onetrack

This might explain the first P-51 pic better ...

US Army Air Force - Jet Powered Mustang

The pulse jet fitted to the Mustang for trials was a copy of the pulse jet fitted to the Nazi V-1 Flying Bomb.

The Americans took the engine back to the U.S. and reverse-engineered it, it was also produced by Ford as the PJ-31-1.

More info about the R&D work on the pulse jet engine in the link below, it was labelled "Project Squid" in 1947.

The research was pretty intensive and centred around fuel types, and the search for materials and metals that possessed superior properties to the run-of-the-mill known materials, that would withstand the temperatures and pressures inside a rocket-fuelled engine.

A lot of this research was no doubt of great benefit to the later, American space programme.

http://www.dtic.mil/cgi-bin/GetTRDoc?Location=U2&doc=GetTRDoc.pdf&AD=ADA952980

Flying Dog, you gotta stop sniffing that avgas. You're talking about some serious stuff here - it's called murder, and it can get you executed in a lot of foreign countries. I hope she's got a good lawyer.

I found Joels brother in the U.S. - and the truck he's using, to drive Joel to the airstrip ...

This looks like a pretty good advert for good crash survivability in a high wing, light aircraft.

Plane crash survivors in hospital

Avgas is readily available at Leonora by appointment.

Domestic Airport » Shire of Leonora

Laverton could also be an option, the airstrip is 3kms out of town, and the Shire states JetA1 is available 24/7 - but says nothing about Avgas. You'd have to call the Shire or the local fuel agent.

The last time I flew out of Laverton was about 1986 or 1987, so things might have changed a bit!

http://laverton.wa.gov.au/shire

Excellent photos, and top-class assembly hints and advice.

onetrack said:I'm just pointing out, that price alone, is not the final determining factor in most peoples purchase decisions.

bexrbetter said:

 

Correct, because it's the preliminary factor that's already been decided.

As someone who was self-employed in my own business for around 50 years, I bought a vast amount of mechanised equipment of all types, and spent a lot of money doing so.

I know that, often, the price of an item I wanted or needed, was a lot more than I wanted or budgeted to pay - but I had to examine the features that made it that price, and decide whether to bite the bullet and pay for it.

A cheap price is certainly an initially attractive thing - but a low price doesn't always swing the sale.

A lot of people prefer to pay good money for an item that they are convinced has better features, longer life, is more user-friendly, is safer, and has better resale.

Sales and marketing techniques are as much a feature of a products success, as the design or price of the product. Despite Beemers and Mercs being extremely high-priced, they still manage to sell a lot, as compared to Hyundais.

I do recall a car salesman telling me once, that there were psychological numbers that you had to talk people over - such as a $10,000 limit when selling used cars.

People would get $10,000 fixed in their minds as the maximum they wanted to pay. It was a real sales barrier to have good car priced at $11,000, and then try to sell it.

He reckoned people would say they couldn't possibly afford it, it was way over their budget limit - even though the vehicle was a better buy, than most of the clunkers priced at $9,999.

It was his job to talk people around to seeing the benefits of spending the little extra to get the better vehicle.

I understand you're intending to aim squarely at the "most affordable" kitplane - but never forget that marketing and sales techniques, as well as attractive design features, are as much a part of the success story, as a low purchase price.

A lot of potential buyers are wary when presented with a low purchase price, wanting to know exactly where or how the build cost was cut so substantially, and what possibly suffered as a result.

You only use duck tape when you're going to wing it.

I'm not being disparaging. You're being overly sensitive. I previously said I'm not dissing what you're doing, that I admire what you're doing.

All I wanted to know was the reasoning behind what you're doing, and you have now explained it. Perhaps I missed something earlier on in the thread, that I should have read.

I'm just trying to raise a few points of discussion and reasoning. If that goes against the aim of your thread, I'll drop it. Thanks for the enlightenment.

Bottom line is - is a $10K kitplane offer, really going to make a huge difference, when owner-builders are often looking at more than that, for instruments/avionics, and around $25-30K for a motor?

Not trying to diss your project, I admire your efforts - just trying to get my head around the economics/benefits of what you're trying to achieve, and whether it will cause a huge rush of sales for you.

