turboplanner

........I saw Ahlot trying to climb a ladder to put out a fire, and while his legs do appear to hinge where they should, his arms were hanging down to the same height, and......

 

 

Never mind grandad, just remember not to put the electronic dyke brush to your ear.

 

 

Yes, but what if you design and build the aircraft from scratch then ten years down the track another turkey comes along, bolts the wings off something else to the fuse and away he goes.

 

 

Hope that was tongue in cheek .... its EXPERIMENTAL therefore industry practice, Australia or otherwise, is not relevant. Paddle pop sticks as building materials are allowed, shoving a monster fuel injected 2 stroke into a Jabiru kit is allowed, cutting a few feet out of (or adding a few extra feet into) a wing on an existing design is allowed.

 

Are all of these desirable, maybe not - probably not for the paddle pop sticks,

 

Are all of these 100% safe, probably not, but they are NOT aircraft that are required to meet design standards, they are experimental.

 

You fly at your own risk - if you do not like the risk do not fly the individual aircraft or these series of aircraft and go fly something from a factory that meets a design standard.

 

Stop trying to shoehorn experimental into factory requirements

Ah yes, the myth that you fly at your own risk.........perpetuated by the brave, but not any more.

 

The attitudes surfacing here and the indication that formal supervision is absent presents some serious problems for RAA and CASA

 

You can still build your own car without spending the millions on crash testing, but there are safety steps which must be followed. If these principles have passed your EXPERIMENTAL then some quick changes are needed if people are to protect themselves.

 

 

A good friend of mine modified his Jodel in some very dramatic ways including a complete redesign of the wing and its reconstruction. This is not just amateur built from a kit or even plans, this is in the ordinary sense of the word, aeronautical engineering. In this case the engineering is being done by a very intelligent school teacher and a self-educated but not qualified "aeronautical engineer".How could it be to his (or his wife's) disadvantage to have an L2 have a look over his shoulder?

An L2? What about an aeronautical design engineer?

 

What has been going on here? Unsupervised, unqualified design, involving safety components, is contrary to most Australian industry practice today

 

 

Yes, silly old police, always advertising for eye witnesses.

 

 

Well stop whining about it then.

 

 

Problem with that is that you have to be dragged out through them, and if there's a fire you only have seconds to get someone out who may have a broken leg.

 

That's what I like about Simpson - one pull and you're out of it and running.

 

 

My eyes are still watering Marty!

 

OK, I'd ask how they work. If they are attached permanently to those buckles, then when you sit down the waist strap will come across your pelvis and the smaller strap across your leg. To me you could still submarine, but the mounting positions they set may squeeze you enough.

 

 

We did have one case of castration which occurred in a vertical, inverted impact.

 

Not sure whether it was five or 6 point, probably five.

 

In that case the guy had a habit of checking his harness on the roll round before the start by pulling his shoulder harness tight, which left his waist adjustment less tight.

 

The inverted impact was almost totally take by his shoulders which broke his back and left him a paraplegic.

 

Just how he was castrated in the impact was a mystery.

 

With a six point you have two chances of detaching the crown jewels instead of one.

 

Aside from what I said above, submarining is usually low impact, indicated by the fact that you are moving down and through the waist belt which is progressively going to increase the squeeze of your stomach etc.

 

 

I'd just buy a 5 point Simpson racing harness - it's designed for high speed impact, and the Release is designed to be immediate and total - all five let go at once. Good if you are semi conscious in a fire; even better if someone is coming to rescue you and can just yank the single release.

 

Not sure if there are suitable race shops out west, but you should be able to get a harness online. (I'd also check the US price)

 

 

You aren't customers, you OWN THE BLOODY ASSOCIATION!!! This is not a consumer issue.

