KRviator

I saw a similar article a few days ago and thought "WTF?!?" Would anybody actually sign that to own an A5? I certainly wouldn't, and let's face it, nice an aircraft it may be, it still isn't an overly pretty arcraft - mind you, this is coming from a bloke who things the A10 (twice as good as an A5??) is one of the sexiest aircraft out there... For the price of a new A5, you can buy a SeaRey and a very nice RV for your cross-country needs - and not have to worry about all that legal bullshyte Icon seem willing to force on their customers.

 

"Thou shall not speak ill of Icon", "We shall maintain your airplane to whatever cost we determine" and a host of other warning sigs are massive red flags to me. This kind of contract may well become the norm in aviation in years to come, but right now, I forsee Icon going the way of Bede aircraft. At least this time, there won't be a host of partially completed BD5's on the market for years to come....

 

 

An ATC'er in the U.S. got pineappled for bringing his kid to work and letting him give clearances. The pilots thought it was great, management not so much, unfortunately.

 

 

Cessnock is smack in the middle of the Hunter Valley Wineries, but not quite "north" NSW. Plenty of accommodation from caravan parks to Crown Plaza type things. Hot Air balloons aplenty if you want someone else to do the flying (4 were up today when I was driving to the airport). The Hunter Valley Gardens are a hop, skip and a jump away from the airport, as are various desert/gourmet chocolate bar type things.

 

If you're coming down soon, Maitland has SteamFest on over the 9th/10th April, covering a bunch of different things from steam trains - including the great train race - to old steam traction engines, etc. From Maitland you can get a train into Newcastle for awalk along the foreshore and a fish & chip lunch watching the working harbour, or a dinner at Scratchleys Seafood restaurant (very good, not 'overly' expensive).

 

 

Don't forget folks, it is not 45 minutes at your cruise fuel flow. IT is 45 minutes at your holding fuel flow. Now, while I am yet to formalise that quantity for my RV as part of the flight test program, I'm expecting the holding flow to be in the vicinity of 15LPH (expected cruise FF 25LPH) based on a ~100KIAS holding speed so that's 11.25L in the tanks on touchdown, or less than 30 minutes of my expected cruise fuel flow. And this is at touchdown, not shutdown. Allow another 2-4L for the taxi in and shutdown and you can have as little as 7-8L in the tanks at shutdown. You'd be hard pressed to find an FOI that would be able to convince his bosses - and consequently the DPP - you landed with less than 11.25L.

 

I am strongly against making it a criminal offence to use any part of your reserve, or failing to declare an emergency if you are going to eat into your reserve, but it is not the end of the world, and you would be able to talk your way out of it unless you tried a fuel drain and didn't even fill up a tester...

 

 

I'm all for FF and will use it extensively when I finally get my 40 hours flown off.

 

But I have what is probably a silly question; say I'm enroute Cessnock to Brisbane, under the E LL of 8500. I have a plan in the system, and would like flight following. I understand the process to request it, but what frequency do I call on? I'm not in E, so is it the FlightWatch frequency, or the Area frequency for the overlying Class E?

 

 

On the south side of Brisbane is Heck Field, beside the JCW VOR, and to the west you have Archerfield (if you must...) Watts Bridge and Gatton Airpark, both about an hour away. To the Southwest, about an hour from the CBD as well, you have Boonah which was quite a nice little airfield when I flew out of there a few years ago.

 

 

Another good one for planning is SkyVector, that will give you the wind, radar and IR cloud overlays, rubber-banding of your flight plan, and also give you a printable NavLog and export your plan to Dynon SkyView equipment.

 

 

The information you have quoted is old. I can confirm that aero club is no longer running the strip on behalf of the council. The strip has recently undergone a $3.5 million upgrade and the general mood is of great enthusiasm for flying.Gerard

Is there a listing of current fees publicly available? The ERSA says you pay at the office (of the CCAC), whose website (updated late last year) says it is $27.50/tonne MTOW, or $15 for 'training' flights. This marries up with Council's published fees and charges for use of the aerodrome. I have not seen anything that would suggest these are not the correct figures, nor has anyone previously challenged these figures when I've spoken of them. This is partly why the RV is hangared at Cessnock (whose hangarage fees work out to $1,560/year).

Hi KRviator - Please share the fees and charges?

