cjandme said:Jabiru has found a way to make aircraft engines in Oz and whole airplanes and kits too I believe. There must be some way around the legislative red tape for those who are so inclined.
acotrel said:I used to work in the Australian aircraft industry, in manufacturing. The industry is subject to stringent controls, and is greatly different to the auto industry. Australian Standards don't really apply. Materials and manufacturing equipment are usually imported from the US or the UK, or France. The attention to detail is extreme. Having said that, we lost our manufacturing industry when tail flutter caused a Nomad aircraft to crash, killing the test pilot, and causing the co-pilot t o become quadraplegic. It was due to flying the plane before wind tunnel test results had been analysed and reported.
acotrel said:The wind tunnel tests showed the tail flutter which caused the first Nomad to crash. The plane was flown before the test results were available. The original design had a hinged fuselage so helicopter blades could be carried in the plane - Vietnam in mind. Just another example of a poor design brief, and changing tack in mid stream. Result - end of an industry.
madass140 said:No more frames, i sold the setup with enough tubing and all the laser cut brackets, tabs etc to make about 50 frames before I left Australia 5 yrs ago, I dont think the new owners of the jig and tooling etc bothered to carry on with production, such a shame, everyone wants a Slimline frame, I have no intention to do it all again, it was a great purpose built frame jig , it would rotate 360 degrees within itself for ease of welding, I think Rohan would of seen it.
Rohan said:madass140 said:No more frames, i sold the setup with enough tubing and all the laser cut brackets, tabs etc to make about 50 frames before I left Australia 5 yrs ago, I dont think the new owners of the jig and tooling etc bothered to carry on with production, such a shame, everyone wants a Slimline frame, I have no intention to do it all again, it was a great purpose built frame jig , it would rotate 360 degrees within itself for ease of welding, I think Rohan would of seen it.
I did see it, was quite neat I recall - although the actual details escape me these days.
Frames looked really good.
These days, I've wondered if buidling a larger tubed version would bring any benefits with respect to engines with significantly more orsepowers...
swooshdave said:There's a guy on ebay selling them. You don't need larger tube, just thicker walled.