turboplanner

It is normal to do a 6 hour induction just to follow an escort vehicle onto the site then get out of our trucks and stand in a driver safe area whilst the truck is unloaded. (these a simply shipping containers, 4 twistlocks and 1 lift). To most people including myself it is a farce.

The induction is usually a first time only, but in some cases you need to be accredited through a TAFE - I agree not easy for a casual driver/contractor.

What you are describing is an elimination procedure, which guarantees ZERO driver injuries/fatalities at that site.

 

The same procedure applies in car manufacturing where, for example six people may work on the floor pan station, and before the robots start swinging around and rearing up, the bum weight of all six must register of seats away from the action before the process unlocks - guaranteed zero injuries unless they fall off their chair.

 

I would happily impose mining type safety standards on Road Transport but it would bankrupt the country in 5 mins flat. Everything in life is a compromise, we need to ask where the comfortable level between a perfect safety record and affordability stops. ps. As an aside truck drivers deaths in road accidents are not classed as workplace fatalities by any of the state authorities. If the road is not my workplace then I am stuffed if I know what is.

We are getting there with balanced legislation.

 

We now have Fatigue laws, for which I have had to redesign Prime Mover specifications.

 

We now have Chain of Responsibility laws, where the responsibility flows directly up the chain to the person demanding delivery time

 

We now have a lot more parking areas, and so on

 

I just did a very quick and broad comparison of where the truck driver and RA pilot stand in relation to the number of drivers killed per year vs number of vehicles/aircraft registered in that category, 12 months:

 

All vehicles - 593/17 million - 1 per 29,000 vehicles

 

All drivers, Heavy Rigid Trucks - 74/326,000 - 1 per 4,400 trucks

 

All drivers, Articulated trucks - 108/91,000 - 1 per 842 trucks

 

All pilots, RA aircraft - 12/3500 - per 292 aircraft

 

So when you open the door and step in, they are your overall odds for that category

 

 

Well good on him for at least making an effort to comply.

 

 

Sorry I interrupted the mothers club

 

 

I was under the impression that the amount of ethanol had to be advertised.

The Safeway service station I went into yesterday had replaced his 98 pumps with diesel in every lane (catering for the area), and there were no labels on the other pumps.

When I checked online afterwards, I found I'd filled with 10% ethanol in the 95 octane.

 

 

A thread on murdering a dog is about TV licences?

 

 

Yes 95

As I mentioned earlier it depends WHOSE 95.

Some have up to 15% ethanol, some have ethanol some of the time, and all are using it in the price war to keep the sale price per litre down, which is fine for cars but can be deadly for aircraft.

 

 

Only a court can make a finding of guilt in our democratic system and a person is to be regarded as innocent until so proven.

Try getting a speed camera notice in the mail.

Unless you can name another person who was exceeding the speed limit, you pay.

 

 

But how do you police it without seriously hampering the few freedoms we have left

What are these freedoms?

You don't have the freedom to injure or kill someone, and this is what we are talking about.

 

You don't have the freedom to fly below 500 feet, where you could kill yourself and passenger against a powerline.

 

You don't have the freedom to fly into cloud.

 

You don't have the freedom to get lost because you didn't have the necessary navigation equipment on board

 

You don't have the freedom to run out of fuel because you didn't physically check the level, or didn't flight plan.

 

and so on.

 

Compliance and Enforcement supervision strictly relates to those things that can prevent you from being killed.

 

 

I keep hearing these stories of fuel degradation but I havent seen this from personal experience. My chainsaws can have six to 12 month old 2 stroke fuel in them and all I do is top the tank with fresh fuel without removing the old fuel even up the the ratio of 3/4 old fuel and 1/4 new fuel and they start no worries and run like a dream.

That's more or less what BP is saying, but anyone wanting to go down that path in an aircraft needs to get it direct frm BP, particularly the percentages.

 

 

We may not need to pay if we can police ourselves a little more.

I agree, and the recent board action to recruit a specialist is a positive move.

 

No one is saying we need more regulation yet but as you said in post #34 that if we have a big incident the minister would order action. That normally means more regulation. We have plenty of regulation and in many of our accidents those regulations have been ignored.

A big incident often produces knee jerk reactions from the politicians who have no idea what the technical issues are, but know enough not to upset the electorate. The greyhoudn racing industry in Victoria is a good example.

As far as fatalities from ignoring regulations, that is something RAA could work on.

 

 

Now though they have got rid of that and only stock 98, if used straight away or left in A sealed container no problem but I had it in the plane with no flying for just over two weeks and it had developed a horrible green gum in my fuel filters.

It pays to get on the web and read the current specification sheets for that brand of fuel. The last time I checked, several companies were adding ethanol at differing amounts on differing octanes, so you can't be sure you're protected from gumming up just based on the octane figures.

 

I'm not saying your green gum was the result of ethanol, but if it was, you'll find it everywhere there was fuel, ie in the float bowls and lines, and in the very small air galleries.

