nathan_c

If we could avoid speculating on the cause of this one until the facts come out, I’m sure at least a couple of members of this forum would appreciate that. Thanks in advance

Okay I’ll keep that in mind next time you share unrealistic and ridiculous opinions on what should be sensible topics. In the meantime, as TP indicated, I’d like to see some informed opinions based on provided evidence as to why an interest in aviation would be either detrimental or beneficial to the hiring of or operations of CASA staff. I won’t go as far to say I have proof (beyond knowing a couple of CASA staff), but I’d wager a bet that a large amount of CASA employees love aviation and want to work towards advancing it and might be offended if it was suggested they were in it for other reasons.

Your opinions are not facts either FT, but you seem to be portraying them as such while bring TP’s down.

Id be pretty confident with most things turbo posts on here as being facts. He’s shown himself to be a lot more reasonable then most on here from what I’ve seen recently.

Totally unrelated to the conversation at hand, but can I ask what RAAA stands for Kyle? Or really more what the third A stands for? You consistently name it that so Ive been wondering if its some joke that this simple minded pilot has missed?

No, thats not what is being said at all. There are many actual cases of people undergoing nav training getting lost once going outside the immediate surrounding area. Someone undergoing nav training is either someone with an Ra Aus pilot certificate or a PPL/RPL student, who by the time they have reached nav training are equivalent too or at a higher standard then a bare bones pilot certificate. If those people have the potential to get lost (and it does happen) then what real safety justification do you have for sending a pilot certificate holder with no training out further than 25nm? Because thats what you are asking for, further allowances for people with no documented training in navigation techniques. 25nm may have been an arbitary number plucked somewhere in the past or it may have been a carefully chosen limit based on safety cases, I have no idea, but have a real look at how far that actually gets a pilot. From Redcliffe, that means I can fly up to caloundra, around the glass house mountains, most of the way to kilcoy (that might be a few miles out I havnt measured), down to around archerfield, and also out to moreton island.... Thats an astonishing area to cover, and includes in it some very busy airspace, mountain ranges, and enough room for weather to have a significant impact on a pilot within those boundaries. Its totally possible in the right scenario that a new, potentially nervous pilot may still get unsure of their position within those boundaries because 25nm is still a decent distance away. Further than that and you are just increasing the risk factor even more, and inviting trouble. Now, if you want to argue "well as an instructor I should be able to deem him more competent to go out to 50nm because I know him". As was said, that is a system that has incredible potential to get abused, and it would be a hard argument to justify why you deemed that person safe to go further with no further training, especially if other people/schools are only sending their students a smaller distance. Id also like to see you try and fairly tell one student they can go half the distance then the other because you deem them less competent with the same qualification. Thats asking for trouble too. Stubbornly asking for relaxations of rules because you want or think others should have an easier time of it with less training involved is not the answer for a better RA Aus. Having personally seen some of the quality of new pilot certificate holders hitting the world from various schools, I dont believe that we have a good enough common standard of training and testing across the country to allow for us to be changing to any sort of relaxed standards. Not every one is a top gun, and that has to be allowed for.

I could argue a lot of things with you M61A1, but I have no particular desire to beat my head against a brick wall tonight. Whether you like it or not, if you are completing training for and have not yet been issued the "endorsement" you are a student because you are learning, it doesn't matter if you have a certificate or not. If someone has a bachelor and they go back to complete masters, are they no longer a university student because they already hold the bachelor? That's your logic you are using. People wanting unrealistic and dangerous relaxations of rules is one of the reasons Ra Aus has such a bad reputation in regards to safety and compliance.

You have not completed a nav endorsement, you are therefore a nav STUDENT, regardless of whether you hold a pilot certificate or not. Turboplanners comment on students having troubles outside the 25nm area is therefore relevant to this topic. Depending on the area it is quite easy to get lost outside that distance (or inside it for some people) when people that have not been appropriately trained. Also, allowing instructors to develop their own rules would be a dangerous move. There is a syllabus and defined rules for a reason, it needs to be followed and people creating their own standards for how far a student can go is a. fraught with danger and b. opening up a huge can of worms in regards to liability. Additionally, you are required to conduct every flight using DR procedures. GPS navigation (either aircraft mounted or ozrunways on an Ipad) can be used to supplement your primary form of navigation (DR) and give you greater situational awareness, but is only ever a secondary form of navigation for RA pilots. Using (and admitting) that you use GPS as your sole source of navigation is illegal and in my opinion stupid because you are knowingly going outside the rules and you would rightfully be deserving of any actions legal or otherwise that came your way in the event of an incident.

