Head in the clouds

I don't think any of these 3 would increase safety at all. I don't see people currently experiencing safety issues for lack of these, so how could they increase safety? All they would do is to encourage people to fly when they wouldn't otherwise, because of inclement weather, and that's likely to decrease safety rather than increase it. Also - considering that aviation is a user-pays activity, you can be certain that access to CTA would come with an increase in costs one way or another. I don't see why the majority of RAAus members, who would never use CTA anyway, should share the cost with the few who appear to want to use their recreational aircraft as commuters. So, should you hypothetically be given access to CTA with a Rec pilot certificate, how much would you be prepared to pay for each use of it? I can't imagine there would be much change out of $60 per incursion, if only on the basis of discouraging excess traffic. Would you be happy to pay that? I don't personally think people with a pilot certificate will ever get access to CTA, and nor will aircraft without certificated powerplants. The closest might be people flying an LSA with a certificated powerplant, and who also hold a licence rather than a certificate. And, on your third point, how would an increase in MTOW increase safety? To be able to increase safety we have to look at what's actually killing people. Statistically it's lack of sufficient training in the stall/spin situation, poor decision-making in terms of inadvertently flying into IMC, and hooning around low-level. So my three points to increase safety would be - 1. Mandatory spin training for all pilots, with refreshers at every BFR. 2. RAAus produce an entertaining one day training course about weather-related issues and how they affect pilots, with videos and real-life stories from those who have stuffed up and lived to tell the tale, and take it on a national-wide tour with compulsory attendance by all pilots. I know it sounds a bit harsh but I know a lot of flyers who have very little understanding of how weather works. 3. Crack down on hooning and increase the penalties. Every time someone hits a powerline or tree or aerobats into the deck it seriously affects our public profile and is potentially another nail in the recflying coffin.

That's unlikely, they're busy people and stretched. The Australian personal tax system is largely based on honesty, so the OP could always fill in his own tax return dishonestly and hope for the best. But no tax accountant would provide him with what he hoped for. The problem with dishonest tax returns is that they never expire, unlike business documentation which has only to be archived for 5yrs, a dishonest tax return can bite you 20yrs or more later, and the penalties are massive, and they compound. That's what allows the system to exist, based just on honesty ... and life-destroying penalties. Fancy retiring with a comfortable nest-egg and the ever-increasing software search technology finds that you didn't declare a profitable investment property sale 25 years ago. Say you made just $50K on the deal. The penalties for not declaring the tax liability are huge in the first year. Say you should have paid CGT of 12.5% if you'd owned it for more than 1 year, then that approx $7K of unpaid tax would, with penalties, have grown to millions in 25 yrs. More than just about anyone's Super account ... Good luck with ever sleeping well to anyone who doesn't give unto Caesar that which belongs to Caesar ...

Hi Matt. Don't shoot the messenger OK? I see where you're headed with this, but best you be prepared for a disappointment. My wife is a commercial accountant and now furthering her career by completing a masters degree and a fair bit of that study during the last two years has been to do with Australian tax matters of all types. I was (also) very surprised to hear that what I'm sure you're hoping for isn't permissible. The long and short of it is that if you're paying money for courses of any kind that further your paid career then it's tax deductible, but if you're not already employed in that environment, and taking courses or study to be able to gain employment in a new arena, then it's not deductible. You don't need a tax accountant that's 'an aviation specialist' to tell you this, the same applies to whatever field of endeavour that interests you. For example - a person living in Melbourne wants to become a hairdresser, so they pay $5000 to take a course in Brisbane to learn the basics of hairdressing. None of those expenses are tax deductible, ever, cannot even be carried forward. The same person is already a junior hairdresser but wants to improve their position and work in a better salon. He/she takes a course in Brisbane. The costs of the course, the hotel costs, the flights, reasonable costs for living away from home, are all tax deductible because that person is already working in that field and is taking further education to improve their position. In your case, as a PPL, you cannot be employed in any aviation/flying position. You can fly a skydiver's plane and you can fly some aerial work on stations but you cannot be paid to do that so you are not 'employed' in aviation, you might be being paid as an assistant at a skydiving centre and part of your duties are flying, or similarly being paid as a stockman on a station some of which requires flying the station plane, but you cannot be employed as a pilot, so your further training to become a commercial pilot cannot be tax deductible. Sorry, I feel your pain ... On another note, why do you want to get a commercial licence and also an instructor rating? Are you a multi-thousand hour PPL wanting to pass on your decades of experience? If not, why not just get your comm licence and go and get some real-world experience so that you have something worthwhile to pass on to your students? This nonsense of students becoming instructors to build hours has to stop, it's why we have so many timid instructors ...

