FlyBoy1960

Hello John, This is EXACTLY what i was saying. If you practice with engine at idle its going to give you BETTER performance than with prop stopped, forget all the drag of a rotating propeller crap, that's just from people who don't understand simple physics. So, when the engine does actually stop you will get WORSE performance than with everything you practiced previously. Thank you for validating what i wrote, which i simply parrot replied here from a really experienced guy at the airfield.

Not in a Trike !

this is where we are getting confused I think we are not talking DRAG we are talking sink rate. An aircraft with a propeller turning at idle will create more drag than a stopped propeller but the sink rate of the engine at idle will be less. My comments were about a stall spin occurrence and it is much more likely to happen with the engine stopped completely than it is with the engine at idle and possibly producing around 15 hp. From what I am told it is impossible to windmill a propeller attached to a Rotax engine because of the gearbox, it may roll over a compression once every now and again but it is not an issue like direct drive. So in summary, it is much easier to stall and spin with the engine stopped completely than it is with the engine at idle and producing roughly 15 hp. The sink rate is less with an engine at idle because it is producing some thrust from the 15 hp. This was why I made the comments that I did as part of the discussion, not to excite people into debate just to think about it a little bit more and it could hopefully/possibly affect a result in the future. We can practice engine off landings with the engine at idle but it is going to give you a better "performance" result than it will with the engine stopped so you need to be prepared for reduced performance when the engine actually stops. The same person gave me all of this information also told me the following which has never left my memory in years. "I thought he was a pretty good pilot until I started flying a motorglider and this just proved how little I really knew. It was only when I actually learnt how to glide that I then became a good pilot." I think that is pretty close to Word for Word but it made me think that every pilot license should have at least a couple of hours of gliding as part of the training package because every aircraft without an engine will become a glider, that is guaranteed !

okay naysayers, I checked my sources with a quick phone call last night and can give you real figures regarding flying with the engine at idle flying with the engine stopped The Pipistrel Sinus airframe with the engine stopped and the propeller unfeathered has a sink rate of around 210 ft/m, with the propeller feathered 187 ft/m The Pipistrel Sinus airframe with the engine at idle has a sink rate of 90 ft/m and of course this is why the aircraft must use both flaps and airbrakes for a normal landing with the engine at idle otherwise it sits in ground effect for more than 1000 m before it will slow enough to settle. As demonstrated by these figures with the engine stopped the sink rate is around double of what it is with the engine at idle, and this is the point I was trying to make. People practice "engine failed landings" but still have the engine at idle will therefore have a performance which is significantly better than it is with the engine stopped. Regardless of what creates more drag has nothing to do with what we are talking about, we are talking about sink rate, what will get you to the ground fastest and that is definitely stopped engine. Again, I am not the expert I'm just repeating parrot fashion the information from a two times NASA/CAFE challenge winner pilot and one time team owner winner who does know what he is talking about. (provided I have understood him correctly) So in summary, if we practice dead stick landings with the engine at idle we are going to get better performance both in sink rate and distance than we are with the engine stopped. The point I was trying to make through all of these comments is that you can practice with the engine at idle as much as you want BUT when the engine is stopped there is going to be a deep crease in performance which may/can/does catch out many experienced pilots because the sink rate is significantly less and turning is not helped by those extra 15 hp of the engine at idle pulling you through a turn back to the runway. The message here is, unless you have KNOWN performance of your aircraft sorted out or you have an excessive height beyond what you think you can get away with than just land straight ahead

