River

G'day team, Noted 'somewhere' on the forum a photo or two of the Holden airship down south... Here's a few pics captured off one of my video cameras as the ship flew over the inner western suburbs of Brisbane last month. Noted too the ship got 'pinged' for a minor airspace seperation infringement while they were up here too, oops... Quite an impressive sight close up, especially at night! They promotional work over Brisbane, the Sunshine Coast and of-course the Indy motor race at Surfers... plus no doubt other locations too. Cheers team...

G'day Danda, Yes it's a question I've asked many a time... and as mentioned by others, PDA units do offer this capability which allows for both storing of as many program applications, maps and the ease of updating by just removing the memory card, placing it in a card reader and via your desktop or laptop computer and completing the various tasks then replacing it back in the PDA… Usually a very easy task. One reason why stand-alone type GPS units may not use the ‘every day’ memory cards may be to do with their thinking as to data and security integrity. Some of the GPS units use officially certified airspace software are may be concerned as to the legal requirements when using their software. An example may be if you were using a brand XYZ software/GPS and was 'pinged' for flying into controlled or restricted airspace, etc relying on their software/GPS and you used that software/GPS as a defence in claiming the software/GPS indicated you were not infringing, etc, etc… Another view is that GPS manufactures appear to be somewhat conservative and await quite some time to see how the technology and usage of new technology methods are accepted into the mainstream operations. Using the Garmin 196 I find the GPS hardware part of the unit quite good but find their ease-of-functional use poor and as for working with their memory card, to put it mildly – it’s a pain. Where-as their iQue M5 PDA/GPS is a delight to use… Cheers

G'day David, you could look at the earlier posts covering part of your question in General Discussion; Page 3 - GPS/PDA reviews (29Aug2006) Page 3 - Handheld GPS Options (21Aug2006) Page 4 - Garmin PDA & GPS (12Aug2006) and Page 6 - Garmin 296 v's Lowrance 200C (31May2006) These posts may give you an idea as to costings and whats available. It really depends on what you wish a GPS unit to do for you. IE, general purpose land navigation using the units built-in basic mappping software, Specialised aviation software or what..? Not all GPS units can run specialised aviation software though. It comes down to what you need from a GPS. General purpose use and your $700will see you with a reasonable unit but for use with specialised aviation software may see your $700 fall a bit short... as you can see from the above veiwing of the earlier posts. Hope this helps you

G'day 'team', Had a look at the video with the pilot losing his engine... I reckon that it would make a great training video as it shows with quite high quality vision just how quick events of this natural can occur and when you are flying at such low levels it shows you have very little time to control the situation. Not knowing the whole story but appears the pilot was extremely lucky as he was moments earlier flying over industrial type areas which would not have been a nice choice if the engine failed then. I noted this was a reasonable road running just next to the bush area but appears he was too low to consider the road as a landing area, etc... As I said, it should be used as a training video though, I'd be inclined to show the video at a later part of a new students training as it 'may' put them off wishing to fly without detailed advice on the pros and cons of these type of incidents... What's a general opinion? Cheers,

Note this news item out of the US... "Odd Chain Of Events In MN Seaplane Incident All's Well After C180 Loses Power ANN REALTIME UPDATE 10.30.06 1600 EST: We're learning more of the circumstances behind an incident this weekend involving a Cessna 180 Skywagon seaplane in Minnesota. The Minneapolis St. Paul Star Tribune reports the aircraft lost altitude over Forest Lake Saturday... and landed hard. So hard, in fact, that two passengers onboard the plane were thrown into the water. The two women -- one 35 years old, the other, 47 -- were rescued, and taken to an area hospital. The Washington County Sheriff's Office reports they are both being treated for injuries not believed to be life-threatening. As for the Skywagon... the harsh landing caused the plane to lose its floats, but the pilot was able to recover. The 44-year-old pilot was later able to land the stricken plane safely on a nearby grass landing strip. Neither the pilot nor another passenger onboard were injured. The FAA is investigating." Thats one sure hard landing and if it wasn't such aserious incident it'd be quite anevent watching the incident from the shore line ... You can be lucky.

