Thx1137

hehe, can it really have been like that!? Some people really have aviation in the blood. It is a pity I couldn't start until 44. :-( Hopefully soon I will find out what it's like. The weather has been getting in the way over the last couple of months. :-( Everything that is left can be done near the field thankfully.

I did my RA test today. I was being tested for my pilot certificate with passenger and cross country endorsements. Got to the field at 13:10 and started flight planning at 13:30 or so. The trip was for YADG - Woodside - YMBD - YSYN - YADG. There were thunderstorms forecast but off the coast, the actual conditions in my area were stratus cloud at 6000. Winds were 20 to 25 during the flight. It was actually not a bad day for a fly. After the some ground testing involving POH use, ERSA use, Area Forecast decypering and some other questions it was time for the CFI to check my flight plan and weight and balance sheet. I managed to get ticks in all the boxes so far so I was starting to relax a bit. I had to treat the CFI like a passenger. This is something I find a little difficult because I have no imagination! :-) going through the briefing were fine although the first thing he did when he got in was start playing with the rudder. (naughty passenger!). After doing the rest of the passenger briefing I did my checks, runup, taxi and takeoff. So far so good. No black marks! The first leg of the flight plan called for flight under a 2,500 foot class C zone but also had a LSALT of 2,500. Once established (GPS was off for the whole flight so using headings) and FREDA out of the way I was sitting at 2,450 feet. It started getting bumpy so I slowed to Va and asked my passenger how he was holding out and that if it started getting too much to let me know straight away, I also said that if it gets too bumpy we will divert because I didn't want to risk getting into Class C. It was all going great, and then... I was about 1 minute from Woodside. The CFI asked me "what town is that?". I told him it was Woodside. I then had a thought, I turned over my map to see if I might be mistaken. Up to that point my heading was keeping me right on track but this town was to left of track and a bit too far away (by 2-3 mins). I couldn't see any other largish towns so head on over there. I started double checking, the roads seemed to match up and there was a little town behind me and to the right. Nope. I managed to somehow overfly Woodside and go to Lobethal! I didn't see it on my map because it was right on the map crease and not knowing the towns in that area much. Well. After all that great work. grrr. We head back to the real Woodside and continue on to YMBD. Enroute the CFI says. "At this intersection divert to Woodchester". OK. Map origami time. While working out the track, distance and time I kept finding myself turning to the left. I couldn't explain it. I ended up drifting a fair bit off track. I estimated a rejoining angle and managed to find my intersection (so tiny but there it is) and started off for Woodchester. My calculations seemed to work well enough, I was probably about 5 degrees off but found it fine. Next we were off to do some stalls and steep turns. We were happy with the steep turns, the stall recoveriess were OK but certainly not my best. Next up it was engine failure time. Did the checks, found my field, did the PAX briefing and the mayday call. It was a bit sloppy but we would have suvived fine. An embarising moment. The CFI says 'Take us home", I find the hills and start heading towards them. Everything seems ok but something wasn't right, I thought the heading was a bit low. I pressed on for a couple of minutes. Nope, definately not right. I grabbed the map and realised they wern't the right hills! I worked out a correction and managed to get myself on track. We did some cross winds. The less I say about those the better. Certainly not my best work but I had already told my instructors that even if they are "good enough" I wanted more practice untill I was happy with them. We had a practive EFAT which wasn't the best either. So, after all that I still have a PSL and short fields to do plus some more cross winds. There will likely be some more EFATS too. Although I made some mistakes he was happy with how I resolved them, thank heavens :-) Two hours in the air and nearly 2 hours on the ground and still not done. My car test was so much simpler!

Amen Turbo, there is no excuse for a lack of communication these days thats for sure. I work in an area where I sit literally meters from people who are supposed to tell me things and I am buggered if I can get info I need from these people in a proactive fashion so ease of communication has nothing to do with it. It seems it is more based on priority and a "how can I get me work done if I am doing other stuff" attitude.

Holy Ship High In Transit thats good! :-)

hehe. Very good :-)

Here is what an A380 had to say about it. --------------------8<-------------------- I certainly looks harder than normal, but It's not that bad. If you watch the last part of the approach they seem to get some sink at about 100ft the also went in short around the 500' area (maybe due to a wind gust or shielding producing undershoot shear?), so there's not much you can do about that in an aircraft like the 380. The approach was very stable and the crosswind technique is petty good. The commentary is is a load of tosh for three reasons, The reason for the harder landing is not from "wiping the power off" .The 380 wing is super efficient and even if you pulled the thrust off early (which I doubt Terry Lutz did,given the sink and undershoot) you still have heaps of lift going into the flare, which is why you never flare much in the 380. At light landing weights say 330T or less you don't flare at all or you float. In contrast if you pulled the thrust off early in a 767 you buried it every time. Not sure about the 777, but I presume it's like the 767 given the commentary. The reason they flared a lot is due to the undershoot PIO is for Pilot Induced Oscillation, I didn't see any? The aircraft tracked the center line after touchdown with only one small swing into wind off the center line hence the rudder input. So you're not inducing an oscillation if it's not oscillating and Three "the aircraft will still be usable" what a tool --------------------8<--------------------

This is the thing. We all stuff up, especially when new. The difference is who continues to try and improve. I expect most pilots that want a career in aviation will try to improve. They have to. But for many of us, like myself. Once I have my certificate I don't _have_ to improve or learn anymore. I am (apparently) close to doing my test but comparing my skill level with my instructors I feel very inadequate. I might be safe enough but I most certainly am not my definition of "good". I would _love_ to know what airmanship issues were demonstrated at the airshow. It is great to learn from. The most common issue I see (and contribute to :-() is radio calls. This issue is most certainly not just RA pilots though so it is a problem for all of us. Someone once said here that getting the certificate is a "licence to learn". I think that message really aught to be driven home more. How many of us get the certificate and think "thats it, I am done"? There will always be people that think they are good when they are not though I expect there are various reasons that can occur. When we no longer fly with an instructor (even if we do and they don't pull us up all the time) we probably mainly judge our skill by the landings and maybe altitude deviation, other things may be forgotten. We have no nothing that is easy to compare our performance with so I think it would be easy to get lax and not even notice. Steven.

