Head in the clouds

If you can do any training in it (which you most definitely can), you can certainly do 'type' or familiarisation flying in it. FYI there's no such thing as type training in RAA, unless it were for tailwheel, nosewheel, HP, LP etc and RAA choose to call them 'endorsements'. What drives you with all this negativity FT? It's quite bizarre ...

Hmm ... that doesn't make anything any clearer at all - does that make you a tennis player or a golfer? Ian, with the greatest respect (well you have to have respect for someone who puts a Rotax into a Jab), you don't seem to be aware of the 'innards' of your engine. You can find the 'llustrated Parts Catalog' online if you like and see page 3 of Section 72-10-00. Assuming one doesn't have one of the very earliest gearboxes it will have the 'With Clutch' shown there. I have not personally disassembled one of these 'boxes but I was told that that particular clutch is akin to a pair of wavy washers engaged with each other and they are constantly working while the engine is running, thereby absorbing the TV. You will probably be aware that other gearboxes that look outwardly similar to the Rotax 'box usually use a rubber donut arrangement for the same purpose. Contrarily, the 'slipper clutch', as you describe it above, is a wholly different thing altogether, and is also on many later engines (i.e. as well as - being 2 clutches in total - I do seem to recall when I bought mine it was an option to have the second clutch), and is the one you refer to which is there for the protection of the crankshaft in event of a prop-strike. It is not in the gearbox, it is in the crankcase on the output end of the crankshaft. It is a multi-plate clutch similar to a motorcycle clutch and can be seen in exploded view on page 10 of Section 72-10-00. Incidentally, and in case it is of any interest to folks ... I'm told that using avgas deposits so much lead oxide and other 'detritus' into the engine oil that the life of that oil-immersed clutch is almost halved from the usual 1000hrs to around 600hrs (this info from one of my most respected friends who has in excess of 10,000hrs flying behind Rotax in his flying school). It's worth considering that if that clutch wasn't ordinarily slipping then it wouldn't wear regardless of what's in the oil, I would have thought ... Hope it helps.

Welcome Elwarra. It's pleasing to hear of someone aiming to develop something new. I'm sure hybrids are worth pursuing. Personally I think the series hybrid has it over the parallel, but nonetheless I will be watching your approach with great interest. There has been a lot of discussion on the subject and of course there's plenty of prior art worth sifting through. I doubt you'll ever find a use for existing camping-style generators, the small ones at around 900W would be next to useless since the minimum useful power, even for a range extender, would need to be at least 15hp rather than less than 1hp and it would need to have a power-to-weight ratio around 10-12 times better than those generators. If you haven't already, I would recommend that you join the Ultra-Electric Facebook Group. Also, there is invaluable and very considered information in this thread - Hybrid Power: IC engine to generator to motor Good luck with it and please start a dedicated thread to tell us of your progress, I'm sure there are many here that could provide valuable input for you. A tip for you on that subject - make sure you choose a good thread title that will be easily searchable in future (give it some relevant tags for the search function too) because you can't change the title later, and I'm sure it will become a very popular thread and a valuable resource for the future.

Yes ... well if you found someone who has an RPC and is familiar with the Cheetah and has a pax endorse and is willing to be PIC then he doesn't need to be an instructor ... Depending on him/her and also on the flight manual he/she might have to be in the left hand seat. Some aircraft have both seats as command seats, some only the left seat. But some time for you in the right seat might be enough to get you familiarised enough?

Not quite sure what you mean by being 'checked off' but I'm guessing you mean you'd like someone to show you how to fly your own plane rather than the one you learned in? Because if you have an RPC you don't have to be endorsed onto a different type, though of course it's advisable if you're new and the type is very different from the one you trained in. Either way, you don't need an instructor, just someone who has a pilot certificate (so that they are allowed to handle the controls) and, in this case, preferably someone who has plenty of experience in a Cheetah. Should be a few of them around your area? Might be just a case of putting the word out without the requirement for them to be an instructor.

Hi Leigh, without more information probably no-one can tell you for sure. You need to rtfm (read the f... manual). BUT many (most perhaps) similar brake systems use transmission fluid and if you put brake fluid in them you'll be rebuilding your entire brake system in a week or two. So it'd be a good idea to be absolutely certain what fluid you're supposed to use. BTW - it's all to do with what the seals and O rings are made from ... Hydraulic mineral oil is easy to get from farm machinery suppliers, and is more like auto trans fluid than brake fluid. Hope it helps.

