turboplanner

I tried to post a link to the above post in the thread http://www.recreationalflying.com/threads/fatal-incident-at-parafield.59915/, for Compulsion but it's been locked. Why we do this when there are lessons to be learnt I'll never know.

Compulsion, I had the feeling you were questioning your own safety in your own aircraft, and the post above should give you some considerable reassurance of the huge safety margin you have if you follow safe circuit practice with 15/30 degree turns as against 60 degrees.

I would be stunned to find any RA/GA instructor departing from these standards, but there are dozens of public reports which tell be it could be going on.

BS flows freely on forums.

I just looked up my Jab notes for safe operations in a circuit - which I was expected to be able to demonstrate.

Turning crosswind after climbout - 15 degrees

Turning from crosswind to downwind - 30 degrees

Turning from downwind to base - 30 degrees

Turning from base to final - 30 degrees

Do that and you'll have a good safe margin

Training for steep turns (45 degrees) was conducted above 3000 feet in GA, and there was no training for or suggestion of more than that. Even steep descending turn training was at 45 degrees.

At 60 degrees in the circuit the AOB is 100% above what it should be and you're very close to a spin or spiral dive and if your recency is the same as most, you'll be lucky to pick it up after the slightest lapse in concentration or gust of wind.

The risk factor of a spin is exponential according to Angle of Bank, so by conduction the turns at 30%, your risk factor is not just half, but a fraction of half.

I remember Slarti wailing "Who pushed the ignore button!"

A couple of things here.

The Proponent in this case may have spent millions buying the land, may have employed Planning Consultants, and may be on track with a planning strategy to counter the more extreme comments, which usually carry almost no weight in any case. He hasn't asked for people to chime in and add to the confusion.

In cases like this, where an objector is basing his case on something which is wrong or irrelevant, The Proponent's Planners will not interfere with him, but let him have his say in the process. The Planning Consultant will then get up and quietly shoot down the objection on legal grounds.

So, for example, is someone is objecting to an airfield on the grounds that light aircraft will dump their fuel over local houses after an engine failure, and that's the basis of his objection, the Proponent will remain silent - he couldn't get a better objection than that because he knows that at the crucial phase, the Tribunal Hearing, he just has to produce an expert which says the practice does not happen with the aircraft proposed for the development.

If, on the other hand a string of "helpers" roars in and talks people into sitting down with the objector and straightening him out, then the odds are he'll drop that objection, and may well find another one which does carry Planning weight.

In this case, in this forum, this objector has already been given the heads up publicly. I haven't mentioned any other objections to avoid making the situation worse, but believe me, going and having a cup of coffee with him, unless at the request of the Proponent, with the advice of his Planning Consultants is NOT a good idea.

Tomo's certainly staked his claim.

I didn't say anyone was stupid; I used the word stupidity - a big difference.

I'd classify flying along with your gear hanging in a crop and hitting a stump, or flying in and out of trees and houses and along the top of a canefield and hitting a SWER, when in both cases you know your minimum height is 500 feet as stupidity as against smart.

That's a very good point kg, if you were to take the stupidity and apathy out of the sport, it would be quite safe.

Well then, Robinson (or CASA for that matter) should ground the affected aircraft effective immediately and make the bladders available in large numbers so that every owner will be able to complete the mod. It is completely Robinson's responsibility and the blood on their hands is getting thicker. Not good enough.

Correct, grounding is the normal industry safe practice. Hopefully this one will bring a manslaughter charge, and people will start to get serious about safety again.

This is a PLANNING issue, not a debate evening, pork pie auction, whistling contest or novel writing competition.

Most of you would not hire a vacuum cleaner salesman to teach you how to fly, so why would you, without any Planning skills, without knowing what criteria match what zoning, what issues are critical to the proposal and what are not, make random suggestions which, far from helping, may provide ammunition to the other party.

Rubbish.

Seriously, you need to take any sort of threat as having potential to damage your airpark's future.

What is your evidence for asserting that FT?

Or when you throw a leg over the Drifter forgetting it wasn't the Indian?

(Seen the great old Indian in the new Shannons ad FH?)

Crayon, he will have very little impact on the project regardless of what he stirs up; it will be decided by Planners, and the arguments he's putting up carry virtually no weight whatsoever, so other than the ideas of talking to him, and perhaps lowering the profile, he's not an issue. The fact that the project appears to have been going for some time indicates that the planning process is proceeding as normal, and it may even be that the public consultation phase (and there always is one) is probably already closed.

not the time or place for it.

......... the last I saw of him was a fast pass along Rwy 20 at about 50' and the plane sounded perfect..............

......Yeth Thetil, I'll be there thitting neckth to my Thpoertthar, counting riveth, and thimmying around the ......."

