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Bruce Tuncks

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Everything posted by Bruce Tuncks

  1. Bruce Tuncks
    I would like to start the "Rec Flying" school for specialists. My first graduates would be modelled on the Fred Hollows training. They would be straight "A" kids fresh from high-school. They would spend a year ( or 2 if proven necessary ) on the eye anatomy, infection control in operating, anaesthetics etc. They would spend more time on these subjects than the standard medical graduate does, and the savings would be in that they would not need to study, say, the bones in the foot. They would be true specialists in cataract operations. Fred's lot do these in Ethiopia for $50 and in Australia it costs $5000 at least.
  2. Bruce Tuncks
    I tried to look it up turbs, but there are lots of recent cases which prove that my report was correct. The injured passenger does NOT collect. Maybe the first case was before the internet...
  3. Bruce Tuncks
    There were 2 such appeals. The second was because somebody did a stall-spin from the top of a winch launch. The lower-court beak, presumably with some understanding about how a weak cable could cause the load from a crane to fall, mandated very heayy and expensive cables for all wire launches. He obviously thought the glider was being lifted as if the winch was a crane. Don't think that a beak is either smart nor educated in any way. I reckon you need to know all about how he was appointed and by whom. My knowledge of judge appointments I do admit was from Rumpole. You need to suck up to the right people and lose at golf to them.
  4. Bruce Tuncks
    I think it was about 20 years ago, and it happened in Australia. Somebody got injured on a tandem jump and despite having signed an agreement to not sue, he did just that and won in the first court. The beak said that you can't sign away your rights or something like that. Anyway, this would have meant the end of glider rides etc, so the GFA levied it's members, I being one, to pay the squillions to appeal. The appeal was won, and an appelate beak said " the risk was apparent and obvious" or something similar.
  5. Bruce Tuncks
    My main objection though is that this idea makes things like angel flights unaffordable. This has a flow-on effect of lowering the life expectancy for lots of people. I really hate how CASA in particular are set up to ignore the bad effects of their policies.
  6. Bruce Tuncks
    I reckon with the parachute tandem jump it could be said that the parachute guy had a duty of care... but this was overturned on appeal. The concept is not so easy as you suggest turbs. Anyway, this is the first time I have heard that argument and I don't like it at all. I would like to be able to do anything at my own risk if I so chose. I can ( dimly) see why things you MUST do, like earn a living, need protections built in. But anything you do just for fun and where the risk is completely obvious, like parachute jumping, are quite different. I can see why the legal profession would not like my idea, after all this must be a big money-earner for them.
  7. Bruce Tuncks
    Thanks Ian. The fact is that I would like the option of an angel flight and I would be happy to do that at my own risk. The last thing I want is bureaucrats saying that I need to spend millions to "be safe".
  8. Bruce Tuncks
    Ian, you are obviously correct here, but how would you implement that idea on a Jabiru? Ideally, when you stopped running the engine, there should be no further actions needed, like opening valves on pipes.
  9. Bruce Tuncks
    Most of my hours have been in tail-wheel gliders. But the reason for nose-wheels is that on landing, the bump of the mains touching down REMOVES angle of attack a bit and so makes a bounce less likely. This is true even though you are keeping the nose wheel off the ground till you have slowed so much that it falls down anyway. It is to do with the mains being behind the c of g not before it. The exact reverse happens with a tail-wheel plane. This is why tail-draggers are more expensive to insure. So, without airbrakes, a nose-wheel plane is much easier to land. This is so pronounced that the extra drag of the nose-wheel is forgiven.
  10. Bruce Tuncks
    The worst thing Keating did was to allow individual CASA officers to be sued. This is not in itself so bad, if they could be sued for failing to nurture aviation for example. Alas, they can only be sued for allowing things which might end in an accident. So it is in their interests to have a small aviation sector. Too small and the govt just might reduce the size of CASA.
  11. Bruce Tuncks
    I'm going to remember that RF.
  12. Bruce Tuncks
    I was planning to go but doubt that I will now... it's a long way from Edenhope.
  13. Bruce Tuncks
    There is a great true story about the US's best and most reliable weather observer. He was so good they used him to calibrate others. But then his records went haywire... he had gone on a vacation to florida and taken his gear with him.
  14. Bruce Tuncks
    For many years, as a student, I drove an "unroadworthy" car. I never had an accident with them, but I sure was mindful that they would never pass an inspection. The last was a mark 1 Zephyr. Apart from being full of rust, the wipers didn't work on accelerating or going uphill. You needed to momentarily lift your foot to get the vacuum to work and get a bit of wipe. What I didn't know was that the rear axle was turning into a crystalline mess at the diff. One day it refused to reverse and I found the splined end to be in a thousand bits.
