Admin

I know that there are quite a few members of the police force here in the forums and I just want to say THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU.

This morning my 6 year old son Lachlan who sufferes from Dyspraxia (a problem between the brain and his mouth causing an inability to communicate properly for his age), disappeared from out the front of our house whilst practising to ride a bike. We had the front door wide open in case we heard anything but after 10 mins when we checked he had disappeared and his bike was left on the footpath.

Corrine and I turned frantic, Corrine went out around the block in the car whilst I looked in every nook and cranny of the house but he was no where. I called the police and within 5 mins there were 2 police cars here, 3 more on their way and the police chopper coming over.

Neighbors went out looking on foot, on push bikes and in cars and I got to admit trying to calm Corrine down I shed a tear.

An hour later the police found him about 1 klm away walking down the street. They stopped but he then ran and they couldn't catch him. Another police car got on the other side of him and stopped him. The police woman that was here trying to keep us calm got a call on the radio that they found him and needed one of us to go there as he was very frightened.

I went down and got him.

If it wasn't for the police and their saturation we may never have found him.

Way to go Wingman - you can't beat that

A light plane has crashed near Swan Hill in north-west Victoria. There were two people on board, but no-one was injured.

The plane crashed in a paddock at Lake Boga.

I was over at the Garmin dealer yesterday and he was telling me a story that happened the other day with a Mendelssohn's 296.

Firstly Mendelssohn's units are not Australian so this guy came in with one under warranty and he was told that it was only covered under warranty in the UK.

The owner then said he took the first one back and had to wait several weeks to be told that they were giving him a new one. After 1 month it starting faulting as well.

Remember Mendelssohns exist here in Aussie simply because Mendelssohn's daughter married an Aussie so they now live here and sell the stuff that is from the UK

With the US dollar at the moment Clear Prop can't even buy them for what Mendelssohn is selling them for. Now one would think that I would be better to buy them off him but no - not with the warranty problems and them being non Australian units - I think you all deserve better then that but Mendelssohns are the cheapest at the moment if you want to risk it.

im quite happy with my 25-0078 vampire.. its the aircraft that ate 007!

Fuel spewed from Cessna plane after mid-air collision

Staff writers

August 29, 2008 12:00am

FUEL spewed from a damaged plane before its heroic pilot pulled it out of a death plunge and made it to an airport.

The airman, who was instructing a novice pilot, grabbed the controls as the Piper Warrior threatened to plummet into suburban houses.

He was able to level off at about 600ft (200m) and make it safely back to Moorabbin airport.

The pair had seconds earlier collided with learner pilot Akash Ananth and witnessed the start of his fatal descent into a Cheltenham back yard.

Mr Ananth, 24, had earlier approached the runway and, either deliberately practising or because of a poor approach, took off again.

The Herald Sun has been told Mr Ananth was in congested air traffic when he was instructed by air traffic control to turn left, away from Moorabbin airport, from where he had earlier taken off.

Mr Ananth, a trainee pilot from the Royal Victoria Aero Club, is believed to have obeyed instructions, putting him on a direct collision course with the Piper Warrior.

A source said that in the moments before impact the two pilots saw one another and, as is normal, banked hard right to avoid a collision.

The Cessna clipped the wing and tail of the Piper.

The Piper Warrior, with teacher and pupil aboard, had been on a navigational training flight and was en route to Moorabbin when it collided with the Cessna, which had been doing circuits.

Airservices Australia, which operates the control tower at Moorabbin, said personnel manning the tower had been suspended as part of a normal investigation process.

"In this incident the air traffic controllers on duty at the time have been stood down pending a full investigation," an AA spokeswoman said.

It couldn't comment further because the matter was the subject of an Australian Transport Safety Bureau inquiry.

ATSB investigators yesterday returned to the scene of the wreckage.

Parts of the plane, some up to a metre long, were found hundreds of metres away.

Investigator-in-charge Michael Watson said the wreck indicated Mr Ananth had no change of survival.

"We are interested in what led to the accident," he said.

"At the moment we've got most of the wreckage, but there are a few bits that have been found in the vicinity where the aircraft collided."

He said they would listen to the communications between air controllers and the pilot, but it was only one of many aspects of the case.

Moorabbin airport's future was under a cloud yesterday.

