kgwilson

The nosewheel should always touch down after the mains. Keeping the weight off after touchdown reduces stress from undulations in the runway. Many nosewheels have no suspension so shocks have to be absorbed by the tyre and leg.

Yes same day for me too. They have probably all taken a long weekend so you can expect a response on Monday.

CASA will issue you with a 6 character hexadecimal code that is unique to your SE2. They need the unit serial number & manufacturer name & whether your aircraft is RA or GA. They will advise RAA of the code when they send it to you. You can swap the unit from aircraft to aircraft & just change the Rego number in the SE2. If the aircraft already has ADSB out you disable this is the SE2. You also change the stall speed for different aircraft. It is all in the manual. Just follow the setup carefully & you will not have any problems.

Ersa & airspace are built in to Enroute. It doesn't have live weather overlays or Notams but does have TAFs & Metars. Long press on the map will bring up all the airspace data with the ERSA info if you long press on the aerodrome. Download the manual. It is well written & easy to understand. You can open it in a browser from your phone or PC or download it. Available in the menu from the App.

On a nice Summers day cruising along in an airship in a plush restaurant observing the world below from a thousand feet or so as it slowly passes by is something I'd like to do. The problem is that the cost would most likely be beyond mere enthusiasts like me. It would bring the romance back in to (slow) air travel. I suspect though that specialist freight carrying large irregular shaped things will be its main role. The current design can stay aloft for 5 days with a 10 ton payload with a 4000 NM range and maximum altitude of 20,000 feet. The next design is pretty ambitious with a 50 ton payload. It will carry 200 passengers or 6 x 20 foot containers & 48 passengers over 2200 km. It is very environmentally friendly & needs minimal infrastructure, will be fully amphibious able to land/take off from land, water, snow, ice etc. How it deals with strong winds and bad weather will be the biggest challenge.

A cheap testbed is always handy. Later you can consider weight, efficiency and energy storage. 30-40 miles range is useless though.

The landing gear will be in the bump under the struts. This is where most large high wings put them such as the ATR. They will need to be fuel efficient. The thin wings will reduce the capacity up there despite a bit more wingspan.

Interesting. I connected mine & checked the stats. It shows the battery currently at 80% & voltage 3916 millivolts. The battery indicator displays green till the battery gets to 60% then it displays orange and red when it gets down to 30%. I used mine for a number of flights & on the ground to show aircraft overflying & in the circuit & didn't recharge it till the battery indicator changed to orange which I did at home. A few months ago I replaced a double 3 pin socket outlet with one that included a charging circuit with 2 x USB A & 1 USB C sockets which will supply 3.5 amps max at 5 volts. It still took a few hours to charge the SE2 back to 100% with the supplied QC3 cable. I have a USB C PD cable capable of carrying 65 watts & it will charge my phone to 50% in about 1/2 an hour, then it slows down. The last 15% of charge takes about 40 minutes.

RV & SR22 chromolly nose legs are quite long and the Nose Job is well engineered and would appear to be effective, especially as if you do bend the nose leg it in theory pushes the nose up rather than in to the ground without it. Mine is far too short for such a system and it doesn't flex much. Still I land on the grass and on some rough strips. There is no secret, just keep the weight of the nose by increasing up elevator progressively from touchdown till walking pace. It took a while to master initially due to the sensitiveness of a full flying elevator (stabilator). What you don't want to happen is for the aircraft to leave the ground again as it can quite easily drop the nose heavily after it stalls again.

There have now been 6 incidents in less than a week, the latest turnback to Fiji with fumes from the galley oven cited as the issue. Maybe it is just that these have all been reported in the Press when they normally wouldn't. Apparently there are over 10,000 turnbacks annually with Qantas averaging 60. They are well ahead of their average this year if the last week is anything to go by.

It depends on what your USB supply is capable of. As Uavionix say the SE2 may consume more power that the USB supply can deliver. It will slow the battery depletion though by whatever the output is. I think the maximum charging voltage is 5 volts so in theory if your USB could deliver 5amps that would more than keep up with the power useage. I know with my 1-2 amp USB supply in the aircraft, my phone will keep functioning when connected for as long as the flight but there is no more power in the battery when I disconnect than when I started. I have thought about getting a bigger one but have not done so as I am unsure whether I'll get radio interference. The first cheap one I had was useless. The one I have now is Baseus & no interference. It seems to be a good brand. I have a 20,000 mAh 20W Baseus power bank & that is excellent so I take that with me to recharge things if I am nowhere near a power point. It is quite heavy.

The SE2 contains 4 x LG INR18650 F1L Li ion batteries of 3350 mAh each. That is 4 times the average phone battery of a couple of years ago. Battery capacity and chargers have increased a lot in the last few years so the old 1-2 amp chargers you got with everything years ago won't cut it any more as the time to charge larger batteries is too long. Uavionix states in the installation manual (you can download this from their web site) below. 8.2.1 Connection Notes It is important to choose an appropriate power supply and cable to ensure proper charging of SkyEcho. 1. It is recommended for fastest charging that the chosen USB power supply should be compliant with the Quick Charge 3 (QC3) standard. Use one which provides at least 18W. SkyEcho will not adequately charge at less than 2.5 amps. 2. SkyEcho has a high-capacity battery that will permit up to 12 hours of use. It is recommended that, where practical, charging is conducted at least monthly on the power supply until full. 3. Regardless of adapter output, it is not recommended that the SkyEcho be used permanently in-aircraft using a 12V USB adapter as the SkyEcho will consume more power than can be provided by the adapter. 4. While SkyEcho is fitted with a USB-C charging socket, it is not USB PD compliant. USB PD chargers will not properly handshake with and charge the SkyEcho. Instead, use only chargers equipped with USB-A output ports, and utilize the supplied USB-A to USB-C cable. 5. Computer USB ports (Mac or PC) cannot deliver sufficient power to charge a SkyEcho. Given that when fully charged to SE2 provides 12 hours of use, there is no real need to charge it from your aircraft power supply anyway.

