Ian

I recently came across an article where a pilot was refused a medical because he was taking Ritalin for ADHD. Later this was overturned by the AAT on the basis that CASA failed to adequately assess the situation. https://hwlebsworth.com.au/adhd-diagnosis-not-fatal-to-aviation-medical-certificate-application-nam-v-civil-aviation-safety-authority/ CASA now appears to have the policy under review and are asking for comments. https://www.casa.gov.au/licences-and-certificates/medical-professionals/dames-clinical-practice-guidelines/attention-deficit-hyperactivity-disorder-adhd#Attentiondeficithyperactivitydisorder(ADHD) I find this stance interesting because a number of my work colleagues have been diagnosed with mild ADHD, take medication and I regard them as some of the top performers in their field both prior and post their diagnosis and subsequent medication. It's even more interesting that given the penchant for Defence forces, included the US DoD to provide the very drugs prescribed for ADHD reducing the error rates and alertness for extended combat missions and high operational loads. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/7661838/ https://jmvh.org/article/should-the-australian-defence-force-conduct-a-drug-trial-of-wakefulness-promoting-medications/ I'd be interested in people's thoughts on this matter as these same people are interested pursuing their pilots licence. Personally I think that numerous pilots appear to have traits which would fit on the spectrum which could be considered sufficient to get them diagnosed with ADHD. If this is the case, would they be better pilots if this condition was treated?

Yeah this is a fair call and I'll probably rail against the injustice of the world at that point. But on the flip side I still remember a trip into town with my Grandma who lived in regional Australia when I was young. It remains one of the scariest experiences of my life, luckily no-one else was on the roads. However I still believe that assistive technologies are really beneficial to older drivers. For example my mother's last car has lane assist tech which alerted her to the quality of her driving which sadly is not what it was 20 years ago. It has improved her driving considerably because it has made her aware of her deficiencies.

But there is also plenty of evidence in Australian that this view is promoted for revenue raising. For example the state Governments have strongly resisted releasing the dataset associated with road fatalities and only recently has the Federal Government, after encountering years of resistance tied road funding to releasing this data. https://www.drive.com.au/news/government-under-fire-over-road-safety-reform-as-death-toll-rises-again/ We need a policy which reflects deaths per km travelled and balances the needs of those who regularly travel long distances in regional areas. Or preferably fund the building of lots more high quality airports and airstrips. 😉

There are excellent older drivers and pilots, however it's likely that they were even better operators in their heyday and it's regretful that we place additional burdens on them however amongst their cohort is an increasing number of dangerous drivers. I'd actually like to point out that the current requirement for getting a driver's licence are far far higher than what was required 60 years ago. Then you did a written test which was laughable simple, practiced three months and did a driving test with the local policeman. Many people simple drove around the block or less, four left turns and parallel park in a 100m of free space. Now people have to pay instructors, spend over 100 hours driving with an instructor, do a driving test which takes 30 minutes, and pay for tests. I'm all for pushing back to the original approach because based upon my experience and the comments here this hasn't resulted in any changes at all to the quality of drivers and has only created a cottage industry made possible by bureaucracy. Testing all drivers with the same frequency would be dumb when we have better information. Older drivers, and pilots are simply more likely to be struggling in terms of baseline competence and getting worse, in this situation they're more likely to endanger others, so it makes sense to test their competence frequently. Look at both Biden and Trump, they're both in cognitive decline and if they were driving or flying I'd want them tested regularly. Below is an example of what can happen, would you like this guy flying your plane or driving your car. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-08-31/senator-mitch-mcconnell-freezes-up-for-a-second-time/102796926

Testing for bowel cancer isn't done for all ages because it is better targeted at specific age groups. There's a cost borne by both the individual and public when testing and it's better to do this in a targetted manner. Similarly testing the skills competency of people is best done to address the actual risks. I don't object to testing every 5 years however 5 years is far too long for older people. People often have a significant cognitive decline over a single year. I was following an elderly driver the other day who was driving at 40km/h on an 80km/h road. When navigating a roundabout he pulled out in front of another car. Clearly he shouldn't have been in control of a vehicle that can kill people. I agree that getting old is bad and that many older people are both mentally and physically capable, however we do need systems which address the risks associated with ageing. That being said there are some drugs which may slow the process, rapamycin, D+Q etc.

