damkia

It's completely true. I am one of the affected ones and have spoken to a number of others in the same boat. I have documents produced by RA-Aus accepting the aircraft, I have copies of the of the test reports, I have copies of documents produced by the factory and foreign airworthiness authorities. All of these state that the aircraft is within its design parameters if flown at 544kg.I'm yet to find out why RA-Aus is failing to recognise their own documentation for renewals. I'm struggling with the idea that they can ground my aircraft and yet they are ok with other aircraft of the same type still flying simply because they haven't fallen due for renewal.

 

I'm baffled...

A bit of public pressure for the RAA to announce these sort of problems before actually acting on them is really all that is needed. ("Proposed rule change") If everyone sits back and lets this sort of stuff happen, then it WILL keep happening just as it HAS been happening in the past, as there is no mandate to the management at RAA for change in transparency.

Clearly not a great deal has changed at RAA HQ since the EGM/AGM fiasco....

I have often wondered why some of the European aircraft have been flying here at greater weights than the same aircraft which seems to be limited to the 470ishKG weights in the UK. I thought that that was a UK category weight limit. Maybe not.

Goes some of the way to explaining the different nations definitions of ultralight/microlight/LSA...

I would expect that the aircraft may need to have been designed with the 544/600kg limit in mind, including all the relevant safety margins. Whilst they may be safe in most conditions, extreme conditions that would not normally cause an aircraft structure to fail (544/600 kg), may allow these (~450kg) to fail

As stated I hardly see how new regulations can be considered to be hush-hush/secret squirrel business. A phone call to Tech Ops may all that is needed to clarify, perhaps with a post here or on RAA website explaining what is happening. My best guess at "scaremongering" speculation is that it was a review brought about by one of the CASA audits that may have noted that these aircraft may have been approved by RAA but not have been designed to carry the weight that is now being put on them, ie they are using their safety margin design limits to comply.

RAA Tech Ops would be the people to contact, rather than scaremongering third hand information.

A few website I have seen use a template for advertising to give the ads a bit more information.

The other thing about doing it this way is it only allows registered users to communicate with sellers, clearing any need for display and harvesting of sellers details for malicious use by scammers and bots.

Are the fill caps/ tanks venting correctly? If not then there is the possibility that the fuel is under pressure as you ascend making the drip more noticeable. As the tank gets more empty, the effect will be amplified due to the increased amount of air in the tank.

As a general comment you could expect a little more than normal while the engine is running in (50hrs or so). The bulk of the running in should be complete after the usual 25 hrs or so, with oil consumption tapering off after that. It does not magically arrive at its end point oil consumption at 25 hrs.

Do the basics, have a GOOD look around to see if there are any leaks, run it up with the cowl off to see if there are any leaks under pressure.

As above, contact Lyc to see what that "normal" consumption is. If the 233 is anything like other GA derived engines (as distinct from smaller LSA type engine, Rotax etc) then you can expect more oil consumption that you would expect as being "normal" from a smaller engine.

Im struggling to get my head around the bend radius. As an example, if I had a piece of 3mm Chrome Moly I need at least a 3mm bend radius

bend it around a 3mm rod or 1.5mm rod?

For years now I have promoted the model of having a 7 to 9 member board. For example in a 7 member board, 4 members with one each from Qld/NT, NSW, Vic/Tas, SA/WA and say 3 members elected not to geographic region but rather "titled" positions of say Finance, HR, and Marketing. ALL members vote for ALL candidates Australia wide and in the case of the "Titled" positions, they are elected on their demonstrated ability of knowledge in that titled area. You could go to 8 members with the 8th position also being titled under "Legal" or a 9th position breaking up the geographic regions by one more.The only way to do this and jump start RAAus is to declare ALL positions on the RAAus Committee as vacant and an election held for all new members under this framework. We would then have a clean slate in which to build a great RAAus using a good mix of aviation centric representatives covering large regions along with professional representation in appropriate business disciplines.

 

What could also then happen is each of the Geographic reps would form sub regional (non board) representatives and as a team would hook up each month to discuss not only Australia wide elements or RAAus but with also sub regional issues.

 

What is stopping this...2 things...the constitution and the current incumbents and that is a chicken and egg as the current incumbents won't support a constitutional change that will effectively see themselves dumped from the Committee.

I have come up with these pre-set fields for the Specifications page of each aircraft...any other specifications can be entered in as extra text:Cruise Speed (Vno):

Maximum Airspeed (VNE):

 

Stall Speed (Vs):

 

Fuel Capacity:

 

Fuel Range:

 

Useful Load (kg):

 

Take Off Distance (ft):

 

Wingspan (ft):

 

Engine Make/Type:

Engine Reliability:I am interested to know if there are any statistics about aircraft engine failures - that are related in terms of MTBF for each brand/ model? It is no good just saying that 'X' number of brand 'Y' engines failed this year. We need to know in relation to hours flown, just as accident statistics should be related to hours flown, and numbers of landings, not just to the calender year.

As it is now, we get to hear individual cases (some folk delight in bagging out a particular brand) which cannot be extrapolated to give a realistic picture of reliability.

 

Since all failures should have been reported to RAAus, it would only take a modest data filter to provide a list of engine reported failures related to brand/model/hours in service.