Launch and onboard video of an amateur rocket that reached 121,000ft in 60 seconds. Impressive stuff!

Is it Toowoomba?

All this discussion about location for a national fly-in is all very well but it's been discussed at great length a couple of times in the last two years or so and at least one particular contributor still seems locked onto the idea that it needs to be near to what he believes is the majority of the RAAus members/flyers. Unless things have changed while I wasn't looking I'm pretty sure that the majority are not in New South Wales or Victoria, they're actually in Queensland, co-incidentally where the State of Origin Trophy also lives. In fact when a count-up was done there were as many members and planes in Queensland, as in Vic and NSW combined ... that may have changed but if it has no-one has told me. The reason that we up here are quite happy for you down there to have our national fly-in nearer to you is that over the years we've come to realise that you mob don't really like flying very far and that's because it's all quite cramped down there and you're not used to big wide open spaces and all that. Of course there are a few who have spread their wings previously and have experienced the great outdoors, we call them the metal men of the world, but for one reason or the other they've had to migrate back down to the microcosm, but they still delight in re-living their adventures of yesteryear and so a gentle 5-6 hour hop is spent as it should be, enjoying the journey, rather than worrying about the destination.

Flying west to east is quite as OK as doing it east to west but if you're planning to then go on down the west coast you'll be flying a lot of extra hours doing Kun-Broome direct twice, mind you the inland fly is great too and if you only fly coastal you'll have missed that. In any case you need to spend time well inland to see places like Argyle diamond mine, Purnululu (the Bungle Bungle range), Wolfe Creek crater, the King Leopold range and various gorges therein. However - the very mention of wifey on the right and filming to the left suggests you're still thinking that you'd be flying the coast and keeping Oz on your left whereas it just won't happen that way unless you want to be vulnerable for more than 95% of the trip. I can assure you that even if you like to fly as I do and prefer not ever to be vulnerable (i.e. nowhere to go in event of engine failure), flying that region there will be more than enough 'uncomfortable' time even with the best pre-flight route planning unless you stay above 8000ft for much of the time, and that would make the scenery much less enjoyable. As you investigate your route via Earth you will find that not all of the coastline is 'spectacular' by a long way, like most other rugged regions there are 'special places' and you should plan to see them as excursions from your safe route north and then west. For instance, departing Wyndham there's only Cambridge Gulf to see in the first half hour and it's best seen from high up to properly appreciate its majesty where five of Australia's larger rivers reach a confluence forming extensive whirlpools, creek and mangrove lined mudflats as far as the eye can see. If you track to the mouth of the Gulf there's little else to enjoy and much risk for lack of safe outlanding places so the better approach is to aim to meet the coast halfway to the Berkeley river mouth where precipitous cliffs edge the plateau. With good fuel and happy Ts and Ps the only way to enjoy that section is to get down low and trust the machine for a few minutes while you track north with nowhere to go if it goes quiet. Certainly the filming will be to the left in that area. Within minutes the coast turns hard left into a large horseshoe and so you will have land on your right and left, and there are a couple of short gorges that you're bound to track up and down again, so your filming will be in all directions - just don't fall into the spiral dive/stall/crash trap trying to turn ever tighter onto a Kodak opportunity, remember to fly away from the target shot, turn back and approach to one side of it - and that'll be how you get your images of most of the classic Kimberley spots, not by just having the camera person on the 'Australia side'. The next really picturesque place is the Berkeley river, a long mangrove estuary that becomes an ever-tightening gorge, then the freshwater