turboplanner

35 minutes ago, jackc said:

But many of them fly unlicenced  and unregistered?

You've mentioned this many times but apart from being pointless because of the potential legal issues and penalties these aren't in your 11,000 members and 3000 aircraft.

If you go down that path your could look at the 50,000 who are gunna go flying, just haven't had time etc.

6 minutes ago, onetrack said:

Of that 3000 aircraft, how many are actually flying regularly, and how many are dust-gathering hangar queens? The mustering/station industry must be the major component of RA-Aus.

The mustering/station industry is a myth.

Way back in 1959 the Melbourne Porsche dealer, Norman Hamilton, designed and built quite a nice looking small aircraft for station inspections and mustering called a Jackeroo. It cost way less than the entry level Cessnas and Pipers, but sank like a rock in the market.

Inspection used to be feasible for broken pumps and empty stock troughs, but these days each watering site has solar powered reporting to satellite, and cameras if you want them, so you can do stock counts from the office, check on a particular animal. 

Some cattle are scared out of inaccessible outback gullies by aircraft and  mustered by helicopter, but the market these days has very specific demands on stock handling which limits the number of aicraft and helicopters. Having said that, the number of suitable properties is very small.

2 hours ago, BrendAn said:

In our area Traralgon is the only other airfield with training apart from the 1 instructor at Bairnsdale. Of the the 2 schools at Traralgon .1 lost an instructor last year and they haven't got a replacement that I know of and the aeroclub just lost an instructor but I think they may have a replacement. So as others have posted . Training is a struggle in the regional areas.

RAA Inc. could have fixed that. The Members had much more direct power.

It's interesting that just  a few dozen members pushed RAA into the independent Limited organisation it is today, and one of the reasons, used over and over and over again to get votes was that we were getting too big for an Incorporated Association because it was like a cricket club. It's ironic that the top section of the cricket club system today earn multi millions per year working in Australia for the season then places like India where they REALLY make money - some structure!

Under RAA INC, you could have raised that as an issue and formed a committee of Key skills to run a recruiting programme form a Club and train Instructors, Maintenance supervisors, etc to provide the training and build the numbers.

Apart from that aspect, just going back to your raw numbers for Traralgon, that's pretty much the point I've been making. I don't think there will ever be an even, natural, progression across Australia at any one time; the situation is dynamic, based on someone being interested in Instructing and entrepreneurial enough to set up a profitable operation.

Earlier I showed a photo of the huge Roma, Qld terminal.

Roma today has a population of 6,840.

Traralgon today has a population of 26,907.

If you add local towns of Morwell, 14,389; Moe, 9,373; Churchill, 4,568, that's a local district of 55,237 people.

Interestingly, when I pulled these population figures for towns this morning, none provided total population; all provided total male and total female; that's what we've come to.

As many of you know, your local instructor is making a living off much tinier towns than that, so Traralgon is what we would call in marketing a Primary Opportunity, and we would be working it over and reporting on the progress every month.

As for the proposition that aviation is declining in the country districts:

In the early 1960s the Nhill Aero Club in Western Victoria had one Tiger Moth.

Nhill today has a population of 2401, which back then may have been around 1,500

Naracoorte, SA, today has a population of 8,690, back then around 5,000 including the surrounding "district".

Nhill employed one instructor. They couldn't make it pay just at Nhill, so the instructor would fly the Tiger to Naracoorte once a month to train his bookings. Distance is 144 km, 78 Nm - about an hour's commute for the Tiger. Many people today commute that far every day and think nothing of it and nor did the pilot then.

The club had a network of various airfields in the small towns which they supported so in quite a large area of the Western District and South East, you could travel 15 mins to 30 mins to your lesson.

That was a financial model that produced many pilots over many years.

Notice that the Club was marketing orientated; they went to the customers; they didn't try to get the customers to drive hundreds of kilometres to their lessons. Note that the Club organised the business and the Instructor did the flying - living the dream.

4 hours ago, BrendAn said:

a lot of those morrabbin movements would be the international students doing touch and goes all day, hardly represents flying in the rest of australia.

I mentioned the fluctuations and what they were.

It wasn't meant to represent the rest of Australia; for one reason or another aviation will collapse where there is no interest or where the providers aren't managing their businesses to bring in businesses; plenty of McDonalds have disappeared, but less than the new ones. In the transport industry plenty of branda have fallen out of the market to be replaced by new ones and plenty of non-performing dealers fail every year to be replaced by new ones.

4 hours ago, BrendAn said:

there are about 11000 members and 3000 aircraft , 

On this site around 2010 - 2015 you'll find plenty of comments about the RAA membership of 8,000, then just before the Limited compny was formed it had grown to 10,000, so your comment indicates healthy growth for RAA. 

That doesn't mean growth everywhere. As I outlined above, plenty of people in business don't adverstise, don't market, or their margin breaks what their market can afford, and people walk away, and maybe they're walking away from the people bad-mouthing the industry, but those numbers indicate more people are coming in than are leaving.

4 hours ago, Student Pilot said:

Turbo, do you (or any of your family) now work or have you ever worked for CASA?

