Friarpuk

I have a folding wing kit that I've never installed. If someone wants it, offers are welcome.

 

BTW Scott I fly to WA on the 31st of May!

 

 

The Sportstar finally got registered this week so I am looking to book our flights to Perth for the 28th. Plan on doing a refresher flight with an instructor on the 29th and leave for home on the 30th. If we get any weather hold ups you might even catch us along the way.

We'll see what the weather's doing closer to the time! It will be probably the 2nd or 3rd by the time I say g'day to a few mates in Katanning and give the Skyranger a few good runs since I haven't flown her since the start of the year.

 

 

Amen !

 

 

I had the same problem with my tacho and found that my instrument circuit breaker was failing. At first the tacho was jumping then after awhile the oil pressure and temp and cht started dropping. It seemed the tacho was more sensitive than the other instruments. Put in a new circuit breaker and problem fixed.

 

And Scott does have a passenger on the hand held video camera!

 

 

Okay, the Qantas flight is booked from Bris to Perth for Friday the 31st of May. Then the real flying will begin from Katanning to Kingaroy, in between the fronts with a good westerly up the rear, hopefully!

 

 

At Coral Bay WA for the next few days. My planned route is Meekathara, Kalgoolie, Forrest, Eucla , Ceduna, Port Lincoln, Aldinga and home.Using Avgas so the above may not suit you.

Phil

Hope you have a good flight and tail winds! I have interesting memories back tracking with a 737 at Kal!

 

 

I hope you still have some influence with the man up there. A tail wind would be very handy.It should be a great trip. Skyrangers just love this sort of thing.

Greg.

So does this Skyranger pilot! BTW thanks again for the therapy flight the other week!

 

 

Hi Friarpuk,I will be making a similar flight hopefully in the next fortnight. I will be leaving Jandakot for Esperance, then around the bite like you to Port Augusta, from there to Broken Hill, Bourke, St George and finally to Gladstone.

My mount will be an Evektor Sportstar. I am just waiting for RAAus to register it and then I will be heading west to get the aircraft and start the trip home.

 

Cheers

 

Mick

Yeah I'm detouring to Temora to catch up with a mate. If I wasn't doing so I would cut up through Broken Hill to folk I know at Dirranbandi.

 

 

Hi, Fuel, food and accommodation can be expensive accross the Nullabor, I found Mundrabila roadhouse to be very reasonable and enjoyed the stay, we put the plane outside the motel room and fuelled at the premium unleaded bowers, at the time avgas was a dollar dearer, avgas was not available at Mundrabila. Dinner and beer was reasonable as well.Across the Nullabor there are gravel and dirt runways and tracks and was difficult avoiding stone damage to the prop , do run-ups on the go.

Thanks Camel

Some good advice. I drove over with the family at the beginning of January and did a bit of a reckie on the way. Strips didn't seem too bad, at Caiguna and Nullabor, but I will have a look at Mundrabilla on country airstrips guide. The wife must have been driving and me asleep when we went through there.

 

I am planning to pack the sleeping bag and a tent to keep costs as low as possible. But then I am stopping with a mate at Temora for a few drinks and a catch up, hence the detour to southern NSW.

 

 

Can't offer any advice but I'm interested in your plans for refuelling on the way. I assume you will be using unleaded mostly?rgmwa

Hi

 

I am hoping to use 95+ ULP as much as possible. I keep two empty plastic jerry cans in the back and a Mr funnel and can hump fuel from the bowser to the plane if I need to.

 

 

what type of aircraft are u doing it in & what are your predicted fuel stops.

I fly a Skyranger Swift with a rotax 912. You can check out my plane build and flying videos at http://friarflyer.blogspot.com.au/

And as for the stops you can see the stops on the map with the pins and the airport markers

 

 

Hi folks

 

At the end of May 2013 or thereabouts I am planning to fly across Australia. Below is my planned route. Any comments, wisdom, or advice welcome.

 

Friarpuk

 

 

 

Forgot to ask. What kind of prop are you spinning?

