I_Con

Not much help at this point in time but have you had a look at Navbag for android. At this stage is basically naips for android but I understand the developer is planning flight planning/navigation in the next few months.

Business is doing ok, I did build it from the ground up. It surprisingly simple to build up a business, all you need is a little bit of honesty and integrity and the customers come flocking in, who would have thought. I am lucky in that I have the ability to simply switch off the business owner in me when I walk out the door, and family life is a priority. And yes it is rewarding seeing the fruits of all your hard labour, and I do love what I do.

Model flying in Menai/Barden Ridge through Southern Sydney Model Aero Club. We fly out of council owned soccer fields with permission so its only really good for electric or max 40 size ic models.

The pic of that dog is so cute. So just came back from a relaxing 1.4 hr scenic. Turns out the ear plugs (minus the beanie) where a hit. 1 yo was playing and laughing with my wife before falling asleep for the rest of the flight. Although she wouldn't keep the beanie on for any length of time, she barely noticed the ear plugs were in and a good time was had by all. P.S, the 1 yo is in a forward facing child seat.

I never said they don't both enjoy it, just that we can't keep the headset on the youngest. We have a short scenic planned for tomorrow afternoon, we are going to try industrial ear plugs and a beanie, I'll report back with results.

I agree, the amount falls and head knocks my two have had would give the average adult concussion and bleeding on the brain. And how many times have you heard about serious car accidents where the parent/s are wiped out and the kids walk away orphans. Major thread drift now. My biggest fear is my girls will fall in with the wrong crowd/meet the wrong guy/get involved with drugs/e.t.c and ruin their lives. I have a friend who has a boy and a girl, both teenagers now but the dad got his son into dirt bike riding at the age of six. They would hook up the trailer with the bikes and head off somewhere riding every other weekend. Fast forward to today the boy is 16 and most of his facebook posts are pics of himself with his dad riding bikes or some other activity but usually involving a parent or the rest of the family, not street racing/underage binge drinking/doing drugs/sleeping around/e.t.c. Their daughter who is at uni now is a similar situation, was always involved in doing something usually with mum from a young age and now always doing stuff with her mum and family, even went on a 3 month holiday around Europe with mum during her gap year instead of getting pregnant at the Gold Coast for schoolies. Both the kids are quite bright and you can tell they are going places. The reason I tell this story is so that some may understand why I want to include my girls much as possible. Edit: On a side note (or rather back on topic) a bit of googling found these CARES Airplane Safety Harness For Children. Any one had any experiences with these?

Ok so we are going to turn this into a irresponsible parent thing. I was just going to let this thread die on its own but I feel compelled to reply. I am not oblivious to the dangers involved in light aircraft, quite the opposite, I have researched it extensively. Its very hard to compare driving and flying as they are measured in different ways (klms driven to hours flown) and its not feasible to convert hours flown to distance driven because that makes driving look really dangerous compared to aviation. If driving distance is roughly converted to hours in the car (which is a rough estimate because no one knows the exact average speed of all those driven klms plus the whole pedestrian/cyclist thing) then you get the motorbike analogy. Obviously you can reduce the risk of dying in a car by only driving to the shops and back rather than driving on country roads or on Fri and Sat nights when DUI is prevalent. The general consensus is that flying GA aircraft is some where between riding a motorbike on the road at its most dangerous to driving in a car on the road at its safest (I have even read that its as safe airline travel, but I don't think anyone really believes that). Again its difficult to compare because of the differences in measurement. I'm not sure where the dirt bike riding/race car driving analogy comes into it. Basically GA flying encounters 1.8 fatal accidents per 100,000 hours. To break it down further, private and business flying (the category I am interested in) is the most dangerous of all GA ops at 2.2 fatal accidents per 100,000 hours. FYI Flight instruction is the safest at .03 fatal accidents per 100,000 hours and any GA flying in New Zealand is much more dangerous. Now obviously these are not preferable numbers so I looked into it further. I don't have solid numbers to back this up but around 80% of these fatal accidents are caused by pilot error. The most common is flight into IMC by a VFR pilot resulting in CFIT (I count flight into IMC by VFR pilots pilot error), followed by fuel exhaustion. Another interesting fact is private pilots are pretty safe in their first 200 odd hours, its after that, that boundary's start to get pushed and the bag of luck is emptied before the bag of experience is full. Lets not forget that there are a lot of cowboys out there that do stupid things in a plane who are more likely to be involved in a fatal accident. So going by the figures above, I believe I can reduce the risk of my children being involved in a fatal plane accident to the level of driving by: Filling the tanks for every flight no matter how short. In the C182 I fly I can have full tanks, the whole family and associated stuff and still have room for another 100kgs in the back. Fly only in good weather conditions. Never VFR on top. We do day trips/navs only on Saturdays so if the weather turns we can stay the night and try to get home on the Sunday therefore reducing get-home-itis because of work or whatever else. My family know and can accept that if weather is not perfect we won't go. I will never stray to far from a forced landing site. I'm the guy that will only cross the mountains following the Great Western Hwy so there is always a road/oval/golf course within easy reach. I will constantly go back to the CFI practicing emergency's and abnormal situations. Its one thing to know what to do, its another thing to have it practiced it in the A/C I fly regularly. Only fly into and out of certified airfields with nice long paved runways. My instructor tells me if I continue to fly like this I will turn into a pussy and never get any real experience, thats fine I'm only a PPL and I will never NEED to get there. And besides I still do all the fun stuff when I have a mate next to me. The data I have used came from the ATSB at http://www.atsb.gov.au/media/32897/b20060002.pdf. Everything I have said above relates to certified VH reg general aviation. I have not looked into the dangers of LSA which would be different. So with all that my wife and I have decided to allow our kids to fly on the provision that is as safe as can be and we won't take any extra risks. When we were planning/starting our family we both agreed we would protect them as best we could without being helicopter/hovering parents wrapping our kids in cotton wool. We have decided that the benefits of flying as a family outweighs the risk.

