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Bandit12

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Posts posted by Bandit12

  1. CASA Avmed really don't understand neurodevelopmental disorders, and what they don't understand gets a hard "no".  I diagnose Autism frequently, and many Autistic adults would make fabulous pilots.  It's a generalisation, but often structure, rules, and repetition works really well for how they operate. Use of checklists, religiously rehearsing plans for response to engine failure, never attempting a turn back - arguably, Autistic pilots would handle these things better than the rest of us.

     

    ADHD is a little more complex.  A person with ADHD might have attention at the 1st percentile but be at the 50th percentile when taking stimulant medication, while the person without ADHD could be rolling along in life blissfully unaware that their attention skills are only at the 25th percentile. One gets a medical and the other doesn't....

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  2. Let’s start back in the days when GA had the Piper Tomahawk which came into Australia around 1975.....

    Now what is so very interesting is that this beastie was a widow maker and spun at the drop of a hat......

     

    Some comments below from guys who flew the tomahawk back in the day!

     

    1. The Tomahawk was changed structurally so much between it;s certification flight tests and production, that the Piper Engineers and Test Pilots said it is NOT THE AIRPLANE WHICH WAS CERTITIFED !. Piper had modified the wing after and made it more flexible.
       
      2. Spin recovery is extremely difficult. In the context of a approach stall/spin recovery it IS impossible.
       
       

     

     

    3. The accident record of the Tomahawk as a trainer was appalling, and the industry that buys them ran the other way screaming. Many airplanes today are placarded against spinning, including the Bellanca which has been used successfully in airshow routines. Nobody in his right mind would want to get anywhere the limits in the tomahawk .

    I didn't learn back in the day, being only a relative newcomer from the early 2000s. But I did fly a Tomahawk up to GFPT, then later for NVFR and just for fun. I didn't find it to be scary at all or difficult to recover, although incipient spins were all that was allowed. It certainly didn't spin at the drop of a hat, but it did have quite a pronounced wing drop at stall. Accelerated spins in a Pitts S2B were much more of an eye opener. Agree though that spin training should be mandatory.

     

     

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  3. Aviation is full of Alpha males. Many who have a huge amount of knowledge, ability and experience gained over decades are susceptible to coming across as arrogant and whether this is deliberate or just a part of the individuals personality seems to me to be part of what we now term "Human Factors". I know of a number of these individuals and while they often provide very valuable information and advice, can be friendly and forthcoming on almost anything aviation and provide assistance without even thinking about reward, I remain somewhat wary when the attitude on some issue is tinged with a level of arrogance. I am sure that those individuals don't see it in the same light, but then why would they.We have all probably had bad instructors as well as good instructors so how can this arise if the process of getting there is supposed to sort this out? The difference is often the personality or attitude of the instructor not his knowledge, ability or experience. Something that perhaps needs to be done is a psychologist report be part of on-going reviews, particularly when an individuals attitude is called to question by that persons peers.

    At the risk of casting aspersions on my profession, sadly I don't think a psych report would offer much useful information in most of the cases. It definitely happens with the big players but not so much the small ones, because the big players can afford to recruit based on desirable characteristics (as a preventative measure) but when it is a hobby there is no such restriction. I'm not surprised in the least that a highly experienced pilot would attempt a turn back despite training and advocating against it. With a split second to make a judgement call, and given that the exact circumstances are usually unknown, I suspect that plenty of people would do similarly.

     

    Incidentally, I would be happy to offer my time to look at the HF side of accidents. There is always plenty to be learned, and if nothing else I'm sure that Maj would have been quick to encourage others to learn from the accident.

     

     

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  4. Haven't been around much, busy life and kids had taken centre stage. I saw the crash on the ABC news yesterday morning and while an accident is never good news, this one struck a chord instantly. Even then I avoided logging in to the forum for a day, not wanting to know about it.

     

    Like so many others, I had never met Maj in person, but enjoyed many discussions over the last few years. He will be greatly missed.

     

     

  5. that's the difference between being depressed and depression

    There is a big difference between being depressed and having depression, and it has nothing to do with what you are inferring FT. Nothing at all.

     

    We have more people commit suicide than die in car accidents in Australia every single year. And how many of them take out a plane load of people with them? Granted, most of them probably aren't pilots, but most of them drive and most of them do not take a car load of people with them when they decide to go. This was not just depression, and it was not just being depressed.

     

     

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  6. duch, for what it`s worth, I reckon your heading in the right direction, is it even possible though, to asses someone`s mental health accurately and totally?Frank.

