marksires

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Posts posted by marksires


  1.  Clearly they use capacitance to detect the liquid level. Drawback: The units shown use 120V as their primary input power. The lying chinese company thinks we can't read their data plate. The SENSOR is 5V, but the processing box has 120V input requirement.

    Jim Wiebe of Belite sells a nice one for our use, check out:  http://www.beliteaircraftstore.com/bingo-3-liquid-detector/

    If you scroll down far enough, it says the control box needs 100-220v AC.  Not lying, just not designed for our American short attention span.

    1 person likes this

  2. Might work if you are flying in Phoenix.  Florida or Alaska, not so much.  It will just make you wetter.

    I remember years ago Universal Studios in Orlando put the misting fans at the wait lines - they worked great at the California location, so let's put them in Florida too!  Probably somebody getting a kickback from the fan manufacturer, or else just plain stupid. 

    They did a great job of getting you wet, but didn't cool at all.  Hard to get any evaporation cooling when the humidity is already 80%.

    3 people like this

  3. Turbo,

    I think you missed the point of the climb out in the article.  The point was that the Avid achieves maximum climb rate at a low speed (60mph in the examples).  If you are climbing 1000fpm at 60mph, then you have a steeper angle of climb than an airplane that climbs 1000fpm at 100mph.   This is a big advantage when  you are in a confined takeoff area.

    My Cherokee 235 will climb at 1000fpm, but it is going 110mph to do so.  At 60mph, it would be mushing along with little to no climb - with full flaps.  So the Avid advantage in a confined area is much greater than just the 600-700 feet shorter takeoff run.

    Always remember these kinds of articles are as much about marketing as they are education- they will stress the strengths of their product, while glossing over the disadvantages.  In this case, I'm sure it was inspired by a competitor talking about how much faster they were, with a slightly longer takeoff run.

    Of course, the Cherokee would be doing that with 4 people, full fuel, and 100lbs of baggage, (or 2 people, full fuel, a couple of dressed moose, well maybe alligators in my case :P ), which  is a different kind of advantage depending on what your mission is.  It would also be burning about 20gph in the climb, then 12.5 in cruise, but cruising at 150mph.  Again, different mission, different plane.

    Mark

     


  4. That works great for a project!  Mine was a flying Avid, I think that trailer would be a little short! :)  I also had two nights out on the way back, and didn't want it damaged by looky loos in the hotel parking lots.  And I *might* have exceeded the 70mph legal limit for a good part of the trip.

    That is a great stealth trailer setup though, no one would ever think of asking for someone with a Mini to help them move!

    Mark

     

    1 person likes this

  5. I hope it works long term.  I've heard to many stories of it delaminating and clogging the fuel system after several years.  It is almost impossible to get something to bond when you don't have the opportunity to prep the surface first.  But if it buys you several years, then it is probably worth it.  If you start seeing debris when you sump the tanks after this, it is probably time to replace them.

    Looking through the logs on my Cherokee, I found they did this to the tanks, then replaced the tanks about 5 years later.

     


  6. I have an enclosed trailer, but a wing has to come off to fit the avid in.  It was neither cheap, nor light!  But it was worth it to bring the avid from California to Illinois, then Florida.  I've probably got 75,000 miles on that trailer now, using it for many things except hauling the avid!

    One caution - even more so than when you get a pickup, suddenly you have a lot of friends that need to move.....

    Mark

     


  7. 30 degrees is more than I like on that turn, there is little chance of recovery if you stall there.  That said, as long as you were coordinated in the turn, depending on the stall speed of your plane you were probably not too close to the edge. If you want to be sure, get up to a decent altitude, and practice accelerated stalls until you know when it is too much.

    But then I've also never obsessed about a square base to final turn.  That is where I get my final read on the winds, and if I overshoot and need to spend some of my 'final' time getting back to the final course, that's just the way it is.  If there are obstacles, that changes things, but there are few times that's an issue.

    Mark

     


  8. Note that it wasn't straight water injection on the 109, it was a Methanol/Water mix.  This is still done, and kits are available for cars:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HkPFZWd8wj4

    B52's used water injection during takeoff when loaded heavy.  They could only use it for a short time or it would cool the hot section too much and reduce the power instead of increase it.  Jet engines, particularly pure turbojets like the B-52, make thrust by shoving air/exhaust gases out the back really really fast.  Add water, which is much more dense AND expands much more than air when it converts to gas (steam), and you get a much higher thrust.  At least until the cooling effect sucks up too much energy and things quit expanding.