Premier John Brumby said there was a strong argument that more of the training could be done in regional and country areas, where there are fewer people.

"We've been working to do that. We have a company which is training pilots now at Mangalore, and I know there are a number of other sites in the state which are under active investigation," he said.

Mr Brumby said the airport came under federal jurisdiction, but he would read the State Coroner's and the CASA reports very closely before he drew any conclusions.

"Moorabbin's got a 20-year licence by the Federal Government, and the next review comes up in 2009," he said.

"As a matter of course we would make a submission to that. We'd want to look very closely at the coroner's report and the CASA report before we jump to any conclusions."

Moorabbin airport last year had 310,322 take-offs and landings, an increase of 76,796 flights on the previous year.

"That probably distills down to about 40,000 a month -- and that's a hell of a lot of aircraft flying circles around this community," Moorabbin Airport Residents Association's Tom Uren said.

"I've been told about 70 per cent of movements at the airport involve international trainees. They're practising their skills over a heavily populated area, and you might say a percentage of them are unskilled. It's a great concern.

"When you're talking about humans and mechanical contraptions, there's got to be that potential for something to go wrong."

In June, MASA and the Dingley Village Community Association sent a report to the Federal Government outlining their concerns.

The report states in part: "Moorabbin airport is the busiest airport in Australia for aircraft movements.

"It deals mainly with old, noisy light aircraft (majority over 30 years old) as opposed to general aviation traffic elsewhere.

"The majority of activity is light aircraft used by flying schools for daily, repetitive circuit training."

Greater Dandenong councillor Peter Brown, who also lives close to the airport, has sent his member of Parliament a string of e-mails about "event after event of low-flying planes crossing each other's path within minutes and, in some cases, seconds of each other".

"I referred to the air traffic over our residential area as out of control months ago, warning of an impending tragedy," Mr Brown states in one of the e-mails.

"My complaints were mainly ignored," he said.

The Federal Government would decide whether Moorabbin airport should be moved, its manager, Phil McConnell, said yesterday.

Mr McConnell admitted having an airport in suburban Melbourne, particularly one that focused on training pilots, generated concerns.

"Of course we are aware of concerns," he said.

"The Government has got to work out if it's happy to have airports in suburban centres," he said.

The airport's owners, Goodman Holdings, recently signed a 99-year lease with the Federal Government to operate at the site.

But the Rudd Government is reviewing national aviation policies, including safety and the operation of urban airports.

- Anthony Dowsley, Paul Anderson and Nick Higginbottom

Engineer Tony Suhr inspects the damaged plane. Picture Nicole Garmston

I think what the investigators have over us in their opinions are they are actually looking at the pieces on the site and talking first hand to everyone that is involved for them to form a better opinion then what we get to make our opinions on - the newspaper, that deserves a big

Just my opinion :big_grin:

I personally believe this thread has been handled extremely well. We have highlighted some issues without laying any blame and that is absolutely fantastic and the way that these types of threads should go. It all comes down simply to the words that are used in the post and it is so obvious that that has gone into almost all posts here in this thread before the submit button was pressed - after all these years I really think we are on to something here that differentiates us from the gutter posting in other forums.

THANK YOU!

The rules that have been mentioned in this thread will probably be incorporated into the new set of rules that are being developed (hereinafter referred to as The FUHRER - The Forum User's Handbook of Really Entertaining Rules )

Yep, back up again!

It worked alright a couple of hrs ago but not now - they must be having a problem so we will have to wait and see

Wow! scary figures,Wouldn't it be easier to design our own.

 

Now that would be an interesting project.

 

With all the Know how participating in this forum it could be possible.

 

Steve

Perhaps we should revisit building our own aircraft and call it the "Recreational Flyer" :big_grin:

Some time ago I was given the prices of the new Millennium Master for both the kit and the factory built versions and I wasn't happy so I have gone back to them to see what we can do. Unfortunately it hasn't helped.

It is with regret that I have to announce that these are the prices for the aircraft:

- The Millennium Master Kit

The kit is composed by the totally built and glued aircraft but with the mechanical parts to be assembled: ailerons, controls, cloche, landing gears, engine mounting, hinges, canopy, etc. The kit contains all these parts except for engine, propeller, parachute, instrumentations, electric system. The does not include an optional parachute but has its installation (belts, doors, etc.) pre-installed.

