danny_galaga

While I'm a centre left kinda guy politically, I really feel bad for people who believe in conservative politics and find their parties are being ruined by anti science nut jobs. Most obvious in the US with the Republican Party, but also here with the Liberals and Nationals. While I didn't always agree with those parties, they had a different and valid point of view to mine (which is important in a democracy). Now they just seem like a joke. I hope for my American Friends a new conservative party forms so they have a respectable voice again. The Republicans can just rename themselves to the Clown Party. 

I LOVE two stroke motors but I guess their time has come. I agree, electric might be the way forward for microlights especially since they are generally used for pootling around. 

4 hours ago, jackc said:

I am surprised Rotax did not develop something, maybe they think the move to higher power engines is where the market is going?  I don’t know how constant mesh bike gearboxes would last,  maybe an idea would be to strip out all the bike gears and make a single speed set of gears that could use the existing case?

Enginewise, there are many choices…….I think there is a good potential market for 4 stroke power as emission rules will kill off the 2 strokes, just look at outboards now……2 strokes gone.

Yes you could probably just put a simpler drive train in, but bike gear boxes are a pain in the ass to work on. Those gears are designed to be working constantly, hauling you and a pillion for say 100,000 km. So would be easier to just leave it as is.

Those microlight companies may have to start thinking about a conversion kit for a light four stroke bike engine. A modern version of a Yamaha xs650 for example. Swap the drive sprockets for a belt (if Kawasaki it will probably be belt drive already) and a bracket to mount a prop on. Leave it in say fourth gear and away you go. 

3 hours ago, jackc said:

Maybe I should simply put a wanted advert second hand  and see what I get, I have abandoned the Aerolite 103 due to engine choices…..no more 503, 582s for reasonable price.  Guess’s all the Aerochute guys snap them up?

Don't they offer other options though? There is a German engine they list. Name eludes me this instant...

Agree. I grew up in Darwin. Schooling in the 70's and 80's. Public school system was probably best in Australia. Most people I knew went to public school. I was housing commission but really had no idea how poor we were. Don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing. Most of my friends were richer. They were the ones with go karts and Atari 2600's etc. I still haven't owned a go kart but I finally bought an Atari 2600 a couple of years ago 😁

Your parents are the most important thing. My friends with mean parents unsurprisingly didn't do well in general. The ones with good parents did. I'm the odd one out in that equation. I think my parents were good, but i STILL didn't do that well. My younger sister did. Even though she went to a rougher high school than me, our family was more settled by then. SHe has a masters degree in education and funnily enough teaches at my old high school. One of my friends who went all the way through public schooling is now a professor of physics. His doctoral thesis was in charting an anti matter periodic table! One friend who went to a private high school became a boiler maker, his brother an auto electrician. His father was a fucking a hole. Nothing wrong with the trades (I ended up being an auto electrician too) but what was the point of the private schooling? He could have left public school after year 10 and been a boiler maker.

There, those are my selected examples. How about some famous ones that show all the combinations?

Norman Mailer- Harvard at 16. Best selling author.

Theodore Kacsynski- Harvard at 16. Better known as the Unabomber.

Michael Faraday- Apprentice bookbinder at 14. One of the most important physicists ever.

Edmund Kemper. Ran away from home at 14. Became known as the CO-Ed killer for killing 8 female students. Also killed his grandparents at 15.

Just thought about it. Those four all had very high IQ's. I think for the rest of us non geniuses a stable caring family is the key. 

1 hour ago, planedriver said:

Teachers union members trying to cover their Ars* I would imagine.

It's amazing how us older folk really appreciate how many times tables have assisted us in life.

I recently went to a shop and simply bought two items at $6 each and gave the young girl a $20 note. because the electronic till wasn't working, she ended asking me how much change she needed to give me.

This is what is called an argument by selected instance.

Also never let it be saidi haven't put blood sweat and tears into this project 😄

Screw that, I share nothing! 😄

I think the thing that helps the most is when i have a hissy fit and whine to you guys. Your positivity inspires 🙂

Ok, ok! Time to get back at it. I stayed overnight in town so I could get more inertia on the project. 

2 hours ago, ev17ifly2 said:

I took delivery of a BushCat kit in the same shipment as Danny.  I have no technical background having had a career in sales and marketing however I found the build to be relatively straightforward and as a result the plane was signed off and flying within twelve months. It has now logged over 100 hours of flying.

Which is great, but you are retired and twelve months is a far cry from the claimed 3 weeks. I was off to a bad start almost straight away. You would remember how early in the piece the engine mount goes in? AFTER I installed it I realised it had corrosion on it. Eddy said it was best to replace it. After sending two of them (the first was sent in a cardboard box and got bent in transit) I finally got to pull out the corroded one and replace it. So within the first few hours of the build I had to wait several weeks to proceed. The Parkes plane built by school kids could not have been built if they had my kit.

