skydog

One of the instructors who perished is a legend here in YBDG. Chris Gobel ran a flight training school here for well over 25 years and very well known, respected and liked. He trained hundreds of pilots many going on to commercial airlines and is held in very high regard by CASA as an advanced instructor. He will be sadly missed by many and remembered this Friday night meeting at the clubhouse.

Too many crashes this summer unfortunately. Someone suggested 2 aircraft involved a mid air????

Seeing the exciting threads in this forum prompted me to go back into the deep dark history of my logbook to look for prompters to remind me more about my first solo because I am old now in years and honestly cannot remember the finer details. It was on April 22nd 1974 in a Cessna 172 at Ardmore airport in Kiwiland. The log book entry did not help much as there is not much room to make many remarks and I was more of a conservative nerd in those days:) It just says "FIRST SOLO". I wholeheartedly relate to the other common threads on this thread that the lighter weight was very noticeable on climb out and more concentration needed on landing as it floated a little down the strip. Ardmore was and I suppose still is a very busy airport with 6 or 7 in the circuit not uncommon so I was busy. Yes I was very happy and it is the quintessential moment or realisation that one actually can fly (& land ) a plane. Of course it was just a small achievement relative to learning to hopefully become a safe and proficient pilot. It does however more interestingly bring up the question about training in those days compared to now because I was surprised to see that I went solo in 3.95 hrs. Certainly now it seems especially in LSA solos seem to be around the 8,9,10 even 20 hour mark. I do believe my solo time was about normal in those days. Does it depend on the "difficulty " of the aircraft type to fly & land i.e a GA in a 172 vs LSA in a J120 Jab or has the syllabus requirement changed since those days? I dont know but I do know that I have talked with many student pilots at airfields still not solo after a lot of hours such as above and I also know the jabiru for example can be difficult to land compared to the much heavier 172 as I have about 90 hours in the small original Jabs . Anyone shed some light on this? Is RAAus training in very light aircraft contributing to this? Anyone have data? Are flight schools more greedy? Has the proficiency requirements changed? For comparison the first 8 flights totalling 3.95 hours consisted of TIF, effect of controls, climbing and descending, medium & climbing turns, stalls, circuits, more circuits, and more circuits. [Total circuit time 2.05 hrs] By the way FYI, I see in my log my cost per hour was $11.00 per hr dual!!!!!!!!!!!...............................Wish it was more like that to fly these days:cheezy grin: Regards.

Welcome and I am sure you will love flying over the magnificent mountains, lakes and scenery of NZL.

The mighty RV12. Great machine. If the new 760kg limit comes in my RV6 will fit that category. 749Kgs MTOW Stall speed is good with the 40 degree wing flaps. CASA will likely find a way to exclude them like too fast.

I own a RV6A nosedragger. The basic dollars stated prior seem to be very similar to my experience over the last 12 years. Consider a share in an RV to make it much more cost effective over a short term say 1 to 5 years. A 50% share will save minimum $4000 per annum. A 4 share mu h better Work on flying about an average 70 hours per year (after the first exciting year or two maybe 50 hours ) If you are a solo owner and a weekend warrior put aside in your aircraft bank savings account an allowance of $140 per hour (on top of a healthy deposit) to cover the very basic fuel, ins, mtce costs. Allow about $2000 extra during the year for SAAA or other memberships avionic upgrades, mechanical upgrades, tweaking, and Avionic biannual. I am sure you will enjoy owning and flying an RV PS you can still fly economically by cruising at 110kts using 22 litres per hour if you want but hey the speed buzz is rather seductive. Renting is probably better depending on how many years and hours per year you intend to fly. I would guess the cut off to be about 6 years for buying a second hand RV at 60 hours per year but there are an infinitesimal RV's out there for rent so sharing is the better option, again not a lot of shares available out there especially at airports and lose to you

Good idea. I put a dob of silicone but it gets dirty and hard to see. ? Thankfully with the leak proof inner tubes it is not a big deal now.

I think light tyres that spend 90% of their time in a Hangar will last much longer than the warranty period. Plasticisers, silicone etc break down with sunlight and higher temperatures and lots of use as in a car. However my tip for tyres is to invest in the "leak proof" tubes. They are not cheap but worth it as they reduced my "pumping up" from once per month to twice per year! On an RV and many aircraft accessing the valve thru wheel pants is not always possible or an easy affair. Yes we can cut access holes in the pant etc etc etc however leak proof tubes are great. Some have thicker rubber which also provides much added protection from those large spikey bindis.