rockbar/tidal falls and a larger falls higher up. You'll fly up the river then back down it again as there's nothing of any consequence after the falls. So the camera person will see all of it on their side as you fly up the gorge and back again. Just north of the Berkeley mouth are some large and impressive sand blows but then there's nothing much else until you reach the mouth of the King George, so you might as well just track high and direct to the mouth and then once again track the gorge to the falls and back. From there probably fly high and direct to Faraway and then the same again to Kalumburu via a look at the rivers and eastern edge of the bay to the north. There's no point in tracking coastal around the northern cape, nothing better to see than you'll already have seen. Years ago I opened up visits to Truscott, I don't know what the go is now but if you can get permission to land and/or stay overnight it's a quite well preserved WW2 airbase with some fascinating history and an abundance of relics to seek out. I spent a few weeks there initially, mapping a lot of the relics and probably only found half of them, they extend all over the peninsular and are in remarkably good order. They include the well known ones nearby, officers mess, latrines, truck workshops, the airstrip of course and taxyways, revetments, armoury, several crashed planes including fighters, a couple of Ansons, a couple of B24s, C47s, a DC3 etc, further out there is the fuel dump and several AA batteries, searchlight batteries and so on. Much further north are parts of a B24 which dead-sticked onto a claypan after bombing Iwo Jima, IIRC, shooting down a Zero and running out of fuel about twelve miles out. It damaged the noseleg and props and was repaired onsite and flown out again, the damaged bits are still there as well as the nose turret and bullet casings, and the 'camp' used while repairing it. I learnt about the existence of a lot of this stuff from the actual former engineers, air and ground crew who built and manned the place because we flew them back and accommodated them there in 1995 for a reunion and the dawn service on ANZAC day. What a bunch of treasures those fellas are and were. I won't try and detail the whole of the rest of the trip for you but I think you get the gist of it. Down the west coast there are even fewer potential outlandings in some areas, in a fixed-wing you pretty much have to fly high from place to place. Mitchell Plateau airport is the next stop after a lap around the falls, then there's nowhere much on-track to land before Derby, if you go down anywhere along there it would be another coffee-royal affair if you were high at the time and able to get to a clearing of some kind, or statistics if not. The Prince Regent is the absolute jewel in the Kimberley crown but there is nowhere to land a plane at all, just huge rock cliffs and boulders and deep chasms and gorges. The river is the longest straight river on Earth because it's an open fault-line, consequently the entire area is broken ground. Horizontal falls is worth a look if you get there during the tidal rip and the Archipelagos are beautiful from high up. As far as filming is concerned, consider building an active gimballed external camera mount. For professional film work I used to rent a Continental mount which mounts to the front of a Jetranger by removing the LHS chin bubble. The camera was then traversed and elevated remotely using a joystick via push-pull cables. Since the camera operator's eye was remote from the camera, in the early days it was guesswork exactly where the camera was pointing so most aerial shots were done wide-angle. Later we found a tiny 'spy' camera and mounted that on top of the mainVideo (or 35mm movie) camera, and connected that to a small monitor in the cabin, so that performed as an accurate viewfinder and allowed use of some zooming of the main camera. Given the image stabilisation of video cameras these days you could do some remarkable cinematography with a small remote controlled camera (my little Nikon can be controlled via wifi and/or bluetooth, using my smartphone as the controller), and it wouldn't be hard to build a small gimballed mount that could be driven by tiny stepper motors instead of push-pull cables, and controlled by a custom written smartphone app. I wonder how many of those you could sell? Russ - I've sent you a PM as well ...

