Jaba-who

The rectangular wings is the detail that kills most of the possibilities. I don't know of anything that fits that. Everything has some tapering to the tips. The really slow makes me think maybe a Dash 7. We had a couple flying out of Cairns a few years back and it was really off putting to get behind them on final. Even in my Robbie 22 I had to slow down.

Yep and Just because they don't post doesn't mean they don't take note of or read the forums.

Are you saying the original ( fixed wing) is fake or the video (of the helicopter) you have added is a fake?

Lots of points worthy of comment in the above post but the one that is probably the most concerning to us is that you are suggesting that CASA will have evidence or have a factual basis for having a policy or regulation. If you were around during the jabiru debacle you would recall that casa don't need facts to crucify part of the industry. Casa used dubious data collected from a source who were unaware of what casa were going to use it for, so did not really scrutinise or verify it first, and then casa included irrelevant events and stated they were all relevant. Absolute dishonesty to establish a rationale for bringing our hobby down.

True for the pilot employed in a decent sized airline or aviation company. I suspect ( without a lot of evidence) that it might not be so good for say a young guy just got his first job in a small company flogging freight and a few pax around the outback. May also be a problem in the self employed guy with single aircraft doing charters. I speak from experience on that one. Have a mate now retired, who had a single aircraft ( small twin shuffling charters around north Queensland ) never looked healthy to me but assumed he must have been ok. He came for an operation and I did his anaesthetic. He surprised me with what background illnesses he had and I now doubt he actually passed a proper medical. I suspect he had a friendly dame somewhere who ticked boxes and buffed him up for his medicals. So that drags me back to my comment about medicals ( and the complexity of factual decision making on them) for the less complex commercial ops.

I think the reality is that this is a complete myth. In private medicine ( all DAME s are in the private medical arena) medicals for licenses, insurances, proefessional positions etc are not economically viable and are a pain in the butt. I rarely do them in my specialty but I have done some and they are annoyance we would all rather be without. They are not covered by any Medicare or insurance so they must be paid for by the patient fully ( which is surprisingly expensive because everyone forgets that when you see the doctor for a half hour you also have to pay for the receptionist, practice nurse, electricity, equipment used, stationary - everything. No one is helping pay for it. So patients pay a lot and whinge about the cost. They take a long time compared to seeing several patients with coughs or colds with less remuneration. They result in patients being unhappy if they fail the medical but results of the test are not up to the doctor - they are dictated by casa but the dame wears the unhappy complaint. If they give a glowing report to casa and the patient then has a bad event it can come back to bite the dame. And lastly most of us disagree entirely with the CASA doctors who think that somehow the rest of us know nothing about how flying and health interact and override our medical knowledge with what is obviously casa clap-trap. They are NOT our mates!

I would. For exactly the reasons you quoted. Humans are very good at jumping to emotive conclusions about many things - because it just feels like it should be done that way and/or because that's the way we have always done it. That doesn't make it logically or factually correct. I might be drawn to some form of medical on single pilot ops carrying passengers in less sophisticated aircraft. But even probably less stringent then we have. But of course there is the issue that commercial pilots are far more likely to keep flying if they develop an illness (and hide it) because of the income requirement. There probably needs to be some net to catch that phenomenon.

A couple of medicals ago this question and a bunch of others relating to sleep patterns appeared. This recent medical ( class 2) I did the sleep questions seemed to have disappeared. They were not in the on line section and I assumed they would emerge in the extra questions the DAME would ask. But they didn't get asked. Don't know if he just assumed I'd answer 'correctly' so didn't ask or if they've truly been dropped.

I can see lots of people will have dodgy memories of what illnesses they have ever had. I can see the standard approach will be - don't put down anything that could be incriminating then only if somehow it gets found out - then response will be " Oh yes! I forgot about that! It happened so long ago. Sorry" Hardly an ideal way to approach it but as we all know a system which included such faulty memory medicals will be no less safe than one where a drivers licence medical applies.

