turboplanner

......his night out at Blue Lake Lodge of Arthur, which by Tasmanian standards was a wild joint because they served beers instead of cups of tea.

Cappy drove his ................

Whaaaat ? Sorry Turboplanner but do you honestly believe that organisations like CSIRO (the envy of the reserch world) somehow were incapable of "keeping up" ????

Well it might surprise you if I said "Yes" to that. I've had personal experience in business with two CSIRO people who let their later employers down badly (one who used to advise US Presidents), but we were not talking about business enterprise in general, we were talking about public liability which entails risk management.

The Government bodies were outpaced in trying to keep private companies safe in an environment where, if something went wrong, the government had licenced the activity or even visited the factory and signed documentation declaring the activity safe or the machinery safe. I even saw this happening with Department of Civil Aviation which controlled the safety and construction of airport Fire Crash Tenders. The Inspector would show up as each stage was completed, put his grey coat on, get out his instruments, and then be taken on a long lunch. He happened to be up to the task in this dance, and catch the people out every time, but if a mistake did slip through, it was DCA who paid the bill to fix it, or paid compensation to any victims, even though DCA hadn't made the mistake.

What the governments did was offload the risk by requiring private activities to manage their own risks; in other words take responsibility for their own actions.

Governments still retain risk in some areas like the automotive industry, but even there risks have been transferred. e.g. where once a new car was checked out and registered by police, these days each dealership registers their own new cars, so they are responsible for any mistakes.

Indeed you have and very logically presented if I may say so.

Turbs,That's completely fine IF the right references are available. If a plane is built from plans and altered much Even Painted you need to do a new balance determination. A greasy grip of the principles helps but then apply it to the actual machine and evaluate it. Planes are rebalance checked many times in their lifetimes . Some can remove and shift item s that can be adapted using just calculations. and derive a new weight and index legally but I don't think that's widely practiced with U/Ls in Australia. A good load sheet is not difficult to use amend and check and often gives you a trim figure. Nev

We finished up having two discussions in one.

(a) Setting up the Chart - OK's method is as good an example as any, but once the parameters of the Envelope Chart are established, then....

(b) Using an Envelope Chart before each flight kicks in.

Say you are a hirer of OK's aircraft, that's what you do.

If you are doing the same thing over and over again - say circuits, you might only do it the first time, then keep a copy for identical flights.

It's particularly holidays, fly ins, and new routes/distances that will catch you out.

I've thought this for a long time. And CEOs of local governments are obscenely overpaid as well. But it isn't only the public sector. We sometimes see CEOs of companies in the private sector get forced out of their job because something went badly wrong. This is them supposedly "taking responsibility" for it. BUT - often they walk away with a huge payout - how is that "taking responsibility"? And quite often they move almost seamlessly into some other highly-paid position. It's all a very cosy club up in that rarefied atmosphere.

Jeff Kennett introduced upmarket CEOs into Councils to stop some of the hopeless and incompetent spending, because he believed business people could do it better.

I'd be interested to see a detailed Comparison analysis with the Councils of today because even with the massive amalgamations at that time the rates have never stopped heading for the sky and less of the basics gets done (roads, garbage, planning)

One council tried to introduce a Rule to provide less communication to the public and make more decisions behind closed doors. I got involved and found that two streams of management are creeping in to some Councils, 1. Councillor decisions - the traditional way a Council approves things and 2. Executive decisions where, a bit like the invisible suit story, everyone knows that the council has to make some decisions in a hurry and those are made by the CEO, hence less need for consulations and open council debates. The rule was thrown out by a lot of ratepayers who normally remain quiet and there will be more scrutiny of the Council in the future.

Maybe some other time; this has got way out of control into aircraft design where what I was trying to do was get some more people to comply with their obligation to do a few simple calculations before every flight.

I was looking at designing something that didn't yet exist, but same thing, however, for routine operations in RA or private GA level is fine, just doing the calcs even better.

What does catch people out are cantilever loads where mass is levered off but can't stay up in the air and comes down on top of the existing load at the other end of the balance. Even light items can significantly effect balance in that situation.

i had not realised that Schutt was using the walmart principle when I did a fair bit of my training with them. I must say that they were the most professional and competent training school that I flew with. Latrobe valley Aero Club were next in my opinion and some others hardly rated at all. When I got involved with Ultralight flying I was appalled at the poor standards of training, except for one CFI working on his own.