  15. Bruce Tuncks
    While you are probably correct, there is a problem here. Car drivers tend to drive at what they perceive to be constant risk. This is why annual inspections of cars don't save as many lives as you might expect. The owners of defective cars are only too well aware and drive accordingly.
  16. Bruce Tuncks
    Conspiracy theories are generally crap, but apparently in this case, it is correct. In the US, the system extends to include GP's too. This is why we can't go there and start the Rec flying medical school, even if we restricted entry to straight "a" students. It is also why medical stuff is relatively unaffordable there. So they get the benefits of extreme socialism as well as extreme capitalism.... wow.
  17. Bruce Tuncks
    The first lot of ignorance is likely ( sadly) real. Answering the phone is a low-level job. But she should have been able to put you onto her boss at least... that is likely feigned. Once, when we had an old Czech guy for a nightwatchman at the gliding club, he heard some thieves breaking into our bar. So he got out the phone we had given him for just this purpose and rang 000. Well she was an idiot on the other end. She didn't believe "Two Wells Road"... anyway, they both hung up in anger with the robbery still in noisy progress. I guess the guy's thick accent didn't help , but I would have expected more from somebody answering 000 for the police.
  18. Bruce Tuncks
    Yep Ian, and patient outcomes are highly dependent on how much in practise the specialist is. Apparently there is a hospital in the US which just does one type of operation. It holds a world record for good outcomes. I wish I could find an answer to this...
  19. Bruce Tuncks
    I blame the specialists themselves and the govt which pays the bills for the situation. Specialists are the only trade where the existing practitioners can decide that they don't want any new entrants. Guess what? they all get millions a year.
  20. Bruce Tuncks
    I reckon they stand to gain money if they are a rival flight organization. As for CASA, they are responsible only for flying accidents, They have zero interest in improving the quality of life. As for the medical specialists, they are dreadful. Yes we need to change things, and your posting Ian is a good start. As an observation, the latest angel flight disaster at Mt Gambier was caused by the pilot having too much awe for the medical specialists. He should have postponed the flight till the weather was better, but he clearly did not think he had this option.
  21. Bruce Tuncks
    I said it before, but I reckon that if you have reached 70 intact, you should be given credit for knowing how to survive. One day, my grandson Zaccy said " you are real old Grandpa, are you gunna die soon? I replied " Listen, Zaccy, there are lots of kids your age that will die before I do because I have learned when I gotta be careful"
  22. Bruce Tuncks
    One day, I watched an exemplary EFATO where the pilot did a lazy 90 degree turn to safely put down in a paddock out front of my hangar. I got there first to congratulate him, but he ( correctly) reckoned he would be in trouble with the club. The EFATO was caused by the loss of fiberglass from a Jabiru prop. It was so out-of-balance that the pilot shut down the engine before it shook off the plane. The loss of glass from the prop was caused by the removal of the protective tape by our then maintenance guy.
  23. Bruce Tuncks
    I agree skippy. Practice does not have to make perfect to be worthwhile. And I would add also practice EFATO stuff at a safe height. I personally reckon that a fast response enables the difference between the starting speed and the stalling speed to be used to avoid as much height loss.
  24. Bruce Tuncks
    My theory is that FRP aircraft are way over-strong because the material is variable. So they choose a low maximum stress figure and the weakest likely structure. This means that an ordinary structure will be over-strength for 2 separate reasons. This is how it works in practice.... a Jabiru and a Technam ( Italian all-metal plane) suffered identical falls when a u/c leg collapsed when wheeling out their hangars. The result? The Jabiru needed a new bolt and the Technam was out of action till a new wing arrived from Italy. Metal is very predictable and I reckon the allowable figures are truly important to adhere to.... well more so than fiberglass anyway.
  25. Bruce Tuncks
    You guys are right but I still need to lose some weight. I just finished reading Hanna Reitsch's memoirs and thought while reading, that she was safer being so light. She was in real life a small woman. But batteries are darned heavy things, unless you join the revolution and change to Lithium types ( LiPO4 is not dangerous I hope). 6kg down to 1kg is worthwhile I reckon. AND, I reckon the regulations are pretty conservative PLUS, aircraft are built with conservative safety factors. The very next time somebody loses their Jabiru wings, I promise to look real carefully into the matter. Once, I was worrying about how Libelle gliders had their rough-air reduced from 135 knots to 89 knots. Then I found that "smooth air" can contain a sharp-edged upgust of 15 knots! In my 40 years of looking, I reckon I found 15 knots maybe once, and it wasn't sharp edged. we foolishly believed the 135 knots and in the bad old days, we did start-runs at 135 knots and full water in rough air. Nobody ever lost a wing, except for the mid-air over Narromine when the hapless pilot returned minus about 3 meters of wing.
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