A64Pilot

No idea how it could happen, cannot imagine in flight, as it’s peeled outside that seems to not indicate something from the outside like an overhead lift punctured it. I’d fly it, but would probably put a piece of tape over it. As we have a tube steel structure I don’t think the thin skin is particularly structural.

I’m not arguing against what your saying, I’m just saying I guess that unfortunately not all Judges are impartial and ones that aren’t can often find in a way that’s not impartial. However I think that a Judge that has an Agenda will find the argument that requiring a major modification be done to burn a fuel harder to overturn, could still happen just I think it’s a more convincing argument. Long way of saying this might just not be the last we hear of it, that more court cases are coming. I know nothing about California’s politics and CARB etc except what I read and hear, but I’m surprised at this ruling, I expected a rubber stamp. I would expect the ones leading the fight to ban lead to have an apoplectic fit and come out strong. I doubt they will stay quiet, but as I don’t live there and have personal experience maybe I’m wrong.

I think the most important part was him or her recognizing that the FAA hasn’t approved the fuel, but allows it if there is a major alteration of the aircraft done. STC by FAA definition is a major and therefore requires an IA and a 337. Things like the opinion of the definition of Commercially available can be undone I think, but I think saying an STC isn’t a major when he FAA say’s it is, is going to be tougher for another Judge to disagree with. There is precedent for fuel STC’s though with the Mogas ones back in the 70’s, but often they did require significant airframe modifications. I keep thinking that surely the G100UL is dead, but the FAA still hasn’t taken action.

My 2c, ask for copies of the logs, very often the guy who wrote the ad didn’t have a clue what they are taking about. It could have all been well done and maybe it wasn’t. Until you get the logs you don’t know. In my opinion don’t worry much about repairs in the logbook, be very wary of those that aren’t. By that I mean have someone who knows what they are doing look for oversized rivets etc that hint at repairs. Since the requirement that you only have to keep logs for one year has been so widely disseminated, and that log book pages aren’t numbered. I know of a couple of pages that were lost when the razor blade cut them out suddenly it’s a “No damage” airplane. They can’t lose a filed 337 though so pay the buck or whatever the CD costs from the FAA.

You can believe what you want, but I can tell you that if the POH stall speed was off by 6 kts, that aircraft would have never been certified. Secondly the part about consistently beating book speeds is more than a little suspect, I guess you believe that too? My older J came from the factory with the upswept tips, they didn’t come out with the MSE

Burn and Learn, seriously? Why are they so hot to “help accelerate a transition to our unleaded future?” Why the hurry? Shouldn’t they instead be all for a slow roll out to ensure safety or extensive third party testing or similar?

It reduces drag by reducing the vortices that are generated by the difference in air pressure from the top and bottom of the wing. AKA induced drag, one way is just from the decreased wing area at the tip, a big ole fat Hersey bar wing has a lot of area at the tip, a sailplane very little. If your producing little lift at the tip, there is little induced drag, at the tip. If I look I can show you pictures of a Thrush crop duster spraying, the spray is similar to smoke in making vortices visible. In level flight there are pretty much no visible vortices, the spray lays down flat in the field, at the end when you pull up if your still spraying you can really see the vortices, this is due of course from increased angle of attack at the whole wing of course but the tips now have pretty significant vortices. The Thrush has a 1.5 degree washout, not a lot but enough so that there is very little lift in a decently high speed cruise, even though it had the big old fat Hersey bar wing. So yes any kind of “fence” that prevents the air under the wing from mixing with the air above the wing will reduce drag, hopefully more than the drag it produces but on an average GA airplane in cruise the drag reduction is pretty much nothing. But an aircraft that flies at high angles of attack in cruise can really benefit from tips reducing drag, reason you see such high tech ones on an airliner but on a GA airplane they are more for marketing (look cool) But you just can’t convince some, look at these things on a Thrush crop duster, my testing showed the did little to nothing, but they do move the center of mass on the wing and the center of pressure so they will change bending moment etc and most likely increase wing fatigue, how much who knows? I’d try to tell people that if the accomplished half of what was claimed I’d fit them on at the factory, they aren’t Patented, nothing stopped me from building them https://www.johnstonaircraft.com/Ag Tip Winglets.htm I have to think if you got a couple of kts out of J model looking tips, EVERY Mooney would have them, these guys remove steps, hide antennas in the airframe and who knows what else for a kt

