IBob

Oh dear: Service Ceiling: 10,000 ft (3,000 m) (estimated), 3 ft (0.91 m) (actual)

Some wit set this up outside Gatwick a few weeks back: https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-beds-bucks-herts-61541224

What you are needing is an Air Speed Indicator, and GPS will absolutely not give you that: the last thing you need to be looking at to avoid stall is (GPS) ground speed........

It turns out both the above aviation accounts are true: Sabrina soloed in the Cessna she was given at age 14 in Canada. She built, with assistance, Zenith N5886Q, which she flew at 16.

I hate to be picky, but I also hate the casual misinformation, and don't understand the need for exaggeration in this case. Or maybe the problem is the growing inability to read past any first sentence? Sabrina started building N5886Q in March of 2006 at age 12 and she completed it by October of 2007. It was then disassembled, painted, and transported to KARR. It was certified as airworthy E-LSA on January 11, 2008 and flew its maiden flight four days later, on January 15th. It was kept in Phase I flight testing for Sabrina's first U.S. solo which she conducted in it on August 24th of 2009 at age 16. Or maybe this: According to Pasterski’s account on her web site, her grandfather gifted her a Cessna 150 airplane for her 10th birthday. Over the next few years, Pasterski got help from a mechanic and others in rebuilding the plane’s engine and constructing the frame for a new aircraft. She told the Chicago Tribune in a 2015 interview that she first went up in a plane at age 9: The first time was a discovery flight (which typically includes both instruction and a quick time in the air with a flight instructor). It was basically along the shoreline. That was really gorgeous. It’s a nice feeling. It gives you a different perspective; everything’s so much smaller. Then, two days before her 14th birthday, Pasterski flew the plane by herself in Canada. She created a video montage to document her work on the project. Stephen Hawking never followed her on Twitter: neither of them have or had Twitter accounts. And there is no record of anyone at Harvard calling her the next Einstein. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- However, someone of extraordinary abilities, no question about that.

Nah......follow your own taste, Franco! I'll just turn the sound down and enjoy the visuals...thank you for posting them......)

Nice camera angle, enjoyed the flight. Not my taste in backing music, but that's subjective..........)

Big job, Mark! And I never did come up with anything to (easily) fill in all the little mat holes on my kit supplied f/glass bits: sourced various products, but every sand/spray iteration showed more holes. If only they'd used a gel coat....what have you used there?

😬

Good informative thread for me: something to add to the list of simple preflight checks.

It is passed through various of the lubricated parts of the engine as you rotate by hand the prop for approx. 20 engine turns. So completely refilling the entire oil circuit. As stated in the manual.

With respect, Thruster, I'll be an old wife and take the manufacturer's advice, rather than yours....)

It's a $30,000+ engine. I would be following the manufacturer's recommendations, including when it comes to oil and filter.

Yes, Facthunter, that's why I'm recommending the manuals: they also contain the routine for priming a new 912, which is done with compressed air......

I recommend downloading the Rotax Line and Heavy Maintenance manuals: they're free. It tells you how to do an oil change, including important details like DONT turn over the engine once you have begun to empty the oil out. The idea is to keep the lifters flooded and so avoid getting air in them.............

sfGnome, there is a permanently open rearward-cowled vent in the roof of the luggage area. The doors are a 3 dimensional work of art but not entirely rigid, so do not neatly seal all round (though this could probably be addressed with different thicknesses of draught stop. The doors have round ventilators that can be closed. The firewall can be closed off using boots on the control rods. The remaining major source of draught would be from the rear fuselage, through the various openings around the controls, seat pans, luggage area etc. I expect these could be reduced. The fact remains that you don't need much gap in an aircraft to be very draughty: the coldest flight I have ever made was as pax in a Piper Seneca mail plane, midwinter: the seals round the doors were a bit tired, the resulting draught was strong and constant.

Still clinging to stale old ideas of manhood, Flightrite???

Some sort of Dzus fastener? Search Dzus on Aircraft Spruce.

And yet more off topic: I was part of a job on Paramushir, a Russian island off the Kamchatka peninsula. We were there midwinter, power on the island was from huge ships engines driving generators in a building out back of town, we were commissioning a fish processing plant on the coast out the front of town: an experience I'm really glad I had, but that I wouldn't choose to repeat. The power made it's way from them to us via aluminium cables on wooden poles with wooden crosstrees. It snowed and blew a great deal, the wind driven snow would build on the upwind side of the poles, the power would then track down the pole, and eventually incinerate it. As we went to work each morning we would count the missing/burnt pole stumps, with the crosstrees still holding the wires apart, but sagged right down near the snow covered ground........

It is a wonderful resource, extralite..........would be even better if more folk actively shared their experiences here. We all get to benefit and learn.......)

Hi Garry, and welcome. Can't comment on the Classic/VG heater, I believe the muffler setup is quite different than the XL/S. But I can tell you that the heater in my S is pretty useless too, though how much that is the heater, and how much general draughtiness from various places, I'm less sure....

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/jul/18/what-can-smug-australians-teach-the-uk-about-surviving-a-heatwave

Hi David, did you manage to isolate the problem? Interested to know what you may have found.......

As a relatively low hours rec pilot, I have found that I have to guard against two things: 1. An interrupted preflight, or one that deviated in some way from my normal routine, allowing missed steps loss of focus and oversights. 2. Allowing the preflight routine to become 'just' a routine, rather than actually focusing on each check: I saw this begin to creep in with my engine instrument checks, where I wasn't actually focusing on each one to verify the reading before moving on to the next: a subform of get-there-itis. I have tried to break that habit by placing my finger on each instrument as I check it, which slows me down enough to do the job properly. I also notice when watching YouTube topdressing footage that the pilots 'stir the pot' with the control column prior to every single takeoff. Presumably this is due to a history of controls damage or failure in the industry, but if it's good enough for them and in view of the above, I need to make it good enough for me.......

Hi Glen, I can only speak from the experience of my own build: 1. The engine was much easier to fit to the ringmount supplied, by first removing the coolant pump cover with it's coolant outlets. 2. After fitting the engine to the mount, the pump cover was easily refitted, but the position of two of the coolant outlets had to be adjusted to allow the hoses to pass through the ringmount. 3. This was done by holding the cover gently in vice softjaws, gently heating the required outlet and rotating it by pushing on a piece of dowel inserted in the outlet. I made these adjustments several times before getting them right, and was concerned that I may have leakage as a result, but there has been no problem. The pump outlets are a soft alloy with a fine thread secured with Loctite 243, which requires a moderate amount of heat. (The coolant inlets at the cylinder heads are a similar fitting with the same fine thread, but a higher temperature Loctite is used there, requiring considerable heat for removal. I have replaced one cylinder head port, it was a difficult job which took me three attempts to achieve a leak-proof installation.)