Are We Losing Interest?

[Old Koreelah]

16 minutes ago, pmccarthy said:

I have have 51 years in GA and 28 years in RAA flying…

Crickey PM, I just added those two numbers together…

[jackc]

That long in Aviation, Fred Flintstone must have been his CFI 🙂 

[walrus]

Spenaroo,regarding boats, I see plenty of $150k wake boats bring pulled by 100K+ of trailer and Dodge Ram 4WD. Most of these appear to be owned by young tradies. The hourly running costs are stratospheric. The question remains - why aren't aeroplanes maintaining market share of the Australian toy market? Judging from american youtube flying videos there are plenty of young folk in the American GA scene, why not here?

 

..But we know they are unsafe! Why, they even permit children to touch the controls!   ...And the takeoffs and low flying! Suicidal!

[jackc]

8 minutes ago, walrus said:

Spenaroo,regarding boats, I see plenty of $150k wake boats bring pulled by 100K+ of trailer and Dodge Ram 4WD. Most of these appear to be owned by young tradies. The hourly running costs are stratospheric. The question remains - why aren't aeroplanes maintaining market share of the Australian toy market? Judging from american youtube flying videos there are plenty of young folk in the American GA scene, why not here?

 

..But we know they are unsafe! Why, they even permit children to touch the controls!   ...And the takeoffs and low flying! Suicidal!

Those wake boat owners probably started with a tinny and a rusty old HQ ute,  over time they upgraded and went bigger and better.

Aviation has no ‘entry’ level anymore, RAA is heading for GA territory in training and aircraft costs.  In what ever pursuit we have followed in life, we started at the bottom.  Aviation has no ‘bottom’ anymore 😞  

[facthunter]

But the sky does. That's where you come to grief. . I think we are going around and around..  Even when I was 13 people who owned or mucked about with planes had more dough than most. Doctors and chemists had twins and didn't fly enough hours to keep current in them. DCA was better. It had no lawyers making the rules. Wackets and Percivals had the wings fall off..

 While a Dodge RAM and speedboat cost more How many of us aspire to that?

  If you have a speedboat, swimming pool or fullsize billiard table you have more"friends" but none of them will kick in for the repairs  Nev..

 

[pmccarthy]

1 hour ago, jackc said:

That long in Aviation, Fred Flintstone must have been his CFI 🙂 

It’s like understanding the difference between series and parallel wiring.

[facthunter]

Did you have more amps when you flew both. The REAL stuff is Ultra lights . You only press buttons with that other stuff and it's certified as easy to fly.?  Nev

[pmccarthy]

It was easier to stay current.

[440032]

BOOM TISH.

[spenaroo]

16 hours ago, jackc said:

Those wake boat owners probably started with a tinny and a rusty old HQ ute,  over time they upgraded and went bigger and better.

Aviation has no ‘entry’ level anymore, RAA is heading for GA territory in training and aircraft costs.  In what ever pursuit we have followed in life, we started at the bottom.  Aviation has no ‘bottom’ anymore 😞  

Correct,

We just acquired one of those boats in the family. (and most I know of are owned by the parents - like ours, or through family syndicates)
ignore the tow vehicle, these are normally work cars with businesses plastered on the side.
its so we can fit more people on the boat, current capacity is 12 people. (find me a 12 seat plane for 150K)
you rarely see those boats go out with less then 6. and they offer the ability to stay away from the shore for longer (lets you get to clear spots in the river, and rotate through skiers without the need to come in and swap people in the boat)

like planes the old 70's ski boats are still around and popular as an accessible entry point and make up the majority of users. of the 10 main boats we go out with, only 3 are the big wake boats. and there is an additional 3 jet-skis because they cant justify a boat

and there will also be young guys who have their own business and mortgage everything with a lavish lifestyle - it all gets sold as it eventually collapses, and we get a reasonably priced used boat from it.

Edited October 1, 2021 by spenaroo

[Ian]

There is still a lot of interest in flying however there are significant barriers to entry and ongoing accessibility issues and a government bureaucracies which aren't interested in GA.

To learn to drive a car or boat costs a few hundred dollars, to learn to fly costs about $20,000. If you live in Sydney and can afford a plane you're not going to be located anywhere near where you can house a plane. Canberra has to be the only capital city in the world with only a single airport, and that airport doesn't cater the general aviation.

For example to drive a car I can learn from someone with experience in the vehicle of my choice and pass and examination provided by a Government body or a private examiner. To get a boat licence I can pass a test and gain experience with an existing boat owner. To fly a plane I need to interact with a flight school with multiple levels of instructors, chief instructors etc, fly in certified aircraft etc. Some schools can offer shortcut training programs where they qualify with fewer hours, for example commercial pilots can qualify with fewer hours through some programs. 

While I agree that the training associated with flying should have more rigor than a car licence that doesn't justify the current broken system. The system should be broken out into instructors and assessors who are individuals with qualifications rather than the present mess which tries to create a business model.

 

 

[spacesailor]

It,s not Just the practical aspect of training, but that Bureaucratic theory.

