and today i have mostly been...

[OllieNZ]

Forgot to add it's a piper pa34-220t seneca 5 for those that are interested in such things ;)

[steve_earwig]

Whel I see prop aircraft I always wonder how long it would take me before I walked into one

Very nice plane! My nephew has his PPL but sadly, at 18, these days he's more interested in ruling the universe via his pc and poking little girls

Nice looking piece of kit. Is that an executive transport, or the top end of private piloting..?

Which reminds me... must do something about my HDI engine cover constantly coming adrift from its fixings.

You want some Renault exhaust bobbins you do. There's a few how to's about but https://youtu.be/1FlWcuGwRD4

When I did mine I got a length of M6 stud, dismantled the standard plastic thingies, removed the pathetic spring clips and, using the stud to hold them, heated the (plain) nuts up and melted them in, following up with some epoxy. I thought they'd probably come loose all the time but they're still on there. This way they look standard but they're not.

[trufflehunt]

Neat, thanks.

It was the slightly 'bodger look' of the little screw kits that put me off .
Melting the original tops on is just the job.

[Welly]

Ollie - out of interest is there a rule of thumb conversion from flying hours to miles?

[highlander]

Ollie - out of interest is there a rule of thumb conversion from flying hours to miles?

I'll leave Olly to answer this one (I'm interested in aviation, but not professionally associated with it)

But I do know that aircraft life is generally measured in flight hours and in flight cycles. One flight cycle represents an entire flight from beginning to end. If you think about what an airframe needs to endure during the course of a flight - particularly if it's one designed with a pressurised cabin and/or cargo hold - all the vibration from the engines and any turbulence, the air pressure differences during ascent and descent, the temperature differences (it can get down to -70 C at 35,000 feet), the flex of the wings as they pick up the load of the aircraft on takeoff, and the stress on the landing gear when you land. Plus weather - any rain/sleet/snow/hail/lightning. It makes a lot of sense to think of high-cycle aircraft as being worth a lot less than low-cycle aircraft.

1 cycle = 1 flight, regardless of duration or distance
1 hour = 1 hour of actual flight time, again, regardless of distance

The manufacturer of the aircraft will determine the maximum number of cycles the aircraft is expected to last for.

Most large aircraft like 747s are typically used for long-haul flights, and have a much greater turn-around time than a short-haul jet like a 737 or Airbus A320. So larger jets last more years than smaller ones because they make far fewer flights per year. There are 30+ year old 747s in service, but the likes of Ryanair might sell off a 737 after only a few years.

[OllieNZ]

Ollie - out of interest is there a rule of thumb conversion from flying hours to miles?

Not really, it would depend on the speed of the aeroplane and type of usage. Being used for traning ours get hammered with more landings than hours which is pretty hard on the air frame, undercarriage and engines compared to a long haul airliner which may do as little as a single landing cycle every 10-12 flying hours.
Based on an average speed of around 150mph 1000hrs would equal around 150,000 miles and just for interest we run a 50 hour check cycle so new oil and filters every 50 hours.

[Welly]

That's very interesting and quite a responsibility obvs. Don't forget to change the pollen filter, it's often overlooked lol

[OllieNZ]

That's very interesting and quite a responsibility obvs. Don't forget to change the pollen filter, it's often overlooked lol

Yeah, you kind need to fix things properly first time........
No pollen filter sorry, but plenty of other filters

Here's a thought, averaging 800hrs annually per aeroplane would equal 16 checks per year so 112 total for the just 7 seneca 5's (we operate 20ish aircraft total) 9us qts per engine per oil change (18qts per check) = 2016 qts of oil a year or 1900 litres for the more metrically minded among us.

[steve_earwig]

Nowhere near as interesting as things with wings...

Miloš was back Friday to smooth stuff up ready for painting.




He did want to do the ceiling in the pantry but I kind of liked being able to see where all the wood was, so he just patched it up and I painted it with me sprayer:




I had a bit of a fight with the sprayer, it's a Bosch I'd bought it about 7 years ago to paint the roof of my garages but I just couldn't get it to spray properly. I ended up watering the paint down so much the moment I could see the paint on the wall it started running. Arse. After 3 hours putting a feeble coat on I was beginning to think the sprayer was some kind of revenge weapon and resolved to paint it normally when I took it apart to clean it and realised I'd forgotten all about the volume adjustment, which was shut right down to nothing. Ah

Today I've flattened the floor with tile glue and tiled round the corner with some old tiles ready for some lino I've got going spare.