It's a shame you don't live a bit south of Brisbane Sean, I'd give you some paid work helping me build DooMaw, and teach you some valuable aviation-related skills at the same time, and you would get to fly the plane when it's done. Why would I do that? Because I don't think there are enough younger folk with get-up-and-go these days, and I'd love to encourage more of it. The point is, if I would do that, so will many others, so do as Robbo suggested above. I know of a number of commercial pilots who started their careers with no money but by walking into an aviation maintenance facility and asking if they could sweep the floor for free - just so they could see some planes up close. In all cases the answer was 'no' funnily enough, so they went back the next day and asked the same question, and the same each day until inevitably the owner saw the determination and they started work that day. Good luck Sean, nothing other than Persistence and Determination will guarantee you a job in aviation.

As you're well aware, the Top End is the best part of the country by a long way, Russ, and I'm sure you're very aware that it's also the least forgiving if anything goes wrong. The first and latter parts of your trip should be easy enough, NQ to Wyndham is easy if you more-or-less follow the highway as it follows the tablelands and there are plenty of grasslands and claypans on which to put down if you have to, even for a small-wheeled aircraft. Be aware of three things mainly - most of the grassland is infested with termite mounds which are like concrete blocks if you hit one, much of the grasslands are blacksoil which turns to slippery and deep bogholes with just a few millimetres of rain, and many teardrop-shaped apparently clear areas are only temporarily clear due to bushfires either from lightning strikes or Aboriginal burn-offs. Those recently burnt areas can be covered in fire-hardened sharp stakes where scrub bushes have burnt away leaving just the stump, that's mainly to the West of the Stuart Highway in the Tanami, and is what caused the demise of Anderson and Hitchcock and the loss of the Kookaburra during the search for Kingsford-Smith in the 'Coffee-Royale' affair. So the point is, don't just look for clear areas as you cruise along, study the surface of them very carefully using binoculars if you're high. From Wyndham to Broome is another kettle of fish entirely. About 80% of my flying was spent along that coastline, and while it is undeniably one of the most spectacular areas to see, it can also be very challenging - and all my flying around there was in turbine helicopters which provide a level of reliability that is thousands of times higher than a single piston engined plane, and also has hundreds of times more emergency landing opportunities than a plane, in the unlikely even that one might be needed. In fact in 13yrs full-time up there I only had 3 unscheduled landings, one for a tailrotor problem and two for hydraulics problems, so in all cases I was able to continue for a short while to a suitable landing area, and suitable in those cases all involved finding a small flat bit of rock on a high pinnacle, not something you could consider for a fixed-wing. The above is not to suggest you can't fly a plane around the Kimberley coast quite safely, you can, and people do it up there every day. What it does suggest though, is you must do some very careful study for your route planning, you shouldn't just plan to keep Australia on your left because much of the coastline is unlandable, and there are extensive areas with no beaches, just rugged cliffs and huge broken boulders. There are many inlets, creeks and large rivers, all are crocodile habitat and the flats all get inundated by the large tides twice a month, so even though they look hard they are often boggy and unsuitable for landing except up at their highest edges, some of the time. The area is a paradise for floatplanes (any Jabs on floats?) but more than a few have been sunk while moored overnight at idyllic rockbars at the top of the saltwater reaches, because crocs like to chew on unfamiliar objects in their territory. Talking of floatplanes and that particular trip, have you seen the documentary called Flight of the Pelican (IIRC) about three floatplanes that flew the coast of Australia? The best time to see the Kimberley coast is just after the wet season, so your chosen time is near ideal, when the waterfalls and fishing are at their best. However, where the north is concerned you really can't plan for a fixed itinerary. Even when I had scheduled helicopter safari departures to brochure and take bookings I had to always have the early season ones (the best of them) on notice for moving their dates forward or back, and those changes might be as much as six weeks according to the great annual variation in the length and strength of the wet season. One thing you really don't want to do is get caught in late wet season thunderstorms along that remote coastline. Storms aren't often accurately forecast, they can develop very rapidly and it can be frightening enough in a helicopter where you can set down and ride it out, but potentially deadly in an aeroplane, especially if you lack the fuel range to turn around from near your destination and run away from it, all the way back to your departure point if necessary, and that's if the storm lines haven't cut you off behind. So - you should really plan your trip for reaching Kununurra not before the beginning of April and be prepared to delay the Kun to Broome part until the weather is perfect and safe for the remote regions. And - if you have to hang somewhere for a month at that time of year, I can't think of a better place than Kununurra ... These days Google Earth is an absolute blessing for planning remote area flights and for the Kimberley you could spend many days checking all the possibilities and eliminating a lot of the hazards from your route. A good small survival kit is essential, we had a thread about them a while back, with some good contributions - Survival Pack Also, a satphone is essential as radio coverage is poor up there, even if you have an HF its coverage is patchy and often overwritten by unlicenced operators, mainly Indonesian fishing boats. I have a small (large mobile phone size) satphone which I always carry when in remote areas. Even though the place is abundant in terms of food and water as long as you know how to fish and hunt, a satphone will save your life if you are injured because you can get help very quickly since there are so many helicopters up there, all are used to despatching at a moment's notice, when needed. I won't be using it until DooMaw is flying so you are very welcome to borrow the satphone for your trip if you like.

