68volksy

Personally I find the "you must make it back to the strip" mentality very frightening in most situations. There are just too many variables to consider. I think it better to train to be able to select the best field you can at any given time. If you're far enough along downwind then it might be the runway you took off from. Sometimes it's the cross-strip. The data says that the vast majority of engine failures in the circuit occur on take-off or initial climb-out and if you try to make the strip in these instances you're generally committing suicide. Engine failures half way along downwind seem to be very heavily practiced and but if you look at the data all that training is pretty much redundant. PFL's on downwind are more about practicing glide approaches rather than practicing for engine failures in the circuit.

Maintenance costs? The grass has been fully mown twice in the past 12 months and apart from that there's no maintenance to be done. Council resealed the runway at a cost of about $450k prior to signing over the lease so it's good for many years. He's not a councillor but has some very good "friends" on Council staff is the general feeling. One or the other has been trying to "sell" it to him since 1996 when it was given to Council from the Commonwealth. He was meant to have paid $250k for the "Option to Purchase" however from what I can tell no money changed hands but a "Guarantee" of some sort was put in place. The whole deal was unbelievably complicated considering it was really only the sale of a 40 hectare parcel of land!

Hi dodo, Hangerage from $40-70 per week. Landing fees are as arranged with the guy currently leasing the airport from Council. For the school it's $20 every time we call full stop - for everyone else it's different (some of the RA-Aus guys haven't paid a cent). Parking on the grass is $6 per day (only paid parking in Goulburn!) with an annual fee as arranged with the lessee. Stable is the real question. Current guy is leasing airport for $500 per year from Council and has an option to purchase the airport which he has not yet taken up. The option expires next September (2013) as does the current lease. If he finds $2.5million to exercise the option then things will no doubt change. If he doesn't the council will figure out another way of trying to sell it to him...

You could use the interest rates instead of the opportunity cost. Just be careful as many people factor in the loan repayments and not just the interest portion. Loan repayments very useful if comparing these things on a cashflow basis though. Depreciation is a funny one really. For the GA aircraft we don't factor any in at all. The depreciation above was included for a new J170. We also assumed that after the initial loss the depreciation would decreases substantially. We were a little in the dark about appropriate depreciation for the Jabiru. For the Warriors there's 60 years of data out there so it's very straight-forward. Personally I'm a bit dubious that a Jabiru would still be 100% after 20,000 hours of flying so a depreciation rate to factor that in would be appropriate. The opportuntiy cost is a very important factor if cross-hiring the aircraft as it allows for the aircraft owner to make a margin they consider appropriate.

That's the simple list (this one actually prepared by a guy we cross-hire an aircraft from). We have a spreadsheet where we plug in the different annual hours and it spits out the hourly cost for us. We use this to determine the break-even hours and then can play with the margins until we get the figures we're comfortable with. We work backwards in that we determine the profit that we need to make in order to justify the work we put in (determined the type of business and hours of work that was desired as part of this). We then work the margins towards gaining that figure and add the instructor pay rates on top.

Non-Cash Costs Opportunity Cost (6% of $65,000) Depreciation (variable based on hrs) Cash Costs Registration Insurance Engine Overhaul Sink Fund (1,500 hrs) Propellor Sink Fund (2,000 hrs) 25 hour Oil & Filter Change (L2) 100 hourly (L2) 200 Hourly (L2) Engine 500 hour top end overhaul Maintenance (ADs, tyres, Instruments, Misc) Hangar hire (month) Fuel 15L/hr @ $2.30

My current line of thinking is a community title subdivision with a detailed governing document. Every landholder gets a say in how things are run with a limit on amount of votes/land for each landholder all established with a clear and simple purpose in mind (such as maintenance of two cross strips for the use of light aircraft). We are only 1 hour from Canberra where there are a lot of ultralight/light aircraft owners.

