turboplanner

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It would only make you grasp at another straw. BS is BS

Training and rules are tougher these days. You don't see a lot of crashes.

head over to the http://atsb.gov, plenty of empirical evidence. We are lucky in Australia that we don't have the amount of snow and high altitudes.

What was interesting was "Collision with terrain" and "Robinson" go together like chewing gum and a blanket.

which can lead to wyalong, wandong, wagga wagga, wangarattta....

............bull had disappeared into the bone bulldust, but wait,.....

Hundreds? Can you explain all this a bit better F_T

I think you picked it Nev

... a puff of ......

...smoke as bull disappeared into the bone breeze, probably on his way to townsville, tamworth, tumbarumba, tooleybuc, or tanunda.......

Turbo: you left out the interest costs/revenues on your planes. assuming you lease or pay cash and earn it from the bank if you fly a Jabiru

Bob did you include about $130.00 per hour for the labour? I was working on outside costs

For all the people who only half read the subject of Human Factors, this is one of the best examples you'll see.

Having taps market doesn't fix it, havihng on/off only doesn't fix it, only regular attention to your own HF habits helps.

For the life of me I don't know what the aircraft industry hasn't caught up to the much safer car industry standards we have today.

A couple of them, including Bob Brown made idiots of themselves by going too far, didn't know for example that Qantas could legally lockout.

It's the Everest of skill. They are actually flying it, showing an extremely delicate touch on the controls. I can't even get close to doing it on the simulator even though I can fly a Mustang well (which is a lot harder than the trainers).

Looks like a kid's thing but it's an awesome ability.

Or even us heathen in Melbourne Tomo

I used to dread having to do group projects and getting stuck with them. There was this one Indian guy who acted like a prince, his way or the highway. You only have to look @ the rubbish cars that China and India put out to see that they have trouble sourcing good engineers and managers.

Er, Toyota was the number one for a number of years F_T

Hmmm ... if that is Holden ... what is Ford doing? Ford don't enjoy the same sales volume as GMH or do they?

At that point we will have Australian size families trying to squeeze into Asian size cars........and (I can't find a gentle way to say this) Bathust will be like it was with the Ford Sierras, but with the whole field smaller and sounding like singer sewing machines!

Aw, I thought you were the author of that for a minute F_T, then I realised you'd just cut and pasted a newspaper story, which wasn't really related.

TLDR strikes again.

munners, the comments above are great.

I would add that you need to have experienced unexpected crosswinds at various layers, unpredicted weather, wind shear, the various bad habits of the aircraft, and out of standard radio/traffic issues as part of the learning curve.

If I was comparing trucks, where the primary need is to make a profit, this is the sort of spreadsheet I would start with.

What looks a prohibitive cost, is not so prohibitive after you sell it, because the resale usually reflects a percentage of the up front price.

If the product has a substantially lower maintenance cost, it's not usual for it to be ahead at the end of the cycle.

Assuming sale of the aircraft with a reasonable number of hours in the engine for the buyer (about 4 years worth in this case) the financial model is interesting.

Assuming a 1000 hour engine life for the Jab, it's cost advantage to a flying school may be offset by the downtime for the engine rebuild making the Skycatcher a better buy.

With an 800 hour engine life the Skycatcher is ahead for both flying schools and private buyers.

Disclaimer:

Don't go out and buy a Skycatcher on these figures alone; I've just shown you the basic principles.

It may be that the sell price percentage is different for each aircraft, and it may be that there are other unscheduled maintenance issues, or a difference in scheduled maintenance

The full spreadsheet would include a lot more data than this.

However, what surprised me was that the Skycatcher is not out of the question financially, and it would also be worth doing this type of exercise for the Carbon Cub.

If I was selling the Skycatcher, I would be totally focused on this spreadsheet comparison, backed up with provable figures, and I'd be selling quite a few.

If I was selling the Jab, I would totally focus the Company on through bolts and valves to produce a financial advantage Cessna couldn't touch.

A key factor in all of this is why the Skycatcher is more expensive with Chinese production, and what the quality/maintenance/life costs are going to be.

(Sorry, called it a Skylark on the spreadsheet.)

EXX21.pdf

EXX21.pdf

EXX21.pdf

Well only that I've been watching you. The flying seems OK, but your sermons could do with a polish.

And I swear Nev backfired a 727 engine on takeoff the only time I ever sat down the back next to an engine.

He palmed it off in a very relaxed chat over the intercom as a compressor stall, but I still believe he was trying to scare the sh$it out of me!

I can recognize a contraption when I see it.. Nev

Yes I saw that one too. Perhaps the gentleman concerned might like to enlighten us as to why that is........................Paul Toone

For enlightenment, check the magazine each month for forced landings caused by engine failures, then compare them with the ATSB reports from GA, you'll sure focus on potential landing spots after that

When you get a call from a Journalist there's no time to come up with a word perfect teflon comment, as you could if you had the time to look up facts and prepare one.

There was a bit of overlap with comments, but that would have been caused by the journalist phoning the different people, Ops Mgr not being available by deadline etc.

I think they did a good job.

http://www.theage.com.au/national/holden-wont-commit-on-jobs-20111103-1mxyw.html

This puts the Qantas actions in perspective.

The architect of open trade was Senator John Button who believed that protectionism led to inefficiency, and Australians should have access to cheaper products and services.

What he overlooked was that Australia didn't have the same critical mass as the overseas companies. In the automotive world Australia's annual production equated to about a morning's work for the overseas companies.

The Senator also did not take into account, or ignored, the living standards necessary for competitive pricing, whether of manufactured products or services.

A television expose this week showed that Australians can competitively supply our chain stores if they employ piece workers at $3.00 to $4.00 per hour working in their own bedrooms and enclosed carports.

The Qantas and Holden stories are the closing stages of the Button plan.

I've always sympathised with the car guys because they have to make decisions so far ahead of the market releases, and what is an excellent concept today may be unsaleable tomorrow. When you add fiddling by a bunch of incompetents in Canberra who have no concept of this and will usually be out of office before any design cycle completes, it can be disastrous. Same goes for Qantas where they have to order new aircraft on long lead times.

Reacting to the 1979 fuel crisis, GMH fast tracked a smaller platform car, lighter with better aerodynamics, and even a four cylinder option. Ford believed it was all over for them because they hadn't been able to downsize the Falcon.

But the fuel crisis was a beat up in which the Government was complicit, albeit probably incompetently so, and the people wanted space in their cars for their families, and walked away from the Commodore.

Within ten years GMH went belly up, and that was the end of the Australian car. General Motors on the sole basis that they would not allow Ford to have an uncontested position anywhere in the world started up Holdens Motor Co, came up with a bigger floor pan, gave it the Commodore name, released it as the VN, and had a massive success which in recent years has been steadily eaten away by the cheaper overseas cars of the Button Plan.

The Company saw this coming and about ten years ago Managing Director Kevin Wale was sent to China to set up a carline. Last time I checked there were three General Motors carlines in China. The Chinese are brilliant with mathematics, so I would assume GM has been steadily collecting engineers over there and they are now ready to design fully the cars they build. You can bet they work for a lot less than Australian Engineers.

It is true that the next Commodore will be Australian, but from the press reports that will only run until about 2018, not very far away - six years back is 2005, so a very short era.

Then we will be committed to the "competitive" overseas product whatever it might be.

The irony of all this is that Australia has returned to the 1930's where we imported cars and trucks. When WW2 broke out the overseas suppliers wiped the tiny Australian market and we had to patch up whatever old clunkers were still running in Australia, which is what led the Australian Government to subsidize the establishment of Australian cars and trucks.

We've gone the full circle.