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Fred and I met this morning at HKS turbo seminar where Mark was main speaker.

Then we spent more time watching Mark and the eGull being swarmed by people. Mark has the best ultralight display spot here.

It turns out that we had more in common than our planes and being here, as a chance remark by Fred revealed.

And that connection is documented on the Internet. I've been following the blog of a woman who flew her Drifter here from Oregon, with some challenges. She has connections with my home base, Brian Ranch Airport. I watched her land, took her picture and her web master Bob Comperini put it on her web site.

Later Monday Fred performed a much more beneficial service, as she documented in her blog.

http://www.lessonsfromtheedge.com/b2evo ... p/Oshkosh/

Sent from my iPhone

Arty Trost. She is just a few mules from me.

-Alan Cossitt

>From my iPhone. Please excuse typos and terseness.

Bravo

And my freind Jerry sold her the Drifter, complete with his canard upgrade to help trim it. She is quite a character, and I too admire her justing jumping in and going. That's also a great thing about Mark, he had flown the sh-t out of his designs, and tweaked them until they are quite good. Thank you Mark for such a great plane. Oh, and by the way, our trip up to Concrete Washington for a great, free fly-in, we had the chance to fly for a while together. The 503 in a slicked up airframe had no problem keeping up with the Jabiru 2200 powered Titan 2, and outclimbs it significantly.

kb

Yes Kess, I'll drink to that (+1). now what's this unit "pMPG" at pg3 in the 3rd line of the last para of the GFC revised prize structure pdf at http://cafefoundation.org/v2/gfc_main.php

rc

Arty is such a nice Lady of the air.
I saw the smoke coming from her plane as I was sitting with a guy at the HKS booth. ( Sorry I am bad with names, but he is the pilot of the Odyssey that the skydiver transfered to in a dive.)
He was a pleasure to talk too. I could see a lot of people helping Arty get the fire under control so we went up to take a look at the damage a bit later.
Here is what happened, a gust of wind blew her BNC cable that was disconnected from her radio. Guess where it landed? Right onto the positive terminal of the battery. It welded right on to the post and the whole cable lit up like a sparkler. Then the BNC cable proceeded to melt through other wires it was laying on causing more dead shorts to ground.
A quick thinking passer by threw his slurpy on the fire and cut the BNC cable with a pair of side cutters. ( I guess you should always be walking around with side cutters)
I came in and had a look and offered to help. Arty was so appreciative. I told her things look fine but we must be absolutely sure what caused it.( I described what the cause was above.)
So I started snipping out all the bad wires when Arty said so politely. Fred I just have to ask You do know what your doing when it comes to things like this?
I guess that is understandable when a stranger is cutting up the wiring harness in the plane that has to get you home.Especially when you know nothing about wiring.
Long story short! I followed every wire that had some melting and wrapped them with electrical tape, cut out the bad and gave her a shopping list of what she needed to buy from some of the vendors. I stopped in next day to see how she was doing and was greeted with a hug. You got to love this sport of aviation, we are there to help each other.
Before I left Oshkosh I checked in again but Arty was off some where and I could see the repairs were made properly. I hope to hear she made it home OK.
Fred

Fred,

Here's the link to Arty's blog. http://www.lessonsfromtheedge.com/oshkosh/

And here's her Spot track. They did make some progress late today.
http://share.findmespot.com/shared/face ... phQ5YVWYgJ

The blog part about high winds destroying planes at the ultralight field Saturday was very sad. (Her planes and those of her trip companions escaped harm.) And not anything that EAA has reported on any of its sites I've been following. The rain Wednesday and Thursday support my decision to pack up and leave Wednesday morning. It provided time to spend 2 1/2 days with my son and my two grandsons on the way back to LA. Currently we're in Green River, UT, listening to an after-dinner rain storm spend its last few drops on the motorhome roof.

When I get home I'll soon be receiving an EIS with altimeter option ordered from Grand Rapids Technology, which will then enable me to jet my carbs to 1150 egt that Mark recommends. Right now I'm around 1000-1050 at cruise. The altimeter option will allow me to remove the 3 1/4" aneroid unit in the middle of my panel, which works poorly, probably the victim of 10 years of Rotax vibration and desert dust. In it's place I can install my Garmin Aera 500 GPS in a much more usable location. Right now it hangs in a bracket below the intrument panel where it is hard to see and reach.

I considered the fuel level option, but Mark said it is better not to drill a hole in the top of the tank, required to insert the sensor. He suggested that if I chose to drill the hole, I should never put the last gallon of fuel in the tank. Which would I rather have, another 15 minutes of fuel or know that I was down to my last 15 minutes? I choose fuel and a flight time display on the GPS.

So here's a question for the electronics wizards among you: is there a way to fabricate a series of optical sensors and requisite electronics to sense from outsite the tank where the fuel level shows? By eyeball, its easy to see. Or maybe somebody already offers such a product. I know there are external level sensors for boat water and holding tanks, but I think they work by a change in electrical field caused by the water level.

Dick O'Reilly

Richard,
If your running a 503, I would think twice before re-jetting. If it's not, I rest my case. If it is, you might check out the EAA Video website for Brain Carpenter's webinar on care and feeding of Rotax 2-strokes. It's titled "Is Your Two-Stroke Engine About To Fail?", and what a great primer for me. He is more into proper prop loading to target the right egt/cht readings, and going digital for accuracy.

Thanks Kess,

It is a 503. It has the Rotax HAC system, with needles and jets per Green Sky's specs when I rebuilt carbs last fall. Prop loading on the ground adjustable Ivo 3-blade is 6350 rpm at full throttle level flight, which was Brian Carpenter's recommendation when I took his repairman's course at Corning last December. That yields static rpm of 5750 at my airfield at 3230 asl.

I discovered belatedly after leaving Oshkosh that Lockwood and Green Sky publish different needle and jet specs for the HAC. I'll be trying to resolve discrepancy when I get home.

Maybe my Westech egt gauges read low, which is why I'm not changing jets until I get the new EIS installed. If it really is running cool, I'll follow Mark's instructions to first raise the needles 1 slot. And if still cool reduce main jets by one size increment.

Dick

Sent from my iPhone

Dick,
I'm also running the Ivo 3-blade, although it is an in-flight adjust. I converted it to ground adjust for a while, then had the electric drive rebuilt by Ivo and re-installed it. My fastest wide open speed seems to be also about 6350rpm for the sweet spot. At that pitch the engine bogs on take-off unless I fine pitch the prop a bit. I like about 6000rpm at 70mph for climb, which gives me 1000-1200fpm. I do have a 68" prop with the 3:1 gearbox. Some of my friends are still running 2.62:1 and 62" props, which makes for more noise and probably less effeciency. You will however appreciate the EIS digital gages. I took the the repairman's course also, and learned some good stuff. Check out his webinar at EAA, and I'm sure you will be impressed with more info.

kb