Certainly. They used to be online, but now all I can find is the proposed charges (which were then ratified in a council meeting). So, owing to the performance of the RV, coupled with Wyong Council failing to introduce a "daily" rate, a'la Bankstown or Archerfield, leads to $270/hr in landing fees alone. + a fee just for the privilege of refuelling on 'council' land (not counting the fuel purchased!), etc etc.

 

I think you will find this has now been adjusted. I know there was a turbulent period where the Wyongshire council were making it hard for people. I fly in and out of there all the time, I believe the current landing fee is $16 for 1500kg, the hanger fees are around 4k a year.I would be quicker for you to get to Warnervale, what type of AC do you own or oprerate?

The CC Aero Club still shows $27.50/tonne MTOW/Landing on their website, as does Council. If something else is actually being charged, that's upto the CCAC, I haven't - and have no plans to - fly out of Warnervale now they've introduced these new fees.

Why dont you fly out of Warnervale or Somersby,?

Have you seen the fees and charges Wyong Council has imposed at Warnervale?!? It's cheaper for me to takeoff from there, fly to Archerfield, do an hour of circuits & refuel at Archerfield and fly back to Warnervale than it is to simply do an hour of circuits at Warnervale itself!

 

So the details listed under the free search for my car are Tare weight, last 4 digits of the VIN, rego expiry date and GVM. Nothing about owner, address, if it is registered to a business or who the actual operator of the vehicle is.

 

 

When NearMap was free, I googled the out-laws address and it had caught us as we were loading a sideboard on the trailer. You could clearly see my bald spot from space!

 

 

$189,000 USD?!? Bugger me. Sure it's a nice looking plane, but for that price you could get a nice Cirrus. Though the A5 can land on water more than once....

 

 

As it should be. You can't Google any old car rego, boat, trailer or truck rego willy-nilly. Why is my plane different?

 

 

You still need to be alive and able to activate it. Even a fixed ELT with a G switch isn't guaranteed to work.

 

 

neil it is only non-compliance (your bolding...not mine), if it is required to comply with the manual in the first place. The simple fact is, no RAAus aircraft, or VH- experimental aircraft is required to comply with the engine manufacturers installation manual. Indeed, several Rotax manuals caution you not to use the engine in an aircraft where sudden stoppage could be hazardous to your health. Should those aircraft be grounded too? I departed from the plans for my RV in several instances, and yet it passed it's registration (with RAAus too!) without so much as how-do-you-do from HQ (the forgotten signature on the W&B form notwithstanding). Should my RV be grounded?

 

That is why your entire argument is flawed, and, IMHO, have lost any and all credibility you may have had, by your ill-informed attempts to force your opinion on others, without having the data to back you up. Of course, your apparent refusal to admit you were wrong or apologise for your abrasive style doesn't help your cause either, irrespective of it being "your style". Rude is rude, and just because you may be rude all the time does not excuse it.

 

about time I started naming planes...

Go ahead, I'd love to see the response you get. Particularly from someone who took offence at you alleging they're operating illegally.If you make a claim, have the balls to back it up with data, references and statistics, not incorrect assertions, assumptions and personal opinions.

 

 

A belated followup, but after having life get in the way, there are now not one, but two RV-9A's on the register. After nearly 5 years of blood (yes, really), sweat, tears and reaching the threshold of AIDS twice - but no drilled finger strangely enough - Aurora Australis is now, OFFICIALLY, an aeroplane.

 

It took only 8 days to process the rego with only a forgotten signature on the W&B form holding up the registration process for 24 hours, so make it 7 days to process. I was fully expecting another bunfight with RAAus about having "another RV" on the register, but after finalising the punch list items and sorting out the paperwork, it went incredibly smoothly, so a big thanks is owed to Leanne in RAAus HQ!

 

Until I get home to button up the access panels and prepare for the test flights, the registration is deemed "Provisional", with it moving to full registration once the test hours are flown off and the finalisation form submitted.

 

 

 

Taking the politics out of it, why is public transport in general so unpopular? Not just air travel, but spending money on new railway lines, new busways and interchanges.

