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The next instalment in the CA510 110hp installation into a J160 is a bit overdue but here it is. The engine will require a 3” prop extension to fit nicely into the cowling. We are waiting for the extension to arrive from overseas. Once it does, the engine location will be confirmed and the mount will be final welded. In the meantime, the exhaust system has been welded up and looks very nice. The photo below shows the exhaust system mounted to the Rotax we have been using for mocking things up to keep the new Zonsen engine pristine until the final installation is ready. Hopefully the prop extension will arrive soon (it has been shipped so we are waiting for it to arrive) so that we can finalise the engine mount. Bolly is doing a special prop for us which we are excited to trial with this airframe/engine combination. The fuselage work is essentially completed but awaiting painting. The wings have been painted and are ready to go back on the fuselage. Once the engine and accessories are mounted, we will have throttle cabling and instrument wiring to do and then we are pretty well done with the installation.

Merry Xmas to all forum members, have a nice festive season and enjoy safe flights.

fantastic flying weather this morning. flew around for 3 hours in total. very calm . VID20260103095658.mp4

i spent an hour in the air on the 30th. fantastic morning but started getting bounced around in thermals as the day warmed up. photos of local wetlands and farms. looks more interesting when you're up there.

I tried control line but after a while I started to feel like I just going round in circles. Learnt RC so I could crash them further away . That way I combined walking and flying.

Mrs M has an Albatros D1-D111 1917 German fighter tucked away somewhere. She won't let me fly it without a tail-dragger endorsement... 😒

An overweight takeoff, alledgedly overloaded with toys, at the North Pole resulted in an incident today. The pilot who reportedly flies only once a year had to be cut from the wreckage but was otherwise unharmed. The type of aircraft was unknown.

It’s a very long way from Caiguna to Cue but I’m home.

We were in Kakadu several years ago..we went on a eco trip with an Aboriginal bloke..I was looking at his woomera.and I asked him what sort of resin did he use... answered with Sikaflex mate bloody good shit.. Bernie..

To end 2025 I got the thruster T85 single out for a fly. Compared to the RV, Beech23 or two seat thruster it seems a little tricky to fly, perhaps I just need to fly it more often. I did see that I had missed a piece in the fallow spray for the 2026 crop.

She is one of us, an equal, a pilot. I'm sure she will learn from her video and be better in her future flights.

I’m halfway, just 2/3rd to go. With 2340km left I should get there just after Rudolph.

Well, I’ve just ticked over 1000 hours building, and that’s just the time in the shed. All the hours on the computer investigating options and sourcing parts are not included. Probably about another 1000 to go. Funny thing I noticed yesterday. With the heatwave, it appears that all my heat shrink tubing has shrunk a little. The size that used to slide over a spade connector now just doesn’t. Now all I need is for the heat to help my gut to shrink a little… 😛

Very lucky you had your seat belt well fastened.

Ticked off my first fly for the year with an hour out to the coast and back.

In October I set myself a goal to have 2000 profiles completed by the end of the year. This gets increasingly more complicated. Wikipedia lists thousands of aircraft, but only has details pages of a fraction of them and many are variants of the same aircraft. Also, a large number listed as separate aircraft are actually licence built versions of other aircraft. I have completed 84 profiles since the beginning of December, including 15 on Dec 31, and posted the 2000th at 11:58 New Year's Eve. I think I'll wait now till a few more models are released.

pilot seen later converting van into new sleigh

After a quick trip out to the station I started on the van work. The vinyl job was stuck well but left nice shiny paint underneath. It's a long way from finished the 38°C day helped soften the plastic wrap.

Couldn't monitor the Power due to Lack of Night Venison Glasses. Nev

i did 3 circuits yesterday. it was like riding a bronco. felt safe though. i used to only fly in calm conditions but now i brave a bit of weather so i don't get a big shock if i run into any. it amazes me how well the xair handles the wind considering how slow and light it is. couldn't fly today, 40mm of rain put a stop to that.

