Mike Borgelt

There is this: CASA warns DAMEs about Medical Assessments - Australian Flying So much for medical reform. They are now putting the frighteners on the DAMEs who can issue assessments themselves. For how long will you be able to find them?

Yes, CASA lied when they said they had achieved medical reform. There has been no significant reform at all. Why would you believe anything else they say? UK CAA did the risk analysis and decided the medical achieved nothing much and the risk was extremely low in any case. This is in the UK where the population density of innocents on the ground and in the air is much higher. For the kind of aircraft we are talking about you simply send the CAA a letter saying you can drive a PRIVATE car, medically unrestricted, ONCE. Over 70 you need to send it every 3 years. What a contrast to Australia. BTW I have a friend who was a commercial pilot who turned 60 and had to do the Stress test. At his third one the female doctor said - "these things are dangerous, I wouldn't do one". He took this medical advice to heart (sorry) and gave up commercial flying.

Not only RAAus memeberRPL and PPL holder sand aircraft owners. It doesn't matter what politicians and government officials SAY, just look at what they DO.

All continues to plan. The aim is to eliminate private aviation as far as possible. This was confirmed by Carmody and his deputy recently when they said that wasn't the plan. When a politician or government official says something isn't so, you can bet the opposite is true.

Actually you are glad they were slightly more inept than the allied governments. None of them are ever ept.

The actual stick position in your hand is pretty subtle and not necessarily obvious while occupied. Vision is better. AoA indicators get confused in turbulence. If you damp them to give useable indications the AoA may exceed stalling angle before the thing indicates so. A gust (entering thermal) can stall the wing momentarily (aircraft tries to line up with new relative airflow direction). The aircraft will begin to pitch down (aircraft tries to line up with new relative airflow direction) and the danger is that you try to maintain the same attitude by pulling the stick back which maintains or deepens the stall. I believe this caught somebody out at Waikerie a couple of years ago in a spin in on turning final in a glider. The only small aircraft I know that trims the entire tail is Mooney. Even there the way stick position varies with trim will depend on the details of the linkage. I sure wouldn't design it so the stick could stay in the middle with the aircraft at the stall. This only applies to simple aircraft. Aircraft with fly by wire can do just about anything and then there are aeronautical abortions like Airbus aircraft with their appalling un-ergonomic cockpit philosophy. The bloke who used to be the RAAF chief test pilot during the 50's and 60's once told me that if the aircraft is trying to go in a different direction from what you are trying to command, it is trying to tell you something. Go with it.

djpacro: That article is nicely confused. Stick PRESSURE has nothing to do with it. That is a result of what you did with the elevator trim. Stick POSITION is what counts. Stick position controls elevator deflection (it is rigidly connected) which controls ANGLE OF ATTACK due to the stability of the aircraft.(depends on C of G position, flap position also) Demand an angle of attack greater than the angle at which the wing stalls and it WILL stall. The stick controls angle of attack, the pilot controls the stick. We really should have a stick position indicator. Something as simple as a red pole which starts to protrude above the glareshield at elevator deflections which cause angles of attack approaching the stall.

Crony Capitalism. Australia is good at that. Doesn't do us any good as a country or as individuals.

The Jumo 004 was not a crude engine. It was axial flow (like most modern engines) and had hollow air cooled turbine blades. The French grabbed some after the war and developed the design in to the ATAR engine. As for over haul life, the life of a late war DB605 in a 109, supercharged and nitrous oxide boosted was about 10 hours. The 004 was easier to overhaul. Can we get over the jet engines have low static thrust myth? Until you get to Mach 0.8 or so a jet engine has maximum thrust while it is not moving, just like a propeller. The thrust drops off much more slowly with increasing airspeed than the thrust from a prop.

The answer is the Canadian Owner Maintenance system. Small light aircraft are not complex things.

What a lovely society we have made ourselves. We no longer make laws which the vast majority of people simply follow. Our government no longer trusts its people. We are making a "Low Trust Society". These are usually found in the Third World and the reason that they are Third World is because they are low trust societies. Third World conditions will follow soon enough here. On public servants, I've generally found the front line and their immediate supervisors to be generally helpful. The corruption starts higher up.

