kgwilson

Never heard of this, Kevin. Their site promised I could read reviews, but none delivered. 

 

Can you tell us more about this ap?

 

The web site is airmate.aero and you can download the app from Google play or apple store. It has the latest charts, ersa, notams, & weather (metar, Taf, Sigmet etc). There are also radar & rain overlays. Creating plans is easy by entering aerodromes in an edit screen or selecting from the VNC or where there is no VNC it has the geo map in the same scale. You can create waypoints etc by moving the magenta line to wherever you like. It runs on my phone & on a cheap $80.00 10 inch tablet I got at Aldi a couple of years ago. Put your aircraft details in & it will provide flight tracking if you are in cellphone range so people at home can track you if you want. Keeps a flight log & it can update your flight log if you want. 

I also use XCSoar which is a Gliding app (free also) but I just entered all my aircraft parameters & it is super simple to use. Just ignore all the gliding stuff.

Forget Ozrunways & Avplan.  Airmate has everything you need, runs on anything & it's free.

Good luck with that......they're too busy indoctrinating people to teach them how to think.  

 

Well Sydney University has developed a Gel version of the zinc bromine flow battery which has the capacity to take on the Lithium Ion market with materials that are common & cheap. The spinoff Company Gelion is well advanced & has produced a lighting solution called Gelion Endure. The current focus is on large scale stuff such as PV storage but the technology is apparently infinitely scalable. This may have applications for aircraft batteries as zinc bromine is a fire retardant so they won't blow up or catch fire.

Otto was at South Grafton a few weeks ago & stayed for our Christmas Lunch. I hope he's OK. The BT report says serious Spine and head injuries so I hope they are exaggerating as that sounds a lot worse than "a bit banged up".

It has a CVR but as far as I know does not have a FDR.

Kyle C, This is your opinion and you are entitled to it but it is not what this thread was created for. Check the issues raised in the Off Topic section and you can argue on this forever.

It certainly points to a major mechanical failure of some description. With such total destruction it will prove incredibly difficult to determine the cause. It has been done before though as they piece tiny fragments together to establish which parts were attributable to the impact and which weren't and then determine what failed.

So by that argument other countries who also only produce 1 or 2 percent can say the same thing so if there are 50 or 60 countries with the same statement all of a sudden half of the worlds emission stay the same or increase. NO we must all deal with it or eventually perish. I'll be dead before this happens, if it does but poeple being born today will certainly feel the brunt.

Better than 19:1 is a very impressive L/D and is approaching sailplane specs. It this a correct value?

The argument of "we only produce x% of global emissions is a cop out and irrelevant. Every human on this planet (almost 8 billion of us) contributes in some way to the change in our climate. None of us can really do anything as an individual unless you are immersed in the issue. Our way of life means we use cars/trucks/planes and our infrastructure requires megatons of fossil fuel to run plus we power our lifestyles with it as well. We have to change for survival of our species and it is happening but at a pretty slow rate. The massive uptake of renewable energy from solar and wind is a great example along with the huge development in energy storage. Awareness is one of the greatest drivers. We can all do a little but the big polluters like coal fired power will eventually die as the cost of creating replacements is way above that of renewables.

My contribution is less than most of the Petrol Heads and power boat owners around. I will still keep flying using fossil fuel just as I will keep driving my car. I am though aware of the issue and am reducing my carbon foot print in other ways. 

When I was born 70 years ago in a months time the global population was 2 billion, now it's almost 8 billion and the improvements in technology and living standards have improved exponentially in that time. Population is the biggest problem but it's going nowhere soon.

The conditions out there were pretty bad as I understand it with lots of wind, mountainous terrain & I imagine heavy smoke cover. The crew were reported to all be US citizens. Their job is incredibly dangerous & I sometimes wonder how they find the nerve to do it. The risk of something like this is extreme. I certainly couldn't. RIP friends. You came here to help and gave your lives for people you do not know.

A 1978 Cessna 182Q, VH -WNR. As far as I know there was no severe weather at the time. The call was calm & collected but it would appear only seconds from disaster. The debris was spread over a wide area according to reports indicating a high speed impact. A mechanical failure of some type perhaps.

Debris has been recovered from the water this morning off Moreton Island but it has yet to be confirmed it is from the missing aircraft. 

OME used to supply them via the company he worked for a few years ago. Pretty much any quantity and at a good price. I'm sure he will still have contacts.

Black, no water that I could detect but probably condensate/oil mix as it was thin & I did not top up at all between changes. The oil level dropped about 2mm from start to finish.