 

I've heard people say that 98 once the aromatics ect evaporate ends up back as 91

I've heard that too on this forum. On the BP website they say that can happen with their 98, and spell out how that will affect your engine's operation, and recommend topping up with some fresh fuel to help that situation. I won't go into it here, because each application is different, but would recommend you read their website information, and if what they recommend sounds like a good idea for you to save wasting fuel, follow that up with a phone call to a BP technical person, telling them you are using it in an aircraft, just to make 100% sure.

 

 

What we don't have is the cop on the corner keeping and eye out for the 2%.

and eventually we are going to pay for that. Self administering means self administering.

 

Please don't go for more regulation.

Who is saying this?

 

Perhaps the best thing we could do as an aviation sector is to not accept the bad behaviour or our fellow flyers. Those that blatantly and repeatedly do foolish and dangerous things should not be welcome amongs us or at our airfields.

Agreed, there have been some doosies in that toll; people who got away with it for decades, who everyone in their district knew about, but did nothing.

 

 

You are talking about an Industry with a great deal of money to spend on such systems vs a recreational activity. Not a fair comparison and a whole different duty of care.

The duty of care is exactly the same, the payouts are exactly the same. Get involved in one, and that's nearly a decade of your life gone.

 

 

Where is this community pressure apart from secondary airports the developers want to get their hands on and ramp up the safety issues any time they can.? Over many populous areas there are NO suitable forced landing areas at all. Pilots should be concerned about operating into these aerodromes as well as the people below. Perhaps we need more golf courses and horse racing tracks. Nev

The community pressure right now is lying dormant, but can explode at any moment. If there is a bad crash, for example with Dash 8, killing 20 or so people, the second paragraph is likely to read "Twenty nine people have been killed in twenty nine months in this dangerous, and unnecessary part of aviation" followed by "the Minister has said he will take immediate action to ensure this can never happen again etc."

 

Those are the times when draconian decisions are made.

 

 

........as punishment he was made to do it again just for the staff, as a Food Standard exercise to show them just how much gas their food produced, and how it could be a hazard in the workplace if someone walked past you with a blowtorch or.......

 

 

So do some high hour pilots get complacent, is that pre-flight check just a rehearsed procedure. I hear some say RAA need to do something to address the level of incidents of which a large percentage do appear to be caused by Human error. Does there need to be some reeducation at timed intervals.Question: Did your last BFR include a Supervised Pre-flight check

The best answer to that is in a book called "The Killing Zone" by Paul A.Craig which is available on Amazon. It's a 300 page analysis.

 

Apart from that, as you study accident reports, a lot of the same stuff ups are made, a lot of corners are cut, and recency is everything.

 

 

...cracking and overheating and.....

 

 

"......I bought some shares which had been reckon mended to me by a local aircraft builder, who ....................."

 

 

It would be interesting to see what percentage of serious incidents occur in School/Hire aircraft as you would expect that the majority of these users would be low hour Pilots with less experience.

I haven't seen any RA statistics, but the GA statistics indicate that the student phase is by far the safest.

That may be because the student has training fresh in his mind, is generally adhering to regulations, is operating out of good airfields, doesn't have ratbag peer pressure, and has the oversight of instructors and the CFI to keep him on the straight and narrow.

 

 

That may be FT, but let the rock fishermen solve their problems. You would be surprised at the threats to their sport.

 

These statistics are a sword hanging over OUR heads.

 

 

There is that little rump, yes; that's where compliance and enforcement methods are used.

 

There are no single fixes, it requires a complex approach.

 

 

You can teach and preach safety all you like but there are 2% of idiots out there the will not put their brain into gear and don't give a rats backside about things so there will deaths and accidents forever.The other 98% just keep having to pay the price in new rules and new costs because the idiots at CASA, Air Services and others think there can be 0 accidents. We all know drink driving is wrong and against the law but every day someone is killed or a drunk kills someone and they the 2% of fwits still drink and drive so know matter how much safety is out there, people will continue not to follow the rules and kill themselves that is a fact

My 2 cents worth

The solution starts with analysis, then taking action based on that analysis, using education and compliance and enforcement.

 

RAA unlike other high risk sports has a glaring omission with no Compliance and Enforcement network of volunteer members.

 

I haven't seen these new rules that people keep mentioning, but certainly I see a contempt every day for the CARs which have been around for many years. Maybe to solution to that is some edcuation, firstly during training on just what rules apply to a Pilot in Command.

 

Drink driving action has progressed from the point where, in Victoria, the statistics indicated that in 50% of fatalities the driver was drunk. Good advertising, an exceptionally good effort by Police, and a matching attention the detail by Magistrates has helped reduce the death and injury toll by a massive amount. The action taken on drink driving has been a massive success.

 

 

Thanks John, as usual you bring reality into the situation.

 

 

Some manufacturers have been shandying 95 with a significant amount of ethanol, so be very careful to check the product break down. This may have had more to do with the change, particularly in a rural area where petrol has to sit in tractor tanks, chainsaw tanks, stationary engine tanks for more than two weeks.

 

This is due to consumers pressurising the oil companies to supply cheaper petrol.

 

 

....."Never mind Salty, Hatso was always a tricky character, and he'll cop it for accusing KAZ (Avref registration) of wafting"

 

Don Q, who always manages to weave his latest purchase into the conversation asked innocently: "Would this have a VNE"

 

"only if ........................................................................................................"