onetrack

There were 670 recorded cases of fuel contamination in 2015, where motorists lodged a claim. This is only the number who decided to proceed with a claim against the servo operator.

There were likely to be a lot more, who did receive contaminated fuel, but who did not proceed with a claim against the servo operator, because the damage was minimal, or they wore the cost, and decided it wasn't worth the effort to pursue a claim.

https://www.choice.com.au/transport/cars/maintenance/articles/contaminated-fuel-costing-drivers-thousands-of-dollars-in-repairs

https://www.choice.com.au/transport/cars/maintenance/articles/petrol-stations-selling-contaminated-fuel-customers-with-repair-bills 

Admittedly, the number of fuel contamination cases is low, as a proportion of the total number of fuelling-up operations annually - but the risk is still there, it simply pays to exercise caution.

I'm not saying you shouldn't buy automotive petrol (mogas is an American term that shouldn't be used here). All I'm saying is, be aware of the potential dangers in using a product that has no traceability, and is susceptible to all kinds of unauthorised and unforeseen inputs. There are plenty of recorded cases of motorists suing servos for damage to their vehicles engines and fuel systems by contaminated fuel. It pays to keep receipts and good records of your fuel purchases.

As kgwilson points out, you buy fuel from a servo that is not a low-volume retailer with tanks that are 20-30 years old, and you buy from a retail outlet that is company-owned, so the risk from adulteration designed to increase profits is very low.

Around 80% of our automotive petrol is refined in Singapore, to Australian Fuel Standard Specifications, it's shipped in in large volumes in big ocean-going tankers, and it's distributed via bulk tanks to all the various company branded outlets.

The companies who own the bulk fuel farms are not necessarily the oil companies, it's a standalone business by itself, just storing fuel in bulk. 

The oil companies draw the fuel from the bulk tanks with their company road tankers or contracted fuel road tankers, and "additive packages" are added at the point of filling the road tankers, so they deliver a specific product to the company servos.

As you all know, the oil companies specialise in branding their petrol (and diesel) products as being "different and better" to the other companies products, the only difference is whether a fuel additive package is added to the bulk petrol, or not.

....which were all previously displaced for Cappys arrival gathering at the Island. However, despite Cappys relaxed mood, he became a little apprehensive when a funny-looking Chinese transport plane flew in (long-overdue avref) and landed, and then disgorged 140 PLA troops - who immediately set upon Cappy, and arrested him at gunpoint. 

The leader of the PLA platoon spoke good English, and introduced himself as Capt Doo Aw Di. "I'm here to inform you that President Xi Jinping and the CCP are greatly angered by your takeover of this island - and you are being arrested in accordance with CCP HQ's instructions.

This island is within the Nine Dash Line, and your arrival and set up here, is nothing less than blatant aggression, and Chinese land invasion by Australia! Accordingly, we are going to make an example of you! - just to show Scott Morrison, we mean business!!"

"It's bad enough that you bought a heap of Yankee Imperialist Running Dog Capitalist nuclear submarines! - thus showing your countrys aggressive intent towards China! - but now you have greatly angered both the President and the Party, by invading an island to which China has rightful claim! You will regret this foolish move!!"

Cappy blanched at the thought of being placed in a re-education camp. They didn't have gin and cigars there. But then he thought fast. He reached for his Esky, which was nearby. "How many Geraldton crayfish will it take to make this little arrest problem go away?", he asked Capt Di. "I have enough here for........

One must always keep in mind that when using automotive fuels from servos, the older underground tanks are steel, coated with bitumen. After 20 years, the high levels of moisture in the soil, that is carrying either acidic or alkaline components in solution, gets under the bitumen and corrodes the steel. This then develops into pinholes in the steel tanks, which allows entry of dirty, rusty water, which settles on the bottom of the tank.

Even though the suction spears for the bowser pumps are placed a distance from the bottom of the tank, swirling fuel from recent underground tank fills, makes the dirty rusty water move within reach of the suction lines for the bowser pumps, thus pumping up the rusty dirty water with the fuel. The filters on the bowsers are only mesh screens (about 20 or 30 micron from memory), they do not have elements than can stop water.

Many older servos also have fill points for underground tanks that are poorly positioned and poorly designed, and which can allow floodwaters to enter tanks.

So the chances of acquiring petrol contaminated with dirty rusty water, particularly from older servos, are reasonably high. Cars and trucks have better fuel filtering than bowser pumps, so they stop a lot of this crap from reaching your car or truck engines critical fuel components.

Newer servos utilise fibreglass tanks, and are better designed, so the chances of corrosion and contamination are greatly reduced. Most servos have fuel leak tracing spears sited in the ground around the tanks. but these are designed to catch fuel leaks into groundwater aquifers, and they're behind the curve when it comes to fuel contamination, as they only catch holes in tanks when there's a serious outflow of fuel from the tank into the soil.

