nomadpete

I find it amusing that one person making a lot of noise about the situation and inviting others to do he same IS NOT EVEN A MEMBER of RA-Aus!!!

John McK,

I applaud your 'pet project' and hope it progresses soon. Sorry if I have made any silly statements. I don't think Maj was serious about the 'class action'. I wished to raise the importance of providing a useful learning that should be shared after a incident. My post purely intended to improve our flying safety through allowing us to understand the sequence of a pilot's decisions have led to an incident (combined with the causal events).

John, with respect I wish to differ on the importance of the subject of "pilot error" in aircraft accidents and incidents. In EVERY incident there is a safety case worthy of bringing to the attention of ALL pilots. As you mention, and I have no reason to disagree on this, a majority of accidents are not related to a aircraft frailty that needs to be advised to us. The present process works for that eventuality. We do need constant reminding of the human factors and decision making issues though. It should not be necessary to "read between the lines" as you put it.

I agree wholeheartedly with the sentiments here but if you are really serious about this you need to do some reading. Start with the ATSB website and then move on to the Transport Safety Investigation Act (as I did today ). Also have a read of section 4.08 of the RAAus Ops Manual which outlines our obligations for reporting and what RAAus says it will do in relation to accident reports.I'm sorry to put a damper on things, but remember we are talking about the Australian TRANSPORT Safety Board. It concerns itself with aviation, rail and marine because these are methods of mass transport and have the potential to kill a lot of people at once. It doesn't investigate car accidents. They don't investigate everything in aviation either, they don't have the funds....only those accidents which have the most potential for helping keep the maximum amount of people safe. For example they don't generally investigate aerobatic accidents, because they usually involve one person engaging in risky behaviour. UNLESS it happens at an airshow...where a lot of people could have been impacted.

 

Let's be honest, Recreational Aviation rules have been specifically designed to minimise risk to the general public. Our planes are light, reasonably slow, we can't fly in CTA or IMC (so we can't hit big jets), or do aerobatics or fly at night. In short, we can't hurt too many people if we crash. By its very nature RAAus is not on the ATSB investigation radar....until we hit a ferris wheel at a carnival or something.

 

If it is true that the ATSB offered to do investigations for RAAus, and the offer was rejected, then a very valuable opportunity was lost to us. I don't think any sort of legal action is going to help because I don't think any law has been broken. And I would be careful about trying to extend the principal of "Duty of Care" any further. I think we all have far too much duty of care as it is.

 

By the way....there shouldn't be any legal ramifications in doing investigations. The Act specifically prevents investigation reports from being used as evidence in any legal action. Also, as Scotty said, Coroners reports are usually a matter of public record. Here's some findings from the NSW Coroners Court. Google for them in your state.

 

I'm not saying do nothing...just that we need a different tack than legal action. By all means move a motion at the upcoming meeting, or the Natfly meeting, that RAAus explore methods of investigating accidents and making the information available to the membership. They used to do it (there are reports from about 10 years ago), why can't they do it now? I don't know how much it would cost to get an investigation done. If it averaged $10K per investigation ($1 per member) then I think that would be money well spent.

I would hope that it would be possible for RAAus to do something a little more helpful than the present vague notes in the Magazine. The Air Safety Digest used to present a "no blame" overview of incidents without taking on the whole liability problem of making judgements. We just want the basic story of the critical events and decisions that may have led up to a incident. Surely that is possible? With the present RAAus system they don't even reproduce the information that I have sent in to them in my report of an incident.

Worked better back when i was regulating myself

By support I mean you and I. Hell we could easily get hundreds if not thousands behind this, and I'm sure the national press would come on board. They (ABC) had no problem covering on national radio our lack of rego drama a few weeks back..We have a right to at least the basic details............................................................................Maj...

I echo your concern. There is nothing to be gained by reporting an incident to RAAus unless they can help us learn from it. The present process in totally useless.

Some time ago, I wrote to the Tech Manager and asked if it would be possible for RAAus to recommend a lab that could do fuel analysis. I received no answer.

My reasoning was spurred by the failure of me fuel tanks. However, I also mentioned the need to find out why engine failures were occurring without any obvious mechanical cause. My particular worry was about finding out if my mogas was contaminated by ethanol, but simply knowing that there was nothing wrong with a sample of fuel would greatly assist establishing cause. If the fuel was OK, then that only leaves ice.

This is just one more proavtive way that RAAus could assist safety.

I've been talking to a couple of pilot's wives about the suspected clumsiness of the RAAus exec/board processes and their reluctance to communicate with the members.

