Maritime_Ev

Like the other sunshine coast class G airfields (YCAB, YCDR) the circuit at Gympie gets very hectic at times, especially when the gliding club is active. It is not unsual to have multiple LSA/GA students doing circuits mixed with arriving aeroplanes of all specifications and the ocasional helicopter, while at the same time have gliders launching and recovering from the left/right grass. And the gliders do not seem to have great radios in them (and being gliders they sometimes come from non-standard angles that you might be be looking for) which doesn't help the see and avoid in the circuit. However when you're approaching (or in) the circuit you'd be very much aware of this looking for traffic, the LSA pilot was a local too as I understand, so he was certainly aware of the glider ops. Still a combination of approach angles, a bit of sun glare, a cockpit distraction and an unreasonable dose of bad luck and it could happen to anyone. Of course if this happened outside the circuit area (perhaps above it?) it becomes a matter of non-allerted see & avoid and "big sky", with a (logically) lower level of vigiliance. They may not have been on the same frequency (CTAF, Area or gliding specific) and regardless wouldn't have been broadcasting. In that case it would have just been a matter of sheer bad luck. NB. Not sure about where this happened exactly, but Kybong is about 16km from Gympie proper so they may well have both been in the circuit area.

The local aero club at YBSU has been training RAAus students in CTA under a CASA dispensation for years, I'd be very surprised if they were the only school in Oz that managed it (tho to be fair, it is a pretty quiet airport compared to Archerfield and the goldie). Interestingly you can fly solo as a RAAus student but once you've got your certificate you can't fly in CTA until you get a RPC (normally a couple of hours in a GA aircraft sees to that).

Interesting to see the different experiences with the transition between RPC and PPL; especially the learning curve entering controlled airspace. I did it in the opposite route, did ab-initio PPL in a C172 (with some time in a C162) at a fairly quiet class D airport (Sunny Coast). I found my first flights into busy uncontrolled airfields (Gympie, Caboolture, Caloundra) much more difficult: You have to figure out which runway to land on without the ATIS and there's traffic coming from everywhere, with gliders and low powered UL doing different circuits to everyone else, not to mention skydivers being dropped overhead and runway infringements by the local LAME's dog and the occasional roo. In controlled airspace ATC takes you by the hand and as long as you follow their instructions you're good, of course your radio calls need to be right, but they should be OCTA too, with the added benefit that if you do muck up a radio call they won't be shy to let you repeat that bloody taxi clearance until you get it 100% right which will cause sufficient embarrassment to make sure you don't make the same fault again (and to the credit of YBSU tower they very rarely get cranky). Yes it can be intimidating to fly and taxi around the big jets but you'd have to make a really big fuckup to actually hit one though you do occasionally get to play chicken with em, see below :)

You are right, you don't need a class 2; however you do need to have a medical certificate: To exercise the privileges of your RPL (such as flying in controlled airspace) you need at least a recreational aviation medical certificate (RAMPC), which can be issued by your GP rather than a DAME. Flying on a RPC you only need to self-declare that you are fit enough to hold a drivers licence. My confusion came from the fact that I know some RAAus students have to fly before opening of the tower because they don't hold a medical certificate (but thus not nessecarily a class 2, a RAMPC would have done). I learned to fly in GA and had to get a class two before I could fly solo, as the RAMPC didn't exist yet. I guess this is yet another way in which flying RAAus is cheaper. From RAAus: Q. Are the medical requirements different? Yes that's right. With an RPC issued by RA-Aus. you only need to self-certify and declare you maintain a medical standard equivalent to that required to drive a motor vehicle. From the CASA website: Q. If I have a Recreational Aviation Medical Practitioner's Certificate, can I fly in controlled airspace? Yes. You can fly in Class C or D airspace as long as you are qualified to do so, and your aircraft is suitably equipped and maintained.

You need a class two medical to fly in controlled airspace, regardless of passengers. This also applies to RAAUS students flying solo in controlled airspace with a flying school with a CASA exemption (interestingly, once this student passes her flight test she would no longer be allowed to fly to the same airfield before getting a RPL + endo).

I think you're confusing the base units and the prefixes. The base units are meter, kilogram, second, kelvin, ampere, candela, mole. With those you can derive all other units (Newton, joule, volt, etc) that's the beauty of the system, and the reason it is used for scientific purposes worldwide. BTW According to Wikipedia this idea was pioneered by Maxwell and Kelvin, so not all foreign (tho that depends on your point of view, they're foreign to me). The prefixes are the nano, kilo, yota, etc. I thought there were 10 up and down but it could be twelve, I rarely use anything smaller than micro or bigger than terra. I agree that the French can be a bit difficult when you're not fluent the local lingo, but that has little to do with how well the system works. And while most people in the Netherlands speak some English asking for a pint of milk in a Dutch supermarket might give you a few frowns too, quite like asking for a liter in the US

It's a pity that people get so nationalistic when it comes to these things, especially in the states you still hear the "it's French so it must be bad" argument a lot. The metric system (more accurately International System of Units) has a certain elegance in that it covers all measurements with combinations of just 7 base units, six of which are defined as natural constants, and with the prefixes it can be used on widely different scales (from the sizes of internal components in chips to distances between planets). However for daily use that all doesn't matter too much as long as units are used consistently. And that's the problem in Oz aviation; altitude in feet, navigation in Nautical miles and visibility in meters, fuel in liters, aeroplane weight in lbs and passengers in kg no wonder people stuff up. Even more important in engineering, I once worked as an engineer on an old trailing suction hopper dredger that combined 19th century store keeping with British Lister-Blackstone main engines, American Caterpillar generators and Dutch Stork-Werkspoor dredge pump engines. Either system would have worked but mixing them was a disaster. Reckon that ship was the final straw to leave the dark side and let my engineer's licence lapse to become a full time deck officer.