(a) No

(b) What on earth does that have to do with the number of healthy young RAA members becoming Instructors?

6 hours ago, Student Pilot said:

Yes there are exceptions that are going ahead. I have traveled a bit and Mostly I see places shut down or shutting down. GA is in a steep decline and has been for the last 25 years or so. I have friends in a few different areas/states that also say that.

RAA seems to be clinging on still, nowhere near the interest or aircraft there was 25 years ago. I suppose the real decline in wages and income (Compared to inflation) over that time has a big part in it. Also the changing of the want/dynamic of RAA is compounding the decline. Now an RAA aircraft cost about the same as a 182 did 25 years ago. A Rotax 912 now cost what an 0-520 used cost to overhaul 25 years ago. There are still basic cheap flying machines but seems the average price of any new machines be it composite or metal is way over $100,000. No way an average man on wages can afford to learn to fly let alone own an aircraft.

1. How many members of RAA are there today? Not much point discussing where Recreational flying is today without the figure.

2. You're crossing into GA. Nothing wrong with that but the two types of flying are different.

     GA flying used to be primarily cross country. Today it's far cheaper to go to the same place by RPT.

3. The heyday was a false boom caused by the promotion of light aircraft as aerial cars. As the complexities of flying - flight planning before the flight, refuelling at stops, limite number of passengers, turn backs or enforced stay-overs due weather and the cost to remain current bit, some drifted into recreational flying, some ursued other hobbies, so there was  big drop off in GA, and there was also a drop in GA Commercial because of the limitations of light aircraft operations.

4. Having said that there are still thousands of GA aircraft flying around Australia. The current 295,000 movements per year of Moorabbin pretty much kill the doom and gloom merchants; a few historic totals are:

1965, 257900

1968, 321251

1969, 240574

1981, 270419

1995, 347000

1996, 350000

2004, 220900

2007, 310322

Points 2 & 3 haven't had much influence on total movements which fluctuate more when an Arthur Schutt or Bib Stillwell come along or someone starts a mass-training deal.

With Recreational flying those member numbers tell the story - I'm surprised no members have bothered to put up current figures.

If you look at any business from your own little dunghill, it will always appear that you are losing the good talent you've mixed with for decades and the industry is becoming less understandable, going to the dogs, not like it used to be, will extinct etc.

People comment about their own local area, which may well be going bad, but they don't live in or visit other States and districts which are booming.

Take a look at the size of the terminal in the small town of Roma way out in Western Queensland; Aviation is booming there.

Although Soar Avation went belly up beause of its policies, its marketing strategy was almost right and look at the numbers or aircraft and airports that they operated out of.

If you're one of the only people in step, the army might be going where the action is. Look at the RAA numbers.

They're all just flying at other places and talking in other groups.

....facetious club which conducted a weekly competition for outlandish speeches.

The OneT was the clear winner of most of them, his Sea Shells of Western Australia Beaches presentation, which went for over three hours was a clear winnner with:

Interestingly, in an Incorporated Association, usually there is a Natural Justice process where a person can Appeal a decision like that.

1. The official can impose a sanction on the spot where an offence take place.

2. If the member doesn't think it's fair he/she appeals against it.

3. A Tribunal is set up and hears the merits of the argument and makes a decision to (a) uphold the decision and penalty, (b) reduce the penalty (c) Uphold the Appeal and dismiss the penalty.

I sat as an Appeals Tribunal Chairman for three years and the decisions were evenly spread between (a), (b), (c)

In one case a person who had just crossed the line to win a State Championship was disqualified for deliberately hitting another car and the Champion ship awarded to someone else. At the Appeal the Steward who reported her admitted he hadn't seen the incident, the Chief Steward who made the decision admitted he hadn't seen any incident, his witnesses admitted they hadn't seen anything happen at the location. The Appeal was upheld and she was awarded the State Championship.

The only costs involved were to drive to the Tribunal location near the track and give their versions.

Compliance and Enforcement is a two way street.

https://www.atsb.gov.au/publications/investigation_reports/2020/aair/ao-2020-065

.....could be categorised by ..............

..........CatNN which had taken over the major broadcasting task after a survey which showed the average American only has the day to day skills of a cat. Tom Cat was the main personality sitting at the desk with the curvaceous Alley Cat who was a Tabby. Pussy Galore did the weather, and you never knew what was going to happen there, Fat Cat was the Food Guide person. Black Cat represented the disadvantaged and often had heated debates with CopyCat who was always lock Stray Cats up. Cat Steven was brought back to do the Entertainment reports, and Cat of Nine Tails told childrens stories about ...............

.....he had a permit and ...................

4 hours ago, Garfly said:

 

 

Basic research might lead to this ATSB safety report from April 1991:

 

A few excerpts:

 

"The see-and-avoid principle serves a number of important functions in the Australian air traffic

system. However, while it undoubtedly prevents many collisions, the principle is far from reliable. The

limitations of the see-and-avoid concept demand attention because increases in air traffic may

impose an accelerating level of strain on see-and-avoid and other aspects of the air traffic

system."

 

"Perhaps the most damning evidence against see-and-avoid comes from recent trials carried out

by John Andrews in the United States which have confirmed that even motivated pilots

frequently fail to sight conflicting traffic."

