onetrack

Can't say I'm overly impressed with the cantilever wing. Eliminating the struts certainly does improve vision a little - but at what expense for wing strength?

It took me a long time to find the load factors for this aircraft, there's nothing in the advertising material, it's buried in the POH. The figures are +4.0g / -2.0g, which is not anywhere near as good as a lot of strutted-wing, cheaper aircraft.

One thing in the companys favour as regards ethics, is that they refuse to take any money, until your ordered aircraft is ready for you.

That is unbelievable in this day and age of corporate shafting of everyone you deal with - taking the money and never delivering the promised product, is de rigeur for so many of these startup manufacturers.

Well, this American bloke just found out (after forking out US$440,000), that flying a Gravity Jet Suit isn't quite as easy as the glitzy sales videos make out!

https://www.cnbc.com/video/2020/05/23/he-bought-a-440000-gravity-jet-suit-and-discovered-flying-is-not-easy.html

My Dad bought my brother a beaut wind-up fob watch for (I think it was) his 19th birthday.

Brother took the watch gratefully, his butterfingers let it slip - it hit the concrete floor vertically, and exploded like a hand grenade, with watch parts spreading far and wide!

The brother was obviously quite upset at losing his present, within milliseconds of receiving it - and Dad was quite disgusted at his clumsiness!

I think the watch cost about £2.00 ($5.00) at that time (late 1950's) - but the basic wage was only around £13.00 ($26.00), back then.

Spacey, how did NRMA discover your house maintenance was not up to scratch? Do they send snooping insurance detectives around to check? 

All insurance policies have a requirement that you keep the insured item in good condition. Failure to do so does result in lower payouts, if a claim is lodged and the company determines the item was in poor condition prior to the insurance event.

Failing to keep your car in roadworthy condition can lead to insurance companies refusing to pay out on claims. And "prior damage" is not covered, either.

We pay $566 annually for "unlimited value" home insurance for a 3 bedroom, double brick and tile, "heritage-classed" home (built in 1957), 5kms from the Perth CBD - with another $182 for $80,000 in contents value - all through AAMI.

Unlimited value means no upper limit to rebuilding the house, if it ends up in a level pile of crumbled masonry on the ground. It will be rebuilt to the original plans and building standard.

The house would probably cost well over $400,000 to rebuild, with raised jarrah floors and jarrah trim, decorative 9' (2.75M) and 9' 6" (2.9M) ceilings, and timber and tile window awnings.

We have only ever had one claim, about 20 yrs ago, a savage wind flattened the back fence (6' asbestos sheeting). It was fully paid out, and replaced with Hardifence fibre cement sheeting, and the company also disposed of the asbestos.

We do keep the house in good condition - the old saying "a stitch in time saves nine", is very applicable when it comes to house maintenance.

There were secondary and tertiary factors in the crash, in that the pilot only had an estimated 5 hrs sleep in the night previous to the trip. Furthermore, he was taking 4 prescription drugs, 2 of which are incompatible with flying.

I'll leave it to individuals here, to add 2 and 2 to get 4, as to the level of this crash pilots serious medical problems, that he failed to advise CASA about.

The drugs he was taking are for serious conditions, such as addiction withdrawal symptoms, and bi-polar disorder. IMO, he should not have been piloting at all, whilst undergoing this treatment.

Quote

Other factors that increased risk

• The pilot did not disclose on-going treatment for significant health issues to the Civil Aviation Safety Authority. That prevented specialist consideration and management of the on-going flight safety risk the medical conditions and prescribed medications posed.

All mechanically-driven devices are major liabilities. They depreciate on a daily basis, just sitting. If you need to sell any mechanically-driven device, you will more than likely fail to get what you think it should be worth.

Such is the business of owning "toys" that give us pleasure, or which facilitate transportation. The only time you may make some financial gain, is if your item is deemed "collectable" - in which case, you will have buyers fighting to buy it.