Even a few months ago traffic circles ate its lunch, now it handles them better than I do and I spent years in Europe so I learned then. If anything it’s not as conservative as I am, it will pull into traffic that I would wait for. Someone on this site explained FSD perfectly as of a year ago, that it reminded them of a nervous teen driver, it was full of bugs, you would be driving down a country road and out if the blue it would brake hard. I think shadows would confuse it, but it could get exciting when someone was right behind you and the car hit the brakes for no reason, I drove then with my foot near the accelerator to hit the “gas” when it did. The steering wheel movements were jerky at parking speeds, you could tell it was making the effort, but it just wasn’t there. I assume after years of trying and failing Elon had enough and spent God knows how much building an AI Supercomputer named dojo that’s teaching the cars to drive, I believe there is more than one now and expect they are doing things other than teaching the cars like maybe the Robots but that’s supposition. Plus Hardware 4 is now in production cars and at least the cameras are much, much better. He’s stated if he can’t make FSD work on hardware 3 cars he will update them for free. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesla_Dojo The Cyber Truck has been problematic FSD wise I don’t know why but it’s FSD updates are well behind the cars, I’m sure it will be fixed but as I don’t have a clue what the issue is as honestly I’m not really interested in the truck. Cool vehicle, just I don’t have any need for one. Supposedly the Cybercab is going live this Summer in Austin. I suspicion it will be geo fenced and only allowed in certain areas that have been tested at first, because it won’t have the capability of being driven manually, I don’t think it will have controls in it, but who knows we have only seen prototypes The Waymo model is I think a dead end, it has of course a great many sensors and is restricted to only areas that have been mapped to the centimeter. But in my opinion FSD is tough, I mean hugely way more complex than Garmin self land or anything in an aircraft to include any ground ops. So if you can teach a car to drive in NY City at rush hour then you could teach a jet to taxi anywhere on an airport I believe. The future I think in cars and Commercial Aviation is Automation, not saying there won’t be a Pilot, but I think their job will be to take over if needed and that will be rare, so how would they maintain proficiency? I have no idea, maybe Sims? But successful automation is much safer than a Human that's been proven decades ago, who can hand fly an instrument approach with the precision of a coupled approach? Almost all of my drives now start out in the garage when I tell the car “navigate to La Perla in Eustis” for example, that’s a restaurant in Eustis a town about 30 miles away that the Wife likes. Push a “button” on the screen and tap the brake to acknowledge I want the car to drive. The car backs out of the driveway, drives to the neighborhood gate where it stops and triggers the built in homelink to open the gate and drives to the restaurant and pulls into its parking lot, without me having to intervene at all. I do park it as the lot is dirt/gravel and I think it needs lines to park? Lots of construction in Eustis now with traffic cones etc and the car has no problems and it’s congested. We take the little dog as he enjoys going with us and when we get there I put the HVAC in dog mode where it maintains set temp until we get back and click the home button, tap the brake and the car drives home. It won’t pull into the garage it stops short I don’t know why, but I do have to drive the last 10 ft. The cars are of course all internet connected so you get live traffic updates and it will reroute if it will save a time that you set, you see live Radar on the map like ADSB, get wx etc. Not sure if it’s happened yet but the cars will phone home and report things like flooded streets, construction, temporarily closed roads etc so other cars will reroute around the trouble area. FSD is close, but I’ll never completely trust it, but as I get older I know the day is coming that I’ll get to the point that I shouldn’t drive, especially in night and maybe bad wx etc. Then I’ll really be even more appreciative of a FSD car. Assuming I live that long of course.

