kgwilson

If you have a history which includes Hang Gliding or Gliding the VSI (Variometer in Glider terms) can be a useful way of using the elements to gain height without power. I use mine this way quite a lot.

The thing with panels is try for an ergonomic layout. Most manufacturers don't do this, some are downright awful so you have to change hands or look all over the place rather than glance at the important things and see them all at once. For example I have a centre stick with the PTT button on it (pretty normal) a binnacle on the left with throttle, Carb heat and flap switch. Trim is a centre wheel in the armrest. In front the 6 pack, radio in the centre along with Nav (GPS etc) and on the right engineinstruments all angled towards me.

Sounds like the student was a bit of a know it all. Ignoring the flying school policy of changing tanks every 30 minutes, not keeping a fuel log & failing to check & switch tanks when on the ground. All simple and standard procedures. PA 28s have been around for a very long time and many thousands of pilots have not had problems as they adhere to the operating procedures. Based on the accent I wonder if the student was training to eventually become an airline pilot in Asia. If so this event should convince him to change his career options.

Yes it looks like a textbook forced landing, over the strip at 1500, just wash off the height & grease it on. It was reported the wind was gusting to 40 knots  (direction unknown) & it was hot. The 210 has a glide angle of 8:1 or even less at 85 knots flaps up. so at 1500 feet he has a maximum of about 3.5km in still air. With a gusty 40knot headwind make that 1.7km. Even if the wind was not on the nose working out the options with only 1.5 minutes of flight time left with your brain in meltdown phase what decision do you make. The approach was too high for 04 which is short at 827 metres so decided to go for 18, at 1523 metres, much better. By this time he'd be below 1000 feet & possibly turning into a headwind. In the end he did the best he could, landing straight ahead. Turning back to try to get to 18 would have been the worst decision he could have made at that stage.

I have just done the survey and consider it relevant, but a couple of the questions requiring ranking would not allow me to answer in a way that would show my feelings. No doubt because I am also a PPL holder flying an experimental and therefore RAAus is not the be all and end all.

 

I did make comments where able to and at the end.

 

Overall it was fairly done.

 

I found the same issue and made a similar (I presume) comment at the end.

I went flying yesterday. It was the first time in 3 months that there has been no smoke or dust haze. We had 40mm of rain on Christmas eve/Christmas day and all the local fires have been extinguished. BUT this is only in the NE corner of NSW. The amount of burnt out bushland from Yamba to Evans Head is massive. We still have Easterly winds so while silky smooth along the coast it was very rough above the burnt out areas with small punchy thermals. With more hot and dry weather forecast the fire risk will be back up there within a week or so. 

If you are stupid enough to just rank them in the order that they are presented in you should not be doing surveys.

It's a web based survey hosted by SurveyMonkey. It is Here

An email was sent to members with the above link. Anyone can complete it. It is completely anonymous.

You must have fallen off the radar. Just email RA-Aus & tell them you no longer get emails etc & they will fix it up ( so long as you are  paid up member). This happened to me at one point. There was no reason or explanation. They just added my details in again.

Heathen, noun. The definition of a heathen is someone who does not belong to an accepted religion or is someone who is lacking in morals or principles. An example of a heathen is a person who is uncivilized and not religious. An example of a heathen is a person who lies, cheats and does other immoral things.

So who are the "Heathen Hordes"? The definition appears to me to have been given by Fundamenatlist religious fanatics.

Someone had to FT, God love you too.

 

Who's Dog?

Politicians often get Sate Funerals but they never put their lives on the line for the community. More often it is the other way around.

Remember the SBS doco on Boeing whistleblowers in 2011. They got the sack, the problems were ignored, 3 x 737 NGs broke apart on landing overruns & all was pushed under the carpet. At least the latest whistleblower  has already retired from Boeing & has had his say at an inquiry. The Boeing "Profit before Safety" culture has been exposed but has it been eliminated? Dennis Muilenburg is saying all the right things now but he was in this up to his neck all the way through. This saga has a long way to go yet.

