KRviator

The Victorian GAF's today show the freezing level as low as 3,500'. Something to seriously consider when they're also indicating -SHRA and TSRAGS is do you need FIKI capability, or can the trip be postponed or rerouted?

I didn't know it till last night, but they've now got a DA62 now, and doesn't it look niiiice! Still has diesel engines too!

The same way RAAus has said "We'll never divulge your details" and only 18 months later, in the printed copy - but not the edited online copy - is an article saying "Oh, we've inked a deal with some random mob to sell out your details to feather our nest" and when called out on it, "but but but, trust us...."

What were some of your likes & dislikes about owning the Twinkie?

If you hold a PIFR, this discussion is moot. ? As I said above, your flightpath is dictated by a non-approved WAAS GPS antenna, through an uncertified EFIS to an autopilot that you may well have installed yourself. A PIFR pilot wouldn't be concerned with flight beyond last light, he would have held an alternate in the event they couldn't get the lights on at Leigh Creek, he would have diverted when his fuel state dictated he wouldn't reach his alternate with his fixed reserve intact, he wouldn't have been doing NVFR in an RAAus aircraft and he probably wouldn't have killed himself and his passenger... The intent of posting the above narrative is to highlight if you have AB & C installed, which a lot of people seem to going by posts here and in various magazines, in an emergency you can utilise what you have to fly an approach that gives you a somewhat decent chance of survival, vs tooling around without a plan hoping things will work out and then spearing in when they don't. Yes, NVFR or IFR flying needs training and the appropriate rating, no argument there from me - never will be either - but we continually hear of VFR pilots getting into IMC, or in this case, flying beyond last light and coming unstuck. The above is a tool that may help them survive their foolishness and more importantly, not kill their innocent passenger... People are free to consider it another tool at their disposal if everything's gone to hell, they are free to think I'm stark raving mad for even suggesting doing something like that - I don't really give a rats. But I'm not going to keep something that may save a life to myself just because someone doesn't like the idea.

Completely agree Yenn. ✔️ Prevention is always better than cure. But we practice forced landings, we practice PSL's, stalls and steep turns. If you are equipped with an EFIS and autopilot it doesn't take much to become confident in the buttonology enough that you can use such a method to keep you upright and hopefully get you down in one piece. If by having this discussion, we've prompted other EFIS owners to think "Gee, I didn't know it could do that, I might go out and try it to see if that KR bloke is right" then the conversation has served its' purpose. Hopefully no one will ever need to use it, but I'd rather someone know they could if they have to. It might have saved 2 lives last week, it might not, but it can save someone going forward. Insofar as comms, Ironpot, if you are using this to get down in one piece, you are yourself already in an emergency and hopefully the RPT will sod off to the hold somewhere and monitor your progress. You don't need ADS-B for it, that simply tells people where you are. You don't even need a transponder, just appropriate EFIS, autopilot and OzRunways / Avplan (I think AvPlan works), which a lot of us seem to have.

Emerald-Launceston, 7.0 hours, 16GPH (fairly conservative, might get 1GPH lower, particularly LOP with EI) = 423L, at $2.20/L (Fairly cheap, but price last time I refuelled at Cessnock) is $930 in Avgas alone. Not factoring in oil, or other operating costs... Mind you, that is cheap if you are taking 4 people. 4 x DeathStar seats, plus checked baggage, plus seat selection, plus hotel for the Brisbane overnight, it can work out much cheaper to fly yourself. But for a solo trip, you need to put a value on your time and run the maths that way. Anywhere within fuel range of my RV it is cheaper and faster for me to take it than fly the airlines. If I need to land for fuel, the airlines quickly catch up.

