Jump to content

408059

Members
  • Posts

    105
  • Joined

  • Last visited

Everything posted by 408059

  1. Ultralights Good to hear about Gundaroo. Often thought it would be good to drop in. A number of years back Dick Smith had an open day when he was awarded his Trike certificate, which I attended. Have you been in recently? Cheers Steve
  2. Terry I'll start the ball rolling for you. For Canberra, of course, you'll need a ppl, transponder and appropriate engine to get in. The closest other commercial strips are Goulburn and Polo Flat, both of which are one hours drive each from Canberra. That said , there is a bus service between Canberra and both towns. There are private strips just outside Hall and Yass. I have no idea how to contact the owner of the Hall strip. The Yass strip used to be mentioned in AOPA's book on country strips. I saw the strip about 10 years ago. It ran across the back of several farmlets just outside Yass. It is small and undulating. Dick Smith has a strip at Gundaroo but it is by invitation only. The strip at Hume is closed. That about exhausts my knowledge. Cheers Steve
  3. I have a vague memory of you Kaz. As you said, it was many years ago now. The Monerai only had a tow hook and we used to advise everyone to stay in high tow to be safe. This did not sit well with Peter and Mark, the resident instructors. Other interesting characteristics include: 1) it never travelled in a straight line because of the lack of tail control (though the pilot probably contributed to this issue as well), 2) flaps were used as spoilers, which made landings interesting, and 3) I never liked the canvas sling seat that put you inches above the main wheel box. A fun aircraft though. I also had a Salto on line for a while at Euroa. Now that was a well thought out V tailed aircraft. I was into gliding aerobatics in those days and did the the American nationals at Fond du lac and a couple of comps at Lasham in the UK. The Salto served me well in practice for those competitions. It had the best roll rate for a glider in those days, loops were easy and flick pull throughs were awesome. What the the salto did not do well was coming out on line from a spin. Most competition aerobatic routines in those days required a one and a quarter spins and you always over or undershot the exit line. Also, outside loops were a little tricky because of the slim wing profile. You had to go in with reasonable speed and if you pushed too hard you high speed stalled it and if you were too light on the push you got an egg shaped loop at best or a tailslide. Although the Salto was rated for tailslides I never liked them and they were unpredictable given the V tail. It was a good cross country machine as well, but you needed good days for long distances. I used to get a lot of advice from Ursula Hanle the designer and builder of the glider. She was very passionate about the glider but has probably passed on now. There were no aerobatic competitions in Australia and you had to get aerobatic training overseas so my passion wained. Cheers Steve
  4. I'll offer you some observations, albeit with not many hours in the Allegro 2000. It was my conversion aircraft from GA to RAA and I noticed that it: 1) flew nicely, 2) had reasonable performance, 3) had no momentum once the engine was cut (not unusual for a RAA aircraft), and 4) had an over center feel to the ailerons so it was easy to over control. cheers Steve
  5. Hmmm. This thread brings back memories. Back in the late 80s I bought, in partnership, a monerai and flew it at Euroa. I think it was Terry Whitford's old VH-HDH but would have to check my log book. It was an interesting aircraft to fly. The monerai was very light so I could stay up in the lightest of thermals. The major draw back was the all flying tail. Behind the Maule Rocket tug it was impossible for me to keep in station. Landing in gusty conditions was equally challenging. My partner had similar issues. I was a low hour pilot in those days so we sold it on to Terry. Cheers Steve
  6. Saw copies for sale at my local newsagency a couple of days ago. cheers Steve
  7. In the scheme of things industry generally pays the highest salaries and presumably gets the best staff. CASA, with their cap on salaries they can pay, work with the remainder, train them up and loose them to industry. The RAA gets the leftovers. The only way RAA survives, I suspect, is because it trades off its good cause status. I’ve seen what they pay to their admin staff from the recruitment ads in the local rag over the years and it isn’t much. Without a paper audit trail on staff benefit decisions then rumours will abound. Yeah, I’ve heard about the relocation costs and much worse. Most of the people concerned have long gone so it will probably end up as a judgment call on what to report. Let’s see what the auditors pull up. A radical thought, why doesn’t RAA use some of its retained earnings and pay a decent amount for some good people to sort out the mess. They will not last long because of the politics but at least while they are there they can sort out the past sins of former managers. Cheers Steve
