turboplanner

30 minutes ago, FlyingVizsla said:

I don't know about Guarantee it, but they do oversee it.  Even back in the AUF days, The Bunny Farmer & Myles would visit the Club annually to see how things were going.  They were rather horrified by what they saw and their advice was given as a friendly suggestion, getting a little sterner each time.  They guy who maintained the Club's plane was a cowboy and his aircraft was about the worst advertisement for an ultralight.  They would suggest he take it away from the airport.

By Guarantee I mean that the Self Administering Organization, by appointing an L2 has to eliminate all reasonably forseeable risks from their appointee (so they would need someone meeting the qualifications required for what an L2 does.) The L2 would also need to eliminate all forseeable risks from what he is doing. It's not that hard to reach that position if you create a position standard and an operating standard and everyone operates on a go/no go basis. The beginning isn't easy, but once there's a document people start to say "this is missing"or "that isn't necessary" and the process quickly comes together. The revese is if there's a body on the ground and a primary control with a missing nut and no hole for a cotter pin to suit a castellated nut, the flame goes to the L2 and bounces up to the organisation because an unsecured nut was a reasonably forseeable risk.

I agree supervision is very difficult because you don't have statutory powers like the Inspectors did in the old days. In Speedway the Machine Examiners check the cars before every race and enter the results in a log book. The entries are exactly what was found. If there's a safety issue it goes to the Chief Steward. He decides whether the car is safe to race. If the driver is prohibited from racing he has access to a Tribunal Hearing, so by the time they've made the final decision, multiple people have assesed and judged the issue.

Myles knew all this because I think he worked in the mines and was familiar with the processes, and I like the way he worked and fought very hard behind the scenes when people played politics to try to get him out.

Based on the reasonably forseeable risk, you can't miss one aircraft.

One of the ways we netted build qulity and mistake was to invite everyone to practice days where they could do laps to test their cars, and we'd show them how to fix the issues and those days attracted more and more people because it was informal. In some cases the fix would be done for them in the following days.

Breakfast fly-ins are the ideal venues for doing this with aircraft.

30 minutes ago, FlyingVizsla said:

RAAus does check up on their L2s and one I know thought they had a vendetta against him as they asked him for copies of Log books for a plane he maintained 2 years running.  He has to renew ever 2 years.  

Audits are a way an organisation can step into an arena like Instructor, CFI, L2 without prescribing everything they do.

For example CASA, which is at arms length from the jobs RAA Ltd is supposed to do, conduct "Ramp Checks" In doing that you could say they are carrying out a duty of care without the direct-line supervision which would allow the flame I mentioned to climb up to them.

You have to be so diplomatic with Audits and have them planned out very carefully. 

One way is to just lay down a requirement that an Audit needs to be carried out every year, arrive with a clipboard, click all the items and move on.

One one occasion we had the experience of a Promoter being sued at a city track for a lot of money  for an incorrect safety cable assembly which injured someone. The case went for five years. The Promoter was a multi-millionaire but he was regularly on the phone crying for us to make it go away.

I was out in a semi-outback area one day and decided to check one of our tracks to make sure the cable was correctly fastened. It wasn't, so the same thing could occur there, but the fix was easy so I raised it with the relevant Association at the next meeting. The immediate response was that the President might find himself charged with trespassing, so I told them they knew where to find me and moved a motion to shut down the track immediatelt pending making it safe. The Association advised at the next meeting that all the cables had been fixed. That could easily have backfired on me, but you have to get the job done if you are the self-administering organization. 

30 minutes ago, FlyingVizsla said:

If you supervise, oversee & train too much, L2's will toss the towel. 

Yes which is why you need to develop the training documentation before going near the officials with a talk from the hip. They have to be empowered. If they know what the documents say and why they say it, they have something to point to if an aircraft owner arcs up at someone who suggests that he has to change something.

15 hours ago, turboplanner said:

Another variable is the type of activity.

The Upper and Lower South East of South Australia produces half the Agribusiness income for the State, so we would expect airfields to do better there than in the baren areas of the north.

 

In the South East, in the 1960s the Naracoorte airport consisted of two sheds, this is it today,

Population of Naracoorte is 5,960.

I'm told this long runway and loop is for the Country Fire Service to pick up water and Crop dusters to load dry product.

