Oscar

Good grief! I haven't read that article, I'm afraid I tend to regard Sport Pilot as a bit of a comic rather than a source of useful information, but it sounds to me as if the author should (and probably will, if her/his local Volunteer bodies that get called out to find missing pilots, bushwalkers, etc. read about it) be taken out behind the shed and given a damn good kicking.

 

To even suggest that one can deduce anything from statistics of people who haven't died through not being found within a 'short' time is monumentally stupid. Short of having the EPIRB hooked up to a heart-rate monitor that sends out a message that 'I'm here, but I'm dead, so don't bust a gut trying to find me', the presumption is ALWAYS that search and rescue is necessary. Where do the majority of people who are routinely called out to SAR events come from? - the ranks of volunteers, who drop everything in their normal lives to get out there to help. Sometimes, they die.

 

The sort of person who writes that sort of article should be tagged for 'no attention' if they go missing. And they should be subject to a Court order for ALL costs - including an hourly rate for recompense of volunteers who give up their time to help in the search. As a member of the NSW RFS, we had quite a number of property owners who refused to do hazard reduction work on their properties; after trying all other sorts of reasoned explanation of why they needed to, we ended up posting a notice to every property in our area of responsibility that IF their property was under threat of fire AND they'd not undertaken reasonable measures to ensure OUR safety to try to protect their property, we wouldn't do it. That is our policy, and we stick to it. We have kids, loved ones etc. that depend on us; because some bastard isn't prepared to help her/himself, we are not prepared to risk our lives and give our personal time for their problem.

 

Same with people who don't carry EPIRBS. Anybody who suggests a mobile phone and a GPS is adequate lives in the middle of a bloody city; out in the real country, mobile phones do NOT work everywhere, and a GPS is only useful to you to know where you are if you can't report that to other people. A Satphone, perhaps... just do the calculation on the cost of a Satphone and subscription vs. an EPIRB...

 

 

Merv, I think it's a case of too much aerodynamic balance, but don't hold me to that, what I know about aerodynamics is that I don't know enough to be an 'expert', or try to pose as one because I'll screw up somewhere. I've heard that there are some other gliders with the same problem, and some of them can require more than the 'prescribed' force to get the bastard unlocked, but that's hearsay only.

 

Re your KIAS - just by chance, is that on the same aircraft as the one you have the 'interesting' IAS situation in a sideslip? And if so, does it have a Dynon EFIS with a Dynon AoA/pitot head instead of the Jab one installed? From the 160 POH, the KIAS at VSo is 48 kts and you have 49, which isn't much different really, but if it is the same aircraft then may I politely (and we are being reasonably polite to each other, for once ) suggest that you might find it interesting to try moving the Dynon sensor position around and seeing if it changes your readings? That super-dooper pitot thingy that Dafydd talks about I've seen, and it sticks out about a metre or more in front of the wing when installed (dangerous bastard to be doing your pre-flight if you're wearing close-focus glasses, on a Jab.), and to get a really accurate static you need a funnel on a bloody great length of trailing tube, so it's pretty obvious to me that position error for both pitot and static is a real problem for a neat installation. I somehow doubt that you can expect to get Jab's factory results with a different sensor, and the POH is (obviously, again) based on their installation.

 

 

Merv - re 'aileron snatch' - there's a similar sort of thing can happen with rudder, called (I believe) 'rudder lock'. I did a 500k attempt in a Standard Libelle glider, ( a type I'd never flown before then, with a check out that consisted of 'here's the water dump valve, fill it up before you go and don't dump it until you absolutely have to' - no mention of the propensity to rudder lock). I guess the instructor may have trusted me not to get it to the point of that happening - and I didn't, though having several somewhat memorable climbs in tight and very lumpy thermals with a gaggle around me. I guess I must have been keeping it straight enough, though I remember very fondly that it was quite delightful to fly right on the edge of the stall in the thermals, with miniscule stick movements and just light dancing on the rudder; some of those thermals went from about 1500 AGL to around 8,000, so lots and lots of turns even at somewhere over 1,000 fpm ROC.

 

 

Merv, if you look at: http://www.comlaw.gov.au/Details/F2011L00617 you'll find that it's VSo of 45 kts. The 160C POH states the VSo at 45 KCAS and 48 KIAS, and won't have been able to get certification without demonstration of that (most probably to the satisfaction of a CASA test pilot). Pardon me for intruding here; Dafydd can probably give you a way more complete answer.

