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It's not as simple as that. My experience is that the hardest guy to understand on the radio was Irish. Scots would probably be hard to understand too. Chinese students are usually OK, except that like most students they sometimes make errors or are unsure of their calls. (Who hasn't been a student?) That problem is magnified because their schools tend to be very active, so there are a lot of students flying in the same area. Having traveled to the USA a number of times in the last few years, I can tell you Americans often have a lot of trouble understanding Australians. Should we be prevented from flying there, if we are hard to understand? Guys over 70 seem to be the main offenders when it comes to giving their life history over the radio. And instructors like to use it to organize their social life.

The Basic Class 2 requires you to unconditionally meet the commercial license standards, which is not as straightforward as you describe. It is strict enough that CASA had to specifically exempt glasses and hearing aids, and strict enough that if you do not meet the standard for a Basic Class 2 you might still be able to get a normal Class 2. The Basic Class 2 has 2 advantages: It is cheaper and easier to get You might be able to find a doctor who will fudge the standards, and CASA will look the other way because all the responsibility falls on the doctor.

A lot of international cargo was carried on passenger jets. The reduction in traffic has caused a huge disruption to cargo services. I have heard that freight charges have increased as much as 10 times over what they used to be e.g. a shipment that used to cost $3,000 now costs $30,000.

45 cases in the Melbourne meat processing plant are reportedly because a person who was infected back in March said they had not been to work, and so no followup was done on the workplace. You can see why an app to automatically record contacts would be useful.

You are misunderstanding the design of the app and the reverse engineering. There is no way they can collect your details at the time someone tests positive, because the app does not collect any details from your contacts other than the identification code. It is important that person running the app has no way to link the codes their app has collected to any individual, so it cannot collect e.g. a phone number. The contact tracers need to be able to tie the identification code to contact information, so you need to register the details up front. There is no other way to get it from the contact information collected. This has always been the way it is designed to work and publicly described. What you are suggesting would involve less privacy, because your contacts would have to record your details on their phone and could theoretically access the information themselves. The list of contacts (list of codes) is not sent until you test positive, so they can't do any large scale contact monitoring.

Only the identification codes of your bluetooth contacts are sent to them, if you test positive. They need the phone number to translate those codes into a number they can call. The government already knows your phone number, but obviously the app doesn't extract it from your phone. That is a good thing. The government can also track your location via your phone. That is not new. People have reverse engineered at least the Android version of the app, and it is what they said it is. Reverse engineering and monitoring the actions of the app are better than source code anyway. If you don't trust the government, why would you trust that provided source code was an accurate reflection of what was running anyway? There is a ridiculous level of paranoia going on with this app. What are we doing that is so important the government doesn't find out?

The best way to protect front line people is to avoid getting infected. Preventing medical staff from being infected is possible (China eventually succeeded, most other countries have not) but seems to require biological warfare levels of PPE which we don't have enough of. The ongoing impact of this virus in countries with large outbreaks is going to be PTSD in the medical staff. They are going to work every day and seeing patient after patient die. They see their colleagues get infected and die. Every day they wonder whether it is going to happen to them. Yesterday there was a report of the suicide of an ER doctor in New York. Protecting front line people requires preventing infections.

They haven't banned flying, they have banned leaving the premises where you reside (in Victoria). If you can fly without leaving the premises (hover a helicopter in your backyard perhaps?) go for it. More seriously, if pilots go flying you can guarantee that some will gather in groups at the airport for a chat - particularly as pilots seem to be one of the groups most likely to downplay the impact of the virus. The same thing applies to golfers, and most other activities where people say they can do it while distancing - you can be sure people will end up gathering in groups. Hopefully these restrictions will only be in place for another 3-4 weeks before they are relaxed a bit.

The government has said they expect the borders to be closed until the end of the year. I expect it will be even longer - as you say, 12-18 months. Perhaps some international travel would be allowed with a compulsory quarantine period on return, but who would want to go anyway? The disease will be causing problems around the world for at least that long. New Zealand is the one bright spot, they are attacking the virus even more than we are so we may be able to travel there if we can control it here. The outside chance is the UK. (Personal opinion only - experts probably disagree.) They perhaps have the ability to control their borders enough that with a strict enough and long enough lockdown they might be able to control it, even though their current situation is very bad. Perth-London would be the go then I think. If there is any international travel in the next 2-3 years I expect fares to be very expensive.

We can see the statistics on deaths, we hear personal accounts from ER doctors in Italy, the UK, New York, we can see bodies being buried in a mass grave on Hart Island in New York. These articles denying the death rate are approaching flat earth or fake moon landing levels of ridiculousness. We can clearly see the evidence that they are wrong.

Sweden looks to be middle of the pack in terms of number of deaths, but a few weeks behind other countries. Come back in 3-4 weeks and look at their statistics.

The worst infection and death rates are countries that initially did not take it seriously. It is still very early days. It is only a month since we started to see significant numbers of deaths outside China, and it's a slow disease - for those who die its maybe 4 or 5 weeks from infection to death. We are very lucky in Australia having been able to see what happens in other countries in time to prepare ourselves and take precautions. I am hopeful that we will find better ways to treat it over the next few months - in the meantime we need to minimize the number of infections. Poorer countries are likely to be very badly affected.

They were made by Mark Levine, chair of the New York City Council health committee: [MEDIA=twitter]1247155043171741696[/MEDIA] They generated a lot of controversy, he has walked back the suggestion of using public parks, saying it was just a contingency: [MEDIA=twitter]1247257389776109573[/MEDIA] He now says that if temporary burials are required they will be on Hart Island.