Hi

Interesting reading about the SOAR "yellow Budgies" brigade as I called them when they were training out of YBDG. (Not anymore). It was terrific to see a buzzier airport and many new faces and would be pilots around. Bendigo wants to grow its airport and had tendered (unsuccessfully) for the initial and second QANTAS training school bases. We now have a Qantas service here everyday. My superficial understanding of the matter from published articles says Government backed, education schemes have been and still are loose, open to interpretation by operators and little scrutiny by Govt to prevent abuse of students. I have no hard facts to back my comments, but: General education "diplomas" available to OS and local students such as in hairdressing, basic accounting, for example can obtained easily by a large quantity of people but again how good is the training and are there any jobs once qualified?. Is it similar for pilot training? I think the company just grew too fast, too soon in the last 18 months which possibly has caused the use of less experienced instructors from a well of dwindling supply. BUT instructors should not be able to become instructors if they are not suitably capable. I would like to assume they all are/were as I am sure CASA would be as well.. The vast majority of pilot trainees from my observations at SOAR seemed to be really nice friendly young overseas students who I assume expect to go back home with a "Western" pilot qualification of some sort and make some money in local or regional airlines. BUT the gap in hours required and training organisations available overseas I imagine would make that very difficult to obtain the hours and experience for acceptance into a small say tourist or freight operation let alone a commercial airline. There are so many Asian airlines with their own training airports and organisations here already. The fast growing SOAR I believe was/is struggling to obtain the number of instructors required. As soon as they got a few hundred hours or more up they themselves instructors move on to go for that commercial job. Over a period of months comparing the local flight schools incidents with SOAR at YBDG shows that something like a 7 to 1 ratio or higher by SOAR. Hard landings, very hard landings, broken undercarriages, damaged runway lights, and a write off. Why would that be so? Could it be choice of aircraft, Tecnams vs overwhelmingly Foxbats & Bristells ? I am sure the manufacturers would be arguing no but could it be a factor , maybe. SOAR have some Tecnams in Sydney maybe interesting to compare incidents of those to Foxbat? Regardless the student should be instructed to a level as to fly and land safely by the instructors. It would be interesting to know the average hours of the instructors employed. Possibly were SOAR trying to push students thru? Were instructors not up to scratch?/high experience levels? It was a habit to watch the yellow budgies doing circuits as the landings were always interesting to say the least. It got to a stage where I felt compelled to say to an SOAR instructor they needed to address the situation as maybe a worse outcome such as serious injury may be imminent. Understandably this did not go down well. Many of the hard landings I witnessed had instructors on board! Perhaps the Government and training operators including the large TAFE`s and RMIT`s just want the ready available money from overseas students to grow our own wallets without conscionable consideration of the outcomes? With greater scrutiny fm authorities any organisation should be able to meet the standards. We all want safe skies for all and we do not want or need CASA to over-regulate as this affects the innocent training organisations here. Please lets have safety first, fun second and money third. I guess I am just stating the obvious.

Try JABI

great quality I havnt visited the photo comp for a while and I am greeted by lots of bloody fabulous quality photos. Excellent work guys and there has to be a calender come out of this competition Ian?

Brumby vs Jab Jabs are much cheaper but of course cost is not everything and the old rule is absolutely true . "you only get what you pay for" and I would add, if you get something really cheap then add some price/cost factor on to it to cover downsides. But if you are going to do that then you might as well pay more in the first place. Both planes have their plusses. ps I did 90 hours in Jabs.

Found this website for those ultralight dactyl enthusiasts pterodactylpfledge : Pterodactyl Pfledge Ultralight Group

I would love to see this plane in our skies. Reminds me of the feeling I got when I saw my first Rutan design, different , cool, fast I think, and sexy.

Oasis flight training is at Moorabbin about 20 minutes away.Phone the mobile 04 0784 0641 They have Jabs and I think there is another school there with sportstars.

Chris, I think your Father is right. I believe he will get thru faster on the 172 than learn to land the trickier Jab which can add hours and dollars to the programme for the average pilot in my opinion. Why not learn in a 150 to make it cheaper again? He can convert to the Jab later with landing experience under his belt and without having to go for a PPL! I have seen Jab students take 30 hours to go solo, the average seems to be about 20. He also may consider learning in Gazelle or similar which is easier to land and fly go solo, then convert to Jab later

Lovely work once again Naemick

Thats a powerful little beast for sure. Impressive

makes sense Stand clear -starting does make sense over clear prop for me but so does some sort of horn/siren. Maybe a horn with the sound of blades cutting thru meat would get the message across!

A mid life crisis ????? No,....its a mid life indulgence. Enjoy it.

Bionath, Are you thinking of doing aeronautical engineering at that Adelaide college? Has a good reputation from what I have heard and the money in this industry aint half bad. Re x amount of hours per year once you have a license its pretty much based on doing 3 take offs and landing within 90 days to keep current. Naturally if you dont have a license and have been "away" for a few months a CFI would likely check you out and sort out any bugs that may have crept in before sending you off solo again. Learning to fly in ultralights is the cheapest way. Keep saving that dosh!

such a great feeling isnt it getting that license? Bummer though when my instructor said to me "thats only a ticket to learn how to fly" Made me think a bit. Still learning and lovin it. Take care up there.

I agree Thalass, its a looker alright. I wasnt sure about the cruise speeds though. RV6 at height 160+ knots but with a 5 litre engine. Could be a good alternative if I lose my GA license

Fabulous work DF. I am sure a lot of people have learnt a lot about these 'old wives tales' in aviation.