FWIW, I have tried it before to prove the concept, at a remote airfield and in mid-morning CAVU conditions, and the highest workload - for me anyway - was the mental juggling to try to hit the next altitude constraint without having to level off. It is surprisingly easy to do and almost painless when you know the systems involved. If you set your altitude to 100' below airfield elevation, and have the autopilot set up in IAS-hold, you control descent rate with power, so only have one control to manage. You can set up a VS-based descent, but then are watching speed as well and if you change selected VS, you need to make a corresponding change in power. Assuming you re already inbound to Leigh Creek with the autopilot in GPS Nav, it takes 8 presses on the Ipad screen and about 20 seconds, most of which is time waiting for the 8-year-old iPad2 to respond to the screen presses. It'd likely be much faster with a modern iPad. Rubber band the route to an IAP waypoint Confirm the waypoint (OzRunways will then ask you if you want to load the entire approach into the current plan) Confirm the "Add RNAV Waypoints to plan" Rubber band the route from the FAF to the ARP (As the approach/OzRunways sequences you to the MAP from the FAF, not FAF-ARP-MAP) Send to SkyView (SkyView will announce "Flight Plan Updated" in your headset as confirmation, and update the waypoints, ETA's and ETE's on the SkyView map screen) Tap near the destination Select the destination airport Select the appropriate RNAV Approach chart. Once you have done that, you are free of changes to your horizontal flight path so long as you keep the AP in GPS mode. The iPad will show a Georeferenced approach chart so you can cross-check your position and be assured the Dynon is flying it accurately. All that is left is to descend appropriately, and depending how you have your Dynon set up, you will get ETA/ETE's on your screen, so you can do the mental maths for required descent rate for that segment. The distance between RNAV waypoints seems to be a fairly standard 5nm, so for a 60KIAS approach speed (roughly what I use in the RV), you have ~5 minutes each leg to confirm your position, altitude and descent rate. Now the important bit...I am not condoning this as a standard 'everyday' practice. That needs to be understood from the outset. However, for those aircraft equipped with Dynon/G3X or other EFIS systems, particularly those that have WiFi flight plan functionality, If everything has gone pear-shaped, you are stuck on top of cloud or airborne after last light, this provides a means to fly a published approach under autopilot control that could well save your life, particularly if the GNSS is closely aligned with the runway.

I fully respect other's opinions here, but for me, the Dynon (and others, I just have Dynon) isn't just a glass cockpit. You're completely correct there is a terrific amount of data available, but it's also what isn't there that is a massive boost to safety in its' own right. Audio alerts, timers, and continuous monitoring of everything engine & electrical related. The Dynon will automatically announce, in your headset "Oil Pressure" or "Engine Monitor" if something goes out of limits. It will announce "Timer Expired" or "Approaching Waypoint", or "Flight Plan Updated" if you change something on OzRunways and then WiFi it to the EFIS. It will alert you to change fuel tanks based on a timer you set, or on reaching a specific fuel quantity or consumption. You can have all the above with the traditional 6-pack presentation on the Dynon screen if you so choose, but for me, the EFIS presentation with SynVis over the top is more natural. Some EFIS manufacturers ( GRT, for sure & MGL I think) even allow you to connect a FLIR camera and overlay the EFIS symbology on the camera image, as you would get in an F15! Using this accident and my Dynon installation as an example, if you couldn't get the lights on, you can open the Leigh Creek GNSS chart on the iPad, select the waypoints and WiFi the plan to the Dynon and, with autopilot engaged, all you have to do is monitor the vertical component, which you can do with the Vertical Speed hold or Airspeed hold modes on the autopilot. The Dynon will fly the approach, and if you continue beyond the minima (emergency afterall) you at least stand a good chance of arriving somewhat intact, within the airfield boundary...A 'standard' 6 pack doesn't give you this level of automation, or safety, and I would never go back to such a layout in any airplane I owned.

Big $$ to buy an already-built -10! I have around $110K in my -9A! ?

There's a few Twinkies (twin Comanche) for sale for well under $100K. Particularly with tip tanks, they should get you there non-stop in around 7.0 hours with up to 3 people depending on the BEW and model. (I know your profile says Brissy but I used Emerald-Launy as a rough guess as not many farms around Brisbane) Loaded up with all the family though you'll need at least 1 tech stop around Dubbo. They're reportedly one of the most efficient light twins around, using not much more fuel than a bigger, fast single. Whack an electronic ignition on each engine, and you are back down to two magnetoes with their 500-hourly inspections, and get lower fuel burn & easier starting too. I'm shortly going to sell my RV-9 and am giving serious consideration to a twin comanche... A J-model Mooney is about as efficient as you'll get in the piston singles, getting around 155-165KTAS from the IO-360, and with the Monroy tanks can do that distance non-stop, with 2 x 200lb people on board. These seem to get around $100-120K on the classifieds.

Usually not. That's one of the major gripes with RAAus, they either don't, or are very selective in what they release about a fatal accident. But...IT can, and it does get disseminated - occasionally. Although, the Mt Gambier crash data was obtained from OzRunways, not an onboard EFIS-based datalogger. The problem with with the Dynon (and others) data is it is not crash-hardened. The last flight is stored in non-volatile memory, but if that memory chip is damaged, that's it. The ATSB (and NTSB, et al) are very good at trying to mechanically & electrically fix damaged chips if they believe something can be learnt (as in the Cirrus Orange prang), but they are not miracle workers. I have found myself pushing the boundaries of what would be considered sensible a couple times since I've been flying behind the Dynon in marginal VMC. IT was legal, yes, but it wasn't smart. I'd look down to confirm the Dynon position agreed with the Ipad, look up and I had the 5km, but no discernible horizon, reliant almost exclusively on the AH on the Dynon. That was a wakeup call for me and I've not done that again. Given almost every pilot in Australia flies behind OzRunways or Avplan that gives your arrival time almost down to the second updated in real-time, I can only wonder if the bloke in question was that comfortable with his EFIS setup he deliberately ignored his ETA based on his (over?) confidence with his equipment, but overlooked the reliability of the PAL.

