turboplanner

I wouldn't get too excited about the theories and claims of those days;  the US manufacturers were trying to convert people into believing flying was as simple as getting in, turning the key on and being 600 miles away in 4 hours.  In Australia Arthur Schutt used to fly in to any farm that had decent size paddocks and try to sell the owner a Cessna.

I’m not surprised at the RAA figures because they match what I’m seeing out and about. One Moorabbin based flying school has over 30 Foxbat/Vixen on the line and that may be more than Bob Stillwell’s Civil training fleet from the GA heyday.  Lot of training = more average hours per aircraft also. RAA May have started to shift from owner/operators to the more conventional aircraft hire. For these people around an hour a week is the most they can afford/make time for.

I had to deal with it with passengers in boats and had good success in telling them to keep their eyes up to the horizon so they couldn’t see any part of the boat. Their bodies quickly adjusted to what their eyes were seeing.

Not so clear cut in an aircraft because we want to look down, but better than being fixated on the instrument panel, cowl or seatback.

........."I named him with sympathy and compassion after a well-known Greek family with links to aviation."

Not many people know that it was not the Wright Brothers who built the first aircraft to fly, but Daedalus Drogynedes, a Greek fish and chip shop owner. He designed a set of wings made from feathers and stuck them to his arms with wax.

Daedalus had a son Icarus Drogynedes and taught him how to fly but warned him not to fly too high because the hot sun would melt the wax, or too low because the feathers would get wet in the sea and lose their lift.

[Fact: these two logical and well-founded safety regulations were the base on which all CASA decisions and regulations are formulated today]

Nobody really knows what they did to upset the Government of the day, but they were locked up in a tower so high that the Officer in charge used to say, I’d like to see someone jump out of THAT!”

Daedalus got a job in the prison kitchen, where he had to pluck the geese for meals and separate the beeswax from the honeycomb, and soon they jumped out of the window and were on their way.

Icarus, like all sons, and some current pilots, thought rules were for wankers and flew higher and higher, and sure enough the wax melted and he fell into the sea and drowned.

This area was later named the Icarus Sea and a nearby island named Icaria (now YICA), and of course the world’s Peak Aviation Body was named ICAO.

The Captain was so overcome that Turbo had given him this famous name that he forgot...................

 

There is no known event where a Jabiru engine was grounded by a coolant leak. 

 

Probably because it isn’t water cooled Bruce.

Why do people perceive a need greater than standard motor vehicle?   Serious question.  

 

If if you can take a ton of steel at 60kph+ within a couple of metres of pedestrians in a car why set higher limits for outside control airspace where risk is mostly to you and your 1 passenger? 

 

So on top of the issue that any medical is an on the day test I really do do not see the benefit to actual risk that higher limits bring. 

 

That question needs to be asked of people with medical qualifications and people who have an understanding of the existing regulations and each complex variation, so probably a DAME and an Aviation Lawyer working together.

Just throwing it open of a forum is likely to result in one of the circular, but useless arguments that just confuse more people.

For example, in a recent discussion someone queried the need for colour blindness tests, citing traffic lights where everyone knows the top one is red and the bottom one is green. When I pointed out that you needed to be able to identify whether the tower was giving you a red or a green (and there would be no traffic light stack), I think you were one of the responders who gave an example or a work-around. HOWEVER, and this is my point, I have no idea whether that was the only time colour becomes important, and most likely it is not; the various instrument gauges being a good example, and if someone then says: "well you can quickly become familiar with where the red sectors are or where the red and where the green lights are" that fails as soon as you get in another aicraft, or as an instructor did to me not so long ago, told me to land a 172 at the turn on to final from the right seat, where I only had limited vision of a layout I'd never flown before. 

Wow! That is a pretty serious criticism and news that a motion to tell CASA to back off is in train.

 

Senator Rex Patrick quote:

“CASA has an over-regulation issue, so much so that the Government is progressing a bill through the Parliament that legally requires CASA to treat safety as primary, but be mindful of the need to maintain a healthy industry”

That’s what Rex says, not necessarily what the bill will say, but regardless, that’s basically what the industry has been requesting for a long time, so not unexpected.

I wouldn’t go as far as giving the statement a wow or inferring it is a bill to tell CASA to back off, because CASA will always have a legal obligation in respect to the Aviation regulations.

Quote attributed in Daniel Keane’s ABC News story to the Angel Flight CEO:

“…no mention of ATSB’s failure to investigate the circumstances leading up to the accident prior to the arrival at Mount Gambier….”

