HOW SILLY IS THIS?

[Methusala]

Yesterday I visited RAA Headquarters to hand over photographs of the panels of 2 aircraft displaying the yellow warning stickers attached. I was astonished when it was pointed out that the one on the 19 registered aircraft had CAR 95-10 printed in small type. This apparently made the aircraft unable to be registered until the sticker was exchanged for a generic type! Then when the file for my 25 registered Thruster was examined, it was pointed out that the large rego numbers arranged vertically down the rudder were missing a hyphen which again made that aircraft non-compliant. How do we win against such pettifogging nonsense? I can only wonder at the mind numbing pettiness of bureaucracy. Don

 

 

[Head in the clouds]

Yesterday I visited RAA Headquarters to hand over photographs of the panels of 2 aircraft displaying the yellow warning stickers attached. I was astonished when it was pointed out that the one on the 19 registered aircraft had CAR 95-10 printed in small type. This apparently made the aircraft unable to be registered until the sticker was exchanged for a generic type! Then when the file for my 25 registered Thruster was examined, it was pointed out that the large rego numbers arranged vertically down the rudder were missing a hyphen which again made that aircraft non-compliant. How do we win against such pettifogging nonsense? I can only wonder at the mind numbing pettiness of bureaucracy. Don

That's an interesting one - if you put the hyphen in horizontally it wouldn't look right at all, and if you put it on vertically it would look like a figure 'one'.

 

Talking about the stupidity surrounding rego numbers - when they were first required on ultralights it was in the mid 1980s and (GA) aircraft had always only had letters, numbers was a new experience for the Regulator. So when DoA (or it might have been DCA by then) first wrote up the requirement they said that the numbers had to be without seriphs in roman numerals 400mm high on the underside of the port (I think) wing. My mate Bazza has always been a smartass and so he put his rego on and it looked something like XXIV-MDLXXXIX (24-1589). Bazza was the editor of the AUF magazine at the time and naturally he used the opportunity to put a photo of his newly registered Gemini on the front cover and mailed the DCA a courtesy copy to show how quickly folks were complying with the new requirement.

 

In the next issue Bazza was "mortified to have to inform the membership" that the Regulator had already revised the requirements for registration and now wanted everyone to strip off their numbers and replace them with Arabic numerals. "Why can't we just use Australian numerals" the headline lamented ...

 

 

[sain]

Its almost as silly as the continual posting of Ra-aus governance crap outside of the governance forum.

 

Moving on from that however - I have four questions:

 

1. Are the requirements for what goes on the sticker clearly articulated (like in section 7 of the Technical manual maybe)?

 

2. Are the requirements for the rego number clearly articulated (like in section 4 of the Ops manual maybe)?

 

3. Is compliance with the Requirements particularly onerous or burdensome?

 

4. Is there any reason why you haven't previously complied with these requirements, noting that they have been in place for a number of years now?

 

Simple non-compliance stuff like this makes it really easy for CASA to fail RA-Aus come audit time.

 

Please guys, before sending your rego in - do yourself a favour and make up a check list of what the requirements actually are, then go down them and make sure you comply. You'll save yourself the aggravation of getting failed for "pettifogging nonsense", the RA-Aus staff the effort of explaining to you that you actually need to comply with the requirements (because its apparently not clear enough). And you'll save us the aggravation of yet another post about the incompetence of the RA-Aus office (*sarcasm mode on* yes, because its their fault).

 

 

[farri]

How do we win against such pettifogging nonsense? I can only wonder at the mind numbing pettiness of bureaucracy. Don

Unfortunately! When regulations are enforced, simply for compliance sake, the only way to win is to 'comply.'

 

Frank.

 

 

[fly_tornado]

I am sure that the rego issue from CASA perspective is mostly about making the RAA act like grown ups and learning how to enforce rules and maintain standards. Like you would expect them to be. Its unfortunate that no one has shown Methlusa/Don the problems with his plane prior to visiting the office but its what you expect from the RAA, blaming the CASA for the lack of direction from the RAA only shifts blame from the RAA.

 

 

[winsor68]

Not Ra-Aus's fault???!!!???

 

I thought the basic underlying reason Ra existed was to monitor compliance to these regs through a SMS which includes at it's core an audit system that ensures this sort of stuff wasn't happening...

 

Too many of us are blaming the victims..

 

 

[farri]

In fairness to everyone concerned, the 95-25 catagory has been around since the mid eighties and it`s the responsibility of the aircraft owner to know the regulations.

 

Continuously criticising the RAA publicly is neither a smart nor positive, constructive thing to do. It may well be doing considerable harm to the organisation.

 

Frank.

 

 

[fly_tornado]

And not criticising it will only make it worse...

 

 

[farri]

Better to submit, complaints, in writing, to an RAA area rep or the board secretary, that way they are obliged to act on the complaint. Whether they act or not is another matter!

 

Frank.

 

 

[fly_tornado]

The beauty of your system farri is that the RAA can basically keep claiming that your aircraft renewal is unable to be processed due to a "computer error" for infinity or until you give up.

 

 

[greybeard]

I think that there is a lot of special people out there and the regulations should be non-existent to allow them to do whatever, whenever they like.

 

Oh, hang on, hasn't there been some issues with non-compliance recently?

 

 

[winsor68]

It is up to the members to comply with the regs....

 

IT IS UP TO RA AUS TO ENSURE THEY ARE THROUGH A SYSTEM OF SELF AUDITING...

 

And it has been for a long time...this is what self regulation means...

 

 

[farri]

The beauty of your system farri is that the RAA can basically keep claiming that your aircraft renewal is unable to be processed due to a "computer error" for infinity or until you give up.

ft, Surely you can`t be serious???