There's a reason why avgas is delivered in sealed containers with strict traceability. Automotive fuels have multiple points of entry for contamination and adulteration. More than one dodgy servo owner/operator has been done for fuel adulteration, adding a number of cheap, readily available, discarded industrial chemicals, ranging from products such as toluene, discarded parts cleaning fluids, to paint thinners. 

If you must buy petrol for your aircraft from servos, buying from the newest servos is critical, buying from large company-owned servos means less chance of servo owner fuel adulteration - but you still must be aware that fuel companies can add ethanol in any percentage up to 10% in 91 RON automotive fuel, without advising users.

https://www.fcai.com.au/environment/can-my-vehicle-operate-on-ethanol-blend-petrol

.....and there was no better occasion worth milking for all its worth (note, no superfluous apostrophe), than the day OT went and paid a visit to Brownes milk and cream factory when it was under threat of being taken over by the Chinese.

"Damn the Chinese takeover of everything agricultural in Australia!", he cried, as the assembled media pack doted on his words, and what he might do next.

"We need to stop this subversive and subtle Chinese invasion!", he thundered to the media reptiles. "It's (note, apostrophe) high time we fought them on the beaches, fight them on the landing grounds (avref), fight them in the fields, and in the streets - we shall fight in the hills; we shall never ever surrender to a backdoor Chinese invasion of Australia!"

And the gathering crowd cheered, and the media pack went wild, as they relayed the message to their stations. But OT's efforts were in vain, as the majority failed to back him and continued to buy cheap Chinese products, and Brownes fell to the Chinese. It was a sad day in Perth when this happened, and.......

.....selling 500 Australian-designed and built electric commuter aircraft (long-overdue avref) to an un-named, low-cost, Irish-run airline. These aircraft had been designed in secret in a former Holden factory in Elizabeth, S.A., and were designed under cover of the new Sonnen home battery manufacturing facility - purposely so, to defeat any Chinese spying and commercial advantage in the now-booming field of electric commuter aircraft.

Of course, Sonnen were in on the deal, in the form of supplying modified home batteries to power the aircraft. These batteries were modified by pumping the cells full of air so they foamed up, and became light as styrene floats - without affecting their already-impressive power output. 

In addition to the batteries, however, pedals were also installed in the footwell of every seat station. These pedals were interconnected with the drive system to the propellers, so that pax could pedal away furiously if they wanted to get to their destination faster - and they also got to pedal, in exchange for acquiring lower-cost seating.

Naturally, the business and first class pax seats didn't have pedals, because it was always right of these upper-class people, to be free-carried by the plebs.

Michael O'Leary was over the moon when OT displayed the aircrafts features, and immediately put in the major order. 
O'Leary cried, "What's even better with this arrangement, is that I'll be able to tell the pax this is gym equipment that they will have to pay extra for, because they'll be getting fit, as well as getting there faster!"

Meantimes, as soon as Turbo got wind of this deal, he had sniffed a major financial killing to be made in the battery recharging business - and he immediately set up Turbine Hi-Power Recharge Systems Inc., to take advantage of what he saw as a massive market with huge potential (electrical pun intended), and he set about ringing a gent he knew, who would........

.....warrant more awards than frontline soldiers at Lone Pine. We'll be organising a medal handout next Wednesday at 08:00hrs sharp at the Boardroom. Those who have initated more than 100 aviation  regulations infringements will get the Gold Wing medal with Oak Cluster. Those who have initiated more than 50 aviation regulations infringements will receive a Silver Wing medal alone.

Those who have initiated more than 10 aviation regulation infringements will receive a Brass Wing medal alone. Those who have managed to issue between 1 and 5 infringement notices will receive 50 Hungry Jacks and Donut King vouchers. Now, as regards this errant aviator bull, we will now issue........

.....Dogs Roofing Company at work on a nearby house, replacing the tiles. Turbo immediately became fascinated by the operation. He'd not known before, how intricate the tiling process was in roofing a tiled house. He grabbed a coffee and sat and watched in awe, as these pro tilers ran back and forth on the roof easily, and seemingly without a care, until..........

.....some time to straighten out the corflute wings, where Turbo had walked into them. However, with Turbo being a very resourceful gent in his youth, and always carrying a roll of Gorilla tape in his back pocket, he soon had the wings resembling their normal shape. It was fortunate the Gorilla tape also came in camo colour, so that helped greatly in ensuring the Pegasus stayed hard-to-find.

After finding the cockpit again, and yanking on the starter rope once more, the Victa screamed into life, producing voluminous clouds of blue smoke (along with huge amounts of noise, way out of all proportion to its actual size), this severely negated the major camo effort, which disappointed Turbo, as he now realised that he could be tracked - not only by the billowing blue smoke cloud - but by the noise level as well.

However, as he promptly shut the noisemaker down, Turbo developed a cunning plan. He would only start up the Pegasus on Sunday mornings, so the Victa noise and smoke from the Pegasus would be hidden amongst the noise and smoke from the 40,000 other Victa mowers that crank up every Sunday morning - whereby he would be able to get airborne without anyone noticing a thing!