Try actually adding something to the discussion turbo. We all know he is right by their actions.

Keith, I think they are trying to quiet the rumblings of the incipient revolt. The Part 149 that has been published bears the hallmarks of a hastily put together piece of regulation in order to meet the boss's deadline. There are any number of shortcomings in it. It isn't in any way "new" it is just a disguised way of cementing in place the existing structures of the GFA and RAAus which are in many ways more onerous than simply being in GA . The only reason sport aviation needs special exemptions from the normal rules is that the normal rules are too stupid. Relax the medical for RPL/PPL(in Australia - overseas you might need a Class 2 to fly) to that used by RAAus, allow more owner maintenance on simple aircraft including annual inspection sign outs, a short section in Part 91 private operations dealing with glider launching and it is all done. Use independent LAMEs again and independent flight instructors as is done in the USA and both business and private/recreational GA will thrive.

I watched the video. If Skidmore had been certain he would have said "No, we removed those causes" (removed the non mechanical engine failures). What he said was "we would have done that" implying he thought they would have but didn't know for sure.

Skidmore got set up by one of his underlings to tell an untruth to a Senate inquiry. It is on video. When asked about the Jabiru restrictions and whether some of the alleged engine failures were due to running out of fuel and did they take this into account he said "we would have". Dumb answer and AFAIK, wrong. Best to say I'll check with my minions and get back to you after lunch. Wasn't long after that he left. Yes he was an improvement on McCormick but that would be the easiest thing in the world.

Amazing. I couldn't understand that gibberish at all. Seems like it would be vastly easier for CASA to write some regs suited to the "not standard" aircraft like ultralights, gliders and balloons and leave it at that. The "not standard" aircraft need slightly different regs suited to their characteristics (note that no helicopter meets fixed wing standards, hence they have their own airworthiness requirements and pilot requirements). Gliders and ultralights fly like any fixed wing aircraft hence at most a logbook entry orendorsement like retractable landing gear, constant speed prop etc. The FAA manages this without fuss or bother and their advocacy organisations have not been suborned by the FAA, unlike CASA's undermining of our organisations. As for the serial flouters, whatever regs are in existence will not stop them. Isn't it amazing that criminals don't obey the law! Fortunately aviation is very Darwinian and if we want to apply peer group pressure we should stop saying what a great bloke and pilot Bloggs was and how he "died doing something he loved" when he does something utterly stupid and kills himself and others and tell the truth that he was a dumb f___ who made himself and the rest of us look bad. The thought of people saying that at your funeral might get a few people's attention.

When the snags have been removed, Part 149 will be in force and it will be too late. Private lawmaking, private kangaroo courts for alleged trangressions with none of the usual legal protections and you'd be better off in GA. At least for power flying that is an option. Pity about gliding. I saw the ABC news segment on the pilot shortage. What do they expect? Aviation in this country has been made so expensive and difficult so fewer people are doing it, airfields look like WW2 prison camps complete with barbed wire and demands to see your documents. Pilots are all treated as potential terrorists. Not a friendly atmosphere. As a result of fewer people doing it, the infrastructure doesn't get replaced when it reaches end of life (Avgas bowsers). Air "Services" won't NOTAM unavailability. It would be nice if that actually was announced on the area frequency that we are forced to endure listening to, just like weather changes. We now have a pilot shortage - surprise! Regional airlines are now poaching GA flying instructors which cuts off the supply of new pilots, makes getting an AFR more difficult etc etc. We really are swirling down the toilet bowl. All predictable and predicted by such as Dick Smith, Boyd Munro and others. Meanwhile RAAus blows its horn about creating 10,000 new pilots.

Yes, kasper and the lies will be excused because they think it will benefit the organisation. It is called "noble cause corruption".

It happens to be a Criminal Offence to knowingly supply false data required by the Commonwealth. Both for the supplier and any bureaucrats who know it is false and do nothing about it. Carries a jail term. What advantage is it to behave so stupidly? Why lie to yourself? What it does show is that nobody official cares about the safety of sport aviation and the leadership of the organisations should stop worrying about upsetting the bureaucrats. As long as we don't kill innocents on the ground (probability is your friend here - the actual built up areas are a very small percentage of the Earth surface and aircraft crash all the time for all sorts of reasons with a remarkable lack of damage to people and structures) and don't run into regional airliners (avoidable by keeping a good lookout and a few simple rules of the air) the only people who care about our safety is us. It's just us. So why lie?

