Ultralights

yes, i looked over every savannah, still no big tyres! :P

 

 

yes, you can wonder pretty much anywhere, except taxiways of course, CASA only moved people back behind the fences during air show routines,

 

yes, that Long EZ was stunning, great craftsmanship and a lot of love and effort went into that, it was beautiful. Lots of nice RV's but sadly no savannahs with big tyres! grr....

 

 

Cancelling last year is what happened this year, no one would risk the loss if they turned up, all stocked with perishable produce, only to have a small crowd to cater to, i think you will find, following the success of this weekend, the next one will be well catered. apart from the mid day snacks, i found the aero club meals to be quite nice, friday night was a really nice mixed grill at the Royal.. could barely eat all the animals on the plate. let alone the salad or chips.

 

 

happens regularly with the technam low wing line with all tanks full

 

 

but keeping the aircraft balanced will reduce it a lot.

 

 

a departing wing waggle. seen heaps of them.

 

 

also, competition aero pilots sometimes like to take G limits a little to far, repeatedly.

 

 

people cant handle the noise of a sparrow farting in suburbia these days, could you imagine the noise at 8;30 am in suburbia with these departing for the city...... and i dont see it ever happening, people can barely drive in 2 dimensions safely, let alone 3, then throw in a southerly change and a storm or to at peak hour... it will be carnage... ill stick to helicopters

 

not to mention the unfounded fear of tiny drones already near hi rise buildings.. image commuters in flying cars!

 

 

why are we constantly trying to re-invent the helicopter?

 

 

water, or bugs.

 

 

 

 

Before

 

 

After

 

 

My grandfather.

 

 

if your having trouble getting down in a crosswind, rather than try a 4th and 5th time straight away, go and do some circuits at traffic height, stay at circuit height even through base, final and upwind, do enough to help you calm down and relax a bit. then try again...

 

 

i am pretty confident i could get my savannah down with a 20Kt crosswind, done it many times before. or if it gets to strong, land across the runway with winds above 25 kts.

 

but if i was in another aircraft, then the term "Precautionary Search and Landing" would be at the forefront of my mind.. find a dirt road, or something else into wind thats safe to land on...

 

anyone remember the Prec search and landing? or the reasons you should have learnt how to do it?

 

 

i found the ATSB report, and to correct my post, it seams about a 50% failure rate.. still, pretty abysmal for something that would be considered essential to safety.

 

 

apparently NASA are testing the fixed automatic ELT's to see if they actually work, i think the initial report suggested 90% failed to activate on impact. so, i always carry mine in my pocket, and if i need i will activate it before i land if the engine quits.

 

 

location location location, $500 a month at Bankstown, to $60 or so in regional areas.

 

 

i am eagerly awaiting the results, i have heard through the grape vines in the industry over the years that Impact set EPIRBS are not very reliable, and hence, NASA have decided to look into it.

 

 

Pretty much, every post on this page highlights my points about regulation saturation.... there simply should not have to be this amount of discussion over something so simple with regards to commercial ops, or cost sharing... sadly our regulations are so vague that they can be interpreted to mean completely different thing, sometimes in direct contradiction to each other.. (and im talking in general, not just the cost sharing situation)

 

this is the sort of regulation that needs to rewritten and defined in plain easy to comprehend and understand english. and doing so will remove much confusion, and allow easier following of the regulations improving safety.. confusion in rules, just as it does on the flight deck/cockpit, leads to unsafe situations.

 

 

but if you payed $1 for aircraft hire, then its a cost share... all good.

 

 

What I'd really like to do is Harbour Scenic One at night. Damn I wish I had started this sooner :(

yes, that ise awesome, and if you leave late enough, YSSY will be closed, and you can fly over pretty much anywhere in the city.

 

 

 

not only that, Australia day and New Years ever are fantastic from the harbour scenic at night. but for that, you need to plan and get a flight plan in early, and make sure you are NVFR, the Ifr guys have to be stacked off the coast.

 

 

Any flying <500ft, aerobatics, formation, spinning. These things have always required specific training and endorsement. There are another 4 rec pilot endorsements - that's 8 total. I would not call that overwhelming. I need to remember more things than that to start my tractor!

we know that, but a lot of low time, and irregular pilots dont. or think, yeah sure, you might need an endo for that, but i am skilled and can do it now, and so, try, and we know the consequences..

 

 

yep.

 

 

haha yep, next time ask them to take you to Goulburn for some night circuits! or out to Cowra. no lights out there! if you do go to do your NVFR, see if the instructors will take you out west, on a moonless night..

 

how did you go with the 2 whites and 2 reds?

 

 

 

In RAA I've never heard of anyone actually failing a BFR, does anyone else know of someone who did? The nearest I came to hearing of one was that an instructor recommended the pilot take some extra training. They still passed him and he didn't take the extra training, in fact he was so offended he made a point of finding a different instructor for the next BFR - that was when I met this fella. When he told me the story - his comment was that he hoped the 'new instructor' wasn't so finnicky ...

and herein lies a big percentage of the problem... quite a few pilots assume that once they are trained, thats it, no more learning to be done, and in some cases, refuse the advice to take more training.....

 

another is pilots forget, or are never told or explained, that flying is a lost skill, they say riding a pushbike is something you only have to learn once, as you never forget how to do it, well, this attitude seams to pervade the aviation community. flying skills degrade rapidly over time... so constant retraining, or practice, is required.

 

A BFR should be structured like a lesson to reinforce emergency procedures?

 

How many of you do stalling practice during a BFR?

 

Some clarification on what i meant earlier about decent instructors,

 

M61A1 got it in one, a decent instructor is one that teaches you to understand the principles and theory.. and has the experience to back it up. who would you prefer as an instructor? a very friendly, person, you get along great, you get praised a lot.. encourage at every step regardless of how you perform? somone who becomes a friend, or could easily become your friend? but is only a young person themselves, and have had nothing in their flying career except, their own training to Instructor rating and a CPL... and just cant wait to get into the big shiney jet..

 

or an ex airforce fighter jet pilot or someone with countless hours flying charter in the outback in all sorts of weather imaginable in clapped out old cessnas, who has seen everything the sky can throw at you, who will not sugar coat anything, tell you straight up if your flying sucked that day, and demands you do better no matter how well you think you went? and is interested in seeing you be the best you can, even though you dont get along like a house on fire, and would not be the type of person you would invite for a BBQ..but you do finish a lesson feeling like you really understand whats going on....

 

ask your instructor these questions, what causes a stall? if their answer involves speed, consider another instructor.. (its AOA, and can be exceeded at any speed)

 

and whats hotter? Lean or rich of Peak EGT? if they say either, again, reconsider.. find an instructor that understands engines and systems. (both lean and rich of peak are colder, as the peak is, well, the peak)

 

and ask yourself this, HONESTLY, how much height loss will you tolerate when recovering from a stall?

 

in my case, i initially was happy with 300ft, but now after some aerobatic flying, with a decent instructor, im not happy until i can recover with less than 50 ft. im really happy if i can do it in less than 20.

 

(the CPL requirement in the flight test is 150ft)

 

As for regulation, we have way to much, compared to growing general aviation sectors in other countries such as the USA and NZ. not only that, theirs is written in plain english, not lawyer speak designed to make sure you can be prosecuted no matter what.

 

a recent example i was dealing with was aircraft certification for ETOPS approvals, CASA, Via Comlaw pages ran to nearly 800 pages. all of which required a law degree to understand. but the FAA documents on the same certification was a single PDF of only 38 pages... written in plain easy to understand english.

 

 

You reckon reducing the number of regulations will improve the accident rate?Perhaps indeed there are too many regulations and don't for a minute think that I am advocating more (I am not). But consider this:

 

I fly for a major airline in my day job. We have the bejeezus regulated out of us. Honestly, if you wanted to know the hoops I have to jump through every year it would make you cry. On my company iPad there are 30 procedural, technical and regulatory publications (the longest of which is 2,200 pages and takes up nearly 80 MB of memory in a compressed PDF format) excluding CARs and CAOs which I am required to have an in-depth knowledge of. Yet our accident rate over several decades is almost zero. How then, is an accident rate linked to "regulation saturation"?

 

Seriously, you don't understand how lucky you are when it comes to freedom from regulation - it actually feels quite liberating for me to hop in my little Experimental plane on the weekend and go for a private fly. Yet still you fall out of the sky at somewhat alarming rates. Why?

 

He had many hours at the controls of his own Beechcraft Bonanza. He was a Pilot and a good safe one.

 

He didn't have a mustering (low level) endorsement and had less than 3 hours in the plane including his checkout.

I wasnt commenting on this accident in particular, but to clarify my idea of regulation saturation is, there are so many rules and regulations in regards to pretty much every aspect of flight, that most amateur pilots simply do not know them all, or find it impossible to know them all, i know all about the regulatory regime covering transport category aircraft, but pilots of those are doing it full time, its their job to know the regs and requirements, just as its my job as a maintainer of these aircraft, and military aircraft to know the rules and regs in regard to maintenance...(and there are far more than flight crews have to deal with)

 

but for weekend pilots, private pilots, who have other jobs, they simply dont have the time, the memory capacity, or are not in regular enough contact with regulations covering their flying to know everything, they are simply overwhelmed by it all, and go off and fly not knowing they might need endorsements or specific training in those areas of flight. or some just go, to hell with all the regs, and just continue on, not getting any refresher training like a BFR or similar training before trying something like mustering or formation work.

 

on the second one, Hours do not equate to experience... there is a good book by a Capt John Deakin,(full throttle) he was at one point, the worlds highest time B747 pilot, 30,000 hours alone on the Boeing 747, in the first paragraph, on the first page, he himself admits, he does not have 30,000 hours experience, he has 1 hours experience, 30,000 times.

 

just how would you expect a 30,000 hour pilot who has never had an aircraft at more than 30Deg AOB in those 30,000 hrs, to handle a 90Deg banked turn at low level and airspeed? I have seen it with my own eyes flying with an aerobatic school, high time airline pilots thinking they know it all, and then really struggling to come to terms with advanced manoeuvres, and take quite a long time to unlearn all the ingrained 2 dimensional flying.

 

and the last one.... you never stop learning when in aviation... a pilot that thinks they know it all is a dangerous pilot. and i get worried when pilots talk about their abilities and how advanced they think they are.

 

even myself, with 1000's of hours, experience with competition aerobatics, night flight, and soon to be twin time, still get nervous before a flight, especially when going for a fly to practice aerobatic manoeuvres, I have flown my savannah for 1000 hours, and havnt flown it now for 12 months, i dont plan on getting back into it now without a few hours with an instructor.. and a refresher on advanced control and stalling and spinning recovery.

 

What we need is regulation that is easier to understand, and comply with, and to ingrain the notion of you can never get enough training.

 

 

yeah, thats all well and good, but has the grass runway been fixed yet, it was like landing on soccer all sized boulders! though i still dont think the business practice of raising landing fees to a point that other businesses are forced to shrink, and reduce operations, thats a business model that no one will eventually win from.