Actually it's not agism, it's science. 80 year old drivers accident fatalities are on par with new drivers, and they get worse not better. Ageism is where an unreasonable bias is held against the elderly, in this case it's a reasonable bias. It's better to spend public resources where they're actually necessary, we've made getting a licence incredibly burdensome for the young, often requiring hundreds of hours of supervised driving. We do SFA on policing the similar decline in driving skills. The current scheme of getting a doctor to decided if a driver has adequate cognitive skills is frankly woeful. A computer generated based test which simulated busy traffic which tested reaction times and decision skills would be better.

Technology can make for better drivers. Just as technology can make for better pilots. My experience is that there are poorly trained drivers. There are also drivers who are so old they're no longer competent to drive. If a computer can drive a car better than a person let the computer drive. Similarly I'd like to see planes largely automated allowing someone with limited skill to fly, it would improve the infrastructure and quality of life of many many people.

Personally I'd like to see the highway/freeway speed limit lifted to 160kmh for electric vehicles with automate safety features and a demonstrated low highway accident rate. This would make electric cars more useful. I would note that state government are fighting the release of their accident data. I suspect that this is because the areas where they raise the most revenue from speeding to keep us safe are not the areas where accidents occur. https://www.drive.com.au/news/urgent-call-secret-crash-data-shared-toll-rises/

ADSB is a tool which provides additional information on suitably equipt aircraft in the vicinity. Being proud of the fact that you switch ADS-B off is the same category as being proud of not wearing a seatbelt, or of not wearing a helmet when riding a motorbike or being able to drive home after having a skinful. The see and avoid report is a pretty blunt assessment of the efficacy of the approach. I tend to agree with the likelihood of ADS-B becoming a mandatory requirement at some point in the future if the price of in and out continues to drop. That being said ASD-B is a flawed technology from a protocol point of view.

The short outtake from the video. There are a lot of unknowns associated with the impact. Two aircraft collided, one joining downwind, the other doing circuits with a crosswind join and turning downwind. One was a high wing, the other a low wing. Both Aircraft were fitted with ADS-B. One of the pilots didn't like the FAA knowing where he was an would often switch the ADSB off. This was a view that he frequently shared with his associates. Whether activating his ADS-B could have saved his life is unknown.

Buy again if you're based in Canberra your options are limited. Canberra to Cowra is about 2.5 hours, so a round trip commute is 5 hours on top of a working day doesn't really fit. This doesn't mention hitting roos in the morning and evening. Compared to Goulburn which has a RTT of 2 hours along a much safer road allows a single day trip. But the comments about the weather are valid.

Is this document available upon request? It would be an interesting read.

From someone at the airport.

I was talking with someone there the other day and they didn't mention anything apart from the fact that it was for sale.

A hose generates thrust. A drone needs to be able to generate equivalent and opposite thrust. It's not hard especially once its in a steady state. It's just maths and power. It wouldn't be as small as the toys in the video but its certainly feasible.

But change is inevitable. Climate change and zero emissions will place significant pressure on the industry. Hydrogen fuelled turbines are even less likely, there's a reason why Elon Musk uses methane in his rockets.

Yes and no. A battery drone with a payload of water isn't effective. A drone to control or support hose powered from the ground can have more than enough thrust control a firehose. Whether it's cheaper or more functional than a ladder is a different matter.

Certainly I wouldn't invest in it. But from an economic perspective the stars align more now than 40 years ago. If zero emissions are mandated aviation costs will increase and different design compromises will be required.

