turboplanner

27 minutes ago, Flightrite said:

We can thank the greenie nutters for now having such well dressed donks, ADR27 hit then it went down hill from there!

It wasn't greenies, both NOx and Particulates cause cancer. A lot of lung cancer  was probably caused by smog in cities. Exhaust smoke had pretty much disappeared by 2012, and since then Particulates have been reduced by 97% and NOx by 98% on the improved 2012 levels. Cars and trucks are now cleaner than the urban air they move through and actually suck in dirty air and blow it out at the clean ADR standard.

45 minutes ago, onetrack said:

Excessive levels of electronics and electrical devices is a recipe for an increased level of failure. While electronics have progressed over the last 4 decades, their reliability is still suspect simply because they work on low levels of current, very thin layers of insulation, and a nasty tendency to fail from the impact of severe temperature extremes, and vibration.

 

Modern road vehicles still fail to progress on a regular basis - but they fail to do so, for far different reasons, as compared to the road vehicles of 40 years ago.

Todays road vehicles suffer from an increased amount of fire events, an increased amount of electrical, and particularly electronic failure, and shutdowns caused by ECU's going into "limp home mode" when sensors report measurements outside their set parameters. I would imagine it would be highly undesirable to set a "limp home mode" in an aircraft engine, simply due to one sensor reporting a fault, that may or may not impact engine operation. 

 

In addition, vastly increased levels of electronics and electrics increase weight - and weight is anathema to light aircraft - or most aircraft.

 

Reports are that vehicle manufacturers have managed to shave an average of 140kgs of weight from the average car over the last 30 years, due to the increased use of light alloys and thinner higher tensile steel sheet in panels and even major structural members.

However, a large proportion of this weight shaved from the primary build has been added back again, via the installation of a huge amount of electrical and electronic devices - which range from engine controls, through to CAN bus architecture, wiring and onboard diagnostics, through to entertainment and safety devices.

I can endorse that having recently had to pull a head off, almost needing a gps to fin the engine. The number of sensor connections was mind boggling, everyone clicking apart in a different way which had to be learned and the looms burying the engine.

.......always rock solid and he showed OT how it is done. If others spend their money quaffing gin every afternoon, that's their problem and .......................

34 minutes ago, Ian said:

The issue is that the technologies aren't mainstream in GA whereas it has in the automotive and RPT industry and RPT. And they are really inexpensive.

I attempted to explain some of the constraints to your theory, you can't just take a water cooled car engine and put it in an aircraft; but it's a lot more complicated, and on top of that there are financial pressures which are working against low volume applications like GA and RA sports use.

9 minutes ago, Geoff_H said:

For a continuing flight the aircraft could use the boiloff in the APU.  Defuel between longer flights.  I don't see a need for a second tank. Fuel tanks would be in similar places to existing tanks.  But with very good thermal insulation.  I have worked on control systems design of two hydrogen plants, one using methane conversion the other electrolysis, never on liquid hydrogen but have worked on control systems for liquid oxygen/nitrogen plants.  I expect that there would be difficulties but one has to be open to brain storming to advance technology.  

Yes, it's here, looking at the basics, that is much more productive than building a one off feature car for a Motor Show that doesn't actually work, but sells everyone on a new fuel or new motive power, like the Jet cars and trucks of the 1950s. The fuel tank, lower power, and infrastructure were the achilles heel of LNG.

.....to do. With an evil grin he went online and took out a $30 million loan before the bank manager could get back; then he encouraged Trackbine to do the same, and .............................

5 hours ago, Ian said:

Actually modern turbocharged and some naturally aspirated engines dynamically adjust fuel metering to the delivered air. They also use oxygen sensors to ensure that injectors deliver the right amount of fuel.

Actually a number of boat engines are just repurposed automotive engines no real redesign. The reality is that car engines can be run at high loads for extended periods without damage and at optimal levels of efficiency. Aircraft engines can't do this.

