IBob

Sure. Just steer clear of them big magnets they use for pickin' stuff up in scrap yards.........

The Wankel-powered RO80 got NSU Car of the Year in '68, but subsequently finished the company: the early versions had so many rotor tip failure problems that owners would hold up how many fingers/warranty tip replacements they had had as they passed each other. It didn't help that one of the selling points was 'the faster you go, the more economical it is', due to the peculiar power curve: the autobahns had no upper speed limit, so RO80 owners drove very economically indeed. A pity, as it was a very advanced and well built car in many ways. More recently, there is still a strong contingent of Mazda rotary fans among the petrolheads. And I have to say they sound great when they're going. But I'm also told they are forever needing to rebuild them.

"Wretched pilots keep complainin' of running out of elevator trim. Right....we'll fix THEM..................."

There is also a story about a loader driver who got his own back by clambering somehow into the hopper midflight, and hiding there after landing. But, of course, nobody would be so silly as to do that nowadays.........)

Oh dear.........( The Airtruck had a tiny dicky seat at the rear of the fuselage, for transporting loader drivers and other unfortunates; and from which, on turbulent days, the long-suffering loader drivers had a clear view of the twin tail booms, as they wobbled about independent of the aircraft and each other....

I'm just pi**ed off that I could have made do with a couple of barn doors, instead of 7,000 rivets and aluminium origami.........(

Yur, but we cain't have folks manglin' the langwidge..............(

...and will all be flown over the next 3 days. Then next week end is Wings Over Wairarapa

As others have noted, the article (and also the accident report) says he felt the left wing stalling, so applied left rudder. I wonder if this was incorrectly reported and written up, as no comment is made on it in the report.

You don't se?

Yep, bit of a puzzle how that could happen. There have been incidents where the flap handle wasn't properly latched, what usually happens then is the flaps jump to 0deg, not the other way. To avoid the resulting sinking feeling, I have been reliably advised (by at least two sources) to always wiggle the handle after setting the flaps.

https://www.airliners.net/photo/Untitled/Beagle-A-109-Airedale/915402 This guy is located and flies regularly from our local field......)

Bodie, sorry, yes 1/4"BSP. Over here the manifold blocks are sold at auto paint shops etc, as they are principally used for compressed air lines. I only occasionally use the outboard tanks here in NZ. But it's handy to be able to go there and back on some flights without having to source mogas. Your solid tubing in the wing sounds good. Just be aware that the tanks may swell and shift a bit in use, so your coupling to the tank needs to be able to accommodate that: it sounds as if yours will.

Hi again Bodie. I copied Mark's 4 valve setup, which works very well for me. The block we use in NZ, and in Australia where Mark is, is a 14"BSP air manifold, with ball valves. You will have some local equivalent. If I were building again, I would also run the return line to that manifold (rather than to the RH inner tank). It's no biggy, but it would be one less penetration/fitting in that tank. And it would remove the possibility of fuel loss if flying with that tank topped right off: as it is, if I see very high level on that tank in the sight glass, I switch to that tank for 10mins or so and burn some off. To run the LH fuel lines across to the valve block on the R of the fuselage, I made a tray that screws on in front of the cabin frame member. Some builders run the lines under and to the rear of that frame member, but this puts an undulation in the lines where air may sit, resulting in differential fuel flow. Where at all possible, avoid undulations in the upper fuel lines, and run them steadily downwards. For those LH fuel lines, you can fit solid pipe (with hose at the last part down to the block). In my case, since I do not have solid pipe there, I recently laced those lines to a piece of light aluminium angle across the width of the tray. This has removed all undulations and the fuel tanks are now self-levelling on the ground, and feed more evenly in the air. PS I believe ICP may now have amended the manual in recent kits, specifying how the 4 tank option should be plumbed. Builders of those kits may have to follow the amended manual for their build to be compliant. Attached is a pic showing the tray carrying those LH lines.

I'm pretty sure mine was copper. Certainly my (added) negative cable was. Maybe PM Mark at Kyle Communications here, he can probably give you a size if you're not sure.

Yep, the negative is literally the other half of the circuit. And I'm referencing an Australian Rotax guru (I think) who commented that the aircraft that seemed to suffer starting and clutch problems were more often those without a dedicated negative cable. Um, not good on my wire gauges. Same size as the positive cable that goes forward?