Of course. I think most of these runway incursions the offending pilot doesn’t realize they are crossing a runway, think it’s just another taxiway

It keeps changing but it sometimes stops and if you’re close to the light when it turns it accelerates and gets through. I think it bases it’s decision on how close are we when it turns yellow and our current speed. What I don’t know is how does it know a four way stop from a two way? It always has so far but how? Does it recognize the backside of the other sign? It displays all traffic signs and lights on it’s screen so you know it sees them, it even makes a ding noise when not in self driving when the light turns green so you don’t sit there like an idiot. By changing I mean the FSD is updated maybe once a month or two on average and sometimes you really notice the changes and sometimes not. Last update it’s a little more aggressive than I like, but it used to be stupid cautious, for instance it would stop right parallel to a stop sign like the law requires, then it would move forward as most of the time you can’t see cross traffic back there at the sign, if traffic was spotted it would stop a second time. Normal driver stops once a little past where the law requires where they can see. Update before last it now stops past the sign like human drivers. It used to be that it obeyed speed limits pretty closely, but now it drives close to average traffic speed. It’s getting more and more to drive not precisely IAW the law like a high school driving coach, but more and more like a common driver. It doesn’t like intersections, by that I mean it seems that it accelerates pretty briskly to clear them Compared to what it used to be like, it’s brilliant now. Not that I live in NY city, but I figure at dusk especially that it has to be a tough drive, I only watched a few min of this Video, this is the latest revision of Tesla FSD, and remember a Tesla is completely reliant on cameras only, no other sensors just vision just like we humans are. Anyway just if your curious

Forget the self insure for amounts above that. The reason is if the repair bill will exceed about 60% of the insured value they will write you a check for the insured amount at which time it’s their airplane and they will auction it off. I saw someone lose their Maule that way by being underinsured. I don’t know about the 60% number it’s just what I heard maybe it’s 80%, but either way if they total the airplane it’s theirs, not your to repair. I think it may be better to be uninsured than under insured

They DO reduce drag at high angles of attack, Winglets are better of course but even end plates work. But we cruise at low angles of attack unlike Airliners, then add in many aircraft have washout, the tips have even lower angle of attack. So far as reducing stall speed significantly? I doubt that. A friend, a Dr Ralph Kimberlin had an STC for winglets for a Twin Bonanza, I teased him about them not knowing he was the STC holder, he claimed they helped climb. Personally I think they may have but bet money they slowed cruise because of drag, probably not much though and I have zero data to support that belief.

Note I’m not saying anything about Gami or George. We had a saying in the Army ref being “caught” It was Lie, Deny, and make counter accusations, until the hammer falls

Weight is there of course but doubt it’s much, tips on GA aircraft are ineffectual as we don’t cruise at high angles of attack, in theory they could help in climb but I doubt it’s measurable. If you want them for looks I think you will be pleased, if you buy for performance I think you won’t be happy. When the J first came out LoPresti was asked in an interview what the performance gain was and he shifted to how good they looked, said the reminded him of some woman named Stacy’s nose, she has such a pretty nose. I think technically as they do add a small amount of frontal area which is a drag increase that they may actually hurt performance, by an amount that’s calculable but not measurable. Insignificant in other words. Like wheel pants on older Pipers and Cessna’s they improved looks but didn’t do much for drag reduction, modern ones like on RV’s do.

I bought mine at 64, in my neighborhood I’m young, we have people in their 80’s that fly. I’m 66 now. We also the other day had a Commercial Airline pilot age 63 who felt poorly after helping a neighbor pour concrete who went home to lay down and died of a heart attack. One neighbor in his 70’s flies the “Villages” Jets. So age isn’t necessarily the determining factor, some lucky people at 70 are in better shape than some unlucky ones in their 50’s. It depends where you are on that spectrum. As far as Insurance it may go down as you acquire hours, but I think if your not instrument rated, getting that rating may help the most. I pay about $2200 for 125K on my J. It went down 7% this year but don’t think it had anything to do with me, I think insurance has hopefully peaked and beginning to ease a bit, but that’s just hoping and guessing. When I can no longer be insured assuming I still want to fly and feel able to do so I’ll either forego insurance or switch aircraft. In truth my Mooney is a bear to get in and out of for me now, a C-182 is looking more and more attractive, or an LSA amphib maybe, but their insurance is stupid high.