G'day 'Team', Adding to this airmanship discussion, some time back, I had just completed my final pre-flight checks and engine runup, etc and gave the standard radio call re entering runway 30 for departure to the north. Prior to this I had checked the circuit area and saw nothing and heard no aircraft active on the radio when the radio crackled with a foreign accented voice and with a rather strong signal strength calling that his aircraft was entering downwind for runway 30. Weather was one of those beautiful one day, perfect the next day… no wind and visibility 100% with the circuit being a right hand pattern. This airmanship incident was at a well utilised GA/RA/Helo airfield just north of Brisbane. Nothing wrong with this so far but I just had a ‘vibe’ that all was not what it sounded like and upon scanning the downwind area and that of elsewhere with-in the circuit I could not observe this aircraft. I called the aircraft asking for his location again but received no reply. I elected to stay where I was off to the side of the runway still by some 50 metres but re-positioned my aircraft to give myself a better scanning view of the circuit area. Then the aircraft called in again indicating he was turning base for 30. Damm, how could I not see this aircraft still yet and I have 100% line-of-sight vision of the area. He then again calls up that he’s on finals for 30. Hmmm, I thought, I’ve missed seeing him on the downwind, base and now finals??? I was becoming genuinely sus of these radio calls… Again I scanned the circuit area and of-course the 30’s finals but no aircraft? I awaited some 2 minutes but still nothing so another radio call requesting his position and, of-course, no reply, bummer. After another minute or so I decided that as there is another airfield just a few miles so-to-speak further up the coast and that as they have a runway of the same 30 direction the earlier radio calls may have been indicating for that airfield. The difficulty I had with this thinking was though that the aircrafts radio signal strength was very strong and ‘sounded’ like it was quite close by. I conducted a very though visual scan once again of the circuit and finals area and called that I was entering 30 for departures to the north, awaited, no replies and scanning the skies proceeded to move towards the take-off position on 30. As I was turning the aircraft from the taxiway towards the runway I then observed an aircraft flying very very low over the trees obviously heading for the 30 threshold. I mean he was only some 20 or 30 feet above the tree line! I stopped where I was, still just short of actually entering the runway as this aircraft flashed by to land directly in front of me - and then liftoff again… turning west immediately after becoming airborne never to be seen again. (There’s never a surface-to-air missile lying about when you need one!) The analysis of this unintelligent airmanship performance by this aircraft was made worst as it was a well know GA training aircraft from a major GA aerodrome not that far south west of my airfield and that it appeared there was an instructor in the right seat too. Further, this aircraft must have flown an off-set south western straight-in approach completely against all the local airfield rules and that of the ERSA info too from quite a distance away and at a height of no higher than most likely 100, max of 200 feet. I came away from this occurrence with the distinct impression he was going to land no matter what or who was on or using the runway and his radio calls were totally false and misleading as was his airmanship.

G'day Paul, I believe I heard the entire radio side of that incident (10th Oct) and was somewhat taken back and amazed by the Pilot's apparent lack of planning, airmanship especially flying with-in a number of major control zones and navigation skills... To say I was disappointed with this recreational aviator and to lasting image he made 'against' recreational aviators with-in your professional community would be an understatement. Yes, of-course others both in GA and commercial make intrusion blunders too but not as unprofessional as that incident. I’d venture to say we all have made, myself included, or will make the occasional (hopefully rare) error in navigation, etc but gee, let’s try to keep those errors well away from busy controlled or restricted airspaces. Yours in recreational aviation, Cheers...

