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pylon500

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Everything posted by pylon500

  1. Maybe we should have Jumbo's in RAAus, you can get a few thousand litres in them......
  2. Poor old controller's probably going to get a grilling...
  3. That's some serious overkill! Even if this was going to be fabric covered afterwards, this is WAY too much material. You will also find that, suddenly it's quite hard to flex the sides in!! If you're fully skinning the outside, you only need a couple of verticals to support the outer skin, and they only need small simple triangles to brace them. There's a reason that the small triangles are all thats used, it's all thats needed.... If fully skinned, diagonals are pointless, the skin will do that, and you may remember that the diagonals on a curved frame do not stay on the skin 'plane', so you can't rivet to them anyway, or were you planning on gluing with Sikaflex like Gary...?
  4. While I totally agree with your sentiments, as in we all want more for less, but the truth is, with our English inspired bureaucracy, it's a case of the victim being 'hung, dead and buried' before they realise "Sorry M'Lord, we seem to have got the wrong one". The funny part about the American 'improvement' to aid dying GA, was LSA, which we blindly got on the bandwagon and followed, even though those that actually read through it and said "hang on a minute, have you seen all the bits that go with it?", while being fully aware that we actually lead the world in ultralight regulations (or lack of them) at the time, and we managed to step backwards about twenty years to take on LSA. We had unlimited speed, retractable, variable prop, auto pilot at least ten years ago, we were following Europe with 450kg, but were looking at 480kg for manufactured and allowing 540kg for homebuilts, with our typical whingeing and complaining, we would have eventually got to 600kg with our own regs. People would still be complaining that we need still more weight, but with the above freedoms, they wouldn't be as many.
  5. Seems to be the way most want it to go, they just can't see that if you want GA, you'll get GA, and everything that goes with it! Remember, GA is dying, try to remember WHY !!!
  6. The aircraft is reminiscent of a plane I test flew many years back, that was also built by an above average 'handy man', built his own house, wooden boat, half finished a KR-2 but got sick of dealing with DoT (CASA back then) and also builds wooden weaving looms. As a University lecturer, he clued himself up on engineering and aerodynamics, and designed and built his own ultralight. Only powered by a Rotax 503, it could still cruise in the 80kt range. Was also a bit squeezy in the cabin, and was all plywood. My own designed single seater was all metal, also a 503, was 30" wide in the cabin (nicknamed the flying armchair), and could hit the mid 70's. I could also fit a full size, two stroke exhaust within the cowl. Was later converted to a two seater. Haas been sitting the back of my hangar for a few years, but nearly ready to fly again... Still not sure how you're getting that exhaust in there? Arthur.
  7. Don't need more than 600kg. If you can't build a decent plane under that weight, you shouldn't be building planes. If you want to fly heavier planes than 600kg, GA has been in existence for more than eighty years. If you can't hold a GA medical, learn to put up with only one pax, and light weight, day VFR aircraft. Don't go bringing your potential heart attacks, and clapped out 1950's airframes over to us, we don't want them, we don't need them, and we have better aeroplanes anyway! Gee, that felt good, I'll get off my soap box now and let this calamity carry on to it's final destruction, after which, we'll have to look at re-creating the AUF again....
  8. Just some observations, which I'm not 100% sure of..? Is the wing actually tapered? Depending on which photo's I look at, I get the impression that the wing has a lot of cantilever after the strut attach point? Yet the spar caps look to be about the same size over the whole length? The strut reinforcement blocks look a bit 'sudden', meaning they don't appear to taper the load out into the web gradually. I think I would have used a plywood rib at the strut attach, to stabilise the shear movement in the top cap in that area. At least with full span ailerons, the twisting load on the wing is lessoned. Separately, I would have mounted the engine a little higher, for multiple reasons; Less power/pitching moment, Better ground clearance, More room under the mount to try to hide the exhaust, (it can be done, you don't need that big can hanging totally on the outside). How wide is your cockpit?, does look a little cramped.. Sorry for any grief, just my observations (hopefully all wrong).
  9. Reports from The Oaks, had water over the Northern end of the strip, as well as the Eastern end of what was the cross strip (down towards the creek). Will take a few days to dry, the wind helps.
  10. Shame about all those side plates you had lasered !! And as mentioned before, if fully skinning the sides, you only need light bits of angle to stiffen the skin.
  11. Provided it's one of the newer Jabs, and not a 55.
  12. If you want to align airflow past ailerons, it's better to fit fences on the end of the ailerons than hope for winglets to help (and I certainly wouldn't expect the Jabiru ones to be of any use). Having said that, the Jabiru ailerons need all the help they can get, as they are very poorly designed.
  13. While this is all thread drift, I would still like to reiterate my view that 600kg is plenty for what we are generally doing, and remember that the Europeans have to do the same for only 450kg. We use the 'recreational' moniker, just to hide the word ultralight from the insurance companies. Going beyond 600kg is stepping on what SAAA exists for. Failing that, if CASA is going to step away from private flying, and let it self govern, how about we get some real dispensations towards a 'recreational' world of flying and allow all the fun things we want like aerobatics, night VMC, private crop dusting, 'Not for profit' flying (cost recovered flying like beach shark patrols, at cost social joy flights, etc). And more so in the experimental/amateur field like, multi engine, turbine engine, light weight helicopters, lifting platforms etc. I was going to say electric powered aircraft, but I feel these will become mainstream much sooner than people think ! Meanwhile, my mate with the RV4 is still thinking about moving on to something else.
  14. Has someone got the copyright to 'OZFLY'? As for radio, technically yes should have it, although no RPT goes into Narromine, which is usually the reason for radio. (I said reason, not rules...) Having said that, all the times I've arrived at Narromine for Natfly, it's been a case of, the place looks deserted, but the radio chatter is non stop! But even with radio, many seemed to just turn up at all different places around the area, and try to figure out where the circuit was...
  15. Like the hydraulic cable swaging tool.
  16. If you're going to metal skin the sides of the fuse, it's not worth making steel (or whatever) fitting to hold the vertical stiffeners. A small aluminium triangle bracket on the inside would be plenty. It could include the locating tag for the cross member. Truth be known, the square tube stiffener is overkill as well, even if you only intend to skin with 0.016 thou.
  17. Bubbles only take a bit of practice (and following standard procedure), are fairly easy to make. One of our locals got it right (eventually)
  18. So the extrusions come pre-drilled?
  19. 1500kg is a lot of aeroplane for a two seater? Or are we going to let the real warbirds into RAAus now?
  20. So no option as a taildragger? If you came up with a way of making the plate symmetrical, you could just reverse it for tail wheel set up.
  21. RAAus RV4; Only single seat, No aero's, Self maintain, $210 membership, $110 rego (subject review) No controlled airspace (UNLESS PPL'ed) GA rego'ed; Two seat, Aerobatic, LAME maintained (unless SAAA trained) possibly $850~$1500 100hourly/annual, No rego fees (yet), No license fees (yet) Go anywhere.. What have I missed....?
  22. And we've just re-invented GA with ALL it's associated rules, regulations and additional costs.
  23. Actually if you're looking to build something in the RV3/4 type range, have a look at the Panther; https://flywithspa.com/ Looks like an RV, but built simple like a Sonex. Aerobatic (if VH), they were fairly cheap, don't know about now, and I think a two seat is in the works. Has folding wings. I was looking at one at Oshkosh'13, VERY interested... This is the prototype; 912s, 914, 915?, Corvair, 0-200, 0-233, UL, plenty of choices...
  24. Some Shawnee photos (by request)
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