Won't be long before we'll need the clubs again in order to have somewhere to fly from. It's already starting to happen with the shutting of Hoxton Park and the difficulties at Bankstown spawning more interest in Mittagong and the Oaks which are both club-run. Also Forbes is club-run. Goulburn looking more and more inhospitable. Now paying parking fees of $6/day if you dare park on the grass and not in the hanger and landing fees for the school going from $700 per annum to over $16,000... They're forced to pass the increased costs on so it's the students and guys hiring the planes that really suffer. Unfortunately it seems the only option to secure a flying future in the region is to try and find a club/community title structure that actually works and then head towards funding our own field. At least with the $16,000 per annum minimum we're looking to collect off students/hirers it makes the budgeting process a little easier (at least we know the loan we can afford!)...

We've done detailed figures on both a J170 and a Gazelle. J170 is $150/hour to hire and Gazelle is $135/hour to hire. Costings involved everything including opportunity cost of the funds invested (the calculations were used in cross-hire arrangements). Break-even hours for the Jabiru came at 3.4 hours per week and breakeven for the Gazelle came in at 3.1 hours per week. If you exclude the opportunity cost and depreciation then the break-even was about 1.6 hours for each aircraft. These figures included L2/LAME costs for all maintenance as they're used in the flying school as well as sink funds for engine and prop. That's a good base to work back from anyway. Trade the break-even point of about 1.6 hours per week off against the benefits of owning your own and the simple fact that everyone wants their own aircraft. It's a little different from the boat/motorcycle/sportscar argument though as there is a readily available source of machines for hire.

We all get it wrong sometimes... The DC3 crosswind in that video is some damn good footage!

Quite right - I was really talking of the GA schools I suppose. For recreational training they might have their place in some schools but it's a hard business case to spend $60-90k on a Jab compared to the same amount on a low hour Piper Warrior when you can be quite certain the Warrior will still be worth at least $50-60k after 20 years and 20,000 hours of training life. I don't see any LSA getting even close to these figures, let alone retaining good value... The RA-Aus and LSA aircraft are, in my view, owners aircraft. Not many have been built that seem capable of 20,000 hours of training use.

Not to mention the various new land-based flying activities you'll one day find yourself involved in - the ubiquitous ground-loop and the ever-so-amusing (to those outside the aircraft) "inverted park with a bent prop and your legs sticking up"... I've often heard the phrase "There are two types of tailwheel pilots - those that have ground looped and those that are yet to groundloop".

Just a matter of either picking one that works for you or making one up for yourself (like the macca's version). I remember my the sentence I made up to remember the planets to this day: "My Very Early Mother And Jockey Sat UnderNeath Uranus". No idea why it works - it's absolute nonsense - but it does for some reason...

FESAPA is the downwind check I was taught: F - Fuel pump on & sufficient for go-around, mixture rich E - Engine temps & pressures S - Switches - landing lights A - Airframe - flaps, brakes P - Pilot & Passengers - seat belts, loose articles, brief A - Airport - runways clear and landing into wind

Engines that only get started occasionally and never run up to full operating temperature for a good deal of time will have started to corrode. Generally any engine not run fully for a couple of weeks will have started to corrode internally. The worst possible thing anyone can do is simply turn the prop over every now and again on an engine that hasn't been used for a while - it scrapes any residual oils off the cylinder walls and the corrosion can start. It'll be worse on the coast generally. Most rubber components and seals seem to have a 10-12 year expected life. There's a guy who owns an X-Air at the school in Goulburn who had an old "barn-find" rotax 503 in his machine for a short while I believe (robinsm on here) who could probably offer some very good advice. That's all just from time hanging around the school and the LAME's learning to fly there - don't let me fool you into thinking i really know what i'm talking about!

Good points John - especially with the flood of manufacturers coming through like you mention. LSA aircraft haven't really been adopted by the schools as trainers just yet - partly for those reasons but mostly because they have practicality issues for flight school use. The skycatcher for instance looks great but its useful load and fuel capacity has knocked it out of contention for most schools. If you're busy the last thing you need is having to refuel between every flight. More issues will no doubt come up with the whole being built "down" to a weight limit rather than "up" to a standard in my view also.

