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Colonel K
Jun 29, 2009
Seconding how awesome the Avro Vulcan is. I pass one every time I pop to my local airfield for a lesson and it always draws the eye.

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Colonel K
Jun 29, 2009
I believe this is true AI.

Kenyan Does six months intensive research on the internet, then makes his own light aircraft. Here's hoping this one actually makes it up and doesnt end up like the previous two kenyan attempts.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ujU1DjaYfs4&

Judging by the nosewheel it could be some time before the aircraft is anywhere near reaching take off speed.

Colonel K
Jun 29, 2009

Jeece posted:

Well, here's an update (nothing spectacular):



I'm sort of dissapointed now. I would have loved to see the video of it trundling down a strip somewhere to see if it showed any promise at all. Apparently the elevator is foot operated, so who knows what he's come up with for the other surfaces.

In trying to find out more about this chap I came across the Somali contingent, they have decided to go straight to rotocraft. Their cameraman also appears to be completely fearless.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PjL6xBBQ8ps&

e: A Nigerian has actually made one and flown it on six occasions. It may only fly to a height of seven feet but that's drat impressive.
http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5hV0rzEDq7TWnlm7tMmr2zeQmiRig

Colonel K fucked around with this message at 02:08 on Oct 23, 2010

Colonel K
Jun 29, 2009
Gabriel is back at it. Prepare for a somewhat dissapointing test run.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a-_dsNTZch0&

Colonel K
Jun 29, 2009

dietcokefiend posted:

Man... even with a perfectly smooth, slight downhill runway that thing would barely get enough speed to take weight off that front tire :(

I feel that's probably very true, or that there'd be so much play in his nosewheel that it'd just shake itself to bits as it increased speed.

But I'd love to see him trundling down some form of highway on full chat just for that small chance that he might get just get off the ground a little. preferably coming to the ground with his life intact, I can't imagine the undercarriage surviving any but the finest greaser.

Colonel K
Jun 29, 2009
I fly light aircraft and find that upto about 3000ft you can usually get ok signal and make a call quite comfortably. I've never noticed or experienced any issues on the comms / nav. Saying that my calls tend to be pretty short, just letting someone know that I'm inbound or over their house etc.

Anything much higher and I find signal is very iffy.

Colonel K
Jun 29, 2009
This weekend we passed the 75th Aniversary of the Spitfires maiden flight. As we've all seen many pictures of them I thought I'd mention one of the interesting groups that flew them and many other war aircraft. The women of the ATA (Air Transport Auxiliary)
The ATA was set up during the war as an aeroplane ferry group to move planes from factories, to military units for fit outs and onto the main airfields. All of the flights were done without any radios and flown / navigated visually, official instrument flying was not allowed or taught.
Initially the ATA pilots were drawn from people who had gained their private pilots licences before the war. Probably the most famous woman to join the ATA was Amy Johnson who initially made her fame by flying to Australia in 1929.

Amy sadly died on a ferry flight in '41 when flying from Blackpool to Oxford Kindlington. she overshot by approximately 100miles (probably flying in cloud) and ditched in the Thames estuary after running out of fuel. She drowned.
Next up is Joan Hughes a diminutive young lady who was around 5 feet tall yet went on to fly some of the biggest aircraft in the RAF. She gained her pilots licence at 17. She became the only woman pilot to be qualified to instruct on all the military types in service. Here she is pictured below with a Short Stirling. Later on she piloted some aircraft for films. In the 60's she flew the small monoplane in the magnificent men and their flying machines, as she was the only pilot they could find, small, light and with enough experience to fly the replica.


By 1945, it had 650 pilots from 22 countries around the world including Chile, South Africa and the U.S. Of these, 164 were women. Pilots mainly came from the commonwealth countries.



Finally I must finish with a mention of Group Captain Douglas Bader. Despite losing both his legs showing off doing low level acrobatics in a rather unstable aircraft. He managed to get back into RAF service during the war. Flying Hurricanes and Spitfires in the battle of France and Britain he was often known to celebrate coming back over the channel, by dropping low, opening his canopy and lighting and smoking his pipe. He was shot down over enemy territory (possibly a case of friendly fire) and ended up in Colditz where he caused as much disruption as he could.

Colonel K
Jun 29, 2009
I love STOL bush planes, I particularly like the little tricks some of them have, like a button to pneumatically retract the flaps to kill the lift so they can hit maximum braking.

I'd love to pop the 31" abw tyres on the husky but as I'm mainly based from tarmac at the moment the wear would be ridiculous, in the future will prob pop for the 26" goodyears as they're a better compromise for varied use. 6 psi or so on such a big tyre must great for rolling over obstacles.

Colonel K
Jun 29, 2009
Excellent pictures frankenbeans, I particularly like the swordfish.

Here's a shot I snapped last night whilst out at the airfield.

Colonel K
Jun 29, 2009

iyaayas01 posted:

Is that a Lightning in the background?

