How About Story Time

On Sunday, April 19, 2020 at 8:59:57 PM UTC-4, Waveguru wrote:
Sorry this is so long. Many years ago I owned an open Jantar and loved it. It had a tube plumbed thru the hull under the seat for your ****ing convenience. I hooked it up and used it for a season, but then read in Soaring that with this type of arrangement, the pee would stick to the hull, and run back into the gear well and corrode stuff. I did a thorough inspection of my gear, and sure enough, it has started to corrode. I removed it, bead blasted it, powder coated it, and put it back in. The article also said that if you attach the **** tube to the gear door it would get the offending fluid away from the glider and it would solve the problem. In addition it said to put a T in the line so that you could blow out the pee so that it wouldn't freeze in the wave flights. I installed the new system with the T and tested it out on the ground with the glider in the cradle, and it worked great. Time for the test flight. Of course I waited until I REALLY had to pee. I lowered the gear and let'er rip. Instead of the pee going out the exit tube, it came blasting out the blow tube, gushing all over me! And as you all know, it's really hard to stop peeing once you get going, so I pinched the tube, and while I was trying to stop, the catheter condom blew up like a water balloon! I stuck the blow tube out the vent window, spraying pee all down the side of the fuselage. I was puzzled as to why it worked in the test, but not now. I figured that there was some kind of temporary plug, and that maybe I could blow it clear. I wiped the tube off and blew hard on into it, which just blew the condom up like a balloon again. Frustrated, and not thinking, I pulled the tube out of my mouth, and the pressure blasted the remaining pee all over me, and right into my mouth! My initial reaction was disgust, but my second one was gee, that isn't actually that bad... Back in the barn I found that when I sat in the seat, it crushed the tube running back to the gear. I eventually switched to a 2 liter bag which is much easier because I don't have to put the gear down and can pee in crowded thermals without getting it on my competitors.

Boggs

Where do you put the 2-litre bag--behind your seat?

Curious for myself.
Ian IN

most of the guys who use the bag, lay it beside there leg or strap it to there calf.

YO,

I'd seen your Mark VIII video before. I'm waiting for the Mark IX you promised: a tube feeding a holding tank at the glider's CG. A level-sensing switch empties it at the appropriate time by closing a valve on the input side, pressurizing the tank using compressed air from a companion tank (charged on the ground or, in version IXa, by a small onboard 12v air compressor), and opening a valve to the discharge tube leading all the way back thru the fuselage to a tube that extends (a la Mark VIII) horizontally until it's aft of the rudder. Then, with an abundance of caution, it flushes the entire system each time with 50 cc of water from a connector to the water ballast system. I heard you had to make some adjustments after the air compressor accidentally pressurized your left water ballast tank and partially separated the wing skin from the spar. How could you have known that would happen? I agree a $2.99 check valve should fix that in the future. Teething problems like this are part of every great technological advance

Sign me up when it's ready. What good is technology if we don't use it? Besides, I'm tired of pilots complaining every time they see my wheel come down in a thermal.

Chip Bearden
JB