K-man

Has anybody heard what may have happened at Yarrawonga on Saturday? Apparently a light aircraft came down hard, severely damaging the undercarriage but with no injury. The only Press I have seen was two lines referring to collision. I'm thinking collision with the ground.

Having read the 52 pages of the Draft HF & TEM document, I think it's a bit like the ASIC card fiasco. I find it disturbing that the document suggests to an instructor that they should deiberately apply pressure to a student pilot, in flight, to the level that they cannot cope, to demonstrate what happens when we are subjected to high levels of stress. I would also suggest that to change the radio frequency when the student is distracted to see if the student notices that something is wrong is just plain crazy. They didn't suggest that the instructor retracts the undercarriage on base to see if the student makes the final check on final but that is probably because very few training aircraft have RU. Then section 11 suggests that pre-flight we should basically do a SWOT analysis, repeat during flight and after the flight do another one just to see what could have gone wrong! I hope some one can come up with a decent checklist. Perhaps the following could provide inspiration: C .. Check for every worst case scenario. R .. Realise that we all can make errors of judgement. A .. Agree to maintain good situational awareness. P .. Post any potential problems NOT encountered to this forum. Some posts suggest that this is about 'common sense' but to my mind this is about the opposite. As the saying goes, 'the problem with common sense is that it is not common'. I can understand an instructor taking on board the sentiments of this document and modifying the instruction. There can never be too much attention devoted to SA (situational awareness), but to try and cover this in a session on the ground, then pass a 20 question quiz? This really seems like someone with too much time on their hands!! thumb_down

Our aircraft is financed by Bank of Queensland, although we had to go through a broker to obtain the finance. Ironically we are BOQ customers, yet our manager couldn't get a lease for us. We used Bidgee finance, Deniliquin. Ask for Wendy. www.bidgee.com.au Good luck. :thumb_up:

NZ Pioneers We visited NZ with a number of Aussies for Logan McLean' s flyaway in Feb. We were treated to some wonderful hospitality and flew over some beautiful country, courtesy of the NZ Pioneer owners. I would love to build a Hawk, it's a beautiful aircraft.

Different training aircraft I have only just read this thread regarding ppl or not, different training aircraft etc. My experience has been that I thought I would go through to ppl and maybe beyond. It was suggested that for reasons of cost it was best to start in the Jab J160, get the RA certificate and go on to GA. What happened in practice was, I started in the Jab, changed to the Tecnam Echo and finished in a CSU Retract Pioneer. I found the time in the Jab the most challenging as we often had gusting cross winds which meant that you must constantly make control inputs to keep on track especially on late final. The Echo was a delight to fly. It is a very stable aircraft and very forgiving. Where the Jab required lots of rudder input the Tecnam required minimal rudder. As my training was nearing completion my wife (already ppl) and I decided that we would purchase our own aircraft and RA seemed the way to go. I will probably never go on to ppl as RA offers just about all we would want, especially once the controlled airspace endorsement comes through. In the meantime take a look at some of the beautiful aircraft around, in particular the Sierra 2002, Sportstar, Texan, Dynamic, Pioneer etc. Life's just great in RA! :thumb_up: