Powerin

OK planey...I'll supply the sheep and you supply the bbq and joint and I think we'll have a very good time

Oh well...can you put in a good word for me at Lilydale? You might have to do a low pass to scare the sheep away before landing....surely a small price to pay to keep my sheep fat and happy:thumb_up:

Ahhh...well, I thought a brilliant young up-and-coming aviation lawyer/pilot like yourself might have a big backyard :big_grin:

Hey...I think my sheep are doing well here! I can keep the grass at Tullamarine, Essendon, Moorabin, Lilydale and Coldstream under control (and perhaps Pt Cook, Avalon and Toorandin too!). Tango wants one and surely Darky will take 10 or 20. Any other takers? Now...did I mention that I have some hungry cows as well..... Peter

With the lack of spring rain I have approx 2000 sheep in need of fattening. Would that help? I can organise a few B-Doubles to get them down to you. :thumb_up: Peter

I talked to a farm inventor at the Henty Field Days last year who was showing a system in an old Subaru (?) ute using an electrolysis unit to split hydrogen from water and then using it as a fuel supplement. I was sceptical because it takes more energy to split water into hydrogen and oxygen than you get back out of burning it. But he claimed he was using the hydrogen/oxygen as a combustion enhancer and was getting incredible fuel economy. Sounds like the same thing you are doing. Skydog: Thielert have been re-born as "Centurion Aircraft Engines" and are back in business. Diamond Aircraft now produce their own "Austro" diesels based on the same Mercedes engines. There are a few other interesting aero diesels in development...Wiksch, SMA and DeltaHawk come to mind. I think the 3 cylinder 100hp Wilksch has potential as a recreational aircraft engine. I have seen Youtube video of them in a few aircraft...but I must admit the rattling sound of a diesel just doesn't sound right in a plane! Peter

Hey Tomo...experimenting with hydrogen power...that sounds cool! Where did you get the hydrogen from (make it yourself?) and how did you get the fuel/air mixture into the engine? Like Nev, I think a hydrogen (or perhaps ethanol) fuel cell driving an electric motor might be the way of the future. Peter

Some here seemed to think that the proposed RAAus weight increases would just allow old GA aircraft into RAAus. I think it will be important in the future just to be able to carry more fuel (and strengthen the airframe to be able to carry it). Peter

Sometimes you wonder if it's worth living outside capital cities any more. I don't fly yet so I don't know how buying fuel at airports works. But I know there's not much money in selling fuel and a lot of country petrol stations basically do it as a community service. Country airports might be the same? But with the proposed environmental regime of auditing and monitoring underground fuel tanks for leaks (and the associated costs and paperwork), a lot of country servos won't be able to afford to continue selling fuel. It's going to make it hard to fly anywhere if the country airports don't have fuel and the local servo has closed down! Will Shell still be selling Jet A1 at these airports? Everyone might have to convert to diesels! Peter

It would be at full brightness, but I think the light waves would be squashed together from the doppler effect and blue-shifted higher up the electromagnetic spectrum. So somebody at the airport watching you would probably get a burst of x-rays or gamma radiation rather than see a beam of light. Peter

Actually (according to Einstein) it's impossible to travel at the speed of light because it takes an infinite amount of energy to go that fast. BUT if Maj was on final to the airport going 99.9% of the speed of light (!) and switched on his landing lights he would see the beam travelling away from him at the speed of light. Even though he's already at 99.9% and nothing can go faster than light, the light will still travel forward at the speed of light from his perspective. However the good Captain, waiting to takeoff at the airport, would see the same beam of light travelling towards him also at the speed of light...not at the speed of light plus 99.9% that Maj was travelling at. So yes, your landing light would work. Does your brain hurt yet? :baldy: Ok I'll stop now...I know I'm a nerd Peter

I'll probably sound sexist here, perhaps because I am? But I subscribe to the theory that men and women are very different beings (and I think women are the superior being :heart:). We are built differently, we think differently and our brains are wired differently. In this day and age women can do any job they want to can't they? So I just wonder if the reason women aren't as involved in aviation is that a higher percentage than men just don't like flying. Just purely because women are different from men and think differently (as a general rule). So perhaps it's not because they can't, it's just because they don't want to (and the same applies to a lot of other "blokey" jobs and activities). That's my politically incorrect theory anyway. Probably wrong (but my wife agrees). The girls here can feel free to shoot me down in flames . Peter

Wow! If I had rims like those I'd be up for $1500 every time I drove...well...anywhere!! :)

Touché bass...

