sfGnome

I’l have to trust you and NASA on the peripheral awareness bit (not saying it’s wrong, just that I have no idea). However (there’s always an ‘however’ 🙂), gyro chips drift pretty quickly, so you also need a magnetometer (and possibly other stuff) to constantly correct it. Have a dig around the web for people who have tried to make homebuilt artificial horizon displays. I haven’t found one that’s been successful, but you might find something. The key thing is that the display and driving it is easy enough; it’s sourcing the reliable attitude information that’s the problem. If you can do that, then you’re away.

Hi Marty. I haven't had a great experience attempting to paint - hopefully things will turn out better for you. I bought rolls of clear builder's plastic and lengths of conduit and constructed removable walls that hung from the roof of the shed. I put an extractor fan down on the ground at a door with the rest of the door blocked off so the air was drawn over the tops of the plastic walls and down to the floor level at the fan. That aspect seemed to work well. (I can add photos if you'd like, but at the moment I'm on a PC which doesn't play nicely with the format that the iPhone produces. Yes, I know how to deal with it, but I'm being lazy...). I painted the cabin interior, but decided that the results, though ok, weren't really good enough for the outside. Maybe I just got frightened and it would have been alright? I don't know. I did show some examples of my work to my paint supplier (an ex-spray painter) and his response was "Not bad, but doing the outside would be a bridge too far", so I gave up and have sent it to a commercial shop recommended by some other blokes in my SAAA group. Sadly, it's been there for a couple of months, and it's still not finished. There's always some "big commercial job" that he's had to do and it's always mine that gets bumped. 😞 Whinge over. If I was trying again, I think I'd leave the interior until I'd built up some skills. Trying to work inside the box that is the baggage area was difficult as I kept bumping the gun against other recently painted surfaces. I'd suggest doing lots of practice sweeps without pulling the trigger until you're confident that you'll get the coverage without the contact. Oh, and I had a couple of worksite lights hung at different angles, but like iBob said, too much light is never enough.

From an electrical & fire safety point of view, absolutely yes, you should have a BMS on lithium batteries. However... The Ducatti regulator that is standard on Rotax engines (I'm assuming that yours is a Rotax) does not play nicely with a non-existent battery. As far as I could tell, most of the alternative regulators had similar issues (though the CARMO regulator given its design type might not be troubled - you'd have to ask them). The only one that I found that expressly stated that it was designed to continue working in the absence of a battery was the B&C PMR1D. It's a bit more expensive, and, as always, shipping from the US is a bomb. However, for that and other reasons, I figured that in my specific configuration, it was worth the money.

I recall a story of an airforce pilot who put in a maintenance request which was returned NFF (no fault found). His reply? NFF means Not F***ing Flying until you’ve found it…

One of my ex-syndicate partners bought a sling2 and absolutely loved it, so much so that when he decided that he was getting too old and sold it, he went out shortly afterwards and bought another. As for the bling issue, you could say that a Lada will get you there just like a BMW, but oddly, people prefer to buy the beemers… I’d love to have a full glass cockpit with autopilot and the works. It’s only the rapidly diminishing pool of the readies that stops me. 😛

B&C are in Newton, Kansas. Sadly, although AircraftSpruce carries some B&C equipment, B&C have confirmed that they don’t carry that particular part (yet).

Sadly, they shut it down a few years ago. Pity, because it used to get reasonable reviews. Then again, all the current companies seemed to get really good reviews up until about 5 years ago, but no longer.