Fletchers & Crescos are not bush planes but they do operate from some pretty rough strips with a ton of super phosphate on board but always land empty. I went for a ride in a Cresco off my neighbours strip In NZ. The approach was under some 110 kVA power lines to a 30deg up slope strip with the loader on the top flat turnaround. I did about 6 runs with the pilot. Each one only took a couple of minutes, takeoff to landing.

Apple chargers are Chinese like all the rest, they just charge 2-3 times more for them. Apple do not have PD (power delivery) chargers but I suspect that will change with the next model iPhones & iPads. Check Ebay, there are plenty of 3.5 amp and above chargers there as well as 3.5 amp car adaptors. Uavionix do not recommend USB C to USB C cables mainly because most of these are PD standard to allow for high speed charging. Many new models of Android phones can charge at 100 watts or even more so you can charge a 5-6000 mAh phone battery from empty to full in half an hour or so. The USB cable that comes in the box with the SE2 is QC3 standard and is USB A at the charger end and USB C at the SE2 end. The QC3 standard has a maximum current of 4.6 amps so at 5 volts that provides 23 watts to the battery being charged. There is a dual USB A wall charger on Ebay for $9.95 delivered that supplies 5 amps so will charge at 25 watts . This is locally supplied with an Australian plug. There are plenty of different suppliers and prices. https://www.ebay.com.au/itm/374111703682?hash=item571acb9282:g:dXUAAOSwAUdimZjM&amdata=enc%3AAQAHAAAA4Hbw8VHuW1eNI9O%2F4P9uwRHss%2BfhWDxs4Fm2DsLbpYk4fZNF9vwMEtazqV4qisxaEv069I81R1Jl%2F7EMUCaGXg0yRv2rkhrYW49ibLwhLYZpRSyG94aUK4tPAaZqfcgEl5YPExowNZjePRw34LxB4apXYH8vLQlt15QR2Pt4sSgo16%2Fx8HVCtM46FFDLON8s9plBSoEiY8BgdKXU8qUkRAUwIJFUGiEqo5ktAGCzEy6vmMw2BKh70SS1lun8kV65gYAFay36Ef0qYEJRrmFYzkZufDHjORKJV8bks%2Bi6TxYi|tkp%3ABFBMsKfOgLth

Cessna nose legs fail too. The 172 & above have pretty beefy Oleo strut noselegs but they are heavy complex and expensive.

Have you set the "Ownship" filter to "On" in your SE2. If it is not set and you have Mode S out or SE2 set to transmit out it can cause a ghost image of your aircraft on your nav device.

It is not called the "Flying Bum" for nothing.

Nosewheels on most aircraft are a weak point especially in rough landing spots. That's why Bush planes are taildraggers.

Uavionix say that a supply of less than 2.5amps will not adequately charge the SE2. A 2 amp supply will probably charge it to a certain level but it may not fully charge. They also say not to keep it plugged in to your aircraft USB supply as it will consume more than the power outlet can supply. That may be the case for factory built aircraft but if you build your own you could install a 3.5 amp USB outlet. Still that depends on how much power your alternator can supply. New phones & tablets (except Apple) now use PD supply which as I said can deliver 100 watts but the SE2 is still one step back in charging technology using QC3 which new Apple devices also use. Apple has not caught up with the rest of the world in charging technology. A 3.5 amp charger costs very little ($10-15) & you can get car adaptors for about the same price. Make sure though that the charger end is USB A as a lot of new ones are USB C and USB C to USB C are more likely to be PD cables which won't work with the SE2.

It doesn't even look like that engine photo is from that aircraft.

Many of your old chargers won't be any good as they will charge at 2.0 amps or less. At 5 volts nominal output this is only 10 watts. This is insufficient to charge a SE2. Uavionix specify 18 watts or more. The cable supplied is a QC3 cable so you will require a charger with 3.5amps or more. At x 5 volts of output that is 17.5 watts which is fine. You cannot use the later PD (power delivery) USB cables which are capable of delivering up to 100 watts, they just won't work.

I wonder if it was the fact that the Press had loudly published MAYDAY. As it probably came from the Oceanic Datalink Comms emergency transmission how did the Press know unless there was a leak from someone?

I just had a look at mine and the suction cup does sit about 5mm higher than the SE2 in the case. It is a fairly hard cover though and the USB cable doesn't take up much room so I reckon there would have to be a lot of pressure to switch it on & the SE2 switch is recessed as well.

They must have changed the packaging. The new ones come in a hard cover zippered case with the SE2 and suction cup in separate moulded compartments so there is nothing that can switch it on when packed.

I don't know the regulations but I imagine it would be mandatory to divert to the nearest useable aerodrome for the type when one engine failed. In this case Sydney was it anyway.