Dafydd Llewellyn

I agree - but one needs to do some reading to comprehend what you're looking at. For example, one often sees a Fohngap at Murrurrundi Gap, and just East of Bathurst, under SE stream conditions. How many RAA pilots know what a Fohngap is - and what it implies if you try to penetrate further upwind? Glider pilots will recognise it.

The engine in the early Skyfox (CA 21) was an Aeropower (certificated) conversion based on VW components. I did the pre-certification flight test work on that aircraft. The engine was marginal on power to meet the climb performance requirement - its main problem was that it was rated at 3600 RPM, which is simply too fast for good propeller efficiency at Skyfox speeds. It worked, provided you did not flog it; means it took a long time to climb. Ran quite sweetly, but a bit like trying to fly something powered by a sewing-machine. I had some experience with VW conversions in gyrocopters in the 1970s; it showed that the barrels were inadequately cooled due to their being too closely spaced, for more than about 45 HP; also the cylinder base flanges used to embed themselves into the magnesium alloy crankcase, and then crack off the cylinder skirt when the engine cooled down. One had to do a through-bolt conversion to get them to stay together. The crankcase was too flexible and the original crankshafts would not stand more then about 45 HP continuous before they fatigued due to flexure of the case. Aeropower got around that by fitting a forged steel crank, but the real problem was the case. The later Limbach conversions based on the 2100 VW Transporter engines fixed a lot of those issues, but were a lot heavier. The cylinder heads do not have sufficient fin surface area for aero-engine duty cycle.

What makes you think the current version is "final"? It keeps on changing. Consultation? What's that?

Guru for English gliding weather; not for Australia - tho his basics are valid anywhere. We almost never see a warm front or an occluded front. I found the old RAAF Manual of meteorology more useful; but nothing beat playing golf with a couple of CSIRO Cloud Seeding Officers; they reckoned the golf course was the ideal spot to keep an eye out for weather suitable for cloud seeding - and I learned more about weather from them than from anything else.

Well, dig back through the amendments and you'll see the progressive changes.

Yeah, they keep on amending them. So is the original ANO 95.55 nothing like the current CAO 95.55. But that's not because of the change in title. The things are "Orders" - ANO stands for Air navigation Order - i.e. an order made under the old Air navigation Regulations. CAO stands for "Civil Aviation Order" - i.e. an order made under the Civil Aviation Regulations. But if you track back through the amendment history - and I have almost 40 years of it - you'll see that ANOs became CAOs pretty well seamlessly, and just went on being amended. In any case, the "Orders" are a third tier of regulation after the Act and the Regulations; and they're slated to be scrapped. All that third tier stuff came into existence back in the '60s or earlier, as a means whereby DCA could shift the goalposts without having to put it through Parliament. That got stopped about 1983, and they became "Disallowable Instruments" - which means Parliament gets a chance to look at them, tho I doubt it ever does much - and since then the Orders have been something of an anachronism. But vigilance is needed, because CASA will make all sorts of changes when it sweeps them into Part 149.

The Warwick strip will be, I predict, comfortably clear of whatever new airspace restrictions evolve from Brisbane West/Wellcamp. Any closer to Toowoomba and that may not be so. Warwick has no cross-strip. It's a lot more than walking distance out of town. There's an active gliding club on the site. I suspect anything other than hangar sites may be difficult to find.