 

"See-and-avoid has been described as a maritime concept originally developed for slow moving

ships which is now out of place in an era of high speed aviation (Marthinsen 1989)."

 

"The Americans, having recognised the limitations of the concept, are looking to other methods such as the automated airborne

collision avoidance system (TCAS) to ensure traffic separation."

 

Sounds like a warning to me.

 

 

 

see_and_avoid_report_print.pdf 859.05 kB · 1 download

CASA and RAA are the Recreational Flying Regulators.

What I was talking about was nothing to do with one way of doing something vs another.

It was about prescribing a system a pilot must use, thereby having a duty of care vs stepping back and letting pilots do their own avoiding in which case the taxpayer is not shelling out for infrastructure and training  and anyone hurt will be suing a pilot that didn't see him.

42 minutes ago, Garfly said:

Our regulators are not the problem here. They have been warning against relying on "see and avoid" for at least 30 years.

I haven’t seen any regulator messages of warning, an implication that something isn’t safe. Just the neutral statement that in certain class airfields separation is by see and avoid. This took ATC out out of separation by radio, so no liability to eliminate reasonably foreseeable risks and no drain on the taxpayer.

...........was then blasted by the Black Sovereign Aboriginal Corporation (Reg in Haiti) which pointed out that there were no possum skins showing, they being the National Dress of the Torres Strait Mertians.

It go to Turbo on a bad day, and he turned the digital marketing off and made them all send the $5.37 through the post and cars ran out of fuel, workers in high rises froze and generally people learned a good lesson about coming up with ridiculous hurdles to doing business, and flocked to Turbine Holdings in a massive show of support which sent Australia post into profit and paid or half the new Submarine fleet.

Australia was a better place, and in future.......................

...........a small credit card capture for each litre produced.

TF fuel was marketed like mobile phones where the Online advertising was the same no matter what button on the Ad was pressed. Press "Price" and an infotainment message of 15 minutes plays and outlines the vast empire of Turbine Holdings around the world, livestock 37 million, land 50,000 square kilometres, and the need to avoid any CO2 emissions which led to TF fuel. Hit the "Specifications" you get the same message, hit the "Facilities", you get the same messages.

The online keylocker showed that one customer stayed on line for two hours before he finally clicked "BUY" for 27 litres of TF fuel for his Hyundai HGetz, and then ............... 

On 08/03/2023 at 11:39 AM, Garfly said:

How long will the "strictly eyes-outside-the-cockpit " principle stand in the way of so obvious a safety improvement?

Even some basic research on Public Liability law will explain why that is nominated as the procedure, and why these days we have audits rather than inspections, and why benchmarks, such as Australian Standards, SAE standards etc have become so important to your defence against negligence.

Have you found a regulation AGAINST having your favourite alternative method on board?

If CASA and the medics are so bad then why critics them for allowing  Max Quartermain to fly. You can‘t have it both ways.

.........escape from bad people?

"Yes" said Rachel changing the subject, "but I use a 357 magnum and they usually stay out of my way".

Just then three Granalds Orions came screaming down in a dive out of the sun. It was the three tracks, OneTrack TwoTrack and Three Track. They were part of the Confederate Air Force, a group of bomb chuckers for hire. They had a devastating effect on a copse of trees close to where Gene had been. Smok started to rise, and out from the tress came a very bedraggled .....................

.......the effect on Gene was simultaneous.

He grabbed his 50 cal and ran for his Ultralight at the same time.

Not many people know that Gene Simmons owned an Avid Flyer.

The reason for the Flyer was clearance height.

This was required so when Gene concentrated with his tongue hanging out the side of his mount it didn't drag on the ground.

In this case his extensive organ tripped him up and over he went ..............................

....onniving to get a better view of Turbo who of course was not longer there having walked behind the Samola trees.

As Gene stretched to the left then to the right to try to regail sight of the target, Turbo lethim have one right in the abyss, which wasn't part of Sniper Training, but ....................................

....retaliate, so they rolled off the train into a ditch behind some Samola trees, which curved around in the direction of the shooter. Soon they had gone in a circle and were looking at the tight jeans of ..............................

.........in fact in Afghanistan they were referred to as weeds rather than English roses. They all wore those tight, white, trousers and blue coats. Despite this they blended into the population until they had multiplied to a sort of Afghanistan Joneses, rather like the WA Tracks who fill the bars of Freemantle on a Friday night.

Turbo knew he would never potshot a Cook, but what was there at the target?, What was his mission. As we know he looked like Matt Damon, and the situation was very much like the Bourne Identity. Suddenly there was a "POOF" and a sniper's bullet took off the head of the passenger next to Turbo. He had to THINK!, what..........................

....ability to recognise anyone, since the zig zag geography and interplay of charaters has become mind boogling to the point that Turbo was catching a bus in the southern area of Afghanistan, and suddenly thought:

"Where am I?

What am I doing here?

Where am I going?"

He realised he had no answers to these questions. Realising he had rather a long, large bag, he looked inside and found a 50 cal. sniper rifle, good for 4 km. He looked out the window and 4 km away was ...................