old man emu

No. What I was meaning is that what SSCBD said about having a check to see if you could present the type of risk an ASIC clearance is meant to control should only cost a pittance, not the extortionist fee that is demanded now.

Also, my Working with Children check lasts something like three to five years and is a Name and DOB check. So I agree that the ASIC system is an ineffective approach to security.

33 minutes ago, johnm said:

personalised with 'on site' attendance by Mr Plod 

And was there any need for the use of "Mr Plod"? Think about it next time you are the victim of crime. Or are you the vigilante type?

Emma Chizit?

4 hours ago, SSCBD said:

Surely a simple, turn up at the local cop shop once a year and give them my license and 50 bucks towards the local cops Xmas party and see if the handcuffs come out or I get a little gold stamp for being a good boy gets ride of this ASIC crap for us noncommercial pilots

 A National Police check compares an individual’s details to determine if the details match previously recorded records within the National Police Reference System (NPRS). The results of the NPRS check are assessed by police personnel and a certificate issued. 

How much does a National Police Check cost?

•  Name and Date of birth check is $50.00
•  Name, Date of birth and Fingerprint check is $197.20
•  Volunteer working in Commonwealth Aged care only is $15.00
An additional fee of $5 is payable for applications which require a printed certificate to be mailed to the applicant.

The  Name and Date of birth check of a National Police Check is basically the same check that would be done if you were stopped for allegedly speeding and the constable decided to issue an infringement notice. That's what they are doing when they take your licence and go back to their vehicle.  That check will provide your prior history of interactions with the legal system., whether as a victim of crime or an offender. It will also return to the constable any warnings that may indicate a penchant for doing bad things. 

4 hours ago, SSCBD said:

50 bucks towards the local cops Xmas party

I appreciate that this was written with humorous intent, but the inference offends me as career constable, as it infers a degree of bribery. Please don't use that anymore. 

5 hours ago, kgwilson said:

A simple fibreglass box attached to the firewall,

If you can't fibreglass, go to a vehicle dismantler and pull one out of a car.

New South Wales is a political unit on the east coast of the continent of Australia. It extends from the Port Hacking River in the south to the mouth of the Hawkesbury River in the north, and from the coastline in the east to the eastern bank of the Nepean River in the west. There is an extensive area beyond these bounds - a political No-Man's Land - that has tenuous ties to New South Wales. 

1 minute ago, Old Koreelah said:

Are you sure where your plane’s Centre of Gravity is?

Batteries are the handiest things for adjusting CofG. Aircraft with tractor configurations often have their battery box at the rear of the fuselage to generate a Moment to offset the engine's Moment. That would help solve your access problem. The only downside is the cost of the extra length of power cable you'll need to run from the battery to the bus bar.

As for the continued serviceability of your current battery, I put a new, wet cell battery in my bike in September 2020. Circumstances have prevented my using the bike more than a 100 kms since then. The battery is still quite OK. The usual reason that any battery gives up the ghost is depletion of the chemicals it contains to provide electrons. If the battery has been sitting there, not losing electrons, the level of chemicals won't have changed much. Some of the slippery little devils will have jumped off the +ve terminal into the atmosphere, but there will still be plenty staying inside the box.

Well, the airport is being built on Badgery family land.

July 18, 1914, was one of the most significant days in Australian aviation. It was the first flight of the first Australian-built aircraft. ­Andrew Delfosse Badgery was the first man to fly an Australian-made plane, which he built himself on the family farm at Badgerys Creek. Well, not quite so true. The plane was a Caudron Type 2B. Most likely he brought the plans for the airplane with him when he returned from Europe just before WW1. So the correct description is that it was the first made-in-Australia aeroplane. The Caudron Type B2 was a 1911 design. It is said that the Caudron brothers built only two, so Badgery must just have had the plans. The pictures show that he powered it with an Anzani 6-cylinder radial of 60 hp.

COP THAT, RED!

It could have been YNBW. The only other YNB* is Narrabri, "Y" being the identifier for Australia.

OK. I have redesigned the flight plan form to allow for up to 10 waypoints, or whatever the navigator chooses.

I have retained "usable fuel" in the W&B because its weight is going to be present at the start of the flight.

How is this one?

OME

Flight plan landscape.docx

And their automated nav systems will be locked onto YSWZ (Western Sydney Airport).

What until the environmentalists get woke to aircraft exhaust emissions precipitating on the catchment of Warragamba Dam.  They'll drive out from the Eastern Suburbs in their Double Bay Deutzs and surround the place waving protest signs made of recycled cardboard packaging that came from China.

