Sapphire

Of course you had to ground the plane but were there no facilities to weld it there? One gliding club I was with had continual problems with cracked muffler on a Pawnee. Many mornings they had it pulled off and someone was welding it up. Talking about welding, I am restoring a boat trailer and have to do vertical welds and welding underneath which is the worst when "lava" dribbles down on you. Is gasless mig welding easier than the stick welding I am doing?

Worst case scenario the cover flys off and jams in your elevator and you save the day by moving your weight back and forth to land the plane. A glider pilot did roughly the same to save himself.

Broken plugs easily happen when you are tighening them up with a lot of sideways force. Your "Solitaire" looks like a Sapphire with a name change. I had some interst in it as well, but it is four or five thousand miles from me. I would put in another CDI you can switch to. The guy I sold my Sapphire to had the engine stop dead while taxiing-electrical problem.

So there is an overide for your headset PTT? US ebay prices are $125 USD plus $11 postage to Oshkosh. However they invite offers on ebay. If they are selling slow, a $50 bid might be accepted.[ these smilies are a bit addictive]

A three blade prop is quieter. The story doesnt end there. A two blade prop is more efficient than a 3 blade prop but at a lower power setting. If you increase your power then the 2 blade prop becomes less efficient untill you reach a point where putting on an extra blade is more efficient. If you increase the power more, then again you get more efficiency by adding blades. Basically all this says is that the prop needs to match your power and that putting on a three blade prop can give you less thrust or more thrust.

Boingk, Id like to get that headset as I will be going to Oshkosh this July [save the postage] It has a push to talk buttton on the dome. Do you put your hand to your head every time you want to talk? Never had one of them. Normally you have a push to talk button on the stick which works after you plug your set in.

Those who do not do preflight checks need to ask themselves one question:"Do I feel lucky?" Well, do ya punk?

Another feature is that the cyl. head temp guage can show normal temperatures but part of the engine is overheating. The sensor under the spark plug only measures temperature at that one spot. Everytime the engine overheats, a bit of damage is done. If it happens often, then say an 1800 hour engine needs many top end overhauls. I knew a pilot who bought a brand new Jabiru and needed to do te overhaul between 300 and 400 hrs. Now I'll have the Jabiru guys entering the debate as well.

There is an edit facility. I didn't specifically hunt out the Hummel Bird but more the design of having cyl heads sticking out in the slipstream with no other modification. I kept bringing up that a/c because I was investigating one that was for sale here. Cooling is a very complex subject and even the best working systems don't satisfy the requirements of aircooled engines all the time. Take a 40 C plus day and you have to taxi to the far end of a cross strip and there is lots of traffic. You are holding behind several aircraft because this aerodrome has no taxiway. You have waited what seems like eternity just to taxi on this runway so you can hold some more to back track the cross strip. The delays can go on and on while your engine is screaming for cooling.

Another one from me I just thought of. Checked the prop bolt torque and found it to be from 3 ft/lb to 12 ft/lb/ requiring I think 16 foot pounds. Checked it very regularly after that always requiring some tightening up and the prop got thinner and thinner. Has anyone seen this?

That's incredible. Do rats chew through fibreglass? Those Sapphire wings had evidence of rats living there for a long time.

Years and years of preflight checks can reveal nothing worth worrying about until one day..... Print out any things you found that could have caused an accident. I'll start with preflighting a Sapphire [pusher prop] Found a strip of rubber about 50 cm long press fitted on a strip of metal attached to the engine and partly hidden under the cowling. It has partially come loose and that loose end sticks out a bit into the airflow. The rest pulled off easily. Possible worst case scenerio, the rubber hits the prop and causes a blade to come off. The vibration from an unbalanced prop tears the engine from its mounts. The shift in c of g renders your pitch uncontrolable. Sounds like an exaggeration? A piece of metal about 1" by 12" lying on a runway brought a Concord down. Anybody not doing their preflight checks would have nothing to report here.

