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There have been multiple similar RV7 crashes. At some point past VNE the aircraft breaks up. The sequence seems to be rudder flutter, the rudder trailing edge rivets unzip and the rudder is torn in half top to bottom, the rest of the tail comes off and damage after that is due to aerodynamic loads produced when the tail is lost, e.g. a pitch down and negative G is plausible. There isn't enough information in the report to be sure (need a picture of the rudder), but the debris trail shows 2 locations for the rudder so it seems likely. Given the events leading up to the breakup it the crash was probably inevitable though... exceeding VNE in IMC doesn't have a good record for recovery.

An analytical response: Aerodynamically, you have the wing. The horizontal stabilizer keeps the wing at the desired angle to the airflow. The fuselage is just there to join them together and provides a convenient place for payload. Then engine is there to move the wing it through the air. If you do not have enough control authority to pitch the nose down at higher speed, either the horizontal stabilizer is at the wrong angle i.e. rigged incorrectly the elevator doesn't have enough travel e.g. control stops the weight and balance is out of range - but you said the W&B was OK and I would expect this to be a problem at lower speeds not higher The type of engine, RPM etc are irrelevant aerodynamically.

You can understand why GPs etc. are unwilling to rely on the indemnification until the legislation is passed. I'm not denying that, my question was whether it produces the best result?

According to GPs, the government announced they would indemnify GPs but have done nothing to put that into effect. There are GPs that will give under 60s AZ because they believe it is the best balance of risks despite the potential liability, and there are GPs that will not. But here is a public liability conundrum: You can give people a vaccine and perhaps become liable for the 1 in a million people who dies, or do nothing and (legally) bear no responsibility for the 1 in ~300 people who dies as a result. Does our system produce the best result?

That is not a definition of airworthy. Whatever happened to "I certify that ... the aircraft is controllable throughout its range of speeds" which is required for experimental aircraft (and no less for professionally built aircraft I assume). From the description it is speed dependent, what happens e.g. in a spiral dive? We would like a more analytical question.

The vaccination rollout here has been a bit of a debacle... we do not yet have enough vaccine for the people that want it. Last year, Pfizer offered the Australian government enough vaccine for the entire population with priority access to serve as a model for vaccine rollouts worldwide. The government negotiated them down to 10 million doses and no priority. Meanwhile, the government placed their faith in vaccines that could be manufactured here: Astra Zeneca and a vaccine being developed at the University of Queensland. Unfortunately the UQ development was discontinued because trials showed it caused false positives in HIV tests. Then the issue of blood clots with AZ raised its head. Never mind that the risk is miniscule compared to the risk from COVID, the government said it's not a race and recommended that people under 60 do not get the AZ vaccine but wait for Pfizer. Then Delta COVID cases started to crop up and the urgency of vaccination started to become more obvious. AZ is the vaccine we have, but the government don't want to be blamed if people get blood clots so they told people to get advice from their GPs. The GPs aren't happy because they don't want to be blamed either, and anyway their ethical obligation is more to the patient in front of them at the time rather than the population as a whole. So now we have millions of people lining up to be vaccinated with Pfizer vaccines we don't have, and a government complaining about people who don't want to be vaccinated with the vaccine the government told them they should not take.

The description of the problem? There is nothing else it could really be based on the description you have provided. If you can't stop the aircraft climbing with full forward stick, the aircraft is unairworthy and should be grounded until the problem can be fixed.

Keep watching NSW to see why we are grateful for the efforts of Dan Andrews. I have no pleasure in that observation, I genuinely fear what the next few months will look like in Australia - Sydney in particular.

It seems very early to make those sort of predictions, so my guess is that the rumour was made up.

Of all the groups I know, pilots seem to be the most likely to ignore the lockdown rules. From organizing fly ins on Facebook during lockdown, to elaborate justifications about how flying counts as maintenance because aircraft need to be flown regularly (never mind that before the pandemic they might have gone months between flights) and outright denial of the disease, pilots are at the top of the list.

It's an infectious disease, any protocols guaranteed to prevent it are impractical for normal circumstances. All we can do is take precautions that reduce the chance it spreads. If you have had a cold in the last 18 months, you have relaxed your guard enough to catch COVID if it was there. If you did have a cold, could you identify the person you caught it from and all the people you might have passed it on to? That is the challenge of contact tracing.

It appears that there has been a Russian PR firm paying people to post antivax stuff on social media: https://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-trending-57928647 https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2021/05/26/influencers-offered-money-pfizer-discredit-russia/

The lock downs might be under the authority of the CHOs, and recommended by the CHOs, but regardless of where the legal authority lies you can guarantee the decisions are made by the governments. If the CHOs were making the decisions there would be much less variation from state to state. They would follow what has been proven to work rather than reflect the politics of the leaders. The body language of Kerry Chant in one of the Sydney press conferences has been commented on widely - it was pretty clear that she did not agree with what was being announced, despite being named as the person responsible.

