Mike Borgelt

Appears to be nothing to do with a fence. Stall/spin is the word.

Turbo, most do now, a few hundred dollars. Records GPS track and altitude along with pressure altitude, once a second typically nowadays as memory is cheap. Used for verification of cross country performance flights and competitions. Very small and neat now. Search for LX Nano. From the Bowenville thread: Kaz, I doubt the bereaved actually read the internet to find out what happened to their loved one. They are in the loop. The rest of us are trying to stay alive and if speculation helps us think of things that that could have gone wrong that we ourselves didn't think of, it may help.

Are you SURE the glider hit the fence? No Cookies | Herald Sun glider was LS8. There may be one broken fence picket but that may have been done to get access through the fence for people as the marker cones are around it. The other posts and wires are intact with no sign of damage. The earlier crash link is here:Father dies in Benalla glider crash Jan 1 2015 it was a Nimbus 2. Aircraft some distance from fence. Emergency vehicle is between fence and wreck. Lots of fences in the area, not surprising that fences are nearby. The yesterday one was a kilometer or so north of the airfield, the first about 20 Km to the north. There was a spin in on final turn of an ASG29 at Waikerie in late February or early March 2016 I think (may have been 2015). Pilot badly banged up, broken bones etc. If anybody has any links to the detailed accident reports for those, please post them here.

I'll disagree with Graham Brown. Sure there will be speculation. It does no harm and possibly a lot of good as it explores multiple scenarios which might cause people to think RIGHT NOW about ALL the things that can go wrong, not just what happened in the particular case with a report released months after the event. One of the speculative scenarios may even be one that the investigators would not have thought of. I've also seen one GFA accident report that was cocked up beyond belief by a bad assumption made by one of the investigators. Fortunately nobody was dead but it was damn close. We have the problem of people running the activity investigating themselves. Anyone remember why ATSB was set up? Because the Regulator was NEVER going to find itself or its regulations at fault. I find the "lets wait for the official report" attitude akin to "let's sweep this under the carpet and continue on as if nothing happened". Kaz, 2700 hours in 60 different types including variants, much of it cross country and over 500 in competition. 1150 power, of which 1050 in the BD-4, mostly cross country transport.

IIRC the Cirrus at one time had a worse fatality rate than the Beechcraft Bonanza, a generally similar performing aircraft. I also read that the parachute was so they wouldn't have to go through the full spin testing regime for certification. Not that it won't recover, just they fitted the chute and got a waiver. Then we had the guy in a Cirrus near Gilgandra a few years ago at 5000 feet who pulled the chute after an engine failure and judged he couldn't reach Gilgandra airport. According to the news story he'd reported falling oil pressure, passed up the chance to land at Gilgandra and pressed for Dubbo whereupon the engine failed some time later. Some nice pictures of the aftermath with the thing sitting, stuffed, in the middle of a mile square level paddock with the tree line in the distance. I've flown gliders in that area. If I had an engine failure in the BD-4 there I'd say "thank you, Lord, I'll take it from here". When you pull the chute you are out of control and just along for the ride. The BD-4 design has never been formally spin tested either although one guy on the BD-4 newsgroup said he'd spun his hundreds of times. Jim Bede came up and said " I wouldn't do that, we never tested it". From the DA-40 video it seems to recover from spins readily with standard recovery actions. With two on board I wouldn't expect the C of G to be aft. I have some more information about the recent Beaudesert accident but I can't put it up here. Ballistic chutes are fine but I don't know why personal chutes aren't used more. My wife and I own one each which we got for gliding but we wear them in the BD-4 which has upward opening doors. Open door, undo seatbelt, roll off seat. When flying over remote unlandeable country (Gibb River road etc), survival packs on belt, the chutes have ELTs attached to the harness at all times. Chutes are steerable. Best to wear them and not need them than to need them and have them in the cupboard at home. We do get strange looks at airports sometimes. Certainly if you are going to do aerobatics or spin training they would seem like a good idea. In the USA parachutes are required for aeros if there is more than one person in the aircraft. See the jettisonable doors on the C150 Aerobat.

Oscar: "More BS. In a glider, you establish FUST ( Flaps, Undercart, Speed, Trim) on downwind and you don't set them up for diving inverted into the ground." Seems pretty clear to me.

Oscar was being completely factual. Looking at the picture in the link I posted this morning I'd say the glider impacted at 45 to 60 degrees nose down. 60 degrees gets you 87% of the impact velocity of vertical. Probably not enough difference to matter. To the people watching it would have looked vertical from where they were seeing it.

