Old Koreelah

- Re “stores of energy”. Recommended search is for methane hydrate. China, Japan, et all, have major research drilling programs under way. We ain’t running out of carbon fuels anytime soon. About 10’000 years supply according to some accounts...

FB I fear you still don't get it; who said we're running out of fossil fuel? The issue is the problems caused by our over-dependence on coal, oil and gases.

- The ship Endeavour was an enterprise of discovery and progress...

And a great boost to human progress, just like the current boom in renewable energy.

- Re “imported fuel” Yep, idiotic in the extreme. Australia could produce all the fuel it needed and yet we import it..

I totally agree. Many of the world's best brains say this country could be a clean energy superpower.

Old Koreelah, if you believe you are doing something wrong then I ask the question why are you still doing it ?

I guess a few church leaders have asked that question of wayward priests...

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It will take 10 to 20 years to dig our economies out of the Coronavirus hole...

PM I fear you may be right about the economic impact of the current pandemic, but maybe it's doing us a favour: the Corona virus may be little worse than normal influenza outbreaks, but the global reaction might be a good practise run for future fights against more lethal antibiotic-resistant killer bugs.

...We will quickly find out the most efficient power sources as we move away from 'first world' problems of environmental one-upmanship.

The most efficient power sources are being installed at a rapid rate and I sure hope 'first world' environmental one-upmanship continues, instead of the much less productive military one-upmanship that dominated previous centuries.

Hmmm... Old Koreelah, when did earth become a “lifeboat” ?... if we is using boating analogy’s, I’d liken it more to a ship called Endeavour....

FB you must have missed the lessons of the Space Race, when the world watched humans trying to survive in tiny little capsules floating in the void. Their onboard resources were limited, their life-support systems had to work perfectly or they were doomed.

The same applies to our planet. We totally depend on what it gives us, plus the energy arriving from our nearby star. Relying on stores of energy laid down in the distant past must end sooner or later, Sooner if it is doing damage.

Cook is one of my heroes, but his ship Endeavour was nothing like our Spaceship Earth; he could catch fish as he sailed, toss his garbage overboard and forget it. He frequently made landfall to replenish his provisions, quite often stripping local, self-sufficient communities of food, a habit that led to his own demise.

Australia has been occupied by humans for over 50,000 years. And yet, if you were to look at Australia a mere 300 years ago one could argue that the then small population of less then a million were living at the limits of Australia’s then known ‘resources’. We are now over 20 millions and also feeding and provisioning many millions more around the planet...

All true, but you ignore the fact that this impressive feat of feeding far more than our current 24 million people is totally dependent on imported fuel and has resulted in massive damage to our farmland, forests, rivers and aquifers. Australia has the worst record in the world for the extinction of our unique wildlife.

Old Koreelah, if you really believe you are using more ‘resources’ then the “poor people”, why are you doing recreational flying?

Perhaps you need to “make contact with reality”.....?

Well done, FB. Finally we get back to the original focus of this thread.

Guilty as charged. I will plead for leniency on the basis that there are worse offenders than me.

...Oz is running out of the easy money to waste on ‘alternative’ power and I’d hazard a guess common sense will return in a few years when the green power disaster really starts to bite...?

Please make contact with reality.

A couple of centuries of burning fossil fuels has given us rapid development, but has also done much damage to the only planet we have. Why would you oppose moving back to more sustainable energy sources?

Commercial interests are voting for those green solutions.

What do you mean by that ?

Simple maths: there are over seven billion of us in this lifeboat.

I am using much more of its food, water, energy, etc. than the poorest people.

We are using up its resources faster than they can be produced; plundering our oceans, forests, aquifers and farmland at an unsustainable rate to meet current demand, as billions more aspire to our standard of living...

My 0360 burns.... let’s say 40 Litres an hour.

I have 9 grandchildren and I don’t feel that I’m destroying their future with the residues of that burnt fuel.

I do feel that if they choose, they may one day be able to enjoy and maybe understand why their grandfather chose to FLY!

It's all relative, Kc. 40 litres per hour is thirsty compared to my baby's dozen or so, but perhaps what we should be looking at is the total amount consumed. How often do you fly?

I fill my 205 litre drum once a year and buy maybe another 100 litres p.a. from bowsers. My car only does about 10,000 km per year, averaging 9 litres per 100, so that's about 900 litres of diesel.

So my plane costs the environment about a third as much as my car.

Does that make me feel better? I still use mobs more than my share of the planet's resources...

While I. Agree that often the private contractors may cost a lot more than they should, the scary but is that they are still cheaper and still usually deliver better service.