Nope: CAO is simply ANO re-named. Some of then even retain their old ANO title

Yes, I'm sure you're right about that. CAO 95.10 was in reality a very limited form of experimental category, introduced more than a decade before we got a real experimental category. Then the AUF was formed, and CAR 95.25 came along, and produced the Thruster, the Drifter, the Lightwing and the Sapphire. Those aircraft at least got a good look over by CAR 35 engineers, who weren't looking for any elephants, but just verifying that the bare bones of structural strength were there; and there was a very nominal form of flight testing. Then the CAA (Casa's predecessor) raised CAO 101.55, which allowed certification using the British microlight standard, BCAR S. That produced the Skyfox and the Jabiru. The CAA was involved, and they weren't hunting elephants, but engineering. So those aircraft were pretty thoroughly vetted - to the extent required by their rather limited design standard. Jabiru was producing aircraft years before production certificates became part of Australian legislation; they did it under CAR 30 - and got an automatic issue when CAR 30 was superseded by CASR Part 21, in 1998. So the home-grown product was indeed well known to CASA, though the AUF had no part in that process. The "automatic acceptance" clauses in both CASR Part 21 and CAO 95.55 mean that nobody here is questioning the engineering of imported types; provided there is the smell of an elephant behind them. So some importers have taken advantage of that - and RAA people have been too gullible to realise what was going on. This would not have been possible had the importers been required to get an Australian C of A for their product, before presenting it to RAA for registration. But of course the RAA system does not include a C of A, so the doorway was (and still is) wide open. The aircraft would have had to be imported under an export C of A from their country of origin - and that's a pedigree of the elephant, so to speak. RAA has never been in a position to do more than look for the elephant; it has never had the technical expertise to delve into the engineering of the products - nor a mandate to do so. The problem with LSA is that it is a formula for "regulation by litigation". Litigation takes years; it's a very slow process. If you regard the aviation industry as a vast machine, and consider what is controlling it - just as a mechanical governor controls an engine - there is an interesting parallel: If the governor on a machine is sluggish or “sticky” in its action – i.e. it acts with a delay, so its response is always lagging behind the action – the machine will “hunt”. If the phase lag of the governor exceeds a certain limit, it will aggravate the hunting, so the system becomes dynamically unstable and destroys itself. Imagine what would happen if the cruise control on your car was always ten seconds behind the action. A practical example of this is given by “free market regulation” of aircraft manufacture; unscrupulous manufacturers will seek a quick buck by compromising safety standards (we’re already seeing this with some LSA imports). Other manufacturers will be forced to follow suit, or go out of business. There is a fall in prices, and a corresponding increase in demand, leading to a short-term “boom” in the market. Everybody is happy – for a while; then the accidents start, people become disenchanted, and the market collapses. The unscrupulous manufacturers, if they are smart, walk off with their pockets full. The scrupulous ones, whose products were not unsafe, have gone bankrupt. Spare parts are no longer available, because the manufacturers have been destroyed. The consequences are catastrophic – and completely unnecessary, which I find infuriating. However the pain now being experienced in the RAA registration debacle has possibly caught this before it reached full cycle. So I see LSA as a fundamentally de-stabilising influence on the industry, because the regulating effect has too great a phase lag. By contrast, type certification acts up front - so it has an overall stabilising effect - provided of course that its requirements are not so severe that they stifle progress altogether. We saw a great spurt of growth after the introduction of CAO 101.55 - so it seems to have been fairly close to the right balance. What we are seeing with LSA is too many players for the market. That's not a healthy situation. And what I saw as an expert witness for Carol Smith made me very concerned about the engineering in some of the LSA imports.

I take your point about the shed and the people. That works for shearing sheep, too. However an aircraft, an aircraft engine or an aircraft propeller is a "Class 1 Aeronautical Product". These products are eligible for a Type Certificate. The specification to which it's made is the "Type Design" (CASR 21.31). The process of proving that the product was manufactured in accordance with its Type Design, is called "Conformity" and the mechanism by which conformity is established is set out in the procedures manual that is required by CASA (or its equivalent) for the holding of a Production Certificate. So there's a very large elephant hiding behind your term "Specification". The whole business of LSA is to avoid having to have that elephant. However, to qualify for LSA accreditation, the manufacturer has to already possess the elephant - that's how Jabiru has done it, subsequent to the J160C - or to have in place equivalent procedures and people. If you ain't got that, nobody can legally fly your product.

Sure; that's the bones of it. Now try to get a C of A for it. There's just one step you're leaving out. So did the Ibis people. It's called a "Production Certificate".

Reduced to that level of over-simplification, that's how everybody does it. if you want to know a little more of the detail, look up CASR Part 21 subpart G

Well, yes, we found that when we moved from Sydney to a rural property near Clifton. It's quite old-fashioned; the tradesmen come when they say they will, the postman knows the names of the people on his round; the post office will accept an unstamped letter left in the box, and send a slip with what we owe in postage - or the change if we put cash with the letter because we're out of stamps; the vendor of the block of land put us onto a house that was available and could be moved onto it. The people are friendly. One can leave one's house unlocked, and the neighbour's kids can leave their bikes by the letterbox after riding to catch the school bus. Really backward, after Sydney.

Yes, you are correct. The only "benefit" that RAA offers is DIY maintenance - and that's under threat because it's been managed so badly.

"And George lasted how long before his attitude got him passed over as AUF president? I knew George well and looked after his Harvard at Camden for a time. Plenty of things he regretted doing with the AUF." Three very turbulent years; and he resigned because the CAA would not hand over funds whilst he was the president (he drew too much blood, and they resented it, I think). And yes he didn't get it all right, and he knew it. But somebody had to start it, or it would have gone nowhere; and he was the one who did so. What went wrong subsequently was none of George's doing (he was a very strong advocate of the RPL, by the way). You have not made a single contructive point, that I can see; if you have one, please make it.

