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Bleve97

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Posts posted by Bleve97

    Accuracy of the "1 in 60" rule for navigation.

    in Student Pilot & Further Learning

    Posted

    Have you read "We, the Navigators?"

     

    It's a great story, and they did amazing things with the most basic tools, but they had the luxury of time - they were doing ~7kts, and had weeks to do it, and all nice visual clues that we use too, some of anyway, not all of which are terribly useful in aviation.  They had multi-crew to manage the workload. If they got a bit lost they had time to fix it.  You don't hear from the ones that didn't make it though ... Survivor bias again.

     

    Harold Gatty has an amazing story too, but .. they were _lucky_ and a lot didn't make it.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harold_Gatty

     

    Prince of Navigators is a good telling of his tale.

     

    Seriously, while we learn DR and 1:60 and all that stuff, and look at the charts (electronic, not paper), with a charter pilot hat on, instead of a XC instructor hat, I'm using AvPlan and a Garmin 430.  When we get a "you're going to XXXX in YY minutes", you have time to fuel up and bang the plan into AvPlan*, print out the flight log and relevant DAP/ERSA/Country guide pages, look at the satellite pics of the aerodrome if it's unfamiliar, and go.  In flight I am managing passengers, fuel and weather, and keeping my iPad cool ?

     

    * - NOTAMs, weather etc from AvPlan, brilliant. I have a backup iPad in the plane as per our ops manual, and a phone with it on it too.

     

     

    Accuracy of the "1 in 60" rule for navigation.

    in Student Pilot & Further Learning

    Posted

    Well, well, well. I based my assessment of the 1 in 60 rule on the assumption that you would measure how far you had actually flown, not how far you had hypothetically gone down the original track. The video uses the example of the intended track. That version of the 1:60 rule will be accurate up to about 10 degrees off track, as others have said. Bob Tait, in his RA-Aus cross country endorsement seems to switch between methods. 

     

     

    Using the original track is easier because you don’t have to measure the hypotenuse. 

     

     

    The hypotenuse is the better method for navigation because, for example that is the only method that tells you your ground speed and allows you to determine what the winds actually are - not that I would attempt to do that alone in flight. 

     

    The 1:60 is essentially a dumbed down version of the Small Angle Approximation. It works because the hypotenuse and the adjacent are close enough in length that it doesn't matter in the case of using a compass or gyro for navigation in a very imprecise environment.  See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Small-angle_approximation

     

    In the charter world, if you did any of this, you'd be looking for a new job.  That's what TSO'd GNSS is for.

     

     

    Jabiru Catches Fire

    in Aircraft Incidents and Accidents

    Posted

    I suspect that 'unable to start the engine' is more a result of not knowing how to start a Jabiru. Using the choke correctly is most important and perhaps students are not being taught the correct procedure? It's in the manual. Cold mornings are the worst. If the battery cannot crank the engine at 300RPM or better it won't fire. If the battery used by Jab was not up to the task they would have picked up on that long ago.

    We get some pretty seriously cold mornings over winter, and correct technique won't cut it.  A battery booster is pretty important, and keeping batteries on charge overnight helps too.  Sometimes we have to resort to shoving two hair dryers into the cooling vents for 20 minutes to warm up enough to start.

     

    Jabs don't like -1 degree starts

     

     

    The real RA Aus to PPL conversion deal

    in Student Pilot & Further Learning

    Posted

    If your PPL is current the only RAAus exams you may have to do is human factors and the converting pilot exam. . You do not have to do a BFR, just a check flight with a CFI after you have five hours in an RAAus type aircraft, including one hour solo. (Although this counts for a BFR) Unfortunately they have taken away the discretion to do less hours if the CFI finds the pilot doesn't need them.

    The converting exam includes HF, so you don't have to do both

     

     

    Transitioning to the right hand sides

    in Student Pilot & Further Learning

    Posted

    FWIW, most of my Jab 160 flying is RHS, I only fly LH if doing a maintenance or ferry flight. I found the initial move to RH was only tricky from the POV of the spinner bulge being on the wrong side and it took a couple of landings to get the plane pointed straight. Otherwise, no dramas. If the weather's a bit curly and I'm taking a Jab to Tyabb for maintenance, I fly RHS because I'm more used to it, less likely to test the width of the strip :)

     

    Recommended that you do a flight or two with an instructor, just to make sure you're not way off-line on takeoff and landing. The old whiteboard marker on the windscreen trick is good when learning it. I din't find that it made any difference when punting around in Warriors/Archers/Arrows etc.