    Nope. Even with computerised systems and mandatory reporting. There is nothing to stop a person giving a false name at a clinic, representing themselves as having any other occupation other than pilot, paying in full in cash to circumvent Medicare and walking out the door having told of their fantasies to cause mass destruction. As long as they were assessed in that moment as not being able or likely to carry out their fantasies, no one would even try to prevent them or follow up. I read elsewhere how his fiance broke off their relationship the day before (caveat - we all know how accurate the beloved media is) and wondered to myself about whether this wasn't a grand stunt to get back at her. A lot more complex than depression and suicide, that's for sure.

     

    Seriously, I think commercial aviation has probably some of the best mechanisms of support that I have seen. Think about the appalling treatment of our service men/women with PTSD. I think Dutchy is completely on the right track, all we will see are bandaids to make people feel like "something" has been done, and the very outside risk of this sort of thing will continue to be just that.

     

     

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  7. I don't really know what they can do to mitigate a seriously suicidal pilot, apart from not having him there in the first place.

    And speaking with just a hint of experience with suicidal individuals (not pilots though), effective screening to prevent a person like this from being at the controls would be incredibly restrictive. By the time everyone who might be a risk was removed, there would be very few flying at all. Wait, that sounds suspiciously like a CASA risk management strategy......best not give them ideas.

     

     

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  8. I'm a reviewer for a medical journal and review stats and manuscripts and if an prospective author presented stats like those we would reject their paper without further reading.

    Me too (ed psych not medical though) - if there is real data out there, it is not being shared publicly and what has been shared is neither valid nor useful. Not that I think Jabiru deserves a free pass here, but a little more transparency and a whole lot more quantified data would go a long way.

     

    Anecdotally, I have seen a lot of mention about people approaching Jabiru with a failure, only to be told it was caused by poor maintenance or operator error. Has an alternative response ever been received?

     

     

  9. ......The following three accidents seem not to have been reported to ATSB by state police or by RA-Aus Operations staff.....

    Maybe this is where some of the problems lie. In terms of accountability, it should be relatively straightforward for all organisations to demonstrate whether or not they did report to ATSB. Whichever hasn't done the reporting will need a bit of a kick up the organisation's you-know-what.

     

     

  10. "Good question CheeseBoy" (FromageRef) said Turbo, who is an acknowledged expert in the repair of marine and aircraft engines. "It's just a bolt (or stud (AhloxRef) + washer and nut (another AhloxRef)) located at the base of the barrel, normally 4 or 6 in number, which we engine repair experts refer to colloquially as .............

    ....Ahlox's ar$ehole, for its propensity to let rip with explosive gases at the most inconvenient of times.

     

    At that moment, Loxy's derriere twitched, signalling his intent to emphasise Turbo's point for him. Turbo dived for cover, screaming......

     

     

  11. .....to the standard of the adoring fans in a clear case of coitus failus. Turbo wasn't prepared to ruin the coitus supremus reputation that his signature model had been built on, especially given that his own stash of chicks were starting to show a clear aversion to his magnetic......

     

     

  12. My money is on disorientation at night. Once I was downwind doing night circuits when I felt an overwhelming sensation that I was heading straight for the ground in level flight. With few visual cues on a dark night, it happens very quickly. Hypoxia could be an option, particularly if he was a heavy smoker (don't know if he was but it makes a difference). Carbon monoxide can lead to hallucinations, especially if primed by belief in aliens!

     

     

  13. "..............tomato sauce?" St Madge smiled, and his eyes lit up........................

    .....when the truckie pulled out a container that looked suspiciously like BBQ sauce.

     

    "I drained this from the sump of my Jabiru" he said, offering the sludge to Madge "and it tastes more than a little like......

     

     

  14. ...... who nonchalantly replied "But jeez this prosciutto tastes good. Don't ya just LOVE Tapas?"

    "Speaking of torpedoes" commented The 12 Incher "I think that might be one of Andy's .......... and while he says that he may not be the best log in the woodpile (or the least stretchy thru-bolt in the engine), he is a good ..........

    ..........person to have around in a sticky situation. Like that time we were swimming around in the molasses tank, and Andy came up with a different way of cleaning up, by......"

     

     

  15. He mentioned that Australia's Lancaster, G for George, was presently disassembled and he wanted to know if there are any plans to restore it to flying condition - does anyone know?

    I imagine that it would have been headlining news in the aviation mags if it was going to happen. I don't think I have ever heard of an aircraft going to AWM and returning to the sky (but stand to be corrected). One of my relatives did a tour as a navigator in G for George, so I would love to see it fly rather than as an electric light show when I last saw it.

     

     

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