Barryco: Pilot Certificate to RPL is just a paperwork exercise (unless you are converting nav endorsement as well and then you will require two hours instrument time before they will issue you the nav endorsement.) The Ra Aus exams carry over but you will need to hold an appropriate medical and also hold or get an ICAO english language proficiency as well. After you have then been issued the licence based on the paperwork conversion, to be allowed to utilise the privileges of said licence you must complete a flight review. While yes this is 'technically' just a check ride, depending on your skill level coming across it is highly likely one would need to complete a few hours training (exact amount depends on you) in the new aircraft before you would be at a standard that you would pass a flight review. Ramjet: Excellent post, very accurate representation of someones journey.

In fact the Regulations say the only required calls are the ones needed for flight safety. The table of calls in the CAAP are in fact only recommended calls that should be used, it does not say shall or must. Would you be smart to at least make a couple of calls? Yes of course, but if there is no one around you could quite legally depart or arrive with zero radio calls whatsoever. Not recommended, but legal. When you fly from busy aerodromes you very quickly become tired of unnecessary and dragged out radio calls because you end up sitting there waiting to try and get a call in, and inevitably get overtransmitted anyway. How is that safer?

Planesmaker, That's not the point of a medical system though. It's not designed to tell you you have less risk just because you passed, it's just saying you are in the lower risk bracket. There's always risk with everything. The system is designed to catch those that do hold a much higher risk. It's inconvenient for us who pass the medical, or those who could who don't feel like they want to spend the money on maintaining a medical, but there are people flying right now in RA without a medical that definitely should not be, that I can categorically state, and those are the ones the medical system is trying to weed out.

No problems, I did see those points and I was not trying to say that that science or studies are not correct. The point I was trying to make about it all is that yes, if you are a perfectly healthy human being with no risk factors and you have a heart attack well then thats unfortunate and theres nothing that any one could do to predict it and no medical was going to stop that. Unfortunately there is a significant amount of the population, young or old that DO show risk factors, are unhealthy and are more pre disposed to having a heart attack, diabetes etc, and the risk factor for these people having issues is significantly higher then the people who dont show any predispositions. You need to way to catch these people, (because they will and are flying in various forms already) and unfortunately this means the healthy people need to go through screening too even though their risk may be lower (but how would you know without seeing the doctor? Plenty of people dont know something is wrong with them until a doctor accidently finds it.) Also when I say catch these people, I do not necessarily mean preclude from holding a medical, but they do need to be assessed in the first place. I think derikliston's case above is actually a great example. He had a problem, he had it medically rectified and while its unfortunate that its now more expensive for him to maintain it he has been given a medical back and is still allowed to fly (unfortunately thats the case after one heart attack because once you have had one its considered the risk of others is higher). People will disagree but I personally think the current standard for a class 2 medical is pretty well placed, and if something does come up at the time of the medical then it is likely it is something that probably needs looking at anyway.

Yeah okay cool guys so there are some individuals that unluckily have heart problems or diseases that are very fit and healthy and thats a gigantic shame and I wouldnt wish it on anyone. But this does not mean that having to do a medical is useless or all of a sudden invalid. The medicals look for family history and well known triggers etc, and for any signs you could be pre disposed to a condition or if your health is sending you in that direction. Just because some healthy people get struck down by these unfortunate events doesn't mean that joe bloggs who is 150kg's with related health problems who would have a much higher risk of actually having some kind of disease or heart attack etc should now not have to complete a medical or have lesser medical standards imposed on him. I for one will not be arguing for reduced medical standards for GA and if I was ever unfortunate enough to lose my medical then I wouldnt be happy about it but would acceptingly have to give up GA flying and that would be the end of it.

Okay just to put everything out there, you are talking to two people (Ian and myself) who have a significantly better idea than most about what controlled airspace is and isnt, its literally our job to control it. The reason it does not list Class E airspace in that document is because for VFR, it is not controlled airspace. For VFR it is uncontrolled, you do not require a clearance, therefore that is not a case of RAA flying in controlled airspace, please dont try and pretend that it is. Before the argument is made that AIP says class E is controlled, it also says VFR aircraft do not require a clearance to operate in it. As for the ops manual being explicit, I thought the wording "Restricted areas around military aerodromes become controlled airspace when activated" was pretty clear? It points to the CAO in regards to pilots being allowed to enter but the wording about the airspace itself is pretty definitive. If you really dont care, why are you arguing so hard about what appears to really only be about the way you read into equivalent service? The airspace is still controlled by a military controller, which means it has to be controlled airspace and its just trying to say expect Class C procedures (so you dont fly in expecting class D type control etc). Trying to argue that the removal of one word or phrase in a document changes the entire intent of a document to allow exploitation of a privilege that doesnt exist for that class of pilot is not going to get any one anywhere, its just going to lead to re written documents that lock down or remove currently allowed procedures all because someone thought they could flaunt the wording of some rules.

