Ada Elle

Nope. The GP supported medical is a declaration by pilot supported by GP that the person meets the requirements to hold a specified type of driving licence.

The RAAus medical standard is 'I think I am safe to drive a car, so I'll sign this'.

Ummmmm the absolute LAST thing RAA needs is permit inspection on aircraft ... and in fact the UK are unwinding that requirement - they started with SSDR and are now discussing DSDR ie creating the Australian 19- reg category.snip

 

No - the absolute last thing we need is a permit system like the UK

Ouch! There are lots of guys out there who would love to see the return of the good old days without the 'plastic fantastics'. For many, flying a microlight beats everything else.

No, we have a range of aircraft in RA and I think that is a good mix. There was talk of allowing heavier GA aircraft to transfer to and be registered as RA. Old aircraft age and maintainence issues put an end to that. Setting up a separate category along the lines you suggest would be expensive to administer for little if any additional benefit IMHO.

so instead of the current system of 600kg and below, and GA, move to a system of 472kg and below, 475-1200kg, and 1200kg+, with the latter two administered by CASA but with a much less restrictive bureaucracy for the middle group. other countries have done it, why can't we?

tbh, I don't see why the LSA portion of RAA needs a separate licensing and membership scheme to GA licensing. What's the difference between a VH registered PiperSport and a RAA registered PiperSport, to the pilot? at an aircraft owners, maintenance and registration level there's a difference, sure.

What do you think is in PPL theory that is not in RPC theory that would make a difference to the safety of RA flying. Maybe I could phrase it another way and ask what from the PPL theory you would like to see taught in RA that is relevant to RA and might improve safety?

It's not about content/syllabus, but about standards. I don't remember much about stall/spin, for example, in the BAK - although it's in the syllabus, the aerodynamics of it isn't particularly well examined.

However, I am still the same pilot with the same training and the same ability. I have had several people over the years tell me that my RPC is not in the same league as their PPLs. Well I have news for anyone that thinks that. We share the same airspace so you had better hope that I am as competent as any other pilot flying in to Essendon, Broome, Alice or Bankstown. I don't believe there is anything watered down with my training and I don't believe any RA pilot who takes his/her flying seriously is a lessor pilot than pilots with a PPL.

I'm not denigrating anybody's training. I have the same training as you - and my RPL is still in the mail, not in my hand yet.

I do think, however, that the minimum requirements for RAA instructors is too lax. I know that most people will be SIs and will have far more than the minimums - but why allow the barely competent to get through? My question is, if someone can't pass the PPL theory, should they be instructing? If they do instruct, how do you know that what they are teaching isn't the blind leading the blind?

Your leaps of logic from the discussion have me gasping for air.

First you want to keep all the existing weight limits and argue against any change, now you are going on about having 1500kg.

 

You have gone from one extreme to the other.

 

Also what the public or anyone in the media- who can't tell the difference between a Cessna and a Bi-plane thinks about what Ultralight means is not relevant. I don't care what Joe Blow thinks.

 

If you had not noticed we are not just rag and tube anymore, we have moved on and are actually called Recreational Aircraft.

 

Note: Recreational ie not for profit, Not for carrying commercial loads. For the fun and enjoyment of flying.

 

The whole idea is to have all the benefits of flying suitable aircraft that we can regulate and not have the costs and complexity of GA.

There's a vast difference between rag and tube, and LSA. There's not a lot of difference between LSA and VLA, at an airframe level (except potentially for certification).

If I had my druthers, my solution would be to:

- move LSAs, VLAs, and the bottom end of GA into a single 'recreational' class

- allow owner maintenance along the Canadian lines

- have a drivers license medical along UK lines (commercial drivers license standard)

- upgrade instructor ratings to have at least PPL theory, unusual attitude recovery, and allow CPL GA instructors to instruct like in the US (without a formal Part 141 organisation, for example)

- have similar airworthiness standards to VH experimental for 19-

Really, what are the downsides of GA?

- maintenance

- medical

If there was a compromise on maintenance and medical, but with an upgrade on training and airworthiness testing, who would not want to fly GA-lite rather than ultralights?

And having/holding both UK PPLM and OZ RAA and having undertaken training for both in the respective countries there is from my own knowledge fundamentally no difference in the training and airmanship between the countries so fail to see the logical reason for the OZ airspace issues.