We've had a few discussions where Aviators trying to save Council Airports from residential or industrial development have given evidence to Planning Tribunals that their airport needs RFDS/Fire fighting capability, but the Tribunals eyes seem to glaze over anyting but Planning terms. Here's a Country Airport that's walked the talk and set it up. I'm assuming the tanks are connected to the town water supply which on that contour would have a lot of pressure.

5 pages and no answer?

A 19 registered aircraft is supposed to be low cost, simple design, easy to build.

The purpose of a cutout is to isolate the negative terminal of the battery from the electrics to prevent a fire on colliding, or suppress the source of an electrical fire.

Therefore:

(a) a battery isolator on a 19 aircraft should be required.

(b) a mandatory word Solenoid should not be in the regulation

(c) If the wording is battery isolator ther's not a problem requiring 5 pages

(d) If the wording includes "solenoid" the questioner should write to RAA Ltd drawing their attention to this oversight and asking for it to be removed.

6 hours ago, walrus said:

Turbo, yes, that is the way it is supposed to work in a free market capitalist economy that we are supposed to have. We should always be looking at the donut, not the hole.

Yes, when marketing we are looking at the ability of people to eat donuts rather than holes which is why we don't bother lamenting about the holes being smaller these days.

6 hours ago, walrus said:

What I think I can say, taking an overall view of the situation is that over the years I have read enough, including Parliamentary publications, that document Government attitudes and associated CASA regulatory behaviour that increases business risk for potential investors in aviation compared to other forms of investment, for example, property development, mining, agriculture and even manufacturing.

There are two differences here:

1. CASA's function is Compliance and Enforcement of aviation; effectively the highway cops of the air.        Most complainants never talk about Airservices.

2. Property development, mining, agriculture and manufacturing do their own Compliance and                    Enforcement. Most have developed their own OHS policies and many have adopted ISO 9000 - 2015

    Both of these safeguards are available to aviation.

6 hours ago, walrus said:

 

When you evaluate an investment opportunity, you start with consideration of Sovereign risk, that is the risk of doing business ina p-articular country and then drill down to business risks, competitors likely reactions, technical risk, etc. etc until you arrive at a return on investment adjusted for the risks involved. IF the risk is high, then the returns must be high.

 

A component of sovereign risk is regulatory risk and aviation is a regulatory minefield as is allegedly CASA's behaviour in promulgating, interpreting and enforcing the same, at least according to Sen. Fawcett and many other MP's. The risk of investing in aviation in Austrlia is too high compared to other investment opportunities

And yet in a relatively short time I was able to find 14 Australian Airports thriving with a total of 1.5 million movements per year, and that's without the Capital City RPT Airports or the bulk of Country aviation across Australia, and on drilling down to one Airport, Moorabbin found consistent activity volume dating back 62 years. The key takeaway from that data is not high risk of investing, but the need to research demand before selecting a location. You would know that when you've picked an Industry to research for investment opportunities, you then look at the possibilities. I touched on some very basic markers for drilling down, one of them being the obvious Very High Performers, way above the town population metric. Start looking at those instead of the run down airfields with 60 yo fleets, and you get acceptable risks.

6 hours ago, walrus said:

That means that we are likely to be underinvested  in the aviation sector of our economy compared to say, USA, New Zealand and even UK. NO investment = no economic activity = no jobs and it's a vicious circle.

I used Van Nuys Airport in Los Angeles as the comparison with Moorabbin. It probably has more Executive jets than Moorabbin, but the annual movements were about the same.

If you want to compare an enterprise in Australia vs Overseas Countries, Critical Mass is important; for example Australia no longer has the critical mass to manufacture cars; USA does.

The start of this calculation is population which will give you an idea of market viability; for example if you want to sell a product into the US market which is successful in chain stores in Australia which might number 20, you have to finance advertising and stock supply for a campaign in 1,000 US stores if you want to catch the Spring market.

The populaation calculation is like this:

Australia: 26 million

USA: Australia x 13

UK: Australia x 2.6

Canada: Australia x 1.5

NZ: 19% of Australia

If there was NO investment in Australia, yes there would be no economic activity, no jobs, but the Airservices data showed steady, viable markets in all our Secondary City Airports (without taking into account the revenue they earn from non-aviation activities) and the Regional/Country Airports they had website data for. Given that some of the most spectacular growth, like Roma weren't on the Airservices list the stories of ruin are fanciful.

.......omplained (Turbo has had ro banana-hop because Cappy got carried away by his post.)

