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sain

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Everything posted by sain

  1. Okay, I've probably fired off a little strongly in this thread so I'll try and explain my point of view a little more calmly and rationally. Some of the work I do has a lot of government red tape tied up around it, and is subject to regular audits. One of the things the auditors look for is compliance with the red tape. Now normally the auditors are willing to let a few things slide, as long as its clear over subsequent audits that I'm trying to fix the issues. Their practice is though, once you fail an audit, you get scrutinised much more closely. So you wind up with a 100% check of EVERYTHING, rather than just the 10% check you used to get. When I do audits myself I follow the same process. RA-Aus has snuck by for years with fairly widespread lack of compliance with regulations from the membership. Reading a bunch of the old posts on this forum will tell you that there are many common practices which are/were at the time contrary to the regulations (flight above 5000ft (for no reason), flight below 500ft (again, for no reason), flight in clouds etc). So after RA-Aus failed the audits and registration renewals were banned, RA-Aus is subject to much greater scrutiny because of those failures and the widespread lack of compliance. When you guys go to register your aircraft and have things like the stickers with the wrong registration type, or rego numbers not quite correct the auditors are going to find it, and ask RA-Aus why they didn't enforce the regulations. And unfortunately, the statements that will get bandied around are to the effect of "look, they can't even put their registration number on the plane the right way? If they can't even do that, how can they be trusted to have met the other requirements?" The issue isn't that having the hyphen in your plane registration makes your plane safer, the issue is that not having it as per the book is likely to be a symptom of a deeper problem. Unfortunately RA-Aus has made this worse than it needed to be, by not responding to the first audits effectively enough. So now we all get to follow the book to the absolute letter for a while. Joy. And every time somebody submits a registration which has to be rejected until issues are rectified, that just forces CASA to stay on RA-Aus's back. It also inhibits RA-Aus's ability to affect any worthwhile changes to the regulations, because no request for changes will get taken seriously while we still have people who can't even follow the simplest bits of the regulations. So please guys, pay attention to what the requirements are before you send your pilot certificate renewals, your aircraft rego renewals or anything else in to RA-Aus, and please do your best to comply with them. How hard is affixing a sticker (or a vinyl hypen), really? my apologies for any harshness in my initial responses. I've been teaching people to drive an IT system for the last week, and I now have a very low tolerance for inability to follow simple instructions. Unfortunately, something along the lines of "click the Save button" is far to complex for many people. If anybody asks (AGAIN) which button on the mouse is the left mouse button I'm probably going to crack (the user had some RSI issues, and was swapping the mouse from left side to right side frequently)
  2. just to be clear, my last post was in response to methusala's..
  3. Because we can't make any progress towards saying "hey, we know what we are talking about, and gazelles should be able to sport a different prop" and having that statement taken seriously while our organisation hasn't noticed (or disciplined members for) widespread lack of compliance with basic clearly written requirements.
  4. Its almost as silly as the continual posting of Ra-aus governance crap outside of the governance forum. Moving on from that however - I have four questions: 1. Are the requirements for what goes on the sticker clearly articulated (like in section 7 of the Technical manual maybe)? 2. Are the requirements for the rego number clearly articulated (like in section 4 of the Ops manual maybe)? 3. Is compliance with the Requirements particularly onerous or burdensome? 4. Is there any reason why you haven't previously complied with these requirements, noting that they have been in place for a number of years now? Simple non-compliance stuff like this makes it really easy for CASA to fail RA-Aus come audit time. Please guys, before sending your rego in - do yourself a favour and make up a check list of what the requirements actually are, then go down them and make sure you comply. You'll save yourself the aggravation of getting failed for "pettifogging nonsense", the RA-Aus staff the effort of explaining to you that you actually need to comply with the requirements (because its apparently not clear enough). And you'll save us the aggravation of yet another post about the incompetence of the RA-Aus office (*sarcasm mode on* yes, because its their fault).
  5. speaking of conspiracy theories: I don't suppose there were any correlating factors for the people you'd been in touch with Maj? Common people they had voted for (or not voted for) in past ballots?
  6. true, but the last paragraph under technology and methods, and the valid reasons section will point you in the right direction. have fun..
  7. Wikipedia describes it fairly well, without going too far into the technical details. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caller_ID_spoofing
  8. interesting fact. I note that it is also a fact that almost all of us have taken animals of a porcine persuasion for a fly, however as per the RA-Aus regulations they are strapped in backwards.
