old man emu

Spruce and Specialty have Mitchell 0-30psi guages for $US59.95 and the sender is $US37.50. Postage should be about $US35. The guage fits in a 2-1/4" hole.

I'm about to place an order to Spruce, and I could include yours to cut down on the postage for you.

OME

Virago,

I'll second Iggy's comment about PreKote. We are changing over to it from stuff like Aladine because of environmental reasons. Our shop is subject to various items of Federal legislation dealing with airport environments. I source it from Aviall. As a matter of fact I bought a gallon yesterday, I think it sells for about $65 per gallon. You might try Airflite in WA for it. Since it is not classed as "Dangerous Goods", your road freight costs are not inflated.

OME

Virago,

If you are going to pull 5000 rivets, you are strongly advised to purchase a compressed air rivet gun, possibly from Supercheap Autos or other similar tool suplier.

Also, if the kit manufacturer supplied the rivets, then you are OK to use them. As for aluminium rivets with steel stems, that is the usual make up of both pop rivets and CherryMax rivets.

Old Man Emu

Not strictly RAA, but relevant to the article in this month's Sport Pilot.

We had two flying school C172S airplanes in the shop for periodic inspections at the end of last week. These airplanes were produced with stainless steel control cables, and there have been a number of reports of undue wear of the aileron cables.

As part of our inspection, we discovered that the rudder cables in both airplanes were frayed where they had come in contact with pulleys.

Moral of story:

Carefully inspect all your control cables for wear, especially in the vicinity of pulleys and fairleads.

Old Man Emu

Ever been in an open cockpit aircraft Kreisha? .

OME

I wrote my column for no renumeration for two years, because I didn't have the audacity to believe I could walk into a field and demand pay without proving myself first.

And haven't you ever heard of Rejection Slips? If I submit something for publication and expect to be paid for my effort, I accept that the other side of the coin is that an editor has the right to reject it. If I'm smart, and want to get paid for published work, I'll ask a few questions to identify what lead to the rejection, and if there is the chance to modify the work to suit publication, I will. If it turns out that the editor just doesn't like the cut of my cloth, then I'll look elsewhere.

For his work he was gifted an annual subscription to the app, worth $70.

2. He was gifted - by whom? Sport Pilot or Avsoft?

May I ask you, what is your profession?

I'm semi-retired.

University Degree - check

Pilot's Licence - Check (Private GA, RAA Certificate expired)

Employed in aviation - check (Maintenance and Hardware Procurement)

Published work - Check (Airborne magazine early 1990's; Aviator magazine last year)

Other writing experience - Check (28 years' writing forensic material)

Current Projects - A history of the Sutherland Shire from 1950 to 1970 (in research)

You reckon I should risk a Rejection Slip?

Thing is, If we start paying it will be for talent.

OME

I look forward to in-depth contributions from you in the future....

OME

Last comment… (ignoring the ‘infomercial’ jibe)… yes I wrote the ‘App of the month’ article. My journalistic qualifications are… nil; my flying experience is… limited. But I thought that my experience may be useful and relevant for a lot of people. Yes it took a lot of effort to ‘craft’ something together and Kreisha was able to provide a lot of (patient) support to help me turn out something that was (I hope) readable and informative. Truly, isn’t this the key to improving the quality of the mag? Don’t throw rocks at the people who are trying to fix the mag… jump in and help them. I did and I enjoyed the experience… and yes I hope to do it again. However, I’d be happy if I never get anything published again if it’s because there are too many better articles coming from lots of other people.

There was no jibe in "infomercial". I was just putting the magazine's contents into categories.

I must admit that on my first reading of the magazine, I skipped over your article for only one reason - I'm not interested in i-computing. However, in an effort to be fair, I have since gone back and read the article. As a piece of magazine writing, it's a good piece of work. Having read it, I'm interested in looking at the app, but my bias may not let me go out and buy an iPad and this App. I wouldn't have any other uses for the iPad to make the purchase worthwhile.