Hi Jabiru7252. Yes, that was poorly worded: I was mainly trying to convey the idea that polarity is not an issue. And I would be confident the lag time in the carb (air) heat sensor is due to the thermal mass of the sensor: it is potted into a small bolt, which is then screwed into an aluminium socket in the airbox. The rise in air temperature is not great, it will necessarily take time to raise the temperature of all this. As some sort of comparison, I have commissioned a great deal of industrial refrigeration, where the standard sensor is a Pt100 in a 6mmSS pocket. Initial calibration would be carried out in a 0'C ice water slurry. Heat transfer in a slurry is far more rapid than in air, but we would still allow a full 2mins for a probe to stabilise.

Yep, Bodie, every one of us has their moments with the manual, believe me! But when it came to it, I found the electrical very straightforward. The wiring looms they supply save a huge amount of work. Also, when it comes to the sensors etc on the engine and to the instruments, the wire ends are colour coded with little bits of coloured sleeve. And the wiring diagram (in the back of the manual, in the POH, I think) shows those colours. What I did do (and lots of other builders do too) is run a fat negative cable from the battery to the starter relay* mount bolts, then jumper from there to the starter motor (and back to a common instrument ground point on an internal side flange just behind the RH of the panel). This is an extra, but just seems to be good practise, rather than relying on the aircraft shell as a negative path: With a Rotax, it is important to get good starting, as poor starting risks expensive clutch damage. For good starting you want the engine to turn over quite fast, and to get that you need a good battery (and starter relay) and good sized cables between battery and starter motor. * I as fitted the short battery negative cable to chassis, as supplied.

PS: 1. The airbox/air temp sensors are just resistors that vary in value depending on temperature. So there is no right or wrong polarity for them. What I have noticed with my airbox temp probe is that it is quite slow to respond when I turn on carb (air) heat. Provided the exhaust is hot, the carb (air) heat will be almost immediate, but the airbox and the sensor take a while to heat up, giving the impression that the carb (air) heat is slow acting. 2, 3 &4. Attached is pic of my ignition wiring. The 2 blue wires attached to the engine black wire are the ones you can see cable tied to the white upper engine mount tube.

Hi Bodie, looks like you are getting to the exciting bits! 1. Airbox/air temp gauge. Each sensor has 2 wires. Attach the pair for one sensor in the LH pair of sockets, the other sensor in the RH pair of sockets. Your gauge has a switch on the front, to switch beteen sensors, right? So you then need to power up the gauge with 12v, warm one of the sensors and figure out which way the switch is so that you can mark it. I have mine so when the switch is left, it is airbox, when it is right it is outside air. This makes sense to me as my outside air sensor is tucked up in the RH wing root/windscreen join. 2,3 and 4. Those two blue wires come from the starter solenoid. Originally, they would have been plugged into the the two ignition modules to provide soft start (timed ignition retard). BUT Rotax now supply the engine with an 'Easy start unlock cable', which is your coiled black cable there. All you need to do is connect either of those blue cables to the black cable, and that's it, you will have soft start. (I connected both blue cables to the black, just to tidy things up.) Here is the applicable service instruction: https://teveso.cz/content/m_dokumentace/SI-912-028_Advanced_Start_System_for_ROTAX_Engine_Type_912_Series.pdf See item 3.1.1 "The single wire of this harness (see fig. 1) must be connected to the momentary 12V start power signal at the starter solenoid........" Hope that all makes sense, let us know how you go!

FWIW I recently had to cut a large circular hole in gasket material: I was able to do it (with some practise) with multiple light passes of a compass (or calipers) with a sharp needle fitted. (I did try sharpening a needle to a blade shape, but the unmodified needle seemed to work better.) Whether this would work on adhesive vinyl, I do not know.

The Savannah kit comes with an uncoloured ASI, and adhesive coloured arcs for the builder to apply.