What does the Victorian transport legislation have to do with aviation regulation?

Turbs, the next time the leadership takes any notice of what the members think will be the first. A while back a GFA President was heard to say "we can't have proper elections because the wrong people may get in". Tells you all you need to know. I doubt the Part 149 and implications thereof have been much discussed with the membership who will be paying the bills. CASA is mandating that certain jobs be filled etc, etc all of which will cost heaps and result in complete inflexibility. The organisations which used to be member organisations will continue to be merely CASA subcontractors and incapable of being advocacy organisations under threat that their certification as a Part 149 organisation will be taken away. CASA has already said that under Part 149, if the GFA ceases to be able to do its Part 149 obligations, GLIDING WILL CEASE will cease until another organisation is approved by CASA. I presume the same will apply to RAAus. Now these organisations can go broke, be sued into oblivion, the Board can flee under the threat that their personal assets are on the line and nobody is willing to replace them, fall below a viable number of "members" (watch the GFA over the next ten years), be diddled out of large sums of money (already happened) which threaten continued operation etc. Look at how long it has taken ELAAA to get CASA approval. How many years has it been? CASA is in no hurry for anything and no gliding or ultralight flying will suit them just fine. Any accidents occuring during this time will be by illegal operations, which also suits CASA. The correct way to do regulation is as facthunter says, is by education and per pressure. Also by having a clear set of CASA rules (CASA can consult on what they should be) which anyone can operate to and delegations for those who will issue airworthiness certificates, maintenance qualifications and pilot licences etc. These delegates are then carrying out a CASA function and covered by CASA liability. JUST LIKE THE REST OF GA. As I said the "leadership" of the organisations see Part 149 as cementing the positions of their organisations and protecting them from competition. They have long ago forgotten why the organisations are there.

Anyone who believes flying hours can increase by 80% from one year to the next probably believes in Father Christmas and the Easter Bunny. What was that about FAKE news again? The easy way to a reducing accident rate and fatalities per 100,000 hours flown - simply exaggerate the hours flown. Hey Presto! the rate comes down. The GFA also does this by a factor of at least 2. Some of their claims are just ludicrous like the 268,000 hours claimed in gliders in 2006. The stats people at Dept of Transport know this very well but can't be bothered doing anything about it, neither can CASA, which should tell you there is no government commitment to aviation safety, just a commitment to their own jobs, pay, security and pensions. They don't want to rock the boat because it would reveal that their activities are all a waste of resources and a gigantic, blatant lie. Aviation safety ultimately comes down to Newton's Laws of Motion and Gravitation. If you try to break those you die.

What has happened is that the Authorities want to make the rules and then take no responsibility for outcomes by blaming the victims when things go wrong. They do this by obfuscating the chain of responsibility for the rules and making so many rules that it is impossible to operate without breaking some. Then when a mishap occurs they can point to a broken rule. Part 149 is just the latest attempt. It is designed to place a moat around the existing RAAus and GFA, the leadership of which organisations are too stupid to realise they are being lumped with onerous responsibilities and liabilities. I think ELAAA will have a lot of trouble getting CASA approval. Don't forget that the aim is to making private aviation so complex and expensive that it dies out. They have almost succeeded. You can tell this is true because Shane Carmody felt it necessary to deny that that was the plan in his latest missive. When a government official specifically denies something, you can bet it is true.

If you want a safe 4 seater that isn't too expensive to run you could do a lot worse than a BD-4C powered by a Lycoming or Superior O-360. There's a great support group on line and the BD-4 has an excellent crash worthiness and low accident rate record. Front seats are inside a very strong crash cage. Systems and hardware are mostly standard parts similar to Cessna, Piper etc. My wife and I have a BD-4B with O-320. Excellent aircraft, cruises in the 130 to 140KTAS range, 8 hours fuel. Likes to fly high, far and fast especially in the 7500 to 9500 foot range.

There is an outfit at Warwick airfield that refurbishes seats for airliners.