Good idea ... A few points to ponder though - Since the Rotax has a centring spigot for concentricity, your suggestion must be that the 'dogs' or dowels aren't doing anything at all, so why are they there? I haven't found anything that's on a Rotax for no reason. I did point out the much reduced TV issue due to either/both of the 'clutch' arrangements in the Rotax geardrives which would make the drive flange/prop hub interface much less likely to slip but I'd not be confident enough in that to remove the dowels and go for a fly - would you? If you wouldn't either then I'd guess you'd agree they must be there for a reason, and if so I'm surprised you're happy to encourage an admitted newbie to fly his with improperly engaged dowels. My C172 didn't have anything like you describe for mounting the prop. I'm not a LAME or AE either so I'll happily differ with you on this too Seriously though - I never was saying it's not a clamped-plate drive, that's obvious, but the dowels do serve a very definite purpose even if they're not solely resolving the TVs. Without the dowels the bolts would cant in the opposite direction to prop rotation under the combined effects of TV and torque. The dowels prevent this cant exceeding a certain value and they require bearing surface area to achieve that (the prop hub is aly after all, not steel). Using a 12mm spacer plate and allowing only 3mm of dowel engagement reduces that bsa by 80% which would allow the bolts to cant further, stretching the bolts, bending the bolts, wearing the prop hub further, allowing the bolts to cant further, stretching the bolts, bending the bolts, wearing the prop hub further, allowing the bolts to cant further, stretching the bolts, bending the bolts, wearing the prop hub further, allowing the bolts to cant further, stretching the bolts, bending the bolts, wearing the prop hub further, allowing the bolts to cant further, stretching the bolts, bending the bolts, wearing the prop hub further, allowing the bolts to cant further, stretching the bolts, bending the bolts, wearing the prop hub further, ... you get the drift.

Once the isolation ring was fully welded out I had to mount it 'somewhere in free space ahead of the firewall' where it needed to be to correctly position the engine. It isn't square to the firewall either, since the engine has 2 degrees of right thrust and one degree of down thrust whilst at the same time keeping the drive hub/spinner centred at the front of the cowling bowl. Those off-angles result in the isolation ring being displaced sideways and upwards as well as being angled. Gladly, determining the actual position and angles for it were relatively simple using and measuring off the CAD model, so I was able to make up a very simple jig with a couple of pieces of timber, some threaded rod and some 'dummy' universal rubber mounts machined up from aluminium - I couldn't use the real rubber mounts because the weld heat would destroy them while tacking. It was around this stage that I decided that the airbox which provides filtered or heated air to both of the carburetors was just too much trouble to be entertained. It interfered so much with the straight-line path of the legs from the firewall hard-points to the isolation ring (see pics in previous post to see how much room and access space the airbox takes up). My first path was to phone as many folks as possible to ask them about their real experiences with carby icing, particularly in the warmer climes, since I don't have much intention of flying in the southern parts. The outcome was that while icing seems rarer in the north, it might still be an issue on occasions, and of course once is one time too many. Options other than the airbox are a system using the engine coolant flowing through a couple of castings pressed onto the carby throat that heat the carby rather than the air, which is more efficient of course, and there's an electric heater system also available. The coolant-based system is US$400 so it's AU$500 landed here - I did find another source US$100 cheaper but they were out of stock - and that seems quite expensive for a couple of small castings and some tubing and barbs. Also, it's a system that is always 'on' which is fine but being 'set and forget' there's always the possibility that it might not be working when you need it. The problem is that since its tube diameters are very small they run in parallel with the normal coolant flow, rather than in series with it and apparently some folks have discovered a lack of flow at times due to collection of air in that part of the system. I preferred the electric system but was not convinced that their way of doing it is the best either ... so I've come up with my own unique system which I'll describe in detail later. The upshot, though, is that I had determined that I could do away with the airbox altogether and that made access between the firewall hard-points and the isolation ring very much simpler. So - I have a complete airbox and filter/butterflies/drip trays assembly for sale if anyone needs one, it cost $1000 or more but it could be had for much less now ... Once I had the isolation ring positioned, and the parts for the mount's legs made, I could trial fit them and adjust the threaded rod to get the exact position for the ring, so that all of the leg parts fitted accurately. Then it was just a case of tacking them all together. Before I could complete the welding, though, I had to remove the assembly from the firewall hard-points for easier access while welding, and also so that I didn't burn the paintwork behind the ss firewall. If I was to weld out the whole frame after simply unbolting from the hard-points, the welding heat and shrinkage would pull the frame badly out of shape, so I welded scrap bars to the mounting lugs around the perimeter of the frame and one diagonally across as a triangulated bracing. It all worked out well, when I re-installed the frame after welding the holes lined up within a millimetre or so and could easily be pulled exactly over the holes for bolting. Once I'd checked that I cleaned it all up and sprayed it with 2pak epoxy ready for the engine installation. Another 39hrs making a total of 1736hrs so far.