Turbine Dolphin Series Inc has made $1.2 million nett this year with their AI DolphinEye progamme, the first line being .................................

.....Queenslanders take bananas too small for the markets, quarter them and cut rings around them, paint them orange and sell them as cooked banana prawns.

ACIS have made many attempts to stop this traffic because Victorians don't know what a prawn is and have become partial to banana prawns, but the Queenslanders argue that they are legally selling bananas shaoed like prawns and no one's c......................

Well OK,  That's two pilots.

It just happens that I posted the researched statistics on another thread today and there are:

 6,300 RA pilots

10,804 RPL/PPL

-----------------

17,104 total

So 17,102 left to go.

7 minutes ago, Student Pilot said:

If you had been involved with casa in such a capacity then you would know what a bunch of bastards they are to deal with. They condone some companies flagrant misuse/abuse and obvious disregard of regulations and rules while pedantically persecuting others. Why are you such a casa sycophant? Smacks of self interest or trolling?

CASA are bastards?

I'm a  sycophant?

Funny how you can't tell us exactly what your problem is.

15 minutes ago, Reynard said:

Private operations, as defined by CASA. What is the private aircraft ownership trend ? Up, down, static ? I don’t know. But from the turn of the century in Australia I would be surprised if it paralleled with pop’n growth.

The next question(s) would be how many of the GA PPL/RPL holders actually have a medical that is current and how many of the 11,970 SE aircraft on the register have a current maintenance release. I understand those numbers may be hard to find, but would be a true measure of current private GA activity.

We're in a free enterprise society so the fine details don't matter so much.

The available statistics show enough movements for the available study group to be viable, and with a consistent customer base including Bankstown which was what this thread was about.

From there it shows that in the smaller cities and towns around Australia flying viability will vary based on the local income activity.

Like any business, when the customer base moves you have to move with it; in fact if you want to make good money the smart way is to move first. Mr A.T Berry did with his Falcon Ute terminal at Roma and around 36 years later the Mayor was dedicating the new A.T. Berry Terminal to him.

The stories we should be telling are the wins, like being able to compress your RPL/PPL with live-in on the field accommodation at Moorabbin, and the investment going in sealing runways around Australia.

Better still as you pointed out we should be promoting Rereational Aviation rather than getting embroiled in the politics of GA.

44 minutes ago, Reynard said:

I don’t think many people on this recreational flying forum are particularly interested in commercial GA activity. What would be a more interesting statistic is the number of private GA movements over time. This is where the doom and gloom is. I know these numbers are not separately available, but the peak of private GA activity and private GA aircraft ownership in Australia was probably in the late 70’s early 80’s.  The average GA training aircraft also dates to these times.  RA-Aus is possibly seeing a resurgence as a more affordable option but I haven’t looked at their aircraft ownership and pilot number trends.

Also, foreign airline student training at some of Australia’s regional airports, would contribute a significant number of movements particularly before Covid. This is fine for the airport operators and the individual flying schools but it’s not necessarily adding to Australia’s private pilot pool.

What are you calling commercial and what are you calling private in GA?

Aircraft ownership is a different trend. 

There are 6300 RA pilots sharing 3232 RA aircraft  (jan 26, 2024)

There are 10,804 GA PPL?RPL pilots and 11,970 single engine piston

22 hours ago, Student Pilot said:

GA has lost its sheen. You can call being truthful and passing on your negative experiences "running it down" but it's just really passing on how the degradation of GA affects us. Most of those who used to fly just cannot afford it anymore, driven out by over regulation, over zealous regulator, greedy airport owners/councils/operators, compounding costs of maintenance/liability and hull insurance/fuel and cost of aircraft. 
 

Turbo, you can talk it up all you like but the reality is different to all the statistics you quote. 

I pulled data from Airservices for Secondary City Airports, Regional Airports and some Towns for the latest full Year 2023. The figures on sheet WX00278 show the monthly movement figures.

WX00279

On the graph, the monthly figures are shown in bundles for each location.

I worked in a Company which had about 40 different types of Transport products and each month we would arrive in the board room at 6 am and finish at 6 pm analysing the months performance of each product. The production for the month would be decided for each product, cut back if we hadn’t sold enough stock, increased if sales were ahead, and an advertising programme introduced if we were behind along with incentives. Some businesses do this daily.

