pylon500

G'Day Kim, scratching my head trying to think who you are? I'm Arthur, Len's son, and I was in the Mercurians from about 14 onwards, but maybe a few years after you. I know dad was in the club when I was still a toddler.

Possibly just as it seems, although that then means there was three people involved. It looked like he looked at three different bags, but all the same colour and type, while someone was checking a manifest sheet? Who knows...

G'Day Mike, thought you might like this one... (I colourised this in photoshop, taken from a newspaper clipping) Len Armour 1963.

Yeah, it was loosely based on the Nobler, and incorporated some ideas from later stunt designs like longer moment arm fuselages and aerodynamic balances on the elevators. Here's another one I had. Didn't look much like the picture on the box by the time I'd finished with it...

Almost looks like a Monty Python sketch of some sort. Team race was boring, I flew stunt and combat. That was a VERY long time ago!

Have heard now from different sources regarding a windsock being at the crash site. There is a lot of bushland around the airstrip, and although I think I remember there being fences around the strip, there may well have been an animal problem on the strip. Scenario; On approach pilot see animals, initiates go'round, pulls to right of strip to observe animal movement and inadvertently hits windsock? Totally speculation.

So you've still got the Allegro, or still just looking for an RV4?

Don't know how I missed this thread back in July? My mate still wants to sell his RV4, looking for something more like a Lightwing taildragger, although I think he may have been interested in the Allegro.... Has a short grass strip to fly from, not really suitable for an RV.

Just missed the live stream of the test flights (at night), suggested that the props didn't sound like they were absorbing all the power available, little bit more pitch maybe. Also suggested he needs to let the nose down a tiny bit after lift off and gain a bit more speed. The aircraft looks to be flying just on the edge of the drag bucket. We shall see. It's odd, modellers pick up full size flying pretty quick. Full size pilots don't get RC flying nearly as quick.

So the thought occurs, if the fence was to maintain ticket sales, how many extra tickets got sold to would-be fence jumpers compared to how much it cost to hire the fence to catch them?

Seen one airshow, you've seen them all. I'll wait till someone organises a 'flyin' for pilots and planes. We can talk to fellow pilots about building and/or flying our planes, not just what colour they come in. We can discuss the pro's and con's of various propellers without someone in a blinding coloured vest going into conniptions if we touched one. If the circuit doesn't look too full, we can take up a mate to show him our great machine. I could go on, but.

I think there may be a different way of looking at the manufacturer building thing in that; A. For a manufacturer to build a 24 aircraft, it has to go through some certification acceptance as well as workshop acceptance. B. A manufacturer is still only an 'entity', which is backed up by a person(s), the company owner. This entity still has the privilege of building something privately (most likely more than 51%) and registering it as a 19-. The only problem comes if/when he tries to sell it. I think it has to be deemed 'second hand' before it can be sold, but I'm not sure of the definition of that? Twelve months old? Twenty five hours old? Maybe once the 'builder' deems it to be 'surplus' to requirement (non following on from the prototype, company folds, company goes in different direction), and if the aircraft has a 'safe history of operation', there should be no reason it couldn't be sold. Too busy to sift through all the paperwork to be sure, just my gut feeling.

I remember fly-ins. Would grab my camping gear, fly to some remote airfield, meet a lot of old friends and chat about our aeroplanes. Sometimes we'd jump in our plane and do a few circuits so others could see what it looked/sounded like in flight. If you got yourself well known enough, you could bum a fly in someone else's pride and joy and add it to your logbook. Then you could wander around and see what new gizmos, engines, planes, etc that people were building/bringing into the country. No one seemed to mind too much when said manufactures and importers wanted to put on demo flights (we all remember Nestor demo'ing the Storch), but for some reason, organisers started to think we wanted more aerial entertainment, and before we knew it, we were going to airshows. Now we can watch parachutists open a 'fly-in', but I don't think anyone can parachute out of an ultralight. We now (pay) to watch professional aerobatics pilots put on a display of daring do, although we can't aerobat our ultralights. We watch the Roulettes do their thing while trying to drum up enrolment in the air-force, even though most of the people at the show are older than the Roulette pilots. And of course all this closes the airspace around the field so no-one can come or go, or take their mates for a quick flip around the area. Maybe with forty years of flying I'm starting to get a bit jaded so I probably wont be going to Narromine.

