In this edition:

• Down on the farm 63 last month 3/24
• Obituary: Dave Websdale
• Decedents of the V1: Pulse-Jet Powered Aircraft in production
• Your Pilots’ Licence is Changing!
• Net-Zero Hydrocarbon Fuel – Is it Possible?
• Aviation Archaeology Talk
• Plane plus strip hangarage for sale

Down on the farm 63 last month 3/24

Klemm L25C G-ACXE

We actually have a permit but not a chance to fly as the strip has flooded so many times in the last month. We have been doing little jobs on the plane but nothing much to report.

I am trying to put together the talk by the Border Force at Parham for next month’s meeting and will let everyone know ASAP. I am still waiting for a reply from the Border Force.

When you come to club night on Wednesday the 3^th please bring some cash for subs (£25) if you have not paid already!! and we can discuss the above and what direction you want the strut to go, suggestions please for the coming year? Just a night to chat.

Tony Palmer

Obituary: Dave Websdale

I am sorry to report that Dave passed away on the 27th March 2024.

He was our Strut Co-ordinator for many years and he put his heart and soul into the organisation of our strut, keeping it going for us members. He organised various strut functions, fly-ins at Shoreham Airport and wrote the newsletter.

His family are hoping to be able to scatter his ashes at Shoreham Airport in the recent future and I believe if it goes ahead others may be able to attend. We will keep you posted on events.

I took over from him about 20 years ago. He was the Southern Strut co-ordinator from about 1989/90 to about 2004. I just went to the loft to look at the records he gave me when I took over and was astounded how much work he put in with proper written yearly financial reports and all letters to people hand written, no email then!!

As he was based in Eastbourne he used come to the all Palmersfarm Flyins without fail. He would take very professional photographs of the event and would print out a complete bound book of the people and planes attending all at his own cost and would not take any money to cover the costs, he just enjoyed it.

Rest in peace, David it was nice knowing you.

Tony Palmer

Decedents of the V1: Pulse-Jet Powered Aircraft in production

Following up on conversations after the excellent videos on the V1 presented by Tony Berryman; it seems like the pulse-jet powered flying bomb idea has been revived by a Baltimore US based startup company, Wave Engine Corp., who received U.S. Air Force funding to develop a decoy. As engines go, this has to be the cheapest to manufacture; it’s basically a ‘U’ shaped tube.

Turn up the sound in the video to see what the noise issue is about. I wonder if that could be tackled by using two engines appropriately synchronised, like the technique noise-cancelling headphones use. More details here: wave-engine.com/ where you can see the engine fitted on a glider. For a more general discussion of pulse jets: wikipedia.org/Pulsejet. Amazingly the concept has a history going back to 1867!

Your Pilots’ Licence is Changing!

“Change is the only constant.” [Attributed to Heraclitus of Ephesus, 535-475 BCE)]

The CAA is looking at rationalising the the administrative and legal pig’s ear that is the current state of pilot licencing. ANO UK-PPL, Part-FCL, NPPL(A) and LAPL(A), all with different revalidation requirements, aircraft that can be flown, privileges and possible ratings. Sounds good, but some changes might not be so for individual licence holders; the devil is in the detail. Flyer magazine have summarised the proposal here: flyer.co.uk/what-the-caa-is-proposing-in-its-pilot-licensing-consultation/ and the CAA documentation can be downloaded as pdf’s here: CAP 2974C Executive Summary and CAP 2974A Detailed Proposals If you have concerns, there is a CAA portal for feed-back on the consultation, URL in the document..

Net-Zero Hydrocarbon Fuel – Is it Possible?

Well, yes it actually is – you make it from the air! I randomly came across a presentation by Rob McGinnis, the CEO of Prometheus Fuels on what used to be called Twitter. He gave a compelling account of their development of an electrochemical process to extract carbon-dioxide and water from air, and using solar energy, turn it into a range of hydrocarbon products making use of the Sabatier reaction. Sounds crazy, but this has actually been done since the discovery of the reaction in 1897. There is a similar reaction, though requiring high temperatures and pressures, the Fischer–Tropsch process, using carbon-monoxide. It was invented in 1925, and used during World War II in Germany to produce ersatz fuels, accounting for an estimated 9% of German fuel and 25% of the automotive fuel.

The immediate objection is: “but isn’t this an extremely inefficient process?” Well, that depends on your understanding of efficiency, and ultimately of economics. Capture solar energy by growing vast forests, then covering them with miles of rock, leaving it there for millions of years, before searching for it, drilling, transporting and refining it, is actually a pretty inefficient process. Cutting out the growing, burying, searching, etc. bits is a massive efficiency gain.

Using solar electricity directly when possible is probably most efficient, but it is not convenient in many, particularly transport, applications. Using the electrical energy to produce a burnable product, hydrocarbon, means that it can be dropped into existing industrial ecologies. It is really just a vector for solar energy, and all energy available on earth is essentially solar energy (even nuclear if you count its cosmological origins). The conversion process does not have to be perfectly efficient, just efficient enough to make it economically viable, that means at least as good if not better than the current process.

OK, that’s all very well, but what is it going to cost? Here is the interesting bit; the cost of solar produced energy is dropping, and shows every indication of getting cheaper. It is actually cheap enough to make this process a going concern on a massive scale. At least that is what Rob McGinnis claims.

I’m old enough to remember when nuclear produced electricity was promised to be too cheap to meter. Prometheus Fuels offer may be too good to be true, or it is going to be the thing that keeps the world functioning both ecologically and economically. We can hope!

Richard Griffiths

Aviation Archaeology Talk

Members who live in Worthing may be interested in the next talk organised by Worthing Archaeological Society:

The Men, The Mission, The Recovery: The search for the B24 and its MIA’s

Mark Phillips Local Historian and Councillor Arundel

On Thursday 22 June 1944, an American B24 Consolidated Liberator of the USSAF 489 Bomber Group – nicknamed ‘Johnny Reb’ – crashed upon its return to the UK, following severe battle damage to the plane during its mission to bomb the airfield at St-Cyr, SW of Paris. I plan to tell the story of the plane, the men, the mission, the crash, the research and the project to find its two missing in action (MIA’s) and repatriate them to the USA.

Tuesday April 9th 2024 Worthing Library Lecture Theatre 7.30pm – 9pm Non-members of WAS: £4

Plane plus strip hangarage for sale

Rans S6-116 G-BXRZ built 2000 with 80 hp four stroke Rotax and ground adjustable Warp Drive propeller.  I bought her sixteen years ago: total engine hours are now about 750 and it’s in excellent condition and has proved most reliable. Fatter,  approved Tundra main wheel tyres are fitted. She is a tail wheeler.

The fabric has all been replaced within recent hours and if it is of interest to a new owner, may continue to stay in its hangar at Jackrell’s Farm airfield near Horsham. West Sussex.

Price is £15,000. Hangarage by agreement.

mikehallam@btinternet.com Mobile. 079423 88082

Events

Next Strut Night is Wednesday 3rd April, 7:30pm at The Longshore. Come along with ideas for activities next year!

For a list of events go to the website Events page.