 

Actually if you look at modern passenger planes this story is very true. Well designed automated systems actually do a very good job of flying the planes and warn you if you're going to fly into a mountain, pilots actually fall asleep quite a bit . A few meters either side in a car and your goose is cooked. 

My point is that the technology exists and has existed for decades which should make this a moot point. It is also cheap as chips to implement. Why are we even asked to manage fuel flow? It is dumb, the manufacturer knows best and yet they give you knobs, inaccurate, uncalibrated fuel delivery and then try to point the finger at others. I think they should be publicly castigated. 

The problem is the most GA planes don't have these magic fuel maps, don't have calibrated fuel flow and these features only appear in the top end planes.

 

The research has been done, the designs are already done. For instance Saab uses a simple mechanism of running current through a spark plug to detect detonation, it's usable on noisy air cooled engines and can detect detonation on a per cylinder basis. Also all the patents have expired. You can just pick up old Saab coils and stick them on a spark plug and they do their thing with a few additional electronic components. The only thing holding this back is the current chip shortage.  

With these answers I wonder then what all the earlier slagging was about?

.......hard earned cash to the banker. The bank manager smiled and turned to go, but Turbo said "Not so fast, we'd like you to try the new Turbine mulesing system........tha is if you want more business......."

What could he do but ................

...... he was a sadist. Like a fool Turbo who was looking for some sympathy said yes, and the Bank Manager sank his dirty fingernails into the wound. Not having been mulsed, most people won't know how painful that was but we can tell you there's still an outline of a spreadeagled Turbo on the ceiling of the board room, and just in case the bank manager came back for more he transfered the money on the spot. "That's not enough" said the bank manager "You forgot the interest" and Turbo .................

..........Knock on the front door. It was the Bank Manager looking for Mr Turbine. Yes NES faithful, even the business moguls have to butter up the Bank Manager. "What do you want him for?" asked Turbo, who'd used that one for years, and normally made some smalltalk, asked the girls to rustle up some coffee and scones, and excused himself before he was discovered. This new Bank Manager had come from the Country and was used to those on the land becoming very clever when they hadn't repayed a loan. He said "Mr Turbine, that $14 million loan payment was due yesterday and I'm here to collect it." Turbo mumbled something about not being able to get good staff and he'd take care of it, but the Bank Manager cust him off at the pass saying he wasn't leaving until he had a receipt for the transfer. Thinking quickly, Turbo said "You're too late", and turning and dropping his pants showed him the mulesing. "The other bank manager forced me to give him the money I was holding for you" he said, and the Bank Manager .............

2 minutes ago, gareth lacey said:

these posts should be its own ,this should only be about the increase in weight for experimental and lsa aircraft 

 

That should also be in its own thread. This thread was about the consultation period which ended months, or even years ago.

........what you lose in prime wool you gain in pickles, which McDonalds buy at a premium price. Turbine Agribusiness has been helping Cappy with the DNA to grow pickles all over the fleece area because McDonalds pay a lot more for pickles that the world does for their jumpers, these days made out of petroluem byproducts.  It does mean keeping them inside under heat lamps when they aren't eating, but a strange thing happened ..................

1 hour ago, Ian said:

Even skilled operators often operate them in a less than optimal manner which is detrimental to engine life. Because of this people simply cop it on the chin when cylinders, lifters of other components fail short of their expected lifetimes. Virtually no car engines need the babysitting that airplane engines need to operate correctly and modern car engines are simple better across the board. People with zero knowledge often drive them for hundreds of thousands of km.

Aircraft rely on lift to do their work, and the air density is variable. At low levels you can take off first thing in the morning after wiping off frost, do a cross country leg, have lunch, and in 40 degree heat crash into trees at the end of a runway much longer than the one you took off from. There are just two inputs for car engines: rolling resistance, drivelinhe coefficient and surface coefficient. When you're on a bitumen road you can sit back and relax - all the calculations have been done for you, and that's it compared to the pilot that starts beside the sea and flies up to a mountain trip for lunch, crashing into the trees at the end of the runway because the air was less dense. Continuing this, if you want to fly at higher altitudes it's necessary to reduce the richness of fuel, and if you have a constant speed prop you have to make similar decisions to a semi trailer driver with a full load; you have to match the engine load to the condition.

That's why we have training for these situations.

With the fuel supply systems and electronics control we have today, it should be possible for the altitude and OAT issues to be factored in by the ECM, but, for example, Cirrus seems to be more prone to mistakes than legacy engines.

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There's also the chestnut related to load, and how plane engines are designed for high power situations. This record attempt from the 1989 demonstrates the fact that this isn't true, car engines are tested at full power for extended periods.

I couldn't get the link to work, but that will be something Subaru did probably for publicity.

The terms are intermittant loading and constant loading.

Aircraft engines are designed for constant loading as ar outboard motors.  Car engines are designed for intermittant loading as are Urban truck engines. Engines of Over the road trucks (long distance) are constant loading.

Car engines are cycled on the dyno with varying power demands.

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An example are the issues that Robertson helicopters had which were blamed on low lead fuel. The R22 uses the O360 engine, they had a rash of engine failures however fuel was exonerated. Should failures like this occur on a modern vehicle?

Should the O360 be used in a helicopter application where that cold high speed airflow is not available?

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Also the efficiency of the engines relates to the engines running leak of peak not the recommended Rich of Peak settings. As soon as operate in the recommended setting consumption jumps to at least 304g/KWh which puts it on par with Turbine engines. While Lycoming provides advice on how to run LoP they explicitly state. NOTE TEXTRON LYCOMING DOES NOT RECOMMEND OPERATING ON THE LEAN SIDE OF PEAK EGT. (the ALL CAPS is from the Document)

So where does that leave you when operating in this manner?

Self appointed experts come up with bright ideas, push them on people who want to save money and in answer to your questionusually leave the owner paying the bills. If you see something from a manufacturer in relation to using their product it probably means they are very hot under the collar and frustrated.

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Also large slow revving engines have a significant design advantage for fuel consumption, compared to smaller faster revving engines so they should perform significantly better than car engines.

Large slow revving engines being misused?

Fuel consumption relates to two things

1. injector squirts per minute if fuel injected (so rpm)

2. power demand. 

Fuel maps for each engine tell the story of their efficient and inefficient zones, and the manufacturer designe the gearing/prop to work up and down the efficient zone these days.

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I like mechanical things however these engines should be significantly better than they are. They're simple and a bit shit and have a number of design flaws which have been addressed in modern engines design. 

For example they shouldn't still sell engines with carburetors unless they can demonstrate efficient distribution of fuel. (which they can't) . Instead they like to pretend that the fuel injected engine is a premium thing.

Anti detonation technology has been ubiquitous in car engines for over 30 years but not in aircraft engine, this is despite numerous fatalities relating to engine failures which would have been survivable if the pilot knew the engine was destroying itself.

I'm sure the aviation industry would welcome new designers who could solve these issues economically.

........the story that he once made an entire tribe disappear when they started to arc up at one of Twiggy's developments (RM Williams Boots), and he was always pointing the bone.

The Medicine man mixed a power in some water and fish guts oil, took a big mouthful and sprayed it over the hydra heads and POOF! (NTTIAWWT) the heads disappeared. Cappy was free again and said "Let's go and have a G & T.................."

For your family there are cheap transponders for cars, used as anti-theft devices. One of those may do the job for your family.

7 hours ago, walrus said:

I'm sure there are better arguments in favor of a more holistic, less prescriptive and safer system than Australias.

All activities have become much more complicated as our population has increased.

I got a car licence by answering 10 questions and getting at least 8 correct, no driving test. Today it's mandatory to do 120 hours of driving under supervision before being tested plus a driving test plus a test on a book full of regulations. The road toll is down to one third what it was in 1970, 51 years ago when the population was 12.5 million against today at 26 million, a 200% increase.