 

Edit: he did....

 

 

JJ, that reverse airflow - certainly on the downwind duct if sitting cross-wind while warming things up - is a known (and very well documented, in terms of 'proper' engineering practice measurement techniques) phenomenon. I would not be at all surprised if it's cooked a lot of engines while the owners were doing all the right things by the numbers they could see if they didn't have CHT's on all pots.

 

I wonder if anybody has ever done a census of which pots threw through-bolts vs which pots had cht's on them? This is an area where much better recording of all ALL conditions and some research might have provided quite strong indications of problem areas, rather than the simple generalisation of 'engine failed: through bolts / valve guide / valve head failure' etc.

 

I'll also bet that good recording and analysis would demonstrate that there is no absolute linear relationship between effective cooling vs airspeed, i.e. it's not automatic that increased airspeed and lower power setting will throughout the range be better at all points (though obviously it's going to be a better bet to fly a bit faster with slightly lower power than vice-versa..).

 

Anybody who has sailed a yacht competitively knows that when trying to extract the maximum drive when going upwind, you're continually playing with sail settings and relative heading as the breeze changes even by quite small amounts. You are forever adjusting the slot between the jib and mainsail to stop choking, keep the tufts all streaming away, and adjusting the main to stop backwinding from the mast destroying the drive. You'd think a mast, in comparison to the size of the sail behind it, wouldn't make much difference but you can get a really serious area of the main in stagnant/backing air by just a very small change in airflow.

 

 

Excellent find! One of the tricky problem areas for Jab cooling is the airflow past the upper cylinder head bolt nearest the exhaust port and getting decent velocity past that is very important and requires some subtle tweaking. The whole cooling thing is not a simple case of stuffing air at the engine from one side and getting rid of it at the other, it also needs to get to the right places at the right velocities (too slow and it's ineffective, too fast and you can get stagnation from obstructions etc. in critical areas.) The design of air-cooling systems is anything BUT intuitive, and cooling performance testing and adjustment is an area that keeps aero-engineers very busy...

 

 

I hesitate to get into this particular debate because I've seen the way that the 'sides' have an unbridgeable abyss between them, but to me there is a far simpler equation than all the digging through 'evidence' / theory for fragments to prove / disprove things.

 

IF global warming theories regarding anthropogenic causation are incorrect, then by having worked on the basis that they were valid, all that has been lost is short-term economic gain (not economic ruin, that is a wild over-egging of the cake) and less depletion of natural resources, thus allowing longer future exploitation of those resources in a likely more benign climatic situation. Or, in simple terms, we all haven't gotten richer quite as quickly, but we've left more resources (of which the environment is one) to allow a stable continuation of human existence.

 

IF the connection between anthropogenic activity and global-warming is correct, then beyond a certain point there will be irreparable damage to the continuation of our existence in (at the very least) any familiar form.

 

The key word here is 'irreparable'. As a species we may be able to either a) evolve to be able to handle a new environmental situation, or b) develop 'coping' strategies and technologies (or more probably, a combination of both).

 

The essence of the problem is, I believe, that as things stand we have little reason to be in any way sure we can evolve / develop suitable coping strategies / technologies. IF, as a species, we cannot do that fast enough, then all the accumulated wealth from continuing the current scale of exploitation of resources including the environment cannot guarantee our future state. We won't be able to trade our big houses, Jet skis, whatever, for a better environment, or to put the resources back in the ground, rejuvenate food-growing areas, etc.

 

Without a reliable mechanism to secure our future IF the GW proponents happen to be right, then continuation of current practices is an entirely one-way street. IF the GW proponents re wrong, then all we have lost by taking action, is a bit of wealth creation. To me, the anti-GW argument is rather too much akin to the old 'so far, so good' argument when falling off the cliff.

 

 

I should dig out my radio licence (marine) to check the forms,Big Brother not only wanted ALL crew/ passenger info, but all criminal history ! of all person aboard my vessel, & to fax all documentation to Canberra.

I should still have the post office receipts for that lot,

 

spacesailor

 

I'm a bad boy, I didn't tell them (BB Canberra) I gave the boat away.

