The shiny new-look RAA?

[fly_tornado]

Engineering standards always improve over time, you can't overestimate how much CAD engineering has allowed designers the opportunity to rework old designs.

 

 

[kasper]

And I'd hate to be in one of those cad engineered airframes.

 

Cad does not equal element analysis - it's a drawing and form design toolset.

 

Finite element analysis etc that works on design load and strength etc is very different ... and it's not as exacting as many think ... the A380 used very advanced fea in major design elements ... and on actual part testing even they were surprised by differences that were unpleasantly on the weaker side.

 

I very seriously doubt any small manufacturer claiming significant reliance on computer design for structural strength. Aerodynamics yes use a computer but on structures I'll buy one that's been structurally load tested in real life any day

 

 

[fly_tornado]

have you been following Kermit Weeks' Benoist replica build? All those book learnt engineers can't get a 1913 design to fly

 

 

[facthunter]

When you put a strain gauge on it in the air you get the real figures, Often way off the one expected, even by highly resourced companies. Nev

 

 

[kaz3g]

Yes, good point. But to take your analogy further, do 'shareholders' in other companies have to pay the company annual fees? Remember, we are members of an organisation that is being run as a business, but the purpose of the business is to run the organisation for its membership. Without the membership there would be no company, surely?Sorry if the above reads naïve, I have very little knowledge in the legal implications of RAA being run as a company, but I'd like to think if there is no valid reason why we members shouldn't have knowledge of the content of the boards submissions, then maybe we should... It would certainly put to rest any of the bickering on here about the performance of the board. If they're doing a good job (as I suspect), they have nothing to lose from a little transparency, and everything to gain.

 

Alan

Hi Alan

 

The two things are quite separate in my view.

 

On the one hand, you have an organisation that you hold shares in and it trades (hopefully) in such a way that your asset base grows.

 

On the other hand, it is selling services in pursuit of that trade and you are a customer paying for those services.

 

Many years ago, I was a shareholder in PIVOT fertilisers. Everyone wanting to purchase superphosphate from the had to be a shareholder. I still had to pay for my super when I bought it albeit at just $20 per tonne with the subsidy we enjoyed then....look at the cost now!

 

Kaz

 

 

[The Baron]

We are being sold out to a CASA wishlist by our own Chairman. With the new board set up no discussion entered into just full steam ahead for increased fees, more stringent maintenance requirement. Possibly requiring a professional to perform even simple maintenance tasks. ie L1 qualification taken away requiring sitting an exam to be legally able to do tasks we used to be allowed to do. (God help you if you own a Jabiru.) We will loose our "point of difference" if increased weight limits (up to 1500kgs) come into being. Why is Mike M pushing for access to controlled airspace for us - if you want to do this go GA. RAA was about low cost, minimum regulation for maximum fun we are literally going to end up "GA mk2" costing as much as our GA cousins are paying now. CASA has ruined GA and if allowed to continue their influence on our leadership they will do the same to us.

Hear Hear

 

 

[davidf]

Good one Nev, you have hit the nail squarely on the head, again. I like to fly low cost and without the BS.

 

 

[Glenn Wilson]

Engineering standards always improve over time, you can't overestimate how much CAD engineering has allowed designers the opportunity to rework old designs.

Fly Tornado, is that a photo of Sussan Ley on your profile?

 

 

[Keith Page]

Good Morning gandalph.. Thank you for the warning triangle regarding my post -- however my mind boggles.

 

To help better under my post go to billwoodmason #4 and have read of that post. With what I said and post #4 that will give a clearer understanding of the situation of which we are now experiencing. I am not the only person who is thinking this way.

 

KP

 

 

[turboplanner]

Fly Tornado, is that a photo of Sussan Ley on your profile?

No that's FT.....good looker isn't she, but doesn't seem to respond to pick up lines.