Had to have turn around the block, 40C on the ground, 22C at 5500'. Thought it might have been a bit cooler aloft. Smooth as silk but angry looking clouds out west. A few lumps (not real turbulence) as I got down near circuit height. Unusually few aircraft in the air - Christmas shopping?? Managed a few touch & goes - all good. Bit warm, called it a day at 1.1 Hobbs😈

We’re off to Perth in the morning to fly out to Melbourne. I should land there 6:15am Sunday. My first mistake was booking a flight on Jetstar, Virgin allow an extra 15kg of luggage, that helps when you have to pack tools and car parts. That meant I had to go down to the shed for a carry-on sized bag. We got caught in the rain so we dived into an old boiler until the worst passed. There’s been a storm brewing ever since I bought this van from the auction. Hopefully, it’ll settle down soon, it’s a very long way to Melbourne and back.

Does anybody get the feeling we may have veered off from the theme of this thread? Some/many of the comments are getting a little to personal in my opinion. Perhaps it's time to call it quits and agree to disagree,

Don’t really see that French stuff as anything to special really. Each day every day over here

The 18hp mk3 Skycraft Scout only weighed 59kg empty.

Nearly fixed... Still a bit of underbody to fit... I'll regas to air conditioning first thing in the morning. The dirty panels are off the doner vehicle.

I have watched a lot of her videos and she is technically very good. Her narration is a little theatrical but not at the expensive of her piloting. My only criticism is her knowledge is a little limited on the mechanical side but she would not be the only Cirrus pilot you could make this comment about.

Well you don’t have to worry now. I did a quick rebuild in Bunnings car park. I had prepared well but after dropping a few kilograms to meet to Jetstar requirements I turned up a little short of bits and pieces. The hand luggage police were out, she grabbed my little suit case as I whipped the little tablet out to save some weight. It weighed 8.3kg “It’s a little heavy but you’ve only got one so we’ll let it go”. So I checked my suit case in and entered security, enjoyed the usual frisk of my upper left leg and made it through to the mini restaurant where I ordered a toasted sandwich. While I’m waiting for that I hear my name called so back out again to the service desk. “Mr Box you have a lamp with a lithium battery in your checked baggage”. “No, that’s my Hyundai headlamp without any battery”. “Well you’d better take it back to the oversize guy so he can take another look”. I looked around for some big bugger before I woke up to what she was on about. Anyhow the oversize guy was adamant I had a lithium battery so I had to open up. Sure enough I had a little camp lamp in there so it had to come out and into my carry-on bag. That problem was solved but then I had to go back for another upper leg frisk. Not only that but they spotted the camp lamp in my carry-on. Eventually they gave up and sent me on my way. The Hyundai is shooting along fine apart from a damaged cruise control switch. I might try to do something with that in the morning. Right now I’m camped in a little parking bay at Wail. This lousy Victorian weather makes it near impossible to boil the kettle. Yes I know I’m using old technology, lithium is much preferred as a heating source with instant ignition and being almost impossible to extinguish it takes a lot of beating.

Unfortunately, birds seem to habituate to any static deterrent if there is food and/or nesting space. They are a perennial problem in vineyards. Netting of the vines has greatly improved in recent years, but prior to that vintners tried all manner of things: kites, balloons with big fierce eyes, gas guns, hawk cries. And this: An engineer in Hawkes Bay had a bright idea, persuaded a local vintner to let him try it. They erected posts with pulleys on top round a vineyard. An endless motor driven cable ran round the pulleys, and the idea was that various scare devices (balloons, kites, flashers and noise devices) could be attached to the cable and would move constantly round the vineyard. A couple of weeks after all this went in, the vintner called the engineer and said 'We have a problem, you're not going to believe this'. The birds, and there were many, had taken to sitting on the wire, and were happily riding round the vineyard, diving down occasionally whenever an especially juicy bunch of grapes hove into view...............

