motzartmerv

haha;)

I copied this post from the incident thread, togcentral suggested it would be better discussed here..

Good post Tony..You've obviously been in this game for a long time and have a better understanding then most regarding the operation and managment side of things..

A problem that i have noticed myself with the training syllabus is this..

A person can obtain there ticket by passing the bak and then a flying test...that test is usually about 1 to 1 and 1/2 hours and goes through the sequences taught, stalls, steep turns precautionary search and landing gliding etc..

and then go on and get the x country endorsement..now, when i was getting my licence and x country end we would check the weather and only ever fly in the direction of the best weather..never would we attempt to go into even remotly marginal conditions..Beautifull blue skies are great to fly in but, after getting my licence i was on my own..i had to gain experiance with the weather by doing it..it was nearly a recipe for disaster...sure you can be told what a bad day looks like on paper, but untill you see it and see how weather moves in and changes within the course of a flight you can't have a propper understanding...this was brought home to me recently when i was trapped below mountain tops with weather on the ground in all but one direction..i was even looking at paddocks on the ground to get out of the air..now, at one point i found what looked like a nice paddock but had high terrain pretty much all around it..i was heavy, it was 34 deg and very humid and in a jabiru...on reflection, if i did go down and investigate that strip (paddock) i may not have been able to outclimb that terrain either after landing or on climbing away if it was no good..but at the time that didnt cross my mind...luckily i decided to head the only direction that had a clearance between the mountains and th cloudbase of aroun 600 feet, and closing fast..we shot through and made it to the coast...but all in all, pretty poor airmenship on my part for even taking off that day...

my poiunt is, that as students, most instructors take us touring in fine conditions...i havn't heard many stories of an instructor and a student having to do a real divert and mabye an overnight to wait out weather...

Weather in my mind is the most deadly thing to us ultralighters..and i know of a few crashes where it has been the major factor...the guy in the drifta trying to squeeze through a gap in cloud and mountain recently jumpes to mind..

I am currently getting hours up to gain an instructor rating...when i do start teachin pilots, i intend to take them to the edge of marginal weather..to see what it looks like from the air, to decide early to divert and go around it or even better go back...to always have a backdoor available...these things are easily said, but need to be seen from the cockpit in a realtime sence to get the gravity of it..

Sure stalling and spinning r dangerous pastimes...but how many of us get close on a normal flight to this happening...??the weather is always there..

I would be interested to hear from other instructors out there on how they handle this part of the teaching...i think that telling students not to fly into cloud is no where near enuff...

Cheers

Good post Tony..You've obviously been in this game for a long time and have a better understanding then most regarding the operation and managment side of things..

A problem that i have noticed myself with the training syllabus is this..

A person can obtain there ticket by passing the bak and then a flying test...that test is usually about 1 to 1 and 1/2 hours and goes through the sequences taught, stalls, steep turns precautionary search and landing gliding etc..

and then go on and get the x country endorsement..now, when i was getting my licence and x country end we would check the weather and only ever fly in the direction of the best weather..never would we attempt to go into even remotly marginal conditions..Beautifull blue skies are great to fly in but, after getting my licence i was on my own..i had to gain experiance with the weather by doing it..it was nearly a recipe for disaster...sure you can be told what a bad day looks like on paper, but untill you see it and see how weather moves in and changes within the course of a flight you can't have a propper understanding...this was brought home to me recently when i was trapped below mountain tops with weather on the ground in all but one direction..i was even looking at paddocks on the ground to get out of the air..now, at one point i found what looked like a nice paddock but had high terrain pretty much all around it..i was heavy, it was 34 deg and very humid and in a jabiru...on reflection, if i did go down and investigate that strip (paddock) i may not have been able to outclimb that terrain either after landing or on climbing away if it was no good..but at the time that didnt cross my mind...luckily i decided to head the only direction that had a clearance between the mountains and th cloudbase of aroun 600 feet, and closing fast..we shot through and made it to the coast...but all in all, pretty poor airmenship on my part for even taking off that day...

my poiunt is, that as students, most instructors take us touring in fine conditions...i havn't heard many stories of an instructor and a student having to do a real divert and mabye an overnight to wait out weather...

Weather in my mind is the most deadly thing to us ultralighters..and i know of a few crashes where it has been the major factor...the guy in the drifta trying to squeeze through a gap in cloud and mountain recently jumpes to mind..

I am currently getting hours up to gain an instructor rating...when i do start teachin pilots, i intend to take them to the edge of marginal weather..to see what it looks like from the air, to decide early to divert and go around it or even better go back...to always have a backdoor available...these things are easily said, but need to be seen from the cockpit in a realtime sence to get the gravity of it..

Sure stalling and spinning r dangerous pastimes...but how many of us get close on a normal flight to this happening...??the weather is always there..

I would be interested to hear from other instructors out there on how they handle this part of the teaching...i think that telling students not to fly into cloud is no where near enuff...

Cheers

OMG...i feel sick...to think i flew in an aircraft with that many problems...thats just shocking..