 

 

[Hargraves]

I,m of the opinion that the 90% of membership that deliberatly did,nt participate in the last RAA corporate event made a very clear statement

 

and If i were a board member I,d be very concerned about the power and potential of that obvious enormously strong undercurrent thats out their just waiting for an alternate. PS Bring it on. Cheers Hargraves

 

 

[Mike Borgelt]

Canada has had owner maintenance of old C172 etc types for the last 15 years or so with few problems. The FAA looked at this about 3 or 4 years ago and concluded that the owner maintenance fleet didn't have a higher incidence of maintenance related failures and in general the state of the fleet was as good if not better than the traditionally maintained aircraft.

 

The experiment has been run and the outcome is clear. Stop muddying the waters and sowing FUD.

 

OF COURSE RAAus has sold out to CASA. GFA has done the same (in many cases GFA requirements exceed CASA's. Annual checks instead of every two years when in a club environment every takeoff and landing is observed anyway and any problems can be nipped in the bud and no matter whether you are an "independent operator" or not if an instructor is present you are under his or her authority. You also cannot fly unless your club has a CFI, the State has a RTO/ops and the GFA has a CTO/ops. Everyone is a student pilot and nobody is treated as an individual, only as a member of a collective. The people running GFA can't figure out why gliding isn't more popular. Strange isn't it?) .

 

It is part of CASA's plan to divide the low end of aviation in Australia so that it doesn't present a united political voice.

 

Instead of complaining about RAAus costs rising to those of GA, push for regulatory change so that there is a fall in GA costs. There's no need to have private people doing CASA's administrative tasks. CASA is chock full of lazy, overpaid and under worked public servants whose job it is to do those tasks. They were given it by Parliament.

 

It doesn't matter so much who does the administration - it only matters what the rules are.

 

Increasing RAAus gross weight while simultaneously increasing costs by going the current GA path would seem pointless.

 

 

[Keith Page]

Mike Borgelt.. That is a very good post..

 

You and Hargraves are a breath of fresh air.

 

KP

 

 

[gandalph]

Hi Keith. Sorry to hear about your mind being boggled. That can be troublesome. Perhaps a cup of tea, a bex and a good lie down might help?

 

Thanks for your reading advice, I have re-read those posts and my understanding of your opinion is clear, as is my understanding of your agenda.

 

Good luck with the de-boggling though!

 

 

[Mike Borgelt]

Keith Page

 

"Safety, is not a big issue just go back get rid of the fear factor teach people how to think with procedures there it is in a nut shell.

 

Do not get me wrong -- I am all for not hurting people and not damaging planes BUT teach "Safe Procedures" .."Safe Cultures".

 

Not the never ending diet of "Safety" "Safety" "Safety" "Safety" and no member input only the egos out of the office.

 

Safety is the end product not the beginning."

 

How sensible. I'm cheering.

 

CASA, GFA and RAAus don't have safety cultures. They have rules cultures. All sorts of rules, many of which are counter productive to safety*, others make no difference and the really important ones are hidden in the noise. The organisations are operating under the misapprehension that more rules = more safety, with a notable lack of real world success.

 

Earlier this year someone (I suspect from O/S, put in a confidential safety report to ATSB about the GFA run World Gliding contest at Benalla, saying that the GFA had a negative safety culture. GFA and CASA both responded. GFA with much verbiage claiming thy had a "risk mitigation process" (amounts to: we have rules). CASA went along with this farce.

 

Anyone who launches 116 sailplanes from one site in an hour or so is accepting a much larger than usual risk of a mid air. There were two, one with minor damage, one where two gliders destroyed, two bailouts, two pilots injured, airlifted to hospital by helicopter, all at vast expense. The farce is that each participating country was allowed to have two pilots in each of 3 contest classes. One pilot per country and hold the 3 contests at different times and places and you have truly got a risk mitigation process. There are other ways too. Unfortunately egos of the organisers and the blue blazer brigade who sanction these contests, like to have LARGE numbers attending as it makes them feel more important.

 

* Consider the rule about touching the controls. Your passenger, who you may fly with nearly all the time, is not allowed to be taught to fly straight and level by you and is not allowed to "touch the controls". What absurdity, what block headed stupidity. If you lapse into unconciousness what is your passenger going to do? The "how to fly and land" course is going to be very short. CASA would rather have the passenger (and you) die, it seems.