November 5th 2017. Time for an update or two - I scoured the fuselage skins as mentioned last post and then they sat on the bench covered with a tarp for four weeks waiting for a day when I had both time and suitable weather for spraying the primer on. That happened eventually and they're now on another bench awaiting the top-coat once I get the paint ordered. 4hrs in that for the log. Next it was time to start looking at mounting the engine. Some while ago I was fortunate to find a low-priced ring-mount advertised on the site here so I snapped that up. Originally I was going to use a bed mount as it has a few advantages, especially its forward structure which is handy for mounting the radiators but on the other hand it restricts access to the underside of the engine for maintenance and also gets in the way of the exhaust routeing so I guess it's a case of swings and roundabouts. It proved to be very fiddly to get the mount into position, I had to remove the wiring loom at the back of the engine, and also two of the ignition trigger units. At Bert flood's they say it can be done without that but I couldn't seem to find a way. Also, the left hand two elbows out of the water pump were set at an angle where their hoses clashed with the legs of the ring-mount, so they clearly had to be altered. A few phone calls to those in the know and I soon had the water-pump housing removed and carefully clamped in soft-jaws in the vise and the flame of the blow-torch carefully playing over the housing to soften the Loctite so I could rotate the elbows in their threads. It was a bit nerve-wracking, I didn't want to overheat the housing and warp it and neither did I want to put too much pressure on the elbows as they're very thin castings with a fine thread cut into them which further weakens them. Anyway, as soon as the housing was hot enough (very hot - probably around 150-180C) they moved quite freely. I ended up having to heat and adjust them at least half a dozen times. I was able to get the top left one set right quite easily but couldn't find any position at all which allowed the lower hose to miss the legs of the mount. Eventually I found and downloaded all the manuals for the engine, that included some I didn't know were available to we unwashed public ... the Heavy Maintenance Manual (for engine rebuilds rather than Line Maintenance), and the Illustrated Parts Catalog. The Parts Catalog revealed an elbow not fitted to my engine, of 80 degrees bend rather than 45 degrees, so I guessed that might be the answer to my problem. Bert Flood's agreed and had the new part available and it arrived by express the next day. All fitted and looking good now. There was some considerable difference of opinions about which Loctite to use to re-secure them, Floods, the Rotax manual and those who have completed the Heavy Maintenance Course with Rotax all had different answers, so I decided to go with the Rotax Manual ... except that particular Loctite number doesn't exist anymore. Further research revealed that all the Loctites in a particular class end up the same once cured, they're just different in the mode/method of application and the cure rate. So, I went with the 290 Wick-In type which was convenient because it is applied after screwing the fittings together and it migrates into the thread. It also cures slowly (24hrs for full cure), allowing plenty of time for fine adjustment. It's rock-solid now. Once the mysteries of the ring mount were solved I had to think about how I was going to attach that mount to the firewall frame incorporating the rubber universal mounts for isolating the vibration. The answer would be a similar ring mount with sockets for the rubbers, so I made up the parts, removed the ring-mount again to use as a jig and set it up on the bench for tacking. The pictures show the (white) ring mount being test-fitted to the engine, the problem with the water-pump elbows (on the left), and the first stages of making the isolation mount - Another 27hrs to that stage, making a total of 1697hrs so far.

Yes, they are an interference fit into the drive flange and a size-on-size fit into the prop hub. Rotax engines provide a further benefit because the internals of both types of gearbox provide a buffer between the TVs and the final drive flange. It's the TVs that are by far the worst with regard to the drive/driven slippage, rather than the torque alone.

Timber prop hubs are driven by friction but metal hubs have precision drilled and reamed holes for the dowels to aid the drive as well as the centring. It's doubtful that enough clamping pressure would be gained to drive a metal prop hub since the metal-to-metal friction coefficient is so low. And - add a loose spacer plate into the equation, providing two metal-metal interfaces, and the situation deteriorates further.