I'd let my boat licence lapse years ago and had to sit for a new one a few years ago. I had to memorise a book then do a long electronic test which was harder than the GA paper test.

In GA I can remember someone spitting the dummy when mandatory radios came in. He refused to put one in his Tiger Moth because he said it wasn't what flying was about, and he sold the Tiger.

In GA today, if you want to get a PPL, there's more to learn in the syllabus in some areas, but it's still not that hard and you certainly don't have to do 120 hours of supervised training. If you go from the licence to hiring, it's very straightforward, in some respects simpler than it used to be because you don't have to get a lot of endorsements which used to apply.

The backbone of PPL students and training in Australia today is training for CPL which has been so good and so affordable that students have flocked from other countries in their thousands and rejuvenated airports around Australia.

Mainstream GA flying is still managed under prescriptive legislation where the Federal Government has the liability, so they tell you what to do.

If you want to buy your own GA aircraft, you're still in the same management network, and you've just complicated your life by many percentage points. That's up to you to choose, but not a good choice for someone flying less than a couple of hundred hours per year.

If you want to do some simple flying or specialised types of flying away from the busy airports, you can do it at your own risk; CASA came up with Self Admininistering Organisations.

Under SAO, you and the SAO carry the liability when you are flying locally out in the country, so you have a lot more freedom and a lot less cost, however somehow the SAO has to manage its duty of care and your duty of care for the risk, so can make rules and issued sanctions if it wishes.

Workplaces are a good example of SAOs in Industry, so for example if a workplace requires you to use a chainsaw it will send you for training, you'll get an ATO (Authority to Operate) having been trained to operate it safely.

We've seen in recent times you can buy a recreational aircraft at a very low price and fly around your local field or do local trips to BBQs or breakfasts very cheaply.

The complications and problems and costs come when people start jumping the boundaries.

In your case, building an RA aircraft under SAAA instead of RAA, you inherited an organisation which is a hybrid, with part of it operating as an SAO, and part of it, with VH registration operating under Prescriptive regulations, so understandably, a lot more complications to get your head around, because under prescriptive you just follow the regulations, under self administration you have to be identifying your duty of care and ensuring you discharge it 100% and 100% of the time if you don't want to lose your house and other assets.

In an RA aircraft, Airservices Australia allows you to operate over a huge area of Australia without any hindrance. You can fly in short hops from the south of the country to the north of the country west of the Great dividing range without much hindrance at all and in usually mild weather.

However, once flying in RAA, people have started to enter the formal Airservices network for GA, and that will turn the complications up exponentially; not impossible, but usually not as safe and not worth it, and you're back to ensuring compliance with both Duty of Care and Prescriptive legislation.

In your case, you're getting a dose of all the complications so it's no surprise that you'd be looking for a simpler life. It's a matter of choices.

.......before a word was spoken. The witch doctor was an old friend of Cappy's and while many people might think tis is a native Shaman dance, it was just the witch doctor, Wally imitating the movements of Cappy when he's on a full gin bender, and while Cappy was irritated to have this thrown in his face he knew the witch doctor needed a big win to get up enough confidence to beat the nine heads now competing with his and.........

38 minutes ago, jackc said:

It looks to me that it’s almost impossible to prove your innocence against an accusation of breaching the rules,  in some cases?

WHY has all this got to be so complicated.

It hasn't got complicated. For years those of us trained by GA instructors were drilled to fly accurate altitude and turns and had no problem flying within the limitations. RA was exempted from that, subject to staying out of it, and haven't been trained for it so people who buy an aircraft at the top end of RA to go cruising suddenly find out it's more complicated than they thought.  You can't have it both ways if you're flying RA - the idea was that your stay out of busy aircraft where there are lots of GA aircraft with a higher level of instruments, some flying or practicing IFR within the boundaries designated for it.  In your case, with a strip right at the edge, it may pay you to quality to fly in Rockhampton airspace so you minimise the chance of an incursion, or maybe upgrade the aircraft equipment, then be able to access it unless someone is ahead of you in the queue.