Harking back to my original point, don't you think that your effort was worth more reward than seeing your words in print under your name? I don't know what the going rate that is paid by magazines to freelance journos, but your effort was worth the payment. Is $35 worth of app sufficient? In my opinion, NO. I reckon that your article is worth at least the value of a full page ad.

And Kreisha ...

Compare your article on Jabiru with Owen Zupp's in Australian Aviation October 2009, No 265. pp 58 - 59.

Old Man Emu

If we could market this motivation, Ian wouldn't have to sell advertising to keep it up and running

Jenny Craig, eat your low fat heart out!

OME

Well...

I'll accept your ability to write coherently and succinctly based on your tertiary qualification. I can't comment on what you have produced in other publications because I do not usually read them for one reason or another.

As an editor, do you feel that Sport Pilot as it was published recently was more a collection of advertising and infomercials, with only a few readable articles?

The point I was trying to make was that I accept the need for the publisher to sell advertising space to maintain the publication's viability, but without its containing more material for reading it is not much better that junk mail advertising.

That is why I was saying that the organisation should look to remunerate casual contributors who take the time and effort to produce material for publication.

Also, your exposure up to the present has been as a pilot (both GA & RAA), but where is your experience in building and maintaining an airplane? I'm not debunking you if you don't know a clevis pin from a cotter pin, but there are members who could produce some interesting reading on subjects outside your field of experience.

I was very dissapointed with the Jabiru story. We all either fly or know Jabirus, and there was a chance to do an in-depth on the history and future direction of the company. That would have made a good read.

I'll finish by saying "Welcome" to this site, and I look forward to reading your two cents' worth on a variety of subjects.

Old Man Emu

The bloody ironing, of course!

OME

Jason,

As you start studying your ground subjects, you will learn that

MTOW = A/c Empty Weight + Fuel + Payload.

All pilots want to get the most fuel and the most payload in the plane. Unnecessary body weight kills both. Every 10 Kg of body weight roughtly equals 13 litres of fuel, which is roughly one hour's endurance of the planes we usually fly.

So, it goes without saying that lighter bodies fly further.

The really good news is that wanting to fly can be turned to your advantage in the marital area. No doubt you weren't the size you are when you settled with your beloved. Your beloved would jump at the chance to have back the body she fell in love with.

All you have to say to her is "Honey, I want to lose weight, so you can show me off to your girlfrends and learning to fly is my special incentive for losing it."

Best of luck with both.

All 125 Kks of

Old Man Emu

I'm semi- retired and had today off. Except that I had to do two loads of washing and hang them out; remove two wheels from my car, get new tyres on each, then refit the wheels. After that I mowed the front and back yards, and did the front yard edges with a small hatchet. The I took the washing off the line and folded it. I managed to have a smallbottle of cold amber fluid, and now I have to do two Environmental audits for clients to send on to Bankstown Airports Ltd. After I finish that, I might get a chance to do some CAD drawings for my plane build. Still want my job?

:-{0

OME

Ahlocks,

It is the computer at work. I won't play with the settings on it. I can't convince the boss to switch over to ADSL2 despite the fact that he is the one who does the big downloads. I have no trouble with my home computers.

OME

360 or 205. It still takes ages to download via a wireless connection.

OME

Gnarly,

You've bucked the rivet right on the tail! I don't think your comment was negative in any way. It was positive criticism. Compare the Jabiru piece with Dave Tonk's bit about Queensland's attitude to amphibians. The latter was a much more meaty read, but was of equal length. Philip Myer's article was a good one, too.

I think what Sport Pilot needs is some aviation savvy journos. Articles in this type of magazine need to be written by people with some street cred.

OME

Now that Ian has expanded the section of the forum that deals with building and maintaining airplanes, there's a place to publish little bits and pieces of a general nature relating to the hands-on side of having something to fly.

So I'm going to try to produce some useful stuff based on what I see happening around the place where I work. I hope what I produce will be of use and of interest. I'm sure that you'll let me know if it is not.

Old Man Emu

AC43.doc

AC43.doc

AC43.doc

I don't know what most people on the site are looking for. I was surprised how little interest there was in my trip to Reno, Its one of the top avication destinations.