60” MP really isn’t that much boost, it’s only 15 PSI roughly, if I do the Math correctly, still drinking morning Coffee and brain hasn’t engaged fully yet. My Motorhome for example pulls 30 lbs of boost, but automotive boost is PSIG so need to add the 15 PSI atmospheric to get to PSIA that aircraft indicate. So my Motorhome pulls 90” boost, yes it’s a Diesel and therefore not constrained by detonation margins because detonation in a properly operating Diesel isn’t possible. But it’s a Motorhome not any kind of performance motor. Tractor pull motors can run as high as 300 lbs of boost, what’s that, something over 9,000” MP? I wonder what the Reno racers pull? I would assume at least three times what the Military P-51’s saw? No idea really

You could have just said page 24. I saw no mention of ADI. It’s my understanding that ADI in US Military aircraft didn’t become a “thing” until they had motors capable of pulling enough boost to require it even with the higher Octane fuel available, ref the below link on the 4360 engine ops. Before then engine design was driven by available fuel. Look under wet or dry T/O and climb, ADI reduced fuel flow by 500 lbs an hour yet increased HP by 250 HP. They didn’t have to have ADI with I think 115/145 Octane fuel but it saved fuel and increased power. Assuming they had the torque available, the big motors had gear box limits like turboprops do. I’ve read but do not know of course that the engine in the early model BF-109’s wouldn’t benefit from 100 Octane, it just didn’t make enough boost that it could, like the R-1340 for instance, being an old design engine, designed before there was 100 Octane you can run one at the same boost on 87 Octane car gas as you can with 100 Octane. In short the Military use of ADI wasn’t to enable lower Octane fuel, but to enable increased power, on engines that could handle more power, which is honestly the same thing said differently but that took Turbo’s, Superchargers or sometimes TurboSuperchargers capable of pulling boost in excess of what even high Octane fuel could handle, and gearboxes etc that could take higher power. https://enginehistory.org/Operations/R-4360Ops/r-4360ops1.shtml Our use would be to keep current power on fuel that’s only 6 Octane lower, that’s a very mild and very safe use of ADI

So, what’s the plan for you California guys when they outlaw 100LL then? Hope isn’t a plan. FAA says G100UL is perfectly safe and viable for ALL piston aircraft?, George says it’s readily available. What do you think some Judge that has zero knowledge of GA is going to rule? Do they have a choice? Just asking as I’m no Lawyer but if I understand they may be only one way this could go, unless the FAA steps in and temporarily blocks the sale or similar. I believe the number of States that follow California CARB wise is 17? Think they will follow California in banning 100LL? Is that enough market share for the refining of 100LL to no longer be viable? I have no idea but think this could get ugly, I hope not, but hope isn’t a plan

Mind telling me which of the 106 pages cover it?

Longest flight I’ve ever had was about 14 hours, in a crop duster without an autopilot. You learn to deal with it.

A few points. Max range would be most likely in a piston at min drag, which is best glide. Turbines have unusual fuel burn profiles so can be at much higher throttle due to terrible part throttle efficiency. There is one one best mixture for best BSFC and that’s not lean as much as it can stand, just as you can be too rich, you can be too lean, I have read that -25F LOP is the sweet spot but I don’t have any way to verify that. Disregarding ground effect which is at or less than one wingspan high, higher is better, reason is thinner air = less drag, but you burn fuel to get there so unless long legs going higher can burn more fuel. The pumping losses from a slightly closed throttle is small, but it is real, just don’t think you could measure it. Likely the best would be very high, WOT largely because even that is very low MP and RPM at the bottom of the green and an indicated airspeed close to best glide. Just for a point my J LOP at 23 squared, 8 GPH gives about 135 kts true. 64 gls is 8 hours to exhaustion which is 1080 NM. That’s without optimizing anything and as she gets lighter burning fuel she should speed up, so if someone is truly trying for Max range above all else usually altitude and or airspeed and % power change along the route due to decreased weight. It gets complicated, the only time I made a science project out of it was planning to self deploy AH-64’s to Europe, we could snap on four 230 gl of Aux tanks fuel on the wing weapon pylons giving us 1295 gls of fuel. We never self deployed to Europe, but we needed a plan just in case.