 

If you don't like the idea of trying to reduce the cost of $300,000.00 per year for a paper magazine then:

 

1. VOTE IN THE ELECTIONS

 

2. VOTE AGAINST IT IN THE MEETINGS

 

 

It's probable that some of the first actions of police, as the wreckage was drifting in, were to try to identify who it was by phoning local aero clubs and airfields to see who might have left for a flight over North Stradbroke.

 

However, taking swipes on the accuracy skills of journalists and police should be the last thing on your mind.

 

If a witness statement is correct, that the aircraft dropped a wing and fell in from 90 metres, you have a lot more to be worried about, with a score of six on the board for the past year.

 

 

People should still get posted any airwothiness instruction/ directive. Not everyone backs up files either. Printed material is the best reference for required information. Still works when the computer goes poof or the lights go out. Nev

People who don't back up critical files are pretty much the same as those who never kept copies of critical Bulletins.

 

All you have to do is have an external hard drive (for big volumes) or flash drive (for small) volumes and when the computer goes poof you buy another one.

 

The PC came into active use 30 years ago.

 

 

The second was a thread within the last 12 months or so:

This might not be the exact one Kasper, but it's a big thread: http://www.recreationalflying.com/threads/what-can-be-done.112161/

 

 

Believe it or not, it has at least three channels, each of which is MUCH faster than a magazine.

 

1. It can instantly broadcast and SMS to all members

 

2. It can broadcast an email with attached documents to all members AND set a notification to know when each member opens the email

 

3. It has the power of a website, which currently it seems to be using as we did at the end of the 1980's in the last century.

 

In Items 2 and 3 it is not restricted to a magazine type layout, but can run free with photos, diagrammes, PowerPoint and videos

 

 

.....reeled back in horror at seeing the photo Ratso had just emailed to him with the comment that.........................

 

 

".......done that to all the board members when they were off on their "secret men's business" and "scarring ceremonies" where they cut each other with bottles, but in the nicest way."

 

HandyAndy who had been under pressure from Exasperator recency chimed in.........

 

 

I would counter in a member association the wisdom of delineating focus purely on the market forces - we are not a profit seeking organisation and the ardent rag and tube guys n girls are equally part of the Recreational Aviation coverage of the association as the plastic fantastic owners and regardless of how revenue derives from each end of the spectrum the rights and freedoms of one end should not be given up to please the other unless that is done openly and with consent of the membership as a whole.

That was just my marketing background. Putting it another way "The skill of demand research is to separate the real driving forces from what the researchees are saying.

 

I would agree with all you said here; with the exception that where one group requires substantially increased services, it should pay more.

 

... its my perception of the current RAA that the executive and tech are prepared to give up rights and freedoms ... or a the very least not defend them ... without consulting the membership in what appears to be a grab for more and more of the high end RAA and low end GA. Its the issue of transparency of intent and consultation that sits behind me being what some may class as a grumpy old git or a strident rag and tuber. I do not think I am actually either but I am adamant that where rights and freedoms are being given up/traded away/not defended I am going to be vocal ...

The first problem is the Members won't vote; the second problem is the Members don't care to manage the situation. Why on earth do the Members allow a Constitution clause which allows an Executive of three people to make unilateral decisions which affect nearly 10,000, having the power to bypass the board members elected to represent the Members. I haven't found a Clause in the Constitution authorising the employment of a Chief Executive Officer, and so forth. You get what you allow as a Member.

 

Having said that, I've tested demand for Rag and Tube twice using marketing techniques.

 

The first was a suggestion that the R&T actually get up and support Natfly with a stand to attract interest. Although some people had reasons, this didn't happen.

 

The second was a thread within the last 12 months or so which started with sentiments similar to yours, but basically that plastic fantastics had ruined R&T, and I kept prodding the discussion until we got to the point where it became clear that

 

(a) some people still enjoy very economical R&T flying and swear by it,

 

(b) we could not find any impediment to R&T in the current RAA scene, and nothing to stop people going out and buying one right now, and

 

© the real underlying problem if it was a problem was that people were just not interested in getting into R&T.