     

     

    • Like 1

    Looking for a load controller

    in AUS/NZ General Discussion

    Posted

    Casting the net wide!

     

    I have a desire to create some high resolution load charts for a PA28R-201 (Arrow V), which is to say that I've made a vector chart for the load envelope, metric and imperial, but I cannot use them, even though the data is exactly the same as the 100th generation scan/crappy print in the aircraft's PoH, just, it's an illustrator file so I can make nice big and clear charts for training exercises.

     

    I even sent the charts to Piper, who said :

     

    No, we cannot approve his charts. If he was in the US, he could hire a FAA Designated Engineering Representative (DER) to approve his charts. I don’t know if Australia has a similar process.

     

    So, I spoke with Bevan from AvPlan, as we also want to get our AvPlan .ac files approved, same issue, need someone with a CASA stamp to agree that 1 is 1, 3x4 does in fact equal 12 and that the envelope corners, copied from the PoH, are correct, then give us a CASA elephant stamp so we can use these files operationally.

     

    In Australia, this person is known as, I believe, a "load controller", but google is not being very helpful in finding one.

     

    Bueller? Anyone?

     

     

    Non towered question

    in Student Pilot & Further Learning

    Posted

    Say a non towered field has a runway 04/22 with a noise abatement restriction for right circuits only on 04 and left circuits only on 22ie all curcuits to the south of the field due to a town to the north.. Would you avoid descending on the dead side for a midfield crosswind join for the same reason? Because you would be flying pattern altitude over the town..

    What's everyone's opinion? Join on the 45 or long downwind etc?

    You could contact the local operator and ask them :)

     

    But generally, noise is on climb, not descent.

     

     

    • Agree 1

    Jabiru 12 Pole Alternator modification / upgrade

    in Jabiru

    Posted

    Battery voltage 12.8.Have sent a pm thanks Bruce

    I've spent some time poking around with a multimeter on Jabs, and it's worth checking for voltage drops from the battery to the radio, to try to isolate where a loss could be. There's a few places that need checking - in particular both sides of the avionics switch and the 12v bus bar. It doesn't take much time and makes finding the problem reasonably simple. Same with earths, being a composite airframe, checking for resistance between the earth on the radio and the battery is worthwhile. I've stumbled onto 0.5-1 volt losses in places, that's enough to make the radio unworkable at low RPM.

     

    The alternator putting out <12v at ~1000rpm is "normal", unless it's the high output alternator. Operationally, running the plane at 1200rpm when not explicitly testing idle speed in your pre-takeoff check, is not a bad idea :) IT might not be your reg or alternator, invest a few minutes poking around looking for drops before you go replacing expensive things!

     

     

    Flight training

    in Student Pilot & Further Learning

    Posted

    HiJust wondering if anyone has any recommendations for training out of Moorabbin

    I have a few days to kill and in Melbourne in a couple of weeks and would like to do the controlled airspace etc endorsement on my RPL if I can fit it in

     

    Regards

     

    Stewy

    If you're interested, we can do it at Lilydale in Warriors, YMEN and YMMB are close and we do lots of flying into both. Full disclosure : I work at YLIL.

     

     

    • Like 1

    J230 - preformance. (Landing and taking off)

    in Student Pilot & Further Learning

    Posted

    I'm not so sure about the picture in the windscreen frame aspect. IF the student is having trouble maintaining a fixed pitch attitude it might be a bad idea to rely on how the 'drome looks" in the frame. THAT wont' nail the approach angle. The "presentation" of the shape of the runway WILL. Ie IF it's getting shorter you are undershooting and if it's looking taller (longer) you are overshooting. IF you had some form of slope indicator (VASIS or glideslope) they would confirm your adherence to the required slope and were mandatory for RPT jet operations so serious is the need to stay on slope. Nev

    The changing shape doesn't always work so well on grass strips, where the edges are a lot less distinct. Overthinking for sure - keep the IAS about right and the picture looking good, and 95% of the battle is won. I find putting an attitude marker on the windscreen with a whiteboard marker (poor man's HUD!) works brilliantly - point the marker at the aim point, hold the airspeed with throttle and elevator as appropriate, when the gunk goes under the glare shied, eyes to the end, power to idle (roughly), and try not to land :) Apologies to Mr Jacobson and Kruze ;)

     

     

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