Thruster Bob

Looks like a good buy for spare parts though, perhaps to repair an aircraft with nose over damage on landing, as prop, pod, engine brackets look good. Although even then the boom condition would probably make or break it as a spares proposition. I echo Tony's comments about the lack of history on airframe or engine. Cheers, BobT

Hi Tony. Just thinking about angle of incidence. In most normal aircraft the tailplane has a negative angle of incidence at normal cruise attitude. In the thruster the tailplane is aligned with the boom, so at normal cruise, the thruster flys with its tail up, which achieves a negative tailplane incidence angle. I'm wondering if by attaching your angle of incidence brackets, you now have the tailplane flying with close to zero incidence at cruise, which due to the rag and tube nature of the tailplane would cause it flop around, (you would also have more back stick force on the elevator). Have you tried your foam inserts in the tail plane? Maybe make a set that is curved one side and flat the other, and put the curved side down? Ok , That's another desk flying for now! Good to hear progress on the 4stroke front! Cheers, BobT.

Hi Tony, Some random thoughts. I can't see why we can't have one (double sided page) in colour - (just using a colour laser printer) and put say 4 feature shots of thrusters on it. Advertisers might pay extra for colour. Colour laser printers are achieving 30-50c real cost per page, and the quality is OK for me. Whether you are printing enough pages per month to achieve reasonable costs (considering amortization of the capital costs) may be an issue. Cheers, BobT

Hi Fly, The choke levers are standard bicycle parts, (used to change gears I think) ("thumb gear lever"?). They have little butterfly friction nuts. I think the clamp they attach with is either a standard bicycle part, or a standard bicycle part with another stub welded onto it. You will notice the large tube sticking down from the diamond bracket is the same diameter as bicycle handlebars. The choke cable is also a bicycle part , the only tricky part is the blob on the carbie end of the bowden cable. (I think it's not a standard bicycle part). I also thought these levers were fitted as standard to T500's. Re pulse fuel pump, No-one in my group of pilots has had any problem with the fuel pump position, you get a little bit of oil accumulation in the pulse line but doesn't seem to affect anything. One thing you should do however is to replace the fuel lines, the braided PVC ones get brittle after a few years service. I think I've replaced the exposed fuel lines up the engine end with externally SS braided polyurethane racing boat fuel line. I was planning on using milspec fuel line with firesleeve over , but it would have been too bulky. Standard aircraft practice requires fireproofing of all fuel lines forward of the firewall. In the Thruster all you get is part of the line run in aluminium tubing :<( Try to minimize the amount of fuel splashed on your windscreen to postpone the onset of stress cracking in your windscreen (quite visible in one of Tony's pics) Also be careful when cutting and drilling the Lexan (polycarbonate), smooth all the edges before bending, and make smooth holes. Also be wary that some types of plasticisers used in rubber washers, grommets and rubber edging will also promote the stress cracking. In theory the stress in the curved windscreen can be relieved by heating it (e.g. by using a bar heater at a reasonable distance, hot air guns are a no-no) but the temperature is quite touchy, supposedly around 110-120C should do it, and it will start to sag/distort at around 140C , and melt at 160C, so if you have a contact thermometer and some offcuts to practice on , you might want to give stress relieving a go. Also on the topic of windscreens, mine is distinctly asymmetrical, so if you use the old one as a cutting template make sure the new one goes on the same way around! Cheers, BobT

Hi Thommo. I can't quite make out your aircraft regn number, looks like its 25-295. If it is , then its one after mine ! Cheers, BobT

Back when I bought my T500 I talked with the Robinsons, and the story as I remembered it was that the airframe was designed for 450kgs, but the regulations limited the 95.25 type to 400kgs, however the Ronbinsons weren't the original designers so this information is hearsay. I've also seen the photo of the Thruster frame hanging upside down with hundreds of bricks hanging off it. I know my aircraft (T500/582 + spats+ doors with 2 bladed cruise prop) has negligible climb performance at ISA+10 when MTOW is ~420kg. My personal opinion, is that with fairings, and Brolga prop, a T500/582 would be flyable at 450kg at ISA in smooth air. The real issue is with turbulent loading, the huge Thruster wing area creates large stresses during gusts, which are only made worse by needing to fly faster because of the higher weight . The usable window between Vmin control and Vturb penetration closes up rapidly. If you have ever flown through a cold front in a Thruster and gone from stall to Vne during the gusts a couple of times a minute, you don't want to repeat the experience at MTOW. At first blush you might compare the wing loadings of the Cessna 152 at +/-3g with the 6G thruster loadings and say the Thruster is good for 800kg at 3g. But bear in mind that a 30kt gust generates only 3g in a Cessna, but generates 6g in a Thruster, (due to the different wing loadings); and we all have to fly in the same lumpy air! No one has mentioned the effect of c.g. yet , if it's wrong then MTOW is irrelevant. Cheers, BobT

