APenNameAndThatA

Another day, another learning experience. Yesterday I was landing a C172 at the Gold Coast airport with my instructor. The runway was 32 and the wind was (IIRC) 310 and 17 kts. Gusts were not mentioned in the weather. I thought, "This will be easy, wind straight down the runway", and very little crabbing was required during final. When we were about 10 m in the air, we were suddenly blown about 10 m to the right. Almost exactly the same thing happened half an hour later when I was coming in to land at Archerfield. The wind at Archerfield felt more like 20 or 25, when I got out of the aircraft, rather than 15, FWIW. If I was at a very narrow strip I suppose I could have been blown into trees. It seems like another good reason to not land on the numbers, because if someone is waiting to line up, you could get blown into them. Does anyone know any meteorological way to know if there are going to be crosswind gusts as opposed to no gusts or gusts from the direction that the wind is supposed to be coming from? Do gusts, or gusts from right angles to the prevailing wind, become more common the stronger the wind is, say, greater than 15 kt?

I went to a DAME for a medical and it will take CASA TWO MONTHS before the will look at the DAME’s results and consider issuing me a medical. And about six weeks before they look at my RPL application. Seems they are understaffed with people who do the work.

I would love a Mercedes 560SEL. But not to pay for the petrol.

Yeah, you fell for his not-interested-in-it ruse hook line and sinker. He should have been smug when you met him, not angry.

I suspect that the answer is a definite "no", because preventative maintenance prevents breakdowns. On the other hand, maintenance is the most significant cause of engine stoppages in large Boeings (or was in the early 1990's.) Does anyone have any anecdotal evidence? One factor is that if manufacturing gets better and better (a big if), breakdowns and unscheduled maintenance would become less and less likely. On a related note, are there any particular gotchas for oil changes and 100 hourlies?

You are allowed to mix mogas and av gas. I can’t remember the names of the things you add to remove the lead from fuel, but Rotax say they have not tested them but they don’t seem to cause problems.

It was great. I got to request a code, just like the grownups. (3357, IIRC.) Later, I was told to contact tower on 118.7, the kind on hand holding that is usually reserved for airliners. Totally different from Class D. 1200 and 3000, my usual transponder codes, are so pleb. 🤷‍♂️

That is true. The Finer Points aviation podcast says to have *written* personal minimums. (I actually don’t) I wonder if it would be a good idea to have two sets of personal minimums, one for flying alone and one for flying with the family. For example, 15 kt crosswind alone, 7 kt flying with the family. So, for example, setting off and seeing how the cloud is would be okay flying alone, but below personal minimums for flying with the family.

I cant imagine you’ll like reading this. GA has a fatal accident every 100 000 hrs. If you fly 50 hrs a year, that’s 1/2000. The population-wide risk of a kid dying is about 1/2000 per year (but that includes stuff like cancer as well as accidents). So, if you fly, the kids’ risks double from 1/2000 to 1/1000. I have a two seater and fly with one kid at a time. There is no right answer, IMHO.

It is a great book. I am about a quarter of the way through it. It is fascinating how the stability of airplanes has changed over the years. I did not know, for example that the angle of zero lift tends to be at a negative angle of attack. Or that once upon a time, ailerons became completely ineffective before a stall. He said that some aircraft had a tendency to need the stick to be actively pushed forward as they approached a stall and that this was not good - he didn’t actually name Bristell. Also very quaintly sexist. This from wikipedia. Wolfgang Langewiesche (pronounced:long-gah-vee-shuh) (1907–2002) aviator, author and journalist, is one of the most quoted authors in aviation writing. His book, Stick and Rudder (1944), is still in print, and is considered a primary reference on the art of flying fixed-wing aircraft. Born in Düsseldorf, Germany, in 1907, he migrated to America in 1929. He was a graduate of the London School of Economics and earned his master's degree from Columbia University. He was in a doctoral program in the University of Chicago when he decided to learn to fly and pursue a career in aviation. Mr. Langewiesche wrote for Air Facts magazine, an aviation safety-related publication edited by Leighton Collins, and his articles were the basis for most of Stick and Rudder. The basic facts about flying that he emphasized in 1944 have withstood much criticism since then. Over 200,000 copies of the book had been printed by 1990. He taught "Theory of Flight" to US Army aviation cadets in the ground school at the Hawthorne School of Aeronautics in Orangeburg, South Carolina, during World War II, and test flew F4U Corsairs for the Vought Corporation. He later worked for Cessna as a test pilot and contributed several articles for Flying magazine. In the 1950s he became Reader's Digest's roving editor, retiring in 1986. His son, William Langewiesche, is also a well-known author, journalist and pilot with an award-winning career with the Atlantic Monthly and Vanity Fairmagazines.

