onetrack

USD$100K gets you very little, by way of aircraft, or even kits, today. I'm surprised it's not a lot more.

There certainly is......

Arron - As Nev says, though - loading of baggage is still happening almost up to the last minute, while the crew are in the cockpit doing final checks. There's obviously holes in Jetstars loading procedures and door checks.

Nev, you didn't miss much, the video was so bad, it wasn't worth watching. One does have to wonder how the crew managed to miss a warning light for the open cargo door, at startup.

Possibly due to cost? All the additional componentry in a FADEC system on a smaller engine, would push that small engine cost up substantially.

And there's this following modification for Sonex canopies - https://docs.google.com/document/d/1z01IFU3TZG-q1dtxzjAUgkD_JUyMqMiwJATMaQ1hnB0/edit?tab=t.0

Skippy, did you know about this following Sonex canopy service/availability? https://www.sonexaus.org.au/but-and-sell/for-sale/australian-made-sonex-canopies/

Well that shows either his computers, or yours, have been hacked, and emails intercepted. How else would they find your email address as his client? Nothing is secure on the internet, Russians and North Koreans are making billions annually out of internet fraud, and they are extremely sophisticated. It's reported the North Koreans have a complete department set up specifically for initiating scams. They even scammed the Bank of Bangladesh out of $81M after they penetrated the SWIFT banking system.

The scammers don't necessarily work on the "greed factor". How would you like to find out your investment property had been sold without your knowledge, and the funds disappeared into some 3rd world banking system? This happened several times in Perth, around 10-12 years ago. Fortunately, due to some good work on behalf of the W.A. Police, the AFP, and the South African Police, some of the scammers were nailed. Despite all the knowledge about scammers, I reckon about every third business owner I speak to, has been scammed by a simple email - that has come from an intercepted email from a regular customer of that business - advising that bank details have changed, and "please pay to this new bank account number". Hardly a single business owner questioned the bank details change, and they lost heaps. My nephew was scammed out of $30,000 in this manner - thought he was paying a business bill, and didn't find out he'd paid scammers, until the real business asked for payment. Real estate agents here were conned time and time again, with fraudulent official documentation, and changes to emails and bank account numbers, none of which was verified by the recipients. https://www.consumerprotection.wa.gov.au/system/files/migrated/sites/default/files/atoms/files/issue30.pdf

That's nothing but an invite for IT criminals to find holes in the system for financial reward. There's not a single IT system that hasn't been hacked or scammed. Hacking for ransom monies was a favourite a little while ago. Manheim Auctions was hacked, all their customer details acquired, their website was locked down and the hackers demanded $30M to unlock it. Manheim refused to pay, and had to build an entire new auction website from scratch. Unless the company/Govt dept uses two or three step verification with their system, then their customers are open to being ripped off with fraud.

There's been a sizeable number of people in Australia who have lost their homes to cunning African scammers, who are part of major criminal gangs, and they have well-educated and qualified people amongst them, who have IT and legal skills, and they can pass themselves off as genuine people - even to the extent of calling the suckers when they've become suspicious, and these callers have managed to persuade the suckers, they're genuine! In W.A., you cannot transfer the ownership of property without presenting the original Transfer of Land document to Landgate, either in person or by post. Landgate will not accept any land transfer documents via email or electronic form. The reason for this is, the State Govt was obliged to fork out several millions in compensation to property owners who had been scammed out of their properties. https://www.landgate.wa.gov.au/land-and-property/property-ownership/buying-and-selling-property/?accordion=accordion262e0eddf8f341419058efd7bde69347

Sorry, Skippy - I haven't seen any information that says Australia Post operates two separate businesses in the form of parcel and letter handling. AP purchased 100% of StarTrack, a private freight company, in 2012, to enable AP to get into the parcel business without the major cost of setting up a completely new parcel-handling entity. StarTrack and Australia Post are the one and the same, but StarTrack specialises in parcel delivery for businesses, and doesn't handle letters, whereas AP handles parcels and letters for consumers and businesses. An AP postie can and will deliver your parcels, along with any letters for you, in the one delivery. But posties are limited in what they can carry in their delivery bikes, so mostly, your parcels are delivered either by a StarTrack operative in a van - and sometimes by independent delivery van owners, who are contracted to AP or StarTrack. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-12-06/australia-post-letter-delivery-reduced-to-every-second-day/103189962

