old man emu

10 hours ago, Ian said:

whizz wheels are due for the dustbin, fun to use but no more relevant than the cavalry in WW2.

The battery doesn't go flat on a whizz wheel, and they still work after you from them on the ramp. 

10 hours ago, Ian said:

Anyone with half decent maths ability and an understanding of vectors can do most of the calculations which a whizz wheels do in their head

Let's use the example of an aircraft flying straight and level on a known heading, and a known airspeed, and the heading and speed of the air mass it is encountering are also known. That sets up a 2-Dimensional system of vectors, which could be represented by coordinates (x, y) with appropriate identifying subscripts. Note I said that the aircraft was flying straight and level, thereby eliminating the need to consider the third dimension (vertical displacement) it has no speed of direction in his example.

So, given that the vectors of the aircraft and wind can be considered as the sums of their vectors in the x and y directions, how can you calculate, in your head, the resultant vector since that calculation involves the use of the values of sine and cosine of the two headings?

5 hours ago, RossK said:

A Hobbs meter is a clock, it does measure time.

What you are talking about is a Tach Time meter

OK.

There is also the airspeed activated timer that begins timing as soon as the aircraft's airspeed is above stall speed and stops when the airspeed goes below. That sort of time measures wheels-up to wheels-down, which is the official Time in Service for an airframe.

BUT! BUT! BUT! There is also the manufacturer's TBO which is based on the number of hours that the engine is operating: start-up to shut-down. 

How about we accept that these two systems operate at the same time;  that they cause confusion in record keeping, and that it is probably wiser to apply engine time to airframe time. It's probably only after many years that the difference become relevant.

14 minutes ago, Ian said:

slide rules they're an anachronism in the present day and age.

I have to agree that electronic devices and their software make the completion of computations so much easier that mechanical devices like a whizz-wheel. However, both devices are ultimately dependent on the user determining which data to use as values for the variables. 

As for using a WAC, I think one's choice depends on your style of understanding information. I admit that I understand things best when I see them represented in "written" form. I have more information of a situation by looking at Heading and Wind direction lines on a WAC than I can by other means. Maybe that's a result of my education being conducted before electronic digitisation. Is it that a person born after, say 1975, has had the way their mind works influenced to a great extent by electronic digitisation. 

The drawback I see is that by having devices to do tasks, fails to provide a person with the basic knowledge behind the operation. Here's an instructional video on how to use a simple calculator. You don't need to watch past teh first calculation to get the point I want to make.

Now this does not show what addition actually is. To do that, you need to have real objects. Let's use paper clips.  From a container of paper clips, take out some and from those count out three, and put them down together. Then count out six and put them down away from the first three. Now, put the three clips on the pile of six. Now count how many clips there are altogether. You will count nine. That shows that three things added to six things results in your having nine things.

Note this very important concept: In the example above I initially used the names of the numbers (three, six and nine), but note that in my last sentence those names can be seen as adjectives describing the word "things", the same way that "paper" together with "clip" describes the object. When we verbalise mathematical tasks, we shorten our speech by only using the adjective, not mentioning the physical thing that the adjective describes. That's why our maths teachers always have to remind us to include the object when quoting our answer - nine paper clips.

10 hours ago, hkaneshiro said:

You upload it to the CASA website and then print off your medical immediately.

Would you give me the link, please?

7 hours ago, Ian said:

Hi All,

 

Given variations in wind speed at altitude the "shortest" path between two points is may not be a direct route especially on longer flights. Does anyone know of software or other tools so optimise flight paths, engine time and fuel use?

 

 

A couple of good conversation points here. The answers depend on what result you are after: 

1. Shortest time to get from A to B
2. Minimum registered engine hours for the flight from A to B.
3. Minimum fuel usage

1. Shortest time:

Basically, if the wind is directly behind you, distance/speed will be least. So draw the direct route on your chart. Then draw a line parallel to the wind direction. See how far you can fly along the wind direction line before you have to turn off it to a heading to close the triangle to your destination. That is a method to reduce the numbers of hours you write in your logbook.