G'day Darren, what has surprised me is it appears our air traffic controllers also use this free radar as their primary use too. Quite some time back I saw the Brisbane BoM (Weather boys ) using a very high quality three-dimensional weather radar. Very very impressive with capability of moving the image around to any viewing angle in 3D and colour coded and with amazing real time detail into a storm or rain lines, etc… I was under the impression that this is what was fed to the professional operators of the likes of air traffic control and other specialises agencies but appears this radar ‘went west’… With the current weather radars giving real time updates only every 10 minutes, when there is a serve fast moving storm especially near major airfields that 10 minute time delay can cause quite a serious weather miss-reading as has happened at Coolangatta airfield (Gold Coast) last year, I think… and no doubt elsewhere too. As for free ongoing service – totally agree, with the taxes we all pay the weather radar is and should remain to be a free essential service… Cheers,

Noticed early Saturday that the new higher resolution weather radar sited at Mt Stapylton just south of Brisbane and that only became operational a few weeks back had "fell over" Was still down Sunday too so they are back to using the old radar unit sited west of Brisbane at Marburg. Here's a low quality image of what they were showing for Saturday/Sunday... Looks like the inside of a 'cyclone'...

Ok 'team', looks like this area is quite a goer... and yep, me too re motorcycles. I've lost count but just about everything from a bicycle fitted with my dads old lawn mower engine... solo's and sidecars, two and four stroke egnines, road, track, trials, enduro,motocross and stunt events over the past 45 years... They have been a great experience but recreational aviation is err, hmmm, more enjoyable and yet relaxing in a individuality type of way(gee, that's a big word ). Cheers,

You could check up on any of the V8 supercar teams as to where they obtain their supplies as I'm sure they would be using the 'real stuff'. Most of the 'duct tape/racer tape' you see in most auto/general purpose supermarts, etc isquite poor quality. Cheers, Rodger

G'day Paul, thanks for the inquiry. Looking at the image data, the time was 09h20m04s on September 10th 2006. The shot was taken from Taringa looking just east of theTV towers as I was walking to the bus stop. I was also surprised at the group on young teenagers who were all looking at the development of this brief weather cell and their 'animination' was to its apparent powerful look... Usually youth and the likes of take no notice of these weather type events but this time they were all making comment as to what 'close adventure of the third kind' they were looking at... Cheers Rodger

G'day team, Noticed what appeared to be quite a strong wind line in this local storm front moving over the local northern lane from Archerfield north via the eastern side of the TV towers in Brisbane a few days ago. It formed in only a minute or so and stayed in the lane for another 5 minutes. Whilst the camera shot was not the best (a very small fixed focus digital camera) the usual wind formation appeared quite low in and I thought that if an aircraft had flown north in the lane and under this front they could have been in some damage. I wondered if the Brisbane weather radar had pick this part of the storm front up? Rodger

Its been a tragic week with Australian Icons... I'm sure theguys who designed this banner vale would not mind if I show it here on ourrecreational aviation site -it comes from the online BoostCruising car enthusiast site...

but also Steve Erwin - He was “Australiaâ€Â… A fairdinkum bloke who loved Australia and nature, you’ll be missed mate. I had the pleasure of meeting him before he was a media personality back before he was even on TV. A young snowy haired youth who showed both myself and a group of visiting French Canadian soldiers his dad’s reptile park at Beerwah. I was tasked to give these visiting servicemen a tour of our south-east coastal attractions, etc and Erwin’s reptile park was only really a modified small roadside farm with a number of small snake holding pens. The soldiers who apparently, if my memory is correct, did not have snakes where-ever they came from went to pick up one of the Death adders in one of the pens and I was only just able to stop the guy before he actually put his hand on the snake. It was real easy to lean over the pens small walls back then. Then, out of the blue – this young youthful bloke runs up and hops straight into the pen which was full of Death adders and procedures to give the soldiers a rundown on ‘how friendly’ these snakes really are!!! Dam, I had a hard time trying to stop these soldiers wishing to pick up snakes until I managed to get this young bloke aside and explain to him that these soldiers don’t know what serious dangers highly venomous can do. With that, this young snowy haired bloke came back with a collection of snakes in his hands and gave the soldiers a brilliant briefing on the how, when who and why, etc of snakes… It was Steve Erwin. I remember noting at the time this older man who was always ‘hovering’ around in the background and believe it was most likely Steve’s dad just keeping an eye on things. A real Australian... Sincerely, Rodger

