Spin

Thought the STOL conversion rang a bell, tripped over the article in an old Australian Flying this afternoon - here's the photo scanned from the article. Note the canard, wing fences and interlinked ailerons and flaps.

I'm with Bass, we are too big and dispersed a membership to effectively rely on proxies. I'm willing to bet that a majority of the members have no idea what their local board member looks like or how to contact him or her. Sure they could dig out an old magazine and get the contact details from that, but a simple postal vote or a properly authenticated electronic vote is the way to go. I know my local board member to greet at the field, but it still took a bit of fiddling around to get his details and even then I missed out through an oversight on my part. To my mind the abysmal voter turnout is indicative of a system failure rather than the level of voter apathy it appears to illustrate.

Well if the Tigers are a little gunshy after Huey's teasing, you can put 23 October into your diary, the landlord at Jacobs Well has signed off on a fly in, brekkie from 8am onward.

Arrgh, got the call at 6.30 to say get back into bed, it's raining and more to come. Seems like the Drifter Brekkie hoodoo is alive and well. We'll have to conduct a ritual cleansing one of these fine days.......

RR, Bunnings have them in two sizes from time to time. Mine has been great and probably exceeds MAUW on a regular basis. About the only thing to watch is the handle, being alloy and extendable, it is a slight weak point and won't stand being used as a lever eg to tilt a big awkward load up.

So where do you draw the line Frank, give 2 kts the tick, but draw the line at 5kts over? Someone, somewhere is always going to fall just on the wrong side of the divide and want to be included. If there is any BS in the system it is allowing a 2 seater with a 160hp Lycoming and CS prop to be registered under a rule which caters for a 544kg max.

Here you go Dazza, seen at YJCW this morning.... very nice looking machine, with an impressive finish. I look forward to getting some waterborne photos.

Well said Dazza, aircraft and boats cover 2 of my favourite activities, combining them sounds like a great idea. Lunch at McLarens Landing perhaps?

Haha, sorry I jumped in half way wanna, ditto what Blackrod said though, stories like this are a big part of my reason for starting to fly again - we might bleat about CASA etc but we really are fortunate in the opportunities we do have to fly. By the way, I recognised the alu trolley in one of your photos. I bought one a few years ago to carry stuff to my boat which lives in a marina - fantastic invention, it now lives permanently in my car and gets inspanned for all sorts, including lugging the esky and camping chairs a few blocks at Riverfire recently.

You're not going to be allowed to forget that promise - looking forward to it:clap:

Nice Tomo, must have been an interesting flight, I've driven quite a lot of that at various times. I'd get your camera checked out though - too much green in those photos!

Interesting that CASA have had a closer look at some aircraft already on the register, we all know there are some "funnies" out there and it is probably a worthwhile thing to remember when looking to buy - imagine the rigmarole of trying to get an aircraft maintained under the RA Aus scheme back onto the VH register - $$$$$$! I recall seeing a VH reg homebuilt with a MAUW of around 800kg being advertised as being capable of being re-registered RA Aus, not sure about the stall speed but probably also a bit high, imagine having that conversation with Steve Bell - caveat emptor as they say in the classics.:black_eye:

That is one of the issues raised in relation to the Zoche radials I mentioned previously, they kept breaking props and it was theorised that the minute variation in rotational speed resulted in a load reversal several times per propellor revolution, which fatigued the prop material and led to the failures.

Phase two doubtless having something to do with extracting the seat cover from where it had become wedged! :ah_oh:

Extinguisher yes, difficult to get at an engine compartment fire in flight though and I suspect cost and weight will argue against a supression system for most of us. I'll be honest, fire in flight scares me silly, I had an old Ford go up in smoke in town one day and I didn't have much time to bail out clutching a few important files, before it was well alight - you don't get a lot of time once it becomes evident.

