Mike Borgelt

You can buy yourself a nice commemorative campaign patch or coffee mug here: https://www.reaperpatches.com/products/operation-enduring-charlie-foxtrot-covid-19-preorder They also have also have the more explicit version.

The app exists so the governments of Australia can have a valid excuse get themselves out of the corner they have painted themselves into. Sign up ! If enough do it we'll loosen the restrictions! And the sheep fall for it. The State is not your friend, it has only ITS interests at heart, not yours. The pollies only care about re- election. Where else can you get a high paying job involving no real work?

Thanks, Karen. One of my brothers in law came up with a great term the other day "Toxic Conformity"

Airventure is OFF for this year. EAA sent around the notice yesterday.

Oh goody, Turbo thinks that by hiring an aircraft you can avoid paying for the depreciation. A moment's thought tells you that the person hiring out the aircraft pays the depreciation and he passes that on to you in the form of the hourly hire rate.

I should add, check your MSA carby. On the attached plate should should see one field with "15" in it. This means the blue epoxy float is fitted. "MF" means a hollow brass float.

At full throttle, before or just after brake release, check RPM. You should know what it should be especially if it is your own aircraft. Check airspeed as you are taking off. If you fly from mostly one strip you should know what the minimum airspeed is at various points on the takeoff roll, unless it is so long it really doesn't matter. Still a good idea though. If your aircraft engine has a carburetor be aware that floats have been known to sink on the Marvel Scheubler Aircraft carby commonly fitted to Lycomings and Continentals and the carby fitted to Rotax's also. Causes extremely rich running and loss of power. Can be inconsistent. I've had it happen. 1700 RPM at full throttle instead of 2100 RPM. As the flight was meant to be a "warm the oil and do an oil change" mission we took it to the barn and checked ignitions, oil filter for metal, alternator bearings, drained fuel and put fresh in (should have been OK) etc, did one run up which was OK then a full power run along runway with shutdown on reaching 40 knots at correct point, second run was 1700RPM again, which left the carby. The aircraft got a shiny factory rebuilt MSA for Christmas. All OK after that. A little web research reveals that the MSA carby has a history of known float problems. Hollow brass was the original material. The MSA website now has a nice image of a heap of those that have all failed. At one time they went to a plastic foam float on some types. Then with the switch to 100LL the float got eaten by the fuel (degraded anyway). They went to a hollow plastic float at one time then switched back to the brass when the plastic floats leaked and sank. In 2005 they came up with a low density solid epoxy float which showed no problems. In 2009 MSA begged the FAA to issue an AD to replace the old floats with the new blue epoxy floats. The FAA refused. MSA issued a service bulletin which begged people on bended knee to replace the floats. As of early 2019 there has been no reported failures of the epoxy floats in 14 years. In mid 2018 MSA came out with solid low density blue epoxy floats for Rotax engines. If I owned a Rotax or any other engine that had that type of carby I'd buy the MSA type and fit them. Now I wonder how many pilots have died because the engine performed for the takeoff run and then lost power (see my experience above). Low altitude,low power no good options etc. What are we taught in the event of engine problems? Fuel pump on, mixture full rich. Aircraft crashes, pilot killed. What happens to carby? It is under the engine. Likely crushed or wiped out. Any pre-existing damage to float likely to be impossible to ascertain. Sad thing is the pilot likely checked or knew Full Rich was selected and the required pump(s) were on. We all do pre-takeoff checks don't we? Now during my little carby investigation I found that significantly pulling back the mixture (leaning) made the engine develop full power. My take away lesson is that if you have an engine problem and full rich doesn't fix it, try leaning. At that point you've nothing to lose anyway. The other lesson is - know your aircraft. Get involved in the maintenance. Knowing the systems can save your life if something goes wrong.

Norway has joined Italy in banning VFR flights and flight training. How soon before Australia does it?

As I said earlier, silly thread over 2 % of global CO2 emissions by humans. Silly people who can't do maths. As for Student Pilot, tell us all about your science and engineering studies mate. Do you actually know anything about nuclear power? Or did you just read an alarmist book or articleand are now an authority? Properly reprocessed, nuclear waste is less radioactive than the rocks you mined it from in 600 years. Newer reactor designs actually can use it as fuel or simply burn it up. We also live on a continent with vast geologically stable areas, unfit for human use except for strip mining and keeping the coasts apart. In case all the Green idiots are about to find out what their Green Utopia looks like due to the collapse of the West's economies because of the totalitarian Chinese Communist virus (please don't call it COVid 19 as that is what the WHO calls it because they are owned by the Chinese Communist. They bought the WHO and its boss fair and square - I hope they paid more than you can but Australian politicians for). I don't think very many people will find it palatable.