Ermmm, Brad, I think you're walking on thin ice here. I assume that's a factory-built Sting? If so (and/or if you aren't the original builder from plans or a kit) you can't make ANY kind of modifications without factory approvals and the associated documentation. If you do so anyway, you'd be voiding your insurance, the aircraft would be deemed unairworthy and so you'd be flying illegally, for which the penalties can include imprisonment. If the Sting is already available with the fixed pitch prop configuration you propose then it would need to be installed and signed off by an L2/L4 precisely to the factory spec and it sounds like that might be difficult if, in this case, the engine is positioned further aft (or the cowling further forward) to accommodate the CS unit FYI, though, simply adding a spacer plate between the drive hub and the prop hub is NOT how it's done. If you really needed as little as 10mm spacing the problem is quite complex and would probably be best achieved with spacers at the rubber engine mountings but that would also need an engineering order due to the increased bending loads on the mounting bolts, and it's not even possible to achieve if the mount is dynafocal rather than parallel. You can't drive the prop via the ends of the dowels. For one thing there wouldn't be enough bearing surface area, secondly the load applied to the ends of the dowels would be tending them to 'cant' and damage their bearing area in the drive hub and thirdly the dowels themselves are designed and rated to be operating in pure shear at the drive hub/prop hub interface, not to be operating in 'bend'. And fourthly - just try and imagine the effect of the 2700 (x2), or so, torsional vibration (TV) pulses being transmitted through those bending/canting/slipping dowels to your prop hub. You'd have oval holes, chewed out spacer plate and potentially a prop separation through broken prop bolts within minutes ... The proper way to space a prop is to have a spacer plate dowelled and bolted to the drive hub (just like a normal prop hub is) and then the spacer plate carries its own second set of dowels to which the prop hub is fitted and bolted. You can't just knock up one of those, it needs considerable design calculation. I've designed and made a few of them and they're not a five minute affair. IMHO the minimum thickness for the plate would be about 12mm but only if it was made from properly heat-treated carbon steel and that's a challenge, particularly keeping it flat during/after heat-treatment. To achieve the bolting the drive hub dowels and the spacer dowels have to be out-of-phase, so in operation the thrust is trying the pull the spacer into something the shape of a wavy spring washer, so the calcs involve ensuring that the plate is rigid enough to absorb and/or avoid that distortion - quite complex physics once you add the effects of TV. From 25mm or so thick, for the best combination of rigidity and weight the spacer plate is best made from 6061T6 aluminium alloy as a solid disc. Note all spacers, regardless of their length should be made from a solid billet, never built up from fabricated/welded components. From about 50mm long and upwards the spacer can be 'waisted' in the middle to reduce weight, but again, by how much - and how large a central hole may be - is a matter for careful calculation. IIRC the longest spacer for a 912 gearbox is 120mm but that is subject to Rotax's proviso on prop weights/inertal moments. That info is in the Rotax engine installation guide. Hope it helps, but I'd seriously suggest you wait for your prop repairs to be completed.

Amazes me to hear people talking about this 'temporary, hired fence' when, if we have look at the only pic posted of the whole fence it's quite clearly a recently installed PERMANENT fence with the poles concreted into the ground. Is there someone out there that thinks this fence was installed at the direction of RAA? Or that thinks it will be removed following this event? It clearly had to have been installed at the behest or insistence of the local authority i.e the airport operator. C'mon folks ... ffs, it's clear as dogs' whatsits that this fence was/is intended to be permanent given that there might be risks of people straying onto the airside, just like most/all other airports/strips - as they develop. As Poteroo said, just get over it - the fence didn't change anyone's experience unless they allowed it to do so - as others who attended have reported ...

Well actually, yes, I was at the first two of them from about 1989 ... following that I didn't have the opportunity because I went flying commercially for the next 15 years in the Kimberley and Arnhemland. I loved that of course but missed a lot of the social events in the meantime. Since returning from the north I've had family matters to attend to and been building again, DooMaw - my 'next big thing' bushplane, so I hope to see you all in the north in the next year or so I also still have all the 'patches' and trophy glasses from Mangalores from 1981-1987, Kingaroy Sun-and-funs in the 1980s, and among many others I went to the first and next 3 Inglewood flyins, and then a few of them around 2004 - 2008 so I'm well versed in what makes a flyin tick - or not ... And - frankly, it's not just fences, it's also the marshals, the towns-peoples' attitude, the ablutions, the food, the campfires and much more ...

Classic, love it!

