A64Pilot

Could be many things, my guess is that the system had to download the almanac, that takes awhile and of course is temporary. ‘I say that as it was an initial issue after power up, and that’s when things like that occur, jamming is possible and easy to do, but almost always will have a limited range, so a moving aircraft shouldn’t be jammed for long at all, jamming should be a complete loss of location also. Spoofing is possible, but exceedingly unlikely, it’s not easy at all to spoof a GPS receiver

Annie Brogan owns Micro Aerodynamics, I’ve done quite a bit of work with her and her VG’s, First getting the STC on the aircraft we manufactured and then in testing as we noticed an interesting phenomena that hadn’t been noticed before, That is on an Ag plane the vortices seem to mix with the spray and more evenly mix it, making your swath width wider and more even, both very desirable. ‘Anyway, you need to understand why and how VG’s work and what they do. They create vortices of course and theoretically this energized airflow will stick to an airfoil in higher angels of attack before it separates and this separation is of course the stall. You see them very often on Airliners and other intensively studied and designed aircraft, but here’s the thing, you only see them in a few places and those are places that need “fixing”, you don’t see them across the entire wing, and you have to wonder why not? They do have draw backs of course, reference TANSTAAFL . They do increase drag, where do you think the energy comes from that’s added to the airflow? Icing is another consideration, I keep seeing icing systems referenced in this forum, and well if icing is any kind of possibility, you certainly don’t want VG’s accumulating ice. Another is that if three are missing, the aircraft is grounded, and line boys love to drag fuel hoses over VG’s and they pop off or get bent. ‘They make washing and especially waxing a real PIA. Loctite Depend is the “special” glue used to hold them on, there are green plastic sticky templates used to position them for the install, we found it better to not remove the adhesive backing and tape them in place instead, you use a scotch rite pad to roughen the paint, apply an adhesive primer from a spray can and glue them on with the Loctite Depend, which has a relatively short shelf life so be sure to check that, it’s plainly printed. The adhesive is really tough, but here is the thing, you glue them onto the paint, so it’s the paint bond that often fails, so to install them “right” it need to be on alodined paint free metal, which means stripping the wing of course but be careful when you spray the wing because the VG’s do work and if you not careful it makes for overspray. ‘If you install on a painted wing, pre paint the VG’s before installation of course, a very easy way to do that is simply stick them onto a roll of tape, that holds them in place and masks off the bottom where the glue goes so it’s not painted. They come in plastic boxes and there are extra VG’s, paint them too and carry them with you just in case you need to replace some when traveling. Also if you ever repaint the airplane, Annie will sell you a “repaint” kit that is just the VG’s and no STC paperwork for a small fraction of the original price, most of the price is for the STC and not the materials.

There really isn’t much to one at all. not much more complex than a lawnmower engine. ‘What gets people is some won’t send cases to Divco and the crank and rods off to AC specialties and the cam and lifters etc, they give them the evil eye, maybe mic them themselves or use plastigauge and go with that. A lot of money is spent or can be saved in some minds by sending the parts off to quality specialty shops to have them done right. ‘A good A&P/IA in my opinion knows when to send things off to speciality shops and have them done right, we aren’t the masters of everything. ‘Have you ever rebuilt a Diesel? well some insist on doing the injectors and pump themselves because of course an injection shop costs money, but there is no way they have the proper equipment to test and adjust the pump and injectors. Aircraft engine components are the same way. ‘IF I could verify all the pieces parts were done correctly and there should be paperwork, or it wasn’t done, then I’d find me a good A&P and assemble the engine. ‘What other choice does he have? A pro overhauler won’t touch it I’m sure, or if they do he’s paying full price to have it all redone.

The original Cheetah or whatever it was called had one fight control, flaps, ailerons, elevator and rudder were the same, it was a home built and that simplified things. I think there was also one wing no left and right Just looked it up, it was the BD-1 and later became the AA-1 Yankee