The crash looks very much to me, like an engine failure followed by an auto-rotation that wasn't fast enough to arrest the rapid descent. The chopper experts claim you have about 1 to 2 seconds after engine failure to initiate an auto rotation in a Robinson R22. Failure to very rapidly adjust to auto-rotation means a loss of rotor RPM, which leads to an extremely rapid descent. The Robbies have a very light rotor assembly, which is low-inertia, and losing that small amount of rotor inertia, by a delayed move to auto-rotation, means a high speed crash, instead of a controlled, slow-descent, hard landing. It's saddening to hear the instructor was killed, and I trust the young chopper trainee pulls through, but it sounds like his injuries are critical.

Transhipping from the U.S. is pretty much a dead-loss exercise, due to everyone that touches the item being shipped, wanting a piece of the pie. The company you purchase from will often charge you US$50 or US$75 just for arranging an International delivery. There's only two ways to get items from the U.S. - find a company that offers free domestic U.S. postage and get them to send it to the transhipper of your choice (Planet Express is about the best of them), then get the item sent to the Planet Express depot for shipping to Australia. Pick the closest PE depot. The other way is to make friends with someone in the U.S. (forums are good for this), who is close to the company you want to purchase from. Either ask them to pick the item up, and post it via USPS, or get it sent to them for pickup by USPS. USPS Priority Mail Express International is the way to send it - and in Flat Rate boxes. A USPS small FR box costs US$49.65 to Australia. Your postage helper doesn't even need to wait in line at the P.O. they can pick up a empty FR box, book the postage online and USPS will pick it up from their home or business. USPS is pretty reliable. Sending items by road over long distances in the U.S. is a costly and potentially disastrous method, because so many transport vehicles crash, and the parcels are often destroyed. Organising to send the item to the closest International parcel sorting centre is the way to go. There is one of these USPS International parcel sorting centres in Kansas City. USPS costs have rocketed, because of two major factors. The first one, is the same one that has sent Australia Posts costs rocketing - and that is the Govt requirement to deliver letters to anywhere in the country at low cost. As the number of letters has declined substantially, so the costs to the postal agency have gone ballistic, as they need all the previous infrastructure and vehicles and employees, just to deliver a handful of letters a week to outlying areas. The other factor that affected USPS badly was accumulated losses over many years of inadequate cost controls. USPS was forced to pay employees based on their education standard, rather than on the level of task they were assigned. So, USPS ended up with mail sorters who had PhD's, getting paid over $100,000 a year just to sort letters and parcels. It was a stupid and unsustainable system, and there were several U.S. Govt inquiries and investigations into how to reduce USPS's major losses. Part of the solution was simply doubling and tripling the letter and parcel rate charges over a relatively short period of time. I used to buy hundreds of items a year from the U.S. between about year 2000 and about 2015. The postage costs were reasonable in that period. After 2015, it started to become costly to ship items from the U.S., so now I buy only a fraction of what I want from the U.S.

Undersize components such as wiring diameter, would likely be the major cause of heat production in chargers. I have simple test policy, related to my skin. Whatever the item is, if I can't hold my hand on it comfortably for 20-30 seconds when it's operating at full load, then it's definitely at risk of burnout - and fire potential. I also have a policy of never leaving ANY charger unattended. After having lost a house to an electrical fire that wasn't even my fault (it was a voltage surge from the supplier), I'm rather paranoiac about fire starting from electrical sources.