Well, yes Bull, but, with all due respect I don't think you actually got bitten unless I missed something? Those who attended don't seem to have the same amount of upset about this fence that you have, and almost without exception they seem to have enjoyed the event regardless of that dastardly barrier. Either way, it's very good you've brought this issue to attention, I'd agree that high fences are totally unfriendly and absolutely not necessary as far as entry aspects are concerned. Honest people like to be shown that they're trusted, and dishonest people won't be stopped by a high barrier unless it extends around the entire airfield with armed guardposts at 50m intervals. Every industry allows for a percentage of lost revenue on a value-judgement basis - there's no point spending $10,000 extra in security to ensure $1,000 more in gate fees, after all ... Regional flyins are always more relaxed simply because they don't have the larger crowds which result in bigger risks and costs. It also has to be remembered that these 'national' events are mostly attended by newbies, so the risks are greater. The regional events tend to be only attended by 'old hands' so less supervision can be exercised. Either way, it's great to see that people are passionate about getting it right!

In my time flying helicopters in Arnhemland most of my duties were to do with ceremonial events and/or hunting/collecting croc eggs and the like. A fair percentage of the ceremonial side had to do with the funerals of celebrated elders and in that time I was involved with receiving around twenty coffins flown from the coroner in Darwin into Gove/Nhulunbuy in C210s and C206s. They didn't have to remove the co-pilot seat on any occasion that I recall. The coffin shown in the article linked above is uncommon, I've never seen one like that up there. The coffins up there were generally made as small as possible to fit the body because each funeral ceremony lasts for weeks and it's usually quite hot up there, so once received into the community the coffin is placed into an aluminium circular duct contraption which has a small aircon unit in it, recirculating cold air - a small enough unit to be run by a portable generator of only about 2KVA I would think, to keep everything 'fresh'. I attended several of the funerals on Elcho Island (where this one was bound) and what I describe above is typical there also ... so my two bob's worth is - ignore the suggestion of the coffin not having been properly secured or taking up pilot seat positions or the like. I'm not too surprised that after a wing apparently separated that the coffin wasn't found in the fuselage. It would most likely have been secured to four points by a cargo net which would have correctly satisfied the cargo securing requirement. If a wing separated it would reasonably be assumed that one wing separated first, since the 210 doesn't have a one-piece wing, each is attached separately, so if both have eventually separated there would likely have been a brief period of 'sycamore leaf' gyration before the second wing's separation which would very likely generate G forces sufficient to tear away cargo restraint points or the net itself break. There'll be a lot more to this event than meets the eye at this stage, I would suggest ...

From your comments Turbo, I rather think you might be referring to the 'Australia-wide world of Victoria', rather than 'Australia - wide'. From everything that I've experienced in regional areas, and even more so in remoter areas, motorsports just don't exist anymore, except, where the tracks might still remain, as an occasional travelling circus of semi- or full-time professionals, much like the V8s. The reasons cited for the closing of the previously weekly events was the increased cost of event insurance and dwindling spectator patronage for three reasons - their isolation from the action by layers of catch fencing at the insurers' insistence, huge gate fee increases and predatory police surveillance over drivers departing the venue. Try a fact-finding trip around the outback and see how many motorsport events you can attend ... The only places you'll still find them is in major mining towns where the only competitive contenders are the long-term mine managers who have the pay packet to afford it ... Entry level? ... nope!

I'm really sorry to hear of your wife's injury, but with respect, that has nothing to do with it. There would have been several options available to you to avoid being out of pocket after the event, without having to sue anyone. For a start, if you paid for your travel with a credit card you would have been covered for any medical expenses and increased travel costs and/or accommodation costs due to the injury, from travel and medical insurance provided free by most reputable credit card providers, provided that the cost of the travel exceeded $500 in total. Or - you could have taken out travel insurance which would cover it, frankly I'd not travel abroad without health/injury cover at the least because medical costs for non-nationals are exorbitant in most countries. Seriously though - had this happened in Australia would you have sued the owner of the concrete step?

You'd have to be nuts or know nothing about metallurgy to use ss rivets (or any ss fasteners) with aluminium. If you need a stronger pull rivet you'd use monel (cupro-nickel) preferably with an electrical insulation medium like Duralac but that's not absolutely essential unless it's to be immersed in seawater. It's standard procedure in yacht fittings for 50+ years ... but put ss and aly together and the aly will start corroding immediately.