2. Engine time:

Engine time meters (Hobbs meter) are not clocks. They are geared so that R revolutions of the crankshaft = 1 hour. So, it you push the throttle through the firewall, the hour meter will overread compared to clock time. If you use normal cruise power (about 75%) the meter and the clock should show the same.

3. Minimum fuel usage

This is determined by two things - engine revs and  fuel/air mixture. The first thing to do is to determine what airspeed you want to use to get either 1 or 2 above.

If you have a tailwind component that is added to your airspeed to give you your ground, then maybe you could reduce engine revs to reduce the actual airspeed. In other words, use the wind to your advantage. 

If the tailwind component isn't of use, you could look at altitude to make use of the reduced amount of fuel to produce a chemically correct mixture (leaning out). 

It was these last techniques that Charles Lindbergh showed the  P-38 Lightning pilots so that they could carry out the raid that resulted in the death of Admiral Yamamoto. This technique was used extensively by Japanese navy pilots to enable them to traverse long ocean distances in the A6M (Zero)

6 hours ago, Ian said:

Not sure if it's been mentioned however one of the key benefits of wired or pinned crown nuts is that they can be verified as "locked". Far more difficult with Loctite or similar.

To my mind, that is a secondary, but useful, effect of wiring or pinning a castellated nut. If you have a look where fasteners with a hole in the shank are used they do not usually perform a clamping function. They are usually used for keeping things in place where there is movement, like control surface hinges, or for keeping axle nuts firm against the wheel bearing, but not clamping it against the hub. So there is an allowance for the nut to move in and out for a fraction of the circumference of the shank and a cotter pin prevents the untorqued nut from unwinding itself. Its hard to get the correct torque on a nut while at the same time getting the hole in the shank to line up with a slot in the castellated nut.

However, that doesn't apply to bolts with holes in the head of the bolt. These are used where two items are being clamped together and no movement is permitted between the two. In that case, the nut is torqued into place before the head of the bolt is lockwired in such a way as to prevent it unwinding from the nut. 

Sorry that these are sideways. I can't get them to stay rotated the correct way.

Never mind the purchase price, think of the overheads (no pun). Twice the registration fees, twice the cost of insurance. And which standard do you use for service and replacement parts - el cheapo car parts because it's a car, or fully certified and traceable aircraft parts because it's an aeroplane?

It would be a game man who decided to build an amphibious flying car.   

Any wooden airframe manufacture before the 1950s which included gluing wood together has to be suspect, simply because of the degrading of the glue itself. Casein glue is made from milk proteins. It was used to make strong and robust joints in early aviation, and was ubiquitous in the form of "white glue"  but fell out of favor due to its susceptibility to attack by bacteria. That is why a lot of Tiger Moths have had to be rebuilt. It was why the Avro Anson was grounded in the 1950s. (Non-competitive, operational performance may also have played a part). 

Resorcinol glue, also known as resorcinol-formaldehyde, is an adhesive combination of resin and hardener that withstands long-term water immersion and has high resistance to ultraviolet light. The adhesive, introduced in 1943, has been popular in aircraft and boat construction. Wooden airplane components have long been glued with resorcinol formulations. Uncured resorcinol has a relatively short shelf life of about two to three years, depending on storage temperature. Its use has declined since the 1990s due to the ease of use and versatility of epoxy glues and fillers. Unlike epoxy, it does not have gap filling properties, requiring joints to be close fitting and clamped under pressure to achieve good results. Also it is a two-part formulation that requires accurate measurement of components. Resorcinol was named a substance of very high concern under European Union REACH in 2022 because of its endocrine disrupting properties.

Consider the wide variety of woodworking adhesives you can now find easily at hardware stores, or with a bit of searching for more unique types. Here's a description of the various types of glues that can be used in woodworking. Each has different properties, so the choice is a bit of a horses for courses one.