  8. A couple of observations. 1) The early conjecture about what this is all about is quite entertaining but hardly surprising given what has been communicated and the way it was communicated. I touched base with my Board member to find out a little more about the issue. My read of the reasons for the audit is that this is yet another example of systems not growing with the organization. The organization does not have the internal controls and processes you would expect or a ‘peak entity’ for recreation flying. When I spoke with my Board member nothing had been found except for the absence of appropriate checks and balances. Looking to the positive, the Board has found a governance issue, informed the membership and is doing something about it. Pity it didn’t happen 5 years back. They really do need an internal audit process that periodically looks at these issues and reports back to the Board or a committee thereof. I’m taken back many years to when Lee and Mick from the RAA office used to frequent our airfield. Over coffee you used to get insights into the sometimes dysfunction behavior of some Board members and the lack of process and procedure. Sure has come back to bite the organization. Bit sad nothing has been done about improving the systems given the retained earnings RAA has. 2) RSM Bird Cameron is a 2nd Tier Accounting Firm. It is on the Commonwealth Government procurement panel for the Agency I have some dealings with so it has jumped various vetting hurdles. I nearly used them for some contract due diligence work that I needed done so I know they have forensic accounting expertise. Not sure the Melbourne problems are all that relevant to the Canberra scene. 3) I hope some effort and thought goes into the upcoming recruitment of senior staff. Most people try to do a good job but if you don’t have direction from the Board, if you do not have the resources to perform the work, if you do not have the skills or experience then you are bound to fail. You need managers with strong management skills together with industry sector credibility and not-for-profit experience. You need Ops people who have the experience, are committed to RAA and can communicate. You need tech people with the right skills, can problem solve, can say no to members when required and can communicate. The position descriptions for these positions need to fully articulate real word need these people must deliver on. Sure hope they can get it right because the risk of bad recruitment can result in problems that haunts for years. 4) Turbo, you dropped me hints about the past finances in one of your posts. You were a little too cryptic for me. Please PM me and I’ll follow through. Cheers Steve
  9. Hmmmmm Not so sure AR. With finite resources and a fast approaching Christmas period that will slow the process I’d be spinning some positive lines as well. You need to rid yourself of as many distractions as you can and one of the major sources of distraction would be phone calls from upset members. The staff need to focus on vetting and clearing the files together with any other data cleansing required. Now this is easy for me to say with a VH registered aircraft but it begs a question. Why are the registrations renewed every year? Hopefully this question has not been featured in other threads. In the past I can understand the logic. With rag and tube aircraft, built by members, being the mainstream aircraft then you want as many mechanisms as you can get to impose construction and maintenance standards. Remember, in those days we had cowboys or if they didn’t exist there was the perception that they existed. The renewal process probably served the purpose of ensuring a minimum standard of construction and maintenance and managed perceptions of government and the public that the AUF had these matters under control. Today the fleet largely comprises plastic fantastic or similar type aircraft that are factory produced and the RAA has a mature maintenance system. Do we need an annual registration renewal system? CASA doesn’t use one. Is RAA using a system that has fewer relevancies given the make-up of the fleet and is now simply a rod for its own back? Food for thought. Cheers Steve
  10. We jest but there is a human cost behind what has happened. I dropped into the RAA office this morning. It was to pay my subs for the year. Aside from the fact that I didn’t recognize many faces from last year there was not a smile on anyone’s face. My levity and season’s greetings weren’t that bad. I spoke briefly with the bloke trying to sort it out. He was just behind the front counter. Between fielding calls from irate members I asked a simple question and got a very defensive response. Gun shy? Perhaps I misread the mood of the staff I saw and they were simply busy but I somehow expect the faces will change again when I pop in next year. If that’s the case then there has been a high cost because of the failure of managers no longer there. Cheers Steve