All quite valid, and while I don't know who did the engineering for the mod (we did have an aero-engineer building a Wheeler Express here), the gear mounting was proven after an EFTO with the aircraft ending up in a deep ditch at the end of the runway. I became involved in flight testing after the rebuild from this incident, and a different motor. Although the gear leg snapped, there was only minor damage to the mounting structure, if any (I cant remember as I wasn't really involved with the project at that time. the aircraft was built from an early J200 kit.

Remember that not everyone is on farcebook or twitts, if you want to put up pictures, just drag and drop to your desktop, then upload from there.

I've had a little to do with this J230 version over the years, still only flies like a Jabiru (take that whichever way you like), but fairly good utility. Bit of a beast with a Lyco 233 up front, and the U/C on this one is possibly just a little far forward, which keeps you on your toes..

Looks like the quick or the dead! I missed this post, and have a mate that wants to sell his RV4, is looking for something with better short field ability, not necessarily STOL, just a slower/shorter strip requirement. Sure you don't want two?!!

Um, yes, well I've been away for quite a while... I've wandered over into a different realm, and dabbling as an amateaur writer! Was just having a bit of a break and came back here to see what's happening. I'm probably not very good, as a writer, so will probably come back eventually. The differential system is typically being used on all these small contra-rotating helicopters.

OK, makes a little more sense with the chordline diagram. I'm assuming it is the tip section that has the twist, as opposed to the whole wing? Having the taper ratio change at the tip (getting proportionally wider) is going to do some odd things to the span loading on the spar out there, but probably OK. There does seem to be some pointless complexity going into this thing, to say nothing of the overkill of rivets from what I can see so far. The spar rivet pitch looks OK, but have look at the rivet pitch on the wing ribs of a Cessna or Piper, not unusual to have nearly 2" pitch on only 3/32 rivets. Still not sure what the scalloped doubler on the ailerons is for? I had promised myself not to get too involved as I figured most beginners pick up some of the standard way of doing things before they get too far in, but your resources seem to be able to let you go ahead in leaps and bounds... Maybe missing a few pointers along the way? Can't find the 'chin scratch' emoji

If you could keep this in 95:10, you can have as many props/engines as you like. As for contra-rotating, just a quick scribble... As I say, only a quick scribble, probably a lot of little details to sort out, but you get the idea...

If this wing flies, you will be surprised how even a small amount of non-moving tip trailing edge will dampen aileron response. That is if that end bit of trailing edge is not going to move. My second aircraft had a wingtip similar to the Sapphire, with (admittedly) a small aileron. Roll response was not startling. Later, the trailing edge was cut off and joined to the aileron, giving much better roll control. I was initially going to go with just a left wing, but was convinced to add a right one as well...

Some companies spend years researching wingtip design; Some don't think it matters...

Will have to give kudo's to Jab for that gear leg! Landed in a plowed paddock and splintered, but still supporting the aircraft!

The 'plastic' blades referred to are the original 'Ultra-Prop' propellers. The plastic blades were a bit of a compromise between production and performance. Enter 'Aerofibre', a composite blade maker in Queensland, who produced the 'Brolga' blades to suit the Ultra-Prop hub system. Upon his retirement, the Brolga blades were produced by Bolly. Interesting looking blade, and if I read right, they will be moulded plastic like the original Ultra blades... Hopefully the MARAP process should sort this out.

Yeah, there is that problem. I suspected as much. The original plastic blades, although they look primitive, actually work fairly well and can easily be cut to length. You avatar talks of a WB582, I would have thought you should be using a four blade prop for that power and diameter? No, I don't have the time to make/repair props, sorry. A friend had the three blade Bolly on his Fisher 503 Drifter, very nice, and quiet. Had a minor hub issue, but Bolly sorted it, a good prop.