nomadpete

If Myles provides us with a list of his action plans and timeframes in the next couple of days, it will restore some faith in the urgency of his appointment. And may ease some of the pain caused by the unconstitutional way it was achieved.

 

 

Good point Dazza.

 

At first sight it looks like more of the same old behavior of past exec.

 

However, bear in mind that we have all been bitching about the perceived ineptitude of the board, so in this instance I am prepared to accept that maybe Ed is between a rock and a hard place when it comes to getting RAAus into safer waters. He is privy to inside information that we don't, stuff that may not be appropriate to publicise. We have to take his decisions on trust. At least until we see the longer term results. Would you put every important decision through a board that so many of us seem to have no faith in? At this time we may be better off with a benevolent dictator than a puppet. Come September I may change my mind.

 

PeterT

 

 

The way I see it, Given that action was urgent, the options were:

 

1. Engage the services of professional recruitment agency and in maybe a couple of months get someone to fill this role.

 

2. Act now and work with personnel known to have skills adaptable to the role. There is always the option to cast the net properly later.

 

I feel that the wording suggesting that RAAus is "guilty of conducting almost ZERO essential safety training" is a bit offensive to all our CFI's who (in my opinion) are already conducting essential safety training on behalf of RAAus, and being audited by RAAus. If that were not so, I would probably not be alive to write this. However, CASA need to be reassured that it is being taken seriously and action has been taken to keep us looking clean. In the company I work for, we have a person filling a similar role, and they are only a tenth the size of our membership.

 

Just my take on it,

 

Peter T

 

 

Gary, There two answers here -

 

1. I'd really like a touring MG so I can go see the outback and experience the Morning Glory.

 

2. I'd really like a single seat self launching glider to do gliding x - country with the security of not having to have a retireve crew or the inconvenience of needing a tuggie every time I have the urge to go 'feeling up' the air.

 

I'd love to see what you are cooking up though.

 

Peter T

 

 

Good one mate, good one.On a slight detour, who wrote your 'signature'? I applaud the sentiment.

My 'signature' is borrowed from a poem by Robert H Smith. For the full poem, google the first line of it.

 

 

Cam home from work and the wife was stretched out on the lounge, naked. There was soft music. There were candles. Can you believe that - Candles!

 

I looked at her and said "What is this?"

 

She purred "Its my love dress darling"

 

I said "Needs ironing, whats for dinner?"

 

And thats when the fight started........

 

 

Saturday morning I got up early, quietly dressed, made my lunch, and

 

slipped quietly into the garage. I hooked the boat up to the van and

 

proceeded to back out into a torrential

 

downpour. The wind was blowing 50mph, so I pulled back into the garage,

 

turned on the radio, and discovered that the weather would be bad all

 

day.

 

I went back into the house, quietly undressed, and slipped back into

 

bed. I cuddled up to my wife's back; now with a different anticipation,

 

and whispered, "The weather out there is terrible."

 

My loving wife replied, "And, can you believe my stupid

 

husband is out fishing in that?"

 

 

 

And that's when the fight started.......

 

 

CHINESE HOSPITALITYThe Chinese have been trying to push tourism to China to greater heights. So the government has asked all hotels, tourist guides and restaurants to provide all best possible services and proper guidance to tourists and learn English. The hotels have now adopted a professional approach to attracting and guiding tourists – of which the following welcome letter provide a few examples.

 

WELCOME LETTER

 

Getting There

 

Our representative will make you wait at the airport.

 

The hotel bus runs along the lake and you will feel pleasure in passing water.

 

You will know the hotel is near, because you will go round the bend.

 

As you come into the hotel, our beautiful manager will offer welcome drinks

 

and then have intercourse with all new guests.

 

The Hotel

 

This is a family hotel, so adultery and children are welcome.

 

Nurses are available in the evenings to put down your children.

 

Guests are invited to mate in the bar and expose themselves to others.

 

It is good to have intercourse with others and become fast friends.

 

But please note that ladies are not allowed to have their babies in the bar.

 

With our help they can be delivered in the baby center.

 

We organize social games, so no guest is ever left alone to play with himself.

 

Your Room

 

Every room has excellent facilities for your private parts.

 

In winter, every room is on heat.

 

Each room has a balcony offering views of outstanding obscenity.

 

All your needs are from room service.

 

Please feel free to ring for the chambermaid and take advantage of her.

 

Hospitality

 

When you leave us at the end of your holiday, you will struggle to forget it.

I'd have believed it if BEX had posted it.....

 

 

 

Preflight? Just a quick walk around should do...

 

Anyway, you can always check it later.....

 

 

A lifting body aircraft would be suitably easy to build, and it is reported to have benign handling characteristics. The structure is robust, which improves pilot safety. I'd like to see one in the flesh and since the only ultralight one is residing in the USA, I cannot afford the tickets just to get a look at it.

 

 

This one was at Oshkosh in 1994, I believe.

 

 

Us of a more mature age should also have this privilege.

That's Great news! I was always told (by my mother) that it was only girls who could change their minds. How can I earn this new privilege?

 

 

Had a request for a craft similar to the posts initial parameters, two seat, slow, STOL?, folding?, side by side (sort of).This is only an initial draft, but the thoughts are, Foxbat style wing and flaperon, ThuderGull Odyssey styled staggered seating, taildragger for simplicity (but convertible to nosewheel?) but the big difference to the original plan is VISIBILITY, hence a pusher configuration and to be powered by a second hand 80hp 912.