Now I can reveal the solution:

Get all the pilot's and owner's wives together and send them down to Canberra. I'm pretty sure they will sort everything out - they are all heartily sick and tired of hearing us bleating on about this or that outrageous "oversight". Once in Canberra they will do whatever is necessary to restore harmony in our homes.

And as for communication, well who could be better qualified to get the right goss and spread it to us?

After I retired, my wife insisted that I accompany her on her trips to Target.

Unfortunately, like most men, I found shopping boring and preferred to get in and get out. Equally unfortunate, my wife is like most women - she loves to browse.

Yesterday my dear wife received the following letter from the local Target:

Dear Mrs. Harris,

Over the past six months, your husband has caused quite a commotion in our store. We cannot tolerate this behavior and have been forced to ban both of you from the store.

Our complaints against your husband, Mr. Harris, are listed below and are documented by our video surveillance cameras:

1. June 15: He took 24 boxes of condoms and randomly put them in other people's carts when they weren't looking.

2. July 2: Set all the alarm clocks in House wares to go off at 5-minute intervals.

3. July 7: He made a trail of tomato juice on the floor leading to the women's restroom.

4. July 19: Walked up to an employee and told her in an official voice, 'Code 3 in Housewares. Get on it right away'. This caused the employee to leave her assigned station and receive a reprimand from her Supervisor that in turn resulted with a union grievance, causing management to lose time and costing the company money. We don't have a Code 3.

5. August 4: Went to the Service Desk and tried to put a bag of M&Ms on layby.

6. August 14: Moved a 'CAUTION - WET FLOOR' sign to a carpeted area.

7. August 15: Set up a tent in the camping department and told the children shoppers he'd invite them in if they would bring pillows and blankets from the bedding department to which twenty children obliged.

8. August 23: When a clerk asked if they could help him he began crying and screamed, 'Why can't you people just leave me alone?' EMTs were called.

9. September 4: Looked right into the security camera and used it as a mirror while he picked his nose.

10. September 10: While handling guns in the hunting department, he asked the clerk where the antidepressants were.

11. October 3: Darted around the store suspiciously while loudly humming the 'Mission Impossible'

theme.

12. October 6: In the auto department, he practiced his 'Madonna look' using different sizes of funnels.

13. October 18: Hid in a clothing rack and when people browsed through, yelled 'PICK ME! PICK ME!'

14. October 22: When an announcement came over the loud speaker, he assumed a fetal position and screamed 'OH NO! IT'S THOSE VOICES AGAIN!'

15. Took a box of condoms to the checkout clerk and asked where is the fitting room?

And last, but not least:

16. October 23: Went into a fitting room, shut the door, waited awhile, and then yelled very loudly, 'Hey! There's no toilet paper in here.' One of the clerks passed out.

Count through the posts - the vast majority are critical. Credit and praise are given, but are vastly outnumbered by criticism.dodo

 

PS This is fairly standard - people are more passionate in their comments in internet posts.

The same President and Secretary from the first audit to the last one...irrespective of who caused the underlying problem, the same individuals kept ignoring it and not fixing it, and ignoring CASA on our behalf, not to their own detriment but to the detriment of the members...real backyarders...time to elect professional representatives in to help protect our interests, and I do think the sooner the better!

Do you lisp Phil.? Nev (President of the Stop Rubbishing Dumb Blondes Movement)

Wait a minute - this is definately off topic. These aren't jokes - they're axioms!

Hey, AWAL's been stealing all our ideas !

For everyones info the secretary has arranged for audio (PA System) at the meeting including recording I believe. Best that members confirm that for themselves on the day but that is my understanding.

Andy,

There is absolutely no point in asking all those "WHY" questions (except that it would be satisfying to know why) UNLESS there is a little flow chart attached to each question. That is so that a positive outcome can be made to result from information revealed by the answer. So if an answer was "we didn't know at the time" What are your options to rectify that? It might be a motion to change a process or it might be another question.

That is the kind of strategy that must be down on paper prior to the GM. If we leave it to be done on the fly, the meeting will ramble on without acheiving any of the positive outcomes we desire.

Remember that the meeting cannot go on forever, we need to keep to a strict set of agendas in order to fit as much as we can into the available time.

Nine days to go and there is no Agenda (other than the hidden Agendas), no formal list of concerns for people to get their minds around and vote on, no target list of outcomes, no strategy, no plans on who will raise what, no anticipation and reaction plan for a repeat of the AGM etc.Better get a move on if you want to achieve something; there will be other times for the grand plans and policies.

 

There's going to be a lot of disappointed people if after spending a heap of travel and accommodation money everyone just stands around hoping someone else will say something or be able to cope with the answers, raise necessary points of order etc.