Same here (but for farming not flying). Been using Weatherzone for many years and I pay the extra $5/month for the extra info. Elders gets its data from Weatherzone , but Elders gives you a bit more info for free. I have been supplementing Weatherzone with the Norwegian yr.no site for a couple years now. I have found yr.no surprisingly accurate, has good graphics, and my feeling is that generally its forecasts have been as accurate or better than WZ. Peter

So how does a flying wing work? On a more conventional aeroplane you have a horizontal stab and elevator at the back to increase/decrease/maintain the angle of attack of the main wing. How does a flying wing maintain a given AoA or, for that matter, how does it maintain stability? Peter

Yeh...marking was a lot of fun. There was nothing quite like standing out in a paddock with a big noisy aeroplane coming straight at you at 100kts and 5ft altitude!!

It's always fun to stop and watch the ag pilots spraying paddocks (keep upwind of the spray-drift though). It's some of the best flying you will see outside an airshow. Peter

Sabre From last Saturday's Flying Day (5th Sept) at Temora where the newly restored Sabre flew in public for the first time. Not a prize winning photo, or even a good one...but it's not every day you see a Sabre and a Hornet flying together in formation!

Thanks for the training chronology...a great inspiration to those of us yet to take the plunge! But I have a couple stupid questions....one of your late downwind checks was if there was enough fuel for a go-around, so I was wondering: 1. Is any aircraft fuel gauge accurate enough to tell if there is the 5-10 mins of fuel left for a go-around? 2. With the above fuel gauge accuracy in mind, if you think there is not enough fuel what do you do? You have to get down somehow...and soon! If a landing goes pear shaped do you just put it down and make the best of a known bad situation or do you risk a go-around which has perhaps a 50-50 chance of putting you in a better situation? It just seemed to me a bit of a pointless check that should have been done long before the circuit. Peter

Sorry...getting way off topic here. Yeh, the big boys really screwed us on bulk deliveries. We now use Liberty who have bulk delivery in NE Vic/Sth NSW. Prices usually better than bowser. Delivery charged by the litre, the more you buy the less it is. Joint delivery between neighbours is charged as one delivery. Credit is extra. Send weekly fuel price emails and have pricing forecasts on the website. Sorry to sound like an advertisement but we have saved quite a bit of money just by knowing the weekly price and forecasts. I'm constantly surprised by how many of the members here are farmers! Peter

They still do!

Be careful. Remember that petrol is volatile and diesel is not. A spark will ignite petrol but not diesel. Plastic containers and electric pumps designed for diesel will probably not have much spark suppression - both electrical and static. We have a 240V pump, designed for diesel only, on our 5000 litre steel diesel tank. It has a 1 metre plastic suction hose running from the tank to the pump. When diesel runs through this hose it builds enough static charge to create sparks that jump 2-3 inches from the hose to the adjacent metal frame (several per second). Not a worry for diesel but I still wrapped wire around the hose and earthed it. Don't use diesel stuff for petrol. Filling up tanks like this at a servo should be legal and no problem as long as they are properly secured (won't go flying in an accident). I'm pretty sure you can fill 44gal drums as long a they are properly tied down. But the onus is on the servo not to fill unsafe containers so I guess they err on the side of caution. Peter.

If I recall the angled "Hoerner" wingtips of the CH701 and Savannah are supposed to do the same sort of thing as winglets (reduce tip vortices) with less weight. At least that's what Chris Heintz claims on the Zenith website.....http://www.zenithair.com/stolch801/design/design.html

Wow! Sums up our economy so well!