Ozzie, this whinge is pointless. HORSCOTS changed all that - and it wouldn't have happened if there had not been a media blowout on all the fatal accidents. I was at the 1983 SAAA meeting at Mangelore, and there was the CAA's Trevor Burns spruiking for CAO 95.22 ( I think it was) and saying that unless people got together and formed an association right there and then, the CAA (CASA's predecessor) would stamp the movement out. It produced a result akin to a fox in a hen-house. George was the person who could shout the loudest, and he managed to shout-down the hubbub long enough to get the bones of an association together. Nobody but the CAA wanted it; they all wanted to be able to go behind a convenient gum-tree and keep clandestinely breaking the law. There were no GA wannabes; it was simply that the CAA recognised that the GFA was a workable model, and wanted the ultralight movement to do likewise - and would have exterminated it unless that happened. All the things you are talking about are legal requirements; you either obey the regulations or you don't fly. Your choice. George hammered out the least intrusive bargain he could get; I watched him do it. He marched into the Secretary of the Dept. of Transport's office, and in a voice that could be heard at least 50 yards away, said "You're a liar - and here's the evidence to prove it!" (and what's more, he was right. That's why they hated him). Without George, there would be no ultralight aircraft flying to-day. I got the rounds of the kitchen from Gordon Bedson because I dared to mention "airworthiness" - and he proved his point about two weeks later when his Resurgam came apart in the air. CAO 95.10 is still there. You can still use it. Nobody is forcing you to move to "GA wannabe" aircraft. So stop whingeing, will you? HORSCOTS required two-seat trainers and a proper training system. So there had to be instructors and pilot certificates etc.; this brought into existence CAO 95.25, which produced the Thruster, the Drifter, the original Lightwing, and the Sapphire. People stopped killing themselves trying to learn how to fly in marginal single-seaters, not above 300 feet AGL. It is absolute nonsense to say this was due to "GA Wannabes". It was an edict of the Federal Government, brought on by a very thorough enquiry triggered by media pressure, as a result of the stupidity of the people then engaging in that sort of flying - you brought it on yourself, in fact. Whilst HORSCOTS was in progress, the U.K. CAA brought out the World's first design standard for ultralight aircraft, BCAR S. CASA drafted CAO 100.55 which allowed BCAR S to be used in Australia; and that resulted in the Skyfox and the Jabiru. Real high-performance, sophisticated aircraft, Oh Yeah! The accident rate continued to drop. The AUF became RAA and the movement grew amazingly. You want to turn all that back? Really? How about a show of hands on that?

Oh, Hell! I was keeping quiet about the SW edge of the Darling Downs! Not at all sure I want you buggers in my stamping ground!

That's the only way to look at it.

Yes - everybody wants something different. However to put the Maule M5-180C into perspective - it's a 4 seat cum freight taildragger with a Lycoming 0-360 and a Hartzell CS prop. MTOW 2400 lbs, empty 1300 lbs - so its useful load is almost equal to the MTOW of most RAA aircraft. 75% power cruise around 115 kts. It has a ginormous freight door on the stbd side; largest of any other aeroplane of its size & weight. People use them in NZ to haul deer carcases. I did the first-of-type work on both it and its big brother, the M5-235C to get them into Australia, and flew them both in the process of preparing Australian performance charts. Most people go for the bigger engine; but unless you're operating in really high country, the bigger engine gives no real benefit - and it uses a duplex magneto that is troublesome and for which parts are no longer available. The 180 horse one was just a very sweet and highly practical aircraft, and as the engine was one of the few 0-360s to have tuned counterweights on the crankshaft, very smooth. The climb performance tests showed the propeller efficiency to be unusually high - considerably better than the M5-235. Go-anywhere undercarriage, tho I'd not bother with tundra wheels. Definitely NOT an RAA aircraft. The difference between something like this and a Skyranger/Savannah/Kitfox/ Skyfox/Eurofox is that it's a tool, and they are toys. I find aircraft of that ilk extremely boring; and the ones I've flown had poor control harmonisation, which I find irritating. The rag on the fuselage was Razorback (a fibreglass cloth) but by now they'd have Ceconite, I suppose. Quite outside my means to operate one these days; so I'll stick to the motorised Blanik, which I expect will be able to fly rings around any of the above lot of RAA aircraft, and can stay up with the engine turned off, in the kind of conditions one would choose to fly it. It's downside is the large wingspan - 54 feet - and it's difficult to taxi.

Not quite - I said I could put up with the fabric covered fuselage on the Maule, if hangarage was available. Its wings are metal. What is the certification basis of the Skyranger (if any)?