To make some sense of this we need benchmarks, so we might pick population for the City Airports. 5.2 million for Moorabbin (Melbourne), 5.1 million for Bankstown, 2.5 million for Archerfield, 1.4 million for Parafield, 2.1 million for Jandakot.

Using these benchmarks, Bankstown is holding up well against Moorabbin, Archerfield is punching above its weight, and Parafield is either sliding down or Jandakot is performing above its population base.

In general though, all reasonably stable against population catchment.

Essendon tells its own story, which we are not going to here.

Camden fits into the peri-urban character.

Then we have:

Townsville:                  205,000

Mackay:                       139,000

Albury/Wodonga:        100,000

Rockhampton:             84,000

Coffs Harbour:             82,000             dropping below the pack

Karratha:                     21,500             punching well above the pack

Tamworth:                   65,500

The Albury – Tamworth group introduces the factor of Rural activities and income groups.

Karratha gets a big boost from mining.

Roma, Queensland is one of the best examples (although I couldn’t get movements)

In the 1960’s a local was selling tickets from the back of a Ford Falcon Ute.

In 2013/14 the airport processed 254,000 passengers, ranking 29^th in Australia

The population of Roma is just 6,522.

Another variable is the type of activity.

The Upper and Lower South East of South Australia produces half the Agribusiness income for the State, so we would expect airfields to do better there than in the baren areas of the north.

In the South East, in the 1960s the Naracoorte airport consisted of two sheds, this is it today,

Population of Naracoorte is 5,960.

In other areas the agribusiness is dying, the population doesn’t get the money to spend on flying and operations are shrinking.

In the mining areas, airfield operators are buying newer, bigger aircraft and running their own coaches around the towns to pick up the FIFOS.

It’s a free world; as the Mayor of the Gold Coast used to say “Two men looking out through bars, one saw mud, the other stars.”

..........runs he'd ever had. The trail behind the trawler spread for two square kilometres.

After this he polished up his HAACP skills, and focused on the Drifter Flight programme, setting up deck chairs along the side of the runway so the guests could get that "up front and personal" view lie Jonah nd the whale, but a student on approach .......................

53 minutes ago, facthunter said:

I think you are trying to Verbal me?  Nev

If we had numbered posts I could point out the one which pointed to a glitch in the software causing the problem rather than an onslaught by CASA.

3 minutes ago, facthunter said:

That's the best way to know. Just buying charts etc won't do it. You have to be RUNNING something using planes for a living to get the real effect  Nev

Really? You need to be running an AOC to apply for a Class 5 Medical?

1 hour ago, facthunter said:

I doubt that is very relevant to our stuff..  Learning was the reason for the 51% rule. WE have grown in the most unstructured way anything could with just being grateful for "crumbs" at the whim and fancy of the AUTHOURITY who wished we didn't exist. and would "Just go away".     Nev

You started out on the right track in the previous post, but if you are referring to Recreational Aviation it's a self administered body. You have to manage it yourself; you have to train people yourself. This thread is indicating that training may be an issue.

1 hour ago, Student Pilot said:

I take it that's a no then about ever having an AOC?

That's correct.

......a baitlaying pilot and Captain Bull built a deck on top of his trawler, and Captain Bull's Aircraft Carrier Flights using the Drifter.  He added "Cocktails on the deck at 5 pm and Dinner (Giant Barra) at .............

12 minutes ago, FlyingVizsla said:

The alternative For-Profit organisation to AUF/RAAus - the Experimental Light Aircraft Association of Australia (ELAAA) had a Maintainer's course run by Myles.  ELAAA never got off the ground.

 

The problems with running a course that teaches you how to maintain aircraft to L2 standard (how to use tools, etc) is 1. getting enough people together in one place on one date.  2. Dealing with the wide variation in experience - from the guy who has never lifted a spanner to the bloke who has loved engines all his life and built & owned several planes.

 

RAAus welcomes L2 applicants who can demonstrate mechanical knowledge, and then provides training and guidance on what is expected.  When I started with the AUF, anyone who put their hand up could do maintenance because they were all volunteers and nearly everything was home built.  I met some keen but useless ones and some good ones. 

 

I can understand why RAAus does not run apprenticeships for aircraft mechanics or Diplomas in Aircraft Design & Construction.  That is too involved and too long to be funded by members.  TAFE and industry run courses.  People get experience working with mechanics.  It takes years, not a 1 day course.  I note that some L2's restrict themselves - eg only do Jabiru, or don't touch fabric aircraft.  For some L2's it is a business and livelihood, because a lot of aircraft owners know little about engines and planes.