This is the link to the final ATSB Report

https://www.atsb.gov.au/media/5776600/ao-2017-069_final.pdf

She may be referring to something before this final sector of the inbound flight, but this is what happened according to ATSB during the approach and landing:

Ref ATSB AO-2017-069  Figure 2

Note that there’s no evidence of a rectangular circuit pattern.

…after approaching the airport, made a series of turns at about 200’ AGL..

..conducted a go round after touching down on Runway 36…..climb back into cloud….

…called going round for Runway 24…….landed on 29

This and the subsequent take-off on 24 may well get a lot more scrutiny if the family decide to sue.

I wonder if the Instructor in that incident where the first lesson student had to land the plane had any forewarning that of the medical incident that would happen during that flight?

 

Was it just a case of "You never know when your number will come up"?

 

That's similar to what I was saying, and only the instructor has the answer to that, however I wouldn't go on a vendetta against the instructor. There is a clear weakness with self-reporting under the CASA system, but rather than go up several scales to a Class 2, I think, for 600 KG MTOW, the long established motor racing benchmark of a series of passes in nominated tests would both match what happens now with self- reporting (if the pilot is disclosing fully) i.e. no more stringent than what is supposed to be happening now, eliminate failure to declare, or false statements, and most importantly, not throw unreasonable liability on to the Doctor (since he's simply noting a pass/fail on standard tests).

......you're going under the knife and your little green apples will ne used for salad at the local Flying Club (avref), where they don't know.......

It would be handy though to be able to transit through CTR & perhaps stop on occasions for fuel or food or even as a destination. I just do not understand why it is perceived as a major problem. 

 

It's not a problem; some Flying Schools operate RA aircraft in CTA, so the student is qualified before solo and the aircraft meet the standard.

What a few people want is to be able to do it in their non-comforming aircraft and without the training and approval module.

If there are such pilots hopefully they are flying single seat or with another pilot. The stats on RAAus dont show a problem with self declaration. 

 

It's a grey area. There are plenty of people who are incapacitated without any prior warning. Stroke/heart attack fit ito that category.

There are also plenty of people who die suddenly, but either were told they needed corrective action by their doctor, or knew what the problem was and thought they'd go to hospital "if the pain got really bad"

I had an experience with a race driver dying on the track in front of me. He really wanted to win, and before the race had told me he'd had another driver test the car and it was right up to speed, so tonight he was going to have to put the pressure on himself to do better, and he did, getting up to the front of the field, but then down went his head and the car rolled to a stop with him dead. He and the family knew he had a heart problem.

I've been involved in other high risk situations where the driver/pilot has been found to have had a heart attack, but it's not clear whether the heart attack caused the crash or the crash process caused the heart attack.

The stats on RAAus aren't released so we don't actually know whether there's a problem or not, but plenty of aircraft have gone down out of control over the years.

The solution in the past in motor racing has been for a person to  hand over the organisation's Medical Form to a doctor of his choice, who then tests him in accordance with the form.  The Doctor is not pronouncing him safe to fly, just providing the result for each test, so the Doctor's liability is no different to you or I just asking him for a check. The temptation for the person being checked to not report, or provide misleading information is greatly reduced also.

However, as I said earlier, we are not being asked by CASA to come up with new medical standards.

If there was no requirement for a medical do you think that those who know they have a problem and therefore don't try to get a medical, would not just declare they are fit and go fly.

 

Ironically RAA pilots today are safe and secure within the self-stated car licence requirement, and there are many aircraft they can choose to go flying in legally.

Will they be overweight with a passenger and full fuel? Yes of course just the same as the next biggest and the next biggest and the next biggest aircraft where someone wants to operate with full passengers and full range flight. At every level there is a flight planning compromise to be made which can usually be fixed by dropping 1 passenger or shortening the legs for more fuel stops.

In this case it looks like the people who want to do this by changing the rules will certainly shoot themselves in the foot and get a taste of the tougher standards in GA, and as someone said, that might knock out half the pilots, leaving a very small rump of 760 kg pilots and a hopelessly small market for some of the people who, it has been suggested want 760 kg so they can import and sell bigger aircraft.

When people push for changes like this, and in such a sloppy unprofessional manner, mistakes can happen, misunderstandings can occur, and it wouldn't be the first time that a group of people were left outraged and being squeezed out of their comfort zone and into an unworkable mess, only to be told "That's what your organisation campaigned for; that's what you got."

..........but he was a fraction too late.

Turbo's vice-like grip had him by the leg and dragged him back into the surgery. "I've just been told the Tyro's [long overdue avref] overweight so I'm going to have to choose Eunich" he said, and if I have to, you're going to have the same conversion, even........

.....agenda.......

I prefer to look for practical workarounds rather than putting absolute rules in place when not required.   

 

No one is puttting any new rules in place.

Is the inability to discern colour really important in operating a machine? How to colour-blind people know what colour a traffic light is? 

 

If your radio is out or the tower has a radio failure, the Controller is going to give you a green light to land, or if there's a hazard (which you may not have noticed) a red light to go round.

So you need to be able to determine red from green.

.....but he got no further because Mavis had just lifted her head above the Bain Marie ( not related to Marie Celeste, Defence Minister) and the look of venom in her eyes would have made a prize fighter wet himself (as Captain regularly did). “NEVER” use that term about Turbo AGAIN!” She said and the sphincter of everyone in the terminal cafe tightened, because they knew this was as bad as serving a sponge cake without a cake fork. “I ........”

All I'm saying Pete is that Bex would have been digging himself into an ever increasing hole by starting the project off in Sketchup, its just not the right software package for designing a plane, great for furniture.

 

What's the best software package?

..Hi Ho Silver, who needs to get his spurs moving.

But the CA official wouldn't be swayed. "everyone says that" he said,"but how come you've got a price tag on the clock tower?"

"Have I? "asked the Captain, quite surprised himself and blanched as he started to feel another tower coming; how could he get out of this one.

"I'm against price tags per say" [Turbo is picking up on the modern changes to the English language on this forum, also rejecting the Latin phrase "per se" even though he is fluent in Latin]

The Captain turned back to the CA official, and with a sweet smile, said "I'm an official at this airport, could you show me your ASIC card please?"

"My what?" the CA official asked, somewhat less sure of himself and was taking a step backwards, behind the fence, when.....

There we were, the missus and me, going past Wangaratta on the Hume highway when the fuel pump on the Falcon quit.

 

Much later, I told the repair guy that if the car had been a plane, I would just have switched on the second fuel pump. His reaction was that 90% of his customers would just have continued with the backup pump for years until that one failed too.

 

The Falcon fuel pump just has a cheap brush-motor and lives inside the fuel tank. Amazing that they don't explode, the mixture there is too rich I guess.

 

The service guy was right.

Going back to an electric pump and fitting in inside the fuel tank doen't make much sense to me either, but General Motors do it as well in the US.

I would have thought the cam/mechanical one was much cheaper and much more reliable, but that's the way they went. Maybe it provides some more space in the engine bay, or maybe with electronically controlled common rail injection a more variable rate of fuel supply pressure is needed.

This fuel pump location cause a mid-air explosion in a US airline off the east coast of the US some years ago, when an electrical arcing took place above in the space above the fuel level.

....change in the Captain. An IE carge would never have worried him in the past; he’d drop it out anywhere. Turbo gave him a Bible and an old Drifter to do up after he’d expressed a liking for the old rag and bone machines, and he was freshly showered and dressed and busy fixing a seat cushion when....

...moment Turbo walked up with a couple of McDonalds vouchers and two free passes to the next Southland fashion show, and whisked the Captain away.

"I'm just stumbling from one disaster to the next these days" he wailed, and Turbo wondered whether it was early onset of....

....got a bag of......., but an FOI just happened to be......

...gets involved in.

The CASA Operative (CO=avref term) thought about it all day and then did what all Cos did when they had to make a decision; he went home and told his mother.

Now not many people know that terms like "brown bagging" and inference of money in a bag for favours originated in the 1920s when CWA members would but a penny in their little child's lunch bag so he could buy at treat of a Liquorice Square at the school tuck shop. It was as innocent as that, and when sundry gangsters such as Squizzy Taylor, Loxette Snr, and Captain Midnight started using the terms the CWA ladies were outraged; and the CO's mother was a paiud up membere of the CWA. She.......

Selection of Hazel nuts, Pine nuts, Betel Nuts, Cashew Nuts, and of course Pea nuts, that all top aviators carry in their food sacks. Aviators always protect their health, because they only have to sneeze, cough or trip over a dog lying on the floor for a Code Blue alarm siren to go off in CASA HQ. In fact once Turbo only......