Is there actually a Drifter share for sale at the moment? Seems like the reference to the share sale was back in May wasn't it?

As far as I know, which is largely based on assumption admittedly, they use billet 6061T6. However they have a remarkable history of safe operation and hso is the foundation on which Experimental aircraft are built. I'd certainly agree that forged castings might be better but if the billet is working fine why go to the additional expense? High costs are already killing us, why add more to the costs, when what we have is already working well? The hub that is the subject of this thread appears to have worked fine for a good and long life, then showed that it's tired and 'had it' without failing and shedding a blade. Who could ask for anything more? Also I don't think Bolly needed to have replaced it after all these years but it does show their good faith and determination to protect their brand. All kudos to them.

A mighty long time ago ... when fuel there wasn't much more than in Kuwait IIRC. I missed the point anyway, the sign wasn't Fuel 'up here', it meant Fuel-up here ... too early in the morning I guess.

Yes ... but with our dollar at 70c of their dollar they're actually paying 100÷70×$1=AU$1.43 per litre, about the same as here, which is pretty exy by USA standards. 'Up here' on their sign might mean it's in Alaska or nearby.

Yes, I know what you're getting at, and that this contrivance is technically a helicopter but sadly it's doomed to failure as far as being a practical aircraft. There's good reason why helicopters have collective pitch control in particular, and cyclic control also. Power changes just don't cut it when it comes to quick and precise changes to lift requirements, or directional requirements, as can be seen by the mushy drifting up and down and inability to arrest the descent (imagine it trying to stop a high rate of descent) and the poor positioning control even in nil wind conditions. The idea of power variation with fixed pitch airscrews to control lift and direction was tried extensively using gangs of petrol engines and eventually abandoned due to the throttling response rate being far too slow for effective control. Electric motors certainly have a great advantage when compared with petrol engines in a similar configuration, because electric motors produce full torque regardless of rpm or load, even if fully stalled (i.e. prevented from turning), so their response to changed power settings is very quick, but not nearly quick enough for a practical helicopter unless the power to weight ratio is massive. And that massive power/weight ratio is why scaling model drones into person carrying vehicles just doesn't work. The drone's performance is beyond dramatic and impressive but as the weight comes up to person-carrying size, the motors and batteries must increase in size to the power of 4 to keep the performance similar.

Um - no, he's built a man carrying drone that has 54 electric motors without cyclic or collective functions. A long way from being a helicopter, as the video shows. Good try but ...