And great pictures frankenbeans.

Good spot, it certainly is.

Colonel K
Jun 29, 2009

monkeytennis posted:

And a Jet Provost? Vampire? Where is that?

Yes and yes, good spots. Cheating somewhat and looking at the full res picture I think in addition to those you can just about spot the Meteor and the Percival Sea Prince.
It is a small aviation museum in cumbria.

Colonel K
Jun 29, 2009

Nerobro posted:


I really want to know how they did the cooling on it, given they removed the cooling scoop. I was always under the impression that the stock P51 scoop actually provided thrust. But I can also imagine that at the increased power levels, they'd need more cooling. Which loops me back around to how the hell were they managing it?

I'm pretty sure they use a boil off cooling system, whereby the radiator is put in a vat of coolant which heats up and boils off (giving rise to the trail of vapour you see) At the top end that they are running anything disrupting airflow will make a big difference in performance.

I've stopped reading the gbs thread the lack of understanding was monumental.

Colonel K
Jun 29, 2009
Thanks for posting your experience, I really enjoy hearing people just talk about how much fun flying is. It is so easy to get bogged down with various aspects (particularly the european mess at the moment) that you forget how much fun it is just to drill holes in the sky.

Flying is one of those things that seems overwhelming at first, but getting up to speed with it brings a tremendous satisfaction.

I'd like to wish you best of luck with the ppl, and let us know how you get on.

In other news, I bought a drift hd stealth the other day and have been out today trying to figure out how to make a nice sturdy mount in a decent spot without risking any damage. I think apart from the obvious suction mounts inside, I may try to make some sort of mount to go on the lift handle at the rear of the fuselage.

Colonel K
Jun 29, 2009
I can't remember if I read this earlier in this thread or in another, but I thought that the reason the Russians have much lower major overhaul times is due to a significantly different operation philosophy. They don't do FOD sweeps and expect to use them of far poorer condition runways combined with the fact that they don't do much interim maintenence and prefer to pull the engines out and send them whole to large factories where they can get them rebuilt easily partially utilising some of their compulsary national service workforce. I got the impression it was just run them and rebuild them more frequently rather than continuous maintenece and longer major overhaul times.

Colonel K
Jun 29, 2009

ursa_minor posted:

What would be the point of that?

At a guess, because it is difficult to correctly expose interiors and exteriors without the use of multiple flashes.

Colonel K
Jun 29, 2009
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/mos...king-order.html

I knew nothing about this, but I think it is fantastic.

Colonel K
Jun 29, 2009
Fantastic little video, looks like a blast.

Have you got the carbon props on yet?

Colonel K
Jun 29, 2009
Regarding the stacked propellors, I found this explanation on lazairforce:

"One of the most common questions I get asked about my Lazair is" Why does it have double props" No it wasn't some new technology to increase efficiency, not performance anyway ,it was purely a decision based on economics ,They already had a good stock of carbon fibre props for the 5.5 hp and instead of going thru a costly process of acquiring new propellers they simply doubled up the smaller props to absorb the extra power that the Rotaxs would produce .I'am also inclined to think that their choice of the rotax 185 somewhat based on this abundant supply of small props, seeing that the solo 210 engine was already in good supply, it was lighter, produced more power and was aircraft proven already, but they would have probably had to stick 3 or more props together, highly impractical. anyway probably a shrewd decision at the time. "

Which makes me wonder, what performance gains can be had by fitting a better suited prop?

Colonel K
Jun 29, 2009
I'm pleased to hear that he got re-instated.

When the whole shitstorm blew up I got pretty annoyed that anyone could possibly complain against it.

I wish that sort of thing happened more often. If I was flying and someone had their kid on the radio like that it'd be quite fun.

Not sure I could have held it together on the radio after "Adios amigo!"

Colonel K
Jun 29, 2009
What an excellent read. It really seems like there is nothing that can not be completed with a suitable shed and enough cups of tea.

He needs to move on to some sort of directional mount so that he can use it as a leaf / small animal blower.

Colonel K
Jun 29, 2009

Manny posted:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=spNF69Lf7Sg

This is bizarre, and incredibly lucky to get away with.

To flesh this out a little, there are two banner towing aircraft, the Husky and the Super Cub. Both hired by seperate political parties. The cessna camera ship was hired to film the Super Cub and apparently just didn't see the Husky at all.

The Husky managed to get a hole burned in his wing from the exhaust, as well as managing to land on the beach with one flap fully down and one retracted. Extremely good work on his part.

Colonel K
Jun 29, 2009
That's a good picture, I hadn't seen it. It's an earlier Husky with the old style wing and aileron spades. He also got pretty close to the fuel tanks in the wings.

Colonel K
Jun 29, 2009

InitialDave posted:

gently caress it, if someone spiked the MOD's tea and we ended up with a fleet of Lightnings, V-bombers and TSR/2s, I wouldn't complain either.

