Powerin

There's a whole heap of new stuff you have to train your brain to handle...like anything new. Sometimes it will seem overwhelming but eventually it will just click and you will find yourself ahead of the aeroplane and doing things instinctively.

Ultralights has pretty much said it all. It's not as daunting as we imagined. Have the right equipment. Have a plan for ditching. Study the CASA ditching procedures document - download here. As ultra said, on the Flinders Island route you are in sight of an island or rock for most of the time. You plan to do the same as when you are over land, if the fan stops now you will glide towards that rock or that ship. We flew at 7500 or 8500 depending on direction for maximum glide potential.

Scheduled radio reporting gives a lot of peace of mind and ATC is quite accommodating but make sure you study the correct procedures for contacting Melbourne centre and requesting skeds in ERSA. Another thing the pilot did was have a live tracking app running on his android smartphone so family and friends could go to a website and follow our path live....although the phone signal dropped out halfway across the Strait once which gave my wife a bit of cause for concern for a few minutes.

The trip crossing via King Island is a bit more challenging in that there is virtually nothing but water in between, but there is the odd boat or ship.

I haven't quite got my cert yet so I was only a pax...but it is certainly a rewarding thing to do. Tassie is a beautiful place to fly around and the natives are mostly friendly

It's not an adventure if there isn't any risk

The figure that I recall reading somewhere, and I am unsure if it is verifiable, is that the estimated risk of death/injury in flying a light aircraft is similar (perhaps slightly more) to the risk of motorcycle riding (taking into account the time/distance/participation rate). If I recall, this is several times more risk than driving a car.

Sincere condolences to the family and friends of Ben.

...how this is going to contribute to flight safety?

I'm not having a go at you, I agree with most things you've said. But them's the rules. Some agencies will interpret them more strictly than others. It's not going to do you any good to fight against them, you'll just burst a blood vessel. Instead, lobby to get the stupid rules changed.

Why would this apply to RAA but not to GA e.g. Experimental?

My point is this: rego numbers, rego stickers and placards are the most visible part of your ability to follow the rules.

Imagine a CASA inspector is wandering down the flight line at a fly in. He sees two identical planes, one with the correct sized numbers in the right spot, clearly visible rego sticker and placards of the approved type. On the other plane the numbers are the wrong size and in the wrong position (such as vertical on the fin - check ops manual section 4.09), the rego sticker can't be seen and the placards are unreadable. The inspector thinks to himself- "This pilot can't even get the simple stuff right....I wonder what else is wrong"?

Which pilot do you think is more likely to score a ramp check?

I've always found, in all sorts of situations, if you comply to the letter of the law with the stupid little things everything else goes smoother. Then the powers-that-be can easily see you are someone that has an eye for the details and is making an honest attempt to comply. For instance I once had an audit in my business and the auditor commented that I had some of the best record keeping he had seen. After that the rest of the compliance audit for work practices went very smoothly and any problems that were found were treated very leniently (and that's the very reason I keep the records well...despite hating it).

Don't bash your head against the legal brick wall. It never works. Know the requirements, give them what they want (however stupid) and then it's smiles all round.

I have been wondering how long until someone mentioned the "contingency" being a legal action. It seems we may be saving money to give to someone else, instead of saving our own organisation.

Yes we have some money in the bank but it would be unwise to leave our organisation without a contingency fund.I hope to see us return to profit in the next 24 months. Possibly even this financial year (but that is less likely).

There is always the temptation for non-profits to squirrel away money for a rainy day and resist spending, to the detriment of the organisation. At some stage you need to say there is enough money in the kitty and spend "profits" on making things better for members. Hopefully the RAAus is not such an organisation.

I tend to agree with the sentiment that it's raining at RAAus...

Mark said many of the vote envelopes already received at the office have no Member number on the envelope , so therefore they are invalid votes.

It's a simple thing to write the number on the back of the envelope, but also apparently an easy thing to forget. So they need to recognise there are Human Factors at play and change the system.

I've thought the same thing about the Pilot Certificate renewals. When I first got one of those there is one form that tells you how to pay and also how to do it online if preferred. Then there is this other form for the medical declaration. There is nothing on either form that says you need to send in both...or what to do with the medical form if you pay electronically. It's always dangerous to assume that things are obvious and people will know what to do. Human Factors.

motzartmerv, the planes are parked on grass.. so if there is a leak it was undetectable. if the brakes faded, that would be fair enough.. But the fact that it had no brake fluid is very concerning.. its a $10 bottle that could of easily fixed it and its just something that I will now check myself and not rely on the school's check flight list. If anyone has a copy of the pre flight for a jab and could link it to me, i would much appreciate it. thanks heaps!

After a quick scan of the preflight procedures I can't see anything about checking brake fluid...only the actual brakes.

Dunno - I had a J200 once. The 544 kg limit two (not small) guys, about 40% fuel and two hankies for baggage. So as we headed into the sky with full fuel and about 50kgs of baggage (maybe 650 kgs AUW) we murmured to the aeroplane that it should pretend it was a (700 kg max-AUW) J400. We must have been convincing because it took off/ flew/ landed just fine. The takeoff/climb was a bit slower than we were used to, there was a bit more throttle needed for speed and landings were a bit quicker. But we knew the airframe was not about to disintegrate on us ......

Yep, as Turbs says, whether it's safe or not is really not the point. If you fly (or drive for that matter) illegally and something goes wrong you will be held responsible, even if it's not strictly your fault, and your insurance will be void. In the event of you causing a death you won't have any insurance to help and perhaps have a $multi-million lawsuit on your hands.

Always look at the worst case scenario. Even if it's fairly low risk, can you and your family really afford for you to illegally carry those few extra kg if the worst happens?

I'd like to suggest an operational improvement. Signage and maps. It may seem an insignificant thing, but you can improve the experience simply by having adequate maps and signs. How many of you have wandered up and down long taxiways looking for a clue as to which hanger is which and whether it is private or whether there is a forum hiding inside? Where were those toilets again?

Invest a bit of money and get some signs printed up (even laminated A3 paper would do) for the hangars and forums, the bus stops, the food court, RAAus headquarters, the PA announcer and even some lot numbers for the exhibitors. And then have some more at key positions to point people in the right directions....such as a sign pointing down the taxiway showing which hangars are wayyy down there. Or the bus stop is that way, the toilets are over there etc etc.

I know when you are organising an event these things seem obvious, but you have to look around your site through the eyes of a stranger.

I hate to be a wasp in the jam here, but CASA has not always held that perspective. I believe that CASA has pursued at least one RAA member for exactly that 'offence'. This is a matter that I believe RAA should be demanding that CASA provide an an unambiguous statement as to what it considers to be 'commercial' use of an RAA-class aircraft.Para 7 (d) (vi) states: (vi) the carriage of goods otherwise than for the purposes of trade

 

So, therefore, your tools of trade carried for the purpose of undertaking a job (if you can't prove that they just 'happened' to be in the aircraft) - are taken to be 'a commercial purpose'.

 

I am sorry, but short of a issued declaration by CASA, it appears that it would be necessary for a Court to determine a ruling - reference to the CAR nonwithstanding.

I also think that you will never get an unambiguous statement from CASA because they are charged with upholding the law. If the law itself is ambiguous there is little CASA can do aside from trying to change the law. These days the law seems to be deliberately written to be ambiguous so it is open to interpretation.

So if we are to reach the objective of this thread it seems to me we have to change the law. Raaus could certainly be far more involved in helping the community if allowed by law. I've often thought how useful it could be for a local fire brigade captain to be given a bird's eye view of the fire ground and how quick and easy that might be in an RAAus aircraft.

Number one concern of lawmakers would be safety and convincing the powers that be that safety would not be compromised.

Another thing is something I don't think has been mentioned here - unfair competition. I always remember going for a training flight with the CFI of my school...not my usual instructor. He's the boss and chief pilot of a regional company that does everything from RAAus and GA training through to GA fixed wing and helicopter charter and freight. In the hangar next door is a warbird that does "adventure flights". As we passed the hanger my CFI grumbled in good natured way about how the warbird could do a paid joy flight with little more than a signed disclaimer while he had to pay big bucks for an AOC and all the money, paperwork, maintenance and training that requires, to do the same thing. I could see his point.

So in changing the laws we also need to avoid disadvantaging those that have spent obscene amounts of money to comply with those same laws. There must be a way, but it seems there are lot of pitfalls and some very big egos and strong opinions to get past before the law is changed.

Time for a silly question from someone who hasn't flown many aircraft....what do you mean by "easy to fly"? Or perhaps a better question is what makes an aircraft difficult to fly? Getting off the ground and back on can be difficult, but are there many aircraft that are actually difficult to keep in the air? And if so what are the characteristics that make them a challenge?

I note, Maj, that you are a great believer in common sense. I like to think I have some too. But as you have also noted, it is a rare commodity these days.