As an update to the cancelation this is from the committe organising the Great Fly-In.... "Hi Everyone, It is with great regret and sadness that the Great Eastern Fly-In Committee, a sub committee of the Evans Head Memorial Aerodrome Committtee, has decided to cancel this year's Great Eastern. We have reached an untenable situation with the Council over a number of issues, as follows: 1. The fees and charges as passed in the council Plan of Management, June 2006, proposed that each aircraft be charged $100 to land and be there, $310 for warbirds and $200 for commercial aircraft. As well the organisers would have to pay $400 per day for the hire of the Aerodrome, that is for us $1600. 2. The camping would be only in the sandy wasteland east of the amenities block, no underwing or in the shady bush areas allowed and the ranger would enforce this. Fees for this would be $30 for first person and $10 for extra people. 3. All fees would have to be collected by us. 4. All infrastructure to be paid for by us - eg garbage bins and collection, amenities cleaning etc 5. All infrastructure for the camping - porta loos we would have to pay for - about $900. We have till now paid for this with the camping fees. Council has based all this on the PoM for the Aerodrome and the PoM for the LGA. As yet, we believe that the PoM for the Aerodrome is not final. We attended a meeting on the 14th August at which we presented our views about all this and were met with the response that bascially all decisions were being driven by the two PoMs and that was the bottom line. They requested us to put in a response but we decided that as we had already put in a number of responses to these issues already as submissions to both Plans over the last 12 months, they knew our position, that it was not in our best interests to continue along this course as it would not be finalised for another month, leaving all in limbo. We thought we would receive support from the Tourism rep on Council but were bitterly dissapointed with the outcome. I would like to take this opportunity to personally thank all of you for all your support for the Great Eastern and as well from the Committee members and EMAC members. We, I have had a really great time over the last two years, lots of hard work, fun, tears and excitement and best of all, all of you arriving for a great four days. It has been an extraordinary experience, one I hope will happen again in the future. What next? If you want to respond to this, let the Council and us know what you think. I'll keep you posted and as always, Happy and joyous flying and I'm really looking forward to seeing you at other aviation events. Kind Regards Gai PS Send any mail to me at [email protected]" I believe a earnest and firm response should be forth coming of all the aviation peak bodies who have members who use the airfield in both lobbying the council, the state and federal members who cover that area and the minister representing aviation. We, alone as individual aviators can not do a great deal if we do not live with-in the council’s area other than show moral support. If though any of us do use the airfield, then strong concern should be voiced but as I said earlier, this appears to be a far wider concern to General Aviation and Recreational Aviation as noted in the current issue of the monthly Australian Flying aviation magazine. Yours in recreational aviation, Rodger