 

 

[turboplanner]

CASA, GFA and RAAus don't have safety cultures. They have rules cultures. All sorts of rules, many of which are counter productive to safety*, others make no difference and the really important ones are hidden in the noise. The organisations are operating under the misapprehension that more rules = more safety, with a notable lack of real world success.

We've had this suggestion before, but no one seems to be able to point to all these new rules.

 

Earlier this year someone (I suspect from O/S, put in a confidential safety report to ATSB about the GFA run World Gliding contest at Benalla, saying that the GFA had a negative safety culture. GFA and CASA both responded. GFA with much verbiage claiming thy had a "risk mitigation process" (amounts to: we have rules). CASA went along with this farce.Anyone who launches 116 sailplanes from one site in an hour or so is accepting a much larger than usual risk of a mid air. There were two, one with minor damage, one where two gliders destroyed, two bailouts, two pilots injured, airlifted to hospital by helicopter, all at vast expense. The farce is that each participating country was allowed to have two pilots in each of 3 contest classes. One pilot per country and hold the 3 contests at different times and places and you have truly got a risk mitigation process. There are other ways too. Unfortunately egos of the organisers and the blue blazer brigade who sanction these contests, like to have LARGE numbers attending as it makes them feel more important.

Poor risk management may have been the cause, not poor rules, but poor culture, poor planning and above all poor supervision.

 

* Consider the rule about touching the controls. Your passenger, who you may fly with nearly all the time, is not allowed to be taught to fly straight and level by you and is not allowed to "touch the controls". What absurdity, what block headed stupidity. If you lapse into unconsciousness what is your passenger going to do? The "how to fly and land" course is going to be very short. CASA would rather have the passenger (and you) die, it seems.

Instructors are trained well beyond the standards of typical pilots, and usually are light years ahead in currency; most importantly they are trained to expect and react to completely unexpected control inputs , but some people can't help themselves, and this regulation relates to historic crashes where there was nothing wrong with the engine. You bitch about not being able to train someone to be taught to fly straight and level; A few years ago we had someone one here boasting about being given the controls in the circuit. He'd bought himself an ultralight, and the trouble came the first time he tried to land it;wrote it off.

You espouse a safety culture, and the backbone of that is to get your ego under control, let trained instructors do the training.

 

The cost of paying an instructor to train a regular passenger how the fly straight and level, how to turn and descend, and how to do a rough landing, is a very small part of your total cost of flying.

 

 

[M61A1]

We've had this suggestion before, but no one seems to be able to point to all these new rules.

(moerated...)people have been spelling that out very clearly for the three or four years I've been on this site.

Compared to many other countries, we are over regulated with very prescriptive rules, yet we are no safer than any of the others.

 

In the last few years we have had a formal SMS introduced, that's a NEW rule or several hundred, extra inspections, extra requirements for endorsements and it goes on and on.

 

I know people in the GFA have had it similarly.

 

 

[turboplanner]

A predictable response.

 

 

[Yenn]

No you don't have to have a printed copy of the weather, but you do have to have obtained the required information for the flight.

 

I would recommend getting instrument training. I did it years ago and can well remember after being under the hood for about ten minutes and the instructor asked me where i was going. She flipped the hood up and the horizon was at about 45 degrees, the ASI was rapidly increasing and the ball was not in the centre. I know I cannot fly in IFR conditions, because I have tried it and failed. So I am not going anywhere near it now.

 

 

[Mike Borgelt]

Blower, all you produce is high pressure hot air.

 

 

[Jim McDowall]

A predictable response.

Turbo your moniker is interesting: "Strategy can compensate for lack of talent but talent never compensates for lack of strategy."