Aeroshell comes in quart bottles. 3 quarts is 2.838 litres and this brings the oil level to about 3/4 up the knurled OK range on the dipstick which is about the maximum level it should be. The 3300A engine holds 3.5 litres according to the book but this must also include the oil cooler & if I put this much in it would be overfull & throw the excess out into the catch bottle. My oil cooler is a fairly large 7 row Positech & sits at the bottom of the firewall with its own NACA duct air supply & the lines are a metre or so long so there is probably half a litre at least in that part so that just gets mixed in with the new oil.

I have just completed my 100 hourly & annual inspection. I tipped about 25ml of oil out of the catch bottle. It was black and fairly thin. That is from 25 hours of operation. Swished it with a bit of petrol to clean it, let it dry & replaced it. The firewall & bottom of the plane was only dirty from runway dust etc. Just as an aside, the total cost for the maintenance was $139.54 which included a new oil filter, new air filter, new fuel filter, 12 spark plugs & 3 quarts of Aeroshell W100 plus. Labour of course was free & I know absolutely that everything was done. I could probably add $5.00 for consumables like degreaser, torque seal, brake fluid & anti seize but it sure beats paying a LAME.

Cirrus used to target wealthy individuals with no previous flying experience then release them into the world with what some considered to be inadequate training for what is a high performance and complex machine, the result is reflected in accident stats.

 

That may be one of the reasons why there have been so many ballistic chute deployments when something minor has happened with the engine still producing power and the pilot could have continued to a safe landing area had it not been deployed.

I don't think there is much of a verification system. Years ago when coming to Australia I had a NZ PPL & joined RA-Aus as a student member. I needed something (can't remember what it was) but I had to register with my ARN number which I didn't have so I put in my RA-Aus membership number & it accepted it & that has been my ARN number ever since.

I don't know what brand they are but I have never had such an issue with any of the nutplates I've used. The screws tighten up due to the thread being slightly tapered but they go right through without excessive force and keep going till whatever is being clamped is tight. By the current number of posts it probably takes about 20 posters to put a screw into a nutplate.

But we don't compare Kia, Hyundai, Toyota etc with Austins.

 

Why would we? When Austin A40s were around Toyota was probably producing engines with similar lifespans or even less (remember the 1950s & the slogan Jap Crap) Kias beginning production in 1944 & Hyundai in late 1967. Bit hard to compare them when none were in Australia to my knowledge at that time.

Rotax failure rates have always been lower than Jabiru failure rates but it was the twisted data that CASA used in the 2014 Engine restrictions based on raw data rather than real data that eventually led to a Senate enquiry and a couple of ex RAA now CASA employees being let go. At the height of it CASA lists 40 Jabiru engine failures but this was reduced to 12 after such things as running out of fuel and shutting the engine down after an oil leak etc were removed from the list. The whole debacle nearly sent Jabiru broke. There have been well over 10,000 engines produced and they are in aircraft flying all around the world. Rotax had produced 50,000 engines by 2015. I'm not sure how many there are to date but I'd guess at least 60,000.. Both are good aero engines but require appropriate maintenance to ensure they keep running well.

One thing to note is that Rotax failure rates increased in 2013 from 1.5 to 2.7 per 10,000 hours and at the same time Jabiru failure rates came down from 4 to 3.3 per 10,000 hours. This was publishe in the ATSB report at the time

A comment from the CFI of the local flying school when they were looking at getting a replacement aircraft was that "There are plenty of aircraft that are easier to fly than the Jab but all are more expensive and newly qualified pilots go away with more confidence in their their piloting skills than they actually have. If you learn to fly in the Jab you can fly anything" The existing 170D has had 3 engines. The top end was done on the first & it was replaced at 2000 hours, the second was traded on a new engine at 1000 hours as it was a better deal than the top end overhaul & the last had a problem at 700 hours. It has had 1 new nose leg in that time. When the weather was good they were doing an oil change a week.

The use of European LSAs for training is something I'd look at closely. They are built lightly and won't take being smashed onto the tarmac too well. Students are very hard on aircraft. This is why the C150 & 152 which were built like the proverbial brick outhouse  were used for so many years. They took a lot of punishment before failing. If schools need a good solid trainer now the Jabiru 170 would be hard to beat. Super solid airframe and the new Gen 4 engines are superb. Yes they require specific maintenance and the engines don't like being treated like a car engine where as the Rotax is more tolerant in that area. But the price is right and support is excellent. Maintained well they go the distance.

I often feel like a 20 year old but I have yet to find a 20 year old that feels like me.