Noted this news just released re The Great Eastern Fly-In at Evans Head, northern NSW... "The Northern Rivers Echo Newspaper (Online version) Issue 35, Volume 12, Thursday, 31 August 2006 Council cops flak for Fly In cancellation Happier times: Great Eastern Fly In co-ordinator Gai Taylor after enjoying a flight in Ed Field’s World War II era Mustang at last year’s event. The Great Eastern Fly In has been cancelled. Organisers of the Evans Head Great Eastern Fly In say they have been forced to cancel this year’s event because Richmond Valley Council is making it too hard by imposing fees and charges and forcing pilots to camp on “a wastelandâ€Â. Co-ordinator Gai Taylor said the New Year’s event attracted 150 planes last year and an estimated 4000 people. She said she was “deeply disappointed†it had been called off. “We’re all volunteers and we don’t make any money. We’re not playing grand-standing games,†she said. “It’s just too bloody hard to keep bashing our heads against a brick wall.†She said Council’s rationale behind charging $100 per plane in landing fees and $310 for vintage planes was that the fees and charges were in the Council’s plan of management. However, that was also the case last year, and no fees were imposed. “No-one will come,†she said. “No one will pay $100 for the day, let alone $310 for the warbirds. It already costs those people a bomb to bring those planes. Some of them go through 300 litres of fuel an hour. Nobody who does joy flights in a warbird makes money. They just cover their costs.†To add to her frustration Council expected the Great Eastern Fly In to collect all the money on their behalf in addition to paying $400 per day to hire the aerodrome. She said no other Fly In event in Australia was charged by their local councils in this way, and in fact they usually provided free services like garbage removal. The poor condition of the camping area was an equal reason for pulling the plug on the event, she said. In previous years pilots had either camped under the wings of their planes for security reasons or very close by under small bushy trees. This year she said Council expected them to camp on a cleared patch of land near the industrial estate, 100m away from the planes and with no shade. They would also have to pay $30 per night. “Pilots would take one look at it and get into their planes and go,†she said. “There’s no way I would camp there. There’s bits of pipes and broken brick and if there’s any wind there will be sand blowing about.†Richmond Valley Council general manager Brian Wilkinson said he was “very disappointed†the Great Eastern Fly In had made its decision without discussing it with Council. He said Council wanted to take a co-operative approach and work with the event. After being told of the fees and charges, Council had invited organisers to put in a submission on the matter. This was to be included in a report to Council at its September meeting. He said one possible way forward was for Council to cover the fees and charges in the hope that in time the event could pay for them itself. Gai said with no consistent Council policy or support for the Fly In there was just too much uncertainty so close to the event." Aviation, be it recreational, general aviation or sport IS UNDER SERIOUS THREAT.. of being pushed over the edge into the dark ages. . ! :black_eye:

This was on the AAP onlinenews wire... The one of the brisbane TV stations also showed video of the accident site and appeared the aircraft was 'all but totally'... Engine appeared to be a 2-stroke Rotax. Pilot escapes ultralight crash August 26, 2006 06:43pm AAP A 62-year-old pilot escaped with minor injuries when his ultralight aircraft ploughed into a canefield south of Brisbane. The man had been flying solo over an ultralight training field when he crashed near Jacobs Well Road, Hecksville, between Brisbane and the Gold Coast at 8am (AEST) today. (Heck Field local area) "The man was able to extract himself from the wreckage and an ambulance crew took him to the Logan Hospital after another pilot raised the alarm" a police spokeswoman said. "The man suffered a fractured sternum," she said. It is believed the aircraft's engine seized, police said. The ultralight was destroyed in the crash.

G'day 'Team', A brief update on a comment I made in the PDA/GPS review post, I indicated the 3600 model was discontinued as per Garmin's US web site. I also noted a day or so back their web site was also indicating the M5 model also discontinued too! I contacted Garmin in the US about their web site and their indicating of the two models showing as discontinued and asked what was the situation. Their reply was "The information shown in http://www.garmin.com is mainly for US market Currently, iQue M5 is still available in Australia market" As they may no reference to the 3600 model one can only assume (and that’s always a bad assumption using the word assume ) the 3600 may be discontinued. I also received information that the E-TEN G500+ will be at least one, possibly two months before it’ll be on the Australian market. Cheers Team,