It certainly does. Everything you see and a whole lot more. I think I have mine setup to record everything at 0.5 second intervals, but you can get that down even more. There's even free viewers available online to take your downloaded file and recreate an EFIS presentation if you feed said viewer a Dynon/Garmin file. That being said, people need to want to install stuff like this. SkyView, like Garmins G3X, isn't overly cheap, but for what you get it is lightyears ahead of the latest gear from Boeing or Airbus. Personally, I went a step further and installed an automotive dash camera on the rollbar with GPS built in, so there's a visual record of what happens too. A quick look through a file I downloaded last month from the Dynon shows it records the following: GPS Fix Quality, date, time & satellites tracked. Lat, Long, GPS Alt, GS & Groundtrack Waypoint name, bearing, XTE, & distance System time Pitch & roll degrees to 1 decimal place Mag heading & turn rate IAS, TAS & VS Pressure alt & Density alt Lateral & Vertical acelleration AoA & OAT Barometer setting Wind direction & speed Heading & altitude bugs CDI source selected, scale & deflection AP mode, engagement status and current servo position Transponder Code, status & IDENT status Oil Press & temp RPM L & R MAP Fuel Press & flow Fuel QTY L & R Bus voltage & sensed amps Hobbs & tach time CHT 1-4 & EGT 1-4 Ignition system status (user configured) Calculated % power LOP/ROP status Other files available show any annunciated warnings, cautions alerts or their triggers in addition to the 'black box' file. One of the reasons I installed the TSO'd KLN-90 was, in an absolute worst-case scenario, I could load an RNAV approach and fly that down to minimums rather than aimlessly tool about looking for a sucker hole, or worse. It also allows enroute navigation without positive fixes.

Certainly can. As derek said, SkyView can show all that and a lot more. Here's a subtitled screenshot I put up to show some of my rail-forum mates. What is not shown is the OZRunways overlay available - I was using the Ipad that day, or the IFR GPS interoperability. I use a TSO'd KLN-90B for enroute navigation, that pushes the positive-fix time out to 2 hours, from the normal 30 minutes. You can also see the SynVis concept, instead of a 'standard' AH/EFIS, you have a 3D, digital representation of what you'd see out the window. I'm flying up the coast here, so it's water and flat, but in the hills, you see them, valleys, rivers, etc.

Unfortunately, this regulation already existed in the CASR's, the laughable point - to me anyway - was they simply copy-and-pasted it over to the 'new' Part 91 without thinking 1) Do we really need this? and B) IS it really necessary to make it a criminal offence? I'm sure there is not a road-based equivalent that says "If you roll your 4wd on a farm, you are guilty of an offence", though if you had no authority to be there (closed NP trail, driving like a muppet, etc), then an argument could be made in a few other areas . But if you were doing what was reasonable in the circumstances and fell foul of what a 'reasonable person' would consider an accident, so far as I'm aware, that'd be the end of it. And that's the problem...You can do all the assessments you want, and up until something happens, nothing will happen. But if you drop a wheel in an unseen rabbit hole, or a patch of soft ground pulls you to one side, or you nose over, you're instantly guilty of breaching this rule. And a vengeful regulator can use this particular rule as a blanket cover-all in the event of your screwing up. And as it's strict liability, all they have to say is "Ol' mate ran off the runway, therefore, the strip wasn't suitable in the prevailing conditions", and what defence do you have? IANAL, but from what I can see, the answer to that is "not much". I'm not sure this is correct. ISTR, you don't need to do a W&B, if you have previously proven the aircraft is incapable of being loaded outside it's envelope. I'll double check my W&B notes from the MPC, but recall there was a question along those lines in the course...

I came across THIS Part-91 ready-reckoner from our favourite regulator today and had to chuckle. You folks probably will too, when you read Example 1, Regulation 91.410. Or else you'll cry... Now, the instant you run off the runway, overshoot the far end, or even crash in the trees following an engine failure, you are an instant felon, and probably for most of us, twice over - once as the PIC, the other as the Operator. Per Subregulation 2(a)iv, the place you chose was clearly not suitable, as you crashed trying.

You're correct in that it does reduce visibility somewhat, primarily from about 20* above the horizon ahead. In the circuit, clearing the area hidden by the sunshade - assuming it isn't busy enough to justify retracting it - is easily accomplished though. Nothing more than personal preference. I'm right handed and by flying PIC from the right hand seat, any passenger isn't going to bump my right arm when I'm hand flying.