In all other cases, you will work hard to dispose of your unwanted item, and spend considerable time trying to make a sale at a satisfactory price, that doesn't entail major loss.

All kit-building, restorations, or repairs of mechanical devices take considerable time, effort, dedication and persistence. I spend a lot of time on mechanical restorations and it can be very frustrating at times when the project takes far longer than envisaged to finish, and constant delays in parts locating and sourcing, frustrations when parts don't fit properly or are just plain wrong, delays caused by outside influences, and even holdups with tool breakage or the need to acquire a new tool, all add to the mental toll.

This is why a group of supporters is important when doing any of this work. You need both encouragement and assistance - and setting goals that are unrealistic will only add to your frustration.

Sometimes, it's best to take a break from the job and leave it, and go over to doing something else. Even a holiday is good. Then you can return mentally refreshed, and ready to tackle any problems head-on.

Alan, your current Home & Contents insurance PDS should be clear on what is covered, and what is not covered in the policy. Any aviation operations within the residential area are usually excluded from the cover.

I presume you're concerned about a possible increased risk to your home by operating an aircraft in the near vicinity. I would call your insurance company to find out their attitude towards such operations.

Unless the home was located close to the range of the normal airstrip clearances, I see no major problem with the airstrip posing any problem as regards holding a standard home insurance policy.

https://www.casa.gov.au/file/105066/download?token=aMdVb6EO

I don't know if you allow other aviators to use your airstrip, but if you do, you probably need airstrip operators liability insurance.

https://www.bentoninsurance.com.au/aviation-insurance/airstrip-operators-liability/

....the Red Brothers, as America has swung too far to the left with the current Democrat wins, and Trump and his supporters want to see everything Red again.

However, Turbo, Cappy, OT, bull and CT9000 are all puzzled as to why the Trump cohort want everything Red, as Red is the colour of the dreaded Commies, and it should be the colour of their slavish followers, the Democrats.

It's obvious Trump and the Republicans want to keep everyone confused and off-balance - because making everything Red in America, is exactly what happens in China - where everything must be Red, to reflect the superiority of the Commie System.

OT has long suspected that Turbine Enterprises has a major shareholding in Red Paint manufacturers, but a search of share registries fails to provide any evidence of this. However, the Turbine Consortium is known for its opacity, and it's entirely possible other entities are being used to hide the Turbine shareholdings.

Some idea of the behind-the scenes alliances can be gleaned by the fact that its been found that Turbo has booked a seat at the next Trump rally, and since Donald has made a stunning comeback with his latest rally, Turbo is also apparently investing again in Trump condos, golf courses, and other........

The poor mans Cessna? The promoter doesn't seem too enthused about the O-200 powerplant, and appears to be keen to find a "better" engine. I'll wager that's all about a cheaper engine, and keeping costs down.

....then suddenly, Turbs realised that all hell had actually broken loose in Hollywood, as the entertainers complained loudly and publically that they already paid lots of taxes - and salaries - and also paid millions to a huge range of movie and entertainment support industries.

The response to this Hollywood tax revolt was for Arnie to come back out of retirement for the Governors position - publically stating, "I'M BAA-AACK!!"

Arnie gained his majority support by promising to repeal the Hollywood tax - something dear to his heart - because, as a former actor, he would be affected by the new tax, too.

As soon as he regained the Governorship, he did as he promised, repealed the Hollywood tax, reduced the cost of going to the movies, and offered more tax breaks to movie producers and stars.

Before long, California and Hollywood were the centre of the movie entertainment world once again, and the money flowed in like..............

"Two people die after falling from plane" is a classic piece of bumbling journalism. It makes it sound like two passenger just accidentally fell out of the aircraft.

What they should have put, is that a skydiving instructor and his student, died when the tandem jump they were carrying out, went wrong, and the parachutes failed to open. 

I'm saddened to hear that two more young men in the prime of their lives have lost their lives. I guess we can only wait for the report, to find out what went wrong during the jump.