(also, I thought the word inevitable would be taken as the joke that it was, given that the stats suggest that fewer than 50% of engines will fail before overhaul.)

Is it really more likely to stall or is it only if its flown at a lower air speed? And couls an altered op manual eliminate this risk, especially if that extra weight was used for some safety features

Is a J230C, with one POB, any safer at 700kg than at 600kg?

1. The extra weight means that you need a larger paddock for the inevitable engine failure forced landing

2. If you are approaching at say 60kt for a short runway landing, the higher stall speed turning final would lead to a higher risk of stall/spin; or the higher approach speed means you may overrun the runway.

Unfortunately from my perspective (AUF SI, GA PPL and UK PPL(m)) you loose a lot of credibility when you confuse and mix BEW and MTOW in the same sentence (95.10 has never had a BEW of 300kg) and I am sorry if you believe that even a BASIC RAA instructor does not understand loading charts , CofG or affect of stall/spin - and really I am not hearing ANY instructors arguing for watered down standards at all - what I hear is people arguing for APPROPRIATE and PROPORTIONATE regulation.

I've only ever flown with one RAA non-senior instructor, and he said that he was finding some parts of the PPL theory difficult. You may disagree about the amount of regulation; but my position is that someone who finds the PPL theory too difficult to pass doesn't really have a place in explaining aerodynamics, or stall/spin, etc, to a new student. The impost on a new instructor having to do the PPL theory is minimal - there are plenty of pilots who have done it! Loading charts aren't covered in the RAA BAK exam, so how does a basic instructor prove that she understands it?

If we're going to train to the GA syllabus (and claim that our training is equivalent), then our instructors should have passed the theory for the GA syllabus. This is doubly true if we want 1500kg (which, IMHO, is a mistake).

Are you trying to alienate yourself from AUF/RAA pilots ? FWIW- Senior RAA instructors have to pass the PPL theory exam. I have flown with many RAA instructors over the years and they have been just as good or better than the GA instructors I flew with. One RAA CFI friend of mine who I have flown with on many occasions was an Airline pilot, a Virgin sim instructor and flew GA for many years in Papua and has approx 24000 hours. Imo you analyse things too much. I went from a Jabiru LSA55 to a Piper Archer. The Piper is easier to fly out of the two. Basic GA aircraft like the Warrior, Archer, C172 are generally EASIER to fly.

I'm talking about base grade instructors, who need to have 75 hours PIC, no extra theory passes other than the basic NAV and radio, and are allowed to take students from ab initio to pre-solo.

I too went from an LSA55 to eventually a Piper Warrior (with many planes in between). I know that the piper is easier to fly. None of this is pertinent to the discussion.

Is the argument that the PPL theory is too hard for a new instructor trainee? or that it is too expensive?

You don't pay people the respect of reading what they write before you slam into them.

Nah you are having the discussion. You are trying to suggest extra training for ultralight instructors that simply is not needed.

Do you want RAA to still be the AUF, or do you want it to be GA-lite?

Do you want stalls to be demonstrated by someone who potentially doesn't understand loading charts, how to calculate CoG, and how CoG affects stall/spin behaviour?

You can't argue for watered down standards for ultralights and then claim that an RPC is equivalent to an RPL in training.

Why try and fix something that isn't broken ?The current training program has been in place for a lot longer than you have been involved wih the RAA and it has been working fine.

Obviously it's not, or we wouldn't be having this discussion.

There is plenty of evidence, and we are not talking about keeping all other factors the same. My friend's Auster, for example, way heavier than my Drifter, can approach and land slower. Too heavy for Raa, but has been around for years, I bet you won't see many of our current fleet of aircraft last as long. Why not a Piper Pa-25 on the register? it flies slowly and is single seat.

My argument was that the same plane, with higher MTOW, is not safer; it is in fact potentially less safe. A 350kg plane with 550kg MTOW is less likely to have a stall/spin incident than the same plane loaded to a 750kg MTOW.

In what proportion of fuel exhaustion emergencies would a larger fuel load (and the same fuel management strategy) have prevented the accident?

The simple thing to improve safety is make it MUCH harder to get and keep an instructor rating. 250 hours minimum to begin training as instructor and 50 hours a year instructing plus say 20 hours as PIC. This would hopefully lead to fewer people, who imagine they are flight instructors, imposing their incompetence on innocents.