Hi Ian, Tony. Is the picture reversed on this by any chance? The pilots seat is empty, you can see the seatbelts! and the T600 decal seems to be backwards. Looks like the J2200 engine, it would need the extra grunt to unstick from the water. By the by , we have an amphibious trike up here in Port Stephens, flown by an elderly German guy, the locals call him Mad Max, He's a nice guy to talk to though. He sometimes has to taxi in circles to get enough of a bump to unstick from the water. I think I may have seen the fabled single seat T300 in the Sydney factory ~1993, it had a really odd looking pod on it, and it wasn't the best organised aircraft factory I have seen (thats why I completely stripped down my aircraft when I got it!). Sorry , no photos. I think mine was one of the first to be labelled as T500 and I think it had a dubious pedigree too. Cheers, BobT

Hi Fly, First thing I did was to make a proper Aluminium panel. But you really need to have the instruments in front of you before you go making any holes! Follow Tony's advice as not all instruments are exactly the same size, invest some time getting the layout right, it should be setup so your scans across the gauges and switches are logical. You can mount most instruments from the front or the back, But mixing front and back mounts looks real odd, If you mount from the rear , (usual way) you will need to hog out one of the 4 small holes for the altimeter Kollsman knob. I have some of those funny "altimeter nuts" if you need them, I actually used stainless steel button head socket screws for my instruments, and painted the panel matt black. I think Aircraft Spruce have standard instrument templates (page 359 in the printed catalog, it says the hole is 3.16, and mount holes on a 3.5" pcd, and for the smaller ones it says hole is 2.3125" and mounting holes 0.169 diam on 2.625"PCD) Remember to allow some space on your panel for a GPS bracket and or radio bracket, and maybe consider where the compass will be. Getting good clean holes without warping or scratching the aluminium can be tricky , I think I did it by marking out on the BACK of the panel, sticking some contact on front face, put a piece of plywood on milling machine, then clamped panel front side down onto this, use a hole saw to remove most of the hole, then use a boring tool to bore a hole to the exact size . Dress up holes carefully then wet sand 300grit before priming and painting. Today I would use laser cutting. Cheers, BobT

Hi Terry , Coincidentally I was looking at the pictures of your Thruster, just now. Its nice, I like the fairings, something I always wanted to do, I wanted to put landing lights in the fairings too, (landing in the dark by feel is vastly over-rated). I did some Cessna type training (to solo stage) about 30 yrs ago then it kind of lapsed. I originally bought a broken trike, and then a replacement wing for it, did some trike lessons, discovered it wasn't really my cup of tea, and gave up on the trike thing, but still kept tabs with the trike crowd. I think I fell in love with a Thruster that was fundraising for red nose by flying from Sydney KSA to Tasmania around 1993. The local instructor, Keith, also had a red thruster, which I trained on. I bought a second hand T500 that was vaguely flyable from the factory. Then stripped it down, reskinned it, painted the pod , redid the control panel added a transponder, added GPS, Added doors (only used for cross country, stop the maps flying out the window, I don't actually like having the doors on) added spats (from an edge trike, they make them here in Newcastle). Then I painted the nose red and flew with another 5 guys around Queensland fund raising for Red Nose in ~1995. Great Times!, the trip was supposed to end at Watts Bridge , which we were really looking forward to, but the weather clagged in , and we stayed in Noosa until the weather cleared. Somewhere along the way I got my PPL , just a formality really, as once you can fly a thruster you can fly anything. But you do get more respect from the spam cans when you talk like a real pilot. I nearly got an IFR rating , but failed the theory. Did 3 or so flying safaris in C172's and C182's with the guys from work. It was hangared at Cooranbong, but it closed 2 years ago, so it was put on a trailer and parked in my shed, it's still there :<( I will be semi retired in 8 months so I will fix it up then, and get it back into the air. Cheers, BobT

Aha , My third post , I'm getting the hang of it now. Tony, Are you aware of any flaperon retrofits in Oz? , they seem to be popular in NZ? My interest in flaperons is more to do with setting them in reflex mode for cruising flight. I don't think I need any more lift during takeoff or landing, although flaps should promote a better attitude during landing. Incidentally I always three-point, and haven't noticed any bouncing tendency, although I do tend to bounce when doing wheelers though. Pervesely though , I tend to prefer tail high taxiing (but not downwind ). I have the big soft springs, so I think the main gear touches slightly before the tail wheel, but then flexes up under the weight, so you are actually in the three-point position with the undercarriage deflected. I had read about the reducing angle of incidence project, and wondered what the motivation was, thanks for providing some illumination. Possibly the lowered incidence angle will improve the ground handling and minimise the inadvertent departure from the ground in gusts. Cheers, BobT

Hi Robert , You're not alone out there, Many of us have aging 582 engines and scared off by the replacement cost, and as pointed out elsewhere the $/hr for a 582 with a 300hr TBO is not very competitive. Ask around, you might find partners interested in the T500/J2200 certification. Count me in. Cheers, BobT

Hello Paul N Do you have a website for "lockwoods in florida" I can't seem to google it up. Cheers, bobT PS, OOPS ignore this post, I had "pages from Australia" selected on Google. Here it is for anyone else who is interested : http://www.lockwood-aviation.com/store/home.php?cat=249