Maybe for some; not for us.

In the steam train days my home town got mail from Sydney inside three days; now it takes over a week.

We get more and longer blackouts today than when our local electricity County Council ran the show.

When I buy things online they insist on sending via courier; but can never tell me which local agent will receive it, so I have to phone around to find my parcel. In thirty-odd years only one has ever been delivered to my address (5 km from PO). My $12,500 aero engine sat in an unlocked, half-open garage for days before I tracked it down. I retreived it from among the undelivered parcels and the agent still has no idea who collected it.

...In WW1, the green, newly-arrived Doughboys on the French front, were placed with Australian Diggers, to learn infantry tactics and strategies - against the wishes of the American General Pershing...

Some of those fresh American troops joined in the great Aussie push meticulously planned by Monash; one of the greatest Australian feats of arms.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Hamel

It usually does, and improves service as long as it isn't a monopoly. Governments are rubbish at efficiency and service.

Yep, but big business can be at least as wasteful. Not so long ago career public servants took pride in building and maintaining our communications, power, water and transport infrastructure. Since privatisation, staff have been trimmed to the bone so that one storm event can overwhelm the few people left to run the system.

That metropolitan access fee everyone is moaning about also maintains the firefighting reticulation and hydrant points. Some times the social cost is entirely justified

Good point, mn. The crazy push to privatise everything, in the mistaken belief it will save money, often results in our critical infrastructure being neglected. Our recent national emergencies have shown how important it is to spend a bit on water, fire and health facilities.

See other thread

https://www.recreationalflying.com/threads/casa-safety-notice-warns-against-stalling-bristell-aircraft-19-feb-2020.70789/

Well clearly we will have to end extravagant hobbies like Recreational Flying then.

Of course, but you go first...

No, centuries before it's an issue.

Yes, if packed into feedlots like cattle, our species doesn't take up very much space.

But... we're plundering the planet for the food, water and resources those people consume.

We're changing environments at an accelerating rate, and most native critters can't adapt quickly enough to survive. Animals and plants are becoming extinct at an alarming rate.

We may be next.

Over a dozen years, several rebuilds and two replacement engines, my little plane has a cost less than $40k.

Cheaper than boating, 4WDriving and motorcycling.

One of my instructors always put samples into his mower fuel tin.

One issue with these older Jab engines is corrosion of the steel barrels if left idle too long.

It hasn't been a problem in our normally dry inland climate, but I put a few ml of Moreys into the fuel just in case. If planning a long period of inactivity, I run it hard and inject some 2 stroke oil downstream of the carbie.

Oil temp from 85 to 100C, depending on how much of the oil cooler I mask off with tape.

CHTs kept below 130C even on the hottest days if I open the cowl flaps enough. So cooling is okey, but I’d still like to separate the oil cooling airflow from the engine cooling airflow.

Having a separate NACA duct sealed from the rest of the engine to my oil cooler on the lower firewall has kept my oil temps at the lower end of the scale even on stinking hot summer days...

Nice. I tried a separate NACA inlet and outlet for my oil cooler to avoid, as Mike Borgelt said, dumping extra air into the lower engine bay and reducing the cooling effectiveness of that system.

The other reason was to create a source of clean (no chance of exhaust gases) warmed air for heating the cabin in winter. That part worked, but my NACA duct was too far aft to be effective, so I scrapped the whole thing and went back to the previous setup.

However, I'd still like to separate the two cooling systems. It may be possible to dump oil cooler air out the bottom of my cowl belly.

While flying in a group I've had one bloke reporting his iPad losing power, no paper map and he was lost...

It can happen.

Same here; once mistook Picton coal mine for a water reservoir south of Sydney.

Also mis-identified an expanse of white far ahead as Leslie Dam, when it was acres of bird netting covering fruit trees near Stanthorpe...

Looking good, Bex. I might have missed that bit, but have you done aerodynamic testing of the design?

The slab sides would likely increase spin resistance.

One of the many jobs in my "to do" list is a proper compass swing and updating my deviation chart.

Some of my basic training was done on the edge of the western plains; my instructor suggested I do my X-Country endorsement there as well, because it was so featureless that I'd learn to use the compass. I regret not taking his advice, because I did my Nav training on the coast and was spoiled by all the recognisable geography. Maybe a spot of navigating on a flat, boring ocean would be a good way to learn compass reading.

We are lucky they are rare in Oz. North America seems to suffer a few Cyclone Tracey-sized tornado disasters each year.

Couldn't find anywhere else to put this: