turboplanner

The Captain had been on his diet of concrete pills for a week when............

Turbs, you were right about one thing but wrong on the main point.

 

Yes there are worse airspace safety issues than the one I complained about. Flying from abeam Warwick to Watts Bridge , much of the flight was done at uncomfortably low levels and, looking up, there was nobody using the airspace which would have made me safe.

 

As far as seeking to interfere with airliners approaching 23 at Adelaide, you are so wrong that I suspect malicious aforethought. 

 

If you reread my submission and posts of the time, it is transparently obvious that there would be absolutely no effect on airlines if they implemented my suggestion. The only difference would be that VFR planes would have sufficient time and glide distance to find a safe place to do an emergency landing.

 

Why is this so studiously ignored?  We get the safety word used when they find it convenient but not otherwise?  At least turbs you came out with an easily refuted objection, the powers that be simply have not replied.

 

No malice aforethought; I don't make the decision anyway. Just pointing out the futility of what you want to achieve. It's a little like saying "I want to be authorised to exceed the speed limit so I can get home earlier."

Re your assertion of no effect on airlines:

I was referring to your proposal for 5500' at 30 Nm DME which is still on the public record.

VOR approach for Adelaide Airport Runway 23 is <3800 feet at 15 DME

It's difficult enough for say a student in a Baron coming in  at a steady let down not below 4500', let alone having an Adelaide-only 5500 minimum to deal with at 6 Nm from the 8500' step, both with their heads down focusing on instruments.

You make a point about wanting to glide to a landing in a non-CTA approved aircraft, but already there's a log of incidents for the existing CTA (See Adelaide Airport Infringement Hotspots, and there are at most CTA airports; not all people follow the rules, not all people are mistake-free.

I was amazed a few years ago at the number of Airprox incidents involving just Dash 8 aircraft around Australia, primarily at regional airports where you'd think it would be hard to get into trouble.

Further Special Notice: Who could not help but forgive the Captain for his mistakes; in fact this statement hereinafter applies to any post he makes, just in case he keeps up his indiscretions. Captain has often been called the Donald Trump of Rec Fline, but we are no Nancy Pelosis.

Who are we to judge if someone is still wetting his pants in his senior years, or eyeing off the female staff in McDonalds when he has his morning coffee, or ........

I can't see how access to CTA would be done without charging some or all of us for our share of the cost of the entire system. But I completely agree how staying out of CTA forces us into unnecessary dangerous situations.

 

What I would like to see is corridors enabling VFR to safely come and go from their home bases without using CTA at all. We only fly in clear weather during daylight so see and be seen plus our standard radio procedures  would work just fine.

 

And we could fly with enough height to have the time and glide distance to cope safely with an engine failure.

 

If you are still talking about flying into the let down flight path for 23 at Adelaide Airport, forget it.  The Airport is now an International Airport with foreign pilots flying in from other parts of the world.

Thousands of light aircraft manage to find safe routes around it every year, and the diversion time is still probably better than in the east coast cities.

Coincidentally, at a meeting this week of an Association I'm in we had a visit from a Barrister who respresented us successfully in a recent case, and he was outlining what affected groups should and shoudn't do when controversial Planning issues arise, such as residential and industrial encroachment, in this case in Melbourne's open spaces, but also applying to all peri-urban (open space around the edges of cities and towns) all over Australia.

Comments in blue are his comments; comments in black are mine.

Doesn’t think the solution to incursions will be the Legal process

(the Legal process is whether the Application meets what is written in the Planning Scheme applying to the location; The Political process is whether the State Government will strengthen Uses and/or Planning processes to prevent unwanted erosion of these areas.)

This is a very important point for us, because he's telling us if we want to protect these airfields from sneaky business or the argy bargy of short term knee jerks from Councils, the best way to fix it in the longer term is to make the Planning Scheme Airfield Use much more bullet proof.

Probably the most important point made on the night.

Melbourne needs open spaces, but the Government didn’t buy the land.