People are interesting, they try to find the mystery in anything they don’t understand. For instance if you look at the tail rotor of an AH-64, it’s not an X, the blades are not 90 apart, this has led to all kinds of theories by smart people about noise and vortice propogation and all kinds of scientific theories. What it really is that the tail rotor is simply a scaled up Hughes 500 rotor and to have four blades they had to be offset so you could simply stack another one on top and be able to connect the PC links. Simply stacking a second pair on top meant no redesign. ‘My personal belief is that the Mooney tail has straight leading edges because back in the day they were plywood skinned, and it’s a whole lot easier to wrap plywood over a straight edge, so back to what Yves said, it’s easier to build. it’s really that simple, but I can’t prove it of course, but as has been said over and over, and they are correct, if it was in fact “better” there would be many copies, but it’s not, so there isn’t. ‘On edit, now a swept back tail at the airspeeds we fly at is simply a styling gimmick. the original straight tail Cessna’s were more efficient as in less weight and stronger etc, but styling won out of course. The wing tips on later model Mooney’s are more styling gimmick than anything, I’m surprised that they were added, because they do increase wing length, and if you do that, it’s real common for the FAA to make you re pull the wing, so I assume it wasn’t hard through analysis to show that the Mooney wing was plenty strong. Point being is that marketing and styling often win out

I’ve flown into the Bahamas several times and cruised there for years in our boat. The Bahamian people by and large are very, almost exceedingly polite. I think that may come from the British influence? Anyway the secret to getting along with customs etc is to be very polite back and say things like yes Mam and thank you and display respect. If your polite and respectful you can get almost anything you want, they may even fill out the forms for you Be the “ugly American” and you may not. I’ve seen it several times, polite people they treat like family, not so polite people will dot every I and cross every T, and again I believe maybe from the British influence, if they so desire there are quite a few I’s and T’s. ‘To enjoy the Bahama’s get away from Nassau and Freeport, your not in the Bahama’s until you get into what they call the Family Islands, expect something like 1950’s America or Andy Griffith’s Mayberry. The big cities have crime and a great deal of that is imported from other Nations. If you commit some kind of crime in the Family Islands they ship you off to jail in Nassau, where you most likely stay. ‘They could care less about your radio license or any thing else if your nice and wait your turn, not will they inspect your airplane either. ‘Your problem will be upon return to the US, CBP can be a PIA, I avoid Key West like the Plague, however Ft. Pierce is a nice place to check in.

The Cubs at Jack Browns were hand propped and of course any plane on floats it has be done from behind, they won’t let students hand prop though. They had it down, seldom was two flips required.

Problem with TAP and Barnstormers etc is those are asking prices, not getting prices. ‘For boats a Broker can go to “Sold boats” data which is supposedly the price the boats sold for, not asking. I don’t know if there is “sold airplanes” data or not. ‘What astonished me when looking was people don’t seem to take into account the engine time anymore, there seemed to be little difference in asking for a fresh overhaul and one runout, which I still don’t understand. Last time I was looking to buy was 20 years ago and then engine time was a major driver for price, now I guess the panel is. ‘An engine overhaul for an IO-360 is going to cost you about 40K in round numbers, it’s good for 2,000 hours, so engine time is worth $20 an hour, or should be, so an airplane with a 1,000 hour engine ought to be worth $20,000 more than one with a 2000 hour engine and I wasn’t seeing that.

We can’t compare this thing to a terrestrial helicopter. especially a “real” helicopter. ‘The fact that they can make a helicopter fly is impressive, but not nearly as impressive as the fact that it’s Solar powered, there can’t be much insolation on Mars, and does it fly with the panel that charges it? If so then that is really impressive.

Hot starts can be learned how to deal with, it’s another technique to learn is all, and motors will differ some, my current J doesn’t seem to suffer from it, I start with mixture in and throttle set for 1000 RPM and she starts right off, others I’ve had required some prime and mixture all the way out, crank until it starts then rapidly in with the mixture. The only time I’ve seen it be an issue was on float equipped airplanes where you push away from the dock and drift downwind or down stream and really don’t need a start delay, but that’s not us. ‘The only advantage of a carbureted motor in my opinion is many can run auto fuel, but I don’t think that’s an option for us, so in my opinion, carburation has no real advantage over FI.

In the Military the answer would be the crew compartment, apparently millions of dollars were spent changing every Military manual in existence in order to remove that “offensive” term. Turnine Inlet Temperature was also considered offensive do to its Acronym of TIT, so much more money was spent to change it to Inlet Turbine Temperature or ITT so as not to be offensive. ‘You can’t make this stuff up.

wind speed is I believe horrendous on Mars, so balloon would have to be stowed, or be single mission

A bonanza is not a laminar flow airfoil, one would assume that boots would work better as in be less detrimental on the Bonanza airfoil, whereas boots would surely make Laminar flow, non laminar. They are different airplanes, so far as useful load, it’s not as clear cut as you may think, if you take CG into consideration, and if you compute useful load with the fuel load required to complete the trip. useful shrinks significantly. Fuel cuts into useful of course and a Bo has to carry more fuel to go the same distance.