4 minutes ago, jackc said:

All the while…..these people are being paid a Salary you could only dream of, but its all cool and normal for Govt entities 😞 

Honestly, I don't think the functionaries who push the paper around would be getting on much higher Grades of pay than people in CentreLink or similar. It's only when you get to the higher, more managerial levels that the salary gets above average.

I have found it difficult to establish communication with a person working for CASA. I recently went to the CASA office in Sydney for some advice when I was beginning to plan the air display. I wanders around empty corridors before I came across someone. When I explained my need, I was told that whoever could help me wasn't around. At other times I have sent material by email and the only thing I got back quickly was an automated response that my email had been received and had got the "mirror treatment" - someone would look into it. Admittedly, when I did get an email back with someone's name and phone number, I had a pleasant interaction. 

The communication problem I had with the application for air display was that I started dealing with Brisbane, then it went to Adelaide, then to Canberra. I was contacting CASA during summer, so Brisbane was an hour behind my time. Adelaide was its usual 30 minutes behind, and Canberra was in a time zone of its own, not known to the rest of humanity.

1 hour ago, Thruster88 said:

Not sure how GP basic med works. 

He signs it. You send it. You wait. And wait. And  wait,

o by the tie your get a reply from CASA, it has expired and you have to get your GP to do another medical.

Here's a question:

A person has a doctor (DAME or GP depending on the class of medical) complete a medical examination for a licence renewal and fill out the CASA form and the doctor says that the person is medically fit to pilot an aircraft and hands over the signed paperwork for the person to forward to CASA The person on the same day delivers the paperwork to CASA. 

How does that person exercise the privileges of their licence if CASA is slow in processing the renewal?  If subjected to a ramp check, could a pilot produce the signed medical examination report and tell the CASA inspector that the pilot doesn't have the response from Medical Branch because they haven't processed it yet?

9 hours ago, RFguy said:

on your new Australia map

I just grabbed that image because it showed the location of 135E, which was relevant to the post it was in. Actually the image shows what the British were claiming as theirs in 1788. West of the line was indeed Terra Nullis in European Law.

There was no official settlement in Western Australia until 1829; South Australia 1836 and Northern Territory 1824.

It's stupid for a country of such great longitudinal spread, but scant population, and instantaneous electronic communication to have three time zones. The time zones adversely impact on business and commerce. For example, if a business has an office in Sydney and one in Perth, both open from 9 to 5, then the worker in Sydney can't interact with Perth until midday, Sydney time. And the worker in Perth can't interact with Sydney after 2:00 pm Perth time.

The logical thing to do is to have one time zone based on 135 East, or UTC +9.5. That meridian basically bisects the continent East/West:

Of course there would be whingeing at first, but the benefits outweigh the disadvantages, just like it was with Daylight Saving. Just consider the benefit to commercial air travel. It's about a five hour flight from Sydney to Perth. If you read your ticket it would suggest that by comparing departure time to arrival time you would think that the flight only took two hours, but coming the other way would take eight hours. Imagine the confusion trying to arrange relatives to pick you up at either end.

And to start wandering down another track, isn't it time that NOTAMs were broadcast in plain text, rather than secret squirrel abbreviations? Those abbreviations worked when NOTAMs were broadcast by telex and the sender paid for the number of letters. I bet now that a regular type of NOTAM would not involve more than a couple of hundred kilobytes. 

Not to knock the sensibly thought out contributions being made in this thread, but it's getting to be a May Pole dance with no sign of the threads finally weaving something.

I'm the same age as Jackc and over the past year I've somehow become healthier through no work of my own. Each year I have to pass the AusRoads medical because I hold a heavy vehicle licence and a Public Vehicle Driver's Authority. Over the years this medical has become less stringent, yet CASA demands the original format. Thinking about it, I come to the conclusion that the original, more stringent test is in fact better suited to aviation as it does involve a test for balance. My doctor is quite happy to carry out the examination for the Basic Class 2, and fill out the Ausroads paperwork at the same time.

So why does my Basic Class 2 have these restrictions as pointed out below?