Yes, it should have been a wow of a trip, and you are very kind to have taken the time to think of the rest of us and posted what you did. Maybe next time all your trip posts will be about happy things.

OME

I support what you have done, Ian. For too long this site has been used by RAA as its de facto forum because it was not willing or IT savvy enough to have a forum on its own site. I'm not a member of the RAA, so the political huff 'n' puff was of no great interest to me. (Yeah, I know I've made some comments).

I love the way the site has expanded on the building side. I can't wait to start posting in that section. As a matter of fact, I'm going to do some reading over lunchtime to get some info for my first post.

OME

Sucks to be RAA

OME

Ian,

I like the new format, especially the expanded building section. With reference to the thread I've got running dealing with Sport Pilot, I'd be happier to post my type of articles on this forum for nix than to submit them to the magazine for nix.

Just a question..... Can you include a" Suppliers" thread in there? Perhaps it would be fairest if you could work out which other categories would benefit from having a specific Suppliers thread. The stuff that I sell is not, for the most part, what Pilot Shop sells, so it would do us both well to be in separate areas. Provided of course you can see yourself clear to sending me an invoice for advertising on this site .

OME

First of all, I think it's a bit of bad form to be discussing the RAA magazine, Sports Pilot, on someone else's forum - a bit like A Current Affair doing a number on This Day Tonight. However, since the RAA site does not have a forum, where else can this conversation take place?

What struck me about Sports Pilot was the lack of meaty reading in it. There are 72 printed pages in the magazine, and of these 26 (36%) are full pages of advertising. If you were to include the half page ads, the total space allocated to advertising would approach 40% of total pages. This suggests that the magazine is pretty much a financially viable entity.What is all this advertising supporting in the rest of the magazine?

The reading matter in the rest of the magazine is somewhat light on. Most articles occupy only one page or less. In my tally of pages of advertising, I didn't count "App of the Month" nor "What our schools are up to". I consider both of these to be infomercials, but worth the reading. In the "News" section, I thought that "CEOs who fly" was totally irrelevant,and that the photo of Richard Branson was a sneeky "come-on". In "Pilot Notes" there was nothing specifically for pilots, and definately nothing to inspire confidence in recreational flying in an interested browser.

"Tech Talk" was poorly done. Either one writes about the aftermath of prop strikes, or maintaining cables, but not both in the one article. As it stands, what was written about cables left more unsaid than said. The article "Dipstick"wasn't the greatest piece of copy ever delivered to an editor, but at least it has started a discussion elsewhere on this forum. I love/hate Members' Market. I love to see what's out there for sale. I hate that I can't buy anything.

OK, OME! Put up or shut up. Where's your articles?

Well, I'll write them if I get paid for them. The point is, why should I spend my time writing articles for magazines without any reward for doing so? This post has probably taken me a couple of hours to research and write, but I've done it to get something off my chest. But what if I was to write a tech article on control cables? Such an article would take a few hours to research and write. It would have to be technically sound and everything in it would have to be defensible.

Should I give this effort away for nothing? Do you expect your L2 to service your plane for nix? Does your instructor teach you for the love of it? We all have specialist skillls that we have developed through years of study and experience. Is it unreasonable to ask for a reward when these skills are the basis of material that makes a magazine worth reading?

Old Man Emu

Just the thing to take the mother-in-law flying.

OME

Kaz,

I did a ring around for you. Aviall doesnot list these tyres. Hawkers can get them at a retail of about $265 + GST.

The tyre size has been renamed to 420x150TT.

Spruce and Specialty list the tyres as Part Np 06-01250 at $US159.95, and the inner tubes as Part No 06-01226 at $US86.75. The tyres and tubes are by Air Classics. I don't know the weight of each tyre, but if it was below 20 lbs, the postage would be about $US35 per tyre and tube.

If you order from Spruce & Specialty, you'll have them at your door in about 10 days from the date of order. S&S will accept your credit card.

You can order by phone to this US number: 877-477-7823 ( you need the US direct dialling codes) That number will put you to Monica MAZE who is very helpful.

Old Man Emu