Miloš was back again this morning to plaster over the council estate wedge:

which I'll be painting tomorrow (together with the whole ceiling, once t'wife spots how much whiter the new paint is )

Now shelves, as it's such a pathetically small space for a pantry (2.2M x 87.5cm) I was thinking of putting shelves all the way along the rhs and across the end. A foot, sorry, 30cm wide spaced 30cm. I plan to make the brackets from 20mm square tube, full uprights with diagonals on the bottom 4 full length shelves, fastened to the walls with "ears" welded onto the tubes.

Now, seeing as these bricks are fairly worthless, should I take the tubes all the way to the floor? Bearing in mind that I'll have to cut notches in the lino and it'll make cleaning the floor more awkward. And of course the floor's not level, dropping almost a cm over the 2.2 meter depth. Or maybe this isn't enough to worry about?

I'm considering using led strips along the bottom 3 shelves too but I can't decide if it'll look space age or like a migraine...

[Welly]

If it was me I'd use wood as a batten fixed to the wall horizontally for the length of the shelf, the shelf can sit on the batten (and be screwed down to it) with additional cantilever shelf supports at regular centres underneath (the cantilever brackets would need their own batten 'packer' behind using the same wood at the horizontal) so that they 'catch' they underside of the shelf.

If you use a decent thickness for the shelf you won't need all that many brackets, maybe split into quarters along the length.

Obvs if you like to get busy with the welder then knock yourself out

[steve_earwig]

I forgot to mention, the wall's not straight either

It's 18mm chip, quite robust though, not your modern biscuit. 50cm between brackets, if they do sag then I can just weld supports lengthways between the brackets.

Have welder, will weld. Tbh I'm not all that good with wood, I have plenty of the stuff left over from the roof but none of it's particularly straight, plus it's bigger than metal so it'll take up more space, which is at a premium.

Then all I'll need to do is get t'wife used to buying lots of everything, instead of needing to run to the shops every couple of days because she's run out of dog food again

Meanwhile: last night I couldn't get the boiler up to temperature. I gave it a clean out but still no good so I reasoned that the chimney must be blocking up. Due to the stupid design I have to sweep it top down so I had to wait for morning to get up on the roof. Took the lid off and... I've never seen it so blocked before I've cleared down to the length of my crow bar but I can't get the brush down it, fortunately I made a tool last year (out of wood ). I've just come in for a warm up, it was -7 when I started, -5 now. And there's frost on the roof, so if I don't report back you'll know I've taken up sky diving.

[Welly]

I see, you're probably better with metal then and you have the kit to do it

[steve_earwig]

All done, no pratfalls either. The soot in the boiler was light and fluffy for a change but this was the usual chewing gum, I ended up throwing the brush down with a 5Kg weight on it (it's made for just such a job). While it was down there I took the liberty of shortening the brush cable as it was 4 meters too long and now I have the tecky nolloggy to weld the end up so it doesn't unravel (also I always thought I might need the extra length one day, just on case you know? Well feck that, I can buy a longer one if I need one). It doesn't sound much, 4 meters, but on the roof and up a ladder it gets quite heavy and wraps around the ladder all the time.

I suppose it's my own fault for leaving it so long but there's always something else to do, rather than go on the roof in the cold. Besides, it's always a pain to go to your neighbour's and ask to borrow YOUR ladder (To be fair he does need it more often than I do and I'd rather him borrow mine than use some crappy 100 year old dried out piece of firewood)

It's all clean now and roaring, I've stuffed some black locust in there so it heats up quick - I want a fecking shower!

[lozz]

' glad to hear u got down safe n sound.



Chim ..chimney chim chim cherrie.. Carnt rember the rest of it..

[steve_earwig]

Cheers, me too

Chim chimmery chim chimmery
Chim chim, cheroo-
a sweep is quite happy when he's sniffing glue.

It'll be on youtube but I'd rather stick needles in my eyes than listen to it. Oddly enough (probably not) I was thinking about Dick Van Dyke and the worst English accent in cinematographic history while I was sweeping our chimney, I suppose it's inevitable. "Yis Maeory Powpins."

Chimney sweeps in Croatia seem to have some sort of mystic significance, like when you see one you're supposed to touch a button for luck. However, having dealt with them a few times (they're the idiots that made this chimney so you can't sweep it) I think I'd prefer to touch cloth.

Croatian chimney sweeps

That is their uniform, they all wear it. The guy working here asked me what sort of uniform the chimney sweeps in England wear - "I dunno, red nose, baggy trousers and big shoes?"