Yenn

Aldo you are correct. I started flying with all those mandated calls, but now I call when taxi ing and listen in on the appropriate frequency. Some do this with out a transponder, but I like the transponder on. I have been called up several times by ATC to find out my intentions, but they didn't know who they were calling.

When you change anything on a plane you should assess the possible change of W & B. If the weight changes by a certain amount, I forget the exact figure, but it is a percentage of empty weight, then you have to do a re weigh and work out the new C of G figures. This applies to GA aircraft, but I am not sure about RAAus planes. If the Bristell is CASA approved, then I would think the W&B would have to be done to planes, with and without a chute. Chutes are not the be all and end all of safety. One of the first Cirrus chute saved aircraft resulted in massive injuries to the pilots vertebra. It laded in a dam and because the wing hit the water, with no slowing down by the wheels hitting ground first, it stopped in a very short distance.

Bristell could do what has been done before. Fit a Ballistic Chute and advertise like mad that it is a great safety feature. If they must not be taken near a stall, how do you land them?

Were either of them flying IFR or even in IFR conditions. It is possible for instrument flying to be practiced with an instructor, without ATC knowing about it. If they were flying IFR then control should have been aware of them and the collision possibility. I wonder what their transponders were set to. One of them may and probably was set to 1200, which is VFR. I don't think it will take ATSB long to come up with a pretty good idea of what happened.

Marty. I fly from YIVG which is 15nm SE of Gladstone. Live at Benaraby Away from early June to mid July. PM me nearer the time.

I read that both planes were doing IFR training. That means only one pair of eyes available in each plane for see and avoid. Neither of those planes have what you would call really good visibility. Plus an instructor would have been watching the student as well. Did this occur in a danger area for flying training? Maybe the recordings of radio traffic could throw some light on why it happened.

When you say you know of problems, but cannot talk about them, I wonder who you are really trying to kid. Either you know what the problems are or you are just pissing against the wind. There was someone on this site some time ago who kept making those types of statements. Haven't heard from him lately, but a friend of his said that he was having mental problems.

Hard to tell what it was. Low wing, prop turning but little power. Pretty devastating.

Rather than worrying about the turns, we should be making assessments of winds while we are on downwind and even before. It is not hard when on downwind to see if you are drifting towards or away from the runway. Use that information to decide how you conduct the turn on to base and also onto final. As you finish the turn onto final, you are usually aiming for 500', so there is plenty of room to adjust the final approach. My preference is to always be high on the approach, it is easy to lose height, but difficult to stretch the glide. Above all keep an eye on the ball.

My Corby is RAAus registered and perfectly capable of doing most types of aerobatics, including spins. I fly it with a RAAus certificate so cannot aerobat it. I have done aerobatics in GA and have a GA licence I could do aerobatics in my RV but prefer not to. With both of my planes I get very close to the stall every time I land, if not actually there. I find I have to be able to recognise the oncoming stall in order to land, otherwise I would be like a nosewheel pilot and fly it on 10 kts above stall speed. I actually enjoy slow flying, just seeing how far I can go using the rudder to keep straight while stalled.

There is no reason for the fork of the nosewheel to contact the runway if the plane is being flown correctly. If the tyre was punctured it would possibly allow the fork to have a lot more pressure on it than usual, but that pressure should come when the speed was quite low. I see far too many nosewheel aircraft just flown onto the strip, only the other day one survived here after landing Port main and nosewheel, with the stbd. main still off the ground.

What does that long list of well known names really mean. We do not know if the celebrity pressured the pilot or not. With the number of hours he had and the fact that he was IFR capable, even if not current, he should have been capable of working out the safety of what he was doing. The pilot is ultimately the arbiter of whether it is safe to go or not, but over the years we have seen bad decisions made by helicopter pilots, resulting in their and others deaths. They seem to have a much higher opinion of their capabilities than others do. A friend of mine died in a chopper crash, he had knocked off for the day and had a drink. Someone let off a safety flare, which was seen from the island resort, where he was. He discussed the risks of flying at night and after his drink and made the decision to fly and investigate the flare. He lost it, crashed into the sea and died. Good pilot, great bloke, but he made the wrong decision. Even worse it turned out that the flare was a hoax.

I would agree with poteroo, except for the keeping a point on the plane aligned with a point on the ground. All you need is to watch what is happening, there is no need to be watching the altimeter, nor any other instrument if you are competent.

During the worst part of the bushfires we had smoke in Central Qld. Not enough to make you think of not flying, but when you got up a bit the horizon became hazy and the ground was just a grey blur. Not nice conditions and it could have sucked you in, leading to inadvertent IFR.

Kyle. You say that if 760 kg isn't available when you finish the S21, so I assume you mean you will register it GA. If that is your intent you would be well off to be in SAAA and follow their methods to completion of the build. you would also be better off to do the SAAA Maintenance Procedures Course, which would make the RAAus course irellivent. How are RAAus going to inspect log books? Will they require us to send them in or will they come to our homes to inspect. We certainly don't have to carry them n the plane with us.

I have the same experience as SplitS and no problems with RAAus. I did all instrument flying last time and my Corby has absolutely no instrument ability, nor in fact is my GA RV4 much better.

Kyle, as you say it is a load of extra work, but as far as I am concerned it has to be done if you want to get the advantages. When you look at it you will see that it all comes from what we learned the hard way in the past. RAAus pilots may not like it but GA pilots were brought up with it and some can even see sense in it.

It is good that this sort of fly in still happens. A little bird recently told me that The Old Station is a goer for next year.

I reckon flying with RAAus is fun. It has provided a means to fly affordably for a long time. What the problem is, is that now we can fly RAAus planes we want to fly, bigger, faster and more capable planes. Time to move to GA and we can fly with multiple passengers, higher speeds, do aerobatics and IFR if we really want. Oh I forgot, we want to do it all without any extra expense or training.

I believe the coils are stock Honda manufactured. If you do try swapping them over, be aware that they only work in one direction, so it may appear better to put one on the opposite way around to get the lead pointing in the best direction, but it will not work. Go to the Jab maintenance manual for the correct procedure to test the coils. You could put a timing light on to each individual plug lead to see if they are all firing. Try running the engine with the cowls off and plug leads exposed in a dark hangar, to check for arcing being visible. Best of all though is to just check everything from the coil, to distributor, plug leads, then plugs. Whatever happens I reckon you will have to remove the distributor caps and they need a good checking for flashover or build up of conductive matter inside.

I use the RAAus maintenance logbook for the Corby and the SAAA logbook for the RV4. They both do the job but I find the RAAus one is not clear in its headings, so they get ignored. I use the red maintenance release for both planes to be carried in the plane. I don't know if it is illegal to carry the maintenance log in the plane, but it is not a good idea to. I have a sale of my RV organised and the new owner will want to see the logs before he takes possession. I have made a full electronic copy all in jpeg format, to leave at home and take the paper docs with the plane. As for pilot logbooks I just use the commercially available ones.

I have had this problem and it was tracking in the distributor cap. Remove cap and it should be apparent, but clean it thoroughly anyway and see if problem solved. If so do the same to the other cap before it goes bad.

Seems a bit odd having so many sizes. Suction hoses have always been larger than the pressure hoses, usually about 1.5 times the diameter. That is due to the need to keep velocity down in them.

From the angle of the anchor chain, there must be good holding ground. It was at about 45 degrees, but the load would have been lessening as the ship came from crosswind to being nearly into wind. I wonder if it had bow or stern thrusters.

You have to remember he was a chopper pilot!