The problem now is that Melbourne has changed.

Major zonings have held off development, but pressure is now on to take those open space uses and use them in Urban settings (houses and factories)

The Planning System is ad hoc and reactive

With each inappropriate development approved in the open spaces they get less open

Airfields will need to approach State Government to protect their patch. One big blunder which has occurred over and over again is that when Planning/Development Applications were made for airfields they only applied for the property footprint, not the flight circuit, and that allowed people to come in and build houses under the circuit and then make a strong Amenity case agains the airfield.

What can stakeholders do?

1.     Show up; there’s a chance of winning. Even by losing you’re there. The Council becomes aware of the pressure.

2.     Have a good relationship with the decision-makers, e.g. the Council Officers, the Councillors, the Minister for Planning.

3.     Talk only about the Planning Scheme and the Land. Talk about the and itself and what is the future of the land.

4.     If you lose, get to the Council and change the attitude.

5.     The threat will be the Open Space Uses in a Melbourne with more than 5 million people.

6.     Town Planning argument is in 2019 demand for affordable housing, education, religion, particularly where there is a need for large spaces.

7.     Confining these Uses and/or redefining them for greater protection is a Political problem, not a Planning problem.

Arguing about definition of Uses in a planning case is not productive.

8.     Cumulative effect is not a good argument. Drawing in similar incursions which have occurred in Open Spaces tend to make this Application more likely to succeed.

9.     If you only have an objection to part of the Application, accentuate that and say you accept the rest. It shows that thought has been given to the Application. It may force the Applicant to run a Conditions Case at the Appeals Tribunal where the Applicant is locked in to only being able to talk about the condition you objected to.

10.  Don’t elevate one part of the Planning Scheme over others; you’ll usually come unstuck.

11.  If there will be an Amenity loss, have the people direcftly affected personally attend the meetings/CAT and make the statement; that way it carries a lot of weight.

......throw all the pressure on to Turbo, who called up the CO and said “We found 87 deficiencies in your security system and another 47 faults in the M61s. How about we return the guns after tomorrow night with a confidential report for your eyes only and the guns all fixed?. Minister Marie Celeste doesn’t need to know.

“That’s an offer I can’t refuse; you’re a genius Turbo!” he replied.

….the Captain’s six oil tankers had entered the South China Sea area and were almost abeam Fiery Cross Reef.

General Ho Lee had identified them and his destroyer now had its name blacked out and had been called to General Quarters.

“We’ll have to go now” Turbo told Nobushi “we need to disable the destroyer and we also have to get the guns back to the RAAF.

“It daylight!” Nob pointed out.

“Not a problem” said Turbo, I’ll send Agent Sol Lee on to the destroyer and get her to organise early morning exercises to music on the aft deck. You’ll be taking off from the opposite end of the runway, so they won’t see you, and the way she plays music, they won’t hear you, and you’ll have your Turbine Geofencing, supplied by Turbine Corporation which will jam all electrics. “How we get Sol Lee off?” asked Nob. “Now’s not the time to talk about that…..oh I see what you mean; we’ll take her off in the Tyro.

In addition to the guns, the Corsairs now had the Iranian missiles on board, and at the insistence of Nob, some of the old WW2 bombs.

He had insisted on leading the attack and his strategy was a near vertical dive on the ship so momentum would carry the bombs directly to the ship. It was the South Africans who pointed out the necessity of a sharp pull up before the aircraft hit the water. “Funny, we were never trained for that” said Nob.

Once they heard the loud music from the other end of the Island they started the engines and the big 2800 hp Pratt and Whitneys banged, sawed and spluttered into life. The Corsair had been described by Nob as like a Jabiru with 28 engines and although the aircraft were carrying a huge load those big props would have no trouble hauling them into the air.

Nob had a disdain or such things as GPS based systems. “I use eyes” he said, that what God gave them to me for, and immediately peeled off into a dive, letting his bombs go at the last minute. The whistle of the Corvair on the way down put fear into all the Chinese on the island.

