onetrack

The writing was on the wall many months ago. This is just formalisation of the mess to prevent the corporate wolves from destroying what's left of the company.

Unfortunately, bankrupt aircraft manufacturers are a dime a dozen, and this is how it always will be.

The only thing I can see in my crystal ball is that our power/energy sources will become a lot more fractured/diverse in the next couple of decades - and that's not a bad thing. 

Nuclear power stations means we're putting a lot of eggs into one big basket.

Seeing as you can convert from RAA to VH-experimental, and from VH-experimental to RAA, without major roadblocks (provided the rules are met), I would have thought the SAAA document would have been relevant to any RAA aircraft.

I would think the SAAA advice below, probably contains all that you need to know, about approvals for flight over populous areas.

https://saaa.asn.au/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/IPM-FO-002-002-Flight-over-populous-areas.pdf

We need more Duramold construction aircraft? And here was me, thinking that Duramold had been made obsolete by carbon fibre and Kevlar?

I was under the impression that aircraft and parts are duty-free? However, after searching, I find it only applies to certified parts and certified aircraft.

GST is payable on all overseas purchases. Make SURE you acquire and keep ALL records relating to the purchase, otherwise the tax collectors will simply calculate the tax on their estimations - which may or may not be favourable to you! They will also tax any costs incurred in acquiring the goods.

https://www.abf.gov.au/trade-and-goods-compliance-subsite/files/fact-sheets/item-34-fs.pdf

https://www.abf.gov.au/importing-exporting-and-manufacturing/importing/cost-of-importing-goods/gst-and-other-taxes#:~:text=GST is payable on imported,as customs duty is paid.

And this is where the automotive/snowmobile/whatever-your-engine-selection conversion method is, is a dead-end. Not one of these converted engines lasts any more than a few years before it's superseded by a "new, totally redesigned" engine - thus leaving the conversion gurus out on the proverbial limb being sawed, and on the wrong side of the saw.

Ingersoll Rand must have manufactured quite a few units of the Spot-Air, because they're not all that hard to find for sale.

The Ingersoll Rand Spot-Air is perhaps what Nev was referring to. 6 cyl vertical radial with 3 cylinders driving and 3 cylinders compressing.

You even started them with a rope wrapped around a pulley! - because they weren't fitted with a starter. The railways used them for tamping ballast.

Because a motorcycle or snowmobile engine doesn't face the same constant heavy engine load as an aircraft engine does.

There's subtle changes in engine stress loads between loads that ease off for a period, before coming back on again - as compared to constant heavy load with no letup.

Caterpillar thought they could get into the rail loco business by installing their engines in locos. After all, they'd been building heavy duty tractor and construction diesel engines since 1931, so why not get into the loco business, it's just another engine-driven machine, isn't it?

Cat produced a number of diesel locos using their heavy duty construction engines, and they were an unmitigated disaster. Their unreliability was legend. Cat engineers failed to understand that loco engines require extremely heavy duty build, as the load on them is huge and almost constant and unrelenting.

And on long railway grades with a huge tonnage behind them, the stress buildup on loco engines producing maximum power on a constant basis for long periods, soon sorts the men from the boys.

Cat gave up on their foray into loco-building and left it to the people who knew what kind of build strength was needed for loco engines.

Then Cat decided they really needed to get a slice of the loco market - so they simply bought EMD, a long-established manufacturer of locos. They just renamed EMD to "Progress Rail", the supplier of "Caterpillar" rail products. 

I'd suggest dragging a caravan from Melbourne to Cairns is one of the stupidest ideas out and the economics don't stack up.

These people pay $100K for a van, $100K for a massively overpowered 4WD to haul it, pay out $300 a day in fuel costs for dragging their hated highway clogger the 3000kms to get there - and when they get there, the school holidays are half over, they get a few days in Cairns, then have to depart again and clog the highways on the way back.

I've owned plenty of vans for work purposes and they're a constant PIA, with high maintenance costs, insurance, licencing, tyres - and plenty of them are poorly built as caravan manufacturers pop up everywhere, trying to get a share of the RV dollar. Caravan parts are always half the size and twice the cost.

My holidays involve no $100K van, no $100K fuel-hogging 4WD, and no clogged highways stress.

Airline fares are the cheapest method of going long distances, accommodation is available in most places, and hire cars are cheap, and always the latest model with good reliability. 