3 hours ago, hkaneshiro said:

student pilot will be on a full class 2 (cant take the RPL/PPL test on a Basic). Student 24-9876 will be on a full class 2 too (not self declared - they will not be able to solo in Class D/C otherwise

They'd be great stealth aircraft. Rubber doesn't reflect radar frequencies. 

8 minutes ago, hkaneshiro said:

the VH student pilot will be on a full class 2 (cant take the RPL/PPL test on a Basic). Student 24-9876 will be on a full class 2 too (not self declared - they will not be able to solo in Class D/C otherwise) therein lies the answer.. 

 

 

Therein lies the stupidity. When will CASA come back down to earth and accept that, apart from some blatantly obvious physical and mental conditions, a medical examination will not disclose the conditions that cause sudden unexpected death. How many examples  of otherwise apparently unaffected people dropping from heart attack, stroke or aneurysm? 

I think that we should rise up and demand that every CASA employee undergo an annual medical, at their own expense, to maintain their position. Let them walk 1609.344 metres in our shoes.

If it lets a downed pilot escape, it's a Goodyear.

This is a better quality version of the same video.

I know that you will correct me if I am wrong, but I see the prohibition on entering controlled airspace harkens back to the days when AUF aircraft were slow, simplistic things. Obviously you would not want them mixing with even the likes of a C-150 of PA28-140. I suppose those AUF aircraft couldn't carry a radio, either. Nowadays many of the grandchildren of those AUF aircraft are fast enough to mix it with the big boys. In fact, they can fly loops around something like a Tiger Moth which would be free to fly all day in controlled airspace. So why persist with the prohibition?

I'm not saying that an RAA aircraft should be flying into Kingsford-Smith, or Tullamarine and the like. Those airports are part of the country's economic infrastructure. Slow aircraft operating there are like caravaners on a single-lane highway holding up trucks and tradies. But why should RAA aircraft be prohibited from using the Secondary airports like Bankstown and Archerfield if they are carrying R/T sets that allow them to carry on the same level of communication as VH- aircraft. Again I use the example of two Jabirus, built exactly the same, but registered under different systems.

1 hour ago, turboplanner said:

P&O Performance & Operations - the things you caculate before you leave the ground and recalculate in flight.

C&E Compliance and Enforcement items for the trip.

Thanks for that. Abbreviations and acronyms inhibit communication. Now to discuss them.

The topic, Aircraft performance and operations, is definitely one that you need to have by the short and curlies before you head off anywhere, even, as per your example,  a few laps of the training area. Would you agree that "operations" would include how to operate an aircraft when the air is full of potholes and your airspeed indicator is flicking back and forth like windscreen wipers in a downpour?

Proper compliance and enforcement is a bit like the road rules. Who knows the wording and intent of every single rule pertaining to the operation of a motor vehicle on a public street?  You've got to rely on the main ones and hope you don't fall foul of a nit-picking inspector.

3 hours ago, turboplanner said:

P&O, Met, Nav, Leg, C&E,

Met, Nav and Leg, I understand, but what are P&O and C&E, please?

If RAA certificate holders are not getting this instruction, how are they tootling all over the country?

16 minutes ago, turboplanner said:

Because they have different levels of training.

ay, there’s the rub!

So what elements of CASA training are missing from RAAus training? I would have thought a rose by any other name would fly as sweet. 

I thought that there were two main uses for a washer:

1: To spread the Force (pressure) created by the tightening nut over a wider area of the surface of the material being fastened together. Pressure = Force per unit area. Penny washers on wood or regular washers against aluminium.

2: To act as a sacrificial protector between two surfaces where there was relative movement, e.g a nut and bolt combination used as an axle for a control surface hinge.

There is are, of course the two types of star washers, of which the Nordlock seems to be a fancy (ie expensive) variety. And nylon washers which inhibit electrolysis between a steel fastener and aluminium sheet.

Glad no one picked up the grammatical error 

Was the pilot of MDX in these views suffering from "get-home-itis"?