“JESUS NOB YOU HIT ONE OF OUR TANKERS!” yelled Fanie, “what……….”

Previous RAA President who needs it [showing how generous Turbo is], which doesn’t happen very often, but....

TP,

 

I have no disagreement with what you have written, as for this statement:

 

for better or worse, we members have a penchant for shooting from the lip. If we relied on the facts of a matter, these threads would dry up faster than a nylon shirt on a hot day.

 

Well I can't disagree with that, because I'm one of the people who speculates.

What I was trying to get at was the subtle difference between that, and someone representing something they got third hand, or told by a mate etc. as official fact, when by doing something as simple as going on a Council website they can link to the exact fact.

I don't disagree that even irrelevant discussions can help with another airport somewhere, just trying to get the actual facts on this one.

 

TP, as for most discussion of risk evaluation, the case studies are mostly based on "worst case" scenarios with a good does of subjectivity thrown in, as M61A1 said.

 

My question was whether anyone had anything in writing about whether the potential airfield closure was about:

(a)  An unacceptable level of risk at the airfield, (as asserted by a press report), OR

(b)  Agistation by developer/residents who want to build around/on the airfield. (as asserted by a couple of people from hearsay.

I suspect that answer is no, so everyone has started to go off in different directions on their favourite themes (and I admit I often do that myself)

If it's (a) there should be documents available from the Council which can be read and discussed and answered by the airfield stakeholders.

So far I've seen nothing from the Council or the Airfield operators.

If it's (b) there will be plenty of consultation material from the Council about any proposal or location.

So far nothing has surfaced.

Too often we've had debates on here that have raged for weeks over something that was never going to happen, or we haven't been given critical facts which might have helped us save another airport.

There's nothing wrong with talking about risk evaluation etc. but it's pointless if (and I'm not saying this is the case here) a Council has issued several warnings for an Airport to address known safety issues (ie beyond doubt), and/or cover their operations with a suitable insurance policy, and been met with a brick wall, for months or years. In that case it's also none of our business.

So...

 

If there are 10,000 members

 

And we sell 1750 annual subscriptions to the paper version paying an average of $44pa

 

And it costs $72k to generate content and put into electronic form

 

And it costs an additional $140k to print and post the paper versions

 

Then

 

Members are paying $7.20 per year from membership fees to get a "digital magazine" that is NOT designed as digital mag but is instead an electronic form of a print mag (not the same thing at all) 

 

Members are paying $6.30 per year from membership fees to not get a paper magazine

 

In total each member is paying $13.50 towards the magazine

 

If this is correct then around 10% of the  member fee $131 is being used to provide each member with a digital magazine that is not designed to be a digital magazine!

 

I use the non-flying member fee as the last we knew the difference between the two was supposed to be insurance costs

 

If we are now at a point where we need to address the subsidy to the paper mag then I think its time to:

 

1. go back to printed paper for all and acknowledge that this is expensive and either number of mags per year must reduce or costs in membership goes up (or maybe both - I do not know the break even and cost steps that exist fro print and post on this area) ; or

 

2. we go to digital ONLY and change the production and layout to be a true digital only publication; or

 

3. abandon a 'magazine' and invest in a digital stories and information repository with a "publication" front end so people could access the full history of content as a database of documents but still have a 'latest months' content update

 

In my iopinion we cannot keep going as we are.

 

But I did not get any survey monkey link so I am not someone RAAus consider they need information from.

 

The purpose of an Association magazine is to reach outside the current membership and bring in new members (= lowers cost, creates more buyers of the Associations product (i.e. aviation products).  The income should exceed the cost albeit that income is going to suppliers, airfields, function organisers etc. but that cash flow oils the gears that make the Association run better.

With electronic publishing the lead time is cut by a month or more, so there's an opportunity for the Association to publish timely news reports, upcoming events etc and "get into" their community. There will always be some members who think the "magazine" is just for them to read about their Association, and in particular in paper format, but preaching to the converted is not what the Association should be doing, converting new members instead leads to a very healthy and cashed up Association. There are pplenty of excellent sites such as this one to catch up on events and trends and daily aviation life.