 

Is it because "poor people don't drive cars" to quote Joe Hockey and as they're the ones that dude public transport they aren't important enough to spend the $$ on to create votes? Or something else. Something that infuriated me when I worked in Sydney was the freight train curfew each day, from0600-0900 and 1500-1800. A full 6 hours in every 24, freight trains could not run on tracks used by suburban trains to get to the freight terminals. Imagine that with truck? Oh sure, you pay rego, but we're going to ban you from the roads during peak hour...but the government would not spend a cent on freight-train-only tracks.

 

 

Agreed, however, the pass mark is what it is, and should you fall below that standard due to one incorrect question, that is not your fault. But for that question you would have passed and met the standard.

 

It also begs the question, are there any other questions that have not been updated to reflect changes in the AIP?

 

 

By turning off the electrical power, you won't stop the engine. Don't forget that aero engines have an independent spark generation system (magnetos). You will just lose any electrical powered equipment, but at this stage of the flight, the need for them has gone. Loss of radio might be a nuisance.

Not always correct, many modern experimental aircraft do not have a traditional magneto ignition system. Mine doesn't, and it is by no means unique, so shutting down the electrics can, in some cases, shut down the engine too. That being said, the P-Mags on mine have a internal alternator to self-power them, but the previous E-Mag versions don't. Others may have dual electric fuel pumps instead of an engine driven pump. (Low wing with an H2AD engine for example).Which is why procedures given here for one aircraft may not necessarily work with another, and you must know the systems of aircraft you're flying. If it is your aircraft, rather than spend $100 of fuel just boring holes in the sky, get to altitude, throttle back and see how quickly you can get down using various techniques. Learn what a 3G spiral dive feels like so you don't need to be looking inside at a G-meter or a now-blank EFIS screen. Listen to the wind noise close to VNE and try riding a stall down through several thousand feet to compare descent rates.

 

Hopefully you'll never have to use any of these techniques, but better to know which one works best for you if you do need to!

 

 

Depends on the aircraft I think. A VNE descent with a constant speed prop is likely to lead to higher descent rates than a 90* bank with 4G applied and letting the nose fall through the horizon.

 

The -9 is well known as having quite an efficient wing, so until I complete the flight testing to figure out what works best for it, I'd probably go the steep spiral dive.

 

 

One thing I found with the KR2 I used to own, just because you can cruise fast, doesn't mean you will cruise fast. The aircraft is quick, yes and handled beautifully, but with such a light wing loading you feel every little bump so you tended to slow down. It also floats a loooooong way on landing if you're a little quick over the fence, but that is because of the flat fuselage skimming a few inches above the ground in the taildragger, so may not be such an issue with the nose gear.

 

One other thing, the BEW of the Joey is listed as 340Kg, this is nearly 100Kg heavier than the recommended BEW of the basic KR2 design. I would recommend a review of KRNet and in particular Neil Binghams article before committing to something like that. Sure it will fly, but it won't fly as nicely as a lightweight KR2, even though there are KR's out there pushing 1200lb ramp weights! The heavier you are, the worse it will fly, even though it is in balance.

 

Actually that one looks familiar, it might be the one in a hangar at Cessnock across from my RV. If it is the same one, it is disassembled and looks like it hasn't been moved in a little while, so you may well be up for an engine inspection or overhaul depending on the condition of the cylinders, something to consider if it proves to be the same one.

 

 

Another option is APRS, basically an amateur-built-and-run ADS-B for anything and everything, including cars, boats and aircraft. IT is quite popular in the US with the RV crowd. The hardware is quite cheap and once configured is set-and-forget, but you need your "Standard" amateur radio licence to legally use it.

 

The downside is it does require ground-stations to relay the data to the internet, but once it is there, anyone, anywhere in the world, can track your movements in near real-time.

 

 

Truly amazing project - I have been following it for years and he recons it will be ready to fly by early next year. Can you imagine getting two engines out on one side ? EEEKK....

Me too, it puts the RV build in a whole different light when you see someone with the skills to produce such a beautiful product from scratch.The ultimate question though is what will he drop out of the bomb bay? Cans of Budweiser, or maybe fill it with lollies for the ultimate Christmas lolly drop!

 

 

Have you had a look at the SPA Panther?http://flywithspa.com/panther-2/

Indeed I have, there was a good write up in Kitplanes. I don't think the relationship with the Krviatrix will stand for another build though, so I have to keep the -9.Maybe I should just ask the fat ol' bugger for a fuel card?