octave

I think the media is calling this aircraft an Ultralight because that what it says on the Victorian Police Media Unit web site. I have just emailed them to (politely) point out the difference between GA and RA. I think it is important for us to (politely) correct this common miosconception.:hittinghead:

Of course it doesn't make it any less tragic when a fellow aviator is lost.

I just came accross Mr Bibby on a mountain climbing forum, it seems he doesnt like climbers either. Apparently many climbers wrote letters of complaint to SMH about his article (after a tragic fatality on the weekend) and his methods of gathering information (ie asking questions on their forum without declaring that he is a journalist).

Good result, at the very least Mr Bibby might pull his head in for a while.

I keep a regular logbook but also an electronic logbook from ForPilots.com: Aviation Software, Shareware, Books, Computerized Logbooks, and Information this is stored on your own pc but it is easy to create backups of your data, I save this data on an external drive also just in case I post a copy to my Yahoo mail accounts just in case the external drive fails.

The Science of Santa

1. No known species of reindeer can fly, but there are 300,000 species of living organisms yet to be classified, and while most of these are insects and germs, this does not completely rule out flying reindeer which only santa has ever seen.

2. There are 2 billion children (persons under 18) in the world, but since santa doesn't (appear) to handle the muslim, hindu, jewish and buddhist children, that reduces the workload to 15% of the total - 378 million according to population reference bureau. At an average (census) rate of 3.5 children per household, that's 91.8 million homes. One presumes there's at least one good child in each.

3. Santa has 31 hours of christmas to work with, thanks to the different time zones and the rotation of the earth, assuming he travels east to west (which seems logical). This works out to 822.6 visits per second. This is to say that for each christian household with good children, santa has 1/1000th of a second to park, hop out of the sleigh, jump down the chimney, fill the stockings, distribute the remaining presents under the tree, eat whatever snacks have been left, get back up the chimney, get back into the sleigh and move on to the next house. Assuming that each of these 91.8 million stops are evenly distributed around the earth (which, of course, we know to be false but for the purposes of our calculations we will accept), we are now talking about .78 miles per household, a total trip of 75-1/2 million miles, not counting stops to do what most of us must do at least once every 31 hours, plus feeding and etc.

This means that santa's sleigh is moving at 650 miles per second, 3,000 times the speed of sound. For purposes of comparison, the fastest man-made vehicle on earth, the ulysses space probe, moves at a poky 27.4 miles per second - a conventional reindeer can run, tops, 15 miles per hour.

4. The payload on the sleigh adds another interesting element. Assuming that each child gets nothing more than a medium-sized lego set (2 pounds), the sleigh is carrying 321,300 tons, not counting santa, who is invariably described as overweight. On land, conventional reindeer can pull no more than 300 pounds. Even granting that "flying reindeer" (see point #1) could pull ten times the normal amount, we cannot do the job with eight, or even nine. We need 214,200 reindeer. This increases the payload - not even counting the weight of the sleigh - to 353,430 tons. Again, for comparison - this is four times the weight of the Queen Elizabeth.

5. 353,000 tons traveling at 650 miles per second creates enormous air resistance - this will heat the reindeer up in the same fashion as spacecraft re-entering the earth's atmosphere. The lead pair of reindeer will absorb 14.3 quintillion joules of energy. Per second. Each. In short, they will burst into flame almost instantaneously, exposing the reindeer behind them, and create deafening sonic booms in their wake. The entire reindeer team will be vaporized within 4.26 thousandths of a second. Santa, meanwhile, will be subjected to centrifugal forces 17,500.06 times greater than gravity. A 250-pound santa (which seems ludicrously slim) would be pinned to the back of his sleigh by 4,315,015 pounds of force.

In conclusion - if santa ever did deliver presents on christmas eve, he's dead now.

The thing that annoys me is that I can not see the point in requiring an asic card if it is almost never policed. To travel overseas you need a passport, this works because you cannot leave the country without presenting it. In the 2 years that I have been flying I have never been asked to present an asic card (luckily), if I were that way inclined I would have had so many opportunities. It could only work if you could not enter the tarmac area without showing your card.

Yes I went through a phase after getting my certificate, in my case I was flaring too high, the problem resolved itself when I realised that I was not looking at the other end of the runway but I was focusing too close in front of the aircraft. Since this realisation I haven't had this problem.

Yikes, just read this article and I am just off for some coastal flying.:ah_oh: May have to don my pelican proof vest. On a more serious note this article was an eye opener and it will certainly be on my mind whilst flying today!

And presumably these oragnisations must also faced with funding cuts

NASA

The British Royal Society

European Academy of Sciences and Arts

National Research Council (US)

Federation of American Scientists

World Meteorological Organisation

American Meteorological Society

Do you really think that CSIRO scientists are deceiving us to keep its funding? Do you think they also deceive us in other areas?, are you saying we cant trust any information coming from CSIRO or just that information that may be unpalatable.

As far as RA goes the fuel we use is truly a drop in the ocean compared to cars. Personaly I think we should be should be seriously interested in alternative fuels for cars so that petroleum can be save for the truly important such as ashphalt (no point in cars without roads) plastics and of course fuel for our RA aircraft:thumb_up:

What is CSIRO’s stance on climate change?