I really can't see pilot training being based at Bankstown ten years from now. The current holders of the Head Lease seem Hell bent on forcing training and private aviation away, and at the same time forcing the closure of aviation support facilities. The same organisation holds the lease on Camden and did have it on Hoxton Park before they turned that into a business park, or more accurately, warehousing for products we don't make here anymore. So they are not likely to spend money on building hangars, workshops and schools at Camden. Even if they did, they will ask for rents commensurate with commercial sites at Circular Quay.

1 hour ago, spacesailor said:

And were Is that Y .

OK. But you knew what would be correct.

The beauty of Western Sydney Airport is that it has, in fact, saved a lot of land from going under tar and cement. Fear not! In ten years there will be houses right up to the boundary fences.

1 hour ago, Markdun said:

depending what ‘unlawful purpose’ means legally

I'm right beside you with that. Proving that element of the offence description would certainly indicate a finding of guilt.

What must be put into the mind of the jury is that it is not up to them to do the sentencing. Its job is to come to a decision, based on the evidence produced, if every element of the offence has been proved in a way that rules out the creation of a sensible doubt. After the finding of guilt, it is up to the judge, acting on depositions by the Crown and Defence, as well as advice from experts relevant to the sentencing process, to set a punishment. 

Obviously, Society would not be calling for the maximum penalty in this case as the lead up to the death did not involve reckless indifference to life, nor of its nature likely to endanger human life.  Sounds like the result of the death was precipitated on a landing mishap of a sort not unknown to aviation. How poor maintenance lead to the need for a landing at that place is another matter altogether.  

Flying without a licence can incur imprisonment for 2 years, so it is a felony. However many felonies can be punished by fine or imposition on a person's free time (community service). Also if he goes down for manslaughter with a prison sentence, the penalties for any other offence would be served concurrently.

RFguy, you are beginning to sound like an Enema of the People.

Bloody morons! They are calling the place Nancy Bird-Walton Airport. Didn't do any research. Nancy never, never , never hyphenated Bird Walton.

Oh! and the ICAO code for this airport is SWZ.

From a 2015 assessment of airspace during airport planning:

Admittedly, is says nothing about transit lanes.

9 minutes ago, RFguy said:

My observations are there is a fair spread of leakdown results in the manner at which they are done. 

A I said, a bad measurement is better than no measurement. If the manufacturer says that the result should be YY/XX and you get KK/XX, you know that you either have to redo the measurement to eliminate technique error, and if that is OK,  go through a logical sequence as indicated by RFguy.

12 hours ago, Barto said:

I was the one that seen it.

Thank you so much for that post. Now we all know what happened. No more conjecture on the movement of the aircraft. 

As for the seatbelts, these are the forgotten safety devices in all moving vehicles. Just the other day I was looking at my driver's seat belt in my car. The car is 18 years old. Now this question of seatbelt integrity has come up as a result of this incident, so I Googled "service life of seatbelts" and the first link that was returned was this:

And here is a quote from that AWB:

The difficulty is, that while seat belt webbing may appear to be free of detrimental fraying, fading from exposure to ultraviolet light, and chemical contamination, the only way of ensuring that seat belt webbing is safe to use, is to test the webbing to destruction. This, of course, renders the belt assembly unusable. To overcome this problem, some rotorcraft manufacturers have implemented a 10-year service life on seat belts and shoulder harnesses.

Recommendation

1. Remove from service and destroy all seat belts and shoulder harness webbing when it reaches 10 years time in service.

2. Implement inspection procedures to ensure that safety belts and shoulder harness assemblies, particularly those in the pilot and co-pilot positions, are maintained during the recommended ten-year service life to a standard that requires prematurely faded, chafed, or otherwise damaged or chemically contaminated seat belt webbing to be replaced with serviceable assemblies

Fortunately, in Australia, we don't have that American abomination "Vehicular". In NSW the title of the offence of causing death from a motor vehicle collision is called "Culpable Driving", 'culpable' meaning worthy of blame. On the scale of assault offences, from threatening actions to premeditated murder, Culpable Driving (and Culpable Navigation) are No. 3 after Murder (No. 1) and Manslaughter (No. 2). Interestingly there is no Culpable Pilotage. 

The offence of Culpable Driving was created due to juries deciding that, although the actions of a driver were worthy of blame, they were not so serious as to meet the criteria for Manslaughter. Culpable Driving is the offence of momentary mistake - an offence of normally law-abiding people. Manslaughter is the offence of self-centred ratbags.

As for participating in non-commercial flights, does that introduce "obvious risk"? Look at the definition posted above. That covers just about everything that happens after one gets out of bed. If I am approved to fly say a C-182, and yesterday I chartered one with pilot for a business trip conducte under DVMC rules, is the risk any different if I private hired the same aircraft today to fly away for the weekend with family?