Your just jealous because we are winners. We break all the records

I've experienced a couple of breakdowns on the way across the Nullarbor. The first one was an overheating engine just outside Southern Cross in the 1990's due to what turned out to be a cracked head. Wife and four young kids in a LWB diesel Hi-Ace towing a camper on our way to Victoria for a holiday. The local mechanic (Jaimie at Southern Cross Motor Mart) was a bit reluctant to help at first but then spent his Saturday morning pulling the engine apart. Vans (he called them `pie wagons') are not easy to work on as access to the engine is pretty restricted. He rang the Toyota dealer in Kalgoorlie and commandeered a new head about to go into another vehicle, gave me his old Landcruiser to go and get it (just as his wife had hooked up a horse float to collect a pony from Cunderdin for their daughter), arranged for me to take it over to a backyard mate of his in Kal to have the valves and springs assembled in his home workshop and then spend a very hot Sunday morning putting everything back together. He had it done by lunchtime (after a heavy night as he was the president of the local hot rod club and they had had their annual dinner the might before). He sat on the step with a beer while I took the van for a test run. When I came back there was water dripping out because the water pump had packed up. He didn't have a spare but said "I know who does", hopped on his pushbike and rode down to the oval where another mate of his was watching the cricket and came back with a box under his arm. Back over the pits to put the pump in, another test run, and we were back on the road the next morning and got to my parent's with the kids in just time for Christmas despite all the odds. Jaimie (and his wife Michelle) were absolutely unbelievably kind and generous. We always called in on subsequent trips. The second time was a few years later, same van but this time towing a caravan. A local garage had installed a new towbar just before we left but it turned out they had used 10mm mild steel bolts to secure it instead of 12mm high tensile bolts. As a result we almost lost the caravan not far from Caiguna when the bolts on one side sheared and a bracket failed. We barely managed to limp into the roadhouse with the caravan almost dragging on the ground. I phoned the garage back in Perth but there was nothing much they could do. The roadhouse didn't have anyone who could do the welding but they rang a workshop in Norseman who agreed to do it if we could get the towbar there. I left the family at the caravan park and drove back to Norseman and found the workshop. The young owner was very helpful (turned out he was a qualified pipeline welder so he knew how to weld). However he didn't have the right bolts, nor did any other place in Norseman, so I drove to Bunnings in Kalgoorlie and got some and the right size drill bit just in case. Back to Norseman, towbar welded and properly installed this time and an overnight drive back to Caiguna. The garage in Perth picked up the bill, which was the least they could do as we could easily have had a very bad accident. It just shows there are really good people out there who will go out of their way to help if you are in trouble.

A student conducting a solo flight in a Cessna 172 at Parafield Airport crashed into the runway. The plane caught fire, which spread to a grass fire, but the student walked away without a scratch.

On a Rotax 912 (twin Bing carbs), that “balance pipe” is basically a plenum-to-plenum equaliser between the two intake sides. It primarily: Equalises manifold pressure between the two sides (helps share load between carb/intake pairs) Damps pulsations (intake pulses are strong on a 4-stroke, especially at low RPM) Can slightly influence idle/off-idle smoothness and how stable the carbs feel during synchronisation What changes if you go from ~8 mm ID to 20 mm ID? Area matters a lot. 8 mm ID area ≈ π·4² ≈ 50 mm² 20 mm ID area ≈ π·10² ≈ 314 mm² So you’d be increasing cross-section by about 6.3×. That means the balance connection stops being a “small equaliser” and starts behaving much more like a common manifold link between the two sides. Likely effects you’d notice (if any) 1) Idle and low-RPM smoothness could change (sometimes better, sometimes worse). A larger tube usually reduces pressure difference between sides more quickly and can dampen pulses more. That can make idle feel smoother if you currently have unevenness between sides. But… if you go too large, you can also create a situation where: one side’s intake pulses strongly influence the other side, mixture distribution and response around idle/off-idle can become less “crisp” or occasionally hunt/surge depending on how the rest of the intake is configured. 2) Carb synchronisation behaviour can change. With a big balance pipe, the two sides are already heavily “averaged together”, so: it may become harder to detect a small imbalance using manifold pressure/CarbMate-type methods (because the balance pipe masks differences), you might end up with an engine that seems balanced by reading, but still has subtle cylinder-to-cylinder inequality. 3) Midrange and high-RPM power: usually little to no improvement. At higher RPM and larger throttle openings, the balance pipe generally has minimal benefit because both sides are already flowing heavily and the pressure differences are smaller relative to overall airflow. A larger balance pipe typically won’t give you more power. 4) Risk of unintended side effects goes up. Going to 20 mm ID is a big jump. Depending on your exact intake layout, you could introduce: odd transients (tip-in / tip-out throttle response changes), cross-feeding effects if one carb is slightly richer/leaner than the other, potentially more noticeable issues if a carb/diaphragm/jetting problem exists (the big pipe can “share” the problem). The practical/engineering takeaway A balance pipe is usually sized to equalise slowly enough to damp differences but not so large that the two sides become one big coupled system. Jumping from 8 mm to 20 mm is not a small tuning tweak; it’s a redesign of the coupling strength. What I’d recommend instead of going straight to 20 mm If your goal is smoother idle / better balance, you’ll usually get more reliable results by: doing a proper carb sync (idle stop + cable sync at ~3500–4000 rpm), checking diaphragms, intake sockets, clamps, balance tube condition, and any vacuum ports/caps for leaks, confirming float levels and correct Rotax compliance items (many “roughness” complaints are float/diaphragm/leak/sync related rather than balance tube size). If you really want to experiment, a safer approach is incremental (e.g., 10–12 mm ID) and verify with: EGT/CHT consistency (if you have it), idle stability, plug colour / fuel flow consistency, and repeatable run-up checks. One key caution Because this is an aircraft engine, changing intake hardware can have certification/maintenance and safety implications depending on your aircraft category (RA-Aus, experimental, certified installation, etc.). Even if it “runs”, it may not be a compliant modification.