Is the RAA's problem a maintanance one? do they require a level 2 to check it out or something?? i can't understand what the problem is.. Any responsible and decent human being of an instructor would surely have no problems with running a tight ship..this guy was just a nutcase...they shouldn't throw the baby out with the bath water...

Thats unbelievable about the student in the crosswind...I remeber seeing him send guys (low timers) up purposely in bad wind conditions so they could gain experiance..saw some hairy moments i tell you, i was lucky enuff to live very close to the strip he was operating from and had an exellent view of base and final legs on most days..if only i had a video camera i would have caught some very interesting moments...I can understand an instructor going up with a student in windy conditions to teach them some turbulance and crosswind technique, but to send them solo in these conditions is just criminal...

Keep us posted with the school, am very interested to see how you go..spending most of my life in the bush i know a lot of ppl that would be interested in a decent moblie school.. alot of cockeys have room to grade up a strip and could have you come and stay and teach them ...

Hi guys...i have an updade regarding this incident (near) at camden..I spoke to my instructor about it at length..While camden doesnt have an official dead side most schools will continue to teach the overfly method of joining as it serves as good airmanship on other ctaf strips, which we all use regularly..The idea is to descend close to the strip so as not to interfere with the traffic on the glider strips..and this seems quite feasable when you look at camden from the air...

Basically we agreed that the incident was my fault and it came about becasue i turned and descended too close to the active strip 06/24..so close that i was just finishing the turn when i was crossing the strip...if i had turned and descended a little further away i would have been level and at altitude when crossing the strip thereby giving me heaps of visability of the twin on final and then takeoff leg..my wing was down in the turn obscuring my vision..

Since this incident i have joined from outside on a 45 deg and will continue to do so..its much better an idea to get the cue and order sorted out b4 actually joining..if this means a few orbits to let fast traffic go by then so be it..

cheers

Bill..i sympathise with your thoughts regarding the flying school..it was inherntly a great idea..just very poorly run... I would have expected more from the AUF on this matter though..Is there any chance of you opeing the school?? or have they just canned the idea completly?

Regarding the aircraft..i only flew it a handfull of times and it was in my opinion a real dog.. the trim was buggerd, but he was the only one who used the trim inflight anyway saying it was a bit tricky.. there always seemed to be a tendancy to roll to the left, even in a glide.. very unnerving plane to fly, and the day we had the engine failure i kissed the ground when we landed..its the only time i ever wished i wasn';t in the air..

The guy used to make his Joyride passengers (tif officially) fuel the plane, and he wouldnt even supervise, he'd sit in the shade under his caravan annexe..

i could write a book about the guy...but i won't...enuff has been saiod already and the main thing is that he doesn't operate anymore...thank god.. I have a friend who did get his licence but never flew after that...the licence cost him upwards of 12 grand..

anyway, i hope ya can get the school up and running, like i said, it is an exellent idea and run by the write person would be an invaluable resource to those in remote areas wanting to learn..

Good luck

OMG..have a look at this wild strip..more like a ski ramp...fun fun fun...

Check this out...fantastic job by the pilot..seemed to be very fast, i think he was gliding..not sure, the props aren't bent after he stops..and no flaps..

Pretty sure most cfi's just take them from the practise questions in the BAK..But theres also a lot of questions from the RAA handbook..rules and reg's...i didnt study the raa habdbook at all and still passed...but only barely...Got orderd to read it thuroughly..hehe..tip..tip...tip...

Ya know ya gettin it right when ya can do this...check it out...

Hi..i found a casa report that has some ultralight activity in it..strangly enough it seems hangliders acount for far more hours flown then ultralights??how does that work?? anyway, theres graphs showing number of hours flown verses accidents in specific aviation sectors...is an interesting read..the opening stanza says it doesnt count ultralight accidents, but clearly it does but doesnt add them to the ga stats..

http://casa.gov.au/seminars/selfadmin/papers/CASA-Safety-Statistics.pdf

isn't that aweome...got me beat how the wing don't stall when rotated so far so suddenly..flamin exellent stuff

Check this out...Unreal ....

makes my 400 meter takeoff rolls in the jab look dangerous..lol

a amet who speaks the language said the tv report said the passenger in the front jammed her foot on the rudder pedal during the takeoff roll..don't know how reliable this is, but would explain the massive amounts if yaw after liftoff..i have had a passenger who pushed the left rudder pedal during a landing..he said it was instict to push on the brake pedal as we approached...and i find myself doing the same thing when my missus is driving the car....

i just read the crash report...i reckon they can be sure they wern't in any trouble before hitting the powerlines, mabye a bit lost...but the flaps werenn't out so a landing probably wasnt on the cards...the radio call " can you see the railway line" would indicate they were probably trying to get a position fix, but what i can't understand is why in the hell would you go lower to look at the road??..where they hopeing to see a roadsign?? so sad, it looks like a complete pilot stuffup....

Poor guys...looks like a shocking impact...not sure i believe the story about the 4wd...who was left to say it was there?...and who in there right mind would leave a crash site like that, with ppl still in the wreck..who knows what an impact with powerlines would do to an aircraft..ive heard of jabiru's breaking them and continuing flying, and ive heard of airtractors clipping them and loosing all there flying and spinning in..i agree with the above post's, low flying is a recipe for disaster, altitude is our life insurance...the only low flying ive ever done was along a 10 mile beach with the tide right out...and still i didnt go below the tree level of the coast...

Really??...not the one i fly...I had 2 pb..both 70 kgs..80 litres of fuel..and 15 kg of baggage...

you guys are scarein me now..lol..Im gunna be instructing in this machine soon, mabye il try con the cfi to lease a 170 instead...or even better a 230..hmmm..

i have some video of taking off from agnes waters in 30 deg weather...u can planely see how long it takes to clear the tree line which runs up each side of the strip length..nose right over after liftoff to get the airspeed up...very depressing, because i know it can get a heap hotter then that inplaces...

the oil temp never went far away from the middle ...is quite strange..she cruises slow, about 90 kts at 2800 and climbes like a one armed monkey...

So.. .we have had a full blown monsunal trough affecting most of our eastern sea board over the last week or so..An exeelent time to do a major crosscountry expedition up north and back in a j160 hey...hehe...yea right.. My daughter and i blasted off from camden on the 18th and landed at moree after a bit of a bumpy trip over the range..and thats where we stayed for the next 2 nights...rained in and many phone calls to sydney met to keep updated on the weather..with xmass fast approaching i thought seriously about turning back for camden..but that door was shut too...so finally the sky cleared and we were off for biloela (thangool)..an uneventfull few hours and we were there...

thats when the fun started..

we took off on the 23rd with rain behind us but an assurance from the met guy that the cloud wasnt to bad to the south of us...yea right...we ended up in the range with cloud on the tops to the south west and north, and couldnt go bak to the gool because it was a white out...so east it was...hit the coast and landed at bundeburg...another check of the weather and we were off again...but only made it to maryborough..and thats where we stayed..lol...for 2 nights..had xmass morning in a motel with a cranky missus on the phone complaining that pilots are spose to know when its gunna rain..lol...anyway, we finally got out of there on xmass day and headed south...once again we ended up to close to a white wall and had to turn back for caloundra and sat it out for a few hours..then off again and skooted ouround brisbane and archerfeild and stayed low on the coast towards coolangatta, around the range becasue the cloud base was to low to jump the hills and on to lismore..then a coast run down to port maquarie with big black yukkys on our right the entire way (nearly)..after some fuel and a comfort stop at port mack we were off and made Taree...Another big black yucky stopped any further progress..finally the next day (boxing day) we had some resemblance of a clear sky and we made camden..

our track down the coast was practically beach flying the whole trip from rounding the corner after brisbane..a long wasy around but much better then playing with the hills and cloud..at one point when we were in the range near biloela with the crap closing in i was looking for a nice big paddock, its a pretty intence time when weather turns crap and start looking at the ground...but thankfully we where left a little window albeit tottaly in the wrong direction..It was all lessons hard learned but im very thankfull for the experiance, a trip that far in perfect weather wouldn't have given me the lessons i took from the outing..

The jab performed admirably, but....i did discover that its climb in the 30 deg + heat close to mtow is quite poor...dangerously poor i feel..at some points i had full climb power and angle and was sinking at 150 ft per minute..sometimes it took 5 minutes to get 1000 agl...eyes wide open now....

just got back from a trip from camden to Biloela (near rockhampton) . The new jets were put in just before we took off..Deffinatly burned a little more fuel for the power setting..But 4785 never approached the yellow of the oil temp even b4 the jet change, but the cht runs very cold, and curiously the cht gets into the yellow on the cold end during climb..very strange and unnerving when descending and then going to cruise power..

Good job mate..im a little concerned about the length of your first nav..but instructor obviously had faith...

Casa would have to be THE worst govt organisation i have ever dealt with...they really are shocking

I learned in a taildragger skyfox..my log says i soloed after 6.8 hrs, and the solo brouhgt up my 7th hour total time...I think this fast solo time was a refelction of my instructors techniques more then anything..from my very first flight i was in control moments after liftoff..rather then the usual climb to 3000 and hand over...we were on a quiet strip and would always do 2 or 3 takeoffs and landings in the one run..we would even do teardrops on calm days, 2 or 3 takeoffs and landings then a teardrop turn back to the strip and land the other way...hehe...a bit nervy, but an exellent way to get the skills up...

cheers

wow..i didnt know that about the 182, must be quite a machine...if you read some of the coments on the youtube vid , one of them says that the pax had her foot on the rudder peddal, obviously posted by someone who can understand the language the report is in, but then again, there journalist's a probably as reliable as ours in these matters...:;)1:

HPD..im not sure, there's only 2 seneca's at camden, 1 is at my school (the one i fly with) and it was sleeping, and the other is from curtis..i havn't talked to Rob yet to ask if it was his..i will on monday..ill let you know..i am hanging to talk to her myself, at least to find out if she saw me..

cheers