My understanding of the reasons behind the "under the hood" time were that it was a base for further training in the GA spectrum. Also the syllabus doesn't just ask for time but also for some form of "competence" to be shown. The one thing it did for me is show that it can be done but it's phenomenally hard work! I don't think anyone who's done only the minimum 2 hours would ever try to replicate the situation for real. The guys getting into strife on purpose seem to be mainly the Private IFR guys or the CIR guys who aren't current. When you think about it much of the training for a PPL is simply a grounding for further training (CPL etc.) - that's why it takes a minimum of 40 hours. The RA training's primary focus is on flying in good weather for "recreational" purposes. RA was never intended to be a direct competitor to GA however that's the way it has turned out. It was meant to be an avenue for the rag and tube guys to fly for fun with lower cost and regulatory burdens. Ask any of the original founders of the RA-Aus movement whether the planes they first registered were ever fitted out for instrument flight and see what their answers are...

No RA aircraft have been grounded - just a few of the recent "factory built" have changed rego from 24 to 19 prior to sale from what I hear. Mind you it's an aero club rumour so i'd treat it as such... I believe the discussions being had at the moment are all around the LSA/544 area.

You're on the money their Ballpoint. Investigation has taken so long as it's uncovered many deep flaws in the RA-Aus "Factory Built" regime is my understanding. I also understand that RA-Aus, CASA and ATSB have had many long, detailed discussions about the matter. It's rumoured that the 24 registration is being changed to 19 on many aircraft and they're no longer being advertised as "Factory Built" but rather "Pre-owned kit built"? The "Factory Built" idea was a good one but with little to no oversight of the "Factories" or the quality of their product it was always going to come apart in some way.

Great story HiHo. One of the pilots here in Goulburn had a very similar incident a few years back coming out of Wollongong. As he came up over the escarpment towards Goulburn he hit a cloud bank that had rolled through. He kept the wings level and a gentle climb and contacted area ATC immediately. They picked him up quickly and steered him clear of the cloud bank and he was on his way. Whole incident lasted about 10 minutes he reckons but it seemed like hours. It seems keeping on top of the panic is the hardest thing of all. Be interesting to see what details start to come out of the Monto incident about what really happened and how/why or if the system couldn't save them.

Seems to be for exactly the same reason there are always more car crashes in wild weather. I think you'll never stop it happening for exactly the same reason as the cars keep crashing. It really can happen to anyone - I personally try very hard to reduce the odds by being as cautious as possible and reserve nothing but disdain for those who try to pressure me into stepping outside my comfort zone (unless they're an instructor i've paid precisely for that purpose). That said all it takes is a lapse in concentration or a little distraction and we can all find ourselves in a similar situation.

Works for me too. It's a hobby is the primary reason. Same reason i'll leave the convertible at home on a rainy day - sure i'm probably competent enough to drive it in the rain and the car would cope with it but I still choose not to because it'd be bloody hard work and darn miserable!

I suppose in some ways the latest moves by CASA should be seen as a move by them into the world of RA-Aus. I don't see CASA taking an interest in the "traditional" RA-Aus aircraft or pilots. Their latest moves have been to reduce the number of pilots moving away from GA into RA purely for medical reasons. Be interesting to see the statistic but gut feeling is a large percentage of RA-Aus members are in RA purely for that reason. So CASA is in effect starting to govern what once were clear-cut RA-Aus pilots and the aircraft they choose to fly. The change will take time but in theory there should be an increasing number of GA registered Tecnams/Jabirus etc and a corresponding decrease in RA-Aus registered aircraft as the older GA pilots choose to forgo the conversion process. I'm in a rambling mood today...

True they will change the name slightly but in my understanding many of the priveleges attached to the "new licence" are the removal of restrictions that are currently attached to the "old licence" - just like the new medical option.

I do agree with that however the word "us" is actually the voting australian public, not just those in the aviation community. If the public decides they've had enough of RA-Aus (or they simply do not care enough to stop it) then it will be removed. My money is on the general voting public not caring enough so in the end it comes down to the view of the director.