Link to original article, with illustrations: http://www.satirewire.com/news/jan02/australia.shtml

It's happened before, y'know: AUSTRALIA GETS DRUNK, WAKES UP IN NORTH ATLANTIC Tired of Being Isolated and Ignored, Continent Isn't Bloody Moving Sydney, 800 miles S. of Nova Scotia (SatireWire.com) — After what witnesses described as an all night blinder during which it kept droning on about how it was always being bloody ignored by the whole bloody world and would bloody well stand to do something about it, Australia this morning woke up to find itself in the middle of the North Atlantic. http://www.satirewire.com/news/jan02/images/australia.gif "Good Lord, that was a booze up," said a bleary-eyed Australian Prime Minister, John Howard, speaking from his residence at Kirribilli House, approximately 600 nautical miles east of Cape Hatteras, North Carolina. According to Australians and residents of several countries destroyed or lewdly insulted during the continent's nearly 7,000-mile saltwater stagger, the binge began just after noon yesterday at a pub in Brisbane, where several patrons were discussing Australia Day and the nation's general lack of respect from abroad. "It started off same as always; coupla fossils saying how our Banjo Patterson was a better poet than Walt Whitman, how Con the Fruiterer is funnier than Seinfeld, only they're Aussies so no one knows about 'em," recalled witness Kevin Porter. "Then this bloke Martin pipes up and says Australia's main problem is that it's stuck in Australia, and everybody says 'Too right!'" "Well, it made sense at the time," Porter added. By 2 a.m., powered by national pride and alcohol, the 3-million-square-mile land mass was barging eastward through the Coral Sea and crossing into the central Pacific, leaving a trail of beer cans and Chinese take-away in its wake. When dawn broke over the Northern Hemisphere, the continent suddenly found itself, not only upside down, but smack in the middle of the Atlantic, and according to most of its 19 million inhabitants, that's the way it's going to stay. "We sent troops to Afghanistan. You never hear about it. We have huge government scandals. You never hear about it. It's all 'America did this,' and 'Europe says that,'" exclaimed Perth resident Paul Watson. "Well, we're right in the thick of things now, so let's just see if you can you ignore us." http://www.satirewire.com/news/jan02/images/newzealand.gif Officials on both sides of the Atlantic conceded that would be difficult. "They broke Florida," said U.S. State Department spokesman Richard Boucher. "And most of Latin America is missing." Meanwhile, victims of what's already been dubbed the "Australian Crawl" are still shaking off the event. "Australia bumped into us at about midnight local time," said Hawaii governor Ben Cayetano. "They were very friendly — they always seem friendly — but they refused to go around unless we answered their questions. But the questions were impossible. 'Who is Ian Thorpe? Do you have any Tim Tams? What day is Australia Day?'" "Fortunately, somebody here had an Unimportant World Dates calendar and we aced the last one," Cayetano added. Panama, however, was not so lucky. "Australia came through here screaming curses at us to let them through," said Ernesto Carnal, who guards the locks at the entrance to the Panama Canal. "We said they would not fit, so they demanded to speak with a manager. When I go to find Mr. Caballos, they sneak the whole continent through." When Caballos shouted to the fleeing country that it had not paid, Australia "accidentally" backed up and took out every nation in the region, as well as the northern third of Venezuela. They then made up a cheery song about it. By late morning today, however, not everyone in Australia was quite so blithe. "We've still got part of Jamaica stuck to Queensland," said Australian army commander Lt. Gen. Peter Cosgrove. "I think we might have declared war on it. I don't bloody remember. Maybe it's time to go home." Cosgrove, however, is not in the majority, and at press time, U.S., African, and European leaders were still desperately trying to negotiate for Australia's withdrawal. But the independent-minded Aussies were not making it easy. In a two-hour meeting at midday, Australian representatives listed their demands: immediate inclusion in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, a permanent CNN presence in all 6 Australian states, a worldwide ban on hiring Paul Hogan, a primetime U.S. television contract for Australian Rules Football, and a 4,500-mile-long bridge between Sydney and Los Angeles. U.S. negotiators immediately walked out, calling the Australian Rules Football request "absurd." EDITOR'S NOTE: LIKE WE SAID, SATIREWIRE IS BACK! FOR NEW STUFF, CLICK THE 'HOME' BUTTON ABOVE. FOR THE LATEST VERSION OF THIS STORY, CLICK HERE. Copyright © 2002-2010, SatireWire.

Onetrack, while China may have chronic manufacturing quality problems, I think we need to recognise that there are sharp operators everywhere, prepared to bend or break the rules if they think they can get away with it. The food processing industries throughout the west are rife with examples. Even here in little NZ we had the surprise discovery by highschool students that Ribena contained no vitamin C. As for I worked briefly for Perreaux Sound many years ago, making high end audio gear. Folk would bring various brands of audio gear in to have it fixed, While Perreaux had it he would go over it with their lab gear, and almost none of it performed as per the claimed specifications.