onetrack

No, AVGAS is not a low-sulphur fuel. The following is a cut and paste from a Quora contribution by one Paul Montgomery, a retired engineer. QUOTE: "I built a steam injection system for a 390 Ford engine back in the 1980s before current technology was employed and got a 3 to 5 mile per gallon improvement on a truck that got 10 miles to the gallon. This is roughly 25% of fuel savings which are substantial for those days. I did a lot of tinkering with this. I heated the water by wrapping an exhaust header with copper tubing. This was a huge improvement over cold water injection as it decreased the amount of water I needed to inject, and caused less damage to the exhaust. Still, I used several gallons for each tank of gas. I also manually cut the injection on after the engine warmed up, and before I cut the engine off. Even with this, I still had trouble rotting out the muffler and exhaust pipes. This problem could be eliminated by installing stainless steel exhaust components. In the end, even after all this work and enthusiasm, I ended up deciding it was better to just pay for the extra gas. This is the reason why you don’t see many water injection systems."

One of the main problems with water injection, is simply corrosion. Modern materials can be chosen to eliminate corrosion in the water reservoir and injection plumbing, but residual moisture in cylinder bores is a big no-no. The water injection system must be set up so that water injection ceases long before the engine is shut down, to remove all traces of water from the combustion chambers and intake. In addition, water injection creates severe corrosion of the exhaust system components, so these components must be manufactured from corrosion-resistant materials. A lot of stainless steel is not as corrosion-resistant as it's made out to be. There's also a need to ensure that the water used is totally free from minerals, additives and chemicals that adversely affect the combustion process, and which may facilitate electrolysis. This pure water supply must be available on a regular basis, and anywhere you might travel to. Not an easy thing to do. Finally, water is heavy, and water injection uses a fairly substantial volume of water. In a light aircraft, that's a un-needed weight penalty.

.....and which was Kev's rat-tail. The question was soon answered, right after they sat down, when Kev's pet rat descended out of his hair, and sat on his shoulder. The Panamanian panicked. Where he came from, rats were vermin and were killed on sight. He reached for a weapon, all the while keeping an eye on the rat. But the rat was watching him, too, and no sooner had the Panamanian made a sudden move, when the rat jumped onto..............

This is terrible news. It looks like a failed attempt to return to the runway after an EFATO. Three killed in plane crash at Shellharbour Airport in Lake Illawarra area - ABC News WWW.ABC.NET.AU Officers from Lake Illawarra Police District were informed that a light aircraft crashed shortly after take-off on Saturday morning.

Wow, what a little ripper of a classic light aircraft! The '57 Chevy of the aircraft world! I love it!! Now, where's that Lotto ticket!

Wow, the Robbies are going down all too regularly, this year!

Skippy, look on the positive side. A crack developed for seemingly no reason. Then more cracks developed as you went to fix it. It seems to me, that that canopy was getting suss anyway, and perhaps you avoided a bullet from having the canopy fall apart in flight. It appears your model of aircraft has some canopy problems anyway, so now you can ensure you have a very good canopy, by installing the best you can buy and fit. No-one ever said owning an aircraft was a cheap and trouble-free proposal - like all complex machinery, regular applications of money is the only thing that keeps them going.

You can get a flat tyre anywhere, I guess - there's been a few blowouts on takeoff, it doesn't seem to pose a major safety problem. But an open cargo door upon taxiing is procedural and check list failure, on a number of levels.

I reckon the only light aircraft that would consume 2 US gallons an hour (7.57 litres) would be those in a dive, with the throttle pulled back. There's a lot of "salesperson" type promises, when it comes to fuel consumption figures.

USD$100K gets you very little, by way of aircraft, or even kits, today. I'm surprised it's not a lot more.

There certainly is......

Arron - As Nev says, though - loading of baggage is still happening almost up to the last minute, while the crew are in the cockpit doing final checks. There's obviously holes in Jetstars loading procedures and door checks.