If you practice the maneuver be sure to “freeze” the controls for say 2 sec after pulling the power as even Superman has a reaction time. Secondly if you just barely make it, it’s unlikely you really would due to a real windmilling prop sucks a lot of energy where an idling engine won’t or sucks a lot less anyway, it may even provide a bit of thrust, reason so many have the idle set so low to help prevent float. Problem with climbing at best glide is that if the engine quits, you will be below best glide by the time you react you have lost speed. Personally I have a field in mind just to the left of a house on one end and just a field on the other end. Years ago the house had a V tail crash in their front yard and the two inside burned, so I’m sure they don’t want another crashed airplane, so I don’t overfly their house. Very often if an engine quits soon after take off the pilot stalls and of course lose control often being severely injured or worse. I just accept that the impossible turn is just that and hang my hat on that most forced landings in fields etc the people walk away.

I suspect there will be Lawsuits, but also strongly suspect that there are no assets to get, that the principals are well covered. A few Mooney’s may have to get reseals, but a Cirrus may need new wings? I hope there will be no AD of it there is it will be limited to inspections

They will have to, the longer they wait the worse it will get, then when they take action it’s always to overreact as in unlikely I think that we will see any more fuel approval STC’s. If G100UL is a problem and I believe it is, but I don’t have any hard data, but if it is the longer it’s sold the worse the problem will get. Sure it will “eat” the sealant in the old tanks first, those that may have been close to leaking anyway. There have been examinations of wet wing tanks that have had G100UL in them and the sealant was noticeable softened so much so that moderate pressure from the borescope left depressions. I believe given enough time that it would fail even newer sealant. They as in Gami know this I think and are hanging their hat on the theory that the components that are not in contact with the fuel will retain integrity, that was their explanation on O-rings anyway. The fact that there have been so many leaks so fast seems in my opinion to indicate that there is a problem that will get worse. But it does make one wonder why the Embry Riddle fleet didn’t have problems? How long as in months did they burn the fuel? My 2C was the whole interest was on the engines, nobody looked at the airframe, they were too absorbed on engines. I was in the middle of Certification of an aircraft when Gulfstream crashed their G-650. You want find this anywhere I don't think but FAA headquarters blamed Atl ACO for inadequate supervision, (internally). https://flightsafety.org/asw-article/fatal-flight-test/ Slowed us way down, we had to repeat some tests and others added to the Cert program just to make sure all blocks were checked. So when the FAA reacts. I expect them to over react. Oh, and another thing you wont see in writing is that the FAA was given a date by Political leaders that the G-650 WILL be certified by. Gulfstream had serious Political pull.

I had a similar experience with the Prototype S2R-H80 coming back from Oshkosh at 9500 ft when the Gas Generator let go, as in blew apart. The Avia 106” three blade is a dual acting prop, which means it takes oil pressure to both increase and decrease pitch, unlike a Hartzell that a spring drives it to feather, so if oil pressure is lost it goes to feather. It had a Walter E-11 engine as the GE was in Certification and the Walter was identical in form, fit and function. So as the oil pump is driven off of the compressor section my prop stuck at cruise pitch. I called Grand Strand approach I think it was and declared an Emergency and asked where the nearest airport was, he said you just over flew it. I was able to do a 180 from 9,500 ft, fly one mile, enter downwind and land, even made the turn off at mid field. So rate of descent of I guess over 3,000 FPM? Anyone who has flown turbines knows if you pull one to idle the prop goes so flat it’s a hard decel, and a Crop Duster with a 106” prop is worse. Disassembled it, put it on a truck and shipped it home.