  9. Okay, when you can generate that much overtime in that short a period of time management needs to step in and hire more people. two tech managers maybe (or a tech manager and a deputy). thats ridiculous. unless its $366.95 worth of overtime, in which case that is bugger all.
  10. love your work Major. Must be a real pleasure seeing those shiny aviator wings on her uniform. It works the other way around too. My introduction to ultralights came at the suggestion of a military aviator friend. I was saving up enough cash to get a PPL at the time and he suggested I try ultralights instead, as a cheaper option. I've loved every second of it. the light aircraft are good, but the ultralights are just fantastic.
  11. Well, in my case the site admin(s) already know who I am and have a sort-of proven ability to keep it quiet. I have been contacted by a third party group of misguided ra-aus enthusiasts looking for support (via contact details available only to ra-aus or here) last time ra-aus was all going pear shaped. That, to my mind, was an unacceptable use of my information and I was royally pissed about it. Realistically, without resorting to stupid lengths, there was little I could do to determine which of the two was responsible. If it happens again, the stupid lengths become less stupid. The issue, obviously, was disclosure of contact details to a third party without consent. The issue I have with the site admins knowing it comes down to one of the simplest concepts in information security - the need to know principle. Why do they need to know? What aspect of the site can be better managed by having my contact details available to them, that can't be handled in any other way? The answer, in my mind anyway, is none. If I'm being rude, or racially offensive (inadvertently or otherwise), inappropriate, sexist (yes, I know the scantily clad women comment falls into that category), stalkerish, or otherwise making a pest out of myself then the admins can moderate me, ban me, ip address block me (if necessary) or take other steps. If I post illegal (copyright protected material, child porn, whatever) material then the admins can provide sufficient information to the police services that the police are able to identify me. As an end user I can't see why the admins would need that information. The reason why I've provided it to them in the past is about the only reason I can see for it. I wanted to send a package to another forum member, and I was not personally known to them, and nor did I know their address (and I also didn't want to take the stalker route, outlined above). As I had previously purchased stuff from clearprop (i.e provided name billing address and shipping address) I requested Ian confirm my identity for the other forum member, so they could take appropriate action against me if they thought it was necessary (i.e if I started stalking them etc). anyway, enough of my paranoid ramblings.... “Paranoia is just the bastard child of fear and good sense." (Charlie) "Poor thing. Let's adopt it, give it a last name and raise it right." (Jace) "You want to get it a puppy, too?" "Sure. We'll call it Panic. It and little Paranoia can play together at the park and scare the hell out of all the other kids.” ― D.D. Barant, Back from the Undead “Paranoia is just having the right information.” ― William S. Burroughs source for both: http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/tag/paranoia
  12. Its because anybody, anywhere can read the phone numbers posted here and use them for whatever they want. Nuisance calls, marketing calls, political calls. There is also the nastier side of the house, where somebody wants to make a threatening phone call. They grab a legitimate, know good call and spoof the caller id with that number. If I wanted to cause mischief for you frank, and I had your number a faked phone call from you to the RA-Aus general manager could cause you some grief. Yes, in theory they could get those details from the phone book, but how many f marriotts are there in townsville? And then there is profile building. If somebody, say for example NSA, wanted to build a profile on you then things like your phone number posted here would be matched to your address (white pages search), would be matched to details from another forum. And pretty soon, you have F Marriott, of <whatever address> Townsville QLD, interested in planes, fishing, scantily clad women in leather outfits. Member of whatever groups. From your facebook page they'd get your other interests, geolocation data from your images. IT systems and Phone make and model would likely come pretty quickly, which would allow them to figure out which particular variety of exploit they need to compromise your phone and turn it into a 24/7 listening device, or to syphon off all the data from your computer. Would you want the world to know your browsing history? Where your kids (or grandkids) go to school would come fairly rapidly. If somebody wanted to apply pressure to get you to do something, would they go that way? The profile builds up pretty rapidly. I saw it done live on a person picked at random at a IT presentation. In under 5 minutes that person was uncomfortable with the amount of information found about them. In 20 minutes they were distinctly frightened. The information the presenter found on the family tree site was particularly disturbing for the individual. Not using a real name on the internet is about protecting your friends and family as well as yourself. Mutual respect for our fellow aviators, whatever their views, combined with common curtesey and judicious use of the ignore feature would probably go a really long way to achieving your goal of minimising personal/stupid/unhelpful type posts. I love the ignore feature. Mind you I have noticed that its awfully quiet in here these days. *tap* *tap* *tap* Hello? is this thing on? *Edit - disclaimer:* Just in case there are still people out there not ignoring me. The reference to scantily clad women in leather outfits was a poor attempt at a joke. I have no knowledge of Mr Marriott's like or dislike of scantily clad women in leather outfits.