You have to remember that Waddingtons maintenance re-jigging to improve reliability, was done during WW2. And the major problem he found, was that the planned maintenance schedules as laid out by the aircraft manufacturer, were causing a lowering of reliability and more downtime.

This was simply due to the fact that during WW2, many components had to be dismantled to inspect their condition - despite the component still performing admirably and showing minimal wear when dismantled.

As a result, this unnecessary regular dismantling led to an increase in component failures - largely due to them being disturbed, and no doubt also due to the pressure of wartime causing assembly errors.

Assembly procedures in WW2 were also not as refined as they are today, with a lot of haphazard work being carried out with a lack of regulated procedures - and also aircraft being cannibalised for parts.

As a result, "on-condition" became the byword for many aircraft components. If it was working well and hadn't done huge hours, it was better to leave it alone.

Today, we have a lot more refined testing and checking techniques available to us to keep an eye on component condition. 

I don't have a problem with regular rubber component replacement on aircraft. One, it's cheap to do so, and just may save your skin. Two, rubber components are generally easy to get at and replace, it's not like they're buried inside the engine. And three - rubber components are the fastest degrading item in the power unit, and they suffer adversely from heat and cold cycles, exposure to UV light and ozone, and chemicals in the cooling system (if the engine is water-cooled).

Even in a road vehicle, a ruptured hose can result in catastrophic engine damage if the driver isn't right on the ball - and even then, good drivers still get caught with cooked engines, and blown head gaskets, and cracked/warped cylinder heads - and "dusted" engines.

https://blog.aopa.org/aopa/2014/01/14/the-waddington-effect/

..........nesdecript-looking underwear, which is not a good look for Disneyland, and which must reflect the poor salaries these performers receive!"

"We must take up a collection, or organise some crowd funding so Mam'selle Tinker can buy herself some fine French lace knickers, as in keeping with the Folies Bergère tradition!"

But at that, Cappy, who was rubbernecking and leering at the bottom side of Tinkerbelle, in the hope of ............
 

FB, you're pointing at peripherals with Ipads, pax, high winds, turbulence, bright lights in the cockpit. The Huey is war-proven and driven well past its manufacturer limits, tens of thousands of times by gung-ho American pilots in Vietnam - you can't kill it. They even used the rotors to chop down vegetation, the rotors are weighted for it.

The simple over-riding fact that led to this crash, is that an over-confident pilot kept on driving, past official last light, into gathering darkness, supremely confident in his ability to fly in the dark without training. 

Walrus, I think you're confusing the differences between a kit-built aircraft and a factory-built aircraft. A kit-built aircraft (I'll avoid the undesirable "home-built" term) is majority constructed by the owner - thus the 51% rule.

The ATSB has carried out a study to define recreational aircraft and they found that 33% of kit-builders, carried out major changes to the basic design.

This then begs the question - "What does a Brand X kitplane actually look like, when 33% of them are substantially different in build materials and components to the other 67%?"

There are four basic Intellectual property rights - Patents, Copyright, Registered Design, and Registered Trademark. Copyright can last for many years after the death of the original holder, Registered Design is usually only good for 6 years, and Registered Trademarks need to be re-registered regularly, if the holder desires to keep the Trademark.

Many of the lawsuits and seizures of "fake" brand name products are simply as a result of the non-genuine manufacturer using a registered company trademark without the authority and manufacturing control of the trademark holder.

The major companies protect their trademarks, logos and brand names with zeal. The Americans have led this zealous protection of trademarks, logos and brand names since the early 1800's, suing thieves of those products, mercilessly - worldwide.

But a kit-built aircraft represents a majority piece of manufacturing work by its owner. It may, or may not, have a registered trademark, registered design parts or components, or a registered brand name applied to it - that would be very dependent on the attitude of the company providing the kit.

I'd ask this question. "If a kit-built aircraft crashed, could the kit builder successfully sue the company who provided him with the plans?" 