    I did an aviation camp at the former Castle Air Force base in Merced, CA with my son one summer.  It was a former B-52 base, and they brought in some of the old B-52 pilots to talk about it.  They had a museum with a B-52 and a B-36 (what a monster!).  They also had an original B-52 simulator - it took up 3 rooms.  The Air Force had removed some boards so it would work, but the cockpit, flight engineer, and weapons officer stations (in 3 separate rooms) were all complete to look at, sit in the seats and make airplane noises.

    Mark

     


  9. When I bought my Avid in California, I bought an enclosed trailer (8' x 20') to haul it back to Illinois (and later to Florida).  Best decision I ever made.  Unfortunately, the only one I could find in time was too narrow to load the Avid with the wings attached.  I took off the wing without a fuel tank, not terribly difficult, and easy to reattach.  I didn't check the tail, and it is just as wide as the wings are folded so it had to come off also.  That one nut buried in the vertical stabilizer is a ROYAL b*tch to get out, particularly at a remote field with only the tools I brought!

    Still have the trailer 13 years later - probably has 75,000 miles on it by now.  Most useful thing I ever bought.

    1 person likes this

  10. I'm guessing if Dean didn't want you to haul them backwards he wouldn't have put the attachments back there for a tung mount.

    I had to go backwards with mine because I couldn't get over the fender wells of my car trailer. Tires are to wide.

    Big difference hauling one short distance at low speed (tire/wheel bearing limits) and hauling one across the country on the freeways at high speed.


  11. With a little hillbilly engineering, some tubing and a little time, you can make a Lazy-Boy recliner fit. My specialty is turning expensive metal into worthless scrap.

    I too have become quite adept at turning perfectly good metal into a bunch of recyclable chips with my lathe and mill!  :BC:

    2 people like this

  12. If all you did was plow up/smooth the existing soil, and that soil is mostly clay, then it will always return to its naturally bumpy state.  As BryceKat and Yamma-Fox said, it is complicated, and if you have clay, with rain, and freeze/thaw cycles, keeping it smooth is a never ending job.  The grass strip at our airpark is marvelous, but it is in Florida, with mostly sandy soil.  It doesn't take a lot of maintenance to keep it in excellent condition.

    One thing, is the grass is way too tall - that is part of the clumping problem. It needs to be mowed as frequently as your lawn.

     

    Mark

     

    1 person likes this

  13. That's who I bought my 50x50x18 kit from.  Good product, good service, and reasonable price.  It showed up when promised, and when I found a couple of missing items, they shipped them out quickly.  It went together easily - combined with an amazing job my concrete guy did setting the anchor bolts, it didn't need a single shim anywhere to be square and plumb.

    1 person likes this

  14. My new 50 x 50 x 18 hangar was feeling a little small yesterday - junk accumulates faster than you can remove it!

    1 person likes this

  15. I'm doing a market study for an MBA program and would appreciate a few people to answer these questions.

     

     

    How likely are you to purchase an aircraft/kit in the next year? Zero Chance

     

    Have you ever owned an airplane?  Yes - currently own 2

     

    How would you equip your aircraft and how much would you expect it to cost you?  IFR equipped certified, $65,000.  VFR experimental - $12,000

     

    Have you ever built an airplane? No

     

    How much time per week can you devote to building an aircraft? None

     

    Tailwheel or Nosewheel? Either

     

    SLSA or kit? kit

     

    Would you be more likely to purchase a flying Kitfox S7 if more were readily available to purchase? No

     

    Would you prefer to build a kit or buy a completed kit with the airworthiness certificate already issued? kit

     

     

    Thanks!


  16. I can attest to the accuracy of that Wyoming windsock after I drove through there in the middle of March.  One stop I had to go around to the passenger side to get in.  The drivers side had the wind blowing directly on it and I couldn't open the door.


  17. -18 in the middle of Illinois 5 or 6 years ago is why I now live in Florida!  Bit chilly here today though, only 38 degrees at 10:30am, and that is COLD in Florida!

    Mark

     

    1 person likes this

  18. If there has been an engine change from the original engine when the AW cert was issued, a new AW insp is required. I am going thru the same situation with mine. Call your local FAA FSDO and discuss it with them.

    No, that would qualify as a 'major alteration', requiring another period of test flying, per the operating limitations issued with the original AW certificate, usually 5 hours,  but it does not require a new AW certificate.