 

 

Jim an exceptional job. Building a second plane is still only a distant dream for me. But still I can't wait to do things again with a bit of experience under the belt. I built mine in about 228 hrs but must say by the pics yours looks a bit more polished than my bird!

 

Heath

 

 

You'll enjoy flying her as much as building her!

 

Congrats

 

Friarpuk

 

 

I wont tell you what my Sav cost me but it was a fair bit lower than 60k inc all avionics. I am surprised I would have thought the skyrangers were a lot cheaper

Was that before or after the Aussie dollar rose against the Euro and the US dollar? And does that include a new 912uls? When I was looking around what to buy and build the Sav was not any cheaper and required a lot more work to complete. The worst job I had with the skyranger was fitting the wind screen, and most of the fear was cutting the polycarbonate hoping my measurements and rechecks were right. And then flexing it into place was a 2 person job finicky job. But the most mundane job compared to painting was doing up the stitching for the skin the length of the fuse underside. You won't have that issue with a Nynja as they are fibreglass panels.

 

 

Nice paint job on the Sav! Back to the beloved Skyranger though! One good thing to think about is the balance of stol and cruise speed. I have always tended towards more stol but now am glad I have gone the Skyranger route! Even though my Swift will get off the deck and climb out at 1200-1300 fpm it still crusies around the 90kts. The Swift wing is lower profile than most chunky stol wings and it also has a higher wing load. The point being you don't get flogged as much in turbulent conditions. I can speak for the sav but compared to the foxbat the Skyranger is a much better ride and a little quicker too.

 

 

Don't know! Guess the smoke haze rising from the humpies in the scrub was affecting my judgement. Hey at 500 agl you can still fly high!

 

 

I borrowed 60 to buy and build my swift with a 912. That was without an AH and a transponder, but with a garmin 296 gps. Would be able to do it for a lot less now the Euro is lower than when I bought the kit in 2008. The beauty of the Skyranger is you can make it light and basic or stick lots of whistles and bells in it.

 

 

Yes, we're #3 on final. But where?

This is short final Runway 14 Myrup at Esperance. At #3 you shouldn't have to chase the roos off the strip!

 

 

Reminds me of doing a nav exercise at 500 agl over Tara area, out there they use shot guns not arrows to protect thier "crops"!

 

 

Sitting here burning in my frustration at not flying for what seems like an eternity, while still paying rego, insurance, licencing fees, ASIC, and other incidentals, my buring desire to chuck a hissy fit leads me to ask others about interest in setting up an airparks and/or building hangars on council strips, somewhere on the Western Downs or South Burnett of Southern QLD.

 

Now some might think the likes of Dalby, Chinchilla, Kingaroy, or Wondai to be out in the sticks, but the big advantage I see is that these places are outside or under airspace restictions while still being near enough to reach most costal destinations within an hour or so in a 90 kt aircraft.

 

Basically I am bored to tears, not working, but looking, with my plane in WA where I use to work and now living in Kingaroy where I want to work.

 

Perhaps my dream job would be managing a small RPT airport, fixing the mowers, mowing the grass, painting the piano keys and strip markers. Then at least I would be able to appease my insatiable apetite to fly, build, and watch others fly. The bottom line is I don't want to be a developer tycoon rolling in cash (as nice as that might be) but to manipulate the system enough to house my plane, fuel it, and safely fly it, while keeping the family fed and happily settled here. Any ideas folks (or jobs)?

 

Then the idea of starting an airpark or building a stack of hangars somewhere in the South Burnett has taken root within in recent days of frustration. It seems hangars around here are as rare as hen's teeth and from what I have heard south east Queensland coastal hangar rents are ridiculous for the low to middle income earners to afford. This is what I am and why I have gone RAA, not being able to afford the upkeep or patience of jumping the GA hurdles.

 

Forgive me for my rant here! Going outside and chucking a hissy fit or throwing a spanner is of no use. After all one has to find the spanner and come back inside at some stage! So asking the question here whether there is any interest in the RAA GA community for a hangar building programme or a reasonably priced all weather grass/gravel strip airpark???? Does this spark any interst and would it be worth the trouble of starting the process of council negotiations, etc. ????