I'd have to say he has a snowflakes chance in hell. They are "experimental" aircraft, and the risk involved in flying them, and flying in them, is made abundantly clear.

I would think that the only problem a person building from a "secondhand" set of plans would encounter, is that they would need to be careful to examine where there is any patent, registered design, or registered trademark coverage in the plans, and ensure that they did not infringe said patents, registered designs, or trademarks when they built the aircraft.

I know that companies who have produced kit-build plans, have claimed intellectual property rights when selling the plans and design to another company. But that is a completely different scenario to the contractual relationship between a company producing kitplane plans, and the owner-builder who chooses to modify those plans as he sees fit, or to meet his chosen requirements.

The boat comparison is not a valid comparison, because you are comparing a 100% factory and company built product, which is 100% backed and guaranteed by the company.

The amateur boat builder simply made a mistake by trying to call his boat an "XYZ 35 boat", he should have called it a "Joe Bloggs Custom 35" and ensured there was no reference to the original company in anything associated with the boat.

And 316 withstands that constant tempering and re-tempering far better than any other metal or alloy.

One would hope the COVID-19 crisis has caused a rethink in corporate policies. The greatest single problem with our economic system today is the emphasis on a high level of short-term profits to reward shareholders and senior management people, instead of looking at how the corporations short-sighted policies impact upon themselves and their clients in the long term.

In essence, corporate education and modus operandi fails to place any real value on the customer, or their outlook or opinions, to the corporations long term detriment. Typically, the corporations outlook is simply constant greed for market share and profits, without any long-term insight. There is a stark division between American corporations and Japanese corporations, where the Japanese corporations are more cohesive and forward-looking than any American corporation.

The video below is quite interesting as to how corporate short-term greed and the JIT manufacturing process has badly affected supply chains and caused disruption world-wide. There's a whole lot more to any business decision than just a quick dollar, and many things are not measured accurately, when the bean counters try to bring everything back down to hard dollar values.

A lot of bands/clamps are made from 304 stainless, which has a lower tensile strength than 316 stainless. Always use 316 stainless bands/clamps, for greater strength and higher corrosion resistance.

.....see if we can track down the farming and killing factories of Turbine Enterprises. It's already been noted that Turbine has a large setup farming and  killing cats and rats (in different factories, of course - it's impossible to mix the two on farming and production lines) - but it's the thought of precious little bunnies being farmed and killed, that's enough to set Brigitte off, on a dedicated mission to save the fluffy bunnies.

However, when Brigitte discovered that Cappy was actually a Jedi Rat, she forgot all about fluffy bunnies, and wanted to know how a rat became a Jedi - and then morphed into Mickey Mouse in a suit and cloak. She asked Cappy if he'd ever worked in Disneyland, and if he had, how did he.......

Kgwilsons post about Toyota SS batteries led me to find some recent news, where a company named SAKUU (formerly known as KeraCel Inc), have teamed up with a Japanese automotive drivetrain components supplier (Musashi Seimitsu Industry Co., Ltd.) to go full speed ahead into mass-production of 3D printed SSB's.

The SAKUU company hold a number of patents on new 3D printing processes that simplify and reduce the (currently) extremely high cost of manufacturing SS batteries.

In particular, SAKUU have a patented 3D printing process that produces a structure they call "PoraLyte".

This structure appears to be able to blend a mixture of chemicals or metals together in the printer spray stream, to assist in creating an SSB which is 30% lighter than L-ion and which produces 50% more power than L-ion. It appears the major gain with PoraLyte is its form - microparticles with large and complex surfaces that present as the ideal answer to SSB technology.

Musashi Seimitsu Industry Co., Ltd. is obviously greatly concerned their business model is facing large-scale destruction, as many drivetrain components they currently manufacture will no longer be needed in EV's. So they have invested big in AI, and poured a large sum of money into SAKUU to get in on the EV gravy train.

https://www.electrive.com/2021/05/17/sakuu-presents-3d-printer-for-solid-state-batteries/

https://www.sakuu.com/post/sakuu-poised-to-unlock-mainstream-adoption-of-electric-vehicles-with-world-s-first-ev-battery-3d-pri

https://www.fabbaloo.com/news/the-mysterious-sakuu-3d-printing-process

http://www.musashi.co.jp/en/

There's plenty of cheap and satisfactory kitplane plans available, if you want to build from scratch - which is what you're basically doing, if you try to utilise Savannah plans secondhand.

