Powerin

I don't know Morse....so that passed me by. But some of the emphasis on syllables was interesting. British emphasis must be different from Australian...not that I've noticed before. HOH-TEL instead of HOH-TEL NO-VEM-BER instead of NO-VEM-BER PAH-PAH instead of PAH-PAH and a couple more.

If it's any consolation, agricultural mechanics are charged out at about $120/hr these days (although the mechanics themselves are lucky to see a third of that). $325 for a tyre repair is a rip-off, but then I don't see many BMWs parked in front of aviation or agricultural service facilities. I don't get the feeling many are making big bucks.

So what do the likes of the Ipanema ag plane (Brazilian - now made by Embraer), that Nev mentioned, do to their engines and systems that they can handle 100% ethanol?

I always find it interesting that a subject such as flying, which is so grounded in science, has such a wide array of myths and dogmas attached to the teaching of it. I haven't read the latest Prof. Avius article but I must agree it's hard to see the point behind a so called instructor's article...at least in the way in which it is presented. It appears to be a mix of articles which seem to have an identity crisis. On the one hand the information covered seems to be basic aviation 101 that every pilot should know. Is the knowledge standard of RAAus instructors so low that they need a magazine article to explain the basics of angle of attack and stall recovery to them?? This surely is the most basic knowledge that an instructor should be required to have. On the other hand, because it is aimed at instructors, the basic information is presented in a somewhat convoluted way which makes it inaccessible to students. So we end up with an article which covers very basic topics that every instructor should know presented in a way that doesn't really help non-instructors.

I'm a great fan of thread drift (and a perpetrator). Sometimes threads take on a life of their own and turn into a meeting of intelligent minds with a great deal of wisdom imparted (albeit with a bit of vitriol, misinformation and ego thrown in). They may occasionally degenerate into mudslinging but I'm willing to put up with that for the times when they're a great learning experience.

That's probably one of the wisest comments in this thread. We have to realise we are but 10,000 voices amongst 23,000,000. However, one thing that governments (and their departments) of today fail to appreciate is cause and effect. One of the greatest freedoms and conveniences the general public enjoy today is the ability to fly anywhere in the country, or the world, at a price even the average Joe or Josette can usually afford. Even if ATPL pilots are little more than systems analysts these days, airlines and the general public demand that they actually know how to fly a plane. It is a truism in aviation that EVERY pilot starts in a single engined piston aircraft. Where are these pilots going to come from if the industry that trains them, both RAA and GA, cannot survive? The pay is lousy for the investment required to fly commercially. So the system only survives by virtue of the fact that pilots love what they do (bit like farmers ). Eventually potential pilots are going to see that there are too many obstacles (such as CASA) to bother with following their dreams. This is what we need to be telling CASA and government. A significant slice of the country's economy relies on pilots. Someone has to light the fire of their passion for flying and train them (because they ain't gonna get rich doing it). While we might like to think of RAA as a recreational organisation we need to be pushing our role to government as an essential public service providing a stepping stone for future commercial pilots. I'm one who thinks Jabiru need to seriously lift their game and until they do I would never buy one. But Michael Monck is exactly right in his excellent response...CASA is again indulging in tearing aviation down, supposedly in the name of safety, without even a cursory glance at cause and effect.

Yeah, I expressed it badly....I meant if all the Jabs in Australia take off only 3 times one of them will have have an engine failure. It's a silly way of expressing the statistic....but that was my point. In the same way I think 0.03% is not a useful stat either. Jet, you are exactly right though if you do want to take the risk with your own aircraft you should be allowed to. After all, that was the foundation of the ultralight movement and the experimental category. However, I don't believe FTFs have the same luxury - but the Jabs are heavily marketed to that area. At very least it seems Jabiru should amend their POHs and maintenance documents to reflect the more conservative way these engines should be treated to get the expected life span as these are the documents an FTF legally has to abide by.

I take your point jetjr, and it is a good one. However, when I go beyond the anecdotal and look at the data that is actually available, such as RAAus accident reports or CASA service difficulties, it does seem to back up the anecdotes. Data can be suspect too of course, and can be interpreted in different ways depending on your point of view. For instance I find it interesting how the apparently reliable figure of 1 engine failure in ~3000 has been immediately reduced to a percentage of 0.03% and therefore it seems a ridiculously small figure not worth worrying about. I didn't see it that way at all. Looked at a different way, given there are ~1100 Jab engines in Australia, therefore 1 in 3 takeoffs in all Jabiru aircraft in Australia will result in an engine failure. Doesn't sound as good as 0.03% does it? Looked at another way, if a flying school does 60 movements per week (is that a reasonable figure?), they should be planning and budgeting for 1 engine failure per year.