But, Ian, all that you describe above still means that the success you and Lee had here, was a work - around for a defective communication process that RAAus had even back then. As you say, it went downhill after that. Probably because the noncommunicative culture was already started and was/is progressed by less open people over a period of time (the monkey metaphor comes to mind). At present, RAAus already has its own web site capable of doing what you suggest. If only we could get somebody to arrange for the web site to be dragged into the 21st century, and updated. It is woefully poorly maintained. Just look at the dead links and out of date stuff on it. It still tells us that Don is the treasurer, for heaven's sake!

Communication and transparency, directly from RAAus please!

This is not intended to denegrate your site, Ian. It should still have its own part to play no matter what.

The structure is only the mechanism. The key is the people, their ability to comply with the law regardless of the structure and their ability to do a proper job of management and governance.Changing the structure will not fix the issues if the people at the top are delinquent or incompetent.

 

Fixing some of the structural issues may assist a proper resolution but is not the key in itself. We appear to have a people problem in the first order.

This brings us plebs back to the original problem - to put it crudely, how do we know which individuals need to be moved on, which are already great assets to be kept, and which are a problem now but can be guided to become great assets.

Pete, the concept of using clubs as a main conduit for feedback to the board has great merit because the clubs already represent groups of concerned members. They already represent regional interests. I like that idea.

Sorry guys the spiders sound good to me I am not into that much pain Cheers Sue

UNDERSTANDING WOMEN

(A MAN'S PERSPECTIVE)

I know I'm not going to understand women.

I'll never understand how you can take boiling hot wax,

pour it around your genitals, rip the hair out by the root,

and still be afraid of a spider.

A man walks into a pharmacy and wanders up & down the aisles..

The sales girl notices him and asks him if she can help him.

He answers that he is looking for a box of tampons for his wife.

She directs him down the correct aisle.

A few minutes later, he deposits a huge bag of cotton balls and a ball of string on the counter.

She says, confused, 'Sir, I thought you were looking for some tampons for your wife?

He answers, 'You see, it's like this, yesterday, I sent my wife to the store to get me a carton of cigarettes, and she came back with a tin of tobacco and some rolling papers; cause it's sooo-ooo--oo-ooo much cheaper.

So, I figure if I have to roll my own .. so does she...

WOMEN'S REVENGE

'Cash, check or charge?' I asked, after folding items the woman wished to

purchase.

As she fumbled for her wallet, I noticed a remote control for a television set in her purse.

'So, do you always carry your TV remote?' I asked.

'No,' she replied, 'but my husband refused to come shopping with me,

and I figured this was the most evil thing I could do to him legally.'

Thanks damkia, what I was trying to do was to provide a better facility in response to this thread:http://www.recreationalflying.com/threads/victorian-members-and-others-interested.54505/

An email list to a board member is very cumbersome however it does provide privacy. The Governing Bodies forum is locked whereas for a person to view actual posts they have to register on the site and therefore abide by the sites rules in terms of privacy, respect for other user's opinions and the greatest benefit is a very strong framework that can protect users from legal ramifications of what they may wish to say in their posts.

 

The negative aspects of email is it doesn't provide for open discussion by groups of people very well at all. Email also compounds the work load needed in information dissemination between groups of people. The benefit of email is the Board Member can control, to a certain extent, who he/she disseminates that information to.

 

What I was trying to achieve is the benefits of email without the negatives and add the extra benefits of discussion, ease of use and ability to review historic data when new members are included down the track. With the closed Social Group system, the Board Member is the moderator of the group with full moderator privileges to manage the group within the safety framework of the site all much better then email, which can end up being forwarded on anywhere and everywhere

Freedom of speech means that you must allow lots of biassed views to be aired and the reader must be remember to fit his/her sh*t filters prior to taking any views as being truth. And sometime wear a suit of armour.

So, I'd say, thanks Ian for all your efforts that allow freedom of speech to our community. I too, was worried when the site went down, and relieved that it was 'only' an IT problem. Incidentally you were not the only aviation websit down at that time.

Furthermore, a forum is a platform for debate, not a platform to broadcast a news bulletin

Again I thank you, Ian, for providing this resource. It is unfortunate that so many of the committee members find the success of your forums to be a threat. That in itself caused many of us users to become suspicious - usually when free speech and honest communication is gagged, it often is because someone somewhere is afraid that their naughty behaviour will be seen.

My suggested motion was because individual board members are presently either unwilling or unable (I suspect there is no provision for them to use it) to use the RAAus website to provide timely comprehensive information to members. Also, the website is too public for some information. At times there would be information that is useful to members who are aware of the context, but damaging if taken out of context by an outsider. An email list (with the provision for a member to opt in or out at any time) is a way to broadcast information to a target audience of interested parties.

If the mechanism is already there, we should insist that it be used as a step toward transparency.