a set of imperial drills... with a metric set too, you can usually find the right size. I reckon us aviation types use the most imperial on account of the US being the main supplier of hardware.