Nev, you didn't miss much, the video was so bad, it wasn't worth watching. One does have to wonder how the crew managed to miss a warning light for the open cargo door, at startup.

Possibly due to cost? All the additional componentry in a FADEC system on a smaller engine, would push that small engine cost up substantially.

And there's this following modification for Sonex canopies - https://docs.google.com/document/d/1z01IFU3TZG-q1dtxzjAUgkD_JUyMqMiwJATMaQ1hnB0/edit?tab=t.0

Skippy, did you know about this following Sonex canopy service/availability? https://www.sonexaus.org.au/but-and-sell/for-sale/australian-made-sonex-canopies/

Well that shows either his computers, or yours, have been hacked, and emails intercepted. How else would they find your email address as his client? Nothing is secure on the internet, Russians and North Koreans are making billions annually out of internet fraud, and they are extremely sophisticated. It's reported the North Koreans have a complete department set up specifically for initiating scams. They even scammed the Bank of Bangladesh out of $81M after they penetrated the SWIFT banking system.

The scammers don't necessarily work on the "greed factor". How would you like to find out your investment property had been sold without your knowledge, and the funds disappeared into some 3rd world banking system? This happened several times in Perth, around 10-12 years ago. Fortunately, due to some good work on behalf of the W.A. Police, the AFP, and the South African Police, some of the scammers were nailed. Despite all the knowledge about scammers, I reckon about every third business owner I speak to, has been scammed by a simple email - that has come from an intercepted email from a regular customer of that business - advising that bank details have changed, and "please pay to this new bank account number". Hardly a single business owner questioned the bank details change, and they lost heaps. My nephew was scammed out of $30,000 in this manner - thought he was paying a business bill, and didn't find out he'd paid scammers, until the real business asked for payment. Real estate agents here were conned time and time again, with fraudulent official documentation, and changes to emails and bank account numbers, none of which was verified by the recipients. https://www.consumerprotection.wa.gov.au/system/files/migrated/sites/default/files/atoms/files/issue30.pdf

That's nothing but an invite for IT criminals to find holes in the system for financial reward. There's not a single IT system that hasn't been hacked or scammed. Hacking for ransom monies was a favourite a little while ago. Manheim Auctions was hacked, all their customer details acquired, their website was locked down and the hackers demanded $30M to unlock it. Manheim refused to pay, and had to build an entire new auction website from scratch. Unless the company/Govt dept uses two or three step verification with their system, then their customers are open to being ripped off with fraud.

There's been a sizeable number of people in Australia who have lost their homes to cunning African scammers, who are part of major criminal gangs, and they have well-educated and qualified people amongst them, who have IT and legal skills, and they can pass themselves off as genuine people - even to the extent of calling the suckers when they've become suspicious, and these callers have managed to persuade the suckers, they're genuine! In W.A., you cannot transfer the ownership of property without presenting the original Transfer of Land document to Landgate, either in person or by post. Landgate will not accept any land transfer documents via email or electronic form. The reason for this is, the State Govt was obliged to fork out several millions in compensation to property owners who had been scammed out of their properties. https://www.landgate.wa.gov.au/land-and-property/property-ownership/buying-and-selling-property/?accordion=accordion262e0eddf8f341419058efd7bde69347

Sorry, Skippy - I haven't seen any information that says Australia Post operates two separate businesses in the form of parcel and letter handling. AP purchased 100% of StarTrack, a private freight company, in 2012, to enable AP to get into the parcel business without the major cost of setting up a completely new parcel-handling entity. StarTrack and Australia Post are the one and the same, but StarTrack specialises in parcel delivery for businesses, and doesn't handle letters, whereas AP handles parcels and letters for consumers and businesses. An AP postie can and will deliver your parcels, along with any letters for you, in the one delivery. But posties are limited in what they can carry in their delivery bikes, so mostly, your parcels are delivered either by a StarTrack operative in a van - and sometimes by independent delivery van owners, who are contracted to AP or StarTrack. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-12-06/australia-post-letter-delivery-reduced-to-every-second-day/103189962