I was very lucky not to be paying the ultra high prices that seem to be the going rate nowadays.

Schutt and others were using brand new aircraft at the time and if you scale off a current Cessna 172 at around $380,000 new I suspect the hourly hire rate would be a lot less than the package mentioned earlier.

What are people using for plane scales, IE those that you can roll a wheel onto ? the attitude of the plane would need to be specified also, presumably ?

 

IE level or not level for the measurement. If it's CoG and balanced when held by a string, then surely level, but then something have to be level! IE a bubble is going to have to be on some surface somewhere that is in the correct level plane (plane I mean plane of axis not airplane) .

???

You can calculate it based on any angle in 3D

The Nett CG of the aircraft moves during the flight.

Firstly, before the flight it can be in several places based on the PIC flight plan - whether to take full pax at full pax mass, and reduce fuel to stay within MTOW, or reduce baggage to carry more fuel, or load full fuel and reduce the number of pax etc. The aircraft you're going to fly could have quite a different pre-takoff Net CG depending on wht you are going to do.

Prior to this you will have calculated your fuel burn for the flight.

While you and your passengers will hopefully weigh the same at the end of the flight, the aircraft's net CG will vary during the flight as fuel is burnt off. An RV with fuel tank behind the engine is going to get lighter at the front and heavier at the rear, and an aircraft with a fuse tank behind the passenger cabin with do the reverse, so with these aircraf you may be legal when you take off, but have to choose where to seat which passengers so you are safe throughout the flight.

If the aircraft has wing tanks they are usually close enough to the fore/aft CG dimension that you have a lot of margin, but if you only burn fuel from one tank, the Net CG is going to move towards the other tank, and so on.

Piper and Cessna use a calculating method which shows where this moving CG is going to be, shows where each item such as baggage, front pax, rear pax, fuel etc - any moveable objects- are going to be on a chart represeting the safe envelope, so this has the benefit that you can see immediately if your CG will fall outside the envelope.

Jabiru use a different chart layout, but the base calculations - Mass and Moment Arm length vs Maximum will produce the same end result.

I'd suggest it takes about five nights of lessons to be successfully calculating W&B for your flights.

Here's an Envelope type chart set up for a fictional RA Aircraft

EXX16.pdf

Well we are only talking about RA, so simple aircraft.

Of the 10,000 the ones who join from GA will have been trained.

I have no idea what percentage that is, but let's say it's 3,000; that leaves 7,000 and my guess is you'de be lucky to find a hundred that have been trained.

The whole training is supposed to be competency based assessment

How many of the 10,000 RAA members would you say have been trained on W&B (as against a shouted suggestion over the shoulder to buy a book). How many have been tested until the errors stop?

Depends where you put the effect of PROFIT. It's what shareholders demand. often above environmental and worker welfare till they are FORCED to (if ever) CEO's who don't deliver the $$$'s get replaced . For a while now there have been activities carried out in a way as to be described as"ETHICAL" investments and corporations are being asked by shareholders about risk exposure NOT declared in the annual reports. It's called responsibility and not conceiling facts and LIABILITIES affecting the operation of the company longer term. Often these improvements are "reactive " rather than responsibly anticipated. You can get a race to the bottom in cost cutting say wages stripping, repairs and development plant modernisation & research, diversification, consolidation etc Nev

In some ways you might say that's what's happened with Aged Care Facilities, with medical staff able to get through all their daily work in a couple of hours, so only paid for a couple of hours so go to casual basis at four locations and take on four casual jobs to make an 8 hour day, but I bet we find that wasn't what killed the people in itself because even with that working model you could prevent cross-contamination.

Yeah I would have though RAaus would have required demonstrated competency on flown type of CoG calcs.

If you're teaching someone to fly and giving him a Certificate the buck stops with you. The last time I did a Chain of Responsibility check RAA had the duty of care to train the pilots on Performance and Operations including W&B and the RAA structure was incomplete in terms of Compliance and Enforcement so the Flying Instructors were the ones who had direct responsibility for that formal training and assessment.

Over many many years now, there has been a steady running down of the public service and the substitution of permanent employee with contract workers.

As I understand it, this is part of what we have come to know as the "market economy".

