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sfGnome

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Everything posted by sfGnome

  1. sfGnome
    I used to use a mini, and it was fine. Don’t know if there was/is a spec change that would change that.
  2. sfGnome
    How strong are the parts you make, Mark? Do they have a weakness along the joints between layers, or do the layers bond really well? I used a lot of prototype parts at my last company, but we always had to be really careful to not stress them.
  3. sfGnome
    Regardless of whether you’re dealing with a compass or a magnetometer (from your reference to ‘electronic gizmo’), the effect of equipment in the aircraft is not linear around the circle, so the errors need to be checked at at least the 4 cardinal points. The assumption then is that the errors will be reasonably linear between those points, though if they are quite disparate then there would be value in checking more points (or, better still, finding the cause of the disparity).
  4. sfGnome
    Interesting. Air services has just published special conditions for Bathurst airport during the Mt Panorama races next weekend (https://www.airservicesaustralia.com/aip/current/sup/s23-h65.pdf). VH and foreign aircraft have no restrictions and need no permission, but RA-Aus aircraft are banned. I understand that it will be busy with all the A-listers being flown in in their private jets, but to assume that RPC pilots are intrinsically less capable than their RPL counterparts is a bit rich. Ok. Fire at will…
  5. sfGnome
    I used to develop software on an hp machine with one floppy drive. The disks were too small to fit the editor, assembler and the source code, so I had to have two disks, one with the editor and the source, then copy the source over to the other disk which had the assembler to compile it. Slow, fiddly and error prone. Definitely not the good old days… 🫣😁
  6. sfGnome
    That is such a cool looking aircraft! The lack of later craft following that format (that I know of) implies that there is something intrinsically wrong with it, but wouldn’t it get attention if it landed at your local field.
  7. sfGnome
    If you use a thin plastic bottle and screw on the lid at 10,000ft on a cold day, then when you land the combination of much higher pressure and a drop in the fluid temperature means that the bottle is now much smaller than it was… Just hope that the plastic doesn’t do a rapid unscheduled disassembly. 🫣
  8. sfGnome
    This is second hand information, but a bloke told me recently about problems he had with lane failures that would disappear when cycled. The problem in that case was a poor joint in one of the sensor cable connectors (don’t know which one). Something to look for if you haven’t already.
  9. sfGnome
    One of the things that we found when we lived in Europe was how many of their places are named after Australian towns… 😛
  10. sfGnome
    Hi Red. I think that the main photo is actually a P2002 Sierra. Its canopy is different to the rest of the photos (and it says ‘Sierra’ on the tail 😛).
  11. sfGnome
    Before today, if I was to tell you about my last flight, it would have been April, 2016… Yep, as of today, I’ve taken the first step back to fully operational. Just an hour with an instructor getting comfortable in the air again and finishing with a couple of circuits. The last circuit got a bit interesting, with an RPT departing, two other lighties in the circuit, one overflying, and an emergency chopper departing as well. Let’s just say that it was a *very* wide circuit! Thankfully, the instructor said “you just fly the plane; I’ll handle the radio”. Hopefully, next week I can get the BFR ticked off. 🤞
  12. sfGnome
    Regardless of what it is, why does there appear (in the original photo) to be a large chunk missing from the fuselage just forward of the tail feathers? 🤷‍♂️
  13. sfGnome
    If you were James Bond, then yours would be a giant Union Jack… 😛
  14. sfGnome
    Stop trying to persuade me. If the plane doesn’t kill me, my beloved will! 😝
  15. sfGnome
    It was a picture of a Bleriot XI that piqued my interest in aviation. I was only about 8 at the time, but I thought “I could build that!”, and the thought has never left me. However, these days I think “where’s the roll-over protection?”, so when I build, it won’t be a Bleriot… 🫣
  16. sfGnome
    You’re brave, going shotgun. That’s ugly country down there (well, not ugly. It’s beautiful, but mighty scary in a single engined aircraft). When I used to fly from Cessnock, I’d always go up to Mudgee way before turning south, but maybe I was just taught to be a scaredy cat. I used to work with a GA pilot who couldn’t understand why I didn’t want to fly direct.
  17. sfGnome
    Good thinking, 99! I’ll bet the installation was a whole lot simpler without walls getting in the way (and you never know, you might get around to adding the walls some time in the next decade or so… 🫣)
  18. sfGnome
    How can a broken rudder cause the aircraft to bank left? The only thing I can think of (which seems unlikely) is that there was a rudder trim spring/bungee that, in the absence of rudder control, pulled it hard left. Even in a go-around situation, it still doesn’t make sense. Another alternative was that in the process of the go-around, the aircraft stalled, and the attempt to recover with the rudder failed either because the rudder was already broken, or it broke at that point. If that’s the case, then it wasn’t the broken rudder that caused the accident…
  19. sfGnome
    I lived in Europe for a number of years, and when we got back to Sydney, I couldn’t wait to leave again (hence our recent move to the Southern Highlands). My wife uses the train when she has to go to the office in central Sydney, but we use the car for anywhere else (and yes, the peak hour seems to stretch for about 4 hours both morning and evening, so the best bet is to work from home). However, if you don’t mind it being a bit colder than the rest of Sydney, then Southern Highlands has to be the nicest place to live (IMHO 🙂). Oh, and ignore the cane toads and their obsession with rugby league. The heat fries their brains. Everybody knows that the Swans are the team to follow… 😛
  20. sfGnome
    Depends on what you mean by “switched over”. If you maintain the PPL alongside the PC, then yes. If you forego the PPL, then no. 😕
  21. sfGnome
    That’s one of the things that really surprised me when I started taking passengers. Some couldn’t wait to get on board, while others were not so sure. One niece declared “it’s so tiny; no way I’d go near that”. I’d always assumed that everyone was obsessed with flying… 🤷‍♂️ The memory that really niggles at me was that we had a low wing plane, and both my parents were too weak to be able to climb in. If only we’d had a high wing. Mum would have been out of her skull with excitement. Her brothers flew gliders before the war, and she was so proud that I was flying too. Hmmmm…. I think I’ve taken thread drift to a new level. Sorry! 🙄
  22. sfGnome
    Well, he’s a braver man than I. How do you abort a takeoff on that strip? 😳
  23. sfGnome
    Particularly when she spent most of the time looking at the camera and not at the work. I did wonder whether they fitted 500 grit sandpaper while she was doing it so that she couldn’t mess it up. Very impressed by the owner/craftswoman though.
  24. sfGnome
    Well, I did what I should have done in the first place and looked at the Rotax doco. The installation manual says to do the test run accordance with the operators manual, and that says nothing about first runs, just the normal preflight test. So, it appears that Rotax doesn’t require any specific run-in. I guess that Europa’s 2 hour test run instruction is just to find all the normal infant-mortality problems (like poorly fitted pipes and chaffed cables, etc) while you’re still on the ground.
  25. sfGnome
    I remember my dad treating his new Holden that way. Bit tough to replicate in an aircraft through. Thanks a lot to taxiing! 😝
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