Is this for real??

[Tomo]

Ok, Thanks Cloudsuck. Yes I agree he is a great pilot, I honestly learnt a lot that day, about keeping the stresses down, being gentle on the controls etc...

 

 

[merc]

cloudsuck,i made no mention of the legality or otherwise of the drifter at i-wood. i was referring to the posts stating a thruster was doing aero's. As there was only one thruster at the fly in, that is a slight on the pilot.

 

 

[Guest Cloudsuck]

cloudsuck,i made no mention of the legality or otherwise of the drifter at i-wood. i was referring to the posts stating a thruster was doing aero's. As there was only one thruster at the fly in, that is a slight on the pilot.

Oh ok, sorry for the misunderstanding. Long day at the office, my comprehension gyros have toppled :)

 

 

[nong]

Righto if it was Wayne in his VH drifter thats all legal and I don't have a problem and as I said I don't care if you do it and kill yourself but its the people who get caught out down the line that bothers me. I do however have a problem with people who do it in aircraft that are not permitted to. I know someone here on these forums has performed aerobatics in a Jabiru and bragged about it, again its fine until in 5 years time when someone else owns the aircraft and the wing falls off due to that overstress all those years before.The rules are there for a reason stick to them people!

Some rules in aviation, as in other fields, make sense when first promulgated but over time become outmoded. The ban on aerobatics is one such rule. At the time these ANOs were written, many ultralights had weak structures, floppy aerofoils, flutter issues and insufficient dynamic characteristics to enable aerobatics. Also, our first rule set prohibited flight above 300 feet AGL. So in that environment OF COURSE aerobatics were outlawed....it was sensible and reasonable.

We have moved along. As a body charged with regulating so called 'recreational' flying it is well past the time when RAA should have had a go at getting the ban lifted. Aerobatics are a core activity of recreational flying E.G. Mucking about with and getting a few thrills from aeroplanes.

 

History shows that rules sometimes get steam-rolled by what is actually practised. An example was the rule that VFR pilots couldn't fly at night. This rule was widely ignored by a fair cross section of 'bush bandits' as it unduly restricted operations. The rule-makers gave up and made night VFR legal under a simple rule set.

 

PROHIBITION invites disobedience. DISOBEDIENCE is often the opening move to bring about BENEFICIAL CHANGE.

 

Legalities aside, the line between an aerobatic and a non-aerobatic aircraft is not clear in a technical sense. What can be worked out is that different aircraft have different aerobatic capabilities ranging from none to highly capable. In the absence of an enabling set of rules, the flyer works it out himself...best he/she can. A set of rules would lead to aircraft labelled as 'aerobatic' and supplied with pilots notes advising on entry speeds, limit loads, loading information, etc.

 

The message is: WE NEED A RULE SET.

 

Don't shoot the messenger!

 

P.S. It is incorrect to claim that looping or rolling a Jabiru will cause overstress. You can loop a Jab whilst keeping speed within the green arc and not getting within a bulls roar of the published (modest) limit load. Structural damage? No chance!

 

HOWEVER......any plane, AEROBATIC OR NOT, will break if you go too fast and maybe throw in some control movements to twist the structure. But hey, we aren't allowed to provide training for our aerobatic pilots, are we. Better to bury our heads in the sand and berate them as 'fools'.

 

Who remembers those 'fools' who flew the early ultralights. Well those 'fools' are now revered as our 'pioneers'. How the wheel turns!

 

 

[Guest Maj Millard]

nong, yes what you say is interesting stuff. But surely you as an ag pilot (I'm assuming) might agree that in any aircraft, it is not so much the aircraft, but 'the knob behind the knob' that actually causes the machine to break, or to fall to the ground out of control. He does this either by selecting the wrong machine in the first place, or by not staying within the speed /manouvering structural limits, or by losing the aircraft and overspeeding, or by not keeping sufficient altitude below him for dirt avoidance. This often is simply a result of the pilot not having the required aerobatic skills, or training, in the first place. It is my guess, that a lot of so called "aerobatic crashes" would fall into one of these catogories ?. I would be the first to agree that any aeroplane (or most anyway) would be capable of performing some basic 1g manouvers in the right hands, as has been proven many times in the past.

 

Problem is my Lightwing, and a Jab for instance, has that little yellow sticker in the cockpit that says: "Intentional spins and deliberate aerobatic manouvers prohibited" or words to that effect.

 

I think it would be great for some RA-Aus aircraft to recieve some type of aerobatic approval, either basic or advanced as the case, and capability, may be. For instance that new Savage Cub sure looks capable of doing a nice slow roll, and should have the power to pull safely through a nice loop.

 

However once again it gets back to the pilot, and also the need to have some aerobatic training before even attempting the easy, basic stuff.

 

Our big danger of course is the untrained pilot hopping in, and attempting aerobatics in whatever, and ending up one more of the aforementioned " aerobatic crash statistics", because he/she simply didn't have the required training or knowledge, to pull themselves out of the shix, after he's stuffed up on his first attempt, and lost it. That scenero does nobody any good....