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Cyril Gibb

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Everything posted by Cyril Gibb

  1. Your efforts are laudable and appreciated. Your product appears to be excellent and a huge leap over our old senders and gauges. I'd buy them if I had more aircraft discretionary $. My question has been if it's a safety benefit for reasonably conscientious pilots. For example, if we used 2 shoulder harnesses in case one broke, that would be a safely benefit, but the improvement would be vanishingly small. I dip my tanks before each flight and know based on many many refuelings that my accuracy is typically within 1/2 gallon. I have a fuel totalizer that is accurate to within 1/10 of a gallon. I've flown each tank to empty and know for the last quarter of each tank how much is left to about 1 gallon. (more than 1/2 tank accuracy admittedly isn't anything to write home about) I know my fuel burn within a few 10ths / hour. I always depart with at least the legal VFR/IFR reserves. If on the way to my destination any one of: burn time, totalizer or gauges indicated I was below legal reserve minimums, or if any of those factors disagreed I'd be on the ground. I don't fly into my reserve and I've never had to. Perhaps I'm missing something. What possible scenario would make me run out of fuel that more accurate fuel gauges would prevent?
  2. O.K. I concede. For those pilots who confirm their fuel by a "slight thump on the lower surface", accurate fuel gauges would be a potential life saver.
  3. Your assumption of the demographic associated with stupidity doesn't match mine. Perhaps it's an age and stage thing due to my advancing years, but I've seen stupidity spread quite evenly throughout society. Socioeconomic status, age, sex, experience ...etc etc have little to do with it. In the first example a pilot runs out of fuel after 4 hours in an aircraft with an endurance of 5 hours. Mysterious. His call to ATC demonstrated that he was aware in the last two minutes of his flight that he's got a fuel problem. I doubt very much that he thought everything was o.k. for 3:57 and then realized at 3:58 there was an issue. There's lots of airports in that area. A precautionary landing would have been more prudent. The second example a pilot runs out of gas 3/4 the way into a four hour flight, 3 hours flying in a 5 hour endurance aircraft. Mysterious. What we don't know is if the pilots were familiar with those aircraft. If they were familiar and knew the fuel burn, that was just bad planning. Stupid. If they weren't familiar with those planes and were counting on the potentially inaccurate fuel gauges to keep them safe... stupid. Even with your accurate gauges, I wouldn't count on the calibration of a new-to-me plane to be correct on a long cross country.
  4. That's assuming a tank with a depth of 4". Our wet wings are approximately 8" deep, hence less area than 43" x 43". 1 USG is about 1/4" by both logic: 1/32 of 8" = 1/4", and by measurement >= 1/4" (see 2 sample sticks above).
  5. We'll have to agree to disagree about that. It is inconceivable that 1/8" on a dipstick would result in a 3 gallon measuring error. I concede that I'd love to have your fuel senders, but it's not highest on my limited budget maintenance/enhancement priority list. Unfortunately, people will ALWAYS run out of fuel. However (barring a massive inflight fuel leak) can you provide even one example of fuel exhaustion that wasn't stupidity? I chose that word carefully. It is so easy to avoid fuel exhaustion, that stupidity is the only suitable term. I'm willing to be convinced otherwise.
  6. I did a quick check. If I leave a wooden stir stick in gasoline for a full 5 seconds, it wicks about 1/8" for the first 5 second dip and then 3/16" if I repeat immediately. I dip in less than a second, so the wicking error is less than 1/8". Doesn't seem like an issue to me. Secondly, I can't image a scenario where 1 gallon plus or minus would make any difference. If I'm that uncertain about being close to a go/nogo decision, I'll add fuel.
  7. The prop doesn't get moved forward, just the new spinner (with the new 201 style backplate)
  8. I think 44,000 acres is less than 69 square miles. Assuming the standard acre of 1 chain by 1 furlong. Lake Ontario is a 5 minute walk and is the smallest of the Great Lakes at 7340 square miles. Still way smaller than GB.
  9. I have a two axis Century 2000 that I’m happy with. I don’t hear much about the new Century 4000 boxes during autopilot discussions. Anyone have any experience?
  10. I get a little concerned when I start to get that much rime buildup on my leading edge (like we did last week over the Appalachians). What’s your plan over a few hundred miles of coldish water? Maybe I’m just getting more chicken as I age.
  11. We pop down to the US several times a year, so Jan 1 2020 is now coming off my procrastination list. (Diane would suggest VERY LONG procrastination list to be more accurate) The quick and relatively inexpensive wingtip solution would be to meet the US only 978 ground based mandate. When Canada eventually does mandate ADSB, it will be the space based 1090ES solution. To meet both, it's said that we would need antenna diversity. The top and bottom mounted antennas are because a bottom mounted antenna was having poor performance seeing the sattelites. At about Cdn$20K installed, that's probably sell time for me. Right now, with a Stratux or Stratus just sitting on the glareshield (no additional antenna), I can get US ground based ADSB easily even from Kitchener at pattern altitude. So the question #1 would be: why could I not just mount a 1090ES antenna on the top of the fuselage? If I can pick up ground based ADSB from a unit inside the cockpit, why wouldn't it be even easier from an external mount top antenna? Question #2: The US is now also testing the space based solution. Would ADSB position from the satellites be acceptable to US ATC, or does the signal have to come through ground based installations?
