Yenn

I have read VFR guides for many years but this one really covers everything. I am sure that somewhere in the 400 plus pages there is something to tell you when to wipe your nose. It appears at first glance to be a re write of the regs. added to all the old stuff. I will find time to get through it I hope. I just looked at an old version 1977 and it was pretty good and only 262 pages.

Australian Flying is still going strong, although our local newsagent has closed, I get it by subscription. I also get Kitplanes by internet. That makes it harder to read in full, at least for me, but you can subscribe and then download about 20 years of back issues. I used to subscribe to Todays Pilot, but it was taken over by Pilot, which is not as good as the original and I cancelled my subscription. Too much waffle about warplanes and what is going on in the UK.

For my RV4 I paid about two grand per year for insurance and had it for 8 years. In that time I had a brake lockup which put me on my nose, damaged prop, spats and cowl. Insurance paid out twenty three grand for engine and prop repairs and I did the remainder of the work. The work I did covered the excess, as they paid me, plus a little. The Corby has never been insured as I reckon I can stand the financial loss. I am definitely glad I insured the RV and dealing with the insurance assessor was no problem.

2058 looks like an inflateable plane to me.

What is a four stroke steam engines cycle? I would assume that steam could be two stroke or one stroke, ie power on the up and the down stroke.

Icom A 16E specifies 7.2V and an adaptor cable is available for use with 12V from a cigarette lighter to the charger but you are warned that the radio must be off when charging. The instruction booklet details several extras, but is vague as to which charger is supplied as standard.

I bought an Icom A16E and it is OK but I use an old Yaesu in preference, because I cannot run the Icom on 12V ships power. I had an old Icom A 22E which had a 12V input port. I actually ordered the 15 not the 16, but it had been superceded and I got the 16 for the same price as the 15. I just haven't got around to trying to find a way of connecting it up.

If you fly around with a maintenance logbook you are stupid. For GA it is illegal to carry the maintenance log in the plane. Reason being that if the plane crashes the logbook will possibly be destroyed. You want the logbook to survive longer than the aircraft.

For the price I reckon it will not be used much, it seems to be the usual rip off. Concerning log books, I reckon most of them would not be worth the paper they are written on. I know of several instances which should have been entered and never were. I also heard of a L2 owner who sold is plane complete with hangar, to a bloke who only wanted the hangar. There were no logbook entries since the day it first flew and it was therefore worthless. Especially as the owner had it for sale for several years for a highly inflated price, so it sat and deteriorated. My own logbook does not detail every flight as I believe that is not required. All flights are entered on the maintenance release, plus in my pilots log book. I reckon using the GA maintenance release is far preferable to whatever RAAus is expecting us to do, plus it is legal.

Speaking from experience I have found QBE to be good at fixing claims. I made a claim which was dealt with quickly and surprisingly easily. The premiums are high but when the payouts are also high, it is obvious why. Car insurance is a different ball game. It is many years since I made a claim and I am still annoyed about the time and hassles involved in getting it fixed up. I reckon there is a lot of padding of work done by aviation repair facilities

One of the things that a certified engine has to do is be demonstrated that it will run without oil for a certain amount of time. I can't remember the actual wording of the requirement. If one failed quickly it wold probably be because there were other problems.

I can remember the good old days of getting updates for the WAC charts, had to put them on the chart by hand. That as before VNC charts.

No 14 in the world on defence spending. I don't know who spends more, other than obviously USA, Britain, France and maybe Russia.

If I am going on a trip of over about 50 miles I will get the weather and use the whiz wheel to get nav info, then I will consult Avplan and see if they agree. Quite often there will be minor differences, due I think to Avplan using different winds for different parts of a flight, where I may use one wind. I must admit it needs regular use to keep current with the whiz wheel. On the 100 to 650 speed side of the Kane computer, the bottom section has a squared off section, lines all parallel, vertical and horizontal. I have never discovered how it is supposed to work and the handbook does not explain. Does anyone know?

I did a course run by ELAAA several years ago. It was excellent, but that was to be expected as one of the pepole running it was Myles Brietkreutz. I did not get the certificate as I already had the MPC by SAAA. The MPC is as has been stated above is nearly all theory and intended to make us conversant with how to comply with CASA requirements and that is what the RAAus course also appears to be mostly about. Really to be good at maintaining an aeroplane you need to be conversant with the use of hand tools and general maintenance of something like a vehicle. Coming from a background of no knowledge of vehicle maintenance is gong to take much longer to be safe maintaining a plane than a four day course.

When I was a student pilot I landed a C150 with no forward speed. The instructor took it up and landed backwards. No photos.

It will not be long before we are at it again. Supposedly the North Koreans have fired at a South Korean gunpost in the DMZ. That news must have come from the US who have their forces right there. Trump is looking more and more ridiculous and even the yanks may be noticing it. He needs something to distract the voters. that and blaming China for producing the Corona Virus will be a good start to his warmongering. Pity is our PM will be jumpimg up and down and shouting "Me, Me. I want to be in there with you" Once again Aussies will go off to please the Yanks to an unjust war. I only hope I am just being cynical.

I would probably download the app if I had a mobile phone that downloaded apps, but even then it probably wouldn't work, because reception is poor in the places I go.

M61A1. I am guessing that you are referring to bill Whitney. His formula is gross tailplane area, that is horiz stab plus elevator area multiplied by distance from wing mean aerodynamic chord to 20% of tail chord point. Divided by gross wing area multiplied by wing mean aerodynamic chord. His example was for the CT4. 29.1sq ft tail area multiplied by 12.4 ft =360.84, divided by ((129 sq ft multiplied by 5.24 MAC) 675.96) = 0.5335. Bill Whitney noted that he considered this high and recommended the following. Low performance planes aim for 0.35 which is a Lightwing. Medium performance 0.45 Jabiru. High performance 0.55 Lancair. He emphasises that these are minima and can be increased by 0.1.

I reckon the history of Jabiru would be interesting, it evolved out of cane harvesters and split to become two different manufacturers, one being radios.

The ND8 looks to me to be just a neutral density filter, designed to reduce the amount of light transmitted, allowing a bigger aperture to be used with fast films and therefore less depth of field, or even allowing fast film to be used with a slow camera in high light situations.

I don't care which looks better, just having one to fly is great. The length to span ratio can be varied, but the area of wing to area of tailplane needs to be kept to closer proportions. If you increase the length, you can reduce the area of tailplane, but you have to get enough strength in the fuselage to carry the loads, reduce the length and you increase the tailplane area, you can go to ridiculous proportions like the old racer planes and because the length between centre of pressure of wing and tail becomes so short, the plane gets very twitchy. The Corby is fairly short, but I have never found it twitchy. I have never dissected the design numbers to see how it compares, maybe I should do that.

Why do you need washers as spares, surely the old ones would still be perfectly good.

Don't worry about delivery from Aircraft Spruce. When I was building I found them faster than buying in Auatralia. That could of course be affected by the corona virus.

The alternative to what we did was to do nothing and let the virus go right through the population. No doubt a lot of old and other people in poor health would have died and they still may. The object was to reduce the spike in cases which would have seen our hospitals overstretched. There would have been people dieing in their homes and the back of ambulances. The undertakers would also be overwhelmed. Really a fun time for all involved, then after a few months the epidemic would have died out.