For those who haven't seen a VTC or maybe have and just glossed over it, I just came across this link which appears to be training material with some good information.   https://studyflying.com/vtc-of-yppf-adelaide/

6 hours ago, Bruce Tuncks said:

Well I am reassured that the 3000 ft is not some sort of limitation after all. Here's what I am afraid of... I am heavily fined for " safety infringements" until I am bankrupted after which the eviction would happen.

I can imagine that the lawyers would come with a radar trace of your flight . How could you deny this evidence?

 

It would be my luck to get a judge who was secretly afraid of flying and he sure would get me where it hurts.

 

And please tell turbs that I have never flown anywhere near the Adelaide control zone. But when they were re-examining this, I did put in a submission asking that the OUTER half of the 4500 to 8500 step be made a 6000 step. I have yet to receive a written answer, which put me in my place really good. The safety aspect was of course ignored.

Your submission was published and is on the record. Usually no one gets a letter back, so they weren't picking on you. 

..................hydramatic.

It started arguing with Cappy, and he was outnumbered three to one, not only in the brand of gin they wanted to drink (they liked the cheap Coles stuff) but in a restaurant where they all wanted different food. On the Coay shooting range it was "pullPULLPullpull" and no one knew how to respond, but it was when flying the Jab and giving four radio calls at the same time that got him into......................

1 hour ago, Bruce Tuncks said:

My problem is that while flying illegally ( that is, higher than the three thousand lousy feet ) the risk is NOT that I may have a midair with a stupid "flying under the hood" pilot. The probability of this is less than one in a hundred million. 

Here's what I am scared of... I come home to find a bunch of lawyers, protected by police with guns drawn,  to find that I am being sued and eventually evicted, so me and the missus will suffer from exposure.

That is why I would prefer to fly legally. It is more dangerous, but then being evicted is dangerous too.

If you need more details of the probability calculation, let me know.

If you'e talking about sneaking through the bottom layers around Adelaide Airport that's a broken record.

11 minutes ago, Clark01 said:

 

Well... quoting range on cars is standardised. Across the world, using the WLTP cycle. The identical cycle is used for EVs and dyno-burners. And aero drag goes up exponentially (actually, its a cube-law-thing!) for all vehicles. 😀

You quoted a flat 500 K, the figures I've seen over the years are all flat ranges like this, and they all achieve that only by driving them slowly and carefully, so not relevabnt to driving at 100 km/hr, accelerating to pass or towing a caravan etc. There has been talk of range extenders, a second battery set, but the problem here is our light commercials are already marginal on GCM.

11 minutes ago, Clark01 said:

I don't really buy the "long range" argument when plenty of EVs today approach 500km of range, at speed. Sure, there are edge cases of farmers and others who drive long distances, at speed, where there's no infrastructure, and they have a heavy load. Great, these guys can continue to use fossil-fuel cars. But the average daily distance a car drives in Australia is something like 60

The EV story has always centred around the local commuter, your 60 km application. While no one is interfering with ICE there's not a problem, The EV buyer who can afford a $40,000 to $60,000 entry level and is happy with a small car will be a repeat buyer, but once you start talking penaties for ICE, politically you can't allow regional Australian access to transport to be wiped out, you can't just say "Well there might be a suitable EV one day"

11 minutes ago, Clark01 said:

 

The top selling new car in Australia is the Toyota Hilux. Number 2 is the Ford Ranger. These aren't $26k vehicles. They're $50k+ vehicles.

Correct but there are no EV equivalents and if there were, on present pricing, the cost would be$100,000 plus.

The Rivians and F150 Lighnings are in a level above the top sellers, currently filled by RHD conversions to Ram, Ford, Chevrolet - a tiny market.