 

So you can kick and dance at the current RAA structure and Regulations, but even if you could wave a magic wand and change that, the real issue is how will you attract new R&T participants?

 

 

If Goldy Lox wishes to display, then HE SHOULD BE FREE TO DO SO.

 

Ratso, in a rare support for Turbo added "I fought a WAR for our freedoms!!!!!!

 

"Which War?" asked Turbo, but Ratso was............

 

Ratso in the days when he was a Ferrari salesman

 

 

Does anyone know if there was another accident about the same time in the same area because the reporting at first said a six seater and possibly 6 dead?Or was it just another reporting stuff up?

This should answer your concern.

"Earlier, a Queensland Police Service (QPS) spokesman said the crashed aircraft had the capacity to carry six people, but they could not confirm how many people were on board at the time of the crash." Source: ABC News

 

 

I was agreeing with you,Turbs, till you brought up $300,000 for prof Avius .

I was suggesting that as a start - compare that with what you were being told in 2010. Members should take an interest and question these costs. (Do you know if Avius gets paid for his stories? Do you want to pay for that content?)

 

There's a bit more to it than that.General comment....The show is NOToverburdened with excess staff or wastage generally,either, so how can costs be significantly reduced without losing some aspect of essential function.?

I know you are at a disadvantage in assessing this unless you order Annual reports from the ACT Department of Justice, but how would Members know what is economical or what is not? How much communication is occurring between Members and Board Members?

 

The system we have is what we have been saddled with. CASA divesting control (while still maintaining it) and LIABILITY (attempting to). It costs money to belong to anything.

The situation we have is what we negotiated, and then changed. We would probably all have been better off if we'd left the imitation GA aircraft and cross country flight to the more formal training regime of CASA.

I don't agree CASA divested control - they moved pretty smartly after four audit failures - rather they permitted operations which were not permitted under the base ACT, by EXCEPTION and subject to self-regulation. In the AUF era this seemed to work very well. However, when governments take this path, which fortunately they do only rarely, you gain ad hoc, and industry-specific decisions which the big mass of Parliament could never get around to processing, but you put yourself at the whims of the bureaucrats who gave you those freedoms. Occasionally those bureaucrats cross the boundaries of good behaviour and the industry becomes a nightmare.

 

Liability is with the people conducting the activity, as I've mentioned to you on several occasions. You are not likely to ever get immunity from liability from Australian Governments again - you have to insure for it, and that seems to be working well. I'd suggest there are many pilots under-insured to the extent of millions of dollars, but that usually is quickly rectified after a couple of big awards.

 

 

I find there is an element of GA that expresses amused tolerance for ultralights, but I have not heard any genuine antagonism. However, there is an element of the ultralight movement who are anti-GA owners and anti-high-performance RA owners. I think it is a bit of class resentment relating to the cost of the machine, with these critics assuming that all the owners are capitalist pigs, while secretly wishing they could join the club.

People don't take much encouragement at all to revert to Tribal mentality - sporting teams being the best example.

 

I think you are pretty much on the money with your grouping of attitudes, but I don't think it's all that strong.

 

For example there are a few strident rag and tubers on this forum who screech about their freedoms being taken away by the plastic brigade, but when the groups have been offered support, their interest has always petered out.

 

The skill of market research is to separate the real driving forces from what the market is saying.

 

 

There is no provision for recreational flying in the base Act remember; it was allowed as an exception by the aviation authority of the day, which CASA, a safety authority, continues.

 

The exception was allowed subject to Self Administration

 

I can remember when the annual subscription was increased and I argued it wasn't justified, having administered 1500 people for 40 cents each, but was howled down on this forum because the subscription was considered peanuts.

 

If you don't like the subscription now, then take a look at where your money is being spent. $300,000 for Professor Avius to talk to you might be a start.

 

 

The intent of the T is always to save lives and injuries.