Moneybox

Undoubtedly practice at recovery gives you a better chance but are you going to have the time to implement that procedure? My concern is that you are unlikely to stall at 3000'. It's going to happen at a time when you're distracted or there's an engine failure and somewhere near the ground where there is no time to recover. It's not a steady "whoops the right wing is dropping", by the time you sense the stall it's all over.

I looked at the weather on Wednesday and nearly stayed home but in the end decided to bite the bullet and head the 1250km to Esperance to do some flight training. I had to be here to commence training on Saturday. The rain came down as expected but we had some gaps between showers on Saturday so we managed three sessions totaling 2.6hrs but by then my fatigue was showing through with some sloppy landings. The aircraft is a Jabiru J160, not what I wanted to fly but I don't have a lot of choice. This is a scary little plane especially when it comes to practising stalls. When we did our stall training in the Evektor Harmony it was quite sedate sinking slowly after a slight warning vibration. In one case I had to see the vertical speed indicator to believe we'd already stalled. The little Jabiru doesn't leave you wondering. Within a second or two of the stall you are fully inverted and diving towards mother earth at a massive rate. If I hadn't experienced it I'd never have believed an aircraft could tumble upside down so rapidly. I had to try it another couple of times to see if I could catch the stall before it was out of control, I had no chance. He wants me to practise that until I no longer find it scary. The idea of that is scary on it's own. If this aircraft was to stall at perhaps 200' you'd be done for with little chance of survival.

You might have missed an opportunity to have your last swim 🤪

The guy could have been flying cross country for many years but just decided it was time to make it legal. He could have very well had hundreds of hours in the air before commencing lessons.

Yes my brother is due to arrive here on Thursday for our annual prospecting trip, I'm heading the other way to Esperance but I was telling him this time last week we had 30.5°C at 11.35pm. We ran the AC right through the night so not good camping weather but shortly we'll have 0°C some nights.

Yes, fortunately English is my first language, I managed 3% in German but I did a bit better in Urdu.

At present we're watching Spotlight on channel 7. The Chinese have set up Nichol processing plants that are predominately supplying batteries for the EV industry. It's an environmental disaster.

Definitely go self inflating, not because of the inflating but because they insulate you from the cold ground. The ordinary blow-up ones are very cold to sleep on. Even if the self inflating one gets punctured it still gives you some support.

Skippy it helps to be a light weight but my generous looking load capacity is because I only have 65L fuel capacity. Even two up and full of fuel we'll have 65kg as log as it can be distributed properly. I've been eying off a later model with the two 65L wing tanks and MTOW up from 545kg to 600kg but the owner is uncommunicative.

When I did Tassie I had a very narrow self-inflating mattress, perhaps 450 wide, that was also quite thin but it insulated quite well from the cold ground. The straight air ones that you blow up seem colder than no mattress at all. I've had several Therma-Rest mattresses and all have lasted for years. The Kathmandu mattress I took to Tassie was smaller and really only lasted one trip. https://www.outdoorgearlab.com/reviews/camping-and-hiking/sleeping-pad/therm-a-rest-neoair-xtherm-nxt#packed-size

I thought this was under wing camping? You're going to have pack a jack.

I think the hiking shops like Kathmandu would give you a fair range of light weight camping gear. I hiked the six day Overland Track in Tassie and got my sleeping bag, tent, mattress, food and clothes into a 17kg backpack. That was perhaps 15 years back so the range of gear is most likely a lot better now.

It was interesting to see the Shark that was assembled in Perth for the advertising tour of Australia had little windows in the wings and the front floor so that you could see the gear was down. It also had three lights that changed from red to green confirming that the gear was locked in place. Mechanical release cables were included if all else failed.

https://youtu.be/41t-xc302wM?si=FkHmU2j9bUud3xzO

My only chance to get off the ground is to climb up there and hope I don't fall. How could I ever consider building a hanger without giving it a trial run to keep the cook happy.

Are there any facts to confirm reasons for all this action or is this just a group of members tearing down the establishment that's supporting us? Mutiny is not a good thing unless all are about to go down with the ship.

Looks like he's quite excited...

Perhaps most of us won't have to pay at all? "All charges include GST with a Minimum of 1000 MTOW applicable."

As soon as you enlarge the hole you have broken through the powder coating so you'd better use a rust preventative coating and a lube that helps prevent corrosion.

My VW rim with the 11.5mm hole is typical of automotive rims with the valve stem shown. Your valve stem is very short so I'm guessing the brass insert for the valve extends down to the area you need to compress. That's going to make it very difficult. You could just go with automotive valve stems although the length might run into the hub making inflation difficult.

I just measured a VW rim that is 11.5mm, about the usual size. If pulled through from the inside out very little effort is required. I have this little tool just because it was as cheap as chips on TEMU but a normal "T" shaped valve tool from your local auto parts store will easily do it. You are correct the valve stem od is 14.5mm but it easily compresses into the 11.5mm hole.

Don't do too much for now. I've got valve stems and a rim or two so I'll measure it. Normally you'll just lube it a little with anything suitable for rubber, silicone grease, tyre lube, lanolin grease, soap or whatever. The valve stem is inserted from the inside and pulled through to the outside using a suitable puller made for the job (it screws on where the valve cap fits). Fitting it takes perhaps five seconds all up.

This will be a bit of an eye opener for those knockers of nitrogen power. I think you'll see it take off in the not too distant future. I'd love to be there but I'll be leaving for the 1200km trip south to Esperance to continue and hopefully complete my flying lessons.

I hate the way our legal system had degraded the the point where somebody must always be held accountable for a mistake made by an individual. (An inquest into the death of a recreational pilot whose Jabiru plane crashed in the Victorian high country has heard that, at the time, other pilots on the ground considered the weather poor.) I think it's clear that other more experienced pilots voiced their opinion that it was too risky to fly in that weather. This pilot chose to take a risk and tragically died due to his own decisions. I'm not saying that improvements shouldn't be recommended and implemented but do we have to have a bunch of get-rich-quick legal vultures involved?

I don't think anybody can safely fly with a big furry pussy in their line of sight.