  11. Read a few of the posts since last night. Could continue the debate on the figures but it will not add much value to the discussion. Suffice to say that the RAA does not have $2.5m or $1.8m or anything like these figures available but it does have some monies for new initiatives. How much you may ask? Well that depends upon the direction the Board wants to take and its risk tolerance. A small charity might be prepared to sail close to the wind, run down its reserves and operate at levels where income meets expenditure. If they run out of cash then they ask Mrs. Brown to bake a few cakes and run a street stall. I would hope the RAA has a more conservative view. They are, for all intents and purposes, the peak entity for recreational flyers, be they pilots of ultralights, light aircraft, trikes, or refugees from GA etc. It would seem that the role of the RAA is about:- 1) Promoting recreation flying 2) Safety; 3) Establishing and maintaining administrative systems to conduct flying operations 4) Standard and policy setting for operations and aircraft maintenance 5) Oversight of operations and aircraft maintenance 6) Advocating for its members (eg CTA access, aircraft weight restrictions etc) and 7) Providing member services Please do not get caught up with what I have or have not included in the list. The point is that the role of the RAA is important, under a commonwealth delegation, and the stewardship of monies should ideally warrant a degree of risk aversion. The RAA has people’s safety and lives at stake. This then begs the role of the Board in all this. As I see it, the Board is responsible for setting the strategic direction, setting the culture of the organization (including risk tolerance) and monitoring outcomes and performance. I am reasonably confident in saying that the Board may still consider itself in charge of an aero club. The last I saw, staff numbers where around 18 or so and with a turnover in the $millions. The RAA isn’t no Aero Club. Since there is no published strategic Plan I suspect there is none. Given the administrative hiccups we’ve seen this year I suggest the culture is loose. That is not to say that management and staff are not trying their hardest to provide a good service to members but that administration systems are loose and/or immature, which has come back to bite them. Finally, where’s the Board monitoring of outcome and performance? Do they have an internal audit process to tell them how robust their administrative processes and controls are? Do they look at risk including legal claims, insurance risks, poor CASA audit performance and the withdrawal of delegations, membership satisfaction, contract risk etc. The RAA is not a big organization but the Board needs to look at least at some of these, even if only informally. I suspect The RAA has grown without regards to its governance. It has focussed on operationational outputs at the cost of looking forward and monitoring performance. Money has come in, surpluses have been earned and they have been ignorant of the need to improve their systems to match the increase in membership and associated accountability or simply been unable to do anything about it because of the pressure of workload. There needs to be a circuit breaker. Whether a consultant is brought in or staff employed or both it doesn’t matter because it is the outcome that counts. I suggest this is where money should be spent. Then we must turn our attention to the structure of the board but this question has been addressed in other threads. Cheers Steve
  12. Ian If I was Treasurer I would not be in dissagreement with the figures you are throwing around. Just saying that the equity figure is much less in reality and the RAA should be cognitive of the risk environment it is in. That said, I'd prefer to have some money spent on operating and governance systems so the problems mentioned in other threads are not repeated. Picking up on Andy's post, I suspect there are no strategic or business plans or even an audit and risk management committee to oversight risk, audits or any other compliance requirement of CASA. It seems that the focus of RAA management has been purely on producing operational outputs (required by membership) with minimal consideration of how to get there (this is a Board obligation), with limited resources (reflected in the accounts), a couple dissappointing senior staff performances and it has come back to bite the the organisation. The aero club scenario mentioned in my last post. Enough from me. cheers Steve Steve
  13. AR Thanks for your response. I think our views are not too far apart. As an accountant in the not-for-profit industry, which can be volatile at the best of time, I like to see conservative figures. Board members do not always use business logic and not-for-profit organisations often become dysfunctional and implode. The point I was trying to make, with some over-emphasis I might add, is that the RAA needs reserves and retained earnings. I like to see operating expenses covered but it is not always possible. I am not wedded to any specific amount. There are 2 points with equity (reserves and retained earnings). The equity comprises cash of $1.8m less liabilities together with fixed assets $1m less provisions, fire sale discounts and any overvalue component (ie market price). This result needs to cover new initiatives not covered by income and risk. I agree that the biggest risk is probably insurance. It is what I inferred with an earlier comment. I still hold to the view that Natfly is also a risk. The cost may only be $30k but the risk of a contractual or third party claims not covered by insurance is still there. Claims associated with events always come out of left field. We can only guess at the other risks, which hopefully are covered in a risk management plan, (or am I kidding myself?). Not sure that subscriptions are too high. I long ago formed the idea that the RAA is somewhat like a an Aero club that has grown and policy and procedures have not followed suit. More money needs to have been spend on process and procedures that are core to RAA outputs expected by CASA and members. It is the message that is repeated over and over again through the threads. Cheers Steve Steve