Price: 60,000 Euro + shipping to Aust + my margin $5,000 AUD + gst

- The Millennium Master Fully Factory Built

This obviously depends on the final configuration: engine, propeller, flight instruments, parachute, painting, et

Approx Price: 120,000 Euro + shipping to Aust + my margin $5,000 AUD + gst

I am telling you as it is and I don't know what to think - I am being up front and I would be very much like to hear your comments about its viability in Australia.

Some other thoughts:You cleverly already serve all your PHP generated pages using gzip, but the stylesheets and js files are not. You could install an Apache module that compresses those also.

 

Static images are served without any cache-control or Expires headers. They never change, but probably get loaded too often. You could set up apache to serve .gif and .jpg files with long Expires: headers.

 

Every generated page is now set to Cache-Control: private. This means that even if you use the back button, it gets reloaded. So if I do one "today's posts" and then look at a thread, hit back, look at another thread, etc. and do this 10 times, I have just transfered 260kb instead of just 26kb! I would imagine many people look at the forums this way and you could make a big savings if you don't.

 

I would not put any cache-control directive on any forum pages at all. In fact, I have never done this on any website I have implemented (except once for one paranoid client) and it works just fine. Browsers are smart that way and users know how to hit refresh if they thing the page is stale...

I have shaved some off the loading time in the css and images

oh no, this is dangerous

Even more reason why these forums need to be used by more people especially coming in from the GA world.

In my opinion the differentiation between smaller lightweight aircraft is so much greater then larger heavier ones - Gazelle to CT or Gazelle to Jabiru are examples and I know.

Even though I was signed off in a Jabiru I didn't just fly off in my CT when I got it - I still had it handed over to a Snr Instructor who took me for lessons before I would fly it on my own.

Can I ask it a different way...

Anyone who gets their RAAus Certificate in a Gazelle can the next day go out and fly any RAAus registered aircraft that has a tricycle undercarriage - is that still the case?

missed it by that much

1 minute mate

Wow, that is really interesting - serves me right for not reading the entire ops manual yet

is there a statement that refers to the type of aircraft for example a person flying a 172 - can they just get the RAAus Certificate in say 2hrs if they show that they can fly the jab ok by the CFI standards.

If this is the case then they can get their RAAus Certificate in say a Gazelle which is really easy then go straight out and fly a CT, which is much harder, without any further training i_dunno

It was ok yesterday but I am getting forbidden as well!

Welcome Joaqui

It will be really interesting to hear more about flying in your country - please post away!

Enhancing the nature of flight simulator since 1996 . . .

V2 Mexico Auto-installer available -- Media now shipping!

V2 Mexico Terrain Mesh for FSX is now available for download from the FSG Store. You have a coice of auto-installer or manually-installed .zip files. The first shipments of V2 media will go out today, Monday, August 25.

The End of Airport Plateaus!

Continuing the release of the V2 series of terrain mesh products begun in April with the continental United States, FSGenesis has invested countless hours confirming the locations of the default airports in the Mexico coverage area using satellite and aerial images from Google Earth and Virtual Earth, moving misplaced airports, adjusting their elevations, and tweaking the terrain as necessary to eliminate the plateau effects caused by the flat-airport limitation of FSX. The result is the elimination of virtually all plateaus at airport in the whole of Mexico.

Vertical Resolution increased to .25m

Added bonus on V2 is the increase in vertical resolution from 1m to .25, which is four times the default, to go along with a 32x increase in the horizontal resolution over the default.

Free Download for Existing Users . . .

Customers who have previously purchased North America Media,or the FSX Media Bundle, and whose order status is listed as "Partially-shipped" will receive their Mexico Terrain Mesh for FSX media automatically. You may also log into your FSG Store account and click "My FSX Downloads" to download your free update.

New Customers . . .

New customers may order Mexico Terrain Mesh for FSX V2 either as a standalone product, or as part of the heavily-discounted FSX Media Bundle. You will have immediate access to download, and optional media will begin shipment on Monday, August 25.

Thanks

Even MORE

Hi

Please let me know what separate forums you would like in this section. Once a list is created I will add the forums and transfer the threads and posts from the recreational section to here - thanks!

Hi

Please let me know what separate forums you would like in this section - thanks!