walrus

The manufacturers lubrication recommendation may have nothing to do with "performance" in the power or reliability sense of the word, in fact it may even be sub optimal from a performance viewpoint. For example, it is already acknowledged in certain automotive circles that low viscosity oils are often specified to help meet cold start emissions requirements when in fact something heavier may be better for longevity. However there are conditions that we know nothing about that my make oil choice less obvious, for example foaming, behaviour of oil drainage systems or dry sump systems or pump cavitation, etc. We have to trust the manufacturer or do research ourselves.

Ahhhh yes, the old bait and switch trick. You require a class 5 medical certificate. Given the age of RAA aircraft owners, how many are going to clear that little hurdle? Begging of course the question of the relevance of medical certification to light aircraft safety....

facthunter , I flew out of YMMB in GA for ten years, CTA isn't hard, you just have to learn it like everything else. Watch a few videos of light sport aircraft in the UK and USA - you can fly your homebuilt experimental - the exact same aircraft as available here, right around the Statue of Liberty! - and that is without special training, $10,000 certified GPS, etc. UK videos show LSA aircraft navigating multiple CTA's just to get from one grass field to the next. ......and we have to crawl around like frightened mice...

Skippydiesel: " The whole thing is a Yes Minister tragedy of conflicting rules/regulations.😈 .....and it's taken you how long to discover this? CASA has no intention of allowing RAA aircraft into GA airspace beyond a token one or two people who have the excessive amounts of time and money that will be required. And to Turboplanner and facthunter who seem to wish to portray CTA operations as requiring the superhuman skills of a professional priesthood, I say BS. Every new pilot at Moorabbin learns the lingo and YMMB and Melbourne area procedures very quickly - and that is for a "complicated" airport and airspace. Our brethren in the US and UK seem to have no trouble either.

Reading threads like this reminds me why I sold my aircraft and walked away from the suppurating mess that is Australian General and Recreational Aviation.

Predictable behaviour by the "private equity" hyenas. My advice, having been on both sides of this type of activity, is to leave immediately if at all possible, but definitely leave. The reason is that the Hyenas already decided their own exit strategy BEFORE the bought you. Let that sink in. They do not intend to keep you and nurture you, they intend to make you as attractive as a movie star and onsell you for a sum that is many multiples of what they paid for it. Their potential to make such generational changing money is such that they will lie through their teeth continuously.

the retractable Lance is like a big heavy american car. With the big six you need a boot full of right rudder on takeoff and the aircraft is sorta sluggish - based on my endorsement with instructor, LAME a stack of tools and a new battery for a stranded aircraft.. Soft springs on the nosewheel steering on the ground, the feel changes once airborne. So 3 blokes for big day out to Bathurst. A bit of gear and max fuel - we are at MTOW. so stall at zero flaps around 63mph, 53 knots. So TOSS around 1.3 X 50 say 65 - 70 kts add half the gust for mum and kids say 10 -15 kts and you have something like 80 -85 kts Now consider distance to speed - around 1200 ft to 53 kts (performance charts and we qant another30 kts or 50 ft/second we needed 1200 ft to get to 53 kts so we will need the same again and then some to get to 90 kts thats 2400 ft plus .... Is the runway long enough yo give us our TOSS and some gust allowance? Maybe not. Now we get a gust just after liftoff we yaw left, dont counter it fast enough (fiddling with the gear retraction or the nose locker door opens?) the left wing drops and we try to pick it up with aileron, not rudder........

skip, I do as KR Aviator does, usualy deferring to the bigger more expensive to run commercial operators. What I was saying is that when I go past Benalla, I dont make a separate call for Waahring and the like.

Skippy, there are literally hundreds of private fields we all overfly every day. Nobody makes any calls. Anyway its academic for me, I'm out of it and don't miss the mountains of BS , all of it, required to fly in Australia. You want examples? Watch British private flight youtube videos and then remember that those guys are flying through or around all that controlled airspace with self declared medicals that make ours look like strait jackets. Then watch American or NZ videos and see what flying freedom looks like. If there are a few fields where airspace intersects, then they had better have a CTAF.

ARO of course you are correct. What i am talking about is the implicit hierarchy of things requiring a pilots attention - hence my flippant example of an A380 technically infringing Penfield. If that ever happened I suggest that the very last thing on the Airbus pilots mind would be calling on 126.7. Skippydiesel hints at this when he suggests arriving aircraft are the worst offenders. Skippy I never called ALL airfields because that is impractical - too many, most rarely used. Just the ones I new to be populated.

Skippy: "Unfortunatly no one (including myself) seem to have a solution for the lack of good airmanship exhibited by so many Camden GA pilots." With respect NO! Either explicitly or implicitly, there is a mental hierarchy in communications in that communication rules are governed by the airspace class. Camden traffic would expect the Oaks users to inform them of their activity, on the applicable Camden frequency, not the other way around. Do you expect every inbound A380 to announce its arrival on the Penliegh or Riddells ck frequency? Where does it say that RA traffic cannot communicate with GA traffic?

Money: Actually NOT off the topic of this thread because we buy military aircraft to fight wars, not just entertain children. There is an exception to this for military transport aircraft that are dual use. So when we acquire military aircraft, we should consider for what cause we will employ them. Obviously, defence of our own homeland is most likely an honourable use, assuming its not another nation coming after us for our trangressions elsewhere. However outside that direct defence usage, we start getting into grey areas quite quickly - things like "coallitions of the willing" and similar bullcrap. As a result of our "buy american" strategy we no longer have operational sovereignty over large chunks of our equipment. The F35's wont work if the USA decides they shouldn't, similarly other stuff. So its time to review : Considering the history of the countries the US has helped, how far should we go to support them?

I didn't even bother to look up for Avalon bound aircraft. The only exception being when the compelling blade slap of a pair of Chinooks took me back to my youth. far more interested in watching the Russian videos on youtube as they make an object lesson out of Ukraine for any country that believes U.S promises and encouragements to war. Translation: When someone says 'lets you and him fight" its smart to run away.

Another Bristell? Surely not..