My Marine VHF licence is expired now, but from memory all that was required for a voyage was boat name, number of crew, start and destination and an ETA of arrival. Reported to VCP on leaving port, ETA updated as required / cancelled on entering port. EPIRB info for trip did require EPIRB rego number and vessel it was in being reported to AMSA by fax, from memory (this was 2003). Frankly, when you're a few miles off Gabo Island in the middle of a pitch-black, drizzling night with a 2-metre plus swell with a nasty cross-current chop to it up your stern, I for one am perfectly happy to know that someone knows roughly where you are and what boat is likely to have fired off the EPIRB should you need it.

 

 

But after you've done that and solo'd, you get to use single seaters... a 300k around a nominated triangle is lots of fun, even missing out on completing a 500k because you were gazumped by a cold front which you were on top of but had to outrun to get home is good; chasing a few mates around the sky for five or six hours and ending up flying home in formation in the velvet air of last light. Just buggering around and chasing clouds for lift for the hell of it.

 

Sitting in a thermal and watching a wedgetail eagle riding the lift off the top of your wing like a porpoise surfing your bow wave slide in to a couple of metres of the cockpit, give you a beady, unblinking black eye, and then lazily peel away because he/she knows a better thermal.

 

Staying up for free instead of using 14 litres/hour.

 

 

I have no doubt with a glider spin recovery should be taught before solo and the comparison between the characteristics of the two types should not be taken too far, because a lot of it is to do with the large wingspan as I see it. I just looked at my original log book and it WAS done before solo too. That was 1960 when spin competent trainers were about. My initial trainer was a Chipmunk. Probably an excellent choice in retrospect.A flew a kookaburra? for a bit but it didn't make an impression on me and some years later a Blanik which I reckon I took to OK. I was an engine nut back then. They are ALL aeroplanes IF you have a good look at what you are actually flying before you get in, you can pretty much know how it will fly That's why I would allow myself a few hours on a Pitts till someone else was happy..Nev

A Shortwing Kooka I flew, it was a barge. Nothing reminded me of it so much as driving a Centurion Tank years later. First single-seater an Arrow, thence a Pilatus B4 and a Boomerang (which was the nicest thing EVER to sideslip in, it would hold about 30 degrees nose off track. Blaniks are really dignified gentlemen of the air, not the best at most anything but impeccably behaved in any circumstance. Lexus behaviour; for a Mercedes 6.3 AMG ride, try a Janus with full water. First solo flight - a Motor-Falke (and that was the barge you have when you are tired of the frisky antics of barges.)

 

 

That's a good idea;)

No matter who manufactured it.

 

 

Cool Damn! Did your engine send you a Valentines Day card? - she should have. Would be great to have an ongoing history of your engine in the future. Overheating them kills them quicker than an IED in Afghanistan; a record of being operated within limits would be great to have for all Jab. engine owners.

 

 

I reckon the usual stall margins applied to actual weight are about right. If it's bumpy or there are obstacles affecting the wind flow (Mechanical turbulence) a bit extra is normal. You may need to get as slow as possible because of runway length so I suggest a slower lower (has to be) powered approach but why get real slow too early. Flying really slow is not something you do without giving it your total attention. You deliberately sacrifice some safety margins in special circumstances. Nev

Nev, I've had some trouble adapting to power flying. As a glider pilot, I craved the kinetic energy equation - speed or height = safety - and Polo Flat was in unforgiving terrain. Fly the circuit high, turn final high, pull brakes and sideslip, keep the speed up and only let it wash off from about the last ten - twenty feet or so to touchdown, play the brakes. That's energy management that doesn't quite translate to power flying as I have discovered. I don't trust the noisy thing out the front...

 

 

Oscar, rigging comes into it a lot. I flew a rather ordinary Auster that would always try to drop the right wing , what ever way you approached a stall (within reason) and it would do it rather quickly. Agree about the Lancair and have read a lot about it and have 3 friends over time who have owned them including a Turboprop Pressurised one. They are not for inexperienced pilots but I don't believe they should be deregistered. P51's killed a few too till they got wise to a few effects.Stalling training needs to be revisited has been my opinion for a while. I've encouraged Emergency Manoeuver Training, (Hate that title) rather unusual attitude familiarisation and recovery techniques.

