NetHeads, Saturday morning I'm meeting Graham Hewitt at Jandakot airport for a glimpse into the Aussie world of homebuilts. Anybody near Perth is welcome to show up at 11:00 and join in the conversation, at Bill Keehner's hangar in the "Western Owners" hangar row. Graham is 78 years old and has built two airplanes already, and recently began a Pietenpol (how's that for optimism?).
Today at "work" I saw a method of checking compression ratio that made a lot of sense. What they did was use a piece of Plexiglas that was cylindrical and about about an inch thick. The "trick" was how they had machined out a conical shape on the inside, so they don't have to chase a bubble around....the bubble floats right to the top where it goes out the same 10mm diameter hole that the measuring fluid is dropped into. Then, the known conical shape volume is subtracted from the volume reading to yield an accurate chamber volume. Shear genius, I tell you! Yesterday I left "work" and could see a killer sunset shaping up. As soon as I got back to the hotel, I walked down to the beach and snapped a few pictures. I think the best one is at http://home.hiwaay.net/~langford/perth/070426036m.jpg . This would be my first Indian Ocean sunset, and one of the best sunset pictures I've had the opportunity to make... Mark Langford, Huntsville, Alabama see KR2S homebuilt airplane N56ML at http://home.hiwaay.net/~langford email to N56ML "at" hiwaay.net