Actually, I think you will find there IS indeed a rule that says you are not allowed to fly in controlled airspace. If you would like to take a look at the current version of CAO 95.55, section 7.1 (d), states the aircraft may only fly in classes A, B, C or D airspaces (by definition: controlled airspace), and section 7.3 pretty clearly points out that you must hold a CASA part 61 flight crew licence with controlled airspace endorsements. Now that we have the actual rule you are operating under spelled out, we can put that one to bed. Secondly, seeing as you wont take the AIP's wording of equivalence (which I feel like I dont need to point out by definition is the same as, or "equal in value, amount, function or meaning etc" if you want to get super technical about it), I will point you to the RA Aus ops manual which you are required to follow. Section 4.06-3 states that: Restricted areas around military aerodromes become controlled airspace when activated and may only be entered by recreational pilots complying with specific criteria as outlined in CAO 95.32 and 95.55, upon receipt of a clearance. If you dont want to follow AIP, follow the Ops manuals conclusion on restricted areas. Either way, the CAO says you cant be in there without a FCL, so im failing to see why this is even an argument...

That is just about the most flawed logic I have had the misfortune to read. Can we please stop trying to bend words and find excuses to weasel our way into places we shouldn't be? What ever happened to accepting the common sense behind the rules and leaving it at that? Without a controlled airspace endorsement, you are not allowed into controlled airspace. Simple. Clearly it's a difficult concept, but funnily enough regardless of the class of airspace, most restricted areas are controlled by controllers, therefore it's controlled airspace. Some of the posts and misguided opinions on this forum alone are arguments enough against RA getting CTA access, let alone getting into the myriad of other problems with it.

You have no idea how much I agree with that statement

Knowing where you are is critical obviously, and if you can divert from a known point on the map that you can locate easily to your diversion field is a lot easier then somewhere random along track (though this is not always possible). Id rather my students locate an obvious feature and work out a heading based on that point rather then guess how many miles along track you are and being wrong and getting yourself lost. Other little things like having a pencil with 10 mile markers etched onto the side to avoid needing to bring out a ruler can make your life easier too.

Clifton is also a two hour or more drive from a Brisbane away, which is a lot of extra driving and fuel for an hour of flying at a time. As for training in the sling, it's actually an excellent aircraft to train in, its lovely to fly, and I would not consider it unforgiving at all.

I'm not trying to stick up for any one school or another, but from my own search within an hour of Brisbane is inevitably around the same price as is what is mentioned above. Anything cheaper seems to be in a completely different aircraft class to things like the Sling or Eurofox (i.e significantly lower performing.) Horses for courses really, if you want closer to Brisbane expect the prices to be higher or to have to drive to a further out location for cheaper rates. Theres not actually much profit in running these aircraft at flying schools, you would be surprised how much actually goes to running costs and overheads (which naturally are significantly higher closer to the city).

While it sounds like the post is more aimed at sensationalising the amount flying costs (and I dont disagree), for informations sake our school has our Sling 2 at $295/hr dual and $195/hr private hire at Redcliffe. GA planes available at comparable costs too.

Personally I believe any training required should be of the standard required for someone to achieve a RPL CTA endorsment (yes the GA standard), or a PPL standard (which should be the same thing as the RPL standard) and I dont believe that this is an unreasonable expectation of training at all. CTA isnt a joke or something that you can just 'do an hour and you'll be right' or get a buddy to just come in and do a quick rating on. In my opinion if Ra Aus is to be granted CTA access, there needs to be a clearly defined, and comprehensive syllabus and training program to bring pilots up to the required standard for both flying procedures and radio calls. Unfortunately for some Ra Aus pilots out there I have come across, this could be an exceptional amount of training required and possibly far more then any minimum that may be set or that they think they require. As for GFA access to CTA, you can not fly a glider (motor or not) into CTA based purely off a basic gliding certificate. There is a GFA controlled airspace endorsement required to allow this access, and unsurprisingly has a training syllabus to go along with it.

I won't speculate on the cause of the crash because I'm not qualified and making random statements like it was "medical related" with no factual basis is a bit rude to be honest, but just to clear one point up, you do not need to be IFR rated to fly an angel flight. I know some pilot sounds very well that are VFR only who have flown these recently.

Yep as has been said, if you truly can not get any vhf coverage, sat phone coverage, hf coverage or a relay through other aircraft, then read up on setting a sartime for departure if you are departing for another aerodrome. Effectively it means you can cancel sarwatch in the cruise approaching your top of descent (or preferably as close to arriving at the aerodrome as you can while still having vhf coverage), nominate a sartime for departure that will allow you to land, depart and climb back into vhf coverage and if you don't call back up then sar actions will be initiated (not as exact as calling on the ground, but they can at least start looking from your top of descent to destination, and then out along your next planned leg).

I think what Ian means is that in the case of blocking the area frequency or cancelling a sartime in the circuit, alot of airfields dont have VHF coverage on the ground or in the circuit once you get away from capital centres. Thats definitely the case for the airspace I work, and thats not an insignificant portion of Australia. I cant actually remember the last time I heard a circuit call on area except for pilots forgetting to switch radios after talking to me.