Typical reactions (instinctive) will be contributory to a bad result generally, so we could be doing it a lot better. Dafydd is correct in saying that to "punch the stick forward" will usually unstall the wing straight away. ( I've used the term myself for a long time). Go out there and see what is happening. It's not good enough. A couple of level stalls,power off with an aeroplane that is quite benign only instills the view that stalls are NO PROBLEM. ( I did them so tick it off). Nev

Nev, as I understand it, a LOT of work was done on getting the later Lancairs tolerable after the early 340/360 kits; I believe that the (probably DoT at the time, could have been DCA) test pilot for the first Aus. assembled ones could not stop it going to about 70 degrees no matter what he did. There were, I think, two different modification schemes just in Australia alone for tail mods to the bastards.

 

Completely agree that stall and incipient spin avoidance/recovery training needs to be more comprehensive, and just 'familiarisation' is not enough. When I was training as a glider pilot, recovery from a fully-developed spin was a prerequisite for solo, and recovery (obviously!) from three fully-developed turns in a spin was required before x-country rating. I remember a check-flight in a Blanik at Polo Flat (a tight airfield) where the Instructor took control of it halfway downwind, popped the wheel up, pulled the flaps in, turned it across the strip and stood it on its tail and said: 'your aircraft' as the speed decayed off the clock. And yes, I ended up where we should have been, but it was an unusual circuit - base was but a point on the compass in the turn to final.

 

 

Nev, it was slightly tongue in cheek, though the Lancair 340/360 has one of the worst safety records you could ever try to chase up, for fatals from stalled turns. However, as far as I am aware, the maximum allowable wing drop from a simple stall in any certificated aircraft is way less than even 60 degrees, and I assume (but do not know) whether a somewhat similar limit applies to LSA-class (i.e. 24-reg, for us) aircraft. I most certainly do not have the experience of power flying to make any comments, but it's a given when you're in a gaggle in a thermal that all of you know how to keep on circling without suddenly dropping down through the middle of the group! (It's a bit like the time between the 5-minute gun and the start gun for a yacht race, actually). As Dafydd said above, it's an instinctive reaction and you don't have much time in the gaggle to watch the ASI, (you're watching the other buggers around you); you feel the stick pressure change first and tend to notice the bank increase slightly and it's all pretty much a rhythmic response.

 

 

Nev, if it's dropped to say 70 degrees or so straight from the stall, then it's probably a Lancair 340/360 and you've forgotten the first rule of safety for them - don't ever start the bloody engine.

 

 

I used Aerospace 303 on several yachts with excellent results in terms of lack of UV degradation and general limitation of salt encrustation etc. but it's a bit hard to gauge its effectiveness as a water dispersant when it's waves coming over the coamings. It certainly claims water dispersal.

 

 

Having a good understanding of the secondary effects is important, and part of that understanding is knowing when NOT to use them, as in this discussion.:)Just curious oscar, why would you need to use rudder to stay level when being tugged too fast.?

Too slow, not too fast... gliding camp, they'd bought in a Canadian croppie pilot who'd never tugged before but was magic in Pawnees to help out with the tug work, he thought we didn't like flying fast so was climbing out in the Pawnee hanging on the prop at just over 45 kts indicated for me. I thought he had engine trouble, when he hit a small thermal at 900 feet and waggled his wings I bunged-off instantly and managed to catch it and climb out ok. By the time I landed, the tugmaster had seen it and chatted to him, and he came over to apologise (which wasn't really necessary, but he was a great bloke so we chatted about this and that.) It turned out that glider had been trimmed for competition to the full aft c/g for a considerably heavier pilot (John Rowe, it was his personal machine) and when he checked me out for it he asked my weight but forgot I wasn't wearing a chute, so it was twitchy as hell anyway down slow.

 

 

I think a semantic difference here... in a sailplane, one can have the inner wing start to drop in a turn (thermalling, generally); and the rudder has the authority to reverse the yaw rate - normally only momentarily, don't want to lose that thermal! - which doesn't just stop the wing going down, it comes back up (all whilst holding back stick for the turn).I doubt very much Dafydd is advocating ignoring the rudder; but you yourself said, "use the rudder to stop yaw". I think Dafydd is saying, in non-sailplanes, don't fool around with the feet and ignore the stick when a wing tries to drop.