From the CSIRO website

Scientific evidence suggests:

*

climate change is real and underway because the scientific evidence for global warming is compelling

*

most of the warming of the past 50 years is due to human activities

*

climate change will continue throughout this century

*

we contribute to, and support the assessments of IPCC

*

there is great value in understanding the likely impacts to reduce damage and increase benefits

*

to tackle the problem, we need to:

o

obtain better information about impending climate change

o

adapt to the likely climate changes

o

mitigate greenhouse gas emissions.

full text at CSIRO and climate change: questions and answers (Fact Sheet)

If climate change is merely "science fantasy" what do you make of CSIROs position?

If the theory is just bad science then what does that say about the majority of the scientific community. I am sure you can always find the odd dissenting opinion but then I will bet you can find a few doctors who would disagree with the link between smoking and lung cancer.

If CSIRO (and most other credible scientific organisations) is so wrong, what is you theory, is it incompetence or deliberate deception?

A few videos taken on the South Coast

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fLYvSqhh2qk"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t_sxFymgF9A"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-_CrBN6vS8I"

"The most basic recreational plane can be constructed from hand-hewn lengths of aluminium tubing and sail cloth".

Adj.1.hand-hewn - cut or shaped with hard blows of a heavy cutting instrument like an ax or chisel; "a house built of hewn logs"; "rough-hewn stone"; "a path hewn through the underbrush

So thats how you build an ultralight!

A search of the websites of:

CSIRO

NASA

The British Royal Society

American Association for the Advancement of Science

European Academy of Sciences and Arts

National Research Council (US)

Federation of American Scientists

World Meteorological Organisation

American Meteorological Society

to name but a few - support the theory of human induced climate change.

So if human induced climate change is so obviously flawed are these respected organisations incompetent or are they all misleading us as part of some conspiracy?

Well done:thumb_up:, its a great feeling the first time you put it down.

moruya crash

A pilot was killed when his plane crashed during an aeronautical display on the NSW south coast on Saturday afternoon.

Police said the single-engined plane went down at a beach on the south coast seaside town of Moruya about 1.30pm (AEST).

"The solo pilot was doing acrobatics before the crash," a NSW police spokesman said.

"He died at the scene."

Several witnesses will be interviewed by police and a report will be prepared for the coroner.

The Australian Transport Safety Bureau will investigate the cause of the crash.

A Civil Aviation Safety Authority spokesman Peter Gibson said it was difficult to say whether a mechanical fault was to blame for the crash.

"The aircraft itself is a Nanchang, which is an ex-military Chinese training aircraft," Mr Gibson told Macquarie Radio.

"A number of them are now being operated privately in Australia and people use them for joyflights as well."

One dead in NSW plane crash

A man has been killed in a plane crash at Moruya on the south coast of New South Wales.

Police say the man was flying in a single engine plane and performing air acrobatics before his plane crashed on a beach near Moruya airport at about 1.30pm AEST.

The man was the only person on board.

Police and ambulance crews are at the scene.

The Australian Transport Safety Bureau is investigating the accident

well done!!!

Its a great feeling isn't it, well done:thumb_up:

Hey All just got my PAX rating, I took my father up for his 80th birthday, the old boy had a ball.

An airtight case. Dam you and your technology (photoshop).

G day all,

I wasn't quite sure where to post this, but its too good not to share. I went for a flight along the coast yesterday, only recently having attained my pilot certificate. The scenery along the coast is stunning and I had my very cheap and nasty digital camera with me so I thought I would attempt to snap a few pictures. Being a bit of a newbie I didn't want to become distracted by operating the camera so I held the camera and randomly clicked off a few pics. Somehow the camera got switched to its video mode. I held the camera up high to take a picture through the windshield. Having taken a few pictures I put the camera away so that I could just enjoy the flight. Back on the ground and sitting in my usual after flight coffee shop I scrolled through the pictures on my camera and came across the first frame very short vid, taken through the front of the aircraft I was confronted with a sight that almost made me spit my coffee across the coffee shop. :ah_oh: In the bottom left corner (see pic attached) there appeared to be an aircraft shaped image, now you have to remember that this really is a nasty cheap camera with a very small LCD display. I was stunned, could I have been involved in a near miss? I was sure I had kept a good lookout. I decided that it wasn't another aircraft but I couldn't come up with any other explanation. The only thing to do was to race home and upload the image to the PC so that I could enlarge it. I could see straight away that it was not another aircraft but I couldn't work out what it was, suddenly it came to me.

Some of the instructors at our club get the students during the first lesson to place a small marker pen cross on the windshield to mark the horizon in level flight, because I held the camera up high the cross appear quite low on the windshield.Mostly these crosses get cleaned off. I am used to this cross being there and I don't even notice it any more.

I am not sure whether there is a moral to this story but I did find it alarming then amussing:big_grin:

well done:clap:

Thanks all for the encouraging comments. Although I don't often post on this forum I do hang on almost every word written by others and I think this forum is a great way to learn. Learning "facts" from books is very important but its good to hear about the actual "practice" of flying. Now its on to xcountry and passenger endorsement.

Cheers

Graham

Thanks motza, test was in a Gazelle, not too stressful, I was helped by fantastic weather this morning. Made a couple of little slip ups but nothing too bad, my instructor suggested a couple of areas to practice. But I am pleased and glad to get it over with.

cheers

I can't help myself, I have to brag (to anyone who will listen), I passed my flight test this morning;)