Ada Elle

I'm not putting water in my tanks to see! The standard test for ethanol in the fuel is to put water in to the test container to a set line, then fill with fuel and see if the water line increases. So I've seen that, but my question was more if the dye was a little bit water soluble, could you have a colour that looks like shandy (the pale green you get when you mix avgas and mogas). You'd have to get a jerry can of avgas with a bit of water in the bottom and start pouring a jarful out at a time.

Are the dyes in fuel water soluble? ie, if it was pure water, would it still be a fuel colour?

Definitely nicer than a gazelle, which is what I flew next after the LSA55. But after flying modern European composite aircraft... Jabirus are feeling just a little bit agricultural. Going from the Pipipstrel to a Jab is like going from the Jab to a Gazelle.

I think John is great, and I think he taught me well, but having flown a variety of other aircraft since then, an LSA55 would have to be _very_ cheap to want to fly that over something a little.... more forgiving.

I did my ab initio training with John in the LSA55. I haven't flown one since 2011. There's a good reason for that .

Would that be the case for block-hours hiring as well? I'd really like to be able to almost hire as a mini-syndicate: "I will pay you $6000/yr for 50 hours wet" or something like that.

I presume the only people with such ratings are going to be former CPLs with lapsed medicals.

Which LSA55 is it at The Oaks? I've been in all the ones crosshired.. Barramundi, is that VH-MWY in your profile pic?

The Ikarus looks like a perfectly nice plane to train in. Your cloud base sounds terribly low - at Wollongong you can have problems getting over the escarpment, but most days cloud base is a few thousand at least.

I don't think that any days this week, for example, have been complete washouts, weather forecasts to the contrary. Even if overcast, the cloud base has been enough to at least fly circuits.

What I mean is that a basic RAAus instructor might not have passed any more theory than the BAK. What would have been nice would be to import the EASA LAPL wholesale (see other thread).

If you have the time in your logbook, there would be nothing stopping you from coming to an RAAus school and getting brought up to speed, then doing the RAAus flight test. As for summer weather, in the middle of winter in Sydney in one month I've flown just on twenty hours.

You don't have to have passed the PPL theory or equivalent to be an RAAus instructor, only if you want to go to SI. That's a bit terrifying.

The only reason you can instruct on a "recreational" certificate is because AUF renamed itself to RAAus as a territory grab. Otherwise you're an ultralight instructor, or a hang gliding instructor, or whatever - not a description of the flight activity, but a description of the aircraft class. It seems that the difference between a fully endorsed RPL and a PPL is that the RPL is not useful for full private transport duties because it cannot have NVFR/PIFR/SECIR added onto it.

Welcome! Unfortunately you'll find that we have no equivalent of the LAPL; you have RAAus which is more restricted, and RPL which requires a more restrictive medical. )-:

Although the Foxbat has theoretically better glide performance, the guys at SRFC teach a very tight circuit that involves gliding from just abeam the threshold. It's much tighter than what I was taught from the other school at the oaks.

Near Lake Burragorang. I had an unplanned diversion within 20 minutes of starting my nav flight test. This photo was taken on the way home when we decided to go over the tiger country instead of through the smoke.

It's a great idea, especially if you can replace the starter motor and alternator with it. It'd be really nice to get an extra 20hp on climbout through using a cruise prop and having a little electric boost, followed by regenerating that power off the motor later. If you could tune it for the amount of drag that you got at Vbg, it could be a great safety feature. (Also, you can put the batteries in the tail or wherever you need to to correct CoG problems. What would be fantastic, if you could get the wiring right, would be a battery you could slide along the rear fuse and get CoG near optimal every flight.)

Every flight? I was always taught first flight of the morning, and after refuelling. The logic being that dew is most likely first thing in the morning, otherwise you can't get water in unless you refuel (or you left the top open and are flying in the rain!)

Does he make his own props?

I didn't learn to sideslip/forwardslip to lose height until I flew a Gazelle. Other that than, I agree with you - but my god it feels slow now. (Mind you, I flew a foxbat yesterday and that feels remarkably slow.)

I suspect the weight limit is a proxy complexity limit; otherwise the BAK exam pre-RPL may as well be a PPL exam without the nav portion. As for your Brumby... is that not purely a sop to traditional ultralight schools, not requiring them to have CPLs for all instructors?

They are pretty easy to land - but I don't see that a 152 is going to be any harder. (Never flown a 152, mind you.)

Why a 150/152 in this particular situation? Is that just to get high wing time?

The reason to limit transit traffic is to provide adequate traffic separation, no? If it's a CTAF, it's a CTAF and RPT knows it. If it's towered, then the tower needs to know about flights in the VFR corridor to provide separation. Victor 1 is a few miles away from Sydney airport. To do that at Coffs would require you to go a long way offshore.