Vaccination levels are not high enough to make a big difference at a population level, but looking at the rising case numbers I am VERY happy I had my first AZ vaccine back in May, and will be even happier once I have the second one in 2 weeks.

Quite a lot of information out there actually. The immunized are less likely to catch it, and far less likely to end up in hospital or worse. In countries with good vaccination coverage, COVID is being described as a disease of the unvaccinated. Experts have been warning that the Delta variant is extremely dangerous for countries with low vaccination rates i.e. Australia.

All deaths and serious illnesses would be reported, regardless of whether anyone considers it linked. It is part of the monitoring they do, to see whether there is a higher rate than would be expected in the age groups. That way they know if there is something to investigate, even if no-one has made the link. The fact that deaths at a rate of 1 in a million are being detected shows how good the safety protocols are. If you pick a sample of a few million people, particularly concentrating on the elderly, some will die in the period they are being monitored. If you are into meaningless figures, did you know that there are higher rates of pregnancy in women who received the Pfizer vaccine than Astra Zeneca?

If you want blood clots, try COVID 19. Clots are a common problem. It seems to have significant effects on the circulatory system, with inflammation of blood vessels etc. Just about any part of your body with lots of blood flow can be affected. Heart damage, lung damage, brain damage, kidney failure all seem to be common. Even COVID toes and erectile disfunction. Of course death is also a common symptom. It was reported recently that cognitive impairment (i.e. brain damage) is seen in many survivors, including people who had mild or asymptomatic infections. This is a disease that you DO NOT want to catch. It seems like it will cause ongoing health problems in some people for decades. You are far more likely to lose your medical due to COVID organ damage than side effects of the vaccine.

Yes but that's my point. We get what other countries are making. If they stop making ICE vehicles, we won't get ICE vehicles - whether we like it or not. The number of companies investing in ICE cars (let alone right hand drive ICE) is going to drop very swiftly.

How many of those have been designed specifically for Australian requirements? We don't have a car industry anymore, and manufacturers are not likely to keep a ICE line going just for Australia. We need to plan for electric vehicles, otherwise our choices are going to be limited and very expensive, at best. The reality: most people don't do 400+km trips through the outback where there is nothing in between. Most people will buy an electric car because it fills their needs, and will be cheaper and more convenient once we pass the "early adopter" phase. This will make ICE vehicles rare and even more expensive.

Renewable energy is becoming cheaper very quickly. It has been reported that it is cheaper now to build new solar or wind than to operate coal power stations. EVs can potentially help solve the problem of variability, because they have big batteries and can actually return power to the grid if there is a shortfall. With the right software, you could charge your EV when solar and wind are producing a lot of power, and sell the power back for a profit when the renewable energy supplies drop. Power companies obviously don't want that to happen - they want to make the profits themselves - but it just means that some planning and regulation might be required.

Perhaps its not a good time to talk about the reliability of coal, since Victoria yesterday declared an energy emergency due to weather damage to the coal mine. Or there was the time the coal mine caught fire and burned for weeks. And renewable energy is now cheap, and the price is dropping faster than anyone predicted. No-one wants to invest in coal power stations because they know that the energy produced is too expensive to compete with renewables.

I'm not sure about that... I think there is a difference between e.g. "the pilot must ensure that no person" and "the pilot must not permit a person". But it was the section specifically allowing it for repairs and adjustments that makes me chuckle. Yes, I am imagining a meeting where they were trying to write Reg 250 and someone kept saying "but what about Kingsford Smith" until they put in 1B to shut him up.

The rules on carriage of passengers include perhaps my favorite piece of Australian aviation legislation, CAR 250: (1A) The pilot in command of an aircraft must not permit a person to be carried on: (a) the wings or undercarriage of the aircraft; or (b) any part of the aircraft that is not designed for the accommodation of the crew or passengers; or (c) anything attached to the aircraft. (1B) Subregulations (1) and (1A) do not apply to prevent a member of the crew having temporary access to: (a) any part of the aircraft for the purpose of executing repairs or adjustments to the aircraft or its equipment because you wouldn't want to make a rule that would stop people climbing on the wing or undercarriage to make repairs or adjustments in flight!

That paragraph doesn't surprise me. Have you ever bought a used car? As I recall they have similar wording, unless they explicitly offer a warranty as a selling point or it is required by law. I think there was even a standard wording saying that the dealer does not believe the odometer reading is correct. The paragraph has no effect unless you actually want to sue the seller. The seller may have a preference to sell to someone who isn't positioning to be able to sue them if an inaccuracy is found in the log books etc. My reaction is to accept the clause, be aware of what it means and factor it into the price negotiations. Buyer beware is always the underlying principle.

If your base leg is outside the CTR. According to the reports, the collision occurred as he turned final, 3 miles from the airport. I worked out earlier the margin for error with parallel runways at that distance is about 1 degree. Hard to judge visually. Someone else worked out the density altitude was 10500, so TAS would have been significantly higher than IAS. I don't know whether the 160K figure is IAS or ground speed - my guess would be ground speed from ADSB.