  13. It'll be interesting to see if the council extends, given the seemingly unfulfilled promises made by the gentleman. Or if there was a contract of sale that was signed, if they'll be taking some of the penalty provisions. Volksy do you have any idea what's going on with landing fees and the other charges the lessee was imposing?
  14. so umm.. this might be a stupid question, but why the f**** would you need a smart card to drive a strobe? I don't generally like to question repairers, but that really sounds to me like they are talking out of their a****. Okay, I can see using a microcontroller if you've got an all singing, all dancing strobe that will flash in time to some doof-doof music your listening too as your taxing around in your fully sick, hotted up, chrome plated Jodel d9 (or some other more useful application). But even then I don't see how the smart card would help - most of them run at 1.8, 3.3 or 5V. If your going to use one to flash lights, you then need to provide it with power through a regulator and appropriate LC filter. Wouldn't you be better of just fitting a proper regulator and filter to the strobe in the first place? edit: *possible enlightenment dawns* oh - are they talking about some proprietary PCB they stick in with better regulation and filters, that they are calling a "Smart Card"?
  15. one interesting thing - in a motor vehicle accident a passenger is considered to be a third party. This should have been covered by the insurance that comes with being a RA-Aus member.
  16. Its an interesting thought, especially as there are online print shops now that do 3d printing, with better than hobby grade machines. As I understand it you design your parts using cad and send them off to be printed. When they come back, test them out and make sure they are right, then send the cad file to your cnc people (also available online if you don't want to cough up the cash for a machine) to cut the parts out. I've got a hobby grade CNC milling machine, which I'm only beginning to learn to use, and it works pretty well. I'd be inclined to mill the test pieces out of plastic or wood rather than 3d print them - unless you really need the 3D. My understanding is that 3d printing is very slow, and you are size limited a lot more than with a CNC machine, due to parts warping as one end cools before the machine gets to the other. It may be less of an issue for SLS (selective laser sintering) machines than it is for FDM (fusion deposition modelling?) machines. Where I'd see it useful is testing the assembly process. Some of the better CAD packages let you see if the pieces will all fit together, but there are not many I can think of that will test to see if you can actually assemble something without breaking it. "Can you get the required tool into the space?" testing and that sort of thing.
  17. I've had two ignition system failures in a car that wouldn't even have been noticed if there was a duel system (electronic ignition module failed due to overheating twice). I've also been flying in an aircraft when one of the two ignition systems started playing up. Was I grateful the second one was there? you bet. Will I sacrifice for the cost and extra weight of a second one if its ever an option? you bet. Do I think your nuts if you go flying without a duel system? nope. End of the day, what you spend on the engine is up to you. If you can do without the Nikasil treated cylinders, the electric start option, the generator and all the other add ons then go for it.
  18. I understand capacitive fuel gauges / senders can be very accurate for the full range of the tank (i.e full to empty), if properly calibrated. The calibration is potentially an issue if you use different types of fuel, as you will get a different reading between mogas and 100LL. You'll also get a different reading if there is etheanol present in the fuel. I've heard of one with a "tanks known full - calibrate me" option, which figures it all out for you. I havn't heard of any being fitted to a J170. I guess it would depend on if you've got a factory J170 or a kit as to whether or not you can fit one yourself. The usual experts can, no doubt, provide guidance on the rules.
  19. wouldn't you get a higher gain in heat dissapation from having a rough finish on the engine, rather than a smooth, shiny (painted black or otherwise) finish? seems to me the higher surface area would be much more effective. I don't recommend taking a belt sander to your shiny new jabiru engine though...
  20. ahh, the dangers of being sarcastic (presumably): its not quite an ipad app, but ardupilot is pretty sweet: http://www.diydrones.com/ and http://plane.ardupilot.com/ For those who havn't seen it before - autopilot controllers for RC (and larger) aircraft....
  21. go to the big businesses and government orgs OME. They have the same requirements, and may be willing to make use of your services if you can offer a competitive rate on test'n'tag.
  22. Yeah, the car is a good indicator, however it is also worth finding out if the instructor does something else to earn a crust and teaches flying for the love of it.
  23. Did you offer to take her up for a flight in a light aircraft Phil? - might be worthwhile, especially if she writes a halfway decent piece about it.
  24. The other missing bit of information is the number of renewals received.... I note from the latest information that they are now processing 50/week, so thats something.
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