Yes I know I'm a bit of a sook about it. It is not the experience I was expecting. I am actually quite technically minded. For instance:

http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php/topic,144934.0.html

https://youtu.be/WmJLF05lkrk

Engine and electrics is no biggie for me. 

1 hour ago, Geoff_H said:

Danny, Where have you got the project to. Related to the 3-week build?

Id say about two weeks or so by their time scale. On and off it's been nearly two years for me. The other kit in the container mine came in was built in six months. He's retired though so a bit more spare time than me. So id say six months is a realistic figure.

3 weeks is impossible. Each missing or incorrect part takes about ten days to get the correct part from South Africa via DHL.  Which is quick in the world of air freight. Even quicker would be if that part was in the kit to start with.

I can only imagine that they had three or four kits to pull spare parts from with the Parkes kit 😄

Back to my original question. What I have is a Bushcat. Just been working on it again. Hair pulling stuff. Really is not a fun kit. Great plane though. Plenty of kit built versions flying.

The kit was about 45k. Includes all parts to fit a 912 - oil cooler, hoses etc. 

In addition I bought some steam gauges, and a wooden P prop.

SE Queensland  if anyone wants to have a look and make an offer. Id say it's roughly 75 per cent complete. I can almost guarantee you won't enjoy finishing it, but hey- I've done 75 percent of the yelling and cursing for you! 

I freakin absolutely HATE to give up on it, but the main idea of building the kit was to enjoy the process. This just makes me feel angry all the time.

So if someone were to buy it, there would be a different motivation- put in some hard work and get reasonable priced new plane out of it 🙂

13 hours ago, aro said:

No idea what you're referring to with Qudos Bank, but this claim about the PCR tests is false. They are 100% specific for COVID.

 

There are other PCR tests for other diseases, but the laboratories know which test they are running.

He's probably been listening to Alan Jones or some other equally eminent virologist 

I watched a Thruster lazily doing circuits the other day while I worked on my plane, not getting anywhere. If I could turn back time...

20 hours ago, Bruce Tuncks said:

A couple of good things about the poms tho... 

Recently, I heard an aboriginal activist ( well actually  he was as white as me ) being asked about what other colonial power he would have chosen instead of the english...  he was stymied for a reply.

On similar lines, apparently the blacks in South Africa supported the english  against the boers.

 

You trippin too dawg

6 hours ago, Flying Binghi said:

 

 

As to the “10,000”. Here in just Queensland we have over 10,000 children murdered every year, so, what’s another few dying ?

 

 

 

 

. 

Dafuq?!!?! You trippin balls...

To whoever mentioned Sweden, they didn't do too well

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-95699-9

7 hours ago, spacesailor said:

Yes

My second jab had No side-effects on me, just hoping it,s Not a placebo.

BUT  l will get another A S P with a differant maker, first & second AstraZenica, third ( a little blue one ) Pfizer.  It should do the trick !.

spacesailor

Unless you were in a trial, or injected by a German nurse, you got the real deal.

On 09/08/2021 at 1:33 PM, onetrack said:

While the "Live Free or Die" true believers still exist in the millions in the U.S. - and continue to "infect" with their beliefs, the stupid sections of our population, who worship "The American Way" - we are still going to struggle to confine outbreaks. I guess at least we still have inviolable laws to jail and fine the idiots - unlike a number of the U.S. States who think that abiding by laws infringes on their personal freedoms.

 

One can only hope that Darwins law of Natural Selection ensures the American idiots finally die out, and their toxic and ill-founded logic dies with them.

 

https://www.concordmonitor.com/Unlike-elsewhere-New-Hampshire-refunds-COVID-business-fines-41566356

I understand your sentiment, but in reality, even the most hick states in the US have double the vaccination rates of Australia. 

3 hours ago, turboplanner said:

The problem with that theory, is that you certainly can separate, but you can't see covid and you can't control the morons who leave their masks below their noses and lean over you etc. or leave aerosol on the goods you might pick up in the supermarket, or with the Delta strain, which might blow your way in a corridor.

I was one of those morons 😕

I got with the program though 🙂

Even SERBIA and SLOVENIA have vaccinated roughly THREE times as many per capita as us.

Pretty big clue right there about where we're going wrong...

One-track, I think people really have to stop thinking of China as that place that makes crappy hand tools etc. Last year they surpassed the US for the first time in number of patents applied for. Us has again taken the lead but that is clearly an indication that they aren't just a nation of 'people with nimble hand who can make knock offs'. People are people, you get industrious and incentive people in every corner of the world, even the poorest or most authoritarian country. 

On the subject of pay, did you know that the average engineer in China earns more than their counterpart in the US? 

You have to divorce your attitude to the politics and just look at the facts when it comes to economics. To say China will be the biggest economy in the world doesn't mean you like their government.

10 minutes ago, APenNameAndThatA said:

I’m pretty sure China is richer than the US

Not by average per capita. US is still way richer by that measure.