Yep exactly what I said. ( except that for PPL with RAMPC no there is no 1500 kg limit as far as I am aware)

I think everyone except casa disagrees with you. Not meaning to sound belligerent so I apologise if I do. Just trying to discuss. Firstly you are not correct with the correlations of medical to licence and secondly there remains no evidence that backs up any medical requiring or benefitting from any licence levels regardless of how many passengers may happen to be in the aircraft and is not supported by overseas regulations. (Despite the lack of any evidence I think everyone is still happy to say commercial pilots should have medicals. ) And thirdly that's not what ALL our representative bodies are trying to get brought in. There seems to be a consistent opinion expressed on the forum that RPL requires a RAMPC and PPL requires a Class 2. This is incorrect. You can have either type of licence with either type of medical. But if if you have a RAMPC you have some limitations. but essentially carrying no more than 1 passengers and in vfr is about all. You still have access to CTA ( so the belief that only class 2 medical or above can go into CTA is not correct). Access to CTA does not just mean being over built up areas. In every area where CTA exists it is a wide circle extending out well into less built up areas - often into sparse areas or open ocean. Current exclusions of flight into CTA are not restricting exclusion to just populous parts of CTA but all of CTA which means even areas distant to and never-flown-in-by-anyone areas. Many controlled airports (even some big international ones ) have approach paths and routes completely in to ground level that do not pass over any buildings for the entire approach so conflating issues of CTA access and flying over populous areas muddies the waters. There is no doubt that a RAMPC is " harder to get and maintain" than a class 2. Mainly due to absolute exclusion where a diagnosis exists regardless of its effect on performance and the complete prohibition on appealing the decisions. In my area we have had several people try go to a RAMPC but fail and then go back and get a class 2. The differences and the reasons for this are worthy of an entire thread of its own.

I'm not sure I follow your statement. Who are you suggesting your do the tests early with - your GP or your DAME? But the gist of getting tests done early is a two edged sword. Doing anything medical before due dates often triggers the dates of the issuance of the new medical to be backdated to the date when the investigations or examination etc were done. And their next medical brought forward commensurately. This has happened to several people I know. So if you get in early every time your medical falls due you may progressively decrease the time interval between your medical school. It's difficult because if you wait you may end up having periods of no medical. My advice to people is go to your GP early and get buffed up before you go to the DAME.

Being a doctor and a member of several aero clubs I am always being asked advice about getting spruced up for medicals and I have come to the conclusion that you should never ever ever have your gp as your dame. Your dame is testing you for a specific list of criteria, whose relevance to your safety is shown to be near zero but are required for an administrative purpose only. He only needs to know what you want to tell them. You must be truthful about answers but never ever embellish or give complex scenarios or backgrounds to your story. Simple answer .... no more. He has then no responsibility to manage your health or fix you up and no responsibility to go looking for health issues. That's what you gp is for. He is there to simply examine you and see if you pass the casa criteria for having a licence. He is not your friend! He is a casa delegate. If he suggests having an investigation that is not required - refuse ( politely).

GFPT (general flying progress test) which was originally called a Restricted Private Pilots Licence ( which actually IMHO was the only name which gave anyone any idea of what it actually was. ) Now it's all so confusing and ambiguous that no one knows what is what. Hey Geoff, are you flying out of Koah or are you residing there and flying out of Mareeba?

Oscar, that was my concern as well. I have seen some stress studies on fibreglass wings and fuselage components and the science of stress lines and dissipation of forces by the direction of the glass fibres was quite astonishing. I would never trust something like Lycra for a strength requiring component until I had seen some similar stress and force dissipation studies.

I'd be reluctant to use it for anything that needed any structural strength without getting some idea of how it compares to glass.

Forgive me for being negative but - arent turbine engines not allowed in recreational aircraft. You really are only able to direct this engine at GA aircraft. Where almost all are limited to the engine type they are certified with. So the only class of aircraft suitable for aiming at are GA experimental. That's a pretty small market.

Re: Anyone able to do maintenance. Yep but I think that's the same with all aircraft. I know when I had a certified aircraft the LAME employed completely unqualified helpers who did much of the work, and I also helped, (and the LAME did some of it ) and then "inspected" the work the unqualified employee did before signing it off. So while you're correct I think the general gist of the conversation has been "doing maintenance" = the overall job (is:hands on plus signing off ) You can build it but elect not to do the maintenance. Then you get a LAME to do it AND sign off on the work.