When I built the -9A, I enabled the datalogging feature on the SkyView as well as installing a Navman MiVue 530 Dash-camera on the roll bar behind the Coey's seat. As most of my flights are solo, the view of the back of a head is fairly infrequent and it provides a video and data log of all my flights and actions in the event I spear in. I downloaded the card the other day to grab some footage of my recent landings to measure the numbers and you can see the results for yourself. The -9A, admittedly one of the lighter ones out there, can consistently pull off ground rolls under 600' with moderate braking on a slightly uphill runway and is likely capable of sub-400' ground rolls for a maximum performance landing if need be. You can also have fun showing off to Diamond pilots at the holding point by crossing the threshold on a 3000' runway at 250' AGL and still make the turnoff at the far end. The runway at Somersby is only 600m / 2000' long, 850'AMSL and on top of a plateau, slopes down 2* to the north and is surrounded by trees, so most FW landings tend to use Runway 17 and takeoff on 35, irrespective of the wind. For those considering a -9A, enjoy!

Check out the fine print for your credit card(s). I understand many will come with free travel insurance so their PDS' might allow it if you get lucky...Then again, you might need to see if you can find a stand-alone policy for the duration of your travels.

You're right, it is just like that. Just like you pass those signs at the entrance saying "First 3 hours FREE!", but then you come out after 2 hours and they won't raise the boomgate unless you pay $40 because they've changed the sign while you were in the shops. I'd forgotten just how much like those private carparks it was... On a serious note, it shouldn't be different between RAAus and GA - neither should have the private details of members, aircraft owners or operators published...For RAAus to do it "just because" GA does - as alluded to by the CEO - is nothing but a cop-out, and a disingenuous one at that...

I'm actually thinking about trying this on at Warnervale shortly. I can get in a circuit every 3 mins 20 seconds, and Warnervale want to charge $8.25 per landing, so if I do 18 missed approaches an hour, I want to see if AvData will hit me up with a $150 bill. And if I don't touch down, then the PPR restriction at Warnervale doesn't apply either, so Council can get stuffed.

(language) they're behind him. I've expressed my outrage to him in December last year. Because I complained to RAAus in December, I already have gone to the OAIC. And because I have the date & time-stamped PPrune posts, with the privacy policy URL's, it'll be hard for RAAus to argue that *I* am the one who screwed up reading their 'new in August' policy... Particularly when their ISP logs show who accessed what files and when... Soon as I can, I'll be swapping the RV to VH and RAAus can go take a long walk off a short pier. This is not the organisation I started out with, and given the Board's apparent willingness to trample the wishes of the membership and ignore their own policies just to feather their own nests, it's not an organisation I want to be a part of going forward. Good on you for having the balls to actually do something, rather than just vent on here. Best I can tell, it doesn't, as no one agreed for such a change to the Privacy Policy. At least when Apple, et al do it, you have to acknowledge 'reading and agreeing' to their changes - even if you just skim down and click the blue button. True -which is why many of us have written to RAAus and some have, or are, going to the OAIC. So are GA aircraft, with false callsigns, or simply going NORDO - and let's face it, with a parasite like AvData out there, why wouldn't you. When they bill you for overflying, or conducting an instrument approach, or a missed approach, why would you? If you feel so strongly about it turbo, what's your car rego so I can look up where you live? Oh...Wait...

Any income would have to be listed in the financial statements wouldn't it? Any good beancounter would be able to pick it out in a heartbeat you'd think.

Of course, this is what happens when the dog decides it isn't so supportive anymore...And as a side note - check out the "Emotional support peacock" in the article...I can understand a parrot or budgie, but a peacock?!?

Of course bloody not. But we're pilots and we know that. We know that we don't all drive a 2019 Lexus or are dropped off in a stretch limo. But so far as the local council is concerned "Youse all own a plane, youse must be rich" (sic). I crunched some numbers the other day after doing a few circuits at Mudgee last month. I got one circuit in every 3.3 minutes in the RV-9, so according to the Central Coast Council, that means I am up for $150 an hour in landing fees, though that is down from $495/hr last year. And that's just landing fees, for a sub-600kg RV. The bloke who owns Somersby charges me $300/month for unlimited movements and that includes hangarage - though there's no T&G's to be had at Somersby! I don't mind paying landing fees to a private airfield owner, club or organisation, but if it is a council asset, then unless they charge boaties to use a boat ramp, or a motorist to drive down your main street, then I don't feel I should pay to use their airfield. It is an asset like the local footy oval, skate park or road into town that brings everyone else (and their spending money) in.