Include harriers and I'm on board.

Colonel K
Jun 29, 2009

InitialDave posted:

Yeah, I was trying to include stuff that was long gone, in keeping with the Arrow discussion, hence the omission.

I had to look up when they were retired, March '11 . I guess it just feels like they are long gone.

Colonel K
Jun 29, 2009

NightGyr posted:

50 GPH? Has anyone tried reengining it with something a little more efficient?

1000hp piston engines tend to use a lot of fuel.

Colonel K
Jun 29, 2009

Jonny Nox posted:

The last Airdrie airshow had an AN-2 on static display and the person "MC"ing the flight displays mentioned that it was the kind of airplane where you could get it airbourne, throttle back to nothing, and fly all night. Was this accurate? How would this kind of flying affect affordability?


Some figures I found online seem to suggest at 1000hp it is burning 110gallons an hour (5 minutes continuous)
and a cruise of 410hp at 45 gallons / hr.

With a suggested maximum fuel capacity of 315 us gallons that gives roughly 7 hours total endurance at cruise settings. I'm sure if you accept even slower flight you could throttle it back somewhat further to increase endurance.

However, 1200 litres of avgas at current prices would be circa £2700 to fill up. It also takes 120 litres of oil so changes and general topping up is considerable too.

If you're filling it up with 12 people all the time it might not be so bad, but for a bit of a fun toy I think it would be pretty costly, although it is still an SEP so can be flown on a pretty basic PPL.

Colonel K
Jun 29, 2009

Leviathor posted:

Went flying with some barnstormers awhile back.

Terrific pictures, I love fly ins, they are just a fun thing to attend. Have you any more?

Colonel K
Jun 29, 2009
Our favourite backyard RB211 jet man also has a land rover...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cH5rahj_dns&

and it works, in a fashion
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W0-i2ZTjgeo&

Colonel K
Jun 29, 2009

InitialDave posted:

Honestly, they need to harden the gently caress up and keep it the same, and people who complain it's offensive should be pointed and laughed at. It's like changing the name of the Enola Gay because of the modern connotations.

Wholeheartedly agree. It's just a change to dress up history to make it more palatable.

It looks like a Canadian Mosquito is coming along too - http://vicair.net/projects/mosquito/august-2012

Colonel K
Jun 29, 2009
Great pictures and videos GTi.

I really think bushwheels on a supercub look great. If it wouldn't cost circa $9'000 to get them as a spare set I'd love to have them for off aerodrome ops.

Colonel K
Jun 29, 2009
Pop them up, I'd enjoy seeing them.

Colonel K
Jun 29, 2009
There has been a bit of chat about the B-25, so I thought I'd post this interesting documentary http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PUazQ60utI0

Colonel K
Jun 29, 2009

Muy posted:

That's all I needed to know. Off to sperg over the schematics and fantasize about building one in my garage. :swoon:

Art Nalls is the first private Sea Harrier Owner, perhaps one day you could be no.2?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tVcL1gFnJMc

300 gallons of fuel for 14 minutes flying sounds like it could get expensive fast.

Colonel K
Jun 29, 2009
I've decided to go hellaflush with aircraft tyres.

Colonel K
Jun 29, 2009
Congratulations! It looks terrific, expect to be flying a lot more hours this year!

What is the instrument panel like? I had one of my more interesting flight lessons in IMC in a 152, where it was snowing around us and the ADF (vor u/s) lost the plot. On landing the engine died rolling out leaving us on the runway for about five minutes trying to get it started again so we could taxi in.

Colonel K
Jun 29, 2009
Looks great, Keeping it light should help performance. I must admit I like the 430 in mine and find it very convenient, however when the radio side of it failed the repair bill wasn't very pleasant. What are your plans for it?

Colonel K
Jun 29, 2009

tirefoamcan posted:


The most important PM item for your plane is to fly it!



Absolutely agreed. Sadly I'm way below the hours I'd like to have in this year, but the weather has put pay to a lot of flying in addition to work.

Any interior pictures of your aircraft?

Colonel K
Jun 29, 2009
Depending on what you are interested in doing and how handy you are with the spanners, you can bring maintence and ownership costs on the n-reg down to very manageble levels. Helno has a great thread about ultralights and homebuilt aircraft in DIY and Hobbies although it is a little quiet.

e: beaten to it by the man himeslf.

Colonel K
Jun 29, 2009
Looks great, the propellor is quite something.

You mention the pre-heat system. What do you make of it? I was probably going to get a small 40% greenhouse heating tube to put in the cowling on the recomendation of a friend who does the same on his rv-8.

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Colonel K
Jun 29, 2009

slidebite posted:

Are owners of aircraft allowed to do their own maintenance or installation of parts? If so, does it have to get signed off by someone?

It depends on the regieme you operate under. But generally, yes, an owner can do preventative maintenance. Further work can often be done as long as it is signed off by a mechanic.

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