K&N air filters are the standard part in the 13,000+ Van's RV aircraft that are flying around the world. K&N air filters have been fitted to every Rotax 912,915 installation that i have seen. K&N air filters are fitted to many other experimental aircraft, example Glastar. If there was a problem I think we would know about it by now. Over priming, carb leaking, fires that happen while attempting a start will happen regardless of the air filter type. We had one such case at our airport last year, an RV with a K&N air filter, surprisingly there was no damage to the filter itself. I got to see all the damage with the cowl off.

Are you saying crossing the plug wires to clear the carby jets is not a good idea? 😁

No Joke is NO Joke. If you feel like a fool there's Plenty around. To err is Human. To forgive, Divine. er, or something like that. IF you haven't MADE a Mistake , chances are you HAVEN'T Made ANYTHING.. Nev

This. We appreciate the observation about the proximity of the exhaust to the oil filter. Appropriate measures to reduce or negate the proximity of the exhaust to the filter are being adopted. Future posts will show these initiatives.

Nev, I get that you post things to enhance aviation safety. To suggest that the engine or wind was a factor just muddies the water and detracts from the learning experience. The copy of the cctv i have is quite clear, the camera is tilted at a 16° angle relative to the runway , the Cessnas spinner to tailcone is at a35° angle . Wing angle of incidence would be similar. Yes the aircraft was initially climbing which would have reduced the angle of attack. Once the aircraft stopped climbing critical angle was achieved. 35°-16°=19° That will do it. This video and there are plenty more like it if one goggles "cessna 172 stall crash" should in my opinion be mandatory veiwing for all student pilots.

so the ATSB will investigate a student pilot crashing a plane on a go-around where the student walked away, but won't investigate any RAAUS accidents involving deaths?

Bluetooth adapter installed. Only has up to 4 hs on battery, so have connected to ship power supply. As far as I can tell its operational. Will need to go the next step to do a proper evaluation . Will "load" AvTraffic & try to get some flying in from tomorrow 😈

I can imagine an unlicensed pilot at Ballbay, or any small town with an airstrip, would have no reason to make contact with an instructor or use an electronic flight bag if they did not want to. It is a big country and few people ask questions unless you stand out from the normal. Generally when visiting small airports local pilots are treated with respect by most visiting pilots.

A very sad outcome. Condolences to family and friends.

Yes they do its an endorsement.

have you been asked to quote any glazing jobs 😁

As an ATPL pilot you would know RPT aircraft fly correct airspeed for the configuration at all times. Also most light aircraft do not have angle of attack indicators. Yes we can all agree a stall happens when the critical angle of attack is exceeded.

Highly misleading title on that video. It wasn’t the fact that it was 3D printed that caused the crash; it was the material that caused it. It would be like using cardboard for spars, and then after a crash implying that you should never have spars…

not really a windfall once you read the first one😁 the other 16 would be pretty boring.

Caught up with Jacques and Francoise at my hangar today. They were time limited so did not do a fly around the area, next time when they have more time. I took a packet of ‘TimTam’ biscuits and they liked them so have a couple of leftovers for later. Great to meet them and look forward to another visit another time. Jacques is an E-props dealer in Canada so was keen to hear my positive comments about the propeller I have fitted.