It's about time people woke up to the idiotic "RV dream", it's not a dream, it's an expensive nightmare, and it means stress-filled holidaying.

Nuclear power stations come at mind-boggling cost to build. They need to be earthquake-proof, flood proof, fire-proof, and have triple redundancy built into every system.

They consume tens of thousands of tonnes of concrete and thousands of tonnes of lead shielding.

They must be be made 100% foolproof, and breakdown proof, and this costs a fortune.

There has to be millions of tonnes of water available at all times for cooling. The cooling systems have to be mind-boggling in size and complexity.

There have been multiple nuclear power station accidents, of which 3 Mile Island was the worst in the U.S. We all know about Chernobyl. It only takes a pump to break down or a valve to become stuck - and no-one notices - and there's your nuclear power station accident.

Few countries are going ahead with major nuclear power station development, and the reasons are, it's the cost as well as the nuclear waste generated - which non-one wants.

We could build a few big solar power stations in the interior and they would take over from our coal-generated power. All that's needed is storage - and pumped hydro appears to be the best response for that requirement.

It was actually $2 a day - but it wasn't that she reckoned $2 a day was good enough for Australian employees - she actually said that Australian workers had to learn to compete with African workers, who got $2 a day. Of course, many people presumed she was obliquely referring to her employees.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-09-05/rinehart-says-aussie-workers-overpaid-unproductive/4243866

You could be waiting a long time to acquire a Yammy sled engine for your aircraft. They can't supply the demand for sled orders, and they can't build in decent quantities because of a lack of parts. COVID supply chain difficulties are still hitting them.

https://sledmagazine.com/what-does-yamaha-have-in-store-for-2023-deniss-predictions/

The article is nearly 7 years old! The engine has probably already been made obsolete by Yamaha! 

......whether they could call themselves genderless, and to rule that two heads wasn't an unfair advantage in their games.

After all, they argued, with the T&IT's all possessing two heads, in common with many Taswegians, it was simply twice as many heads for their opponents to elbow or kick, as compared to any other team.

The learned judges retired to their chambers to weigh up the potential team gains of having two heads, as compared to having single-headed players, and whether that feature outweighed the oppositions gains in having twice as many T&IT heads to kick.

After 29 weeks of deliberation and a 1786 page judgement that took 18 days to read - let alone understand - the judgement was delivered in a 4 hr 50min speech by the Chief Justice, which speech was punctuated with.........

I hate to think how many rich idiots will buy one of these things and ignore any aviation laws and regulatory requirements, and just take to the air with gay abandon when they feel like a flight. No flight planning, no understanding of aviation requirements, and little flight and piloting training.

WSI is the IATA code for the new Western Sydney Airport. There is no ICAO code for WSI at this point in time.

I would imagine there may be a very small number of operators who are prepared to take a gamble with their lives and other people lives with hour meter disconnection, but the ultimate penalties are more than just financial.

There was one previous operator of a Robinson in the North of W.A. who did carry out regular hour meter disconnection - but he paid the ultimate price, he was killed when the rotor on his Robinson disintegrated.

The rotor had a manufacturers lifespan of 1200 hrs, when it was required to be replaced.

The owner ignored this requirement, disconnected the hour meter and continued flying. The rotor failed at approximately 2000hrs.

The ATSB investigated at length and went through the owners fuel useage records, which showed a major discrepancy against the Robinsons hours showing on the meter. The ATSB calculated from the fuel records, the Robinson had done at least 2000hrs, not the substantially lower figure shown by the hour meter. It was fortunate the owner was the only one on the Robinson when it went down.

9 hours ago, turboplanner said:

My opinion is the ASIC Card says "This person has been thoroughly backgrounded, is known to us and is not likely to be a threat."

 

 

 

 

Well, the backgrounding must be pretty poor, what with the number of ASIC holders - both flight crew and ground staff - who have been arrested and charged with high-level offences, in recent years. 

There were 5 ground staff arrested just recently for being involved in the importation of a huge amount of drugs and for being part of a criminal network. 

And there have been multiple numbers of flight crew in recent years arrested and charged and found guilty of a range of offences - and I believe at least one pilot is on trial for a double murder.

None of this is to say that all those ASIC holders who are indulging in criminality, have all been caught.

So I think your opinion of the quality of the backgrounding is seriously misplaced.

