Mick

John would not slum it in a Cirrus . He owns an Eclipse jet that is still in the USA as he can't make the time to go over and fly it home.

I bet your Tornados did seem cheap if you calculated your profit the way you calculated Bruce's!!!

When I went to school 82,500 - 58,700 did not equal 30,000 - more like 23,800 but that does not make your point sound so good does it? I have imported an aircraft from Europe and it costs alot more than you think.

According to the manual, this a recomended use of the Galaxy chute in my aircraft. If forced to use a landing area too small to land normally, deploy the chute 2-3 feet above the ground and at normal speed for the hold off phase of landing and the chute will act like a big airbrake. I would think twice about doing it on a windy day as I would be worried about being dragged along by the chute. There is no release mechanism for these things, once deployed you go where the chute goes!

Aircraft type could be a factor too. Just as an example I don't think a Cirrus would be very user friendly with no engine & they do have a big red handle.

Now you have summed up LSA!

Mike, if you want to buy my aircraft today drop me a PM, I can almost guarentee that it won't be grounded tomorrow!

Mike, an SLSA ( 24-XXXX ) can and will become a ELSA ( 19-XXXX ) if it becomes non-complient. No LSA can become Std RAAus or Std VH. Just to make all of this more confusing there is a VH SLSA and VH ELSA. Aircraft can be transfered from VH LSA to RAAus LSA and visa versa pending LAME / L2 inspections and the manditory heap of paperwork. A manufacturer discontinueing a type will not cause any problems as long as they are prepared to continue supporting they type with Safety Bulletins and monitor the airworthyness of the type. It is when that support & monitoring is no longer there ( manufaturer goes out of business ) that the aircraft will become ELSA ( 19-XXXX ).

Mike, I am not sure how this may effect Jabs. I am guessing that the Foxbats may have been rated to a higher "G" rating to achieve a certain weight figure, this may have been higher than the +4 & -2 that LSA specifies as a minimum. A lower "G" rating would allow for an increase in weight.

I have been away for a few days so just cathing up on this thread. There have been quite a few comments re LSA and it's role in all this. Having imported and registered an LSA aircraft I took the time to study the rules of LSA, something very few have done considering how many own or fly LSA registered aircraft. When it was introduced it was assumed ( and many were lead to believe ) it was just like std RAAus but with 600kg MTOW ( which std RAAus did not have at that time ). It is actually a totally different beast as far as aircraft requirements go especially when it comes to the dreaded paperwork. The biggest difference is that LSA aircraft do not have to have a Type Certificate, instead manufacturers have to certify that their aircraft meet the appropriate ASTM's. A Type Certificate is a very costly thing to come by, so the idea was to enable manufacturers to reduce costs by not putting their aircraft through this process. Most European and some Aussie manufacturers jumped on this to statisfy the USA & Aussie markets, but they still had to have a Type Certificate for the European countries who had no LSA. At that time most European countries were limited to 450kg or 472.5kg with a ballistic chute, so those weights were all the Type Certificates showed. When Std RAAus got 600kg most thought LSA would start to dissapear, but for Std RAAus you must have that Type Certificate and if it only shows 450kg, that's all you are allowed to operate at. So most European aircraft ( and alot of aircraft from Bundaberg ) are still registered LSA. Because LSA's have no Type Certificate, each aircraft is approved individually. With a Std RAAus type it costs lots to put the first one on the register and each one after that is much cheaper. As LSA's are individually approved it costs the same to register the 100th one as it did to register the first one. For those that have suggested RAAus should be charging more to put an LSA on the register because of the extra work involved, that is exactly what has been happening since LSA began. It costs almost 10 times as much to put an LSA on the register as any Std RAAus aircraft that already has the type accepted by RAAus. This cost is not seen by most as it is built into the customer price of the aircraft by the importer / dealer. One of the traps with LSA is that if the manufacturer is found not to be totally complient with all of the ASTM's then their aircraft can be deemed non-complient and be moved from SLSA ( factory built ) to ELSA ( experimental ) or even possibly de-registered. The other trap is if a manufacturer goes broke and no longer supports the design with Safety Bullitins etc, then the SLSA aircraft will become ELSA's. Another trap is that once an aircraft is LSA, it cannot be transfered to any other category. A popular misconception about ELSA is that there is a 51% rule like Std RAAus 19- class. THERE IS NO 51% RULE IN ELSA! This was done so that manufacturers can supply highly pre-fab kits without the liability of supplying a factory built aircraft and so builders could buy a "kit" at a level of pre-fabrication they were comfortable with. The LSA category is not to blame for the current problems, it has it's rules that for good and/or bad are different in many more ways than I have mentioned above. It is the responsibility of those operating under these rules, and those administering the rules to know them and work within them.

