DonRamsay

You can't beat doing it on a big PC screen. I just use Google Earth to select the route and then put that into OzRunways for the full flight plan. One thing I've found very helpful is the advice you can glean from the articles in SportPilot. There is a particularly useful series on at the moment by Rick Frith. The attached is an extract that will give you the flavour of the experience Rick is passing on.

I was charged $325 by a LAME to fix a puncture in a nose wheel. The aircraft was parked outside his shop. I could have bought a new wheel, tyre and tube for that. My fault? Should have asked for an estimate. I was thinking $50 at your local garage would have been a bit rich. Once bitten . . . .

"Preflighting the iPad" is a lesson I've learned the hard way. Cleared the circuit and turned in the general direction of home, switched on the iPad and found my plan had inadvertently been deleted. Not a big problem but not a nice position to be in.

I agree that 32GB is the smallest practical size. We get away with 16GB because the iPad is dedicated to the aircraft and not used for other personal stuff. We have our own iPad for that and as backup to the dedicated iPad. You can buy pre-loved iPads on eBay for pretty reasonable prices compared with brand new especially if you had to go to 64GB of ridiculously expensive Apple memory.

When doing ab initio, I used to find downwind to base was a risk. In those early days very busy with downwind checks, slowing the aircraft getting some flap out radio call and turning to base. Easy to forget with all that going on to have a quick glance at the IAS. Turn onto final should be a non event. Have a look around and continue with descending turn.

When we were in China, we usually found a beer included with the meal. But, ask for a soft drink and you would have thought you were asking for their first born! Beer was very good.

Sorrento is the one place in Italy that I could happily live. Even still, it pales into insignificance compared to Newcastle - wouldn't you agree Facthunter?

Keith, I agree that we have severely under-used the sub-committee resource. When I was on the Board I set up the original Constitution Review Committee as a Board sub-committee to report to the Board. Sadly, it was dismissed in spite by Runciman but the sub-committee concept was a good one in that it taps into the resource of quality people with time available for such work. It could allow many projects to proceed in parallel. Don

With a smaller Board and 21st Century communications, there is no reason to have an Exec at all. All decisions could be by a Board majority and passed to the CEO for execution. Where a meeting with an external organisation could enter into Policy issues then the President may have to accompany the CEO to ensure the Board's Policy responsibility is properly looked after.

Let's hope the new AV Med boss has a better approach to the Drivers Licence medical. An interesting thought. Could be a good way to go about it. Must admit I don't think anyone else has given that approach much consideration. As you know, we've done a fair bit of fiddling at the edges of the current rules and most of us were thinking the next change should be everything in one go. The reduced Board numbers and how they get elected are likely to be the biggest hurdles for the parochial knuckle-draggers to get past but a smaller Board could then get on and do the rest of what's needed more efficiently. Rewriting the existing Constitution just to reduce the number on the Board and how they are elected could be done. It's still a big re-write. You could drop a note to Michael Linke and suggest it as I'm pretty sure he doesn't read this forum eveen though many Board Members do.

I believe there is a majority on the Board who are in favour of a 5 or 7 person Board. The CEO also favours a more practical sized Board and is keen to do some development on the subject. However, it is not first cab off the rank. First you have to decide on the form of incorporation - is ther something better than incorporated association? Then you need to chose a jurisdiction and Canberra is not favoured. Then you can decide the Board size and how it is elected. Then you need to encode that in a plain English constitution and get it accepted by 75% of members who chose to vote. I haven't seen much in the way of actual work being done on this but it could be happening for all I know.

Reality is that few if any of the staff would or could relocate away from Canberra as it would involve separating husband/wife. It is not a matter of the staff dictating the location but ordinary practical realities. A move out of Canberra would require an overlap between the new office and the current office. The transition would not be a trivial issue. Been there and done that and it is a logistical nightmare. Doesn't mean we shouldn't do it just that it needs a great deal of forethought and planning. My vision is that a merger of RAA and SAAA to become RSA Inc. housed at an airfield with conference and training facilities perhaps even bunkhouse style cheap accommodation. However, that cannot happen until RAA has its act together in Safety Systems, Ops, Maintenance and Admin. Only then can you go to other SASAOs and propose mergers and shared admin ops, etc. But there are other threats like CASA rationalising registration and licensing and rationalising RAA into an advocacy organisation to be eventually absorbed by AOPA.

In the books at 30 June 2014 as $872,582. This is a market related value. Purchased for around $o.5 million and revalued to about $1 million and devalued back to about where it is now. Value probably increasing again in line with commercial property in the area. IMHO = no, nothing. Yes. Canberra is a very expensive place relative to somewhere like Narromine/Dubbo. CASA SASAO is based in Brisbane. Only advantage is the current good staff are Canberra/Queanbeyan residents and President Mick Monck is also. This has allowed us to get the right CEO into the job and smooth his induction with Mick Monck close on hand. It has also been handy for the two Michaels to collaborate on issues like the CASA's Jabiru effup. For sure it would - just not yet.

Don't hold back Gandalph tell me what you really feel about my brilliant post. Seriously, there is a bit of a difference between where a multi national conglomerate sites it's head office and a one trick pony like RA-Aus has theirs. I worked for a sizeable subsidiary of Rio Tinto and we moved the head office of the subsidiary from The 10th Floor of 1 York Street Sydney CBD to their biggest mine site in the Hunter Valley. The focus shifted remarkably I can assure you. A lot of BS was left behind in Sydney and a lot costs as well. And CAMS would certainly benefit from being based at, say, Eastern Creek. I'll presume you were not asking to be taken seriously about the other silly examples.

