youngster

Hi there and . Like the name HeadinTheClouds but now you have started flying it's more like Wholebodyintheclouds .It's great to see new members on this forum who are learning to fly directly as a result of a TIF given as a present.

Tell us a bit more about yourself .....age, location and where you fly from, we just love helping and encourageing new aviators.

 

Alan.

In car terms, it was more or less a fender-bender. But if you are not an aviation type, anytime a plane "falls" out of the sky and the occupants survive, they must be magic.

Welcome Ross, sound like you are well set up there in Cowra.I also like many of the inland NSW cities, can be chilly at night but some great places to live. Just don't go too close to Canberra.

Welcome Ross!

I'm working in CBR PH part of next week, can anyone drop in? Do you know which day?

On the surface, it is difficult to imagine why RAA would not be involved. Do we know for certain that we have no involvement?David

There is a presentation entitled the "2011 Aviation Outlook" at Parliament House next week, put on by the Australian Aviation Associations' Forum. A lot of politicians and big wigs will be there. From what I can see, most of the major aviation organisations in Australia are involved, except for RAAus. Is there some background to why RAAus is not involved? It seems a pity that we wont be able to use this opportunity to spruik rec aviation.

I want to be careful not to criticise anyone, because there may be a perfectly reasonable explanation as to why RAAus is not involved in this particular forum.

Any thoughts?

I called the State Transport Minister's office a few months back to enquire as to whether the NSW Government has a strategy of some sort in relation to maintaining and retaining airfields around the state. The advisor I spoke to had no idea what I was talking about and kept telling me aviation was a federal responsibility. Maybe I should have been talking to the Minister for Lands, but surely there should be some long-term and co-operative strategy to retain, maintain, improve, and better utilise the airfields around the State.

Tell me Jake, did you run through the scenario in your head where the pilot(s) have become incapacitated and a flight attendant asks if there is a pilot on board who can take over?

I gather problems with jump planes are not rare? The CFI of the flight centre I'm training at said a local bloke ran out of fuel and had emergency landings (one was really a crash) twice in less than a year.

A politician who say "Honestly..."

Not being particularly well-versed in the ways of CASA, perhaps someone with a little more experience in these things could suggest an answer to the following: With all other things being equal, would CASA act the same way toward an Australian-owned carrier? It seems most people (with the exception of those with Tiger tickets!) dont really care what happens to Tiger, but if it was Virgin or Qantas, there would be much more public interest in the situation and potentially a different approach by CASA?

All worthy sugestions for The Rat, but my three year old and her cousin have christened her Big Bird and it seems to be sticking at the moment!!All she needs is the orange stripes down the rear struts.....

It could be worse, you could be living in the US, where a set of nail clippers is considered a threat to national security!

A forum member giving Aussie rec aviation a plug at Oshkosh: http://www.airventure.org/news/2011/110728_atf.html

Andy that is very true. There is a tower establishment and disestablishment criteria but it doesn't always seem to be applied. Sometimes I wonder if the towers are established where air traffic controllers might want to live and work!

Did I miss something in my absence? How can we train at archerfield?

There's a couple of very hairy moments in amongst those vids! Was particularly impressed by the calmness of the Thompson pilots managing a bird strike on take off and putting it down without a problem. Never heard a hint of stress or concern in their radio calls either!

Part of the problem may be slightly unique to Coffs Harbour, in that we have a shortage of flat, vacant land for private or alternate strips, so you either fly out of the airport, or have to travel at least an hour to find another strip. That turns an early morning joy flight into a half day excursion. It just seems silly to have a great facility not able to be used, even by people who trained there. Perhaps the proposed CASA sport pilot type licence will be the answer.

Guys there's a massive thread on here somewhere about CTA. There was talk but we were rejected

Flying from Taree, I have never had problems flying into Port Macquarie as it is not controlled airspace.Operations into controlled airspace require more training, higher onboard equipment levels and limited scope for flight variation, you are controlled.

This all goes to add more cost to flying which is not always in the interest of recreational flying.

 

These controlled airports are actually being well utilised when you think about it, someone can go and learn 'how to fly' recreationally at a place possibly closer to home, they just need to go elsewhere once they're on their own.

 

It is always possible to utilise controlled airports/airspace, but you do need to work up to a GA license.

 

GA PPL pilots that come over to recreational flying can still use their privileges in a recreational aircraft providing it is equipped with the right gear.

 

Since the inception of Ultralight flying, there has always been the desire to increase weights, performance, range and accessibility, and there has been a gradual change in this direction, but with it has come increased cost and complexity.

 

The feeling now (as I perceive it) is that we have gone far enough, and that to go any further will have us becoming a copy of GA with all the same costs and regulations that go with it.

 

Lets keep flying fun...

I completely agree. I'm doing lessons at Coffs and I think if it was open to RAA it would attract many visitors because of the great location on the coast, it would be a nice place to fly into for a holiday as there is plenty of things to fly and look at and also the airfield is only about an 8 minute taxi to the center of Coffs. Flying down the coast at 500ft to get to the training area for my lessons is always fun. Coffs would be a great airfield for RAA as there is the smaller 10/28 runway that means if winds are right you can land and takeoff with minimal disruption to RPT traffic. Besides there are a bucketload of warriors training CPL's here so it isn't as if a few RAA aircraft would be a nuisance! We also have the space! There are plans to build almost 20 to 30 new hangars in some dead space on the airfield but arguably without RAA access they would not be filled. For example the hangar at my flying school has the Foxbat and 2 trikes in it, and there used to be a Cessna 210 on top of that which is now gone because it was unprofitable, so there is almost space for 2 more RA aircraft in our hangar, I know for a fact that the massive hangar next to us only houses one warrior as well, and the others down further probably only have one aircraft in them.It never actually occurred to me before that once I get my certificate I wouldn't be able to hire the Foxbat and go flying from Coffs... Must talk to my instructor about that!

I'm only new to this whole flying thing (in fact, so new I'm taking my first theory class tonight), but it seems to me that we are underutilising a whole lot of good airports because RAA flyers cannot access controlled airspace.

Airports like Coffs Harbour, Port Macquarie, Tamworth, etc, are ideally situated to take advantage of the trend toward Rec flying, but once you do your training under a CFI with a CASA exemption to train RAA at these airports, you cannot fly from the airport where you trained.

Is there any logic to introducing an endorsement to allow RAA pilots to fly into some of these smaller regional airports without getting a PPL? Or some other system to make these airports accessible?

As I said, I'm only new to this, so I may be missing some very good reasons to keep RAA pilots out of these airports, and I'm happy to be corrected.

That's sad, if only because it's so close to the truth!

Airport security exists to make us feel safer, not to actually make travel safer. If you look at most airports, it wouldn't take much more than a determined fourteen year old to cause all sorts of problems. There are kilometers of simple chain link fence that are unguarded and flimsy, charter operations where you can just walk straight on to a plane with no security checks, etc etc. As history has shown, every time the authorities crack down on one security issue, some terrorist boof head invents a new way to be a nuisance.

It has always perplexed me why we feel apprehensive about safety at the airport, but are quite happy to attend a football game with 80,000 people where anyone of them could have a bomb under their seat, and we are quite comfortable on a train even though one well placed wedge could derail the whole thing at high speed. Us humans can be odd.