By all means!! Do it! I fly Teccies and I really like them....but if there really IS a structural problem I want to know about it. I want Tecnam to produce a safe aircraft and would welcome an investigation. I don't understand why you don't want the same to happen at Jabiru. Don't assume people here are pushing for action just because they "don't like them". Sure, there are some that bash for fun, but don't dismiss valid concerns because you have an emotional or financial attachment to Jabiru.

Where do you stop? What about Brumby, AAK, Lightwing or even Morgan? I produce nearly $500K in exports....I wouldn't a mind a bit of that grant too.

The GA register only has about 140 Jab aircraft and engines from a quick search.

Again, I don't agree with how CASA has handled this, but the idea that this came out of the blue for Jabiru doesn't ring true. The statement from Jabiru after their meeting with CASA seems to indicate that the meeting was already scheduled BEFORE this proposed instrument came out. When CASA took Tiger Airways to the cleaners other airlines such as Jetstar also had serious airspace infractions recorded against them, but Tiger were the ones who snubbed their noses at CASA (or so I heard). Given the original rhetoric from Rod Stiff when this hit the fan and from his past performances it seems just as likely that CASA felt the need to wave a big stick to get some action at the meeting. The opinion that CASA has done this with no evidence also seems misplaced. The media seems to have asked the question and got the answer of 40 failures in 12 months. I try to keep an open mind, but have had concerns about Jab engines purely as someone looking from the outside at statistics and anecdotal evidence from various sources - both good and bad. Surely though, even for the most ardent Jabiru supporter, 40 failures (if that figure is correct) in only 12 months, in a fleet of under 1100, is cause for some concern? In this age of globalisation and the demise of Aussie manufacturing, Aussie companies have to do things smarter and better. I'm sorry, but they do not deserve support simply by virtue of being an Australian manufacturer. Take it from a humble Aussie farmer, my hip pocket wins or loses by virtue of global demand and how well my product fits into that demand. As for a joint venture between CAMit and Jabiru...one would have thought that the fact that CAMit manufacturers engines for Jab means they have a fairly close venture already. For CAMit, however, the case for pursuing a closer relationship with Jab would have to make business sense. By all accounts CAMit have put a lot of time, testing and money into improving the original design. Jabiru, apparently, have not. If I were CAMit I would not be giving up the rights to a new and improved engine for nothing. I will admit, however, it wouldn't be the first time a company was ridden into the ground for the sake of pride. If there is one thing I have learnt in my journey to flying, it's that pride and ego are alive and well in aviation . Having said all that, there is a valid case for the lack of fatalities. Perhaps the combination of a great airframe with a not so great engine is enough to mitigate the risk. You've got to admit that if Jab DO get the engine right, at a price that's not too much more, they would have a world class product.

I wonder what the strict definition of "Jabiru powered" will be? It could be claimed, and Rod Stiff certainly makes the claim, that Jabiru engines that have been modified in any way are no longer Jabiru engines (eg fuel injection). I agree this has been a long time coming, but I think it's a bit rich including experimental aircraft in the restrictions. There are all sorts of interesting engines flying, some with no proven safety records, from two strokes to auto conversions, in experimental aircraft and yet they are still allowed pax.

I suppose it's because Australia, on the whole, is a dry place. Where I live (in the south) we only get about 20 inches of rain per annum so that leaves quite a lot of sunny days, even in the winter. As for snow...mostly it only happens in the mountains. Frost on the wings is the worst we have to deal with.

I was certainly a semi-regular reader of the mag long before I started flying. At the time I probably didn't realise it was the official mag of the RAA, nor did I actually know what the RAA was. But it certainly helped to sow the seeds about a new (to me) class of aviation. What actually tipped the balance for me was coming across a CFI with a Tecnam stand at an Agricultural Field Days. While I was drooling over the plane on the stand this guy quietly said to me - "I can teach you to fly that plane for under $5000". The rest is history.

I too think it is a mistake having a legal warchest...but I might be wrong. An incorporated association's funds are public knowledge. Is it not the case that a litigant will only bother to sue if they know that funds are available to win? As has been mentioned before, self insurance is probably a mistake because you could never really afford the cost of fighting a court case and the cost of a judgement against you could you? As for the magazine, I wonder how much could really be saved going digital? I admit, despite having had computers since 1982 and being on the Internet since 1996, that I still prefer printed magazines. How much income do we get from advertisers to offset the cost of printing? One thing I notice from the digital versions of newspapers and magazines is the distinct lack of mainstream advertising. How many of our advertisers would stick with our magazine in digital form? I know I would have second thoughts about the cost effectiveness of advertising in a digital format if I were an advertiser. Like Coljones, I am willing to pay for the printed mag, but I would accept a digital magazine if the membership costs were brought down. There was a comment previously about needing cheaper magazine advertising rates for members. This is a nice concept, but I suspect nearly all of the advertisers are members anyway. You can't, on the one hand, complain about the cost of the magazine but then on the other hand complain about the cost of advertising which helps pay for the magazine. It is not the job of RAA members to pay extra to help other members make a profit from their business.