The crash looks very much to me, like an engine failure followed by an auto-rotation that wasn't fast enough to arrest the rapid descent. The chopper experts claim you have about 1 to 2 seconds after engine failure to initiate an auto rotation in a Robinson R22. Failure to very rapidly adjust to auto-rotation means a loss of rotor RPM, which leads to an extremely rapid descent. The Robbies have a very light rotor assembly, which is low-inertia, and losing that small amount of rotor inertia, by a delayed move to auto-rotation, means a high speed crash, instead of a controlled, slow-descent, hard landing. It's saddening to hear the instructor was killed, and I trust the young chopper trainee pulls through, but it sounds like his injuries are critical.

Transhipping from the U.S. is pretty much a dead-loss exercise, due to everyone that touches the item being shipped, wanting a piece of the pie. The company you purchase from will often charge you US$50 or US$75 just for arranging an International delivery. There's only two ways to get items from the U.S. - find a company that offers free domestic U.S. postage and get them to send it to the transhipper of your choice (Planet Express is about the best of them), then get the item sent to the Planet Express depot for shipping to Australia. Pick the closest PE depot. The other way is to make friends with someone in the U.S. (forums are good for this), who is close to the company you want to purchase from. Either ask them to pick the item up, and post it via USPS, or get it sent to them for pickup by USPS. USPS Priority Mail Express International is the way to send it - and in Flat Rate boxes. A USPS small FR box costs US$49.65 to Australia. Your postage helper doesn't even need to wait in line at the P.O. they can pick up a empty FR box, book the postage online and USPS will pick it up from their home or business. USPS is pretty reliable. Sending items by road over long distances in the U.S. is a costly and potentially disastrous method, because so many transport vehicles crash, and the parcels are often destroyed. Organising to send the item to the closest International parcel sorting centre is the way to go. There is one of these USPS International parcel sorting centres in Kansas City. USPS costs have rocketed, because of two major factors. The first one, is the same one that has sent Australia Posts costs rocketing - and that is the Govt requirement to deliver letters to anywhere in the country at low cost. As the number of letters has declined substantially, so the costs to the postal agency have gone ballistic, as they need all the previous infrastructure and vehicles and employees, just to deliver a handful of letters a week to outlying areas. The other factor that affected USPS badly was accumulated losses over many years of inadequate cost controls. USPS was forced to pay employees based on their education standard, rather than on the level of task they were assigned. So, USPS ended up with mail sorters who had PhD's, getting paid over $100,000 a year just to sort letters and parcels. It was a stupid and unsustainable system, and there were several U.S. Govt inquiries and investigations into how to reduce USPS's major losses. Part of the solution was simply doubling and tripling the letter and parcel rate charges over a relatively short period of time. I used to buy hundreds of items a year from the U.S. between about year 2000 and about 2015. The postage costs were reasonable in that period. After 2015, it started to become costly to ship items from the U.S., so now I buy only a fraction of what I want from the U.S.

Undersize components such as wiring diameter, would likely be the major cause of heat production in chargers. I have simple test policy, related to my skin. Whatever the item is, if I can't hold my hand on it comfortably for 20-30 seconds when it's operating at full load, then it's definitely at risk of burnout - and fire potential. I also have a policy of never leaving ANY charger unattended. After having lost a house to an electrical fire that wasn't even my fault (it was a voltage surge from the supplier), I'm rather paranoiac about fire starting from electrical sources.

There must be some champagne flowing in the boardroom of Lockheed Martin right about now, with this successful major F-35 contract. The fighters are being built for both USAAF and International customers. I can't help but feel though, that these fighters will be the last fighters containing pilots, ever designed and built. Drone technology is advancing so rapidly, these F-35's are in danger of becoming wasted defence expenditure. https://www.flightglobal.com/fixed-wing/lockheed-martin-secures-contract-for-296-f-35-fighters/164719.article