  14. Ian From a policy perspective I cannot fault you. Putting my accountants hat on, having worked for a number of major charities and not-for-profit professional member based peak organisations, I always liked to see operating expenditure covered by equity. I didn't always get there but it was an aim. In the not-for-profit industry passion rules and decisions are not often based on a business case or even common sense at times. You need a bit extra in case the Board get a rush of blood. Add to this the risk of an event going bad (eg Natfly) and you want something put away. Also, keep in the back of your mind that equity in the RAA largely comprises fixed assets. To use the reserves etc the RAA will have to fire sale their assets, which will discount the revenue. Further, going back to my earlier email, the office accommodation market in Canberra is soft so the building is probably overvalued. I could go on about where the focus of the board is at the moment but clearly it is crisis management so it is fair to assume there will be no rush of blood. The Board will probably need to throw some money at getting the problems fixed. Next year's accounts will be interesting. I would not be surprised by a deficit result. Food for thought. Cheers Steve
  15. Geoff There's a link to the accounts in one of Andy's post with the audit certificate. Why didn't the accounts go to the AGM. Could only guess but it seems that the Treasurer has stuffed up. Personally, given the level of interest and emotion around I would have also taken the Auditor along to the AGM with me if I was the Treasurer. Blow the cost, the membership needs independent verification and comfort on the state of the finances. But then again, easy for me to say. Steve
  16. Just had a look at the full set of accounts on the RAA site. I take comfort that Ged Stenhouse from RSM Bird Cameron has signed the accounts off. Having had to deal with him on many occasions I found him tough. The current ratio is good (so they can pay debts when and as they fall due), receivables are low, equity is good should some of those risks mentioned in other threads come to pass. Only two concerns, those issues raised above and I note that the market for office space in Canberra soft so the building could do with a revaluation. Cheers Steve
  17. An audit certificate would have been nice.
  18. Not sure about what the fuss is all about. I operate a very small homebuilt GA aircraft and about 3 times a year get an invoice for landing in Essendon. It seems that someone is using my call sign or has a very similar one and it ends up on my tab. I have never been into Essendon and my aircraft does not have the instruments for it. A quick call to Avdata and the matter is usually resolved in 30 seconds. Steve
  19. Enoch I hope the trip went well. You know that the more you fly the minicab the harder it will be to let it go! Howard, for what it is worth, I think the honour of Australia's highest airport may go to Caramurra, operated by SMA, and sits 4,800 feet ASL. Also, the Mount Hotham strip is 4,260 feet ASL. Cheers Steve
  20. Yep, so am I. Canberra based, o2 62636785 or [email protected]. Cheers Steve
  21. Nope, you were right the first time. The RPL and the supporting Part 61 amendments have not been passed. What we have is a medical exemption subject to conditions. Cheers Steve
  22. If memory serves me well Ken Garland bought up the rights a few years ago for the vampire. He has a web site and produces the vampire here in Australia. He's involved with the SAAA as well. A 2 seat variant was manufactured in America until a year or so back when it went belly up. A few have been advertised in the RAA mag over the years. Cheers Steve
  23. I visited the factory in country Victoria in the 1980s. The design was years ahead of the rag and tube I was used to seeing. The SV11 was one of the later models. From memory, I think he passed away testing an aircraft that had the ailerons hooked up incorrectly. Dont quote me on it though. Steve
  24. Yeah.....I thought about a formal complaint but when the ASIC agent, the RAA office, was not interested in passing it on I let the issue drop. A letter to the Minister or Department Secretary with the support of an agent will often get traction but without their support I deemed it a waste of time. To be fair, I should mention the the RAA office was down on staff (because of leave and Steve Bell's resignation) and there was the normal influx of holiday accidents and incidents (eg that idiot doing beat ups over boats on the Hume Weir) so my issue was not, I suspect, of a high priority to them. Anyway, I prefer to just go flying..... with an occasional bleat. Thanks for your comments. Cheers Steve
  25. Dropped my old ASIC and renewal application into the RAA office early November 2011, well before the expiry date. I was hoping for a quick turnaround so I could go crosscountry over Christmas. It seems that the government agency issuing the cards had a machine breakdown. The card was received mid January with a November 2013 expiry. Insult upon injury. Not only did I have to change my Christmas plans but I lost 2.5 months on the renewal date as well. My whinge for the day. Cheers Steve
×
×
  • Create New...