This guy can cure your ignorance: Blowout Week 195 Also look at the comments and past posts on the site. It is remarkable how seemingly good ideas fall over when you do some numbers. Do note the pumped hydro for storage sites in Australia as promoted by Alan Blakers, Professor of Sustainable Energy Systems at ANU (yes, we actually pay this guy). Solar panels are great when the sun is shining and there aren't too many clouds and windmills when the wind is blowing just right but they need to be essentially 100% backed up with something else - hydro, coal, gas or nuclear. All except gas and hydro are difficult to ramp up and down quickly, even gas when you want to use the much more efficient combined cycle plants. So you end up paying twice in capital investment for your power system, the electricity costs much more and supply is less reliable (if you search around you can find a nice graph of increase in electricity costs vs % penetration of "renewables" in various countries around the world. Australia is punching above its weight as our costs have increased about twice as much as the world average). Batteries you say for storage instead of reliable backup? Vast costs, need to be renewed (as do wind turbine parts) and how much are you going to need? I've seen blocking highs in winter across most of SA, Vic and NSW for a week. No wind and usually accompanied by nearly 100% strato cumulus cover. Likewise the SW of WA. Demand "management" just means they turn off your electricity when there is a shortfall. Great. I'm in favour of installing smart meters in all houses and businesses. When done you get to sign a contract that says you want to be powered by x % renewables. When they aren't able to supply, the folks who put x = 0 get first dibs and a lower bill because coal is cheap. Until the green madness power stations could supply at 4c/Kw-hour delivered at the power station at a profit. Lets see how many are in favour of renewables then. Green fantasies are just that.

Here's a link to the student pilot who died. 'Much respected' volunteer killed in glider crash Looks like a fit, active 60 year old to me. Oscar is right the aircraft should be trimmed for approach speed, not to dive into the ground. I have a few hours in the ASK21's in California. You won't find a more gentle, well mannered, less twitchy glider. If nobody was flying I'd have expected it to do a hard landing and bounce from that position . The stick moves a long way fore and aft to get it to pitch forward suddenly like that takes little force but you need to move it a fair way.

There's been an autopsy report released already? How do you fall forward on the stick from a semi reclining position with a 4 point harness?

Thanks for the link to the booklet. Brings back memories. I knew some of those people and one (Arthur Farmer) took me for my first glider flight at Cunderdin at the GCWA Christmas camp at Cunderdin Dec 1957. I was nine years old. Yup the farmer was the instructor. The student that died was 18 same as me at the time as I was about to start gliding.. Unfortunately this has happened again and again over the last 50 or so years. I can think of two female passengers seriously injured in flights with instructors in WA alone, one in Queensland (this century for Qld) , killed and the Ararat accident I mentioned. One bloke lost his head as the glider was flown into the fence at the ed of the runway on his first training flight some years ago. Kaz, one of the hard things when starting flying is knowing whether the response is to your control inputs or caused by the atmosphere. It is far easier to do this early in the morning in a powered aircraft (or motorglider). Power also makes it easy to give the student enough time in the air in one flight to settle down, relax and get comfortable. I believe this causes far faster progress and when it comes to practicing takeoffs and landings, gliders are VERY inefficient. There is also a thing called "primacy". Under stress you revert to what you were first taught. Initial training should be with very carefully trained, experienced instructors to make sure the student uses the right cues. I also worry whether GFA instructors are taught enough psychology about how people operate and learn to keep themselves and their students safe. The record would indicate NO. I know their knowledge of how the instruments in a glider work is abysmal. I can only conclude the rest of their knowledge is similar. My wife did GFPT at Darling Downs Aero Club over 20 years ago. Having just done my PPL there I wasn't worried. I would then and now have been very unhappy if she had wanted to learn to fly gliders in Australia (or NZ which operates under the same system). I have a young friend I see frequently who is learning to be an instructor on the ARH Tiger helicopter. We talk about his instructor training and I am impressed how thorough it is. I was also a long time ago on the ground staff of a professional flying training organisation, 2FTS at RAAF Pearce, for three years. I was met instructor and met man. Also got a fair bit of time in the MB326H for which Ithank the instructors there. Got to be able to do nice barrel rolls, loops, slow rolls and stall turns, even Derry turns and land the thing. I was told, if the instructor lapses into unconsciousness, don't eject, bring the aircraft back.

Mode S tells them who you are and that combined with SSR should be able to be used for separation. I guess they just ignore your ADSB GPS derived position. Betcha that GPS position is better than they can get from the radar.

Only officially if the GPS is properly TSO'd, Derek. In the US the GPS is allowed to be one which meets the TSO requirements but has not been formally approved to do so, in EXPERIMENTAL homebuilts and LSA at least for VFR. Not sure for IFR in homebuilts. Not so here, yet. Both ADSB IN and OUT depend on the GPS working. Nowadays GNSS would be better as multiconstellation chips/antennas are cheap. Currently there is GPS, Glonass, Beidou, Galileo, QZSS and IRNSS. Search for a little app for Android and iDevices called GNSS View. Also at GNSS View

onetrack, I remember the Narrogin accident. The person killed was the 18 year old student pilot. I had met him once in a completely unrelated setting, maybe a less than a year before. Now this is what I was told by a very experienced glider pilot and maintainer who I have a LOT of time for (he was my spin instructor and I count him a friend). The glider was a Kookaburra and it was an autotow launch. They got into the non maneuvering area well down the strip (a bad no-no) without enough runway ahead to land and stop. Tried to turn back and simply spun in. Instructor in the back survived but with shortened legs (I do remember his name). Student was killed outright. On investigation it was found that the instructor, despite having been around gliding for years, had a total of 15 hours of aeronautical experience. GFA was forced to clean up their instructor act. Unfortunately it didn't help much as over the last 50 years there have been a lot of accidents with an instructor in the aircraft where the aircraft has been damaged/wrecked/injuries or deaths occur. In particular, see the accident at Ararat on April 12 , 2012. There have been plenty more. Unfortunately last I looked, you can start training to be an instructor with 80 hours total time and be a level 1 instructor at 100 hours. I'd make that 250 hours and a training course the equivalent of a commercial licence (including written exams), at least a Class 2 medical (a student who can't land deserves what little protection that might be and it might eliminate some undesirable people) and an instructors course the equivalent of that in GA where training is about the safest activity in GA. It may be a good idea to examine whether initial flight training in gliders is a good idea. I don't believe it is on either safety or efficiency grounds. In the latest accident, none of the above apply. The instructor was personally known to me and I would say one of the more thoughtful, knowledgeable and experienced glider pilots I know. Truly tragic in what looked to be nearly perfect conditions where there appear to have been no weather/ technical issues to prevent a completely safe outcome.

Sigh. Once again, simply change the CASA Class 2 medical to that in the US or the UK. Medical problem vanishes. Allow owner maintenance and sign out on under 600Kg gross aircraft. Better still use the Canadian owner maintenance system for all relatively simple private aircraft and get rid of the whole flawed concept of arbitrary gross weight limits which result in fragile, gust sensitive airframes of limited fatigue life and/or loading beyond limits to get some reasonable fuel and people + baggage options. Then we can have one consistent licence with appropriate endorsements (controlled airspace etc) and make RAAus, GFA etc work to retain members instead of the obnoxious requirement to join some government sanctioned private body. I'd shed no tears if both simply disappeared. How complicated do some of you want to make things? Neither the Brits nor the Americans (or Canadians) seem to be littering the countryside with crashed aircraft at any unusual rate.

A mode C transponder allows TCAS equipped aircraft to see you even outside radar coverage. It would have been nice for ADSB not to be a complete stuff up. Using the 1090Mhz transponder reply frequency is about the worst possible decision ever made. There were 3 other frequencies/systems under consideration originally. 1090 won because you could connect a suitable GPS to a suitable Mode S transponder which a lot of airliners already had. It should have been possible to reserve a couple of frequencies in the VHF comms band for data and use those without even interfering with the radio for VHF voice. Then the installation is already done and the frequency suffers less from airframe shielding. FLARM as currently implemented is pretty dodgy as it uses 921MHz and very low power. It was designed as the gliding equivalent of CWIS (Close in Weapons System) on navy ships for last ditch defence against cruise missiles. You don't want to have to use it as you hope the launch vehicle for the missile got sunk/shot down before launch. In the European Alps on a nice day, thousands of gliders fly in lift in close proximity to mountainsides on converging courses at closing speeds of up to 200 knots or so. There were sometimes over a dozen mid airs a year there. FLARM was invented to try to prevent that but modern gliders have carbon fuselages and airframe shielding is a serious problem requiring very careful antenna placement and installation. Now whatever system is used I have to ask - if you can seen by everyone else beyond visual range and you can see them why would anyone want air traffic control? I'd support ADSB for VFR if we could get rid of much of the controlled and restricted airspace as a result. Our scale model armed forces seem to have inordinate quantities of restricted airspace.