What we've mentioned here is a tiny fraction of Australia's transport industry. I was driving Japanese electric pilot trucks in the mid 90's but they still haven't managed to get them into the markets. 

3 hours ago, Clark01 said:

• For passenger cars, this talk of EV and range issues is nonsense in 2021. There are plenty of EVs that have >500km range. 

Our governments are going to have to step in on range quoting. Australia's task is not 500 km at 80 km/hr, but around 800 km at 100 km/hr with a short motel stay in between legs. Airpower demand is exponentially higher with speed above 80 km/hr. That's not the requirement for all Applications, but it is a sizeable requirement for Australian operations.

3 hours ago, Clark01 said:

• Sure, the Ioniq 5 is not a cheap car, at around $72k in Australia. But you can buy an MG ZS today in Australia for $40k, with close to 300km of range.

The market share for Australia is very telling, and the biggest issue is pretty much the same as the reason buyers wiped out Australian built cars. If they can only just stretch to a $26,000.00 new car there's no use offering them a $40,000. The same issue goes up the price range - OK for rich people, not for families. The new car sales per month by model tells the story, and this same discussion has now been going on for years.

3 hours ago, Clark01 said:

• The talk that EVs can't tow is, again, old fashioned nonsense. The Rivian R1T (announced for Australia, available in the US) and Hummer (about to be released in US) have towing capacities in excess of 3500kg. Their range unladen is 500km.

Leaving aside price, Australia has two key requirements for this market:

(a) a highway speed of 100 km/hr (which is dicussed above) and

(b) 3000 kg trailer towing capacity, already compromised because although vehicles are rated to pull a trailer, most can only meet that     GCM by operating with the driver only and no load in the ute tray. 

So we have two issues working against EV

(a) The exponential power demand of Airpower discussed above

(b) increased rolling resistance from a loaded trailer demanding more power.

These things are not insurmountable, but its wrong to suggest you can race into that market with undeveloped product designed for another country.

3 hours ago, Clark01 said:

Ooh. And don't even start me on "baseload". Its such nonsense. A term power system engineers used, that was misused for political purposes.

 

We DO NOT need more "baseload". The Australian Energy Market Operator, the people who run our energy system, make this very clear in documents like this one - what we need is more flexible generation, that can follow changes in net demand. Yes, in an old world we needed baseload. But that world doesn't exist today due to massive changes in our demand (think- things like air conditioners which double demand just a few days of the year) and supply (intermittent solar and wind).

 

There was a period last weekend where South Australia had 135% of its demand met by wind and solar alone. The excess energy was mostly exported to Victoria. Over a 48 hour period wind and solar met 108% of demand, and over a 93 hour period they met 100% of demand.

 

Sure, there's very major challenges to operating a power system with so much wind and solar, and SA relies on interconnection to other states to keep things reliable. But don't mistake "its hard" to "its impossible". 

 

 

Baseload is the power required to be generated in order to keep boilers from cracking. Boilers must be kept warm at all times. In the past, the power companies would sell us power cheaper if we bought it at night when they were on baseload. The renewables started advertising their ability to meet "baseload" as a gimmick, and many people fell for the ruse and thought they could produce all the power we needed.

However twice in the last couple of years I've watched  the dashboard as the load came on at night, once to the extent that supply to 100,000 homes in Melbourne had to be shut down those conditions require Peak Power, and power stations up the east coast fire up to maximum capacity. On both occasions at Peak Power the Renewables contribution was 1%. Renewables are like a car without an accelerator, and at this stage there's no way out. If you invest in enough renewables to make Peak Power, and there's nothing in the way of doing that, the Capital expenditure kills you on the days, the bulk of the year, when you only need to generate a fraction of Peak Power. The power grid at present is an open market, so on a cold day the coal-fired boilers have to keep going at base load, but renewables can switch down amd sell power much cheaper. This is forcing investors out of coal-fired and we are facing some issues on hot days over the next few years.