I'd love to see this come off and am confident it will - one day! I have been saying that since the 80's though, when Zoche diesel radials were going to be the next big thing in aviation. There have been several since then which have promised a lot but struggled in delivering, ask anyone that had a new Cessna grounded due to clutch issues with the Thielert, this even before financial woes caught up with them. Again, on the longevity and cost issues - Granpa's Ferguson is a far cry from a modern high revving, common rail, turbo diesel. They do break, and damned expensively at that, anyone here had to pay for a rebuild on their turbodiesel ute, never mind European luxury model? Enough to make your eyes water and often runs a replacement engine a close race, at $17-20,000! Some are better than others, but I have seen em all in bits accompanied by much wailing and gnashing of molars. Someone also raised the maintenance issue, well manufacturers blurbs notwithstanding, most mechanics are recommending shorter oil change intervals and experience in cars suggests that higher maintenance costs take many, many km to set off against lower fuel costs per km for diesels. So again, I'd love to see it and am sure that one day, with a lot of money, someone will get it right, but I don't know that I'm ready to join the test pilot team just yet.

Time to spare, go by air huh:laugh:. Still sounds like a great trip, I'm very envious. Ah well one day when I am not quite so firmly shackled to the grindstone.

Well I won't be Driftering (not yet) but I'll be out there to take the youngest aviation enthusiast in the house for a flip in the Eaglet:keen:. Wx looks a little iffy, although provided the cloud stays high enough we should be ok. I'll have to remember to take the trusty Canon along for some pics.

That's great, thanks for posting those. I take it the amphibian winning the dead grass award is Heon (Peter's) new baby? I wasn't able to make it this time, but looks as though I'll have to add this one to the list:clap:

I hope for their sake they are just trialing it before buying King Airs again. Nice to see people thinking outside the box, but it doesn't strike me as the sort of aircraft that would take kindly to what I understand of RFDS ops. More of a corporate suit type

Bill, I would hope that you had your tongue lodged firmly in your cheek with that comment. I have never had the pleasure of flying a 707 but I've heard and read quite a bit of commentary from professionals, on that piece of video and your's is the first to suggest that the takeoff was according to the book. In so far as the "assumed superiority" of the ATC, they may not have the requisite skill to fly the beast, but I suspect that after several years they would have a finely tuned sense of what was normal acceleration, runway usage and climb gradient.

"That's not flying, that's falling with style!" as Woody or some such said. I still cannot believe the plane didn't just give up and go in on it's back. That said the pilot was trying to stretch a glide or low powered approach, rather than trying to turn, now that would have gotten interesting:loopy:.

I've always operated on the basis that once your instructor has endorsed your logbook to the effect that you have whatever rating, you are entitled to exercise the privileges. If you're planning to hire and fly from the same outfit that did the endorsement I'd give the instructor a ring and confirm they see it the same way. Be interesting to hear what our instructors have to say though.

Glad I wasn't the only one who saw no.2 above the city reach; I was trying to point it out to the people with me to be met with blank looks, they were all fixated on no.1 running down past Southbank with his ass on fire (first time dump n burn for them). We had overseas visitors with us and I'd just assured them that there is always a big build up on the radio, normally comms with aircraft etc so no way it was going to sneak up on us and frighten the kids, when it did just that:laugh: I think you have called it right River, one of those little things that happen. That said I think it would be only polite to give Brissie a proper send off in December - I understand the final flypast and ceremony at Amberley is a by invitation only affair:sad: - take up the chant, "Airshow, Airshow, Airshow!"

Remember too that in this case the trim will work in the reverse sense, ie, move trim wheel nose down to get plane's nose to rise. We had an incident when I was training for my PPL where a low time pilot had the elevator sieze after rotating, he was able to stagger around the circuit and land with a combination of trim and throttle management.:ah_oh: My instructor later replicated the situation by grabbing the stem behind the yoke, preventing me from using the elevator to control pitch. Doable, but I'd hate to try and cope with turbulence on final.