I'm just pointing out, that price alone, is not the final determining factor in most peoples purchase decisions. The largest number consider performance, looks, resale, comfort and user-friendliness, as well as the price.

Far better than our local hardware man, Mr Handcock. He took particular pains to remind those who pronounced his name incorrectly, that it was pronounced "Han-co".

The whole scenario makes little sense. No solid evidence to point to any one particular person, no apparent motive, no claim by any group that they were responsible.

I'm beginning to think the mystery will never be solved - and with the ever-increasing passage of time, there will be even less chance of finding the reason for the diversion.

MH370 will become the Mary Celeste of aviation - but even the Mary Celeste was found, and she left some major clues.

I'm wondering if the investigators will find anything worthwhile, by way of evidence, even if the wreckage of MH370 is found. The overwritten CVR record is disastrous.

And here was me thinking, we were going to get something far superior than the Ikea of ULS aircraft! The disappointment!! Will it come in a flat pack with readable instructions, or will I need to get help to assemble it??

And why, exactly, is the Vans the biggest-selling kitplane in the world? Is it because it's the best design around? - or is it because it's a cheap and nasty design, with the minimum amount of material supplied to get you airborne?

There are plenty of designs in this world that offer the minimum of good design, along with the minimum amount of material required to do the job, for the minimum amount of dollars/pounds/zlotys expended.

Then there are the few items that offer superior design, with a little more material (usually superior material), for not a lot more money. Wise buyers seek out the latter.

The "biggest-selling" advertising brag is often due to superior marketing and sales people, too - not necessarily because the item provides everything the buyer seeks, at low cost.

Ikea furniture comes to mind.

I dunno, the design still looks a little dodgy to me. Maybe I need another month to get my head around it. Ideally, shouldn't the wing taper in thickness towards the ends?

Here's your wing design principles chart ... I trust you're reading from this ...

http://www.wainfan.com/wingdes.pdf

You were spot on as regards NBH. I found the ownership list details. NBH registered it on 12/03/1981 - but there's no record of when they onsold it to SDS. Seems like it went back to the U.S. in 1998.

Registration Details For VH-BNK (North Broken Hill (Pty) Ltd) 501 Citation-I/SP - PlaneLogger

I found the ATSB report for the Citation forced landing - but I can't find out who actually owned it in 1983 - there doesn't appear to be any easily-accessed online ownership records going back that far.

I think you're right, the pax were all the NBH board. The crash-landing site was only 10km NE of Kal, I was sure it was further out. Ah well, walking 10kms is better than walking 150kms.

http://www.atsb.gov.au/media/31245/aair198304358.pdf

Yeah, it could have been NBH, not BHP. The memory cells aren't what they used to be. Have to see if I can find the ATSB report, or some other old article - there would have only been one Citation, that did a firebreak landing, East of Kal!

I did quite clearly state that I did NOT post it as a conspiracy theory, the information was simply interesting about who was onboard - who are otherwise usually nameless victims.

I recall quite clearly, only a week or two after MH370's disappearance, that mention of the sizeable number of Freescale Semiconductor company execs on board, was noted in many news items.

Yes, I do recall the Graham Hill air disaster. No, I didn't know that F1 teams are now paranoiac about flying together. I get the impression they're a superstitious lot - lucky rabbits feet and all that stuff.

It is not company policy for a lot of companies, to demand that senior staff not fly in large numbers on the same flight.

Separate flights with minimal numbers of execs on board, are usually only demanded when light aircraft are involved. Commercial airline flights are much safer than driving down the highway, we all know that.

If you want to mention past disasters, or near disasters, involving many members of one group, there have been numerous sports teams (football teams) wiped out in air crashes. I haven't seen any requirement for teams to be separated today.

We nearly had the entire board of BHP wiped out, when the pilot ran the corporate Citation out of juice about 50 or 100NM East of Kalgoorlie in the 1980's.

It was pure luck he managed to bring it down in one piece on a station firebreak, with no injuries. No doubt, he must have been roasted on the spot, I'll wager his ears are still burning.

I seem to recall that BHP immediately placed a limit on the number of board members travelling on the one flight.

Then we had the huge wartime disaster of losing 3 senior pollies and the Chief of General Staff, in the Lockheed Hudson crash outside Canberra in 1940, due to the Hudson's nasty, rapid stall at lower speeds, characteristics.