This should not be "private" information, as it is the members that are contributing data to the RA-Aus, and as such you should have access to this information as much as you have access to a financial statement published every year, for the members perusal and for regulatory reasons.

Start at the front and work back

Props/Spinners (Inc Blades/CSU etc)

Engine (basic types)

Engine electrical (electric fuel pumps, alternator, plugs, EFI/ECU, "firewall forward"stuff)

Firewall forward mechanical (engine truss/nosewheel support)

Fuel system (tanks/hoses/clamps/hard lines/etc)

Analogue Gauges (plus lines and senders etc)

Avionics/electrical (interior switches/buss/circuit breakers/wire/looming suppliers, electronic senders, "firewall back" stuff)

Construction supplies (F/Glass, Wood, Aluminium, paint, etc)

Interior (general stuff - cushions, handgrips for control sticks, floor coverings, etc)

Clubs

Schools/Training organisations

Training information (books/DVD/etc)

Regional fuel providers and type of fuel supplied (linked to map?? ie YCAB Mogas/100LL fuel available from XXX company at YYY location during the hours of ZZZ am-pm. Contact Joe Bloggs on ph : 1234567)

Not sure if it is just me but the screenshot is not much bigger than the thumbnail - difficult to read

Hey Guys, Where do you start new forum threads? Thanks Dave.

If I have interpreted what you have said correctly then we already have something like that. Every post has a "Post-It Note" link in it. By clicking that you can create a post-it note of the post including any notes that you want to make about the post yourself plus make it public or private. If you then go to your Profile Details page you will see a tab that lists all your post-it notes in there.Is that the type of thing that you are hinting at

Ok, I have reverted the forums back to the way they were with the exception of the Aircraft section and the Special Interest section. I am so 50/50 on this which is why I continually called for comments. The way the extra user benefits that are coming to the site soon, are set up, depends so much on this decision so your comments are vital in the way the site moves forward.

Written Exam Prep: 1/2A = RTFQ

Half the answer equals read the full(*) question.

(*) "cleaned up" for public viewing, but you can guess the real word..

Out of curiosity, how many international (outside AU/NZ) members do you currently have?

Could you use a prefix in the url to determine region ie "au/recflying.com", "us/recflying.com", "uk/recflying.com" to tailor a list of available relevant subforums, and simply leave the "recflying.com" as an all visible? This would then break down the conflicts in trying to include everything, but give some regional "homeliness". Include a linked list of regions in the "recflying.com" home page.

You get to have your pie and eat it too...

:crying:why didn't you say this when I was calling for comment...good point and understand that but can I take it under advisement at the moment...and can I put to you the question of whether there would be interest on accidents in other countries? For example if there was a separate Accidents forum again, what would you think if there were mixed in there accidents from all around the world...or would you only be interested in accidents in Australia? There are more accidents in the US for example than in Australia and then add UK accidents in there as well not to mention those in South Africa.

I would think that the overseas information would be useful as most accidents have a wide cross section of interest and relevance in terms of human factors, environmental, and mechanical issues involved.

The Governing Bodies and Accidents forums have been merged into General Discussion

Having them separated means you also separated the "attitude" (for want of a better description) into "Dead serious" Accidents and Incidents, with minimal superfluous chatter and thread drifts, and "Almost anything acceptable" General threads where a more liberal approach to posting is welcome.

The other factor is now we actually have to search through pages of general chit-chat to see recent accidents and incidents, with the possibility of missing them altogether if you have not been on for a week or two and have not heard any rumblings to encourage your curiosity to search in the first place.

Having all the Accidents and Incidents in one place was a benefit not actually offered by RA-Aus at the moment - this forum was one of the very few places RA-Aus A&I's were talked about.

I accept that we may not have lost A&I's, but we have lost a good part of the functionality and ease of access to them. A&I's was one of those threads that you keep a general eye on once or twice a week.

"Search" only works when you know you need to search...

For want of a better description it is now not as "fail safe" as it probably should be in accessability

Totally left of field idea, but why not take the plans to a printer/vinyl cutter/signwriter (sticky label maker) and get them to make as many of the accurately sized stickers as you need and simply stick them on whatever you are cutting/shaping. Would be a good way of doing it if you have many of the items to cut to the same size such as ribs, etc...

Anyone in the kit manufacture area could possibly try this too...

This happens a lot in queensland with ceiling fans!

"Dumb and dumberer", in A&E nothing surprises you.....

Pure music with engines....

QA/QC/HACCP principles at play in the overall reliability.

Failure in anything from the basic metallurgy, through to selection of appropriate materials, then the engineering and manufacture, and then to the end user' treatment and maintenance of the engine will all have an effect on reliability long term.

There is one particular engine that may have a materials and design weakness causing issues.

I would question the claim of 18 litres/hour at 75% power, (which is about 96 HP, otherwise I'm not critical.Regarding the injection v.s carb. Clearly this engine need highly regulated fuel distribution to run well and cleanly. IF you are worried about injection system failure, it would be extremely simple to have a manual low pressure "limp home" alternative system added on that might not idle well but would be fine at just under normal cruise output. Nev

"Rotax killer..."