I'm not really sure what you mean by this? They fly at about 30m max along set corridors and it's not a particular busy piece of airspace. Even if two of them crashed above you and the debris rained down on you it would be in the same order of magnitude as a magpie attack unless they were carry hot food ;-).

Yes however as costs change sometimes business models do as well. Fuel is between 22-35% of an airlines operating costs. It's not a small part of their costs, if there was a requirement to be carbon neutral it would make this an even larger factor. https://gprivate.com/6ccs0

Possibly the Klöckner-Humboldt-Deutz DZ 710 In wikipedia it has a claimed SFC of 201 g/kWh https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brake-specific_fuel_consumption However another source puts it as equivalent to the Napier. https://oldmachinepress.com/2013/08/17/klockner-humboldt-deutz-khd-dz-700-dz-710-and-dz-720/ It's taken a long time for turbine engines to approach the efficiency of diesel engines, if the commercial aircraft industry is forced to pay to capture it's CO2 emissions higher efficiency engines might find a niche. However "adding lightness" was always the hardest design step.

The double sleeve was actually an earlier development and used on some European cars. If you look closely you can examine the pictures of the cutaways on the wiki page and see that it's a single sleeve. The design of the dual sleeve was very different at a fundamental level so I'm not sure how you'd go from one to the other. It doesn't really make sense to change the design from a single to a dual sleve especially given the fact the single sleeve was a later development. Not sure about the failure rates, however they were a complex engines compared to poppet valve.

I think that the Bristol and all of there aircraft engines were a single sleeve arrangement. From the wikipedia article https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bristol_Hercules#Design_and_development "The rationale behind the single sleeve valve design was two-fold" Some earlier British cars used a dual sleeve arrangement and there was a patent fight at some point from memory. The lower noise might relate more to the rate of the valve opening as it would be sinusoidal openings to a cross section rather than rapid release of a poppet. I'm not sure if I've even seen one in practice. The oil drag at low temperatures is an interesting point. I wonder whether modern oil chemistry solved this to any extent. Another engine design that is mind boggling is the Deltic which was derived from the aircraft engine the Junkers Jumo 204 which even today remains more efficient than even modern Lycoming diesels. The deltic was both light and powerful. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Napier_Deltic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Junkers_Jumo_204 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brake-specific_fuel_consumption

The drones were available at one point in the ACT on the southside. Old nudist wacko's killed the program off because apparently they were flying overhead and spying on them. They actually sound much lounder in this video than they actually are, listen for the alarm calls of the local magpies, they were about 50m away They were brilliant for fast deliveries of small items, coffee, lunches, stuff from a chemist and bunnings when you needed a packet of screws etc. I could buy things online and have them dropped on my front lawn within 5 minutes. They travelled significantly faster than 100km/h, and reduce traffic on the local streets. The process for registering was download and app, identify a spot to deliver and do a 360 spin with the camera. Once it was approved, bingo. Not sure of the payload however it did manager to deliver lunch for 4 people with drinks at one point. I originally though it was a bit stupid and my son downloaded the app and did the registration. But once we used it a few times I completely changed my mind. It was just so dam quick. My favourite delivery was when my entire family was ill and we'd run out of panadol and ibuprofen. It was literally there 3m later. Apologies for the camera work 😉

The gears are for supporting the sleave valve engine design rather than the current poppet valve. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bristol_Hercules https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleeve_valve They have better volumetic efficiency and because you can have better combustion area design and no hot valve you can run them at higher compression rations on the same octane rating. The main drawbacks were the complex drive mechanisms, cooling the junk head and the tolerances required between the sleve and cylinder block. Modern machining techniques solved the latter and I've always thought that modern electronics and active cooling could solve the former points pretty simply. Does anyone a few million to waste on developing a new IC engine? They're quiet because the valves motion is radial not slamming shut and opening like poppets.