What kind of compressor are you referring to? I won’t have AC on a small airplane, but if I did I’d want it to be electric, the reason is that if done properly you could pre-cool the airplane before pulling it out of the hanger. ‘I assume but do not know that you can do this with electric cars, if not then they aren’t very smart, it’s the initial cool down that uses the most energy, once cool it’s not so hard to keep it that way. ‘The AC unit we installed in Crop Dusters was essentially a golf cart motor hooked to an automotive compressor, what would better is a brushless DC motor, I believe the Prius is that way, that would give you a variable speed compressor. I got my HVAC card to work on the Longbow AC’s if needed, a Longbow has dual 7.25 ton AC’s to keep the avionics cool. heat from bleed air. I never needed the card, the AC’s were extremely reliable

Maybe a heat balloon would work better, using Martian atmosphere, it’s cold as the devil there and they work off of heat differential of course, but the source of heat would be an issue.

One of you smart smart guys could easily install a micro switch and a light if you think it necessary, I’d consider that a minor modification myself so long as you didn’t modify the mechanism

They don’t hand fly well at all, they trim poorly, they are meant to be an auto pilot flown airplane, nothing wrong with that, just know it going in. ‘Then look at what the parachute limits are, something like 53 to 140 kts in straight and level flight?, so pretty much for an engine failure and not much else?

it’s the cam of course that will be your biggest concern. I’d pull a couple of cylinders one from each side and get a look. That also lets you get a good look at the cylinders too. Someone in my neighborhood is resurrecting a twin Comanche that hasn’t run in 15 or so years, they had rusted cylinders on the left engine but said the cam was good. I think they will know for sure in 50 hours, or so. I would inspect the filter in 5 hours, then 15, and finally 50, after 50 I’d start to feel lucky. ‘The moment you find metal that will stick to a magnet, stop and find out where it’s coming from, if you catch it in time you may save a crank etc. Put lots of oil in the cylinders and leaving the bottom plugs out spin it over several times with the starter to blowout all oil out before you put the plugs back in prior to starting. Last edit. Good luck on getting the plug out of the case, sometimes they can be a real bear to get out, you can pre-oil from just about anywhere even remove the pressure sender and go in there if you can’t get the plug out

A spinning ball generates lift, called I believe the Magnus effect, so I guess you can “fly” a ball https://www.grc.nasa.gov/www/k-12/airplane/beach.html A cannon round fired off axis of an aircraft in flight will generate lift on one side and has to be compensated for to hit a target for instance

Several years ago somebody must have had a meeting with FAA inspectors, DAR’s MIDO’s etc and told them that they could be personally held responsible for whatever they sign, since then, many don’t want to do anything. DAR’s , DER’s and yes even IA’s exist to do the FAA’s job, anything any of those can do, you can have the FAA do, just be prepared to wait a very long time, all are delegates of the FAA, the FAA loves to delegate

So, a Harrier in hover isn’t flying?

You have the Walter E11 ? Is it derated to 724? Can you hit torque limits or do you temp out first?

Good friend who just passed had the Georgia plate NHRA, he’s had it for decades

The chart is mounted on the panel and yes I’m familiar how it works, it works off of intake vacuum of course so you must have low manifold pressure to get vacuum, so assumption is prop to full RPM and then reduce throttle as much as you can and still maintain flight, vacuum gauge should still work ‘There is an recurring AD that I’ve not read yet, but recurring AD’s often exist for things maybe I’d just as soon do without. ‘I put an Air Wolf wet pump on the last airplane and was real happy with it, I may look at that for this one, maybe the best backup is a system that’s reliable enough to not require one?

HVAC is simple, I don’t know of any forums but I’m sure there are some, there is a forum for everything. ‘But I’d buy a HVAC for dummies book or similar, the principles are the same but things are getting more complex, used to be you had one expansion valve in a heat pump and it was driven off of a temp bulb, now for the more efficient units, there are two and they are electronic and driven by stepper motors and have of course control boards and a temp sensor, more precise and more efficient. Getting licensed isn’t hard, even I got one.