Not being a member of RAA, but a member of GFA, I have no opinion to express; but a couple of points occur to me: 1. GFA is mainly on-line based. It has an office - in Melbourne - but I don't know whether that's a hang-over from the past (It used to occupy a small condemned building on Essendon airport - and quite definitely people did NOT fly in there to call on HQ). It's in the process of getting its flight safety and airworthiness defect reporting software - which has been extant for a while - into general use so these reports are automatically distributed to everybody who needs to know about them, without the need of the technical managers to do essentially clerical tasks. The technical people are all over Australia, they do NOT drive to work for GFA. Oscar is quite correct; it's the 21st century, and you do NOT need bricks or a mountain of paper; you need broadband and a good computer system with daily backup. So I do not see any necessity for a central office close to an RPT airport; and even less so, an airport in controlled airspace. I doubt I'd ever need to physically visit the GFA head office. 2. It seems to me that people have an expectation that RAA could do something like the EAA has done, at Oskosh - and the Natfly concept is very obviously based on the EAA annual event at Oskosh, writ smaller. But that's once a year; the RAA business is daily. 3. GFA is broken-down into regional responsibilities; there is a Regional Technical Officer (Ops) and a Regional Technical Officer (Airworthiness) for each region - which are, in the main, the States. The RTOs keep their fingers on what is going on in their regions, and do quite a bit of the donkey work; and have an annual face-to-face to sort out policy issues. It works; the central office (so called) Technical Managers keep the systems running, and interface with CASA. It's a long time since I was RTO/A for NSW; back then, the NSW State Association met monthly - tho I doubt it really needed to, even then - and far less now, with internet. 4. I suggest it's a separate subject, but as far as a location for something like Natfly, it's a fact of life that the east side of the divide is subject to easterly stream weather a considerable percentage of the time, whereas it's more usually clear west of the divide. The suggestion of Cudal as a possible location may not be silly, as a venue for natfly, if it's available; but whether it's preferable to Narromine or Temora I couldn't say; it would depend very much on what facilities are available at what cost. But this discussion is really quite irrelevant to the location of a central office, for which the standard of living for the staff would surely be a major consideration. 5. The RAA setup involves a lot of make-work in that it requires re-registration. That hardly contributes anything to the airworthiness of the fleet, and it prevents the technical Manager from attending to more important matters, which will shortly be required by the SMS - things like defect reports, ADs etc. By contrast, GFA registration is a one-time thing; you pay for the paperwork for the annual airworthiness inspection instead - and the filing of the returns from the inspectors. The RAA system is downright stupid, in my estimation.

Every locality has its own weather "pattern"; one gets to know it by flying in the area and by watching the better TV weather presentations - you can deduce it fairly well from the synoptic chart and the BOM weather radar images - and the world wind map is also pretty good. I used to fly to work every day when I lived near Mittagong and worked for de Havs at Bankstown; it takes a while, but if you look at the sky as you fly, and relate it to a good basic meteorology course plus the other references, you get to know what to expect. That does not absolve one from the legal requirement to get a forecast - but it's often more accurate. I got to know the isiosyncracies of the weather in the Sydney basin pretty well. I'm still learning it for the area around Clifton. The problem is, that the best prediction available is often indecisive; the weather may or may not allow the flight. Forecasts allow one to decide not to fly, when the conditions are obviously adverse - or to fly when it's CAVOK - but that's about 35% of the time. The other 65% is in the "well, lets go and take a look at it" category - and that's where people come unstuck. Under those conditions, one needs something extra up one's sleeve - and if you do not have the option of going onto instruments and climbing, then the only other option is to be able to land - and sometimes the only available option is in a convenient paddock, or croppie strip. I've done a lot of "scud running" in my time, and it's not pleasant. Gliding - especially cross-country gliding - is possibly the best way to get to understand weather. So forecasts are a legal requirement, but ultimately you have to make decisions based on what you find. The thing is, MAKE a decision - don't just blunder on, hoping it will get better over the next ridge. We should be teaching people how to make the critical VFR weather decision - turn back.

Garn - they were just practicing for the new airspace restrictions when Wellcamp becomes active . . .

The Maybe is different to the ordinary Bee; whereas the ordinary Bee makes honey, the Maybe makes jam. Feed it on pawpaw, you get pawpaw jam. Feed it on potatoes, you get potato conserve. Maybe . . .

Sure sounds like a hijacking. However, I wonder whether anybody has estimated the odds of an airliner being hit by a meteorite. One the size of a golf ball might well disable the electronics of everything aboard, I would imagine, considering the possible electrical charge of something passing through the ionosphere at meteorite velocity . . . Has to happen sooner or later . . .