Not all want2bees have top univarsary schooling.

spacesailor

[facthunter]

I don't believe you need a degree to fly a plane. To design one would be a different story. Nev

[spacesailor]

Thats the rub, Anyone Can & have designed aircraft, especially model types,

I made model " canards " before they had that name ( that l had  heard of )

Why put those fat wings at the front, made more sense to put the little wings at the front. 

spacesailor

 

[facthunter]

Unfortunately the canards are harder to fly despite appearing to be more logical. We've just gone through a bit on aeroelasticity and flutter. Do you think most pilot s have much of a clue about that Space.? Plenty of designers don't either. 

[Ian]

Why do you say that canards are harder to fly? The following link would appear to imply that's not the case, accidents related to control loss are significantly lower than the rest of the homebuilt fleet in canards (except for the quickie which has ground handling issues).

https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/4016414

[Old Koreelah]

I always liked carnards, but my enthusiasm waned after guiding a Longeze to his parking space at Temora. They sure don’t like rough ground and short runways.

 

Is there as STOL canard design?

[Ian]

Not sure if it was one of his better designs but yes there STOL canard  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rutan_Grizzly

 

[rgmwa]

Rutan Defiant is not a common aircraft. What's it like to fly?

[Ian]

No, not common and I'm just in the process of taking possession of it so it's a bit early to comment as yet. Once I've done a few hundred hours in it I might be more confident.

[Bruce Tuncks]

The Rutan Solitaire glider was a big mistake. It couldn't slow down enough to thermal.

The idea of a canard is that the small wing stalls first and so the main wing never does.

I've flown in a dragonfly ( technically a tandem ) and while it had great performance, it was harder to land and take-off than an ordinary plane.

[Flightrite]

Canards whilst a clever design cant be that good otherwise after the 'Wrong Bros' started out with them aircraft manufactures would have stuck  with them to today, few have tried, most have failed.

I don't agree that driving a car or a boat is anywhere near a comparison to driving a plane.

Your car engine stops or yr boat engine stops you come to a halt, pissed off maybe but that's all, a plane is an entirely different beast when it all goes pear shaped!!

Flying is still a skill well beyond other types of machinery operations, trouble is (like Ive said ) it's way too easy to get a plane ticket & it shows!

Some years ago the RFDS looked at the P180 Avanti, whilst technically advanced in some area's compared to the current RFDS fleet (B200) It failed for various reasons. Orphan type air-frames always seem to turn out lemons in reality.

[facthunter]

Canards are generally twitchy in pitch and seem to require long runways. They seem to have an efficiency in flight which is good. They have been around for a long time and if they really were practical should have more acceptance by now.   Nev

[Ian]

One of the things that I like about Rutan was that he tried things and moved on. Some of the designs worked and others didn't, in his later years there's nary a canard design to be seen. Personally I thought the Voyager was a really clever design.

All design is a compromise, in exchange for simplicity and safer flight characteristics you get longer takeoff and landing rolls because you can't approach unsafe angles of attack to wring the last bit of lift out of the plane. Rutan worked on spin recovery for the F4 Phantom and this strongly influenced his views on how planes should behave and this is reflected in his designs.

The RFDS requires the ability to operate out of less prepared dirt airstrips so if the P180  was shortlisted I'd question their judgement. It's a bit like choosing a Ferrari as a police car.

In relation to the comparison between driving, boating and flying there are different risks however all of these activities can kill. Luckily in planes there's a whole other dimension so you're unlikely to collide with another vehicle however the consequences are generally higher.

There will always be people complaining that there are too many drivers who shouldn't have a licence or that pilot training is inadequate however in reality the industry is dying. I'd prefer a thriving industry with a lower barrier to entry supplemented by technology to assist people with their judgement. For instance weather cams at popular airports, simple web apps which provide advice on routes weather conditions. A single desktop computer with a graphics card is more than capable of calculating proximity alerts for every single active plane is Australian airspace based upon ADSB data and performance characteristics.

 

[NT5224]

Hi folks

 

I'm so pleased to see this thread running. I logged onto the site and was momentarily disorientated because I couldn't find any of the usual 'Is GA/RAA doomed?' threads that constantly pop up. 

 

I almost started one myself 🤣.

 

But good to see contributors maintaining their  healthy glass-half-empty scepticism about the future of aviation. 

 

Here's a quick observation from me. No references to flashy motorboats...

 

I own an aircraft and have an airstrip to fly it off. I pay exorbitant sums to insure and maintain my aircraft. Yet despite all costs covered I fly much,  much less than I would like. What's going on?

 

Are we losing interest? (as the OP posited?)

 

Is GA doomed?

 

Nup. I simply don't have enough time. Im not retired and have a busy working life that consumes so much of my time. I really think the frantic pace of  21st century life is different from previous eras in that respect. I do not remember my father having such heavy demands on his time in the 1970s...

 

So in response to the question 'Are we losing interest?' I have a counter question to put to everybody.

 

How do changes in participation in  recreational flying compare with growth or decline in other recreational pursuits (e.g. sporting club memberships,  recreational fishing or boating, motorsports?)

 

Do people in the 21st century just have less time and participation in organised recreational activities is changing  for that reason across the board?

 

Dunno...

 

Alan