damkia

What should happen and what is happening are two different scenarios. Unfortunately we are in the is happening situation, so there isn't much point about trying to bury your head in the sand about it. I agree it should not have got to this point, but let's deal with the situation we now have constructively.

I would be looking to tap into SAAA with Recreationalflying.com as most of the aircraft owners here have built aircraft, or fly non S-SLA (kitbuilt by someone else earlier in life) aircraft, and use the common thread of "Builders/Recreational Flyers" as the organisational basis, rather than a solely E-LSA/S-LSA with prebuilts and home/amateur built aircraft in the one RA type mix. Give the S-LSA over to CASA where AD's and so on can be more carefully administered, and get the Amateur built/Kit built SAAA and E-LSA type aircraft under the one banner. CASA have the new Rec licence which anyone with RA-Aus licence should be able to easily convert to (5-10 hrs tops? Mainly theory), essentially making the RA-Aus licence redundant. With CASA holding the cards on the S-LSA fleet it would be possible to do the equivalent of the RA-Aus in the "light stuff" and do a conversion to heavier aircraft if/when needed. It would not necessarily be any more expensive to do it this way for the "light stuff" flying than what it is currently, and would increase the quality of training and general oversight through the use of staff with CPL's. Think Bold..............

It has already been established that the solicitors have been called, so he would be "under advisement"from his legal team either way given that it is a current and unresolved issue. It may also be that he is legally not allowed to be personally present while discussion or voting is taking place (conflict of interests, etc).

http://www.seabee.co/Engine/302.html 160 hp (120HP at 75% per RAA???) Current as of less than a week ago... From http://www.airventure.org/news/2012/120728_sci-powers-up-at-airventure.html "This engine was developed over the last six months and assembled over the last six weeks for AirVenture display. The four-cylinder engine on display provides 160 hp at 195 pounds with an introductory price of $12,500." reading further a stunning bit of engineering and electronics with separate ECU's for injection and ignition for each cylinder! Note that it is a Chinese company that has bought out a UK company "shell" of a deceased estate.

My guess? Legally muzzled....

Whistleblower legislation anyone???

This is what the lawyers will be fighting about. Best to let the legal process proceed. There is a long history that is elsewhere on this site of you want to read up on it.

Fight the battle and then move on if needed

Recreational licence (CASA) for me..........experimental registration for what ever I build/buy. Ian, have you thought about seeing if you are able to convert you licence and aircraft registration to CASA/GA/Experimental? More expensive, but at least you would be dealing with a more "mature" organisation. SAAA might do well out of this and could be a shell from which a new "Regulatory Organisation" is built that governs the smaller end of lying.

People don't realise the spin off technology that we have now as a direct result of the race to space. LED's now found in almost every part of modern technology were invented due to the old "nixie tubes" not being reliable enough in use in high vibration areas, and consuming too much power. Papermate pens (the ones that can write upside down) were invented to work in zero gravity (mind you, the Russians overcame this issue by using pencils - D'Oh!) Heaps of other stuff too. If you've got an afternoon it's worth a Google.

A few more consumables for the shop?

Going way back, Channel 9 played the whole landing live to air, in its day a very expensive and technical thing to do. A family friend was the Senior Engineer at Channel Nine for that exercise and can vouch for the fact at the signals were indeed coming by way of a satellite dish pointed at the moon. No if's or but's in my mind.. FWIW anyone that has the balls to strap themselves to controlled "bomb" and pray that everyone else has done their job properly earns my respect RIP Neil Armstrong

Further to that several people independently may come to the same conclusion with their answers, giving the impression of "being jumped on" by the time (usually a short time on well populated forums) the people answering hit "send". ("Great minds think alike", or "Fools never differ", or something like that.........)

Would it be possible to have a read-only preview of these social groups? At the moment they are locked up as tight as a..... You have to BE a member of the group to even look at the threads. Perhaps a read-only preview of the first post in the thread would be useful.

In today's political landscape that would be????? Unfortunately all sides of politics in Australia as well as all the Australian public are losing at the moment.