 

Frank.

 

 

[Guernsey]

ft, Surely you can`t be serious???Frank.

He may be serious Frank, although I rarely take him seriously.

 

Alan.

 

 

[fly_tornado]

farri's plan to censor the internet "to protect the RAA" is by far the best idea the internet has ever created

 

 

[Methusala]

I suppose that in responding positively to pettifogging behaviour we may ignore far more serious issues such as Gazelles being left inefficient and under performing by the requirement to only use the original specified propeller. This undoubtedly helps keep the fleet and those who fly in them safe! Why are we required to affix in a prominent positition a label stating that the aircraft does not conform to airworthiness standards when we are, in fact, over regulated by dolts? Don

 

 

[facthunter]

Welcome to the world of aviation today. Don. I doubt it is all the RAAus staff fault. Most of you people haven't dealt with the CASA direct. You are a long playing record bagging the RAAus . f t. Give it a break is all Farri is saying, not censoring anything. Unless we know all the circumstances and the correspondence between the CASA and RAAus, most of this is speculation. Why would people like Jim Tatlock and Rod Birrell and others, be giving heavens knows what time to trying to sort this out, and all the whinging from here must be really encouraging. You are crapping in your own nest f t or is it not the nest you are really in?. Nev

 

 

[sain]

Because we can't make any progress towards saying "hey, we know what we are talking about, and gazelles should be able to sport a different prop" and having that statement taken seriously while our organisation hasn't noticed (or disciplined members for) widespread lack of compliance with basic clearly written requirements.

 

 

[sain]

just to be clear, my last post was in response to methusala's..

 

 

[Methusala]

I think that respect for regulation is engendered by regulation being appropriate and proportional to the expected outcome. Some wish to operate in a framework where all discretion is absent and so, "just follow the rule and you'll be safe!" is their mantra. I hope that we can have the self discipline to act safely and operate with some independence. By the way, I never implied that the workers at RAA in any way are at fault. Don

 

 

[facthunter]

No Don and only my first line was in response to your post. The rest was for my long time friend f t . Sorry for the .ambiguity..Nev

 

 

[sain]

Okay, I've probably fired off a little strongly in this thread so I'll try and explain my point of view a little more calmly and rationally.

 

Some of the work I do has a lot of government red tape tied up around it, and is subject to regular audits. One of the things the auditors look for is compliance with the red tape. Now normally the auditors are willing to let a few things slide, as long as its clear over subsequent audits that I'm trying to fix the issues. Their practice is though, once you fail an audit, you get scrutinised much more closely. So you wind up with a 100% check of EVERYTHING, rather than just the 10% check you used to get. When I do audits myself I follow the same process.

 

RA-Aus has snuck by for years with fairly widespread lack of compliance with regulations from the membership. Reading a bunch of the old posts on this forum will tell you that there are many common practices which are/were at the time contrary to the regulations (flight above 5000ft (for no reason), flight below 500ft (again, for no reason), flight in clouds etc).

 

So after RA-Aus failed the audits and registration renewals were banned, RA-Aus is subject to much greater scrutiny because of those failures and the widespread lack of compliance. When you guys go to register your aircraft and have things like the stickers with the wrong registration type, or rego numbers not quite correct the auditors are going to find it, and ask RA-Aus why they didn't enforce the regulations. And unfortunately, the statements that will get bandied around are to the effect of "look, they can't even put their registration number on the plane the right way? If they can't even do that, how can they be trusted to have met the other requirements?"

 

The issue isn't that having the hyphen in your plane registration makes your plane safer, the issue is that not having it as per the book is likely to be a symptom of a deeper problem.

 

Unfortunately RA-Aus has made this worse than it needed to be, by not responding to the first audits effectively enough. So now we all get to follow the book to the absolute letter for a while. Joy. And every time somebody submits a registration which has to be rejected until issues are rectified, that just forces CASA to stay on RA-Aus's back. It also inhibits RA-Aus's ability to affect any worthwhile changes to the regulations, because no request for changes will get taken seriously while we still have people who can't even follow the simplest bits of the regulations.

 

So please guys, pay attention to what the requirements are before you send your pilot certificate renewals, your aircraft rego renewals or anything else in to RA-Aus, and please do your best to comply with them. How hard is affixing a sticker (or a vinyl hypen), really?

 

my apologies for any harshness in my initial responses. I've been teaching people to drive an IT system for the last week, and I now have a very low tolerance for inability to follow simple instructions. Unfortunately, something along the lines of "click the Save button" is far to complex for many people. If anybody asks (AGAIN) which button on the mouse is the left mouse button I'm probably going to crack (the user had some RSI issues, and was swapping the mouse from left side to right side frequently)

 

 

[Gnarly Gnu]

If anybody asks (AGAIN) which button on the mouse is the left mouse button I'm probably going to crack

Whoa, that's insain....

 

 

[nong]

I am sure that the rego issue from CASA perspective is mostly about making the RAA act like grown ups and learning how to enforce rules and maintain standards. Like you would expect them to be. Its unfortunate that no one has shown Methlusa/Don the problems with his plane prior to visiting the office but its what you expect from the RAA, blaming the CASA for the lack of direction from the RAA only shifts blame from the RAA.

C'mon f_t. RAAus DID provide direction to Don. That direction is in the Ops and Tech Manuals. Without wishing to be harsh toward Don, I think you are wrong to badmouth RAAus on this one.

 

 

[storchy neil]

mind numbing pettiness of bureaucracy yes it was us who made this happen read the bloody instructions neil