It's beginning to look like RAA has been neglecting this area; it's problematic for sure given the geographic spread you point out but if they issue a qualification they need to be able to measure and guarantee it. Maybe they need to establish a TAFE network and develop a course, or piggyback on an existing TAFE course with variations which the geographic goup of TAFES to teach and examine. When you read some of the scary discussions here, it could do with bumping up the priority list before a serious accident occurs.

6 minutes ago, Student Pilot said:

Read the Glenn Buckley thread on prune. What's your honest opinion on CASA's actions?
Have you ever held or do you hold an AOC?

Good point; when you read that ongoing saga it takes care of itself.

....smoke and fairy dust.

It all cost money and Captain Bull realised he would have to take on some extra work like charters to Tahiti or ....................

.....Albo is paying $125 mil. for a tunnel plus sealing withing the next 30 days or sooner.

In the Golden days of American Tourists in Australia where  our friends, whether from New York or Des Moines, Iowa would land in the Qantas Super Constellation after a 15 day trip, buy the Sydney Harbour Bridge, catch the Ansett flight to Hayman Island or if it was booked out,  the Gold Coast and sit down at a restaurant for a $500 dinner and a black & white photo of Mayor Bruce Small, who made his money out of Malvern Star bicycles. As Chuck picked up the menu he would say: "Ethel (there was once a Ford model called an Ethel), Ah think ah'll hev the Barrymundi, and if the cut of flake was small, would shrug it off as part of eating the most exotic fish in the world, today's tourist, after going out to Sea World to make sure all the flags were the Indian National Flags and not Aboriginal or North Sea islands and there was a "Welcome India" sign out the front then watching the two guys dive off the specator area, retrieve a floating ball and throw it to an indian in the audience (Which replaced the old Cypress Gardens Water Ski Spectacular which had 42 blondes being towed by a boat with a 30 hp motor), would negotiate a dinner with all you can eat for $15.99, decide to have one of "Captain Bull's Giant Barramundi" and on seeing a lonely little whitebait on the plate, erupt into the foulest language ever ................

7 hours ago, facthunter said:

You would need to consider what Liabilities you carry in that job, and how you would be indemnified.  Nev

Just a suitable PL policy and a short course on duty of care to make sure you didn't make repeat breaches.

You can't indemnify against a Tort.

1 hour ago, NT5224 said:

Hi Turbo

 

I'm describing my  own experience. I do know how to use the system, order a pizza or an Uber. 
 

The Issue is clearly an IT problem and could happen to anybody. The platform delivering Class 5  declarations is  still just a few weeks old and there are inevitable glitches.

 

The CASA team were startled when I showed them the machine  had sent me a DAME examination appointment. Remember it’s a Class 5 ‘self assessment’.

 

It’s like the Robodebt computer sending  a demand for cash to somebody who doesn’t owe any. It’s just a machine gone haywire…

 

I have  no problem with CASA. 

Alan

 

Agree, you identified the problem as an IT issue rather than a decaying CASA out to get anyone they can.

21 minutes ago, flying dog said:

Yeah, ok, I'm biting at the burley they are throwing out, but it seems so wrong.

 

Female pilots, ground crews, etc.

 

Then Virgin (Aus) is mentioned.

Pilot Deborah Lawrie.....   (Sorry if not spelt correctly.)

 

"25 years after a landmark discrimination case to allow her to become Australia's first female commercial pilot"

 

Errr.....   Does the name Nancy Bird Walton mean anything here?

 

Or Valda Oss who flew for Southern Airlines in a De Havilland Heron in a very smart Ferrari Red on the Essendon - Bairnsdale, Essendon - Millicent - Naracoorte routes as a feeder airline around 1958 A year or so later Reg Ansett ran DC3s into these country airports at a lower rate and shorter trips times and sent Southern broke.

22 minutes ago, rodgerc said:

Whilst I never pass up an opportunity to take a shot at CASA, the system worked flawlessly for me....Easier than ordering a Sunday night pizza from Uber.

The problem is Rodger the people complaining most likely don't know how to order a pizza or an Uber, and, like the old geysers that used to wander abound the banks saying they were "awful" for not having as many counters, one day there's going to be a puff of fairy dust and it will be learn the systems or nick off.