I quite agree. I just bought a brand new three blader from Bolly with oversize hub to swing 74". It doesn't come with any form of warranty or guarantees other than statutory ones plus whatever Craig and Peter would reasonably provide. Nonetheless I'm quite confident that if a defect was found they would make good. However had I allowed it to become old, corroded and clearly poorly maintained, would it be reasonable of me to expect them to keep on making good forever? Of course not. I mean - the hub that is the subject of this thread has no maintenance records, no-one knows remotely how old it is, who last torqued it, or to what values, let alone who did so for the last ten or fifteen years. Do people seriously think the new owners should be held responsible for this? These are Experimental aircraft parts and consequently they are way cheaper than Certificated aircraft parts. Try buying a certificated 74" CF adjustable pitch three blader for $1800, it'd be more like $10K I would surmise. And then it would be time-lifed and hours-lifed so you'd have to chuck it away at probably half the hours for which the one in this thread provided sterling service. Careful what you wish for and all that ... When props and engines and other critical components get old in Experimental aircraft it doesn't mean we should just keep using them just because there aren't particular requirements to retire them. It's up to us to make good and subjective decisions about the condition of our components, and when it's time, replace them ... we shouldn't be waiting for them to fail to give us a clue about their condition - or expecting the factory to make good after we've had years of good use out of them.

Done.

Sincere condolences to Pud's family and friends and thoughts are with you too Riley. It's mighty tough when you lose good mates. Sorry for you. I think it'd be nice if we at Recflying could send some flowers for the funeral, perhaps some members might care to chip in a few dollars for that? Would you consider organising that Riley? We could send something to you through Paypal or a deposit to your account perhaps? If a few send just $5 or so it would make enough for a nice floral tribute.

And what makes you think there isn't a lot more of it happening? We only get to hear about the ones that are apprehended ...

My students were noticeably divided into those who considered flying to be an art and those who thought of it as a science. The art oriented ones learned to fly quickly and well, and although it was part of the curriculum, they never really needed to understand the science. The science oriented ones tended to be slower to learn each discipline. I think they held themselves up, forever worrying about the minutiae instead of grasping the overall concept. Interestingly, once they learnt the art, they began to understand the science. I'm a mixture of both, but generally science oriented ...

Yes, please don't think my earlier post was suggesting anything otherwise Maj. Your reputation for good and accurate work spreads far and wide. My comments related to whatever may have happened elsewhere in the past.

I couldn't agree more, I'd say Peter and Craig have to be the most supportive aviation component suppliers I've dealt with, in 40yrs of sport and commercial operations. I'm sure they'll provide valuable insights into what actually happened - far better than our speculation.

Are there any records detailing the torque to which the bolts were set 100 hrs ago? As I mentioned previously, and if my learning is correct then cracks always propagate progressively, so a sudden change starting from and only during the previous 10% of the hub's life indicates something has changed dramatically. Whether intergranular corrosion played a part, I'd have to say probably, because intergranular stress is a certainty, given the likely/almost certain billet orientation and the loads applied by the bolts against the butt of the blade. If I had to provide an opinion from what I learned dealing with rotor blade cracks, I'd have to suggest that the bolts might have been over-torqued last service. Note that there is a gap between the hub halves so there is nothing to prevent distortion of the hub reacting between the bolts' pressure against the 'solid' blade boss.

No, depending on the application it makes an immense difference to the airflow into the cooling ducts, and this is particularly important during the high-power, low-speed climb after takeoff. Some types (low climb speed STOL types for example) will overheat very quickly in the climb if the spinner is not fitted. I don't think spinners make any difference in the cruise, they're not a 'streamlining' thing unless the airframe nose is quasi-circular and the spinner diameter matches that, like the Bugatti perhaps... in which case the spinner has little to do with the cooling aspects and much more to do with reducing form and friction drag.

Well, I don't know if that particular aircraft has a spinner or not, perhaps not, judging by the rusty bolt heads, but if not then you'd have thought the cracks would have been noticed earlier. My point was that the majority of 95.55 aircraft these days do seem to have spinners, as mine will, and the spinner would cover the hub and prevent the cracks being seen however meticulous the pre-flight inspections. And - unless owner/builder or L2 the pilot shouldn't remove the spinner to check. Hence I'm glad this has come to my notice as I have the new extra large hub to swing a 74" 3 blade Bolly so the pitch will be set quite fine and consequently plenty of thrust load on the hub from the long blades. Also I'll be very careful not to overtighten the blade clamping bolts which is quite tempting to do since the proper torque (about 110 inch pounds from the Bolly instructions IIRC) never seems quite enough ...