Tried that with a iPad, she'll do it all day long when we are at home training her to get used to it, but as soon as she gets into the plane all bets are off.

Hi All Just recently I have started taking my 2 girls (1 and 3 yo) flying with me. The 3 yo sits up front with me and the 1 yo in the back next two my wife. the 3 yo has her own (pink) headset and she is ok in her car child seat strapped in as it would be in the car. The 1yo however refuses to keep her headset on and every flight is a battle for my wife until the 1yo falls asleep or we have to turn back. Just wondering what other peoples experiences are in regards to child restraints (I want them to be safe, not just follow the law) and hearing protection?

Hi All My name is Con. As you can see from my join date I have been a member for a while and although I have only posted a couple of times I do check in regularly. I got my PPL in the middle of 2012 but CASA were very slow sending out the paperwork so I used this time to get CSU and retract endorsements. Next will be either a twin endorsement or a CIR. I rent and fly GA singles out of Camden and Bankstown (If anyone knows or owns modern aircraft available for private hire please PM me). Most of my flying is scenics and short navs with my wife and 2 girls (1 and 3 yo). I do plan on getting my CPL but I have no intentions of ever flying for a living. At the moment I am current on C172, C182 and Beech Debonair. For a living I am a mechanic and run my own workshop. As far as hobbies go, I love flying, I also like to dabble in a bit photography, for the photography buffs out there my current kit consists of a 7D with various low end lenses. I also fly model planes and helicopters (not so well on the helicopters though). My biggest past time however are my kids.

Thanks for all the replies guys. All useful info that I can use for my next trip down to YSCB but unfortunately I didn't make it yesterday. I had 3 different flight plans ready, all in different directions, and all were unflyable due to weather so ended up taking the family down victor one.

Thanks guys. I have made a few phone calls and it seems I'm in for a bit of a walk. Apparently thrifty are the closest, and if it was any other day they tell me they would happily pick me up but not enough staff on a Sunday. Might all be pointless though as the weather is not looking favorable (as usual).

Hi all I'm taking the family to Canberra for the day tomorrow to go see the war memorial, Questacon, e.t.c. I will be parking at GA parking off taxiway charlie near the 12 threshold. I'm wondering if anyone knows how I would go about either getting a hire car from that part of the airport or how to get my family (which includes 2 young children that require baby seats) to the terminal where I can get a car? Thanks in advance. Con

So I have taken everyone's advice have cancelled my first navex and replaced it with a thorough ground briefing followed by more circuits.

Thank you to all who replied, the links so far are what I was after. My theory books (DH GFPT and Bob Tait PPL) do touch on the subject but thats it. To answer the questions that have come up. Firstly my instructor did give me a briefing but it was a briefing on a C182 in general and didn't really get into any detail re a CSU, and I didn't get any literature on the subject either which is why I am here. Also I'm only at the air field one day a week so didn't want to waste my time with my instructor being briefed on something I could learn at home (or on slow days at work ) in my own time. Why a C182? Well I want to move on from a 172 when I have my PPL so no time like the present, and I want to get more ratings eventually (night, retract and twin maybe) so wanted to get the CSU out of the way early. I know they cost more but they are faster so it kinda works out the same in the end, and lastly at the school I'm using its really hard getting one of the C172's for a 2 hour flight let alone for half a day for a nav, and I wanted to start the nav training ASAP instead of waiting 2 months for a plane.

Hi all I'm new here so please be gentle. After having just completed my GFPT in a C172 and taking a couple of flights with passengers, it's time to start navex, I have decided to do it in a C182, but I just cant get my head around that darned blue knob. My first and only flight in the C182 was out into the training area for a couple of stalls and general handling then back to the AD for circuits. Conditions were very bumpy in the circuit, coupled to that I was in a faster and heavier plane so alot of what my instructor was telling me was going in one ear and out the other. So my question is can anyone help me out with info regarding CSU's. I kinda know the basics, i.e. to set power we start from throttle, then pitch, then mixture, then the opposite for reducing power. But thats as far as my knowledge goes. I want to know how it works in detail, problems that can arise, how not to damage CSU/engine with incorrect settings, e.t.c. Are there any articles online or good books that go into detail regarding CSU's? Any help will be greatly appreciated. I'd ask my instructor but I don't want waste the limited time I have at the air field in a class room learning something I can learn at home. Tanks in advance. Con