So when will we all stand up and say "enough is enough" and demand that Australia follows New Zealand's lead and separate ourselves from the USA's model of litigation for anything and everything? It'd be an uphill road to get the legislation through parliament since half the politicians are former lawyers (and thereby benefit from the current position that they introduced) but NZ managed it - it's virtually impossible to sue anyone over there now. If we kept in mind that one party or another will see the value if enough people lobby. Perhaps we'd just need a Change.org or SumOfUs.org campaign to get things rolling? Imagine - we could have local speedway events again and get the loonatics off the roads, local fun car rallys, amateur boat races, flyins like 30 years ago, without all the BS ... all the things we used to have before the threat of litigation for a cut finger made the event insurance too expensive and they all closed down because of that.

Own-design, plans-built and kit-built are all 19-xxx as far as I know. Unless they're single-seat 95.10 category which are 10-xxx.

I'd seriously suggest that anyone who has any doubts about whether they can complete any part of a flight (i.e. all of the flight - takeoff, climb-out, cruise, approach and landing) without an ASI, might spend a bit of time practicing. At the very least take a sticky card disc along on your next BFR and get your instructor to use it to cover the ASI for a few complete circuits, you'll be surprised how well you can do without the ASI when you have to. It'll give you more confidence to handle the situation when the day comes that a bug blocks your pitot - it does happen, my first one was a part of a grasshopper when I unwittingly flew through a plague of them. On the same subject, it's quite surprising what instrumentation you can manage without when you have to - even more so with a bit of practice beforehand. That practice allows you to recognise other influences which provide clues for filling in the gaps. In helicopters one of the most feared instrumentation losses is the rotor tacho. You're supposed to keep the rotor rpm at 100% pretty much all the time and the knowledge that 104% imposes almost double the centrifugal loading (IIRC it's about an extra 40 tonnes per blade on a Jetranger ...) and anything over 104% brings on a red light on the panel which can't be extinguished for less than about $80,000 due to required replacements of overstressed components. And - there's the opposite scenario, where a 6-8% droop of rpm in autorotation allows the blades to cone upward and is borderline on ever being able to recover. On one occasion I was flying a KH4 (Kawasaki-built 4 seat variant of the Bell 47) when the rotor tacho needle dropped to zero. I was happy that the KH4 is a piston machine and consequently has two needles on the same instrument, the other being the engine rpm (they have both needles overlaid so that you can see whether drive belts, or the sprague clutch might be slipping/failing, and the like). I mentioned to my passenger (the owner of the aircraft) that we'd have to make an immediate landing if the other needle failed, as it was the only information I had left, from which to form opinion about the rotor rpm. Typically, that second needle then also dropped to zero. The aircraft owner was/is a very 'insistent' type who wouldn't hear of landing in remote bushland 30 miles or so from any settlement, so I bit the bullet and concentrated hard on the 'sound' of the rotors and engine and it quickly became apparent that I could detect the change in sound with increase and decrease of rpm better than I'd ever noticed before. Nonetheless I was happy to get on the ground half an hour later. But that wasn't the end of it. On arrival we found that the owner's 2yr old had fallen gravely ill and, after consultation over the HF, had to be transferred to hospital urgently. It was a 4-5 hour 4WD drive on very rough tracks or about 40mins by helicopter. I had no choice but to declare a mercy flight, refuel and get on with it. Once I knew I had to ignore the lack of rpm indication, it became quite easy to just fly to the familiar engine note and rotor beat. Following that I made a habit of relying less on the tachos and more on my 'senses' and using the instrument to check on myself, rather than to monitor quite so regularly - and that reduced my workload a little, providing more time for other needs.

Here is the current issue of 95.10 If he was flying it in Australia he didn't require a pilot licence, but he did require a recreational pilot certificate (RPC), issued by either RAA or HGFA, and the aircraft was required to be registered by one of those Approved Self-Administering Aviation Organisations. As WayneL mentioned, he should have training, pilot and aircraft logs, and if the plane was built in the last 15 years or so, there should also be a log of the build. Lacking any of the above it would be possible 'old mate' either acquired the plane just before moving to UK, or had been flying it 'out bush' without the required documentation.

Brad Turner (APF & former captain of the Australian skydiving team which won the World Titles around 1988) was just on the news saying that the videos stopped after the free-fall meet-up but prior to the collision, which is very unfortunate, making it much less likely that they'll be able to determine the exact sequence of events that caused this horrible outcome. So sad for the families of all concerned.