When thermalling in a glider, you're continually doing a tight(ish) turn at just above the stall for a fully-balanced turn situation (string proper straight on the canopy..) in fairly turbulent air and to get maximum lift out of the thermal and stay centred, adjusting your flight path. That requires extremely precise and gentle use of the ailerons, far more of the turn coordination is done by rudder and elevators. You will continually feel the inner wing starting to stall (usually more through the stick than anything else); a very small amount of forward stick and a bit of topside rudder and you're back balanced without chasing the aircraft all over the sky and losing the thermal. In that situation you absolutely do not try to pick the dropping wing up with aileron until you have both wings working and then only if you really need to. It's stick forward, unstall the inner wing, rudder, then aileron if needed. But ALL of those, quickly but gently (i.e. no huge control movements, just enough of each to have the necessary effect happen). In a decent high-performance glider, the stick movement is all wrist action, you don't throw your arm around the damn cockpit.

 

I personally believe that a good working knowledge of how to use secondary effects of controls is extremely desirable. I've been towed out by an inexperienced tuggie at a speed that necessitated dancing on the pedals to keep the thing level (felt like what I imagine riding a unicycle would be like), I've landed with no rudder (the adjustable pedals slipped forward beyond my leg stretch capability) and I've had to put down into several paddocks that absolutely required a speed over the fence of gasp plus 1% with a decent turn at almost zero feet required to adjust to terrain (e.g. between the irrigation ditches on one outlanding). In all of those cases, plus just generally thermalling, using secondary effects effectively was an absolute necessity to keep the aircraft under control.

 

 

For all our uncompetitiveness, just remember Cessna went to China to build the Skycatcher ( http://www.flyingmag.com/blogs/going-direct/8IGHxFDCOipRo9wz.99 ).

 

$150k for an aircraft that wasn't designed properly in the first place, that had airframe faults, that didn't deliver any sort of useful performance. By the time they got here, they were three times plus the price of a Jab 120. How uncompetitive does that make the Australian product?

 

How much can an FTO profitably charge-out for training if its amortised hourly depreciation rate needs to be around three times that for different aircraft?

 

 

Just before you rush out to your local mower shop, remember that tyre squash is part of the energy absorption component in any properly-designed undercarriage. A cheap pair of tyres may be a rather bad trade-off for spinal column injury in a hard landing. Also, a tyre that rolls off the rim due to the u/c splay is almost guaranteed to cause you at the very least some airframe grief, unless it's a very low-interia landing situation.

 

 

Are you referring to ME Oscar? Nev

Absolutely NOT. I agree totally totally with your comment - the 162 was a complete aberration for Cessna, I'll step into any Cessna anytime to fly (though there aren't many I'd lust to own, other than a 185 or an early 310)

 

 

So let's see here: Cessna, Piper, Beechcraft, Bombadier, Boeing, Airbus, Lockheed Martin, Sukhoi, Mitsubishi, Embraer, Honda - who of the major manufacturers have I forgotten? - can't make a profitable LSA aircraft? But you, sunshine, castigate Jabiru because they don't match the reliability figures of commercial passenger aircraft? Cessna and Piper LSA aircraft have landed their buyers in a pool of excrement. Jabiru haven't, but if you had your way, they would.

 

Have to admire your style, Merv - it's called chutzpah by those with a forgiving nature, or merde absolument for those who are more direct.

 

 

[removed]: if Jabiru is extinguished, there's no proper new production aircraft available on the Australian market for under $70k. How many students are you going go get through your facility when they can't expect to buy an aircraft they can fly for less than about $100k with our exchange-rate falling as it is?

 

 

What a vicious, pathetic, gratuitous and entirely predictable dig at Jabiru. Cessna are a part of Textron - a huge company. Rotax engines are a part of Bombadier - another huge company. Both have annual revenues in the multi $billions area. Bombadier don't produce an LSA-class aircraft, they couldn't be arsed to produce in the sector.

 

Then, you compare the performance of one of the last remaining Australian companies to actually produce a product - that has an export $$-earning performance - in the high-tech sector. We have as of today NO future Australian car manufacturers. Jabiru is one of two Australian-owned export-earning aircraft manufacturers (Seabird is just hanging in there, GippsAero is now owned by Mahindra).

 

You - and a few others - have no other agenda in life than to destroy Jabiru. Nobody, including me, suggests that Jabiru could not do better than they do, but at least most of us express our feelings in terms of trying to exhort them to do better by encouragement of support if they do.

 

[removed] If you are successful in your campaign to destroy Jabiru, the Rec Aviation scene in Australia will be decimated for support of competent aircraft that comprise something like 30% at least of the total fleet. I cannot think of a better example of a Pyrrhic victory.