At least with this magazine, we've had several years to see the cost impacts, quality and quantity of information coming from RAA and make a pretty good judgement.

.....Captain Cook hat under his arm in a vain attempt to bolster his confidence.

"I can spot an injection moulded 54 from a mile off" said Turbo "and have a look on the side of the barrel - it says 'made in China'.

The Captain couldn't resist a look. In a lightning move Turbo snatched both the hat and the evil gun off the gin- soaked old sod, and put him to bed.

The next morning...........

Does anyone have any specific details in writing of either of the above scenarios.

There's not a lot of point trying to do something, just based on hearsay.

Let's get behind the Boonah flying community on this one.

 

Did people not notice the existing airfield when they built houses under the flight path?

 

You should have read the story more carefully; residents WANT the airfield.

The problem is a Safety Audit, and not surprisingly the Council's reaction is that if there's no airfield, the risk falls back to zero.

This will not be fixed by a call to arms, but an examination of how applicable the Audit was to an aviation operation, whether there were formal safety procedures in place, whether there were any infringements, and whether the PL insurance cover was adequate for those risks.

If the answers were YES, NO and YES then the Council should be able to move on without disturbing the airfield participants because it has discharged its obligations.

It's as simple as that.

If there have been multiple near misses and risk taking, that can be addressed.

If the insurance is inadequate, that can be addressed and so on.

This needs logical people face to face with Councillors and Officers.

.......said "How could you do it?  How could you rob our country of it's defence equipmenty, you, you, you (he once was a drinking mate of Joh's"

"Calm yourself down" said Turbo, "I took them out of the Hornets to save your oil tankers"

"You're such a loyal friend" replied the Captain in his best oily tone as he quickly slipped the handgun out of sight "the RAAF won't miss them for a few days until......

[special Note to NES readers: You'll notice on this thread that not only do you get more aviation references than on other threads, but the rate of unfolding scandals is greater than any of the TV reality shows. We've ony just finished hearing about the Captain's ancestor Captain Cook (where ASIO prevented Turbo frpom exposing the horrendous deeds under threat of incarceration), but now we find the family were just common bushrangers!]

......but there was a grating sound and the whole apparatus slid to the ground.

Turbo patiently explained that he had the gun and ammunition situation all under control but hadn't wanted to disappoint the Captain and Hosland, who had made a very good effort.

“The guns used on the Corsair are no longer made and all the old WW2 guns were sold to the Japanese to be melted down to make Toyotas; they got us in the end.” he said.

“I’ve managed to get M61 20 mm cannons, and they’re old enough to fit the Corsair mounts and there’s enough space to allow me to use a Honda generator for the power supply”

Captain, already miffed, said “I’ve never heard of them!”

“Well”, said Turbo, “they’re older than you. The M61 was built in 1946, first ground-fired in 1949. Went into service in 1959. In fact it uses patents developed by Richard Gatling in 1893.

“It first went to war in F-100 Super Sabres in Vietnam, pulled out of them and fitted to the F104 Starfighter, pulled out of them and used in the F-4 Phantom II, the F111, the F15E Strike Eagle, the F16, and the F/A18 Hornet.

“Although they spray a lot of lead they are notoriously difficult to set up for accurate fire, and around the time of the Sabres the armourers suggested to the US Defence forces that all aircraft should carry an armourer, and he should have command of the aircraft. The high command ruled this out on the grounds of too much risk, but decided the armourers should stay in service for life once they learnt how to re-calibrate the guns for accuracy, but the armourers are still bitching about not being in command, and some of them are in their late ‘90s.”

“Where did you get the guns?” asked Hosland.

If you go to Point Cook, replied Turbo, "you’ll see one on display, and if you look very closely you’ll see the grain of the balsa wood, and for the rest, let’s just hope the RAAF don’t decide to test fire their local Hornets, because…….