Get your instructor to observe what you are doing in normal flares and the ones you are having trouble with. Sometimes you can be doing something subconsciously blatantly difference yet not notice it.

Do you have blue eyes? Blue eyes are certainly much more photosensitive than brown, and I also get quite a shock of pain from bright lights on dark nights.

You may not have realised why you were doing Cert 4; it's not a psychology course it's more in line with ISO 9000 series which a lot of people here would be familiar with. It ensures a step by step is processed, audited and logged; it does save your butt when this is done, and more importantly the incident is much less likely to occur, nut it's similar to Human Factors training - we know that causes most deaths, but if you don't take it seriously or don't apply it methodically there's no benefit and you go down that long chute.

M if there's an incident you have to be able to demonstrate that you had instructed and assessed that your instruction had been comprehended. As far as I've seen, other than a Teacher's certificate, C IV is the only Certificate which shows that you have been trained to impart skill and assess that that skill has been comprehended and can be performed.

I don't think it would be hard to get to a happy ending here, some key points being:

RAA could develop a formal syllabus with modules for pre-flight study (student), pre-flight briefing (instructor) standard modules for flight instruction, standard radio and so on.

That alone would create something that a prospective pilot could look at and know where he would be going, a student could look at and know what to study now and what to be ready for next, and instructors who knew what stage the student was at, what had been the weaknesses so far, who extra study/flight training to give the student, and so on.

In terms of how the instructor imparts knowledge to the student, and how he assesses whether the student has absorbed what he's been taught, and whether he is capable of flying solo/away from the field/with passenger etc. Certificate IV is available right round Australia in tech schools and includes modules on assessing whether your student has absorbed your training. In my opinion any instructor out there who hasn't passed Certificate IV in training is nuts, because without that you can't show evidence that you were qualified to send a student solo. I'm aware that the training phase is the safest period of a pilot's life, but these days you do have to protect your house and assets, and Certificate IV is not a terribly big imposition. The bonus of doing it, is if you are one of the brutal yelling types, you'll be retrained in motivation and will be less stressed when you are training, and a hell of a lot more relaxed when your student goes up solo, having been assessed methodically.

I've run out of ideas here but this would certainly lift the satisfaction index on both sides for very little effort.

As we know, most students and weekend pilots disappear because they run out of spare funds, so minimising their spend while they are training is actually an investment in the future because they then have more to spend down the track, and they not only will spend that budget but bring friends and workmates in.

........a Maribu stork walking on mud, or...............

Well you need a belt now and then

Bandit12 in #27 is probably more on the money - we tend to talk about the bad experiences, but I've certainly been lucky enough to have some great instructors who didn't just teach me how to fly but instilled behaviour patterns.

.......starting fairytales about the days in India when the Army cooked in tin tubs and sprayed phenyl over the...................

i would bet a quite substantial amount of anything, that, if the case was redesigned, so it was held together by its own fasteners, like, well, pretty much every other airborne boxer piston engine, then the load on the fasteners holding against the combustion forces, and keeping the cylinder barrels attached, would last a great deal longer, i would say, to stated TBO quite easily.. and it would not be a difficult redesign of the case either, just a leave a half inch thick flange around each half...it appears to me, there simply isnt a bolt capable of doing what the single through bolts are being asked to do, 2 opposing cylinders, and crank case forces. to get a bolt to do that kind of work, and last. would require something made of a titanium or similar alloy.

If the system is all OK the combustion forces are not huge - I don't have the pressure figures for a Jab engine but would expect it to be under 135 psi.

Here's a photo of a head bolt and nut from an old Honda 500/4 with the breathing opened up, valve timing change for much bigger gulps of air and a lot more spark with the end, producing an output of around 100 brake horsepower, and operating around a quarter of the time at 12,000 rpm. With this degree of breathing and high compression pistons, compression is around 150 psi - well above a normal production engine.

The head stud is about 8 mm diameter, the nut six point. The stud goes down through the head and cylinder casting and screws into an aluminium thread in the top half of the casing.

They don't give any problems in this very heavy duty high compression application

So if you double that force to replicate the power stroke of a boxer, and assume just for this exercise the same number of studs/bolts for the two engines, you theoretically have twice the tension. For your theory then, someone might like to look up the strength for 8 mm and 16 mm high tensile bolts and nuts. I'd expect 16 mm to be either less or more than twice 8 mm. You can disregard the threaded stud vs U bolt for this exercise. The Honda nuts, however are full thread depth and appear way stronger than what's been shown on here for Jab, so you can disregard the Jab nuts too for this exercise. If the result is that 16 mm bolts and nuts provide double the clamping force, then there's a chance that there will be a bolt and nut combination made with the strength to do this job. It would be interesting to see what arrangement and bolt system is used on the Subaru boxers.