The basis of the market economy is (public) demand will dictate policy & direction because this is what people will pay for. The problem with this is it is a bit like an automatic transmission in that it reacts to historic inputs but has no way of seeing the hill (up/down) ahead to start to change gears. so as to be well configured for the challenge to come. Our public service now has a long lag/response time to novel situations, applying inappropriate responses to the challenge of the day.

Perhaps CV-19 will be a wake up call to western governments that , the basis of many philosophy's/systems may be sound but the extreme application (to all situations) is rarely so ie common sense (a rare commodity amongst our leaders) should prevail.

The governments saw that in the 1980s and withdrew from many activities where they knew they were sitting ducks and could never keep up with the fast moving private sector.

One very interesting byproduct was that the private companies themselves were slower as corporate bodies than many people think, so there are some blurry corners.

When it became obvious that Covid-19 was raging through the common denominator or aged care homes, one of the owners very publicly castigated the Federal government for not being up to speed with regulations, not realising the prescriptive era had finished 30 years before and the flames might be blowing in his direction soon.

The mum was 92....... and the son is suing for HIS stress and anxiety.....ffs....

Check the law.

.....changed course and was now headed for Blue Lake Lodge on Arthur.

The Blue Lake had been on Arthur for five years now, and Arthur didn't like it one little bit. "A couple of gays from Toowoomba built it", he said "right over me leg when I was fishing".

"We thought it was just log" said Gavin, who was the smart one "How did we know he was there" added Alastair, who was string in one direction with one eye but looking at you with the other.

The NES crew decided to free Arthur who by now........

The first Covid-19 Public Liability lawsuit has occurred with lightning speed; this story covers the initial details for those who want to follow the case and learn from it.

We can't discuss this specific case now, but remember the plaintiffs have to prove that a duty of care was owed to the patient for a reasonable forseeable risk and that duty of care had to have been breached for the lawsuit to be successful.

Victoria's death toll over the past few weeks has been primarily from people who were infected in Aged Care facilities, so the claims are not likely to be in the region of a 20 year old made a quadriplegic in an accident where the eventual payout might be over $11 million. Most of these people were approaching the end of their lives, but all were dearly loved by someone, and none of them got a normal funeral with all their friends present, so we are about see over the next few years how Australians value their parents and grandparents.

WQ10152.pdf

$417.00 per lesson? How much is flying hours and how much briefing? Assume 1 hour flying Aircraft cost $140.00, Instructor 1 hour $50.00, Briefing say 30 minutes and debrief 20 minutes, $40.00, landing/airport fees say $25.00. So the total is now $255.00 plus GST $25.50 & we are up to $280.50. These costs I reckon are generous so the rest is extortion. Our local school charges $200.00/hour including briefings etc in a Jab 160 & I thought that was expensive.

In marketing there's something known as the Walmart Principle and it goes something like this:

For every $5.95 product in a Walmart store the gross profit is 3 cents.

Most small businesses would be costing for a gross of $3.00, so assuming they could buy at the same price as Walmart, their sell price would be $8.92, but they can'y buy at that rate so their retail would be around $9.99. and they will all tell you Walmart can't be making any money selling for $5.95.

Walmart explained the principle once - the compounding effect of volume: For every $5.95 product in their stores, because they had so many stores and because the product was so affordable, they made $1 million net profit, so multiply that by the number of products and it made one of the world's greatest marketing juggernauts.

If you want to see this replicated in Australia, just look at the earnings of Kogan.

What people like Bib Stillwell and Arthur Schutt did was apply the Walmart principle, and created a thriving industry. Some people would argue that was because more people were doing CPL training because there were more openings, but apart from the instructors who were racking up hours for their CPL (and the proportion was about 1 per 30 students, I can't remember the club functions being filled with would-be CPLs.

Yep, I do most of that...

But I just enjoy flying. I know my theory isn't where it needs to be - there is a reason I chose not to study after yr12, I don't have the ability to self motivate.

I can only fly certain days due to work, so I take whatever Instructor is available, whatever the weather is.

I know I could have soloed sooner, my first was at 30 hours... probably would have been 25 if I was only with the one instructor. But I find I pick-up something different from each one, and often they focus on a different aspect.

I duplicate hours because I take time between lessons, often a week or two. sometimes a month - in which case I request to just play around in the training area for a lesson to get the feeling back. Ive got 40 hours over 18 months+

 

Ive had an instructor or two recently say at the end of the lesson that its all about competency now, just have to build it up - and that takes time and practice.

there is no set time/method. Plus they are going beyond the RAA requirements, as they expect most students to move into the GA world - so teach/test to prepare for that. can see it in all their resources, often hear the "you wont be tested on this for RAA, but its good to know and understand now"

 

The heartening thing is a few of the small comment's. had an Instructor jump in and remark that he loves flying with me - as its easy for him. He doesn't do much, because I Know what I'm doing.

Also noticed the change in how they talk, now its about polishing things up instead of correcting. quite often will have in instructor jump in that I have flown with for a few months remark that they can see such a change with me being more comfortable.

There's nothing wrong with any of that; my comments were not related to you so much as a convenient spot to put in some points that people can use if they want to lower their costs.

Right now you will be a better pilot than someone who booked a motel near the field for a couple of weeks and got his PC in 25 hours, all in the same weather pattern, at the same field, and most likely on the same runway and pattern.

The most important thing you said, in my opinion, was about the instructor who says he loves flying with you - that says a lot about you as a Pilot.

You can put me down for a cheap vibration measuring setup and also an icing warning. The icing warning would be difficult though. It is not simply cold temperatures but a combination of factors. Still, a carby temperature reading would be interesting... I wonder what temperatures you would normally see?

I'll sell you a carb ice alert, adhesive paper - five bucks.

I see so many advertise it as 25 hours, I know its possible - but wonder what the true average is

That's appallingly irresponsible given that the minimum hours training for a driver's licence in Victoria is 120 hours.

The most ridiculous one I've read here was someone who thought he should be getting a certificate at 16 hours.

Just to get some of the weather varieties will balloon the hours out, but probably save you bending an aircraft trying to land.

If you try different aircraft types instead of mastering one, it takes exponentially more hours.

If you don't focus on your learning tasks or don't prepare for the lesson by being up to date with checks etc your hours balloon out.

If you just take a different instructor each time, your hours will balloon out.

If your paper studies are not ahead of your flying you'll diplicate hours.

I see a lot of students spending thousands of dollars more than they need to by making these mistakes. Although there might be some instructors out there who take advantage of this to pad the Flightline hours, I've never come across one, but plenty of instructors who don't take the student aside and shown him/hr how to make a plan.

...........the sound of Ba ba ba Barbra Anne (and that was just the sound coming from the exhaust of the Beaver. Their destination was Cradle Lake, but fate ...................

..........Orchestra. When they played Rhapsody in Blue it was just black though, and was quickly sponsored by the dar web.

Bull's activities were soon picked up by Epaulette who was a bad influence and hung out at the Sandy Bay Diner where the dudes met every Saturday night and often went off for night flights in formation, pitch black or not, One night ..........

Turbo in the Acting phase of his career:

Do RAAus have any requirement for its pilots to understand and be able to work out C of G weight and balance.

A friend today who flies a high wing plastic fantastic RAAus plane asked me about C of G. He had taken a heavy friend flying and when he came in to land he couldn't get enough up elevator and landed nose down. No damage he thinks. He asked me if the regulations allow him to get the elevator settings changed. I cannot remember exactly what his plane is, but the Aussie agent is in Melbourne. He commented that he has never been able to get a stall, full up elevator and closed throttle results in a high rate of descent. The plane is LSA, so I told him it probably wouldn't be possible to alter anything, but he ought to check the actual deflection of the elevator. The pilot and passenger sit forward and fuel is further aft, as is luggage. Must find out what the plane is

When you were flying in a paddock maybe, but if you want to enter CASA airspace you need to complete your Performance and Operations obligations, which include W&B before each flight. We've lost a lot of pilots through incorrect W&B which could have been easily fixed with a calculator, fuel exhaustions etc.

.....ReadNecks like Bull's neighbour #13201 Forest Clump who was used to smoky bars, sawdust on the floor, and was a mean guitar player. So mean in fact that someone threw a bottle and knocked out his front teeth.

Which brings up an interesting Point; not many people know that Cappy at one stage was one of the best guitar players in the world. So good in fact that he was invited on the the Louisiana Hayride to play one of his Hee Haw songs. (Which is where today's "Yee Hah" comes from). In those years Cappy went under the stage name of Roy Clark. Johnny Cash later copied this song and took it to the world, probably because he sang it without the Hee Haw clown act which.........