Which test are you referring to? Is this out of the RAAus L1 maintenance test???? Surely not! Sorry I'm completely lost on what this is about.

Essentially, yep you seem to have it. I'm not sure if the same AP can do both RAAus aircraft and Experimental GA. I am making a guess that they are different APs. I don't have any knowledge of the RAAus AP system. There are APS for experimental GA who hold their AP status through the SAAA ( still delegates of CASA but are members of SAAA and basically do the C of A for SAAA members) and there are some who have an AP qualification entirely outside of the SAAA ( still as CASA delegates). The maintenance procedures course (MPC) does not sound like the L1 course but I could be wrong. The MPC done for the GA experimental is essentially a two part face to face classroom course ( takes a weekend). The first part is the bookwork part and has been a part of the MPC since I did my first one in about 2007 or so. The bookwork is just that - how to do all the paperwork associated with doing maintenance. How to find stuff on the CASA website ( bloody difficult!!) and where to find the rules and guidance about maintenance ( FAA AC 43:13 etc) and how to fill in forms, the rules about and what format log books have to have etc. anything paperwork related to maintenance. This is NOT about maintenance as such. I have done several of these courses and they are basically nothing about hands on work. Interestingly, If you are a real LAME You have to do a similar course and you can do the SAAA one to fulfill the requirement for your real LAME job. So it's a proper course not just a Mickey Mouse weekend jolly. The newer bit and only " how to do actual maintenance" is the weight and balance module which is an add on which started only about 2 years ago. If you have done an MPC in the past and not done the W & B module you can do it as a stand alone module ( for $25) but it's only valid for 2 years. And just to complicate the GA experimental. Let's say you helped build some parts of the plane but not all the >51% - just some of them. The AP can give you approval to work on just the bits you did build.

Thanks for that correction 440032. There appear to be more than a few places in the CASA rule book where that appearance of the double negative can lead the observer to the mistake that something is actively approved where in fact is only not disapproved.

What does an L1 course teach? How long does it take to do? Is it really enough to maintain an aircraft?

Sorry, mea culpa. AP = Authorized Person Someone authorised by CASA to give a Certificate of Airworthiness and to decide how/what limitations will be applied during the Phase 1 testing of an experimental GA build. That AP also issues initial approval for a builder to do ongoing maintenance if he's convinced the builder did more than 51% of the build and fulfills the other requirements to be eligible to do the maintenance. The Sport Aircraft Assoc of Aust has APs within its organisational structure and there is at least one AP that I know of who is not part of the SAAA. There is no requirement for a builder to go through or be a member of the SAAA to have a home built GA experimental unlike the RAAus.

As the current RRAus rules do not have CTA endorsements or allowance there is no precedent as such. It doesn't matter where it was done and how proficient the pilot became at it there isn't a licence that includes a CTA endorsement that can be given to the pilot because it doesn't exist. And to make waves and get belligerent to CASA to do so would "draw the crabs" as we say and fairly quickly lead to charges and fines and closure of the school who appears to be operating on the fringes of, if not completely, outside the rules. Strictly speaking if the pilot mentioned by Frank does not also have a licence that allows CTA ( ppl etc) and the aircraft was not fitted with radio and transponder then it was illegal to fly in CTA even for training.

Yep and the liability remains with the builder. The AP is only certifying that the builder has not done anything glaringly stupid. However The SAAA now has a fairly complex tool for recording the inspection processes during the build and this "risk radar" is supposed to help the AP weed out poor build stuff way before it gets to the stage of the final inspection. Personally I find the risk radar to be a bit problematic but it covers a huge amount of stuff and does highlight issues. The AP actually has no right to actually refuse the C of A but he can put such restrictions on it that make it near impossible to do anything with it. The AP can for instance require any number of hours for the phase 1 testing period. ( typically 25 hrs for a kit that has built exactly according to the manual, 40 hrs if there is a single modification using well known or certified parts modification but can insist on any number of hours beyond that for a complete unknown entity aircraft ) Further the AP can limit where the aircraft can do the phase 1 testing. Typically within 25 mm of the airport but can be far more restrictive such as not to leave circuit area or not to cross roads or airport boundary. And finally can limit the aircraft to never carrying any passengers.