Mike Borgelt

Interesting. No good for RAAus as not a recip. Also Basic Med does not allow turbines in Australia.

Reminding me once again why I left here months ago.

ICAO is a wish list. There is no need to comply only to notify ICAO of any differences. For example the Australian RPL is non ICAO and still allows access to CTA.

New2flying: Most modern sailplanes are taildraggers. Main wheel and tailwheel (fixed, non steerable and non castoring). Need a tail dolly which is castoring to move around relatively easily on the ground which has to be taken to the glider. The solution was the three wheel configuration which make ground handling easier when nobody is in the cockpits. Try to land on the main and tail, it is what you'll be doing if you stay gliding.

You wrote:" I think at the present time a court process is dealing with this matter so I'd tend to discourage any careless or uninformed comment.. Nev" Show me the law that says anyone can't comment - careless, uninformed or otherwise. The official accident report has been published. You are free to disagree with it. You then wrote: "i agree with all of that except my being careless or uninformed about modern flight control systems" I wasn't commenting on your knowledge of modern flight control systems just the idea that some vague mention of a possible legal action should silence people. There's ongoing legal action about MH370 in London, I'm told. Doesn't seem to have stopped any speculation, some for pay.

Didn't say it did and if you bother to look up the accident report you'll see his qualifications. (edited...mod) I'm no fan of Airbus cockpit philosophy nor the modern trend to teach just enough to operate the aircraft under normal circumstances with a some defined emergencies. Little to no in depth understanding of control systems and other systems in the aircraft which may get you out of trouble in other cases. BTW much the same accident happened again with an A320 off Indonesia some years later. (edited...mod) Learning to fly involves knowing effects of controls and practice to get better at it. Time in the air. Orientation in the air. Time in the air. Landing. Takes repetitive practice. Difficult and time consuming in a pure glider. Much easier in a powered aircraft (or motor glider). Takeoff - easier in a powered aircraft. A glider on takeoff/tow is formation flying. Student should not actually handle controls below 1000 feet on tow until satisfactory aircraft control is shown. There have been nasty accidents here. Learn to fly in a motor glider/ultralight or normal powered aircraft, then it is just a conversion to fly gliders. You'll also know enough to counter some of the bs put about by gliding instructors and other ignorant people in the gliding movement. The inefficiency of glider training is shown by the GFA's own statistics on membership. Current membership is about half what it was in 1983-84 while the population of the country has increased by more than 50%. Each year about 600 new members join the GFA and about 600+ leave, resulting in a slow decline in numbers. Most who leave do so during or at the end of one year's membership. Sure, some may have got what they want but the vast majority are unhappy about their flying progress and the many unsavoury aspects of the way the GFA and clubs work. If learning to fly gliders in Australia be aware that the GFA has a very rigid (worse than CASA in many cases) rules based operational structure. There is little to no safety culture. I see GA pilots, commercial pilots, military pilots who discard their professional caution and practices when they get on a gliding airfield. The record of "instructors" (most aren't an instructor's bootlace) killing and injuring students is not good. This is obscured by deliberately exaggerating annual flying hours. Tell me, how does an organisation which has been losing membership (it is compulsory) since 1984 get to fly more and more hours each year? In the early 2000's, one year they claimed 268,000 hours. There are maybe 700 gliders out of 1100+, which return an annual inspection report which comes to close to 400 hours per year for every operational glider. Doesn't happen. My mates who do annual inspections report 40-60 hours per annum is about average for a private glider. There are exceptions but there are also plenty of gliders which come back with ZERO hours for the next annual. There used to be several full time operational gliding sites. These are now weekend/by arrangement with occasional full time for a month or so a year. I've got 2700 hours in gliders and self launchers (the retracting engine variety) and 1300 hours GA (most of both flying cross country)and have worked in the gliding industry for 43 years full time designing and manufacturing variometers. I sure wouldn't let anyone I cared about do ab initio training in gliders in Australia (or NZ - it runs about like Australia).

The Air France 447 first officer (pilot flying) was a glider pilot also. Didn't work out at all well.

That's the one, Jim. As I said before Dick's idea was to move to USA rules for airspace management, expanding Class E to protect the IFR guys and leaving the Class E totally transparent to the VFR's who wouldn't have an "Area frequency" nor a transponder requirement below 10,000 feet or within 3000 feet of terrain. We had the start of this in 2003 - 2004 but it was sabotaged by the ATC trade union and Australian pilots who deemed it "unsafe" (mostly from positions of ignorance) and couldn't get their heads around not being required to be on a specific frequency. If you want to know what is wrong with Australian aviation, look no further than Australian pilots and associated personnel. Personally, I did a fair bit of cross country flying in that year and found that by listening to nearby CTAFs enroute instead of Centre Frequency I had a much better awareness of relevant traffic. It was great.

onetrack, dig around and you'll find Dick Smith's comments on that accident with the Cheyenne. The Qantas near mountain collision was a 737 from Perth. IIRC both were likely caused by incorrect entry into the nav system by the crews. In Class E ATC is required to warn you of impending collision with terrain because you are off track. they'll yell at you anyway if off track as an IFR flight has to comply with the clearance given. Don't always believe anything and everything you read in ATSB reports. They aren't omniscient and their investigators aren't necessarily all that knowledgeable, though conscientious. I have provided information to them at my instigation and also their request in the past on several occasions. See the investigation on VH-TWQ. Check out the reconstructed horizontal and vertical situation. Does a minor heading change over two minutes while large and increasing vertical excursions were occurring sound like pilot disorientation? They say there was no sign of control system issues but looking at the picture of the wreckage I'd doubt you could definitively say that. The amount of instrument time under the hood is probably misleading as you can't log it unless with an appropriate instructor (another safety counterproductive regulation). I knew the pilot and know pilots who did long cross countries with him doing hours at a time under the hood, no autopilot.

Remember the old joke: What's the difference between pilots and ATC? When pilots make a mistake pilots die. When ATC makes a mistake pilots die. Much better to put collision avoidance in the cockpits of those who will die. The last instance was the poor guys in the Mooney inland of Coffs. Got messed around by ATC for no good reason. Class E over the D at Coffs would have had the guy simply continue to fly overhead Coffs at 6500 without a clearance required. Australian ATC, with a couple of exceptions in my experience, is the pits. This country has an unfortunate tendency to take a good idea from O/S, then add one or two layers of extra requirements making the good idea far less useful. Class E is for IFR to be separated from IFR (clearance required) and receive traffic information on VFR WHEN AND IF AVAILABLE. If the VFR doesn't have a transponder then it ISN'T AVAILABLE unless within Primary range and I bet those primary returns are turned off most of the time nowadays.

"Would be interesting to see how many IFR aircraft actually use the 8500 to 10,000 foot band. I am betting almost no one." "Quite a lot actually; 9000 & 10000. AC50 D228 C208 etc" At 9000 and 10000 they are already in the above 8500 Class E.

"Why is it safer for AsA to monitor ads-b via a ground based system and relay on the information via VHF radio to an IFR pilot rather than the pilot having ads-b IN and seeing the traffic directly? Jobs and $ ?" You got it! As always, follow the money! ADSB is a system conceived in the late 80's early 90's using the tech of the day which is already obsolete. The REALLY bad decision was to use the transponder frequency for the rf link. This causes the system to be unable to handle more than about 100 aircraft in a given area and complicates the rf design as to comply the transmitter needs very high pulse power. Already a problem in the LA basin but at least the USA put light aircraft on 978 MHz for ADSB although you can fit the transponder type units. A sensible system needs about 1 watt of power for ADSB out , ADSB in is simple and then everyone can do their own separation and no need for ATC "services". The IFR/VFR thing can then be thrown away as well, replaced by "able to fly in cloud and reduced visibility" or not. Seriously put in your replies to the consultation and tell them to shove it. The push for more Class E was a favourite project of Dick Smith but the driver was get ATC to tell IFR guys if they were going to run into terrain.(See Pier Cheyenne near Benalla, Qantas near Canberra one early morning where they went into holding so the controller could get to work and give them a landing clearance - they screwed up the holding and didn't have a moving map and damn near hit a mountain). I think this is now obsolete as if you fly IFR and don't have a moving map with terrain displays you are pretty silly. Who needs ATC?

Our RPL is not internationally recognised. If we simply reduced the medical to the current RAAus standard it would be a CASA decision and wouldn't have any international impact. Then we could simply go back to the original proposal for the RPL and have aircraft class ratings and cross country, controlled airspace etc. Those who think a medical is required for controlled airspace need to be aware that glider pilots can fly in controlled airspace with only the RAAus level medical requirement. A CASA medical is not a requirement. I agree that 600Kg is too restrictive. I'm sure a large percentage of these aircraft take off overweight a good part of the time when 2 people are on board. A nonsense regulation that is counter productive to safety because the aircraft simply cannot be as robust as they should be or the law is flouted. Not a good law. However an increase to 760 or 762 Kg which comes with LAME maintenance for private ops and other arbitrary restrictions doesn't seem to be worth the trouble. The regulatory structure of recreational aviation of all types is a complete pig's breakfast. Where are the hard, quantifiable risk and safety analyses? Let's have the RPL as originally proposed, make the RAAus and GFA work to keep and please their memberships and put an end to the obscene collusion between the people running these organisations and CASA which enables them and enthusiastically takes part in it. It is nothing but legalised extortion. I suspect both might be rather smaller. Maintenance/Registration should never be tied to pilot competence documentation/issuance. This is simply nonsense. We have a registration system for Australian aircraft which puts VH on them. ALL Australian aircraft should be found on that register. Exactly who should maintain these under what circumstances is a matter for debate and swift resolution. It isn't rocket surgery but I bet Elon Musk isn't sad that "talented" CASA people aren't working for him at SpaceX.

It is quite OK to push your own barrow BUT NOT AT THE EXPENSE OF EVERYONE ELSE. The CASA Rec Licence would let RAAus and GFA members continue as they were if they wished. It was none of of the two organisations business if people wanted to operate outside them and in fact I know from the discussion on aus-soaring that it was about 5 to 1 in favour of the CASA proposal. One reason was that wives, friends etc feel better about someone flying or flying with someone if they have a government sanctioned licence, not some gimcrack "certificate" issued by a bunch of what can only be described as well meaning amateurs (and in the case of GFA not all that well meaning a lot of the time). The other point is that if the proposal had gone through it would all have been a done deal by the time McCormick arrived.

I once threw out some correspondence where Paul Middleton was in CAA licencing branch. McCormick was a disaster in just about every way. Unfortunately he graduated from 2FTS. I knew his instructor there quite well and he tried his best to fail him. I never did get a reply to this "Some months later, the RAAus Paul Middleton, GFA's Henk Meertens and Bob Hall arranged a meeting with the Minister, John Anderson and had the proposal killed" after posting it at least 3 times on the old aus-soaring list server. I actually heard about the meeting before it took place but didn't know what was going to be asked. Thactions of those 3 has to rate right up there as one of the greatest acts of sheer b.......ry in the history of Australian aviation. Done just keep power, control and money for organisations that long ago lost sight of what they exist for.