There must be some champagne flowing in the boardroom of Lockheed Martin right about now, with this successful major F-35 contract. The fighters are being built for both USAAF and International customers. I can't help but feel though, that these fighters will be the last fighters containing pilots, ever designed and built. Drone technology is advancing so rapidly, these F-35's are in danger of becoming wasted defence expenditure. https://www.flightglobal.com/fixed-wing/lockheed-martin-secures-contract-for-296-f-35-fighters/164719.article

.....start an earnest discussion with Turbo as to how he handled cross-country, long distance recreational flying (long overdue avref) after he had been accidentally shot in the perineum by Cappy when up the Khyber (literally, making that episode, an up-the-Khyber double). The interesting part was, Turbo received two lots of large medals, for being Up the Khyber twice - one medal for serving in the Khyber mission, the second one for the major perineal injury (the medal recommendation actually read that "Turbo took one up the a*** for his Troops"). The senior officers on the Awards Panel were moved to tears when they read this outline of the reasons for the recommendation. And they weren't emotional tears, either, as the senior officers personally imagined Turbo's pain and discomfort). However, I digress from the initial paragraph of this story. The bite-affected flyers were astonished to find that Turbo had started up "Turbine Inc Comfort Seating" when he realised that aircraft designers and manufacturers pay very little attention to seat comfort - both in commercial aircraft, and in recreational/kit aircraft. To this end, Turbo had stolen a seat design expert from Recaro, plus a senior proctologist from a leading University (who specialised in perineal repair from serious bites on the a***). The Proctologist realised there was a major market in designing vastly-improved comfortable seating for those who had been bitten on the a***, after reading many media reports - and as as a result, he joined Turbine Inc Comfort Seating with some alacrity, seeing the huge potential for his skills to be used, and accordingly he........

I wonder what it was like, to pick up the sound of a loud buzzing insect, that flew into those devices? It'd probably blow your eardrums out?!

Unfortunately, the aircraft caught fire upon crashing, and the pilot is deceased. 😞 It is understood the aircraft was a gyrocopter. What is going on, with the level of air crashes lately?

https://skybrary.aero/articles/beta-range

Nev, I'm not pointing any fingers or trying to lay blame, I just feel for those blokes who worked on the aircraft just recently, they must be feeling greatly concerned. This pilot reportedly had over 20,000 hrs in his logbook, doing much the same type of (skydiving) work for years. The Pilatus has a very good safety record, and it appears there was little the pilot of this aircraft could do, to save himself and the aircraft.

......bull's Blue Heeler, snarling and fully intent on taking a chunk out of any legs visible. The BH made straight for a blue-clad leg, but unfortunately, that leg belonged to................

There must be some disquiet and great concern amongst the maintenance crew in NZ that overhauled the Pilatus, just recently. The photos I've seen, appear to indicate an in-flight breakup.

..........the scam FB Marketplace ads, and the invasive spamming and hacking of "unfriendly" websites such as WreckFlyin (now renamed, of course, to throw the Commies off the scent). It was whilst he was scanning the 'net for subversive sites that needed to be brought under the control of the CCP, that Xi Jinping discovered his name was being mentioned many times on this decidedly subversive site - and he was astounded to also find, that several unknown persons (who obviously posed a major power threat to his permanent position as Leader of the CCP), had been trying to ingratiate themselves at length, by casually mentioning non-existent friendships with him. Accordingly, Xi arranged to have a new Chinese sports model EV with the largest battery ever fitted to a Chinese EV, to be delivered to the major subversive individual (one so-named "Turbopranner"), secretly, and with a gift card attached, saying it was a friendship gift from Xi to his best friend. Of course, the car was to be Fire Engine Red, as it was no co-incidence that the National Colour of China was Red, the same as Turbo's choice in hot car colours. What stunned Turbo when the car arrived, was the specs, clearly listed in Chinglish, and which read............ (and here, dear NES readers, we have the spy photos of Turbo's little "gift" from his "friend" Xi, after the gift wrapping was removed. The hidden cameras and spyware are cleverly disguised amongst the decals and the spoilers.....)

The aircraft was manufactured in 1980, and spent nearly all its life in NZ, where it did many years of skydiving work. The first 17 mths of its life, it served as a Pilatus Aircraft Co demonstrator. It was sold to Australia in March 2025, and only re-registered as VH-XAA on 15th Aug 2025. The bottom photo in the link below, was taken by the deceased pilot on 20th August 2025. It had apparently just had a major 14 year overhaul. https://www.pc-6.com/history/809.htm