.....but time waits for no man and as Hosland was looking at his posterior there was activity in Cowra.  The aircraft had been assembled, and while looking a little rag tag, it being necessary to use parts from several different models, they looked roughly like Corsairs.

None of the pilots had flown a Chance Vought Corsair. “It’s just laik gitting on a Horse” said Fanie, “thar all the seim”.

“Bullshut” said Eye Bolt.

“Since no one else been in Naval battle, I will fly the first attack and prove tactics” said Nob.

“How are you on your landings?” asked Arnie rather cruelly.

“But you mussed the shep and that’s how you’re here” said Eye Bolt with that unique NZ diplomacy.

As much as flying a Brumby at some hessian stretched along a road could be considered battle training, Nob judged they were ready and Turbo took them in his cruiser to the Captain’s Holiday Shack, which was difficult because Cowra wasn’t on the coast.

They arrived just as the first Corsair was completed, and Nob decided he would do the start up in the dark, so another concert was organised by Soll Lee.

The Corsair was rolled out on to the sand, and Nob started looking very serious; he’d managed to find his old Imperial Japanese flying suit, and the white head band marked by a red dot, representing the pilot’s contribution in blood for the emperor, and with the Japanese characters “Namba Wun”

[Turbo warns international travellers to be careful of Japanese humour. He once travelled to Japan with a training group. The instructor explained the huge significance of the white head band and it was passed around for all to take their turn putting it on. “We will give to the winner with tea ceremony’ said the instructor.

Turbo didn’t win that day but took a photo of the successful trainee with the historic head band on.

When he returned to Australia and showed his photos to the resident Japanese they fell about laughing. “It say dickhead!” they roared.]

Nobushi squinted his eyes, primed the engine, and pressed the starter, and the big13 feet 4 inch Hamilton prop began to revolve, and revolve, and revolve.

“GIVE UT SOME FUEL”  yelled Eye Bolt, and Nob could be seen furiously pumping.

Suddenly there was a BANG!!!!! And fifty thousand Goony Birds rose from the small trees.

“SSSSSHHHHHH!! Said the Captain

Then the big Pratt and Whitney fired on one of its 8 cylinders and gradually they all came on line.

Tomorrow they would fit the guns and bomb racks and……..

Corsair start up and flight

There are two approved devices that qualify for the rebate scheme and neither of them are roll cages (the Quadbar Flexi and the ATV Lifeguard).

 

I agree with your reference about tractors but who was talking about tractors?

 

The point I was making was that rebate schemes and safety benchmarks are not necessarily connected.

They should be, and it may well be that the rebate organisers will be swept into joint responsibility with the designers in certain accidents.

Both the Quadbar Flexi and ATV Lifeguards "prop up" the quad bike when it gets upside down, crushing the rider. however when the quad bike bounces and the rider departs the seat he/she might well be on the ground when the bike inverts and the "anti-crush" device could be the thing that crushes the rider.

The roll cage/seat belt combination was introduced into Fork Lifts and Race cars so in a roll over the driver is retained in his seat where not part of him can come in contact witrh another solid object, or the anti-crush device itself.

Since the focus on Quad bikes was kicked off by the Tasmanian case result, and a Quad bike fatality around the same time, those cases are likely to feature in any Quad Bike accident. The owner/operator makes his her own choice of protection and has to live with it.

However, the original subject was not about design, it was about whether the large number of fatalities in Quad bikes is an acceptable kill rate (a rate of deaths after which something will be done to stop them), and the answer is still No, the acceptable kill rate is zero in Quad bikes just as it is in recreational aircraft.

Those involved in designing and operating them have to work for ways to reduce the chance of a fatality.

....posthumous......

Well that's a typical authoritarian response, but I expect that from you.

 

When you say "none", you mean no legal pathway, but generally no-one cared as long as no-one hurt anyone else.

 

Not authoritarian at all. 

Bruce lamented the loss of freedoms.