It isn't that difficult to do a Youtube video of various procedures. if, for example you want to know how to access the right hand rear door locking mechanism on a Honda Accord 2000, there's a nice 4 minute video. Also for the other doors. No rason not to do one on the Jab 100 hourly. Another one for the paperwork/history stuff before you get started. Meanwhile I'll put in a plug for the EAA. Join the USA organisation and get access to more stuff than you can poke a stick at. There's even an Australian Chapter. :-) Yes the US guys are a little insular and USA oriented. Why not? The rest of the world is largely irrelevant to them and ultimately their bureaucrats know that the people they are trying to oppress are armed. It concentrates their tiny brains. See John Ross "Unintended Consequences" The advertising in the magazines is some of the best content. The web is great but you need to know about the product or website in the first place.

Flight instruction has been stopped too, so if you need a renewal of any kind you are out of luck and the qualification will expire. Apparently this causes difficulty in re-acquiring in Europe so German Aero Club is making a proposal: Due to the measures against the spread of the corona virus, which include cancellation of refresher seminars for flight instructors and flight operations, some pilots cannot renew their authorizations in time. This is fatal, because expired authorizations have to be acquired with great effort. EASA has now developed a proposal for national authorities. For this situation, the DAeC has therefore asked the Federal Ministry of Transport (BMVI) to approve an exemption rule for affected pilots and to extend the deadlines. The BMVI has signaled that it will find pragmatic solutions for this exceptional case together with the responsible authorities. Last Tuesday, EASA already made a proposal for exemptions that are in line with Article 71 (1) of Regulation (EU) 2018/1139. All EU countries can follow these exemptions. They extend the validity of assessments, certificates and medical certificates for flight personnel, pilots, flight instructors, inspectors, maintenance personnel, air traffic controllers and flight doctors until the preventive measures against an exponential spread of the Corona virus no longer take effect. EASA has already forwarded the proposal to the competent national authorities. ================= Mike

Well for now, we in Australia can go flying. Gliding Clubs may not meet the social distancing criteria due to their collectivist nature. A Seniors contest was held in the USA recently with great attendance but they avoided the briefings by doing them on the net. A great idea that I suggested some years ago should be adopted routinely. Several European countries have banned VFR flights entirely. Italy, Norway and the State of Bavaria (don't know how they did that as I'd have thought access to airspace was a federal matter) Stay tuned, I'm sure our government and or CASA will stuff it up.

This thread really should be ended by contemplating the fact that at last count, all of aviation accounts for 2% of CO2 emissions. This is predicted to rise to maybe 3% in a decade or two. Either way it isn't exactly low hanging fruit if emissions reduction is your thing. Electricity production is something like 30% or more. This one is easy - just go nuclear like France did, including reprocessing of the fuel. You only get around 1% burn up on first pass through the usual current style reactors. Then you can contemplate going electric for cars too. No point when you generate the electricity by burning coal or gas. Advanced nukes get you the capability to make hydrocarbon fuels from water and atmospheric CO2 giving you a totally carbon neutral way of keeping our civilisation going. In any case the whole thing is nonsense. The planet is atmospheric CO2 deficient. The plants and other geological processes have been sucking it out of the atmosphere and sequestering it. The small increase from 300ppm or so to 400 or so has done wonders for the greening of the planet. This BTW is the only unequivocal observed effect of the slightly increased CO2. NOTHING else unusual is going on. We are in an interglacial. 8000 years ago temperatures were generally warmer a few thousand years after the last ice age ended and on average, have been declining ever since.. Now *there* was global warming and people had nothing to do with it.

An aft facing opening is NOT a low pressure area, as found by at least one sailplane manufacturer. You can't aid cockpit ventilation that way as the pressure is higher than static pressure. Nowadays they use an aft facing vent mounted either below the cockpit or above and aft on the fattest part of the fuselage. I've seen why people have trouble cooling Jab cylinders. They have a front mounted oil cooler under the spinner. Leakage around that will increase pressure UNDER the cylinders and thwart attempts to increase airflow down through the cylinders. Seal around that and run the outlet in a sealed duct right back to the firewall before going down and out.

FW190 had a fabric seal aft of the cockpit to stop this. See Youtube Greg's automobiles and airplanes for a very recent two part on the FW190.