“Humanly possible” and “Within the standards any reasonable instructor would consider sufficient” are two phrases that almost mean the opposite of each other. And I don’t fully get the idea of agreeing with a rule and being frustrated by it and wanting it changed. Of course you are more than competent to fly the Gazelle with less than five hours instruction.

That is all.

The obvious point is that if you are extremely qualified then the rules are not made for people like you. The rules are made for the 99.95% of pilots who are less skilled than you. You should know that so, from this perspective your frustration is not understandable. Apparently there are two types of practice, normal practice and so-called deliberate practice. Deliberate practice is where you practice by doing something that is currently beyond your skill level. Doing that increases your skill level. (Normal practice is where you just practice, like someone who does something for years without ever improving.) I don’t believe that you are flying your Gazelle as accurately as humanly possible. If that were true then you would literally be the best Gazelle pilot in the world. Time on type is a predictor of safety, and you hardly have any. Do you really think that if you had 6000 hrs with your Gazelle that you would be no better at flying it than you are now? If you are flying your Gazelle as accurately as humanly possible then that means that you have not attempted any exercises that require accuracy. How have your chandelles, lazy eights, pylon eights, spiral turns and turning stalls gone? What does your Gazelle do if you stall simulating a skidding turn onto final? Is it even legal to find out? What is the maximum angle of attack that you can sustain to land as slowly as possible exactly where you intend to land? Will you get a tail strike? What is the performance of your Gazelle if you are at height, full power, full flaps and flying as slowly as possible? How do you go simulating a slow short field approach using brief rudder inputs to maintain directional control and longer rudder inputs to maintain wings level (or is it the other way around?) thereby avoiding use of ailerons close to a stall? You do not have enough time in a Gazelle to answer these questions. The commercial manoeuvres are designed to increase safety. You haven’t even attempted them in a Gazelle, so it is not possible for you to reasonably state that you are flying as safely and accurately as humanly possible. Obviously you are a vastly better and more experienced pilot than I am. I am not intending to suggest that the questions I ask reflect on my skill or the skill that you should have before you get a certificate. My answer is a literal answer to the questions you took the time to ask.

If there are fewer airplane ads, might not that mean that demand is up and supply is down?

I had no idea they were such idiots.

The report said that the power pole was 27’ high and 360’ feet from the end of the runway. That’s an angle of 4.3 degrees. Most light aircraft (as opposed to LSA’s) approach at 3 degrees. Unbelievable.

Funny you should mention that. The runway length was 3880 ft and the landing distance for a DC6 is apparently 2600 to 4000 feet.

The runway has a bend in it. Why didn’t I think of that

One good thing is that you can cut the throttle while you are working out what is going on. It is the first step for spins and spirals. (Disclaimer: I have 120 hours.) Next, check the airspeed. If is fast, level your wings with the AH. (or turn indicator or DG). If it is slow, stop the turn with your feet. (I'm saying this to myself more than you all. Mental rehearsal.)

There is no need to straw man people on this website. No one even hinted that hitting a LC with a Micra would hurt the LC more. It is hard enough to have a sensible discussion on here as it is.

Wow. Is the plane lighter now? Do the planes with the yokes like that have more room under the yoke for your knees?

I don’t understand why they approached at an angle to the runway? There was no wind.

I have only read the vectors section. I understood it only because I already knew the information from before I started learning to fly. It would have been better if it had stuck to two dimensions and said that any vector had an X and Y component, and had a picture. You would have understood that because you already know that any wind can be divided into a head/tail and cross wind component.

I did not find the article supportive of the card. It provided me with information that I thought was helpful: it’s not an access card, watch where you walk, and people are obliged to dob on you, and you have to renew every two years. I didn’t know any of that. It seemed to imply that you could not or should not apply for one for fun, but if you fly into security-controlled airports for fun, you will need one.

Words to live life by. Were any of your instructors Buddhists? Are you able to come up with enough quotes to write a book entitled Zen of the Army?