kgwilson

And so he should. This was totally avoidable.

The engines are built by Classic Aero Machining Service in Blenheim NZ. Kipaero sell them depending on the model from between $US50,000 & $US72,000. The expensive one has an electric start which defeats the purpose IMHO. https://www.kipaero.com/product-category/rotary-engines/ https://www.kipaero.com/aero-engines/gnome-rotary-engine/

Wing warping excels in slow flight. That's how hang gliders are controlled. The early Rogallo gliders of the 1970s had large billowing sails with few if any battens to maintain some rigidity & could perform 360 degree turns in not much more than their own length.

I don't care if they call it the Mogas section. It is just another Americanism that has been infiltrating our language both spoken & written for a century. What they produce is Unleaded Petrol, ULP and Aviation Leaded Petrol commonly called Avgas because the Yanks invented the name even though it is a liquid. Since Trump has been at the forefront of trying to become King of the World, I have become distinctly anti American mainly because he and his MAGA followers are just ignorant sycophantic fools but most of all a danger to everyone else.

Several companies are now producing solar powered EV charging stations. The NRMA set up the first one in the Northern Territory in 2023 & it was a failure with poor performing equipment plagued with problems. It has now been completely rebuilt & works fine now. It is quite small with only 26kW of solar panels on the roof & a 200 kWh battery. It has 2 x 80 kWh chargers & costs 99 cents/kWh. Sero Global from WA produces one of a similar size. These can be delivered on the back of a truck anywhere so compared to providing diesel or petrol the cost in very small & they don't need to be refuelled like a petrol/diesel station at high cost in the outback . Once set up they just need occasional maintenance. Larger ones are planned. They are still delivered on the back of a truck but a small solar farm produces the power. How much depends on the size of the battery storage, number and delivery speed of the chargers.

All this discussion on storage of fuel etc has been covered before on this site. Avgas has a completely different composition to automotive petrol. Avgas is Paraffin based whereas automotive petrol is aromatic hydrocarbon based. Paraffin is what is in wax candles and has quite a low odour. Automotive petrol has a very high odour & the smell is largely due to the evaporation of the light hydrocarbons in it. It is this evaporation that limits its shelf life. Avgas without the lead would detonate quickly especially as compression increases or when more fuel is fed into the cylinder at low rpm with the engine under load. The BP study on fuel stored on vehicle tanks is attachedpetrol-life-vehicle-tanks.pdfpetrol-life-vehicle-tanks.pdfpetrol-life-vehicle-tanks.pdf

Anyone in the outback with any common sense would install a solar array and battery for charging vehicles or other devices. High up front cost but then no dependence on fossil fuels, diesel generators or cost of delivery. The sun is still free.

OK I'll be the pedant here. Petrol comes from petroleum, a.k.a crude oil, which comes from the Greek words petra (rock) and oleum (oil). Gasoline though, has no obvious Greek or Latin roots. Not only that, but the gas part of the word is quite confusing, as gasoline is of course a liquid. And it doesn’t help that it’s generally shortened to gas in American English. So Avgas is an American term that has become standard in the Aviation world. Mogas though does not have that standardisation.. Americans don't call it Mogas, it is just Gas or gasoline. There is no rhyme nor reason for why but Americans change things at will and they become common ( except the Gulf of Mexico is not the Gulf of America. Any change made by Trump is just invalid)

BP produced a major study on this some years ago. 98 is generally good for up to 5 weeks in a fuel tank or if in a sealed container with little air gap about 4 months. I had some in my tank for about 7 months after the aerodrome was too wet to get out & I just added 5 litres of fresh 98 & it was fine. That is enough to refresh about 40 litres of old fuel. 98 has a number of light aromatic hydrocarbons ( Xylene, Toluene, Bezine Trymethyl benzine & others) that evaporate off first & this happens quite quickly (within 5 weeks). Interestingly the RON increases a little over that time but then often the engine is hard to start and once running it is prone to overheating which can lead to disastrous results. This happened in a chainsaw that we had in the SES. It had sat for at least 6 months & someone who was not aware didn't empty & replace the fuel with fresh as required. It was hard to start & ran till it was empty but refused to start again & there was no compression. The result was it had a hole in the piston, the big end bearing was stuffed & the bore was scored. We got a few spare parts from it though.

If your SE2 has been unused for some time it does take a little while to get a 3D GPS fix. If used regularly it takes very little time. Even if you haven't used it for months it will have easily got a 3D fix by the time you have got the engine started, warmed up & taxiied out to your run-up spot. In 2024 I coulnt get my aircraft out of the hangar for 6 months as the aerodrome was a quagmire plus I had been ill. It only took 6 or 7 minutes to get a fix when i finally got it out again.

The demand for Avgas has declined considerably over the past few years. There are a number of reasons. There are fewer old aircraft that need Avgas and many of those still flying do not fly as much. The rise of recreational aircraft that do not need Avgas has been very substantial since the 90s. Modern aviation aircraft engines don't need it either. Diesel engines are appearing in ever increasing numbers. The only reason I ever use Avgas is that it is the only fuel available at many aerodromes when I am away. I have used 95 or 98 petrol in my 3300A engine since new. No more lead deposits or fouled plugs. World Fuel & IOR have been busy installing self contained Avgas units at many regional aerodromes over the last few years often at no cost to the aerodrome. They need to boost their share of a dwindling market.

There is nothing like that in Australia but the Chinese have made huge inroads into electric trucks. Electric including hybrid outsold diesel for the first time in 2025 (54%). Windrose Technologies have an electric truck weighing 49 tonnes fully loaded with a huge 729 kWh battery & 670 KM range. The batteries are designed to be swapped out like the Janus and multiple other smaller trucks.

You can keep your head in the sand and pine for the good old days of smelly oil burners or embrace where technology is going. Plenty of businesses are doing just that. Some will fail but that is how progress happens as we learn from those mistakes. The fossil fuel industry is behind a huge amount of misinformation like EV production using too much rare and costly materials, batteries lasting only a few years etc and you throw away materials when everything is worn out. All garbage and absolute proof exists. One example is that batteries when completely spent are ground in to black mass & 95-98% of the cobalt, lithium, manganese and other rare material is recycled.

It is no longer 2023 but 2026. The Gen4 Formula E is all wheel drive, 10 seconds faster in some scenarios, produces 600kW (805HP) with 0 to 100 km/h in 1.5 seconds so is easily quicker to the first corner. F1 currently has the edge in top speed and handling but this will be overcome in the very near future. There is way more money poured in to every facet of F1 than FE

There are B doubles that fully loaded travel from Melbourne to Sydney on a single charge. The battery is swapped in less than 15 minutes. There are automatic battery swap machines for medium size trucks already operating that take less than 5 minutes. Quicker than filling the tank with diesel.