 

Well Muilenburg has now paid the price for his arrogance and has been sacked, ostensibly to restore confidence in the company. BUT the current Chairman David Calhoun has taken over so is now CEO and President in the best corrupt US corporate manner. I don't think this will work either. 

Boeing sacks CEO

With the widespread understanding now of how the "Profit before Safety" culture evolved there has to be a complete shakeup of the entire company. The appointment of the Chief Financial Officer, Greg Smith to the role of interim CEO displays the continued arrogance and focus on profit.

Very recent research has shown that most atmospheric moisture comes from vegetation, mainly trees, and not evaporation from the oceans. Those charts we were shown at school, with water rising from the sea and turning into clouds, were wrong.

 

so loss of trees is even more important than we thought.

 

Most of the atmospheric moisture comes from evaporation of oceanic water in the tropics according to the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Atmospheric rivers are formed in the tropics and carry the moisture to the higher latitudes. These atmospheric rivers are also generated by equatorial forests such as the Amazon basin and this one sends water vapour in a South Easterly direction that provides a lot of rain to the rest of Brazil. The Amazon has 400 billion trees producing 20 trillion litres of water vapour each day but that is dropping dramatically as the forest is cut down to make way for farming etc. Most though comes from the sea which as we know covers 70% of the earths surface.

Me neither. Never even heard of Open Airplane so I couldn't care less that it is closing.

Maybe alarmists are being so to try and draw attention to the issue by our Politicians who still appear to be complete denialists despite providing some lip service to the issue. Climate change & the economy are the 2 biggest issues worrying Australians now. If we reduced our emissions to zero now it would not change anything as the rest of the world continues to generate the same or more emissions anyway.

The thing is most countries recognise the problems and are actively working on reductions. We are 57th out of 57 countries for our efforts with a happy clapper PM who believes that divine intervention won't allow failure and an Energy Minister trying to use credits that don't exist from reductions (now long gone) made under labors carbon tax.. Our direct contribution to emissions may only be 1.3% but add the indirect contribution on our coal and gas exports and were are up there with the worst, in 3rd place after Russia & Saudi Arabia. We have to be seen at a national level to be making a real effort. People and private investors are with solar and wind but our Nero fiddles while our Rome burns.

Interesting review.  For my purposes the Spot Gen 3 is fine and the best value. I don't need 2 way communication & I have it set to track at 5 minute intervals so at 120 knots every 10 miles. I could upgrade to every 2 1/2 minutes but that costs an extra $US99.00 a year. 4WDers won't need anything less than every 10 minutes. If I have a forced landing I'll just hit the help button & wait. If I crash & survive I'll hit the SOS & emergency services will get the message. If I don't survive but the spot keeps transmitting it will send the crash location co-ordinates. If it is destroyed the last known location would be a maximum of 5 minutes flying time from where they can find the wreck.

I have a Spot Gen 3 & it works really well & I note in the "About" page in the mobile app they say that you can call anyone even when out of Cellular range but this is a bit misleading. You can send SMS messages only, you can't make a Satellite phone call. Having bluetooth connectivity is useful as the tiny qwerty keyboard buttons are not easy to use so you can key it more easily on your phone or use voice to text. BUT the service costs are $US290.00 a year or about $AU480.00 so for the added functionality of having 2 way text capability (with 5 minute tracking) anywhere it is expensive. The Gen 3 is about $AUD300.00 a year service cost.

I take mine all the time & my wife can watch my progress at home. I just hit the check in before I fly & she knows I am about to take off. Then when I land I send another one.

The whole issue about RAA surveying its members to me is exactly as they say. They want to find out what bothers members and what they would like to see going forward. When only 10% of members bother to vote in any election does this mean the other 90% are happy? Who Knows? The fact that some directors have financial  interests in certain aspects is a pretty sure fire reason that they promote these things. Our organisation is now well entrenched in the Australian Aviation scene and have a pretty good relationship with the regulator. Animosity between RAA and other RAOs could be seen as sour grapes from those organisations that they seem not to get the same hearing as RAA.