  12. The US maps on ForeFlight cover your flight path. I wouldn’t bother.
  13. No ADSB requirement in Canada. If/when there is, it’ll probably be space based since Canada is one of the founding partners of Aireon. There’s no way Canada could afford the number of ground based ADSB sites required for low altitude coverage over such a sparsely populated area. Note, however, that we do already have ground based ADSB available only at high altitudes for the big iron going across the Atlantic way up north.
  14. Other than filing a flight plan, being in contact with ATC and having a discrete code, there's nothing different. Rules governing Canadian planes transiting US airspace and US planes transiting Canadian airspace are identical, and have no private GA fees in either case. I'm not sure if the flight plan has to be ICAO format or not, but you might as well. The US will eventually require it. I do know that for entering or leaving the US with the intention to land, it has to be ICAO, not sure about transiting. One exception is US aircraft flying from the lower 48 to Alaska have to pay NavCan fees even if you don't land in Canada. Cdn$17 or so. $12 in real money Edit for one final thought. BasicMed is not recognised by Canada. If you're in Canadian airspace with a BasicMed you do not have a valid medical, hence you don't have a valid license.
  15. The NavCan fees are not applicable to US aircraft flying between US airports even though they transit Canadian airspace or are handled by Canadian ATC. Fight it next time.
  16. I play with mixture/MP/RPM when I'm bored on longer trips. Anecdotally, using the Miles per Gallon readout, I find that reducing RPM compensates somewhat for the slow combustion event at more extreme LOP operations. EGT also drops which sort of confirms more energy going to piston push and less out the exhaust. I assume that lower RPM brings the peak pressure back closer to the ideal 15 degrees (or so) ATDC. I'll sometimes go 80-100 LOP at 2100-2150 at Carson speed. (BY plugs) I'd be curious to see an instrumented test of how RPM affects BSFC.
  17. An interesting perspective although I disagree. So people who don't act as I do are of a different race? If I'm critical of someones politics, I'm being racist? It's far too easy these days to accuse someone of being racist for far too trivial a reason. From my narrower definition of racism I think the "third world" comment was really about training, expertise and experience, not a racist comment. Broadening the term racist that much just increases the polarisation and tribalism that we see these days. eg. Just because you guys beheaded MY Queen, I don't think it was racist, just politics.
  18. In related threads also, we hear that it's prudent to check ahead for fees, so I wanted to update this to show how that can still be an issue. I received yet another email from KERI saying that actually, contrary to the previous email that said the $25US was a landing fee, that the fees are actually for customs ramp use and the airport doesn't have a landing fee despite a few days earlier being told that they are in the process of updating the FAA (and hence AIRNAV) that they HAVE implemented a landing fee. Out of curiosity I called customs at KERI who said they didn't have any fees for their ramp or anything else, but the FBO might be charging fees even though I don't use the FBO ramp. I called the FBO who said they don't have a ramp fee, but do charge a $5US landing fee for the airport. Round and round and round it goes..... is it $5 or $25... or maybe both? Are they in addition to the implemented but not yet documented landing fee? or maybe some or all of the fees are only for Canadians flying to the US? Crazy!
  19. A bit of a straw man, I think. The OP says nothing of limiting power to 75%, nor does he mention 100 ROP only above 7500. Taking only the information the OP provided at face value, he uses 100 ROP in all flight regimes without regard to MP or density altitude.
  20. You won't cook a cylinder running LOP that way, but every documented, instrumented, scientific analysis done since the 1930's says you will running 100 ROP.
  21. There was no fee for the three previous visits. Getting the mailed invoice for the most recent visit was a surprise. There had been a charge many moons ago, but that charge was long removed for singles. Apparently this was just reversed with no documentation anywhere to show that.
  22. From the "courtesy" email:. Effective 3/1/2019 the following fee schedule applies: 0 to 6,000 pounds---$25.00 6,001 to 15,000 pounds---$50.00 15,001 to 30,000 pounds---$75.00 30,001 to 60,000 pounds---$150.00 60,001 pounds or greater---$250.00
  23. I complained and they let me off the hook as a courtesy, but said I'd be charged next time..... but there won't be a next time.
  24. Rant on.... I just got a bill for KERI, $25USD for a light single. Last time I was there, there was no fee. The KERI website says nothing. Skyvector says no fee for singles. A/FD says no fee for singles. Auurrrggg ! As others have said, it's not the $25. It's not being told ahead of time, nothing documented, nothing said while you're there, and then getting a bill in the mail!
  25. That’s not factory original. Someone has done a McGyver on it. Looks like a relocated gear circuit breaker (from the panel) and maybe a normally closed push button in series to keep the gear motor from starting. All bets take off until you open up the cover and start tracing the wiring. It’s an odd location for those because the original gear wiring doesn’t run anywhere near the manual extension.
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