old man emu

Bex,

This is for you.

Bottled air????

If you are older than a Millenial, then it is likely that you have spent part of your life in a building containing asbestos. Baby Boomers were probably the most exposed to asbestos in domestic settings through living in houses whose outer walls were fibro-asbestos sheets. Who of us Baby Boomers never broke the sheeting of a wall while playing in the backyard?

But that was not the only place we were exposed to asbestos. Do you remember experiments in the Science lab? Remember boiling up water in a beaker supported on a tripod over a bunsen burner? Remember the wire gauze pad the beaker was standing on? Remember the burnt white circle of material in the centre of the square of gauze?

ABSETOS!

So, if you never worked in an environment containing asbestos; and you never played with fibro as a kid, if you develop asbestosis, can you sue your alma mater for damages?

OME

The non-commercial side of Australian aviation is moribund. (That's a fancy word for 'at Death's door')

Forget about the lack of pilots. They are a dime a dozen. Forget about aircraft availability. There's millions of dollars' worth of airframes sitting idle on airports all over the country.

The problem is that there is no one replacing the blokes who keep them flying - the engineers.

I'm currently visiting aircraft maintenance facilities on Bankstown and Camden for some auditing work. The story I hear all the time has a common thread. The maintenance engineers are getting to, or have passed retirement age and there are no young people to replace them. Maintenance shops are closing all over the place as these engineers, many of who are Baby Boomers, retire or drop off the perch.

As participants in non-commercial aviation we should be gathering together. In one voice, we must demand from those administering the education/training of our young people the promotion of aircraft maintenance as a worthwhile livelihood.

The only way to draw attention to this problem is to mount a campaign of correspondence to Members of Parliament in both State and Federal jurisdictions. We must urge them to reconsider the philosophy that all our young people must go to university. Universities are fine for promoting esoteric themes, but are failures in producing the number of people with practical skills that are needed to keep society afloat.

We must urge politicians to see the urgency to promote skills education by basing training syllabuses on the practical application of the skills necessary to do the job. Trainees must be provided with an income that supports the trainee at an equal level to the trained persons they work beside and learn from. If that means paying large subsidies to those who employ trainees during their learning years, we must do it.

Without remuneration comparable to the rest of society, what incentive is there to learn the theory and skills necessary to keep out aircraft fit to fly? After all, it is the Government through its agent, CASA, that sets the safety standards for the aircraft flying in Australian skies.

Old man Emu

If the engine is "on condition" that means that the person who has serviced it over a good deal of its life has intimate knowledge of it and is prepared to put his neck on the block to allow its continued use after manufacturer's TBO has passed. You'll either have to take the engine back to the person who put it "on condition" or find another person who is willing to take the word of the former maintainer.

What is the TBO for these engines?

I'd be wanting to have a real good look into the engine log-book if one exists. If one did not exist, I'd look elsewhere.

Sounds like a good way for a Sydneyite to get away for a dirty weekend in Melbourne, but I'd hate to book activities for the weekend to have them delayed or cancelled at the boarding gate.

The wingspan of a Jabiru is 9.5 metres. Let's call the total length of leading edges 10 metres (don't forget the tailplane)

Therefore, in flying 54 nautical miles, the leading edges would impact 10 x 0.23 gms of grime = 2.3 gms.

That is equal to a tad over 0.04 gms per nautical mile.

Here's something to consider about the weight of pollutants a plane could impact during a flight.

1. Air Quality Index. (AQI)

The AQI is a ratio of the observed pollutant concentration to the maximum concentration standard set under Section 14 of the National Environment Protection Council Act 1994 , expressed as a percentage.

Two grades of suspended partidulate matter (grime) are specified in the Act - PM10 and PM2.5. The 10 and 2.5 refer to the diameters of the particles (< 10 micrometers, or < 2.5 micrometers). The standard concentration value for PM10 particles is 50 ugm/m^3. A ugm is one millionth of a gram.

The equation for the calculation is:

AQI = (Observed pollutant concentration)/(Pollutant Standard Level) x 100.

This equation can be re-arranged to determine the pollutant concentration from the published hourly AQI value:

AQI = {Observed/50} x100

AQI/100 = Observed/50

AQI/100 x 50 = Observed

AQI x (50/100) = Observed

1/2 x AQI = Observed pollutant concentration ugms/m^3

In other words, the weight of suspended pollutants 10 micrometers or less in diameter in one cubic metre of air is equal to half the AQI value. Today (1/8/18) the AQI recording for PM10 at Camden was 46, meaning that the weight of particles in a cubic metre of air was 21 ugms. Doesn't sound like much, does it?