He was very pleased with this plan, and at 08:30hrs sharp next Sunday morning, there was Turbo, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, ready to rip the Victa into life. He waited until the cacophony and smoke of 20,000 other Victas started becoming dominant in the air, and then he.......

Alan - VH-UEX is a Diamond DA40 NG according to the registration records.

He's just strutting his stuff.

....playing pocket billiards on an hourly basis. This of course, earned him a Diploma from SAU, which Cappy displayed with great pleasure (pun intended) on the wall of his mancave, and where.....

The article is a bit narrow in its discussion highlights. No mention of Airbus considering a freighter conversion. But the bottom line is the A380 is an expensive-to-run aircraft, with a poor cargo conversion capacity.

I think Airbus took their eye off the ball, and only considered the carriage of huge numbers of pax as their main goal, when they designed the A380.

But Boeing were more considered in their planning thought train, and the Boeings are far better suited to cargo conversion, or a pax/freight mix.

https://www.freightwaves.com/news/exclusive-airbus-floats-concept-for-a380-freighter-conversion

Obviously a man of few words.

.......were looking for a feed. But bull was pretty good at scattering cattle with the 12G shotgun he regularly carried on the Thruster - as a result of his aerial rabbit-culling sessions at DG airport with CT9000.

However, as bull was often a little too trigger-happy - and being surrounded by 50 cows all looking for a feed made him even more trigger-happy than normal - he managed to blow away 2 cows as he tried to clear the herd from around the Thruster.

This led to an angry farmer rolling up quickly, to find a couple of his prize cows dead as doornails, and he soon.......

Just like all the other "revolutionary flying machine" ideas - plenty of glitzy imaging in the video, not backed up by any useful performance, nor any indication of how this thing fits into current aviation regulations. 

I don't know what type of bot is supposed to be on the Airport-Data site - but the Simda bot is common. I went to the Kaspersky site to check if my computer has been infected with a Simda bot, and it told me my computer is Simda bot-free.

I certainly haven't had any indications of bot infection in my computer. Another user on a tractor forum I frequent, also claimed his AV said the tractor forum was infected, and it blocked him from the forum.

But there's nothing wrong with the forum, everyone else is using it just fine, and the webmaster is right on top of viruses, bots, and scammers. I reckon the Avast mob want you to go from a free version to a paid version.

MacAfee AV was noted for scamming MacAfee users with fake virus warnings, and MacAfee himself was the biggest crook around.

https://checkip.kaspersky.com/

Sounds like an over-active AV programme to me. I'm sure a lot of these AV programmes make up threats to ensure you keep buying their product.

I went to Red750's photo gallery, it opened just fine, and my Malwarebytes said nothing about an infected site when I clicked on his photo gallery link.

He's a very good presenter and teacher. One thing I repeatedly notice, is that older people tend to fixate or focus on single things for longer than need be, as compared to younger people.

I believe this a habit we need to guard against, as we age. It applies to every facet of operating any machine that's power-driven - but nowhere is it as deadly a bad habit, as in piloting an aircraft.

....with Cappy stating, as bull left - "Well, if that's his best look, I'd hate to see his worst look!" "That can't possibly be bull?", said OT. "First off, bull never dresses up like that! Secondly, he never gets a haircut like that, and thirdly, he doesn't have the calloused hands of a Jackeroo pilot, which is a dead giveaway, and which shows that bull has paid someone to.........

You know you're getting old when all the police and all the pilots look so young! The average age of RAF fighter pilots in 1940 was just 20. That's the average age, so that means a lot were well under 20.

Young people are chosen for these jobs because of their keen eyesight and hearing, their quick reflexes - and with young males, bravado that is often indistinguishable from foolhardiness.

.....with very little success - because the Lawyer X impersonator he tried to mount, was none other than bull, doing his leading part in the COVID-19 lockdown protest crowd.

"Gerroff me, ya fat wog!!", cried bull, "I'm not a lawyer, and not a woman either! Can't ya see I'm wearing a wig and padding!"

"But I heard you like it Greek-style!", said smooth Tony. "You know us Greeks! A hole is a hole is a hole, and we aren't too fussy about whether it's .......

....OT, "There was a bloke who flew through here last Christmas Eve, and he had no lights, no ATC clearance, was seriously well over MTOW, had unrestrained animals on his outfit, and it's understood he specialises in flying at or below chimney height! Yet HE got away with it! - so I don't see any major problems with the Drifters in question, except perhaps for........

The wind contains gusts which are faster than the average wind speed. The wind-propelled vehicle has momentum, and the propellor/rotor has momentum, and is also supplying "lift" once it is spinning - i.e., forward propulsion that is faster than the wind speed. Newtons Law says that an object in motion remains in motion at constant speed, and in a straight line, unless acted on by an unbalanced force.

Nev, I think SP is referring to a Beaver with an Alvis Leonides powerplant. Only one was built.

http://www.aviastar.org/air/canada/dehavilland_beaver.php?p=2