And therein lies the rub. One of the reasons we have to put up with this level of regulation is not necessarily because the regulators have no common sense, but because there is so little of it in general society. These days we can't trust that the pilot lined up behind us at the holding point (or someone lined up at the traffic lights for that matter) has any.

So if some sort of safety regime protects me from those lacking in this area, or pulls me up when I do something stupid myself, then I'm all for it.

I know it's been argued to death before, but in this day and age there is absolutely no need to use abbreviations that belong to the days of the Telex and Morse Code. I realise it is needed for international standardisation and uniformity but why not have both plain English and the abbreviation?

It's ironic that we have to use this newfangled interwebs thing to learn how to decode NOTAMs. I'm convinced that NOTAM/TAF/METAR/ARFOR speak is just an ego thing so pilots can feel superior

We have both B&S and Kohler V-twins on the farm. The B&S, like all B&Ss we have had, has had issues....the latest one being the the diodes on the magneto kill wires burnt out. It also runs pretty rough at idle, the governor hunts around and I have had the carby apart several times. That being said it works in a pretty tough environment and it seems to be well built with a nice twin carby. But it is not a engine I can rely on to start first time every time.

The Kohler is a similar age and is on a fire pump. It always starts and has not missed a beat yet. It runs much smoother with less vibration than the B&S. I don't know what sort of carby or quality of build it has because I have yet to take a spanner to it.

I haven't read the links yet, but wouldn't emissivity only account for the heat actually radiated away from the surface? Whereas an air or water cooled engine is relying mostly on conduction...ie air or water actually touching the surface and absorbing heat energy and taking it away with it. Does conduction rely on emissivity?

When looking at the Constitution, I found it interesting that a great deal of time and effort went into the drafting of things like the handling of Disciplinary matters, yet very little - and all of that as far as I can see extremely formulaic in nature - went into actual 'governance' matters. I imagine it was presumed that 'good governance' would, in the main, result from good will and competent sensible management by those with that responsibility.That's not an unreasonable expectation - but as we now see, when things suddenly slip outside the bounds of 'reasonable' expectation, there is no defined mechanism for handling the situation. As you say, about the only path forward is for things to be done that are technically not handled within the Constitution, and assume that whatever results will be acceptable in the short term and 'ratified' - however that is to come about - in the slightly longer. By any objective measure, that places the current management situation of RAA in 'emergency' mode i.e. in a situation where action NOT consistent with its Constitution has to be adopted.

 

We HAVE to accept this - but we should, I believe, be working our collective butts off to get things back under duly constituted control both as quickly as possible and in a manner that is a demonstrable advancement on the management and governance circumstances that has led us down this path. Despite the fact that RAA-class aviation is something way outside the mainstream of things that are part of daily life for society generally, all we need is for some tragic accident to happen plus parts of the media shouting things such as 'Ultralight aircraft management in crisis, out of control' or similar and we WILL become the focus of attention, with potentially serious implications: such attention is almost never helpful..

As I've mentioned before an association only has a legal obligation to its own members to follow its own constitution. In many cases associations can successfully run on good will and competent management and the constitution is only used as a fall back position in case of major dispute. We, the members, can allow a little or a lot of latitude as to how closely the constitution is followed. As you say, we really have to accept some variance to the constitution just to get things back on track. But as the constitution forms the common ground on which all members stand so it makes sense to have it as compreshensive and foolproof as possible.

Well done Dex. Just out of curiosity, how long is that strip?

Hi Gary, stopped in Wynyard a few days ago to refuel. Saw and heard a Foxbat but pretty sure it was white. I remember from the distance we were fooled by the taxiway that's much wider and more noticeable than either of the runways

Just to reiterate what Sue has outlined above...NO ONE will intervene in internal disputes of an incorporated association. Even if a board is acting against a constitution. It is up to the members to self regulate their association. Voting is a good way of self regulating. If it all hits the fan unfortunately legal action by members is the only solution.

Like it or not, the future of RAAus is up to us...the members. Love them or hate them there is a group who can see the writing on the wall and have been at least trying to reform our association. Whether their actions will be constructive or not remains to be seen. At least they're trying.

I Have actually written to the Ra-Aus Board suggesting exactly that! I believe that ATSB is shirking their responsibility and hiding behind budgetary constraints when all air accidents/crashes should be thoroughly investigated as they are in England by the AAIB and in the US by the NTSB, where even lowly ultralight aircraft crashes are investigated.I had the temerity to suggest that the Board should get out of the weeds of accident investigation and concentrate on strategic issues, such as whether the ATSB should investigate all our accidents and got howled down for my efforts.