I was speaking about this with a professional pilot at our airfield and he explained, and it all made sense to me. There is a huge difference in aircraft performance between a simulated engine failure with the engine at idle and the propeller still turning and the engine stopped and the propeller stopped. "just as an example" At idle any 80/100 hp engine is still producing maybe 15 hp and producing some thrust. This depending on your aircraft may give you a sink rate, of let's say 300 ft/m. The same aircraft with the engine completely stopped and a stationary fixed pitch propeller will significantly increase the sink rate, perhaps 500 feet to 600 ft/m sink rate. So it is substantially different and the controls will be significantly different and most probably more "mushy" because of the reduced airflow over the control surfaces and in particular rudder. This all makes sense to me, this same person also told me that about 95% of pilots will never experience what their aircraft flies like with the engine turned off and in a glide, they wouldn't know the sink rate of a fixed/stopped propeller or any other performance characteristic of their aircraft because they never fly the aircraft in this configuration. It was his advice that this huge performance decrease compared to what some pilots train with the engine at idle is really the big killer and catches many experienced pilots out because they are looking for a 300 ft/m sink rate and they get more than double this with the engine completely stopped and of course they pull back on the stick to try and slow the sink rate forgetting about airspeed, combined with different performance on the controls and it is all over before you start. He insists that all recreational pilots must train in their aircraft (at altitude of course) with the engine turned off so you will know your actual real performance, trim requirements and aircraft outlook you should be looking for when the engine fails. I have never forgotten this story because it all just made absolute sense

You mean 180 degrees turn back, 360 and he would be still heading the same direction as he left and that wont help.

what is PLA ?

I saw this in an aircraft at Oshkosh a long time ago. Apparently according to the Rotax people they had the engine all of the way through certification and it was going to be approved for many different types of aircraft including many four seat aircraft. Once it became known to the legal teams in Rotax HQ which I think from memory they said was bombardier in Canada the engine was immediately canned. Their concern was liability. Apparently they can handle accidents happening in two seat recreational aircraft but with this bigger engine it could be fitted into four seat certified aircraft and this was the nail in the coffin. They only ever built about 20, about 15 of these were used for testing to destruction and the other five were used for test flights. The one at Oshkosh was in a really big Tail-wheel aircraft, I can't remember it exactly but it may have been a moose or something like this. It was really unfortunate that the legal team were scared of litigation and being able to carry twice as many people was the reason for the program cancellation and the immediate destruction of all of the engines. All of them were destroyed except a mockup that is now in Austria HQ from what I could find researching this about five years ago. The one on display at Oshkosh was painted bright yellow and not the red shown in the photograph.

great story

Only works on a good day otherwise you need to be on an IFR flight plan. Any cloud will ruin your plans, it is usually clear at Armidale and the cloud bank is not visible until you are about 50 miles from the coast and you just keep going lower and lower and lower to get underneath it until you are tree bashing. On a perfect day with clear blue sky it is a good option but 9 days out of 10 it is not the safest way of crossing the range. Ideally you want to be in lower locations like the Newcastle where you can come down very quickly from Mudgee and across all going up to Warwick where you can sneak across a range and get into the coastal area

For the absolute best safety I would transit via Warwick, over the great divide to Boonah and then down into the Lismore Valley. Anywhere north near Armidale all the way through to just south of Warwick is very high country and you need to cross over a lot of tiger country with very few landing opportunities to get to the coast. This would be my recommendation for an inland route, for a more scenic flight coastal go Cowra to Mudgee, Mudgee through to the north of Newcastle, probably through the valley at Gloucester and then up the coast to Byron. You will have controlled airspace at Coffs Harbour but they always let recreational aircraft through provided you have a working radio and transponder. Tyagarah is a great airfield but it is a little bit rough at the moment, Ballina is completely security controlled. Perhaps go there one direction and back the other.

as I read this it was the pilot who was suing the Council and the organisers of the fair and he lost because payment is to the defendants. It must've been really bad representation for and on behalf of the pilot because negligence is solely with the positioning of the Ferris wheel being inside the profile for the airstrip. If the airstrip was shut and he flew into the Ferris wheel then it would be the pilots fault (in my opinion), the airstrip was however open and the Ferris wheel inside the airstrip profiles. This is no different than some idiot doing burnouts on the runway while you are landing and you run into him, how can it be your fault when the other party is operating/acting illegally ? Sometimes, I just don't understand judgements from people who don't know anything about aviation, the rules and regulations. In this case it is obvious that the pilots legal counsel did not get the message across

I have been traumatised myself I reading all of this, watching the video and looking at some photographs. Where is my compensation please ?