 

Ah rant finished, but still need to fly!

 

 

 

Hi I realise this thread is old but have just read it for the first time.

 

Meandarra is a good strip and have landed and taken off from there (as a passenger) in a Aerocomander Shrike, and they need a bit length for takeoff.

 

Then after learning to fly myself have landed a Jabiru j230 there a couple of times. Once in a howling cross wind. The centre of the strip has a shallow gully through it that the council needed to pave to make it an all weather strip. I used it as a fly in fly out padre.

 

 

Thanks Captain

 

Really appreciate you down loading the pics!

 

 

Heath: Thanks for the tips on shooting. Can you give us the inside gen on editing too please?

BTW, I particularly liked your point on editing your own footage. My wife shoots a fair bit of unuseable footage as, try as I might, I cannot get her to leave the zoom alone. I might get her to edit her stuff next time.

On an average news shoot for a 90 sec story with three interiviews we would shoot up to 20 minutes of raw footage. In the good old film days crews would go out with 5 mins of film and have to get interviews and overlay for the whole story. But for us today with chips that can hold more vision than our batteries would last this is not the issue. At least when I was in the industry we had video tape we could record over if need be but film one only had one crack of the whip. The same as still photographic film!

 

I too shoot my fair share of what we technically called in the industry "crap", but we all do, especially if experimenting. Zooming is a last resort. Even when on a tripod zooming is generally only to reframe to the next shot. But we were taught if needing to do a zoom in a certain circumstance one needs to hold the shot static for five seconds, then zoom, and then hold the stopping shot for five seconds. Doing this means one has three possible shots to use, two static shots and a zoom. This is the same for pans and tilts too. In editing a story one tends to lay the bed of the story with all audio and associated pictures, and then go back and fill the "black" between the grabs and natsots (natural sound off tape). So holding the shot before and after the movement allows one some time of grace if one wants to put a seven second movement into a ten second hole, etc.

 

But in unstable aircraft I would not zoom. It's just too wobbly! In saying that I mean zooming in or out while recording, or, zooming into something distant, to record a telephoto shot! When we shot out of choppers the pilot was the cameraman, in as far as panning and tilting, and the cameraman just hung on and tried to keep the shot steady. The pilot put one on the shot. But its a little easier to fly sideways in a chopper than a plane. When flying mates around for still photographics one can side slip and fly out of balance, but not as sideways as a chopper. Most of the time if we had one, we'd attach the wide angle lens for aerial vision, and I notice today the cap city stations all have gyro m0unted remote cameras on their choppers. In saying all that, one can cheat if wanting to use a wobbly zoomed in shot , by slowmoing it a little. I've done that in some of my skyranger videos, and have done so in a way that was not too obvious (hopefully)!

 

THis is starting to become a mamoth yarn so more on editing another day. But editing is generally opposite to shooting. Whereas one needs to think slow when shooting, slow to button off, slow to zoom, pan, tilt, etc. but when editing, keep the shots moving, by editing tight, to the beat of music, not jarring but not allowing for the brain to take all in in each shot.

 

Scott what is happening to you in my videos, I suspect, is that the shots move through reasonably quick and a choice of disolves or cuts are chosen not to jar or upset the brain, but being short enough for the brain to fill in the detail of each shot, adding a sense of excitement, or expectation. One that I don't get having shot and edited the material, and if I do it's only months after the fact when my brain has forgotten what is really in each shot.

 

I'm not so bad now, but when I was in the industry, I was a bugger to watch movies with as I could always pick the mic coming into shot and reflections in windows and car doors of cameras, crew, lights etc. Television and movies involve many tricks on the mind with lighting, sound, and editing. Done right it can be very emotive for the viewer. Advertisers politicians and social activists have been hijacking our emotions since the 70s. Its all smoke and mirrors. Enjoyment for us but a powerful tool of manipulation for others.

 

Friarpuk