Ideologically, I would like to see RA-Aus housed outside Canberra and at an airport. It is important to be at an airport because everyday when the staff come to work they are immediately reminded why RA-Aus exists. That does not happen in an office in Fyshwick. It does not need to be at an airport so members can fly in. If everything is working well, we as members should never need to set foot in the place. It's a bit like a bank, any time I have to go to the bank in person something is not right with their system. Access to the RAA HQ by RPT is really only an issue for Board Members and managerial staff. Hopefully we will get the number of Board Members down from an insane 13 to a practical 5 or 7 max. and even then, Board Members don't really need to go to HQ as they could hold their Board meetings in the Qantas Club at any of Brisbane, Sydney or Melbourne. However, at the moment it is very convenient for the HQ to be where it is. We have a very effective President in MIck Monck and an achiever CEO in Michael Linke. Both are Canberra residents. The endlessly experienced and well connected Michael Apps is just down the road at Cooma an hour's drive to Fyshwick. This is working well at the moment and we should not be looking to disturb that setup for the next 3 years or so. We also have a good and improving staff in Canberra and a move out of Canberra would force many of those to look for alternative employment. The move out of Canberra should happen but not for a while yet. It would be smart to do it in concert with, say, SAAA and possibly other SASAOs. But RA-Aus is not ready for amalgamations and won't be until it has its own systems sorted. This is a matter for a strategic plan. It should not be forgotten but there are a few much more pressing matters to get sorted before we worry too much about the long term base for RA-Aus.

I seriously doubt that the lower up front cost and cheaper parts would offset the need for so much work over 2,000 hours compared with a Rotax gearbox overhaul. But, even if the Jab, having a particularly good run, proved to be less expensive over 2,000 hours, I would (and have) shelled out for a Rotax for the extra peace of mind that comes with not putting my passengers at as much risk. Not saying a Rotax will never fail in flight, that would be silly but all I can do is work the probabilities. At the moment, sound risk management says to me go with the Rotax. But, that is not what this thread is meant to be about. It is meant to be about the the unscientific, poor management approach of CASA to the issue of Jabiru engine reliability. And I haven't heard much (anything?) in the way of defence of CASA's approach. Perhaps that's because it is indefensible?

I've flown a Sling with the iS Sport engine and it was smooth as silk, started easily and ran on the smell of an oily rag. I had a read of the maintenance manual and there didn't seem to be much that needed to be done other than the usual oil, filters, plugs and download diagnostics from the engine management computer. No carbies to balance, no carby ice and the Sport upgrade lifted mid-range Torque back above the carby engine. The Sport upgrade seems very much like Ver 2 with the bug fixes done.

Anyone like to comment on their experience with the injected Rotax engine? Servicing? Reliability issues?

We use the iPad Mini 16GB + 3G (but no SIM card) with Retina display in the aircraft and it is fine. I have the dual xGPS160 and it is brilliant and the battery does last ages. The 16GB is only just enough and when it comes time to update the maps I found I had to deleted heaps before I could download the new maps. Use your iPhone as a personal hotspot for the iPad and you have the best of both worlds. OzRunways on the iPhone is OK for a backup even if CASA don't think so. I originally bought a full size iPad 3 (32GB +3G Cell) to use for OzRunways before I got the Mini. It was good but cumbersome. The mini is small enough to mount on the panel (portrait) with a RAM Mount. I've even seen a full size iPad (landscape) on a panel with a RAM type mount but it uses up a lot of real estate. Best to run the iPad off an adapter (2 Amp 12V) or 5V socket if you have one on the panel - that way the iPad doesn't get hot and shut down.

The Sting has a very strong nose wheel setup - probably the strongest of any LSA on the market. Coil spring and needle roller bearings. YCAB can be a bit rougher than many strips. I was told that the the nose wheel should not be considered part of the landing gear - just for steering on the ground while taxiing.

I had some fun with it this afternoon as the RA-Aus site seemed to be down for a while and I kept getting odd error messages. All it took was a phone call to RA-Aus to ask if the server was down and in the middle of the phone conversation it came back up and all was good. Personally, I like the idea of checking your knowledge of the legal requirements. Just working through the study guide brings you up to speed pretty quickly. I like it better than the HF tests. I hope they do something similar with the new Ops Manual as it forces you to read and absorb it whether you think you need to or not.

Fact: there is a body of research work done by Ian Bent. Fact: Jabiru themselves have not been doing nothing in terms of trying to eliminate problems but perhaps not enough. Fact: CASA may not have legal force but can be very persuasive with threats. Even a proposed draft has had a major impact. The key parties Jabiru, CASA and RA-Aus are in discussions and, to some extent, in negotiations. Some good will come from this whole process but a great deal of unnecessary harm has already been done due to heavy handed action by CASA. I can't know whether CASA's severe actions came from exasperating frustration with Jabiru or from megalomania or incompetence or, as some suggested, a strong disinclination for Recreational Aviation to exist.

Yes, I know Awarrrba rd well. Lived in Neutral Bay for a few years. Should see the look on their faces when you pronounce it Awobba.

Then there's the upper Hunter Valley town of Murrurundi which only the locals compress it to Mrundee when said out loud. And of course there's the old song Everybody calls Wagga Wagga "Wagga but nobody calls Woy Woy ""Woy". A lot of people have trouble with Quirindi near Gunnedah: "Krin die" comes close. And I heard a fellow on the ABC Radio murdering the pronunciation of the very picturesque Lakeside village of Wangi Wangi (Pron. Wongee and like Wagga rarely Wongee Wongee) Wollombi will catch a few out and it is really funny to hear Sydney people prononce Awaba as Awarrba where the locals say Awoba.

That exact scenario almost happened to me. Was due for a solo Nav in a J160 - Nav delayed one day and died in the air on the day I was booked to go cross country. Once almost bitten . . .