"ATSB reported the failure rate for Jabiru engines declined between 2012 and 2013 from 3.9 to 3.25 per 10,000 hours while Rotax failures went up from 1.52 to 2.6 per 10,000 hours." The Jabiru numbers declined perhaps because fewer people were flying in Jabiru aircraft at the time of all of these problems? Rotax numbers have always been questionable in this report because they also include the two-stroke engines and not just four-stroke engines, so it is obvious that Rotax failures are over reported and not really indicative of the four-stroke fleet

The problem I have seen with a lot of the foil type ground planes is that they deteriorate over time especially on a surface that can flex like a fabric aircraft and you can start to lose your grounding because it breaks away from the aerial base. On a composite aircraft, no problem but on a rag and tube aircraft you need to be more careful. The only reason they make aircraft out of metal any more is to get a good ground plane #$&^%@😁

How many do you want ? there are just about as many dead Microair radios at our airfield than there are rebuilt Jabiru engines ! I know of about three or four and will ask the owner on Saturday when I am at the airport

if the intercom is operating normally and the only time you are getting excessive noise is when you press the transmit button and all you need to do is turn down the sidetone. You want the side tone to match the same volume as the intercom that way you are getting level audio.

Well, how many Jabiru's are being flown ATM ? if there are 100 Rotax hours to only one Jabiru hour then of course the statistics are going to be weighted

Playing devil's advocate, you need to work out why you are only getting one new user every week whereas before you are getting several every day. Personally, I don't like all of the changes all of the time, it confuses me and being an old person I like things to be simple and the same all the time, I don't like change. This could be why some people are not coming back again. It could be their interests have changed and they are no longer interested, it could be that they have found better platforms which do things differently. I know I discovered the few places on Facebook three or four months ago and they are also pretty good with a lot of the same people here and there as well (or at least I think they are the same by their usernames) are the Facebook sites any better than this site ? that is an answer I cannot give because they all seem to be about the same to me although I find the Facebook feed the just give me information I want to look at and not have to go searching. Maybe it is better to follow the masses and change to Facebook but I do know that you lose control of everything from what I can see and the sooner can find a way to push advertising and monetise a platform for your group they will ! There just seems to be a lot more people on Facebook rather than the 10 or 15 names you see here every day

There are reports on PPrune at this particular serial number had a history of engine problems which they could not locate or identify and it had had engine outs previously if you read between the lines from somebody that it obviously being flying the aircraft before

https://aviation-safety.net/wikibase/244642 No mention of the type of aircraft or anything like that

What's the lesson ? Stay away from twins ?

some of us in Queensland are still waiting for the voting papers to arrive with the first new edition of sport pilot magazine. contacted the RA-Aus head office several times but nothing ever happened, no voting papers and no magazine !

you are making some really big assumptions here about an aircraft being able to be flown overweight in other countries. They may not have the same G requirements as Australia, I believe, our G requirements are based on international standards plus the weather that can be expected in Australia to affect an aircraft during flight. Just because somebody says they fly at 700 kg overseas is probably true but it will most certainly be at a reduced G loading so instead of +4-2 you could be +2-1 in which case your aircraft will either be damaged or break in our turbulence. There are standards and rules for a reason, commonly these are written in blood of those before you. CASA or RA-Aus has a requirement of a required payload which is one hour of fuel, two persons of 86 kg each and if you add this together and don't have enough payload based on the aircraft empty weight then the aircraft cannot be registered as an LSA and would have to go into some sort of experimental category with CASA. We saw this happen at our airport previously when the RA-Aus came up to measure some aircraft that were being assembled that were obviously much heavier than being claimed, then all of a sudden they went on to the VH register after the RA stickers were removed