Jaba-who

Bit of an odd story. I don't know how true all this is. Scuttlebutt round the local traps this morning. IFR equipped C182 and IFR capable pilot ( don't know if he was on an IFR plan or if was current) Left Charters Towers with a phone call made to a maintenance facility in Townsville about going there for an oil change ( that's the story - oil change is really not a big deal to do yourself) but also had a passenger waiting for him at Mt Garnet airstrip to be picked up and taken to Atherton. I don't know if the planned time of pickup allowed for the trip to Townsville as well or if he had double booked himself. Didn't go to Townsville but headed directly off toward Mt Garnet but at some point didn't go to Mt Garnet either and tracked further east and headed toward Atherton. Crashed about 20 km from Atherton ( way past and offtrack for Mt Garnet so must have made a plan to bypass it. ) the passenger at Mt Garnet raised the alarm when he never appeared but by then he had already bypassed it and headed for Atherton. No contact or message about changing plan. Theres radio coverage at altitude in some Of the areas areas but lower down it gets patchy. I've flown that area heaps of times and there's variable mobile phone coverage as well at altitude. I was at Atherton Airport at the time and the weather was good all afternoon mostly all blue sky though a bit windy. I didn't take much notice if there was bad weather to the south west where he crashed. Often is cloud there but as best I recall it was clear there. Starts making you wonder if he was confusional at the time. Medical issue maybe???

Cost predominantly. Jabiru sold engines with fuel injection to military customers for a while so they have the technology. but it would cost more than they make to have the injection systems certified for use in manned aircraft. Theres less and less money in recreational aircraft and engines. And it’s being split up between more and more manufactures. If it’s not financially viable it won’t happen.

No single carb system delivers even fuel mixture to all cylinders. Even lycos and conts have uneven distribution. It’s just that they don’t measure it on most aircraft so you don’t know it, and they are big heavy cylinders which handle heat better so the cylinders don’t fail as much ( but still plenty do. ) if they are uneven so there isn’t the effort put to sort out uneven distribution cos it’s not as important. But jabs are really light, don’t have the heat sink capability of a massive amount of metal etc. so distribution becomes more important and more of us monitor every cylinder for both CHT and EGT. Yenn - you are conflating two different issues. The carby is not unreliable and it’s reliability and function is not affected or changed by the fuel control unit they’ve come up with. The carby does its bit more or less as its supposed to ( but personally I reckon it does it as marked but it’s a crap idea and I have long wished I had a normal carby that I could control leaning etc but that’s a different story. ) But the new control unit does all its stuff downstream of the carby and basically makes up for fact the mechanical pathway ( not the carby) stuffs up the work of the carby. It would be just fine if we had it feeding just one cylinder. What concerns me with the new system is it seems - maybe I’m wrong - that it relies on some cylinders running rich and then leans them match the leaner ones. Wonder how we deal with situation where none are rich ( they’re just right say) and some are already lean. Then it leans out the just right ones too make them lean to match the lean one. So now you run them all lean. So then you have to rejet the carby. Bigger job pulling carby out put it back retest it pull it out again if needed. Big job.

But non-mil spec stuff of different types can be red as well. Unless you know what it is it would be very unwise to take any notice of colour.

Do a google search etc or call the company. As as far as I am aware brake fluids can be all colours. Ive used a number of brands that have been green, clear or red and they are the same stuff

Mostly yes but Not exactly. Yes you are likely to get approval if it’s a well recognised aircraft engine, even if it’s not “certified” BUT it’s up to the AP. Herein lies a problem for some. A conservative AP May be more restrictive if the well known aviation engine is known to be at higher risk of failures. ( even if there is not CASA rules in place like for certain Jab engines.) it’s up to the AP. But if one AP ( the first) won’t approve it then hunting around for another may be unsuccessful because you could understand the seconds reluctance to counter the first, because if an accident happens there’s a lot more explaining to do as to why he countered the now obviously correct opinion of the first. There’s another thing too. When an AP takes on the qualification they have the option of not being approved to certify anybody to fly over built up areas. It’s a legal option some have taken. (Our Chapter AP had that restriction and it took a couple of people by surprise and caused some issues) As for lanes of entry they are not paths where a pilot can go without approval to fly over built up areas. They are not and never were meant to be for this purpose. They are navigational routes, aids to conflict avoidance and separation, and sometimes are for sensitive area avoidance and noise abatement. If you have no approval to fly over the built up area you can’t use either the fact it’s a VFR route or ATC directions as a reason to fly there.

There’s lots of mixed up and conflated data there. WRT converting a 19 xxx. To VH. Yep it can be done. All it requires is a special C of A and then you register it. To get a C of A you need an authorised person. An AP. These are CASA authorised people to do your C of A. Most of these are members of, and do C of As through the SAAA. ( Sport Aircraft Assiciation of Australia) There are APs who are independent if the SAAA as well. I can give you names of the SAAA ones but mostly they will only do them for SAAA members. Can’t help with non-SAAA ones though. Only one I knew died recently. As for for entry into CTA. ( not counting special situations - like training at a RAAus school in Class D or C with an exemption etc ) You can do it in an RAAus aircraft provided it has a transponder and radio AND the pilot has GA licence AND a current medical. The requirement for a certified engine is contentious. The most commonly quoted is no you don’t. Not enter CTA. BUT if your route takes you over a built up area inside CTA then yes you do. If your start point is an RAAus plane and an RAAus pilot certificate and you want to fly in CTA. Your cheapest option is just to get a GA licence and appropriate radio and transponder. If you want a GA plane as well get the above AND then get conversion to VH as well. But maybe significant cost to get the AP.

Similar one at Winton airport ( or was)

Not sure where this idea comes from. But vinyl can be applied to any complex curve. Wrap techniques which involve heat gun application can be used on pretty much any shape. I’ve seen a video where it’s even applied to ball! I’ve wrapped a few less challenging shapes but definitely complex multi-plane curves.

Umm nope. It’s the exact opposite. When you’re in opposition you can say anything, without detail to back it and without funding in place etc. as long as you drag into it how badly the incumbents are currently doing or that they have “no plan” or “no policy” or that because they don’t agree with the opposition policy then they are “rudderless” etc. No matter who is the opposition it’s a position of being able to make noise on anything with a fair degree of impunity.

No that’s not correct. VH aircraft - Don’t have to display them on the underside of the wing now. Still have to have them on the sides of the fuselage though and the size has decreased.

I’m not sure this is valid. I’ve been getting GA landing fees through avdata for years and their charge is the same as the airfield fee listed in the ERSA. Can’t see that if you went direct to an operator that uses avdata they’d accept less than the advertised fee. No evidence but I’d have doubts (and they may not actually let you either). They ( avdata) Can be a pain because they use all sorts of means to identify aircraft that can be in error. ( recordings where mis-translation can occur, flight notifications submitted to air services but flights not actually done due diversions etc ) but when I’ve contacted them about them they have always cancelled without any problem. So I think to throw avdata into the mix at this point is just going to muddy the water.

No it doesn’t. None of us are associated with the case and nothing anyone says here is prejudicial to any outcome. We are an uninformed group discussing a public event.

Not if you are nose up, on climb out. The Ferris wheel would not be in his field of view. (As he stated in the case )

I have a vague recollection that there was some claim by the council or maybe it was the people suing the pilot that there was a cross wind and that the aircraft was pushed across into the Ferris wheel. They claimed that if flying in a cross wind and maintaining his desired path was beyond the pilots skill then he was negligent in flying in conditions beyond his skill. His counter was that the Ferris wheel was erected within the required splay of the airfield which is required by law precisely because crosswinds can cause drift in even the best pilots and that flying within the splay demonstrated adequate skill. The negligence being that the Ferris wheel has been erected within the splay. I dont know whether that initial assertion or the pilots response had any effect on the outcome.

Just to point out that because ATC vectors you over a built up area doesn't get you off the hook. If ATC vectors you to do or go somewhere you are not legally allowed to go then you are supposed to tell them you cannot comply and you may need to offer short explanatory statement. They are then required to vector you by a direction that you can legally or safely fly. They don't have any list of aircraft or pilots and what their restrictions and flight status is. They require you to advise them if there directions they give that can't be complied with. Again relating to my earlier post. Despite having organised with Cairns ATC that I could not track over built up areas during my phase 1 trials, I did get several directions to track via various built up areas. My response was that I "could not comply due to aircraft limitations and REQUIRED track via ...xxxxx...". It wasn't a real problem and As I recall I sometimes got a short delay but usually no issue.

No that's not correct. A VFR lane carries no cross meaning with non-populous or non-populated area. They can be over both populous, non-populous or a combination of the two areas. A VFR lane is a route designed to keep traffic in or on a specific path either to aid in navigation, traffic flow and conflict avoidance or to avoid areas of non-aviation significance such as noise sensitivity. If your aircraft is not approved to fly over a populous area then that's it. You can't whether there's a VFR lane there or not. My my personal experience was: I have an experimental GA Jabiru and when I got my initial C of A and did the phase 1 trials I had that limitation on the aircraft. As my home base was Cairns international airport ( in Class C with several VFR lanes over built up areas which were required paths into the airport) I had to find out etc how I was going to do 25 hours of phase 1 trials and get in and out. I got advice from both my AP and CASA and required that information to organise with ATC at Cairns to be able to come and go NOT using the VFR paths because they crossed built up areas. Once I hit the magic 25 hours and hit the phase 2 approvals it was fine - then followed VFR lanes or go wherever I wanted ( with ATC approval. )

Maybe just to get an eyeball on the cockpit and see if the pilot was conscious and not communicating vs unconscious.

Discussion on another pilots forum, suggests the scuttlebutt is he went to sleep while aircraft was on autopilot. Apparently woke and while awake for some time refused to/did not make contact with ATC. ? Embarrassed, confused in post awakening stupor ( so called "sleep inertia" )

Absolutely agree.

Actually it could be. Misunderstand and you could collide with conflicting traffic. The trouble is that non standard phraseology can be interpreted many ways and one persons meaning can be interpreted differently by another. And non standard phraseology may not be even correctly heard - someone throws in some word you don’t expect in a background of noise then there’s a good chance you won’t even know what it was they said, let alone their intended meaning.

Are Fliteline 760 knock-off Microair 760s?

I think format becomes important in poor reception conditions. If you know what information is supposed to be stated your brain gets pretty good at hearing through the static. If you have no idea of what was supposed to be said your brain doesn’t know what the context was to try and make sense of the sounds. Of course that can be a bad thing because your brain is really good at converting something into something else that it is expecting. But often it’s enough to understand it provided you know what it should be.

I have had three and my hangar mate has had one in about 10 years. Mine have been in as dual comms and one died and was replaced. In that time I have had plenty of people tell me the signal out was clean, crisp and very readable. Unfortunately the receive side has been completely different. I’ve been plagued with engine noise, transponder noise, strobe light noise and even flap motor noise. Done plenty of things to fix it but nothing individual worked more than a minor amount. After lots of small increments i got it to an acceptable level but never good enough for me to recommend them to anyone. I agree with Kyle that the service was also a major problem. We sent some back multiple times for repair and the problem was not able to found or fixed. Or it was found and “fixed” only to be present just the same when it came back.

The other thought I should have added is that you can get it in all sorts of colours not just white. There's a lot of advantage in that when making harnesses for correct wire identification.