One day I would like to fly out west to Sticksville territory to visit family & friends so need a plane that can carry some stuff as well as the occasional passenger, one that has a good fuel range and a bit more speed than what I have now and one that doesn't require a ground crew every 1-2 hours in order to get from one place to another, etc. I also like to be able to appreciate the scenery along the way. Everyone's needs and wants are different. The floopy sort of reminds me of those jumping castles that young kids muck around on. For now I'll give the floopy a miss!!!

If you want to have a cheap aircraft for fun, and also want to fly yourself out west to pester your rellies, then I suggest the practical way to achieve this is to make the fun machine for most of your flying and cross hire a plastic fantastic for the occasional long distance tour. One single design can't be all things to all people.

 

 

Clifton is a great place to commit aviation. Except for the cold winter mornings. The training, the scenery and people make every visit great therapy. Congratulations on mastering the drifter.

 

 

Was fishing in the twilight one night on a creek running into the Murray, and it came sliding past at about three knots, no wings, seemed to be powered by a four cyl engine - awesome sight from three or four metres away.

What were you drinking? I'd like some......

 

 

when did he die?

If I don't like Nick, does that make me Xenophobic?

 

 

Glider Rope break - Turn back procedure:

 

Perhaps I didn't make it clear in my post describing a glider 180 turn back. The initial move is to veer downwind, then turn back into the wind, to minimise the turn radius, and allow the dropping airspeed to work with the crosswind component to drift you back to the centreline of the strip without allowing the airspeed to drop below 1.5 Vs. This makes the slight downwind turn happen when airspeed is highest. If you want to call it a teardrop turn, then the first part of it is really a downwind 'S' turn before making a 'U' turn into wind.

 

My other point remains - it is a very dangerous thing to try consider in a low mass, draggy aircraft such as our RAAus aircraft.

 

 

Sapphire I thought you were referring to the "downwind turn stall" myth, I agree when doing a teardrop turn it should ideally be into any cross-wind there may be simply to minimise the turn radius.

At least you agree with my gliding training. thanks

 

 

Thank you to our RAAus office staff. My plastic Pilot Certificate has arrived, accompanied by another paper copy of the pilot certificate. Pity that we have to collectively wear the expense of this associated rework by our office staff. They have more than enough work on their plate without having to mail things out twice. Multiply that by 8,000 members (or however many we really have) and it represents a lot of money and effort wasted. It's not the office staff to blame. I hope someone takes ownership of this wastage and puts some better processes into action.

 

 

There is lots in the reaction time advantage. As you are climbing you can concentrate on your glide angle distance, phyche yourself up with confidence and pick a safe point to kill the power. Try the same while concentrating on the radio with your eyes glued to multiple conflicting traffic. The instant fright in some pilots would put them near stall requiring hundreds of feet to get best L/D speed, if that is even known. By then the turn back to the airfield hasn't even started and the opportunity lost.

A real engine fail on takeoff is completely different from a rope break on a glider launch. With a glider, there is no grey area. Rope breaks - it is instantaneous and unambiguous. You are usually flying at 20kts or so above stall speed and can use that to execute the 180 without massive height loss. So the training kicks in instantly since there are no other decisions to delay things. However, when an engine falters it is seldom an instantaneous failure, and a first reaction (whilst the mouth is checking for the right expletives) is to scan the instruments and assess what is going on. Those seconds are all it takes for airspeed to bleed off even if you did put the nose down (draggy ultralight verses a slippery glider) and you cannot get it back without trading off a lot of height. Next reaction is to try to stretch the glide whilst turning low............ very risky. I'd rather opt for a controlled survivable crash rather than the likely stall and spin that would be next.

One other consideration is this: I had my Lightwing fan stop at about 300 feet. Now, if I had everything going for me and I managed to instantly execute a perfect 180, (in reality it would need closer to 500' height) I would have another big problem. I would be landing downwind with a set down point that left me with less than half of the strip to get on the ground and come to a stop before the fence stopped me. In the event I landed ahead and rolled to a stop just past the end of the strip. Lightwing glide ratio = 9:1, Training two seat Glider ratio = 30:1 That's three times further.

 

 

OK Andy. It looks like the wheels are starting to turn.

 

Maybe I will soon be humbly apoligising for my earlier cynicism.

 

That is, if a certain re-resignation is not re-retracted tomorrow.

 

 

The phone has been running hot this morning with the news that the RAAus President, Steve Runciman, you know the one we didn't have, has resigned again. This is confirmed by many different sources however tomorrow is another day.

Did somebody say something to upset him? There's plenty of time to retract it again, I say!

 

 

Has anybody heard any news about the Barnaby Wainfan designed Facetmobile? There surely is a lot of scope in the amateur building arena for a ultralight of this type. A pity that he appears to have shunned the opportunity to release plans for his well developed design. If a few u/l versions were built, it would raise the general awareness of this form or aircraft and give him a better chance of raising finance to get his business afloat.

 

Peter T

 

 

Engine Reliability:

 

I am interested to know if there are any statistics about aircraft engine failures - that are related in terms of MTBF for each brand/ model? It is no good just saying that 'X' number of brand 'Y' engines failed this year. We need to know in relation to hours flown, just as accident statistics should be related to hours flown, and numbers of landings, not just to the calender year.

 

As it is now, we get to hear individual cases (some folk delight in bagging out a particular brand) which cannot be extrapolated to give a realistic picture of reliability.

 

Since all failures should have been reported to RAAus, it would only take a modest data filter to provide a list of engine reported failures related to brand/model/hours in service.

 

 

OK. Sorry about the drift.

 

Does anybody else have any cynical predictions that they can support with evidence?

 

I have been watching this space as advised, and so far there has been no announcement of any of Andy's predictions coming to fuition.