2. What weight of grime impacts with a plane?

a) For this calculation:

The wing of a Jabiru is close to 10 cm at the leading edge, measured vertically from upper to lower surface. Therefore the area surface of a metre of leading edge is 0.1 m^2. This is taking the leading edge to be flat. Wrong in practice, but acceptable for this calculation.

b) Distance flown:

One nautical mile = 1852 metres. 54 nautical miles is equal to 100,008 metres. For this calculation forget about the extra 8 metres.

If a Jabiru flew 54 nautical miles through air with an AQI ( PM10) of 46, then the leading edge would impact:

0.1 m^2 x 100,000 m x 23 ugms of grime

= 10,000 x 23 ugms of grime

= 230,000 ugms of grime

= 230,000/1,000,000 gms of grime

= 0.23 gms of grime

While video of starving baa-lambs and moo-cows plucks at the heart-strings, you have to remember that these animals are herbivores, which means that they eat plants.

While it is bad that they have no grass to eat, the drought also means that farmers cannot grow grain, oil-seed, (including fibre crops) and fodder crops. So there is less good grain for our daily bread; less second grade grain for pig and chicken feed, and less oil-seed to go into that feed as concentrated energy sources, and less fodder to truck to the baa-lambs and moo-cows.

If this drought keeps up, it will be seafood for Christmas Dinner, and no plum pudding with brandy source.

I'll get some pix of the one at Dent's tomorrow.

Dent Aviation at Camden is in the final stages of putting one of these on the Australian Register.

Aspergers. autism or not, getting the flare spot on is a problem for every person who has ever juggled a joystick.

To answer the first part of your question, here is CASA's advice

Guidelines for aeroplane landing area - Civil Aviation Safety Authority

https://www.casa.gov.au/file/105066/download?token=aMdVb6EO

If you can build a strip that meets the specs in that document, then, go fly!

As for which licence would get you into the air quickly, you would probably find that a PPL and an RAAus certificate take about the same number of flying hours. Which one you choose depends on the type of plane you decide to buy. I would suggest that being out in the donga in the middle of a million acres, an RAAus registered plane would make maintaining a plane easier.

If you want to get your licence in a hurry, then come South in the Wet for a month to six weeks and get stuck into training full time.

IMHO,

D'oh!

ALL true, but they way they lived wouldn't support our present population let alone what we will grow to. I don't think an AWARENESS of the value of respecting nature and the condition of the planet and a love for it is unique to native tribes.

I agree that a subsistence existence would not support the country's present and projected population. The point I am making is that 10,000 years' of weather observations trumps 230 years'. I'm sure that Aborigines have observed longer cycles of drought and flood. Here are the seasons as described by the D'harawal people of the areas south and southwest of Botany Bay D'harawal calendar - Indigenous Weather Knowledge - Bureau of Meteorology

Check the bottom of this page for the 11- 12 year cycle

Untitled

Non-Aboriginals are now paying for the ignorance of the people of the 19th Century in Australia. That ignorance was the dismissal of Aboriginal knowledge which was gained (one can safely say) over the past 10,000 years of their residence on the continent. (Yes, I know that they have been here longer, but I am referring to the time since the last global Ice Age, about 10-12,000 years ago.)

If those early settlers had not allowed Aboriginal culture to wither and die, we could have accessed vast encyclopediae of local knowledge, as we are starting to do now with bush tucker. That knowledge would have included the cycle of the seasons, which we need to know to let our new land uses flourish here.

We are almost to the end of the first quarter of the 21st Century. We have the Cyberspace, and in there lie all the weather facts and figures for at least 175 years. Plus we can go to State libraries to read the journals of Europeans in Australia from 1788 to find out about the weather.

I'm sure that an analysis of all that data will show that there is a regular cycle of about 10 years or so where the weather swings from drought to flooding rain. As Turbo says, a competent farm manager will know about that cycle, and make long term plans to profit from that knowledge. The only way to lose by doing that is if the drought fails to eventuate after you have sold off stock.

There is much wisdom in the saying, "Gather ye rosebuds whilst ye may".

More so if you were in front in this plane :

It's a joke, Joyce.

But you all got to the runway at the same time!

My new book on Poltergeists was released last weekend, apparently it's flying off the shelves.

Going by the responses, this idea is a damp squib. Maybe if I say that I won't go, others will be look at the chance to gather for a chat in a better light.

OME

How will this tell me how dirty Sydney's air is? I live in country Victoria. :)

"Problemo ! Where does the Sydney Basin end/begin ???? "

For the sake of this discussion, the Sydney Basin is bounded by the coast to the east, and the Nepean/Hawkesbury River from the southwest to the northeast at Broken Bay, and a line from Picton to Stanwell Park