And why would Jabiru do this? They say it is unnecessary to have this level of instrumentation (as indeed do most aircraft manufacturers). Do you believe this level of instrumentation is necessary for a Jab engine and, if so, why - given your previously demonstrated confidence in this design?

Not knowing a great deal about 2 strokes and for my own curiosity.....if you had fuel injection on a 582 you would no longer have oil mixture running through the crankcase? Just fresh air. So could you convert it to a conventional (splash?) sump lubrication? If you had direct injection you could start injecting fuel after the air charge came in and the exhaust port was closed and stop most of the pollution problems caused by unburnt fuel/oil escaping through the exhaust as the fuel charge was forced into the cylinder. I guess you could bypass the whole crankcase pressurisation thing by using a turbo or blower? Just thinking aloud. Is any of this possible or does it happen already?

Airbags built into the seatbelts are available for aircraft, although I suspect not for LSA yet. With no other structural modification do you think these would significantly improve the crash worthiness of LSA or small GA aircraft? http://www.amsafe.com/products-services/general-aviation/seatbelt-airbags/

Congrats 409! Truly one of those milestones in life for those few of us who defy the force which keeps us earthbound.

Henty Field Days closed its on-site strip a couple years ago. Previous management was aviation friendly, current management wanted the parking space. Holbrook is indeed the closest strip and since the closure of their strip the field days had a free shuttle bus, but I can't find any reference to that this year. There is a private strip near Henty but the problem is getting to the field days from there. I have plenty of paddocks to land in too but I am 30km away. My cousin owns land all around the field days....maybe I should talk him into mowing a strip.

I'm coming in late to this thread....but I honestly don't mind misspellings. When you're zooming through reading flat out your brain easily can deal with even badly misspelt words. No, it's the correctly spelt words used incorrectly that make it hard to read something. As mentioned before, it's the homonymns that are the problem. Nothing brings my reading to a screaming halt, and then put into reverse to re-read a couple times, than a misused there/their/they're etc. Correct punctuation is also nice and the visual cue of a capital at the beginning of a sentence is very helpful too for an easy flow of reading. Spellcheck won't help you with any of these unfortunately.

I went through the the RAAus register a couple years ago when it was available as a CSV file and put it on a spreadsheet. At that time the engine type was not shown, so I made some educated guesses and came up with the ratio of Jabiru engines to Rotax 912 to be about 8 to 7. The on line RAAus register currently is not available as one file but does include engine types and models. It is only possible to view 100 entries at once which makes it difficult to quickly check the validity of a search. But a simple search of the register using the term "Jabiru" comes back with 1100 hits. This search includes 11 Jabiru airframes that do not have a Jabiru engine and 11 that are not recorded but would possibly be Jab engines...perhaps they are still being built. A search for the term "912" gives 1407 hits. A quick browse through both those search results show them to be reasonably valid numbers I think. So I believe the engine numbers on the RAAus register are: Jabiru- 1078 Rotax 912 - 1407 Rotax 914 - 30 Edit: CASAs service difficulty reports are also available online and in yearly files. I am not sure if these are only VH registered aircraft? Reading through these also seems to show a trend for the afore mentioned specific Jabiru faults. Continental also seem to have specific faults whereas Lycoming is random like Rotax. Rotax has not appeared in the CASA SDRs in the past five years that I have looked at....I don't know if there is a statistical reason for this other than a lack of Rotax service difficulties. The above is just a general impression from browsing the SDRs and I haven't done any analysis.

I have a question and an observation.... Not owning an aircraft I'm wondering how ADs and ANs were promulgated before the rise of the Web for this and how can someone who is not "connected" now get ADs and ANs? The observation is that, as I see it, RAAus and the former AUF came into being by allowing exemptions from certain aviation rules...maintenance being one of them. In return certain rules were put in place to reduce the risk that resulted from those exemptions. In other words our restrictions are designed to stop us killing too many people if we stuff up. So we are not allowed into CTA, we can only carry one passenger and we are limited in weight etc. I think that the ferris wheel incident is a good case in point. A heavier aircraft could have resulted in a tragedy in that situation. My point is that one of our exemptions, maintenance, is being watered down. If this indeed actually increases the safety of our flying, should not our privileges (more weight for example) be increased to reflect the increased safety?

Yes...but don't forget where a lot of the resources come from....us! So I'd also like to thank the members that contribute their knowledge here (also free of charge )