Hi Skip. Yes, I've been examining all the available options, and had some extensive (and very informative) engineer to engineer conversations with the folk at B&C. One of their regulators (actually, the cheaper of the two permanent magnet alternator regulators) is exactly what I want in my plane. Yes, it is more expensive than the European ones, but it has some specific features that the Europeans don't. I'm happy(ish) to pay AUD400 for the regulator, but I draw the line at another AUD250 just to ship it. 😞

Does anyone have any experiences (good or bad) with re-shipping firms? I went to purchase something from B&C in the US, and for a USD250 part (which weighs about 250g/0.5 lbs), they quoted USD150 via UPS for shipping. That's just nuts! I looked at re-shipping firms (like Reship, Planet Express, MyUS, etc), and while they apparently bring the shipping price down to about USD75 (including B&C's USD25 charge for the US part of the delivery), I can't find one that doesn't get a zillion scathing reviews of lost packages and difficult customer service).

The MGL Avionics forum was being wiped by spammers and DOS attacks, so it now has a Cloudflare front end that you have to get through before you get to the site. It’s a (tiny little) bit of a pain to wait for access (generally about 15sec), but it means that the site is now available whereas previously it often wasn’t.

So when the rubber hits the road, it's not all plain sailing... As part of the application for the ADSB grant, you have to supply "a signed declaration by an approved installer using the template provided on business.gov.au". As an amateur-built aircraft, I'm the installer (I can't test it to the required level, but I can install it), but nowhere on business.gov.au's list of templates do I find anything that remotely looks like a suitable document. So, for those of you who have done your own install (ie amateur built aircraft only) AND have successfully applied for the grant, where did you find that magic template?

I have to admit that I think the feeling would be incredible, and if I was still a teenager and bulletproof, I’d love to have a go. However, as both those requirements are unfulfilled, I’ll leave it to braver (crazier?) folk. Wouldn’t it be a rush though…

A possibly easier alternative (ground ops only) is to disconnect the wires at the two wing sensors and sling two temporary wires across the cabin to the opposite wings so that, electrically, the sensors are now connected as if you had swapped them. If the problem appears to move to the other side on your display, then it’s the sensor. If it doesn’t, then it’s somewhere in the rest of the system. You wouldn’t want to purchase all new sensors and then find the problem was elsewhere (unless you really really want new sensors 😛).

…or when buying a new van, filling it up with ‘standard’ (ok, this was a lot of years ago) because my old van took standard, and then wondering why the engine was rattling so much… 🙄

This might be more work than it’s worth, but can you swap the sensors from one side to the other to see if that’s the issue? Also, is there any calibration on your gauges that might be awry?

That’s my understanding. I’ve been using Sketchup for years (no problem with accuracy - just set the snap to 0.1mm or whatever you want), and the thought of losing access to fusion after 3 years made it not worth learning. Mind you, Sketchup has some foibles that make it a bit of a pain some (many) times, but there’s generally a workaround.

I followed the truck down Macquarie Pass (very winding with some tight hairpins), so, yes, the pucker factor rose a few times. 😛 Actually, the drivers were very good. I’ll be happy for them to do the return journey.

So, does this count as first flight (albeit at 3’ AGL) 😛 Empty shell off to the paint shop.

That’s neat. Your design or purchased?

Perhaps you have the new Rotax ‘Mind Reading’ gauge. It’s very reliable, because there aren’t any connections to break… 😝😁

Hang in there! It’s worth the wait. 😀

Smell of fuel in the cockpit. I think that qualifies for grave and imminent danger. What interested me was that the pilot didn’t say “mayday mayday mayday” as we are taught, but simply a single “mayday” as part of his communication about intentions.

Fair enough. I was thinking of fuel injected aircraft where everything is reliant on a continuous supply of electrons.

Interesting trade off. Cheap, good cranking current, but a lot less time to find somewhere to land if your regulator or alternator carks it. Hmmm… So if you wanted to maintain your time to land, you’d need twice the overall capacity, meaning that the lower cost starts to not be so low. Still, interesting. 🤔

Was it ApplePay that caused the additional surcharge, or did the iPad take you renew via the AppleStore (without actually taking you to the store)? If I recall, OzRunways used to say to renew through their website, not via Apple’s update because Apple add a hefty premium (which is subject to current litigation over monopoly control and restrain of trade, I believe).