Octave, the simple problem remains that every EV system supporter merely states that charging points will be everywhere - but the problem remains, that installing that massive charging network is going to cost a fortune.

We've already seen the mind-boggling cost, and cost overruns, with the NBN - where a huge 120 yr old electric network had to be ripped up and replaced with a fibre optic network.

But the copper phone network was already largely installed in our infrastructure - a charging network needs to be added to our infrastructure. 

I could well imagine the disruption caused by ripping up every shopper carpark to install a sizeable charging network - along with transformers, and all the other associated apparatus needed as well.

I think a lot of thought and planning needs to be put into this setting out of a charging network, so it proceeds with smoothness and integrated planning, and doesn't cause major disruption to many areas.

......How To Scam 100,000 People And Get Away With It". The 4 Corners investigation goes deep into a shadowy groups operations on 6 Continents (they haven't started up in China yet, because the bribe amount negotiations are ongoing, assisted by a team from Dan Andrews office).

The 4 Corners investigation team has discovered the name of this shadowy organisation, which appears to have links with the Mafia, the Cosa Nostra, Mexican & Colombian Drug Cartels, Chinese Triads, Vietnamese Crime Gangs, Internet Scam Gangs, Russian Cyberhackers, and even Congolese Street Hoods.

The team will reveal that this shadowy organisation has tentacles in nearly every corner of the world - and the HQ is based right here in Melbourne, working out of a nondescript-looking home in a SE Melbourne suburb.

The 4 Corners expose will show permanent links between aviation, trucking, motor racing, publishing, business ventures, farming - in fact, every area of society where it can sink its tentacles into, to ruthlessly ream its victims.

The expose will show journalists trying to chase down the shadowy head of this global group, who manages to evade them by disappearing mere minutes before the journos arrival at his headquarters. 

What can be shown, is that this group and its mystery owner, are opportunistic, hungry for power and money, and will stop at nothing to ensure that they........

One concern is the sheer number of charging points required when all of Australias fleet is electric. You only have to see the traffic jams at servos now, when fuel is in demand, to realise the numbers of vehicles in total, is absolutely enormous. And when you go to fuel your petrol or diesel vehicle, it only takes 5 mins - an EV requires 1/2 hr at least, to get enough recharge for the next 100 kms or so.

I cannot see where any charging point will have the capacity to recharge any more than maybe 30 vehicles. This is a drop in the ocean compared to what is required. The amount of charging stations or points will have to be absolutely enormous. Maybe a charging point at every parking meter might do it - but that requires a massive investment in charging infrastructure.

I can see a point where EV takeup will overwhelm the charging network. Yes, a lot of people will have a charge point at home - but they have to get home, first!

This is why I think swappable batteries are a must - and it's high time Govts started examining what the future is going to look like, when it comes to EV's and the charging network- and to start setting standards for battery design/shape, charger connection standardisation, and a host of other areas that will start to become EV bottlenecks, unless they are addressed soon.

Two men, aged 30 & 46 have been found deceased in their crashed aircraft in the Gold Coast hinterland. The aircraft, on a flight to Maroochydore, was expected to arrive at 5:30PM AEST.

When the aircraft failed to arrive as expected, a search was initiated, and the wreckage was found at about 8:30PM AEST, located in bushland along Commissioners Flat Road in Peachester.

https://www.9news.com.au/national/sunshine-coast-hinterland-plane-crash-two-dead-in-peachester/f99a46f5-b8ae-4a58-bcd5-919c3634b390

RIP to those who perished. This is happening too often, lately.