Jim Bede did like using aluminium tube for wing spars. He used it on the BD-1 which became the Grumman AA-1 and later AA-5 and also on the homebuilt kit BD-4 and the little BD-5. As usual what looks like it ought not to be a great idea, on closer examination, has some advantages. There are torsional loads to be taken out by the spar and a tube will take these. You can put lightening holes in the front and rear of the spar in the outboard area and the root fittings can be non precision and lacking in stress raisers. Jim reckoned this was important in a kitplane. The outboard area spar could also be replaced with a rolled, thinner 2024 sheet tube. I've owned a BD-4 for 24 years and it is a great all round homebuilt. If you are looking for a 4 seat homebuilt you don't have a lot of choice but a new BD-4C kit with a 180 - 210 HP Lycoming or clone and CS prop is available and heaps cheaper than an RV-10. Not bad for a design that first flew in 1968. Nobody is forcing you to fit galss and autopilot but in the overall cost of an aircraft, the glass panel (if you stay away from certified) is likely cheaper than steam gauges and already has the autopilot built in. All you need are the servos. As for LSA - one of aviation's really bad ideas. Relatively fragile, limited aircraft, often flown illegally, are a result with a much higher accident rate than standard GA. The only real advantage was the relaxed medical requirement for pilots. As the USA and UK have in the last few years become sensible about medicals, unlike Australia, the requirement there for LSA has essentially disappeared. I doubt they'll be missed.

The Private Certificate in the US includes night training. You don't get to fly at night without training. When you fly at night is a judgement call. I'd use it to fly in nice weather a little later than otherwise so maybe you arrive a little later than last light but no big deal. You might well be able to see the lights of your destination or towns along the way when last light happens. Besides it's pretty and on hot summer's days the turbulence would be gone. I wouldn't launch on a pitch black night, no moon, into iffy weather. Interesting to see the Australian attitude on display here. Always got to put more/more severe/more training requirements on anything, compared to the country where by far most of private GA is done. No wonder CASA is like it is.

Funny how in the USA you get your Private and it allows you to fly day and night. Doesn't seem to be much of a problem. I wonder how many accidents have been caused by last light in Australia? I heard about one rushed approach resulting in a bent 172 at a DoT safety seminar. How many low fuel/out of fuel accidents because landing to refuel would make last light a serious consideration? Sure, flying single engine at night presents you with a problem. Unless within easy glide of a lit runway, might be best to pull the parachute in your Cirrus SR20/22. It is a calculated risk, just like the one you take when you fly over essentially unlandable country by day, or as Bruce Tuncks keeps saying, our ridiculous ATC system puts you over tiger country at a far lower altitude than you would use if there was no ATC. ADSB is a great 1990's system based on 1940's ATC philosophy but we have a 21st century problem. Obsolete before implementation. Flarm is a great technology demonstarter but there there have been quite a few glider/glider mid airs where both were Flarm equiped. Flarm as currently implemented has severe technical limitations due airframe shielding and the extremely low power of the rf transmitter. Antenna diversity with one external on top and another underneath would help. Another Flarm like system designed from the outset for aircraft to aircraft traffic awareness, not a substitute for ATC radar like ADSB, would be best. With now 1440 channels on a VHF comms radio in Europe, surely two channels could have been given over to the very minor data requirements of a Flarm like system. You wouldn't even know it was there as far as voice comms go. Use of VHF and the same comms antenna would minimise installation costs. Could be built in to new comms radio or stand alone. If Australia had gone ahead with implementation of USA type airspace Mangalore would have been Class E for the two aircraft in the mid air and full separation service. Can't have that, Airservices wants to make money to pay their inflated executive salaries.

Depressing. Having been told that the backup for a GPS is one two or three more, all with independent power supplies we still get silly posts. Turbs, why don't you please depart for NZ using stellar navigation? Report back in when you make it. Lord Howe island has ONE NDB for a beacon. Great. the chances of that failing while you are en route is probably like that of a single GPS failing, probably significantly more. There is only ONE. Pilotage and DR aren't going to find you that island. If the entire GPS system goes down - well that is extremely unlikely. There are 24 + satellites and 3 ground stations all tended by some very dedicated people from the USAF. If it all goes down WW3 has started.

In 1991 the satellite constellation was not complete. There were outages when you couldn't get a fix. The 1991 Gulf War had plenty of times when GPS wasn't available when the coalition forces were trying to locate for later reference, Iraqi graves in the featureless desert. So tell me guys. Suppose I'm going to fly my BD-4 to New Zealand via Lord Howe and Norfolk Islands. It is well with the capability of the aircraft. How do I find the islands? Dead reckoning or multiple GPS's?

