turboplanner

Good point BigPete, the Pilot in Comand makes the decision.

There was a case a few years ago where a guy from Gippsland was caught by weather, tried several airports and in desperation finished up approaching Moorabbin.

The ATIS indicated Moorabbin Airport was closed, so he called the tower, advised them he had run out of alternatives and was now low on fuel and needed to land.

The Tower Controller, officious as they sometimes are, told him the Airport was closed and to go away.

What followed was a heated exchange with colorful language and frank opinions of each other.

This didn't move the Tower Controller, and I forget what happened next, but think the pilot flew away and luckily found another airstrip.

CASA publicly blasted both people for their behavior which could have led to a fatality, and finished with something like:

"If the Pilot had called a Mayday, the situation would have been clear and the Tower Controller would have been obligated to expedite an emergency landing"

Thought the ABC Four Corners discussion with Dr Colin Campbell was very appropriate to this discussion since we are either at or past Peak Oil (See M. King Hubbert prediction, 1956)

Peak Oil has been overshadowed by other major events like Global Warming and the economic crisis, but is relentless - we will face ever increasing fuel prices from now on, albeit in a series of advances and retreats.

4 Corners Broadband: Peak Oil?

Dr Campbell outlines the downhill run from the last major oil discovery in 1964.

Doesn't look good for the long term future of the internal combustion engine, but fuel cells are developing fast - Honda now lease a fuel cell Civic in California. They generate electric power, which can be augmented by solar panels.

Solar is leaping ahead too. This year's Darwin-Adelaide race saw cars speed limited to 130 km/hr and required to have upright seating to reduce the available solar panel area. Area is something an aircraft is not short of.

It's a great time for lateral thinking entrepreneurs.

Good experience, good outcome Adrian.

Know how you feel, I'll bet you had a nervous time working out who was going to get to the strip first - you or the cloud.

I started a thread on 25/11 - "VMC" in the Weather section, but so far haven't had any takers, which is interesting because we lose 5 to 10 pilots a year due to flying into cloud, so it should be the No 1 safety topic.

What I'm interested in is how to develop techniques to get an earlier warning of circumstances similar to what you experienced.

The accident reports always usually run something like "the pilot was know to have pushed on in marginal conditions previously...the cause of the accident was continuing into non VMC conditions, terminating in a vertical dive into the ground."

So they state the obvious, which we would agree with, but don't give us unambiguous and easy to understand weather forecasts, or automatic forecast updates by radio enroute.

So step 1 is that we flight plan on a day or a weekend where the weather is likely to close in on us, or there is an unexpected deterioration after we have left our starting point.

Step 2 is that it is not easy to decide whether what we now face is the full extent of it, or whether its going to get even worse.

For example in your case, it just kept on getting worse, which caused several changes to plan, vs a situation I experienced where there was a constant cloud base, but misty rain which made naviation difficult. It stayed that way for the entire trip across Victoria, but in the days of full reporting CASA were tracking three of us in various parts of the state very carefully.

In my case it would have been less stressful to know that conditions would remain stable so I didn't have to look for every flat paddock over several hours.

I noticed on one thread recently a freshly Certificated pilot believing it was easy to reach each checkpoint exactly and to the minute, and of course we can all do that until the wind, turbulence and cloud conditions suddenly present us with a new experience.

I'd really like to hear from some experienced cross country pilots about the tips and criteria they use to decided when to park the plane, when its going to be safe to continue, at what point to do a 180 and get out of there!

Brent, I was comparing it with the day I was No 5 on final, and the last couple of months. I know tie downs were being offered at very affordable rates and if that has caused a pick up its great news.

Yes Brent but it's the straw and the camel's back argument for an airecraft hirer - a lot of people drop out of flying because their budget just will not allow touring flights; that drops the aircraft utilisation which pays off the standing and consumables costs and that in turn accelerates the hire rate in a spiral.

I happily used to cruise around in a Warrior when it was $25.00/hour, but would need to go to the bank manager for the same trips today, and a visit to Moorabbin with it's peeling paint, empty flight lines and ghost town atmosphere shows what the end result can be if the spiral isn't arrested.

No, I've got to the stage of dipping the tank to check, and still get huge discrepancies.

Good points Tony, although most of this is in place, just hard to find. RAA could improve things with a better webside, master index of subjects, reference material availabilty.

For example "the Human Factors compulsory element without a plain language manual that pilots can read and retain is stupidity in the extreme"

I've referred to the manual a couple of times, I think Motzartmerv has said it's only 1/2" thick, its in plain language, it has test questions so you can study the subject anywhere in Australia, yet there continues to be an anti HF theme.

This could easily be avoided by making information easier to find and buy......Ian?

There may be parts of this thread not covered by exsting RAA subject categories and they should be addressed.

Looking ahead, it's quite possible that the RAA of the future would include all non Commercial aircraft operations (personal opinion)

Already we have extremes from powered Chutes to aircraft with constant speed props and rectractable undercarriage and we are increasingly seeing speeds of 150 kts, where the workload is high, the instrument quality is critical and the pilot qualification needs to be much higher for safe operations. The Thruster pilot should not have to pay for these qualifications, so maybe we should now be starting to look at more distinct aircraft licensing steps and Pilot Certificate endorsements so the low and slow guys who stay in the one location aren't loaded down with unnecessary costs and administration (See I do listen to you HPD).

So what happens if you have to go down because you of heat exhaustion?

Check-in, I didn't experience carb icing in 10 years of flying all conditions, then a couple of weeks ago it was there in a Jab, needs a few circumstances to combine so its a bit like a lottery ticket.