The cause of this R44 helicopter crash that killed egg collector Chris Wilson has been determined by the ATSB investigation to be fuel exhaustion.

This, despite the pilot giving evidence that he had refuelled shortly before the crash.

Matt Wright, in his regular style has hit back at the revelations in the ATSB report, trying to minimise his responsibilities.

Unfortunately, the ATSB report is not the end of the issue, there are a multitude of charges yet to be faced by numerous defendants in the case, so I will not comment further until those cases are heard and finalised.

It is interesting that the ATSB was given numerous conflicting crash evidence reports, and no doubt the courts will eventually determine who was telling the truth, and who wasn't.

The ATSB reports that the cocaine traces in the pilots system may have increased the likelihood of fatigue, depression and inattention, but ultimately determined that the cocaine effects did not contribute to the crash.

In the same vein, the investigation found that there were overruns in maintenance, overhaul and inspection periods - but that these only increased the crash risk, they did not directly contribute to the crash.

CASA also came in for a serve, for authorising the slinging of a person below the R44 for egg collecting, but did so without initiating "an effective process" for doing so, to ensure that aviation safety levels were not affected.

The ATSB found that when the R44 engine started to fail, the pilot released the sling holding the egg collector at a height that was unsurvivable.

https://www.atsb.gov.au/media/news-items/2023/atsb-releases-king-river-crocodile-egg-collection-helicopter-accident-investigation-report#:~:text=The ATSB investigation determined that,egg collector beneath the helicopter.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-11-22/atsb-final-report-fatal-helicopter-crash-nt-chris-wilson-death/103131088

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/breaking-news/matt-wright-responds-to-safety-report-into-helicopter-crash-that-killed-costar-chris-willow-wilson/news-story/578478d8671707ab2fb91e952586c8fb

There's constant reference to "flight crew", but nothing referring to individual GA or RA pilots. To me, the definition of "flight crew" pertains only to people involved in RPT.

Kevin, I think you missed the sarcasm in Area-51's post.

......famous piloting jacket (which you must have one of in Tasmania, or you'll freeze into an iceblock in the cabin at anything over 250 feet), but bull had kicked up such a commotion at someone trying to filch his famous jacket, that the cops arrived in force, and the melee subsided, as several well-known members of the NES were arrested for affray. 

However, no-one had yet noticed that OT was throttling the judge at this point. OT was very possessive of his bulldozer business, and nothing made him angrier than seeing it all handed over to useless Indigenes, who OT knew full well, would simply wreck his Cats and then abandon them.

Meantimes, as OT vented his fury about his Cats being simply used and abandoned, a member of the public asked a question loudly, "What about Turbos used and abandoned cats? He's abandoned more cats than any Indigenous tribe would in a 100 years!"

The room turned silent and OT stopped throttling the judge, who beat a hasty retreat to his chambers and who locked his doors.

The silence was deafening as all eyes fell on Turbo, who was starting to turn the colour the judge was turning, after 2 minutes of OT's grip on his throat.

Turbo cleared his throat and started to speak, "Friends, Romans and Countrymen, lend me your ears! - and here's a bag to put them in. I know you all feel aggrieved, angry, affronted, annoyed, anxious, acrimonious and alienated, but let me tell you......

Hasn't this already been discussed at length? - just last year?

The utter stupidity of the security cards fiasco comes, when you read the CASA website and it states categorically that ALL pilots must hold an ASIC or AVID card.

https://www.casa.gov.au/operations-safety-and-travel/aviation-safety-and-security-pilots/security-requirements-pilots#ApplyingforanASIC

But then it only points to the Border Security/Home Affairs website, which has nothing referring to any such law.

What Home Affairs DOES have, is a form titled "Airport Operator TSP guidance".

This document clearly points out that there are "security controlled airports" and airports/aerodromes/runways that are NOT security controlled, because they haven't been declared SCA's. 

Right there is the fiasco in the ASIC card. It's all about TRANSPORT security - not airport security. We've got probably a thousand airstrips and runways where no-one cares what you do, when you arrive there - they are not security controlled airports.

It's pretty obvious the expectation of CASA is that once you acquire a pilots licence or certificate, you'll be visiting security-controlled airports.

But I reckon you could fly with a licence or certificate for a long time, without ever having to go near a security-controlled airport.

https://www.cisc.gov.au/reporting-and-compliance-subsite/Documents/airport-operator-tsp-guidance.pdf