Death counts are likely to be more indicative, although they lag by at least 2-3 weeks. New York is saying they may need to temporarily bury bodies in mass graves in public parks because they cannot handle the current numbers. Even then the numbers may be under counted. In New York they say that around 200 people per day are dying at home. Normally it is around 20. These people are not included in the count because they were never diagnosed with COVID-19.

We can look at other countries to see what happens if the spread is not controlled. Cases (roughly) increase by a factor of 10 every 2 weeks. So 4000 cases could be 40,000 in 2 weeks, 400,000 in 4 weeks, 4 million in 6 weeks. And with the incubation period you can expect the number of cases to increase for another week or 2 after spread is controlled, so whatever number you have then you can multiply by 5-10 if you do a good job of control. Look at Italy, they went from only a few cases, no problem, to overwhelmed in a few weeks. The USA is going through the same thing. There will be a massive number of deaths there. They are talking about 100,000 deaths but I have no idea what they think they can do to keep the number that low. We are hopefully locking things down early enough to avoid that scenario.

30 degrees angle of bank is not a rate 1 turn, unless you are doing somewhere in excess of 200 knots. A rate 1 turn is 180 degrees per minute, not a specific angle of bank. It's easy to say that you should just follow your training, but these accidents tend to happen when things happen differently to what you did in training. Maybe a few things combine, e.g. a tailwind on base, a slower aircraft in front of you and a heavier load and further aft c.g. than you are used to. You delay turning final a few seconds to increase the separation with the aircraft in front, then you need a tighter turn because of the tailwind but you remember your instructor warning about steep turns in the circuit. Some subtle rudder pressure brings the nose around a bit quicker, some back pressure to avoid catching up with the slow guy ahead and ... oops!

Maybe CASA don't know their own rules? the holder has a valid flight review for the rating during the period ending CASR 61.745 (1A) (b) if: (i) the holder already has a valid flight review for the rating (the previous flight review) when the holder successfully completes the flight review; and (ii) the validity of the previous flight review is due to expire within 3 months after the holder successfully completes the flight review; at the end of the 24th month after the validity of the previous flight review expires. Also, from the CASA website: Flight reviews How long is my flight review valid for? ... if you complete a flight review any time in the three months before it is due, your original renewal month remains unchanged. This means your review remains valid, even if you do it early. For example, if you have a private IFR rating flight review and it is due to expire at the end of April 2018 but you undertake it in February 2018, your next private IFR rating flight review will be due at the end of April 2020.

By my reading, the instructor is required to send the notification to CASA, with 50 penalty unit/strict liability offence if they do not. I think the pilot is legal to fly as soon as the flight review is completed, if CASA don't receive the notification it's the instructor's problem. It would probably be wise for the instructor to make sure it is done.

For a GA flight review, if you complete a flight review in the 3 months before the previous flight review expires the new review is valid for 24 months after the expiry of the previous review. So to answer the original question, yes, for a GA review that expires in March if you do one now the expiry date will be 24 months from March. I don't know how or if that translates to RAA flight reviews.

There is obviously a big difference between SVFR when the cloud clearance does not meet the rules for the particular airspace, and SVFR when horizontal visibility doesn't meet VFR minimums.

Avplan do use ADSB paints, sourced from one of the internet sites I think. Their traffic seems to be much more comprehensive than OzRunways as a result. Perhaps being denied OzRunways traffic prompted them to get traffic from a much better source? Here are some screen samples from both, showing the same areas within a few minutes of each other: Avplan OzRunways Avplan also source traffic from a glider network which is nice: OzRunways: The only additional traffic Avplan would be likely to get from OzRunways is non-ADSB OzRunways users, and OzRunways traffic outside the coverage of the ground ADSB network.

In Australia, Special VFR is 1600m visibility and clear of cloud. However, it's not ATC's job to call a stop to it. Visibility is the pilot's responsibility. ATC's job is to make sure you don't run into IFR or other special VFR aircraft.

If those numbers are correct I'm not surprised they were audited for quality

Responding to several posts... 1 in 60 corrections assume you can hold a heading, so a primary reason is to correct for wind. Wind has more effect on a slower aircraft. A 10 knot crosswind will probably be insignificant for a 150 knot aircraft over 100 miles. It is much more significant for a 50 knot aircraft. How do you figure out how much you need to adjust your heading? That is where the 1 in 60 rule comes in. The idea of the 1 in 60 rule is that if you are flying e.g. 100 miles and are 5 miles off track after 40 miles, you can make a correction that will put you back on track at the 100 mile point so you fly the shortest distance - or at an earlier point if you prefer. When people track visually to something they can see, they often track in a curve if there is a crosswind because they don't apply enough wind correction. It is better to calculate a heading and fly it. Making adjustments to your heading to follow ground features makes it impossible to use the 1 in 60 rule. It relies on accurately flying a constant heading. If you use a wind correction you don't know whether it is too much or too little, so you do not know which side of the planned track you will be. It is possible if you are navigating to a linear feature (river, road etc.) crossing your track to deliberately track slightly left or right so you know which way to turn when you reach the feature. The deliberate left or right angle needs to be larger than other possible errors. When navigating visually the tolerance is 1 mile left or right of track.

It wasn’t the first option when I looked. It’s an obvious thing to do, I would be very surprised if Survey Monkey didn’t do it. Their marketing angle would be to get the most accurate answers to your survey which would require randomised order. Maybe there would be an option to disable it, I don’t know, but that would require an active choice to bias the survey.