That crash certainly did lead to a period when the numbers of pollies and/or military chiefs on flights were limited, to prevent a repetition of the Hudson disaster. I think it has been removed in the jet age.

More recently we had the 2010 Cameroon Aero Service CASA-212 crash, near Djoum in Cameroon, which wiped out 6 members of the board of Sundance Resources.

If there ever was a place you'd want to separate your executives on flights, it would have to be any country in Africa.

It may be interesting that such a large number of senior execs of one company were on board MH370, but it happens every day, and no-one even brings it up until a crash or disappearance happens. Then it all becomes a world-wide conspiracy.

The only thing I didn't see mentioned in that pile of tinfoil-hat conspiracy gobbledygook, is that anonymous have secret video of the reptilians filling the chemtrail tanks on MH370 - that were then sprayed inside the cabin, to render everyone into zombies, in preparation for their work for the Illuminati at the secret underground base under the South Pole.

And of course, we know MH370 didn't crash! - it landed at that secret South Pole runway, that Capt Shah practising landing on, on his computer sim! That's why the wreck has never been found!

The supposed pieces of MH370 wreckage found, were cunningly planted by the Illuminati! My God, can't everyone see all this! It all fits together like the most outlandish movie plot - but it's all true!

How many joins in that wing section, Bex? How are the joins made? Doesn't every added join weaken the member? Isn't it better to have one complete, untouched member for the section, for strength?

Most importantly, we can't see how the flapping mechanism actually operates.

Thanks guys... I am getting the message that a cheap vibration meter without frequency output will not be useful.In my imagination, I saw a meter which gave a steady low reading until some event happened like a flywheel bolt coming loose or some bad fuel causing detonation, whereupon the meter would go to a high number. Then I would just have to find the cause and fix it before anything broke.

Too easy to be true huh.

The device was designed for trucks and machinery. When fitted to trucks, they contained a speedo - when fitted to machinery, they only contained a clock.

The device worked on the vibration of the surface it was attached to - and then recorded the level of vibration the tachograph was subjected to, via a sensitive vibrating pointer, scratching the surface of a rotating paper card.

The card was inserted in a pack of 7 tied together by small tabs, for a weeks use - and the cards turned 360 deg each day. Hours were marked in segments totalling 24 segments to the circumference of the card.

As one card finished, at the end of each 24 hr period, the tab was split by an inbuilt knife device, and the pointer went onto the next card.

Because the pointer was highly sensitive to vibration, rough operation of the truck or machine would show up as spikes in an otherwise fairly steady circular line drawn by the pointer.

The truck versions produced a road speed record, idle time record, excessive bouncing of the vehicle, RPM levels (including engine overspeed), and distance travelled.

On machinery, they showed operating time, stopped time, and rough operation, indicated by big spikes in the height of the scored line, just like a seismograph shows earthquake events.

The tachograph is a particularly reliable instrument - but perhaps this version isn't precisely what you're seeking, because they're pretty heavy - and they only reveal the severe vibration event, as a past, recorded event.

Here's a link to the Argo Tachograph. Not sure if simple mechanical tachographs are still made - like everything today, they have been superseded by electronic versions.

Perhaps there is an electronic version that can be used for what you have in mind, you need to talk to some precision instrument supplier.

http://canwesttach.com/pdf/Argo_Tachograph_Canwest_Tachograph.pdf

EDIT - Seems like Argo bought out the Kienzle Company, and I understand that Argo is now a division of VDO.

EFOTO would certainly be a slightly better description - Engine Failure On Takeoff. However, the word AFTER is used, to define an engine failure after the aircraft has left the ground, and is actually flying - to differentiate from an engine failure when still rolling, and V1 hasn't been reached.

Maybe the abbreviation needs to be expanded to EFIATO - Engine Failure Immediately After Take Off. However, that abbreviation sounds too much like an Italian car model failure.

But don't the Airbusses have an additional problem with regards to dual inputs? I'm thinking Afriqiyah Airways Flight 771 here.

Nothing like the Jap bike missiles. I've ridden a VF1000R at 280-290kmh for an extended period, and they reach that speed with staggering ease and rapidity.

Don't do that kind of thing any more, I'm getting too old for that kind of death-chancing stuff.