Yes an individual GPS can fail which is why you have two or three or four. Use ones with internal, charged batteries and plug in to aircraft power. Very old GPS receivers can have a problem. There was a GPS week rollover in 2000 and another in April 2019 so if your GPS doesn't seem quite right (slow to acquire satellites and easy to dropout) your particular receiver may not have firmware that handled it. There may be a firmware upgrade available. Don't count on a TSO'd GNSS being any more reliable than your iPad, Android device etc. It just means it was designed and tested to a specific set of environmental conditions and to specified performance. Any GPS receiver nowadays is as accurate as any other in a aircraft, including the TSO'd ones. TSO'd GNSS systems are expensive. Easy way to get better reliability is redundancy. You can specify every part of a system and rigorously test or you can look at what the overall system has to do. The latter is usually a cheaper approach and easy to make more reliable. TSO'd GNSS systems are not more accurate than any other GNSS system unless you have augmentation. Even that can mostly be added to to your off the shelf GPS. Do you really need 2 cm accuracy of position? Isn't 10 meters good enough? The point about the modern equipment is it gives you more time to look out and manage the flight. Diversions are easy too. Webcams from airfields and significant points. Live METARS. Lost of good information, not just navigation. I also don't want to run in to somebody who is head down with map, ruler, whiz wheel etc for several minutes at a time. I've taken evasive action several times on cross country flights while enroute. The other aircraft in each case showed no signs of having seen us. Last time was going in to Caloundra from the south. About 10 miles out low enough to just make a shadow on the ground my wife noted there were TWO shadows. Quick look around and nothing, no warnings on PCAS (tells of nearby transponder returns) so figured he'd be below and in front and so when lowering nose there he was, just below and to the right, 200 meters converging slowly and we had an overtake. Low wing two seat ultralight returning to Caloundra. Would we have hit? Probably not but it sure would have been close. Turned right to keep him in sight while passing behind. Probably counts as in vicinity of airfield rather than cross country. Didn't hear any radio calls from him.

It makes no sense not to avail ourselves of the modern technology when flying. The aim isn't to navigate, it is to get where you want to go. For god's sake just use the GPS and get there while having time to look outside and monitor the engine and fuel. You'd be surprised how much traffic there can be. As to GPS failing, if the satellites all go down you have larger problems than getting lost. WW3 just started. Carry more than one unit with charged batteries and running off the aircraft power. I've got a Lowrance 2000C in the panel, 2 iPad minis running AvPlan and my Samsung J2 phone also runs AvPlan (the latest Android full version - it's great). Backups should be hot spares i.e running and visible to you. AvPlan shares the flight plan so it's on both iPads and the Lowrance has the next waypoint or destination up. Even airliners have only 2 engines nowadays. A lot of the modern devices use not only GPS but Glonass, Beidou (about to be a complete global system but great in Australia) and Galileo. There's also a GPS compatible system of 4 QZSS satellites run by Japan. Also great in Australia. Right now I have 37 GNSS satellites in view from 5 different constellations plus 5 SBAS satellites which are also GPS L1 locators. We have a problem in aviation, actually finding people who want to fly and willing to jump through the hoops to do so. Making them jump through WW 2 hoops for a PPL test is ridiculous. Nobody flies that way nowadays. What ever happened to train like you'll fly and fly like you trained? If you want to postulate backups when everything fails are you going to train to flap your arms if the wings fall off? The navigation backup is pilotage, right Bruce? Before GPS when we were flying long distances out of Gawler in our gliders, a WAC chart with range rings around Gawler for final glides and simply looking at the ground meant we were never lost and always knew where to go next.

I had a dump failure on one side in my mini Nimbus once. Could only tell on the ground roll when the wing dropped. The earlier gliders had the ballast tanks pretty close to fuselage and the ailerons a long way out so that might explain it. However in our BD-4 it gets uncomfortable holding aileron in the event of tank imbalance. Might also run out of aileron in crosswind landing so I try to balance by burning 30 minutes a side then switching tanks.

The tanks will only cross feed on BOTH if the ball is out of the middle. Banking is irrelevant if the ball is in the middle. Some more revision on aerodynamics is indicated for some people.

Facthunter, go and buy some shares in a large company and go to the annual meeting as a small shareholder and put up a motion. Let us know how you get on.