Aviation in Australia in my view is reflective of the way the country is governed. I spent the first 30 years of my Aviation involvement in NZ from pioneering Hang Gliding to setting up clubs, the National organisation & involvement with and lobbying CAA for greater privileges etc to becoming a PPL pilot & active contributor to CAA proposals. 

CAA in NZ appears to me as a Coach compared to CASA appearing as a COP. I do believe that culture is now waning within CASA from its peak around the Jabiru engine fiasco.

Nothing happens quickly in Australia with a minimum of 3 levels of government & with upper houses that expands to 5. The RPL in NZ was designed as it was elsewhere to allow ageing pilots to still fly but without having to go through the Class 2 medical. The white paper & proposed rule making was done & 3 months later in 2005 it was in. It took another 10 years here & then it was a completely different animal. NZ has now published a notice of proposed rule making to scrap the RPL altogether & allow PPLs to fly with up to 5 passengers in aircraft up to 2730 kg on a commercial motor vehicle licence(already done in the UK & Canada). They can do these things it seems because of less government and inclusivity. NZ RA pilots also have access to CTR and all aircraft are on the ZK register.

So RA-Aus is not going anywhere soon other than to continue to establish itself as the top RAO and eke out as many privileges as possible given the constraints that exist while endeavouring to loosen those constraints. Probably 95% or more of RA pilots have never flown outside of Australia so have no idea what could be. Maybe that is why most just shrug their shoulders, don't vote and don't complete surveys.

Clever but missed it by that much.....

 

Notice the Comet?

 

Not only that but it's a RAF Transport Comet with Roger Millers name on it at the start. I suspect the video creator didn't know his De havillands from his Boeings.

I just completed the survey. I also had no issue with completing it and made sure I provided my own comments if the options offered did not suit me.

I don't think that airframe will be used again.

Wikipedia says "An oil catch tank (oil catch can) is a device that is fitted into the cam/crank case ventilation system on a car. Installing an oil catch tank (can) aims to reduce the amount of oil vapors re-circulated into the intake of the engine."

I originally had a fibreglass oil catch bottle and it got a leak in it. When I emptied it there was only condensed water vapour but it was brown & smelled like oil/fuel mixture. Then the leak appeared unbeknown to me & the stuff that was in it leaked down the firewall & had solidified into sticky greasy goo that eventually went hard. It was really hard to remove. Degreaser wouldn't budge it but after several attempts I got rid of most of it. I then got an aluminium drink bottle & epoxied inflow & outflow tubes. The good thing is that it has a screw in top which I can take off to have a look at what is in there. I have another 4 hours before my 100 hourly so will check then advise what I find. I don't top up between oil changes so the engine isn't throwing any oil. I have heard that if you overfill a Jabiru engine it will throw the excess out into the catch bottle. 

Aircraft engines don't use any recirculation of engine vapours thereby eliminating any possible problems. If you didn't have one the underside (and firewall in my case) would get pretty dirty.  

At 16000 feet the pilot would be suffering from hypoxia but should have recovered once below 10000. Either it was a complete failure to land without power or he was a bit too far away. Then if he thought he'd be short why not try the beach?

How things turn around. When Airbus cam on the scene with their fly-by wire and side stick concepts, armchair experts around the world were quite vocal in their condemnation. Their catch cry was "If it's not Boeing I aint going". Now all modern designs are fly by wire with the 737 the only passenger jet left with cables going all the way to the cockpit.

Also states what is in their head. 

Regardless of causes there have been a number of Bristell crashes. I think the first was when one got into a flat spin killing both the instructor and student, the student at Moorabin and this one this week. I seem to recall at least one more but can't remember any details.