I wouldn't say you are too fussy. You can be blase over airline food [i am soon to find that out againnn] but not life threatening contraptions. The next time I need a night light, I'll know where to go

Welding is not my forte but I have done casting.... When you finally buy your dream a/c you assume every thing is set up correctly-after all the previous owner had enough confidence in it to do a demonstration flight. But is it? Reputable factory built a/c not modified by "fiddlers" should score ok but home built a/c need to be a concern. Before I bought my Varieze I researched potential problems. One builder in the USA spent four years building his Varieze but forgot to bolt down wing attachments which eventually get covered by fibreglass. Both wings fell off on his first flight. Another owner, under the influence of alcohol, crudely rebored tapered wing pin structures and then bolted them down as tight as he could [requires 3 foot pounds] He went off and did aerobatics[no no] One bolt broke away and the wing swiveled back on the remaining bolt. The winglet now produced uncontrolled yaw which flipped the plane upsidedown. His surviving relations took Rutan through an expensive court battle after which he stopped selling plans and went on to better things. What has all this got to do with engine cooling? Absolutely nothing! However,when you buy your homebuilt or any a/c check if it has been built properly-cooling systems I find can be inadequate and it is you who will pay through the nose once you sign on the dotted line. Actually, in my opinion, all piston aircooled 4 stroke engines run in an over heated state. If a part of an engine fails as a result of too much heat rather than normal friction wear, then the engine is running too hot. Becomes part of the high cost of flying.

There is a trike section in this forum with experienced people. Try postin there.

[ they seem to last just fine (minus the occasional 210 or 182!). Where did you read that this system is not acceptable? I've done some more reading. If you have a half vw engine with the cyl head poking through the cowling to be cooled by the slipstream, that is not acceptable on its own. You also need scoopy things that direct flow to the hottest part of the cyl head which is also where the exhaust valve is located. Some reference elsewhere about air being directed into casting holes to cool the exhaust valve area. The same would apply to other engines, I am sure.

That would be a cheap hanger-here at Jandakot one can be yours for $185000. Great to put a Hummel Bird in.

That was a two stroke. The exhaust valve in a four stroke is its own achilles heel. It runs so hot and with insufficient lubrication. I checked the valves on my Continental 0-200 and the intake valves were like new- to look at and valve guide clearance. The exhaust valves were like Dante's Inferno and wobbled in their guides like a top. Eventually got 78-80 over 80 on the leak down test. Somehow you need an oil line to feed the valve guide and huge fins for cooling that area, and a fan. Bet you could get double engine hours with that.

Put on a smaller prop, even a one blade prop? They add more blades if there is a clearance problem and have lots of hp., why not the reverse? The development of this might make the space shuttle look like a back yard botchup. [ It was to a certain extent]

At the Kingaroy Soaring Club [google to aircraft and facilities] they have put a water cooled ford v6 car engine into a Pawnee. To do it commercially the cost would be prohibitive but some retired club aircraft mechnics have done it in their own time. Saw it a few years ago before I got into working on a/c engines, so don't know what modifications they did. Great workshop project to do a smaller say 1.5 litre engine for a single seater.. Though you would have to design and weld new engine mounts, etc. and welding is not my forte. Might contact them

It doesn't matter what whiz bang engine you get, if it isn't cooled properly then it soon becomes scrap metal. From what I have read and see, some engine setups don't seem to follow in line with theory. Some have enclosed cowls with complicated air intakes, baffles, etc. Some just have the cyl heads poking through the cowling to capture the slipstream, which I read is not acceptable, but a lot of a/c have that method. Does anyone have experience with engine life and various forms of cooling?

Why would you not want your rego seen? That would attract attention straight away if you were involved in illegal activity.

When I relic. an aircraft I had to put on lettering underneath the wing about a meter high. That would be bigger than some a/c. Then I had to photograph it and send to the Raa with some signed statements. I guess later you could say "It fell off"

Hope you are not 6'3". I was almost in the foetal position.Engine cooling is not as simple as sticking the engine into the breeze, though it's a lot simpler. One side is cooler than the other. A Continental 0-200 I owned had air intakes, baffles, seals, strips of metal around the fins and inbetween the manifolds. Just wonder how long those open air jobs last.

I notice you are building a Hummel Bird. There is one for sale near here. Will you get long engine life if you expose the heads to the airstream. Some have cowlings and baffles for more accurate cooling. The rivits attaching the wing skin to the ribs distort the skin-too much clearance I think. It doesnt have much legroom-have you tried sitting in one?