Most fiberglass aircraft today use composite methods (noting that this is a construction method not material). all it amounts to is as previously covered using two or more different materials layered together to give the benefits of all materials to the composite structure. All Lancairs are composite structures from the spinner to tailfin, with the addition of metal components embedded into fiberglass honeycomb sandwich at appropriate points, so called "hard points". In short there is nothing wrong with using composite materials for the wing ribs, it has been done many times. Even the A380 has a composite wing - bonded aluminium to honeycomb to aluminium. You just need to make sure the edge to edge compressibility will withstand the forces that the wing skin will be exerting on it, and the outer lamination's adhesive is suitably strong to resist separating from the inner core. One well known product that is accepted as a composite is the cement and steel mix that goes into today's major infrastructure projects. The cement is good under compression, and the steel is good under tension. The composite material (reinforced concrete) gets the benefit of both. Boeing used to supply the Australian manufacturer of Lancairs with their composite materials that were almost out of date. If you know anyone in the industry it may not be that difficult to obtain the correct stuff, or you could try a company that supplies to the aviation industry (Jabiru?) for some offcuts. At least then you have the right stuff with known properties. An interesting aside is that balsa wood has been used by some early homebuilt designs as the core in composites. Polystyrene foam is used on the Glassairs and all of the Rutan "X-eze" designs, freeform bent and covered with fiberglass or cut/shaped and covered with glass.

.............a long way from the original post:off topic:

That belongs in "Off topic" not general chat...

OK, we'll just stick to economics, gender equality, and religion.....

The simplest way to straighten out the financial mess that is capitalism is to remove these "financial instruments" (exotic debt instruments, highly leveraged warrants, etc) and get back to basics. If you can afford it, buy it. If you can't afford it, tough. One of the big issues started when economists decided that debt (people owing YOU money) was an asset, not a liability. Surely common sense would say that until it is paid off in full there is a possibility that it may not be paid off at all? Given that possibility then there is only one way it can be viewed, isn't there? This is what the "Sub-Prime" mess in the US was all about - the fact that the people given the loans had no way of paying them off with the resultant increase in financial defaults and foreclosures. This caused the slump in housing prices and the remainder of the loanholders simply walking away, leaving the banks with huge unpaid loans on worthless properties, with the loanholders going into bankruptcy therefore protecting themselves from legal action.

It's amazing how much they can do in such limited space too. Always quietly composed and reassuring whether it be on the phone or in person, and everything you have done prior to their arrival is genuinely appreciated. Not too may of them are what you would call bad ambassadors, in fact none of them I've met. Happy to donate time and money to their cause, and have done so on many occasions. Given the potential for use of this service from time to time from the Rec Aviation movement, is there any fundraising set up by RA-Aus or various branches and clubs for the RFDS? I know the 4WD movement does a fair bit of fundraising via their State and Federal association and various clubs for them. How about a fly-in "cash mob" (Google it) of Mt Isa, near their original base Cloncurry Qld? They are definitely one of those organisations that you never really fully appreciate until you need them.

No images - maybe that's a blessing.................................

Simple - get yourself caught in controlled airspace with a Jab/Rotax (delete appropriate to taste) engine that has just thrown in the towel. "Radio controlled" by the tower, and most definitely gliding..... No doubt some here have already had the experience.

Wow............ Plenty of opportunities to put it down earlier but he flew straight over the tops of trees, guaranteeing it as an incident whose time had come. Happy to hear they everyone is OK, but the PIC should think a bit more before endangering other peoples lives. "The 7P's", gentlemen....(military guys would know what I'm referring to)

Would it be possible to be able to do a search for members located in particular general geographic locations, or is this currently possible and I've missed it? This could be useful for "the big trip" planning, and also for introductions to locals in the area. An example of what would be good would be to have a tab on the search engine named "People", with the ability to type "Darwin" and find the name of all members located in Darwin area, increasing in distance from Darwin as you go down the list. I realise that members location within Australia is "usually" listed near their avatar (depending on the member's compliance), but I can't seem to find a way of searching for it.