The media from 1904 has promoted the concept that flying is tremendously dangerous, and that concept has been ingrained in the minds of the general public so that we end up with definitions like the one posted above applied to an activity that is more controlled and carried out on vehicles maintained to a much higher standard than the activity involved in getting oneself to the airport.

A measurement instrument has two features: resolution and accuracy. Imagine if you zoomed in on this image  and there were markings/subdivisions instead of just one big red dot bullseye. That is one way to think of resolution.

Accuracy (resolution) relates to how small a difference between two identified points an instrument can show. The diagram shows the same position (the point in the center of the bullseye) measured by two instruments. The two grid patterns represent the smallest objects that can be detected by the instruments. The pattern on the left represents a higher-resolution instrument.

For a leak-down test the optimum would be a device that is "accurate and precise", but since we are looking for trends, "precise but not accurate" is sufficient. Note also that "accurate and precise" does not mean the "Robin Hood shaft splitter" shot.

8 hours ago, skippydiesel said:

The type of devise is not as important as consistency of measurement

I was once given the advice that any measurement, no matter how dubious , is better than no measurement at all.

Skippy's comment is correct. The usual reason for including leak-down testing in a scheduled maintenance regime is to obtain data to identify a trend. If you are servicing your own aircraft, and using the same device all the time, scientific degree accuracy is not required. Every instrument has its own unique inaccuracies, called instrument error, but they remain constant throughout the life of the instrument. It's no use getting an instrument like this gauge calibrated against a known standard. As soon as you throw it back into your tool chest, or knock the gauge on something, it can wander from that calibration. 

At times there is a need for a one-off test. That is when a normally good engine suddenly goes bad. Then you do the leak-down test to identify the dud cylinder, and go from there. 

And as with all maintenance - Record, record, record and RFGuy said. If ever you want to sell your aircraft, comprehensive maintenance records return more money than the cost of the time spent writing them.

It is interesting that the boaties haven't taken up variable pitch props.

52 minutes ago, Old Koreelah said:

waiting for me to find a few weeks to do lots of maintenance.

You only have until 19 May 2023 to get it into the air to fly west for 90 Nm.

We, as people knowing more than the average persons about the legal side of flying, will come to the conclusion that the elements of the offence have been proved. However, a jury will be made up of people most likely not having that knowledge. Juries bring a lot of "There but for the Grace of God go I" to this sort of trial. They simply don't look at the elements of the offence and come to a decision that the allegation has been proved if all the elements have been proved. 

Guidelines for Judges say in relation to Manslaughter by criminal negligence "In order to establish manslaughter by criminal negligence, it is sufficient if the prosecution shows that the act which caused the death was done by the accused consciously and voluntarily, without any intention of causing death or grievous bodily harm but in circumstances which involved such a great falling short of the standard of care which a reasonable man would have exercised and which involved such a high risk that death or grievous bodily harm would follow that the doing of the act merited criminal punishment." Before the offence can be committed the accused must owe a legal duty of care to the deceased, such a duty having been recognised by the common law. It is essential that the act or omission that amounts to a breach of duty is the act or omission that causes death. 

Amongst other elements, the Crown must prove beyond reasonable doubt:

The accused’s act/omission amounted to criminal negligence and merited criminal punishment for the offence of manslaughter because:

(a) it fell so far short of the standard of care which a reasonable person would have exercised in the circumstances; and

(b) involved such a high risk that death or really serious bodily harm would follow as a result of the act/omission.

You've got to watch that "and". "Such a high risk" is another hurdle.

Looking at this, I wonder if the Crown will get up.

It doesn't look like these toroidal props are worth the effort. These tests are carried out with 3D printed props, but I think the methodology is sound. 

7 hours ago, MartyG said:

What capacity/ minimum PSI compressor is needed?

You only need a compressor that can pressurize the cylinder to 80 psi for your particular engine. Basically what a leak-down test says is "If I increase the pressure in a cylinder to a known amount, how much will it keep in. If you had unseated valves or worn rings/cylinder you would not get the sort of figures you quote.

How often to do the test? It is a simple, non-destructive test. You could do it every time you clean the spark plugs. The manufacturer's recommendation of every 25 hours lets you monitor trends. Don't forget to record the results in the engine logbook - adds to resale value.

SAFETY WARNING

Keep away from the propeller while doing this test. You are increasing the pressure in the cylinder well above atmospheric pressure. There is the possibility that the increase in pressure could cause a similar effect to the increase in pressure during a normal combustion cycle and therefore cause the propeller to move rapidly and give anyone in its arc a nasty thump.