Marty_d, do you have any science training or qualifications? Physics, chemistry, geology, meteorology, engineering? If not, you likely don't even have the intellectual tools to begin understand the issue. The local pollution issue has been largely solved for both air and water pollution, mostly by 30 years ago. I can remember when the car exhaust emissions were first controlled and it was claimed to be great because the only things coming out the back of the car were harmless water vapour and CO2. Sometimes solving 99% of a problem is good enough. If you are still worried about CO2 you should realise that NONE of the current or proposed measures in place to slow down/prevent/reduce CO2 emissions will have any significant effect by 2100 (or likely ever). Just a few days ago a bunch of climate modellers admitted their models run too hot. In 2009 we saw the release of the UEA computer data which revealed the inner workings of the minds of the climate "scientists" there. Intellectually dishonest bunch of bullies who make up stuff. Last I heard 1500 or so coal fired power stations were under construction or planned around the world. If Australia built 15 new ones we'd have very cheap, reliable electricity and make really no difference to the world. As it is we'll have expensive unreliable electricity and no industry and will all be poor enough that we won't be worrying about private aviation at all. I'm thinking we need to look at the standard of living in Argentina and realise this is the best case for us. Venezuela could be where we are heading though.

So much for hunting facts. Sea levels have gone up and down since the major rise at the end of the last ice age about 12000 years ago. What we see now is a minor residual from the end of the ice age. Thermopylae is several kilometers inland nowadays. Funny how I don't see plastic residue everywhere. Hiroshima and Nagasaki are thriving cities today We've trashed our forestry industry in Australia when it isn't that hard to figure out a sustainable logging rate and surprise surprise there is radioactive dust everywhere anyway from natural minerals and some of it is alpha emitters like Plutonium is. I figure nuclear weapons saved me from being an infantryman in a bigger, "better" re-run of WW2. Nukes good. Staved off the evil empire. The polar ice in Antarctica isn't melting and the sea ice there has just come off a high maximum. Polar ice at the North Pole doesn't cause sea level rise as it is already floating and Greenland isn't melting, besides it is ringed by mountains. Historical records show the polar ice comes and goes on about a 60 year cycle which seems to be related to major ocean cycles like the AMO and PDO. About the only reasonably certain thing about the extra CO2 in the atmosphere(about 400ppm up from around 300 ppm) is that the planet is greener as the plants are loving it. They also use less water as the leaf stomata which the plants use to breathe are fewer in number and size and hence lose less water. REAL environmental science actually concedes that people (and all other living things) change their environment and endeavors to measure these effects while making a cost/benefit analysis. Sometimes a less than 100% solution is good enough. Green hysteria results in us all being poorer to no avail and guess what? Poor people scrabbling to survive don't care about the environment, just like every other living organism. Green hysteria is an indulgence for the well off.

yeah, We'll have a great electric future when batteries improve. The good ones now are liable to catch fire at inconvenient times. I would not fly in an aircraft that used lithium ion batteries of current tech as its propulsion system. Your built in ballistic parachute isn't going to help. Don't believe the hype. Lithium iron phosphate batteries are much safer but around half the energy density of the current best li-ion batteries. Right now there is an EASA AD out on the FES electric propulsion system for gliders because some of the batteries (Li-ion) were catching fire when not in use. Great. See Samsung phone. Batteries are limited by electrochemistry. There are only so many elements and combinations of elements to make a battery. Hence the lithium batteries we have. There are some batteries using lithium which promise to be safer and have about 400 watt-hours per kilogram energy density but they won't be available until 2020. When looking at these also check the power density i.e. the discharge rate. No good having 5 hours of battery power when you are only getting one fifth of the power to fly. Regulators can strangle all they want but the human race (unlike politicians and lawyers) is bound by the laws of physics. Yes, putting the greenies back in their box is a great idea. Mostly they come up with "solutions" to non problems which the "solutions" turn into real problems.

Yes and the methane turns to CO2 and H2O in the atmosphere without you burning it.

And of course in Australia we have heaps of VOCs (volatile organic compounds) from napalm, er gum trees. They ain't called the Blue Mountains for nothing. I suspect a few two strokes are negligible. We are governed by idiots as will become obvious when the lights go out.

The partially burned stuff is only a problem in large concentrations in cities. No problem in other areas. It all ends up as CO2 and water. I suspect the "problem" is people who cannot do mathematics to properly ascertain the scale of a problem. Don't get me started on the CO2 non problem.

Fortunately R/C models are largely moving to electric power. So what about the amount of emissions per hour? How much use does a weed blower get per year compared to a car. Or an auxiliary two stroke on a sailboat? Or a two stroke on a self launching glider?

I haven't got many details but apparently our federal Parliament yesterday passed legislation to ban two stroke engines, including lawnmowers, whipper snippers, off road vehicles etc. As ultralights and self launching gliders are "off road vehicles" I can see trouble ahead. Does anyone believe these idiots won't include them in the ban, all in the name of the green delusion.?