KRviator

Similar in concept to the Seabird Seeker - but I fear the rise of drones will ultimately replace these aircraft for visual-observation-type missions.

If you're in Newy, you won't go wrong with the crew down at Warnervale. I do my BFR's there, and training over the lake is enjoyable. Close to Bankstown too for your CTA stuff. You have the option of the underpowered C150, a 150 with 150HP (better) or an RV12 with the G3X system for basic stuff and a Tecnam Twin for your MEA rating. I've also heard good things about Phil Unicomb too. Avoid anything at Bankstown - you'll waste thousands of dollars taxiing and simply transiting to/from the training area. By all means do your CPL - but, depending what you do for a crust now - be aware you're going to spend north of $100K on training to earn bugger-all in the short to medium term. I earn more than pretty much every QLink, Rex, Link or Ruffdus pilot just playing trains, that funds my flying and I'm not in debt for it. If you want to fly for fun, don't fly for work. If I CBF flying today, I don't have to - the RV stays in the hangar. Be wary of turning a hobby into a job...

The protections of the Australian Consumer Law may come into play here - just because something is outside a manufacturers or statutory warranty doesn't mean your SOL. We're going through that kerfuffle now with our pool - turns out the builder we used wasn't licensed to actually do pool installs and royally phucked the pavers and fencing which is now failing. His response? "Not my problem, it's non-structural and only has a 2 year warranty!" - so we're pursuing him under the "Not done with due care and skill;.." section of the ACL rather than the Home Building Act.

Just pointing out the discrepancy in logic. Landing fees aren't always in ERSA but can be found "elsewhere". Airport conditions of use documents definitely aren't in the ERSA but are often found "elsewhere" and they occasionally have ridiculous requirements in them. Such as the extra $150 fee for "refueling on council land" (Warnervale) or requirement to wear a plane-proof vest when refueling your RV at the bowser (Cessnock) - or the requirement for stupid insurance coverage (Goldy, Townsville, Isa , Longreach, Launceston...)

The landing fees may be shown in OzR but are the other conditions of operating at the airfields? For example - anyone lobbed into Longreach or the Gold Coast lately? Launceston? Have you checked your insurance policy to make sure you have the requisite $50M (USD) insurance coverage?

If you can tolerate the Council, Scone now has the Kittyhawk Cafe in their WOFTAM Warbirds museum. Good tucker, reasonable prices and good people. You can park on the apron right outside and the gate code is the CTAF.

A slight correction - they gave access to AvData (and individual Council's as well) - and then they told their members it was happening and updated their privacy policy after I called them out on their existing PP not allowing such use. I - and a few other members - lodged formal complaints to the OAIC about that, but it went nowhere.

Of course it is... Come back to me when you get stung paying a toll to drive through the Dubbo CBD. That's not a valid comparison. Paid parking - particularly in regional centers - is to encourage turnover of vehicles in the limited amount of parking spaces they have, thus preventing office lackeys and workers simply parking out the front of a business for the day and preventing actual shoppers from being able to park.

I "owe" hundreds of dollars to AvData in landing fees after they've tried to charge me for landing at places I've never been, or the asshats charging for individual landings at my local, when I'm entitled to an 'annual' landing fee and they consistently refuse to remove the bull$hit charges. So their invoices line my cats litter tray. AIUI from letters they've repeatedly sent, they don't have the authority to involve a collection agency as the debt is not with them, but with the individual airports. Anyway, some of the overdue charges go back years. And on that note, I've had one of the airports legitimately owed some coin ring me up - after getting my contact details from AvData mind you - asking when I'll pay it, and when I said "When AvData stop sending me fraudulent invoices - but if you want to send me one of yours [invoices] to pay, I'll pay it this afternoon". They did, I did and everyone lived happily ever after. Though the cost for the "Business services manager" at the large Queensland Council to find my phone number, make contact, listen to my spiel, generate an invoice and email it would have in fact cost more than the paltry amount they actually received for my single landing at their airport...

Saw someone leaving my local runway with "SNOOPY" as their ADS-B output. Not just on FR24, but directly logged in to both my ADS-B receivers, so it wasn't lost in the web-translation... If CAsA were serious about "the safety of air navigation", they would outlaw collecting info on landing fees from radio calls and/or ADS-B to encourage their use and try to limit fraudulent calls or callsigns.

Paul Birdett?? 😆

I present the time Jonn Deakin nearly landed a perfectly good 747 gear up. With - if you go by the article - probably one of the highest time 747 crews on Earth with him... If he could do it, I know damn well I could. That being said, I don't (or at least, try to avoid) doing stupid shit, like aero's with an approaching storm front.

At least he can't forget to put the wheels down on that one.... We had a shindig in the back yard with a bunch of friends and neighbours. Pretty much my entire circle of relatives and friends has a chronic dislike of people so that seemed the best option - and the two previous shows had done their reversal turns to the north, directly overhead us. This time they did the majority of the turns to the south over Kurrajong Estate, annoyingly. The only time I went down to the airshow itself was to tell them to get on their PA, find the owners of two cars who parked over my driveway and tell the asshats to come back and move their vehicles so I can get out. And this was after my neighbor and I had roped it off to avoid precisely that - we learned the necessity of doing so from previous shows....And it still didn't work... A bunch of locals were not impressed about the (lack of) traffic control that ultimately resulted in a couple of accidents on the NE Highway due to traffic backing up coming off the bypass or first turnoff, or that it took 45-60 minutes to get back from town - a journey that should take less than 5 minutes. I can see a bit more community opposition to the show next time if they don't demonstrate improvements to the traffic flows. That being said, it was a perfect weekend for the show, and Saturday especially seemed chokkas. Traffic started around 0730, was queuing back to back from 0830 and didn't really die down until lunchtime. I had to work Sunday so missed out there, but the only difference AIUI was the Vampire flew Sunday, vs the Strikemaster on Saturday. I'd be very interested to see how much of a profit Paul Bennet Airshows was able to make versus the last two shows where the Council lost about half-a-million putting it on....And why they were able to make a profit putting it on themselves rather than being contracted to put it on by Council that cost ratepayers a motza.

If I was a betting man, I'd put a carton of beer on him rushing to beat the approaching storm front after leaving his practice too late... The KRviatrix and I were talking between ourselves - a "WTF is he still doing up there?!" kind of thing given what we were seeing at ground level - when I said I'm going to go watch him land and we saw him come in and put it down with the gear firmly in the wells, no indication of any problem and certainly no emergency services waiting in anticipation of a gear-up landing.

In a sad twist less than 48 hours before Warbirds Over Scone, one of the Spitfires has just landed gear-up on Runway 29. Wind at the 29 threshold was ~ 270 @ 11G25 - check out the pool stuff moving about and the windsock 'socking' as Mini-Me refers to it. No prior warning was given of any problem, the emergency services went past well after the noise stopped.