G’day “Team’, As I have had to conduct a review of PDA’s (Personal Digital Assistants) with either mobile phone and or GPS for clients, I thought I’d share part of the information I researched with you as I see a number of aviators have asked about these units as to their pros and cons. One of the requirements was the GPS part had to be built-in to the PDA. I highlight this as there are a number of PDA's available with GPS operation but they use a seperate GPS receiver usually connected via a bluetooth or other type device. After searching for all units that met the above spec’s I came up with a short list of five (5) PDA’s. * Garmin’s iQue 3600, M4 and M5. * Mitec’s MiO A701 and * E-Ten’s G500+. (See photos of each shown) Both the A701 and the G500+ have mobile phone, GPS and PDA functions but are presently quite difficult to obtain yet here in Australia. The A701 appears to have no Australian distributor and the G500+ has only just been released this month. They can though, be sourced via the internet online sales overseas. The Garmin models are all currently available here in Australia. The main differences between Gamin’s three models are; The 3600 runs on the Palm Operating System where-as the M4 and M5 run on Windows 2003 Second Edition Mobile Operation System. The 3600 is powered by an ARM 200 MHz processor and has 32 megabytes (MB) of memory. The M4 has an Intel 312 Mhz PXA 271 processor and the GPS receiver chipset is a SiRF III version and has 64 MB. The M5, it’s powered by a newer 416 MHz Intel® PXA 272 Xscale® processor, plus a dedicated 48 MHz ARM7 GPS receiver/coprocessor along with 64 MB but with 15 MB of that memory in dedicated safe storage. All three are able to store 50 routes and waypoints and come with the Pacific autoroute mapbase built-in. The M4 and M5 have 3.5 inch (8.9 CM) diagonal screen sizes 320 x 240 pixel resolution. The 3600 has a 3.2 x 2.1 inch (8.13 x 5.35 CM) with 480 x 320 pixel screen resolution. The M4 and M5 have superior screen resolutions at 65,000 colours where-as the 3,600 has 16 colours. Screen orientation is either vertical or horizontal for the M4 and M5 and vertical only for the 3600. Other varations between the two models are 3D map viewing with the M4 but not with the M5 model. All use a LCD variation of screen type. The M4 and M5 have a flip-up (folding) GPS antenna and the 3600 fixed. The number of tracking pointing per unit are 10,000 each for the M4 and M5 and 5,000 for the 3600. All have audible alarms but none are weatherproof or waterproof, best if you don’t allow the units though to get wet. MP3 (music) playing is enabled with the M4 and M5 but not with the 3600. Map storage is build-in pre-programmed with the M4. The M5 has the capability of using SD/MMC storage cards and with these cards now going to up 4 GB in capacity will give you a huge map and information storage capability. The 3600 also allows for SD/MMC cards too. Strange that the M4 only has a built-in storage though? Now, that big question… how much gold. A check of Australian pricing shows that you should not pay more than around the $825 for the M4 in base spec’s and $1164 for the M5 and $850 for the 3600 model. Note - Latest information (August 18th 2006) from Garmin’s web site is that that have now discontinued the 3600 model. Of the other two units, the Mitec MiO A701 PDA/Mobile/GPS which was released in August 2005 appears to be a good unit offering the best of just about all ‘tech worlds’ but I have been unable to source the unit here in Australia so am reluctant to write much further about this unit until I'm able to obtain reliable reviews, etc. There are a few reports going around the units audio volume is not that good when in places other than a quite room very with the volume control set to max… The price appears to be around the $800/900 AU mark. The other unit, the E-TEN G500+ has just been released (August 2006) and is yet to become available here in OZ thought it appears it’ll be around $1100/1200 locally. An earlier model, the G500 has been onsale for some time and appears the only major difference is the G500+ has a 100% increase in memory plus some other general updates and is available with-in Australia selling for around the $1100 mark. If you needed a small totally portable GPS navigator, Mobile phone using the GSM quad-band range, Bluetooth usage, digital camera, video recorder, voice recorder, use of the internet and a safety feature of sending a SMS message to a selected source of your current GPS lat/Lon and a pre-selected emergency message at the touch of a button. Plus of-course all the usual features that a PDA has to offer, damm this E-TEN G500+ unit has more bells and whistles than the Australian soccer teams official cheer squad at the world cup. There is a downside to this unit and that is it comes with no mapping software for GPS operation. You have to purchase your choice separately and installed it and ‘hope’ it works OK. Overall though, be it either of the Garmin iQue models or the ETEN G500+ if one can install via the memory card say, the MountainScope aviation moving map and terrain alert software plus the UBD street map software and just to thrown in a backup, the mapping software of Oziexplorer’s maps… geez, your going to need a co-pilot/navigator in the right seat full time! That's some back-up unit. Cheers team...

