rollerball

I'm afraid that the simple fact is, flying is a minority activity that the majority of the population don't identify with. The only time they go near an aicraft is when they go on holiday and that's an extremely sanitised experience designed to prevent passengers becoming 'terrified' as it 'plummets from the sky', as any journalist will tell you.

Yesterday I was approaching Sarlat-Domme here in France. I expected to land on 10 as aircraft were doing at another location quite close by witha parallel runway. I then heard an aircraft lining up on 28 so queried the runway in use. His reply was 90 degrees wind from the north so you can choose your runway, so I elected to land on 28 and broadcast that fact to the world. My advice to other posters is TALK don't stay silent and assume anything. In this case, it wouldn't have done the other pilot any harm to know that you had heard him and to tell him what you were doing as he might have wanted to reconsider his actions. If as it appears, he was in the wrong it may have avoided other problems that neither of you knew about eg with non-radio traffic who were also planning a landing. Communicate please!

Good grief! Look at the amount of metal in those rudder pedals. Don't tell me it has bomb doors too

The Ikarus C42 is a microlight/ultralight (max TOW 450kg) in the UK and the whole of Europe and is extensively used for training here.

I'm old school too and see things very simplistically. With a panelful of 'steam' gauges if one goes wrong you can easily keep flying using what's left. You only need one item - the tablet - to go wrong and you've lost the lot. I wouldn't go that route for all the tea in China thanks very much.

I didn't realise until I met up with forum member Gary last week over here in France that you poor buggers can't even do your own maintenance on ultralights unless you built em yourself. Otherwise I'd be waving the flag for a Savannah as one of the most affordable forms of aerial transport known to man. And it's all metal so doesn't mind too much being left outside.

Must have more or less flown over his house! Lanzac is 40 km to the south east of where I live as the ultralight flies on an almost direct line to the famous village built into a hillside of Rocamadour, which I've flown over and around and photographed. As many before me also have.

hmmm... I dunno Here's that pic of the Mustang I was talking about after I've cut it down a bit and you can see the repair sleeve I mentioned on the main tube. His 'hangar' consisted of an ancient old marquee tent that someone had given him and when I took the shot it had just been ripped to pieces by high winds winter 2011/12. Otherwise that's just about as tidy and organised as it ever was. We've all lost touch with him now. The word was that as in all things, he preferred to fly well under the radar and despite claiming to have an ultralight licence, could never produce it 'because he'd lost it'.

Callahan's pic reinforces my views on CoG. Just a straight replacement of the 503 with a 582 would move it back quite a lot I'd say and depending on the elevator authority could lead to a potentially dangerous situation. Be interesting to hear from someone flying a 582 Drifter about whether that's so or if a nose weight had to be added to keep the CoG within limits. If so, that would also tend to negate the 582s advantages over a lowly little 503. BTW I found a pic of the French Mustang that I mentioned that's a bit too big to post here. It didn't have wires - it had lightweight round struts plus a nose wheel and the main gear a little bit further back. Otherwise looked almost idetical to the Drifter.

Hey, that looks like what was a Mustang over here in France. Not sure if it had wires or not though. I knew a guy who bought a Mustang with a 582 and thought that the little oil tank that lubricates the butterfly valves was an oil injection system (no comment please). So he just put neat mogas in the tank and flew it home for over an hour. Then he added some more and flew it for a little bit longer before the error of his ways was pointed out to him. From then on he added 50:1 and flew it for another couple of years with no ill effects except he crashed it and knackered the main tube in front of the main wheels as you'd expect. So France being France, he got hold of another smashed Mustang, cut the main tubes of both aircraft and joined them with an enormous bloody sleeve with thousands of pop rivets. You'd never have got me up in it but he flew it for some time before selling it on to a punter who happily handed over the cash and flew it off to its new home

Derek, life's too short for negativity - it was just my sense of humour that's all. Dunno if there is an aeroclub de brive but the other weekend my Dutch pal and I were out flying our Weedhoppers together and landed at the ULM club airfield at Terrasson (not far from Brive) on a beautiful Sunday morning that was ideal for flying. And there was nobody there. I said to him that it's funny, the French have a beautiful country with the most relaxed flying regime in Western Europe and at almost every airfield we go to it's only us two foreign buggers who are flying. I don't know if it's because money is generally tight in France (which it is no matter what the EU tries to say about how wonderful everything is) or what but it's true. If you're ever back over again in this neck of the woods just give me a shout and it would be my pleasure to give you a taste of the Dordogne from the air. That goes for anyone actually.

I'll drink to that

Ah, always knew that all the rumours about you Aussies were wrong - really you're terribly erudite and well-educated, what? And I bet you down your tinnies with your little pinkies up too

It's not a like-for-like changeover, far from it. Although the 582 has more power, with it's rads and other ancillaries plus being a bigger, heavier engine to start off with, some of that is lost just hauling the extra weight around. Plus you must also be aware of potential CoG problems (sorry, I don't know the specific aircraft you mention). I bought a Weedhopper AX3 with a collapsed undercarriage and tube damage that had previously had a 582 fitted. One of the reasons why I bought it was because I already had the parts needed to repair it from my old AX3 plus its low hours 503 engine. When I came to fit the 503 I had to move the engine brackets quite a way forward to get the CoG within limits so it's worth doing the calcs. I while back I saw a single seat Weedhopper for sale over here on which some clever s*d had fitted a 582. It comes as standard with a 447. It was obvious that the clever bugger hadn't moved the engine brackets at all and I reckon anyone buying that aircraft would have been heading for an early death - that's if they had enough upward pitch control to get the nose up to take off. I also have a blue top 582 powered X-Air which comfortably cruises at 90 kmh and 15 litres/hour. I couldn't get a '503' prop for my French Weedhopper but found one off a 582 engine. Then I did some sums and cut a wee bit off each end but, of course, it still had the same courser-than-standard pitch. I was pleasantly surprised that take off with the 503 was hardly affected but I can cruise at the 'standard' AX3 speed of 80 kmh at 5200 rpm using an amazingly low 10-11 litres/hour (solo). And by upping the revs to 5500, I could match the speed of the X-Air and still, probably, be under the 582 X-Air's 15 l/h. So there are a few things to consider. The 503 is pretty bullet-proof if looked after, especially the DCDI. Mine isn't fan cooled either - you only need that on a flexwing or a pusher 3-axis and then not always (eg the Shadow). Someone once told me that 582 stators fail quite often. I didn't believe them until mine did after I'd also viewed another X-Air some time before that was also suffering from a huge mag drop which typically tells you its stator is naff.

Galinat at around 3 mins in that vid is my closest local 'free' airfield - 'free' because you can fly in there without prior permission. I go in there a lot including last weekend and kept my X-Air there for a while. I have quite a few videos of take offs and landings there, but at 'trouée unique' 450 metres it's one of the easier ones. Our home field (Malbec LF2467) is only 160 metres (a bit more actually) isn't 'free' - no landing fees in common with all ULM (ultralight) fields in France but you have to have prior permission and sign an indemnity beforehand as the runway is rather short. On the 'grand opening' day in 2015 one club member who flew in from Castillonnès in the Lot et Garonne broke the undercarriage of his Skyranger. Here's a vid of me flying to the opening day from Galinat in my old X-Air