Think you're right Ian, I wonder if this is going to be an Ad for a milk product???

You mean single seaters should be banned????

Can this training/learning theme be incorporated into the Human Performance and Limitations programme?

Ah, Thanks Markendee! See the raging debate thread on Human Factors.

Even if the Pilot didn't notice the hand bag, he should have picked it up in the emergency checks "Fuel On, Mixture Rich, Switches to Both"!

Classic Human Factors case from all angles

Good luck with your flying Ryan, it's a wonderful experience.

Yes, important - there's an old safety report where a light ac went down and it was found the passenger had pulled the mixture control knob out to hang her handbag on it! (true).

Maybe we all owe you a bit of both for the entertainment!

Sorry HPD, I really am receptive, but couldn't help myself when the first thing I read about Blink etc was a Book Review on the Science WA site which reads:

"Blink cuts the ground from under its feet by not being able to analyse impulsive behaviour.

"The result is a collection of rather ordinary and self indulgent stories that while making a simple point are not offset by the greater number of stories about the pitfalls of not thinking.

"Failure requires no preparation and the evolution of homo sapiens thus far refutes the book’s thesis that it is better to blink than think.

"This easy to read (big writing) collection of stories is well suited to those with short attention spans for whom the simple message will be a welcome but shallow justification for their lifestyle."

Legally, everyone has equal rights - there's the celebrated story about a light aircraft coming in to Mascot and an inernational ac behind him was ordered to go round. The american pilot responded by saying "that's gonna cost my boss $16,000.00" The tower responded "XXXX make a $16,000.00 go round".

Having said that there's also prudence and mixing big weight differences and speeds is dangerous, so what you did seems the smarter move.

A lot of posts seem to indicate that the HF training and sample questions haven't been looked at.

MozartMerv put it very bluntly and it is only a small book to read; sometimes you have to have the guts to accept that you may make the odd tiny error now and again.

Ozzie, I went through 20 years of GA flying where instructors and thought I knew all about airmanship, but in RAA flying have learned more new things in the last 12 months than in that time, probably because I've got three of the most outstanding instructors you could ever wish for.

I also think airmanship and human factors are two different subjects.

I would see airmanship as flying a tight circuit so you can always glide down, keeping the nose down on takeoff to gain that extra 5 kts before climbing, shallow turns when the nose is up and the speed is low, indientifying wind direction and strength rather than landing downwind etc.

Human Factors include understanding physiology to decide when you shouldn't fly, maximise ability to see other aircraft, scan instruments, understand disorientation, depth perception, G loads, Hypoxia, sensory memory, short term memory, performance vs the arousal curve.

They also include such behaviours as the false hypothesis (cause of the world's worst aviation accident), diverted attention, effects of motor memory, (pilot of a light twin was asked to make the best possible speed on approach to assist in traffic separation. He obliged by retrcating the undercarriage and increasing the approach speed. He then proceeded to land with the gear still up)

It covers methods to cope with stress, fatigue, and so on.

(I'm quoting from the Bob Tait book here).

Friarpuk, I agree with you that tests will not solve the problem - I get very nervous at time when I realise the airline captain missed 20% of the answers, but sound training and absorbing that material does; your observations as a TV news cameraman are also interesting - we often use the term commonsense in the aftermath of an accident when the cause is very obvious, but take the case of the farmer who crosses the rail line every day for 30 years and knows the train comes through at 4.30 pm then gets hit - why did it happen? The answer is in your HF training material....

Frank, you need to come out of retirement, I'll bet you produced many safe pilots; Cralis, you couldn't do better than to follow this philosophy.

Tomo, to fly an ac upside down (and I've only done it with models) requires a substantially greater angle of attack due to the need to overcome the low pressure area you mention.

Did an early preflight on a Victa early one frosty morning with an Instructor who carefully wiped off the layer of ice on the top surface of the wings and said ALWAYS check this because if the flow over the top of the wing is slowed you'll have a very sluggish take off.

It appears he was speaking from a personal experience.

That's the Bernoulli part and I guess turning sharply after an EFATO would be the Newton part, but I agree so much of GA training spells out the beginning (If you do this) and the end (You'll crash), but not the middle

Here's a direct quote from NASA - Home, referring to the two camps - Bernoulli and Newton.

Australian Pilot magazine could have saved a lot of debate by quoting this.

"

Which camp is correct? How is lift generated?

When a gas flows over an object, or when an object moves through a gas, the molecules of the gas are free to move about the object; they are not closely bound to one another as in a solid. Because the molecules move, there is a velocity associated with the gas. Within the gas, the velocity can have very different values at different places near the object. Bernoulli's equation, which was named for Daniel Bernoulli, relates the pressure in a gas to the local velocity; so as the velocity changes around the object, the pressure changes as well. Adding up (integrating) the pressure variation times the area around the entire body determines the aerodynamic force on the body. The lift is the component of the aerodynamic force which is perpendicular to the original flow direction of the gas. The drag is the component of the aerodynamic force which is parallel to the original flow direction of the gas. Now adding up the velocity variation around the object instead of the pressure variation also determines the aerodynamic force. The integrated velocity variation around the object produces a net turning of the gas flow. From Newton's third law of motion, a turning action of the flow will result in a re-action (aerodynamic force) on the object. So both "Bernoulli" and "Newton" are correct. Integrating the effects of either the pressure or the velocity determines the aerodynamic force on an object. We can use equations developed by each of them to determine the magnitude and direction of the aerodynamic force."

As I understand it the case studies which caused HF to be introduced came primarily from dead pilots