G'day Thrasher, The 196 comes with a very very basic Australian mapping setup and really is not that good other than being able to show you are yes, you are 'somewhere' in or around the location shown... on the ground wise. Voice, no not that I'm aware of and I have a 196 too. To obtain reasonable ground mapping with a 196 you need to purchase Garmin's Mapsource mapping software (around $300/400) which will give you ground mapping similar to say, the UBD street directory maps. Having said that the Mapsource detail is only detailed in and around the various major cities and towns and does not show detail such as railway lines, dams, rivers or the likes of... just roads (mostly), etc. Also the mapping detail is somewhat out-of-date too. There is though a new version on the mapping software about to be released which I hope will address many of these short comings. As for the GPS unit itself, quite a good reliable unit though a little difficult to use until you become familiar with Garmin’s way of doing things. Like most products though the manual requires you to stand back 20 feet, turn it up side down and read it backwards... If you have never used a GPS or Garmin product before, be warmed, you'll eventually get the hang of it but! Now having said all that I am just about a place (with-in the next few days) a review of a number of GPS/PDA (Personal Digital Assistant) units to further members options... Cheers

G'day Paul, Thanks for the details on the airfield, nice background chat... This brings me to reason why I like recreational aviation (RA) in that with airfields of the likes of this one makes our RA just what it is... recreational. With-in reason, anyone with property can set up a recreational aviation airfield which is what our style of aviation is all about. Enjoying both the flying of recreational aircraft without all the heavy rules and regulations of GA and being able to take-off and land often in areas where GA would have difficulties in both using the airstrips and regulations an controlling bodies. That’s no a 'shot' at our GA friends just that I enjoy the freedoms of what our recreational aviation is all about - keeping it simple, safe and enjoying flight with 'near minium’ist aircraft.. Well almost. Now, where’s my GPS, moving map PDA and my Dynon EFIS screen… Cheers,

Oh, and whilst on the subject of airline security... :devil: By now everyone has seen those large CTX baggage scanning machines. At about $4 million each, they're very good at finding explosives in luggage. Unfortunately, they're also very good at finding other things too - the false positive rate is very high. Turns out that peanut butter looks a whole lot like plastic explosives (C-4, Semtec, etc)... I wont go into the details other than to say, watch your packed lunch if you have peanut butter sandwiches... Cya,

G'day 'team', Noticed this item mentioned in a security organisation newsletter which begs some serious questions I believe...? "Remote-Control Airplane Software Does anyone other than me see a problem with this? "Some 30 European businesses and research institutes are working to create software that would make it possible from a distance to regain control of an aircraft from hijackers, according to the German news magazine. "The system 'which could only be controlled from the ground would conduct the aircraft posing a problem to the nearest airport whether it liked it or not,' according to extracts from next Monday's Der Spiegel released Saturday. "'A hijacker would have no chance of reaching his goal, ' it said." Unless his goal were, um, hijacking the aircraft. The project costs 36 million euros (45 million dollars), of which the European Commission is contributing 19.5 million euros, and involves aircraft maker Airbus, electronics giant Siemens and the Technical University of Munich. It seems to me that by designing remote-control software for airplanes, you open the possibility for someone to hijack the plane without even being on board. Sure, there are going to be computer-security controls protecting this thing, but we all know how well that sort of thing has worked in the past. "The system would be designed in such a way that even a computer hacker on board could not get round it." But what about computer hackers on the ground? I'm not saying this is a bad idea; it might be a good idea. But this security countermeasure opens up an entirely new vulnerability, and I hope that someone is studying that new vulnerability." And people wonder why I love flying recreational aircarft that a 'Mark 1" human has total control of... Cheers,