In retort others have made these observations:

 

“Strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory, tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.” —Sun Tsu, Ancient Chinese Military strategist

 

“However beautiful the strategy, you should occasionally look at the results” – Sir Winston Churchill

 

“Any intelligent fool can make things bigger and more complex. It takes a touch of genius – and a lot of courage – to move in the opposite direction”—Albert Einstein

 

and best of all

 

“We don’t like their sound, and guitar music is on the way out” —Decca Recording Co. rejecting the Beatles 1962

 

So before blowing people off take a minute to think about this:

 

“There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all” —Peter Drucker (the father of modern management theory)

 

 

[turboplanner]

Turbo your moniker is interesting: "Strategy can compensate for lack of talent but talent never compensates for lack of strategy."In retort others have made these observations:

“Strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory, tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.” —Sun Tsu, Ancient Chinese Military strategist

 

“However beautiful the strategy, you should occasionally look at the results” – Sir Winston Churchill

 

“Any intelligent fool can make things bigger and more complex. It takes a touch of genius – and a lot of courage – to move in the opposite direction”—Albert Einstein

 

and best of all

 

“We don’t like their sound, and guitar music is on the way out” —Decca Recording Co. rejecting the Beatles 1962

 

So before blowing people off take a minute to think about this:

 

“There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all” —Peter Drucker (the father of modern management theory)

All great statements; are you able to enlighten us on these new rules?

 

 

[Jim McDowall]

The rules imposed by virtue of the agreements (is there a current agreement regime or is CASA just handing over the dosh) with RA-Aus and GFA these organisations have re-written Ops and Technical manuals which have imposed expanded regulatory regimes on members. If the GFA leadership spent more time flying and less time writing rules the GFA would be in a healthier position. An end result of this is, for example, members can be turfed out of the organisation for bringing the organisation into disrepute, not a breach of any aviation regulation. And then there is the mess that has been created for maintenance organisations by new regulations not to mention the complete inability to reconcile the 1988 CAR and 1998 CASR into one comprehensible document.

 

 

[turboplanner]

The rules imposed by virtue of the agreements (is there a current agreement regime or is CASA just handing over the dosh) with RA-Aus and GFA these organisations have re-written Ops and Technical manuals which have imposed expanded regulatory regimes on members. If the GFA leadership spent more time flying and less time writing rules the GFA would be in a healthier position. An end result of this is, for example, members can be turfed out of the organisation for bringing the organisation into disrepute, not a breach of any aviation regulation. And then there is the mess that has been created for maintenance organisations by new regulations not to mention the complete inability to reconcile the 1988 CAR and 1998 CASR into one comprehensible document.

Thanks Jim

Group 1

 

Rules imposed by Organisations (such as RA-Aus and GFA) which include rules such as bringing the organisation into disrepute, and rules which are not a breach of any Australian regulation, are required by law to include Natural Justice All of this, making new rules, deleting rules, changing rules, providing natural justice is within the voting powers of the members convoluted as they now are. Following some previous comments, I read the articles of the GFA very carefully. I don't want to say anything publicly on that.I'm not telling anyone anything new by saying the member environment at present has to change before the current situation can be changed.

 

Group 2

 

The GA rules are just unnecessarily hard to follow; while a lot of potential changes have been discussed, in some cases for decades; compliance with ICAO regulations has had more on the ground effect both here and in the US. Anyone who doesn't like ICAO rules should be lobbying at the ICAO level, which these days of online communication doesn't have to involve a million dollar a year airline account.

 

 

[Jim McDowall]

Thanks for the comments turbo. In response, there is an expanding body of law on the subject of "bringing an organisation into disrepute". For example a Commonwealth Public Service employee was sacked for anonymously criticizing his employer in an on-line forum. Someone took the time to track him down through the web and the unfortunate events followed. He had an impeccable service record. The courts upheld his sacking. In organisations like GFA and RA-Aus personal conflicts can and have been used to run people out of the organisation under this guise. I am aware of instances where this has occurred in the GFA. It happens in sporting clubs Australia wide and is increasingly being used in employment situations.

 

Compliance with ICAO regulations is not required to be uniform. Each country only has to inform ICAO of its variations and these variations are published as an appendix to the various annexes. Either way ICAO stands for the INTERNATIONAL Civil Aviation Organisation and its primary charter is the regulation of international transport aviation not particularly General Aviation or UL etc. For example, from ANNEX 7: