Old Koreelah

There was a noticable absence of Central Coast reps from our Fly-Day!

Quirindi Aero Club fly-day 10-4-14

Fifteen aircraft and thirty people turned up to our second gathering, in near-pefect flying weather. A layer of high cloud shaded the ground enough to dampen thermals and keep the air smooth.

Aircraft flew in throughout the morning and taxied up to join the gathering and meet like-minded people. It is surprising how many flyers there are in our district.

A contingent from Scone Aero Club crossed the range, meeting some challenging turbulence on the way.

Aviators and interested visitors spent hours inspecting and discussing aircraft. Quite a few got to try out someone else's plane and took off with a new friend for a flight around the district.

A good variety of flying machines were present, from weight-shift trike through wooden Jodel to a go-fast RV-7. Most abundant were Short Take Off and Landing (STOL) aircraft. Several different types of gyro, a couple of Skyfoxes, an Aeropup, a Savanna, a nice new Hornet with tundra tyres and a Piper Cub with huge tyres which landed on the ploughed paddock.

The ages of those present ranged from 4 to over 80. It was good to see a number of young visitors with an interest in aviation.

Local flyers are planning to cross the range for Scone Aero Club's Open Day and barbecue on June 1 and there are plans for future trips to Lightning Ridge and beyond.

The club is having Fly-Days the second Saturday of each month. Visitors and new members are very welcome.

Yeah, it's terrible when you have manufacturing.

You're sounding like a Buddhist, Geoff!

Actually, being a bloke who owns a proper aeroplane, you might be channeling M. Delemotez. When talking about the Jodel design he advised builders to "add lightness".

Interesting descriptions, Sue. Which one is you? Plenty of forumites turn up at fly-ins, but it's damned hard to identify them. One year there was talk of name tags, but maybe some people value their anonymity! I have often been accosted on my arrival by people recognising my little plane, but after we walk away we blend into the crowd.

Some of these flash new planes may be fast and efficient, but they don't seem to be very forgiving when things go wrong. Older designs like Cessnas carried that inbuilt safety margin at the cost of lower speed and higher fuel-burn. A bit like home insurance.

Always an impressive event; see you there.

...Common sense seems to have disappeared along the way. As an example, at our SES meetings on a Tuesday evening we now have to complete a Safety Management Sheet risk assessment for say, sitting around a table attending a presentation on how to repair a leak in a roof. The cotton wool brigade has gone mad for fear of litigation & that if someone cuts their finger the experts will descend on the place & all the knives will now have to be kept in a locked safe with 2 separate combinations. There is now almost no such thing as personal responsibility.We have to get back to some common sense.

That's not likely to happen, though. The influential end of town usually has better-built homes. Most of our roof jobs have been cheap, run-down rentals.

I have used a tarp over the wing and it is inhibiting, in that if you want to go fly, you have to make everything safe. A small dome type tent is no heavier than a tarp and easier to pitch, plus it can be left standing when you fly.A "Thermarest" mattress is ideal. it is open cell and self inflates when you unroll it. A lot warmer than an air mattress and also very comfortable. The seat in my Corby is made of Confor foam, designed to be used as a mattress if necessary, but is a bit short, leaving my lower legs unsupported.

A good down sleeping bag is light and well insulating.

 

For cooking I have a hexamine stove, but have never used it. I believe the gas stoves which can be screwed on and off a small cylinder are OK at the low altitudes we fly at and it is legal for us to make a safety assesment about them.

 

Pillow consists of my spare and unworn clothes.

 

A LED light can be made to run off your 12V electrics and uses very little power. I bought 12V MR16 I think they are called, 4 for $25 from Mitre Ten and made one into a torch running off a motor cycle type battery. I have been using it for over a month and the voltage is still 12V.

On this forum there is an awful lot of knowledge about aeroplanes (and lots of other things in life). We are lucky people on here offer advice which would otherwise cost heaps, or be unavailable.

Trouble is, even though people like Dafydd can compress a lifetime's experience on one topic into a few paragraphs, many probably don't have the patience to read even that. Perhaps we need to refine that wisdom even more; smelt it down to the essence.

To start things off, here is some hard-won, but condensed wisdom which goes straight to the pool room:

...a little knowledge can be a dangerous thing.

With stalls and spins: if an aircraft is Easy In, Easy Out, then Hard In, Hard Out also applies.

DL: appears that every fool-proof device breeds a new evolution in fools;

It's important to think about the future, but it's more important to be present in the now.

What is the attraction of the crash comics? Am I peverse in going straight to Accidents and Incidents, or is a healthy thing to learn from others' stuff-ups?

A good point, BB, but cost of installation and compliance is humungous. It would require big turnover to recoup the investment.

What we really need is a certified-quality fuel to replace both mogas and avgas. That should keep Jabs and Rotaxes happy, and I believe many of the older engines are slowly being adapted to Life After Lead.

Crikey Turbs, they might be swamped with stories!

After camping near a Spitfire with a tarp over the wing I was inspired to cut down a tent we bought in the 1970s. It now slips over the wing so that I don't have to carry tent poles.

Mozzie-proof, just enough room- and I can do a close-up inspection of the flap hinges from my sleeping bag.

I can also hang onto the tie-down during a howling gale!

Don't skimp on your mattress. After too many nights on thin foam, I spent a bit more on a self-inflating mattress. It's light and will compress into a tiny space. Now I get a decent night's sleep.

YNRM $2.354/L

A new experience for me.....first take off of the day, look down, no airspeed indication. Too late to abort, so I flew the circuit by feel, and I didn't die. The pitot tubing had detached from the indicator. That prompted me to spend an hour or so playing around with different failure scenarios.

Can someone knowledgeable let me know... Is it safer to pull BRS or perform a forced landing?

...Some say to arm them before you blast off etc. Some say 500 ft..Some say 1500.. Our bantam had one fitted, but the handle was right next to the flap lever. And theres a few pilots I know of that I dont want playing around with things like that!!!. Made me very nervous seeing the hands go up and grab the lever, and fidget with the BS handle..Not a nice feeling...

Activating the igniter is said to require a pretty firm pull on the red handle, so accidental rocket launches should be rare if some thought is given to placement of the handle.

Well it was a demonstrator so the BRS folk will be pretty chuffed how well the demonstration worked out with some amateur video footage to boot. The Cirrus folk, maybe not so chipper about the situation. Great that no one was hurt.

This incident is a good reminder that parachutes require regular maintenance. My BRS is about due for a repack. We are lucky that this country has people authorised to do the job.

I thought so too Shags, until one visited our local. Slippery and impressive it may be, but he used an awful lot of tar to get it into the air. I don't want to think about how it would go landing in a paddock if the noise stopped.

There is at least one of these in Oz:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quickie_Aircraft

...and while we're gathering statistics, how many more people are flying because they can afford a Jabiru, but not a Rotax?

Theres a D10 on my current work site but try as much as they can it just won't lift off with or without flap (maybe the problem is the scraper in front that it's pushing?)Sorry been a long day

All the best designs start on the back of a napkin etc!You should start a thread with the idea, I am interested for one.

Napkins are a bit upmarket for paupers like me. I have often got carried away on paper tablecloths in the sort of restaurants I can afford. One night I was midway thru a complex design when my other half pointed out that it was a real, dinky di tablecloth- and biro doesn't easily wash out. Cured me.

I think you will find that they'll work just as well that bit further out; the main thing is that the tailplane is wholly in the wake of the part of the wing between the fences. You may lose a couple of tenths of a knot of the reduced stall speed, but the spin-resistance will still work. It's not critical that the vortices hit the tailplane.

...That is one case for direct drive engines, the lower revs do make less disturbance IMO.

Prop noise is a challenge. I like ducted fans, and I'm toying with a channel-wing design (drawn on the back of envelopes) which would keep the people underneath happy.