Light Aircraft Association

I was sad to hear that Laurie Shaw has passed away. He has been a great supporter of the PFA/LAA for many, many years. I first met Laurie when the late F.I.V. (John) Walker was doing all of our engineering work as an unpaid volunteer in the early day of PFA, and often sought assistance from Laurie. ...

Kelvin: It appears to be normal these days in the USA for flight schools to require renter insurance to fly solo in their aircraft. As you say, it was not the case some years ago, but I suppose times change. Talking to my local flight school here in South Florida, they suggest using AOPA insurance. ...

I bought a Luton Minor for less than the reported cost of these ANR headsets, but that was a long time ago! I recently had to replace a headset that went tango uniform, and bought an inexpensive ANR set from Marv Golden, around $240 US. I have no experience of other ANR sets so cannot make a compari...

Traffic patterns at Fairoaks must have changed in the quarter century since I used to operate out of there. Base leg over West Byfleet station! Wing/Co Arthur would have been rather critical of that!

Peter, what about pluvius insurance for an event? The very first Flying for Fun at Sywell was a complete wash out, but there was no loss involved because of the insurance.

Frank Parker

Brian's reference to the Royal Berkshire Strut meeting at White Waltham produced a nostalgic moment for me, so I went to the LAA home page to look up the strut details. If there is information there relating to individual struts it is very well hidden! I would have expected to see a list, but the on...

Doug Bianchi is one of the unsung heroes of the PFA. He provided a lot of advice to the association , and on ourbehalf attended many meetings with the ARB as our unpaid Chief Inspector. He also found time to do all of the inspections on my Turbulent when it was under construction. I first met Doug w...

I fnd the need to have arrival slots incredible. No slots are required to attend Sun n' Fun or Oshkosh, where there are many more visitng aircraft than Sywell will have. And the request is radio silence, just listen to the controller's instructions. If it works there, why not at UK events?

Some radios have the on/off switch on the volume control, and turning the radio off requires rotating to the minimum volum setting first. This causes considerable wear on the resistive element, and can result in scratchy and intermittent reception after may operations. An avionics switch of some sor...

If you look at the transmit antenna on most spam cans you will see that they are mounted on the curved top of the fuselage, so I don't think you would have a problem with a curved ground plane in your installation. The gound plane is meant to provide an image of the antenna so that electrically it l...

The PTT switch has normally open contacts, conducts when pushed.

You should return you jackplug grounds to the ground terminal on your radio rather than the airframe ground. It is electrically the same, but less noise prone done that way.

(Ground = earth!!)

Frank Parker

Nigel's suggestion sounds a likely possibility. However, if the batter really is going flat, a high resistance connection would not explain that. Have you checked that the battery is receiving an adequate charge? It should float around 13.8 to 14 volts on charge if all is well - assuming that it is ...

:!: Not really Stainless is 2750 F I was using your previous post as refrence :roll: Melting point of Al = 660 degrees C - Stainless Steel 1510 degrees C And Stuart is correct in both posts, 1510 degrees C is 2750 degrees F. Frank Parker, who is a lot more used to old fashioned mensuration these da...

My Webster's dictionary defines "septic" as infected by micro-organisms! I used to have septic tank in my back yard, which from time to time I would swear at, but never could carry on a conversation with it!

Aren't the wings stood chord upright in a glider trailer?