RAAus is unlikely to be handing out info about this issue to anyone who is not directly involved, ie an Ibis owner. I would suggest that you get in contact with Russell at Pacific Ibis. No one on this forum is going to know more about this or have more up to date info than Russell.

As someone else has mentioned above, to me it is about perceived immediate costs. My insurance & hangar costs are done by automatic bank transfer ( out of sight, out of mind ), so I only "see" the cost of buying fuel and parts/oil when a service is due. I do my own servicing so no labour costs. If I had to pay out $150-200 per hour as I fly each time too often it would seem like I can't afford that this week. For most of my time flying there have not been RAAus aircraft readily available to hire where I have lived. I also like to travel and there are not many RAAus aircraft available anywhere that you can take away for a week or two and only fly 10-12 hours in that time.

DD, Hervey Bay had this same fight a couple of years ago and eventually won with no landing fees for the smaller stuff. Might be worth contacting the aero club there, they might be able to help with your battle.

We had a Boeing 717 join crosswind 10, join downwind 10, join base 10 and join finals 10. I was pretty impressed by him joining the the same circuit 4 times!!!

That rule does not apply in the E-LSA category.

Not in the E-LSA ( experimental ) category, which would have 19 rego.

Ian, alot of the aircraft registered LSA are only able to be LSA as they do not have a type certificate. That was one of the things that make LSA different and supposedly cheaper because manufacturers do not have to go to the expense of getting a type cert, they do however have to meet the criteria of the relevant ASTM's. This is the reason aircraft are still going LSA after the std RAA category got the weight increase to 600kg that LSA had had since it's beginning.

There are a large number of Jabirus registered LSA, I have seen several myself that are in use in schools. I am pretty sure that all J120's are LSA and most J230's as well.

An R/C modelling forum I get on actually keeps a total of the time you have been logged in since joining and displays that each time you log in. It is a pretty scary number when you have been a member for 6-7 years. I'd really rather not know!!!

This beautiful Thunderbolt made it's first post restoration flights earlier this year in the UK. I was amazed how many guys on one of the warbirds forums did not know what SNAFU stands for!

Lucky you!!!

Hongie when we left Bundy 18 months ago we were paying $55 per week per aircraft space for an RAAus size aircraft, but that was one of the more expensive hangars in the place.

Watch it Tomo, thems fighting words!!! The Spitfire might be pretty but it's just a glory grabber. Granted the Hurricane is not as pretty but ugly is harsh.

Right there with you on that one, especially on 126.7 where you will hear calls from numerous locations in some areas. Another one I have heard lots is " Hervey Bay - Maryborough CTAF Aircraft ABC blah blah blah blah". These 2 airfields share a Ctaf frequency due to their proximity but if the call does not specify which one they are at, you are left to work out where they are based on what runway # they refer to ( if the call even refers to a #, ie an inbound call ).

Again you seem incapable of reading the very first line of my post, so here it is again - " Obviously we cannot fly at night but........" I think that in no way "suggests" that there is an RAAus Night VFR. I also said the following which you have said does not exist - "If I have an RAAus aircraft that was built for Night VFR and hence has a full lighting package," Again this does not "suggest" that there is an RAAus Night VFR, what it states is the fact there are aircraft that have been built for other categories or other countries that are built for NVFR but end up on the RAAus register. I added that point to the original post as some may take it that having the lights may make it acceptable. As I have said in the original thread I posted this only to provoke some thought & discussion amongst members of this forum. As has come out as a result of this discussion is that it appears that the regs do not specifically mention taxying but it is covered by the words "operating or operation". I was pretty sure that was the case, hence the use of the word "operating" in the thread title. If you want to stop posts here that may be construed so as to be read wrongly in case someone does take it the wrong way, we all might as well stop posting altogether.