Yes you might actually have to pay the fewer instructors but as has been said "what you get for free is worth what you pay for it".

My logbook says that I passed the RAAus pre-solo, BAK, Air law, and NAV/MET exams on the same day, 14 days after my first TIF.

Surely the standard should be at least PPL theory pass for instructor, and maybe CPL aerodynamics, nav, and met passes for SI.

(consider that the greenest of GA Gr3s has a full set of CPL passes.)

Higher weight == higher stall speed (all other factors kept the same) == higher chance of stalling on the turn final == less safety due to stall/spin.

You have no evidence that a higher weight would improve safety.

Can you honestly say to me your aircraft would be no safer if you had an extra 100 kg?

I heard on the grapevine that DAMEs get to tax deduct aviation expenses (including flying)....

EASA VLA is very like CASA/FAA LSA except up to 750 kg (and no cruise speed limit). From the great wizard of Wiki:

Enough of you assumptions about the RAAus medical are WRONG in the way they work to make me think you have an axe to grind and aren't interested in listening. Over a certain age you need a statement from your doctor. If you have certain conditions that situation will apply earlier. If he/she has any doubts they will require specialist statements. People may make certain statements that aren't true often if they think they can get away with it, and I would suggest that is more open to abuse with the CPL which allows NO questions about your condition to exist before TICKING the particular section. Nev

- The re-activation of membership medical declaration is different to the renewal medical declaration

- When you join RA-Aus, or reactivate a lapsed membership, you don't _ever_ need a note from your doctor.

My axe to grind is that the Ops manual is a schemozzle and it should be fixed long before further privileges are sought. At the very least, pilots should be obliged to fly within the conditions on their drivers license, if those are relevant to flying (such as visual correction). It appears that Issue 7 of the Ops manual was a rush job that wasn't proofread before release.

Jump up and down and created a medical test (with costs) when there is no identified problem existing seems stupid to me. If pilots are not capable of flying safely they stop without more regulations.

And don't assume I can't pass a GP medical - I currently (and for the last 35 years) do a class 1 every 12 months for a CPL.

As it is, how many people actually know what the medical standard for holding a drivers license is? If you don't know what it is, how can you honestly declare that you meet that standard?

(The declaration is not that you hold a drivers license, it is that you meet the standard.)

I know all these things!

I am offended by the presumption that all pilots are men and all partners are women. That is what the existence of a 'ladies program' and 'henpecked pilot' suggests. The College of Surgeons, as conservative and traditional as they are, has a 'scientific program' and 'social program' at its annual meeting. There is a women's program, but it is a morning for discussion of women in surgery.

By recertify I meant from LSA to VLA etc. yes if 750kg hasn't been proven in the testing then it couldn't be used (wasn't that the same from going 450 to 600?).When the sling went through testing they did 700kg, believe jab did the same on some models.

I thought the Jab was tested in the Primary category (the 230C anyhow; the 230D is LSA).

I don't have a copy of the LSA standards, and I don't know enough aerospace engineering to judge whether they would work at 750kg. All I have said is that prudence would dictate that we should copy someone else's standard for the time being rather than going it alone by being the first country to permit 750kg LSAs.

That is a bit over the top Ada.As for the 'your loved ones flying in the same airspace' thing, surely an analytical person such as yourself would not use such emotive bs.

The next question becomes, who is opposed to the institution of a GP medical, like the GFA one? That would be people who could not pass a GP medical, of whatever standard, or who do not want to pay for a GP medical (all $80).

Finally, what standard should this GP medical be? At the very least it should be at least as restrictive as a private drivers license; I would advocate that it should be the commercial drivers license standard, on the basis that a light aircraft flying HS1 has the same potential for carnage as a truck driver in Circular Quay (consider total kinetic and potential energy of an RV6 at 1500ft).

If you want to play the (wo)man and not the ball, go right ahead.

I dunno Ada, how does that help LSA owners? They will still be limited to 600kg unless the manufacture certifies them for something different.

The point was they were not pilots at all, BUT because there was something they were interested in at Narromine on Easter weekend their poor old henpecked pilot husband could go to Natfly for Easter instead of taking the children to visit Aunt Maude. Would you like a hand down off your high horse?

watching the world pass you by?

A "ladies program" at a fly-in that isn't an AWPA meeting or similar suggests that you want to shunt women off to the non pilots corner.