Did my retract endo a couple of weeks ago, was told several times not to rely on the squat switch, and double check gear lever position before master on (and after looking at the mechanism that sounded like good advice, plenty of potential for it to get fauled). At least on a A330 you're not gonna damage the prop

Flew the Foxbat to the Angelfield (YMRG) breakfast on Saturday, didn't make any in-flight pictures but the it was quite an interesting trip. There were a few Photographers on the field, so if anyone managed to snap a good landing/departure pic of the yellow beast please let me know. The weather forecast in on the night before was looking a bit average but I figured this would be a good occasion to practice my marginal weather skills: No get-there-itis, no worried passenger(s), lots of endurance, familiar terrain with airports available for plan B. Departing Sunshine Coast airport at around 0730 I decided not to fly the direct route over the range as there was a fair bit of low-ish cloud around and I like to stay nice and high over the hard bits. Uneventful flight, couldn't see the airstrip at first but an incoming C182 showed me the way and I managed to end up perfectly located for a left downwind join with a nice smooth landing straight into a 15kn breeze finish it off, the Foxbat makes it look so easy. After enjoying the barbie brekkie in Murgon the local weather was still quite good (if a bit windy) with broken cloud at 3500, the forecast for YBSU was not so good with possible showers. To stay clear of the range I flew the same route back via Kilkivan (KKV) and Gympie. Gradually descending to around 2500 between Kilkivan and Gympie to maintain clearance from the clouds I found that there was a big shower between me and home; it was looking pretty gloomy ahead but there was a lighter area towards the coast so I considered going further east and approaching via Noosa heads when I realized I had a perfectly good runway (YGYM) a couple of miles to my right... "In case of doubt there is no doubt" as we say at sea so I made the circuit call and put it down and had a cup of tea at Sunshine Coast Flight Training (thanks Tim!) and waited for the shower to pass. Half an hour later it all looked a lot better and with another 25 minutes I was back at the aeroclub at YBSU. All in all a successful flight, a reminder on how important it is to do proper preparation on the ground and have a plan B and C ready before taking off.

No, I'm not suggesting foul play from the importer (or the factory), what I meant was that any pitot-static system has an inherent error (especially at large angles of attack) regardless of certification. I guess that would be of more importance at very slow speeds though. I'm just curious how they managed to get such a large increase in speed (and an suspicious bastard when it comes to miraculous claims about flying, floating and rolling things), as you say in your later post probably a combination of a lot of small improvements. Anyway I'm a fan of the Foxbat so I would love to check out the improved version. BTW I'm pretty sure it doesn't matter whether there's a VH or a 24 rego on it, it still is an LSA for certification purposes. Exchange rate variations can be big problem, no matter how good your product is; if it's suddenly 30% more expensive it's going to hurt sales (Australian industries know all about that I'm sure). It may be a lifesaver for Jabiru, especially exporting to the states (don't know how much of their current CASA induced PR disaster spilled over to the US though).

Sounds like Foxbat is on to a winner with this one then! Hope the Aussie dollar/Euro/UKR grivna exchange will not have to much of a bad influence in the sales price here in Oz. Not to be negative (I really like the little A22 and a quicker more comfy version would be something I'd consider buying) but I'm still a bit skeptical about the speed, it is clear that they did a lot to improve the aerodynamics viz. the A22 but a speed gain of 20 knots (or about 20%) seems to be a lot given that they still use the same aerofoil (?) and similar cabin cross section. Did you test the speed independently? (e.g. GPS on reciprocal headings) I remember a long discussion recently on this forum about how ASI will get very inaccurate near the extreme ends of the flight envelope.

Some Germans already got a bit further with this: http://www.e-volo.com/ I think it would be a great way around a lot of the inherent problems of helicopters; no single point failures (if you set it up with independent controllers and multiple battery packs), no problems with torque, much reduced vibrations. Flying it would be a lot easier than handling a (small) helicopter too, even to the extend that it could fly completely remote controlled or automatic. A BRS would be easy to fit, you can shoot it through the middle of the rotor assembly instead of having a rotor in the way, although you probably want something that works from a really low level especially for the early stages of development.

The only way to avoid that is to build your tower to geostationary orbit (which is what a real space elevator would do), if you built it on the equator you'd be able to just push your spaceship off from the tower and it's in orbit. Only problem is that you need to be roughly 1500x as high as this proposed tower: 35750km I may not be smart enough to be a rocket scientist but I do play Kerbal Space Program occasionally when I need my flying fix and I'm on the boat or the weather doesn't cooperate, amazing how much of the elementairy stuff about orbital mechanics you pick up from that. https://kerbalspaceprogram.com

The only way to avoid that is to build your tower to geostationary orbit (which is what a real space elevator would do), if you built it on the equator you'd be able to just push your spaceship off from the tower and it's in orbit. Only problem is that you need to be roughly 1500x as high as this proposed tower: 35750km I may not be smart enough to be a rocket scientist but I do play Kerbal Space Program occasionally when I need my flying fix and I'm on the boat or the weather doesn't cooperate, amazing how much of the elementairy stuff about orbital mechanics you pick up from that. https://kerbalspaceprogram.com

As Nev already mentioned to, the problem of getting to space is not to get up that high (although that is hard enough in itself), you also need to get to escape velocity (around 8km/sec in proper metric units). So a 20km high tower doesn't really gain you all that much of an except maybe a lower air resistance, but it would probably cheaper to carry your rocket up by aeroplane a la white knight. I guess if you made your tower so high that it reached to geostationairy orbit Randall Munroe of XKCD fame explains it much better than I can: https://what-if.xkcd.com/58/ You got to love a place where you can discuss space flight on the same forum as the latest Rotax engine