I asked what about the AUF and RAA pilots who can now build their own aircraft and fly on a car medical where previously they couldn't unless they obtained a PPL.

We didn't lose freedoms, we gained freedoms.

You're off on some criticism of the current system.

The Victorian Government did no such thing. It simply introduced a rebate scheme for roll bar fitment to NEW quads which could be sold without roll bars (probably because of interstate trade issues).

 

You are seeing less quads as a result of market influences such introduction of the buggies, and yes, the marketplace recognizing the dangers associated with quads. I doubt any farmer new of the Tasmanian case or even if it influenced any on farm decision.

 

You must have missed it.  There have been roll bar rebates for tractors from time to time, but roll bars are still mandatory on tractors.

Roll bars wouldn't work on Quads, they need a roll cage plus seat belt to hold the occupants inside the cage. At the time I'm talking about the SA SES responded by disposing of all their Quad bikes.

So the 136 deaths on quad bikes over the last 8 years weren't an acceptable kill rate? Whilst it is unfortunate that anybody meets an untimely end, society cannot afford, for many reasons, to be so completely risk averse as to not allow people to explore the boundaries of behaviour. Whats next? banning walking because pedestrians get killed?

 

That's correct, there was no acceptable kill rate on quad bikes either, and I think it was the Victorian Government which made itr mandatory for an owner to provide an effective roll cage. (so self-administration plus the owner is responsible for the roll cage being effective, elmininating the government from being responsible if it prescribed a design). We discussed the details on here.  What I'm seeing in the Ag outlets where I go for chainsaws etc. is only a few quad baikes on sale, but more John Deere etc two seater trays with roll cages.  I still see a lot of quad bikes on farms without roll cages, but the owners bear the blame and financial costs when a accident occurs.

We also discussed a prior quad bike accident in Tasmania where a farm employee was awarded $12 million after a quad bike rolled over and a young female employee was killed. Key points in that judgement were maintenance (only the rear brakes were working and one tyre was half flat, and safety, the employer didn't provide a helment.

", but its common to have multiple people working on large documents, "

 

Please change "People" to "Lawyers"

 

and thats accurate for CASA.

 

"What about the 10,000 people who are now free to build their own aircraft and fly it? Couldn’t do that in the prescriptive days."

 

I Beg to differ !.

 

In the OLD UFA, there were NO "wing Load" rule for any builder, Let alone 95 10.

 

No new Hummels to my knowledge ?.

 

The rule of the Bureaucrats.

 

spacesailor

 

I wasn't talking about lawyers, I was talking about many businesses today.

As I recall, Kasper provided the solution for the Hummel.

"Free" as long as you do it how we tell you......Not really "freedom", no-one in this country is really "free".

 

What a load of whining. You really want to go back the prescriptgive days and have NONE???????????

Alas Turbs, you are right about what the government will probably do and yet I lament the loss of freedoms that we face. There is a Benjamin Franklin quote about how those who trade essential freedoms for a bit of safety will finish with neither freedom or safety. The world has some spectacular examples of how true that is, but like most people, we are going to find out the hard way.

 

What about the 10,000 people who are now free to build their own aircraft and fly it? Couldn’t do that in the prescriptive days.

Leaving the MOS until last is unacceptable and is akin to signing a blank document. The Part 103 document refers repeatedly  to the MOS, making it necessary to have both side by side to read and understand the document. It is impossible the make any kind of judgement on the Part 103 document without the MOS as it is meaningless without the MOS.

No it's not; you just read the document as referring to "the MOS".    Over the following year, when the MOS is being developed, everyone knows which parts of the regulation it's to be developed for and will get the chance to see drafts, and comment to ensure it is appropriate for the new Part 103 material.

I'm well aware that the govt shows no signs of changing direction. It concerns me greatly. I see what happens in the Socialist State of Victoria and know that  it is only a matter of time before the cancer spreads elsewhere. Much of it already has.

It's odd that you would say that, because South Australia and Queensland, are well ahead of us in updating standards.