Yes, a good read and I think he is quite right. I think I have swung to the "not make radios mandatory" side although personally, I will always carry one, a hand held if need be. I have experienced many calls and thought "where the heck is that!" so I can relate to that element of the post well but I do like letting others know what I am doing and getting a heads up if any traffic is coming my way. For me it is a cost/benefit ratio thing (cost doesn't just mean $$$). It seems to me that maybe the current levels of radio usage is doing the job because if we think about one of the prime reasons we want them, to enhance situational awareness then given the number of accidents because of non-carriage of radio maybe the current situation is ok. Anyone have examples of accidents where the causing factor was no radio? Sometimes I think we throw out the baby with the bath water in these discussions, IE: if radio is not mandatory then you must think no one should carry one or if you think radio is mandatory then that means you think we don't have to look outside for other aircraft at all. I guess it shows the subject is close to the heart for some of us. Steven.

G'day Wendy. I fly out of Aldinga too. Flying wasn't too bad today (except for failing my pretest but thats another topic :)) Thumper also goes by the name Jodie. Are you flying for fun or taking up a career? Steven.

Looking at the pics I was having a "holy ****" moment but then my daughter came over and told me it was from Lost too.

Not to me. They can be on the wrong frequency or have a radio problem. Hearing people on the wrong frequency is common enough to remind me! It would be interesting to know how many pilots have problems due to aircraft not having a radio. I haven't had a problem yet but the day is young :-) Steven.

Amen facthunter. We cannot, within the rules, have sub-25 NM hops to add distance to our flight without completing our nav endorsement. Obviously it can be done outside the rules but getting sprung is expensive (if the fines are based on CASAs). Especially if there is aircraft or person damage involved because it would be extremely unlikely that the insurers would pay.

Thanks for that. I will have to give it a go. :-) Steven.

It looked like it needed to be steep but surely he would been going 'oh oh' when he is well over half way down the strip and still not on the ground! Looking at the skid marks it looks like it is a fairly common problem. Anyone know where it might be?

Yes but didn't you wonder why the rice moved by itself and had sultanas?! It full of flies and lice!! :-) Steven,

In other words. It should be "business as usual". I don't subscribe to the current doctrine of "it is only illegal if you get caught" mentality :-) Steven.

And is the 100 hours PIC only? PIC is the only thing that makes sense to me but I don't like to assume :-) I have my pretest booked for two weeks from now (who let our instructors take leave!) so it would be interesting to know these things. If it is as PIC then that means I will have 88 hours to go so it will take me about 59 weeks averaging 1.5 hours or so per week. That is a long time! If it did include dual hours then in my case it will take about 39 weeks. Steven. Steven.

My method is similar to FactHunters. I copy the need-to-know things from the ERSA page onto the bottom of my flight plan so that I have one piece of paper that contains all the info I need (radio, runways and circuit/landing conditions/procedures). I also take the pages of strips that I am overflying out of my ERSA and clip them to my kneboard under the flight plan. They are sorted in the order of navigation. Besides easy of use, another reason for copying some of the key info from ERSA is that it also reinforces what you read when you were creating the flight plan so while flying you will probably remember, but if not your short notes will remind. Steven.

G'day Doug, Sorry about that. As soon as I finished I came over but got called off to help a fellow work out how to use NAIPS with AirNav VFR! A little while after you left I did the BAK exam and managed to pass that. Three exams in one day and all passed, yeeharr! :-) That HF one I didn't like much although there is probably ony 5 or 6 questions I would want redone. I only managed to scrape through by the skin of my teeth on that one. No more written exams for me. I almost don't know what to do with myself. :-) Steven.

Sounds good to me. :-) I am there on Saturday at 11:00 too to do some shortfields, the last thing to be signed off!! Steven.

Hmmm. My Human Factors book is for PPL but I haven't seen a reference to a blood alcohol limit in it, it simply says 8 hours and notes that you may still may be alcohol affected. It makes it hard to get ir right if the training material is different! Steven.

It does seem to be getting busier there, getting a flight during the weekend at Aldinga seems to be getting harder. It will be interesting to see what it is like when the weather improves! It is nice, in this weather, sitting near the fireplace and having a coffee while watching students do their training (esp last Saturday, we were doing battle with the 18kt gusting to 30 kt winds, sometimes it look like we could walk faster :-)). We seem to get a few people that just want to eat and watch and not actually fly. Steven.

So the Jabs have multiple tanks but doesn't have a tank selector? I am only familiar with the SportStar and in that we select the tank we want to use so I swap tanks around every 20 to 30 minutes or so, that is enough to keep the needles in a very similar position on the gauge. I hope to start doing some training in a Jab in a month or two so I am interested in all the little differences I read about :-) Steven.

G'day and welcome, Yep, thank God for RA that's for sure. I am sure many of us would never take to the sky without it! Steven.

Wow, they do look like an excellent buy. I might grab a pair as a spare/ for passenger! Steven.