sleemanj

Why would RAA/CASA have anything to say about it? Do you have to have an engine certified over there even under RAA or something? Surely, your RAA plane, your choice what engine you bolt on?

No, unlike Australia, all NZ aircraft be they GA, Microlight, Glider, Balloon... are in a single register and all carry the ZK prefix. ZK-CRI and ZK-LBW are both "Class 1 Microlight" aircraft. The NZ aircraft register is listable, searchable and downloadable here: Active Aircraft Register Enquiry

To answer the original question, yes Multi Engine is fine in NZ for microlights, as are retracts, constant speed props, turbines... Basically the only limits are weight, stall and 2 seats or less, if you can make it fly safely inside those limits then it can go on the register. As for the Cri Cri, there are indeed 2 on the microlight register at the moment that I can see, ZK-CRI and ZK-LBW.

If you're using an airswitch for time counting, which is perfectly fine, you want it to be calibrated so that it is right on flying speed (ie probably somewhere just above stall in the landing configuration), any ultralight is going to be flying well under 60. It's wheels up, to wheels down, 60 is more like "time in cruise" for most ultralights, that's not acceptable. An airswitch is quite a valid means of judging service life, because... 1. Under flying speed, engines are not likely working hard, if you idle an engine for 1500 hrs, you are likely not putting nearly as much wear on it as if you run it flat out for 1500, and the TBO estimate needs to be much closer to flat out than idle. 2. Manufacturers, unless otherwise noted in the documentation, account for this in the service life estimates, because; 3. As others have pointed out, thats what the rule makers around the world reckon it should be based on. It is important to remember that any manufacturers service life number is an estimate at the best of times, we hope a pretty conservative one (and this is usually true, evidenced by those who run on-condition far in excess of published service life). As for the "Overhaul", it comes down to if the mechanic who did it has "zero timed" it in the logbook, when they want it to be overhauled next, is it at 1650 hours total life or 3000. If it's not logged, then 1. find out why the hell not, and 2. treat it as if it never happened until you get confirmation from the engineer who did the "overhaul" as to if it was zero time or not. That said, replacing NOTHING at 1500 and zero timing... very unlikely. Replacing nothing and running on-condition for another 150 hrs... closer to reality.

If it is certified with brakes, who has the authority to issue a ferry permit to said aircraft which is otherwise safe to fly but in breach of it's "certification"?

Must be a difference between AU and NZ, I see in a quick skim that the AU framework is considerably more convoluted and you do tend to use the word "certificate" within the RAA domain even outside of LSA. Australians, always complicating things ;) Here in NZ if you say "certified aircraft" one will assume that means an aircraft with an actual certificate of airworthiness, which does not include ultralight/microlight aircraft. These have neither standard nor special certification, they have a permit to fly for 2 seaters, or nothing at all other for singles (other than an annual condition inspection). A permit to fly is a vastly different beast to a certificate of airworthiness.

I thought we were talking about RA-Aus?

Well this thread slipped my attention! As a type 1, may I say congratulations Australia, now if NZ would just follow suit! By and large the requirements that CASA have set forth are wholly sensible and not at all difficult, with the exception of... Really, every 3 months you have to go see an endo. That seems, excessive. Now if that were every 3 months you have to see your GP for a general check and get an A1c to be submitted to CASA, that would be somewhat understandable (although, 6 months would be a better figure), but to have to go see an endocrinologist every 3 months... that would get pretty difficult/expensive I think.

We are getting pretty off topic, mods maybe a thread split is in order. One would expect that depends on the manner in which you break the plane and the circumstances around that. If you plan a flight to an airfield with suitable length for a braked landing, and you have brakes, and you XXXX it up, they'd pay out, right, hope so, because that's a large reason why we buy insurance. If you plan your flight to an airfield with suitable length for a no brake landing, and XXXX it up, I don't see a manner in which it was relevant that there were brakes. If you have no brakes and plan your flight to an airfield which was NOT SUITABLE for a no brakes landing, now you're in trouble, but the same goes if you have working brakes and go plan your flight to an airfield which is not suitable for a braked landing. It's very dangerous to draw legal conclusions across borders certainly, but here in NZ the law (Insurance Law Reform Act 1977 to be exact) requires that the reason given for denying a claim is directly material to the cause for the claim, and I would anticipate that AU had some similar sort of legislation - otherwise get-out-of-claim-free cards would abound in the insurance industry. The last insurance forms I filled out didn't ask "does your aircraft have brakes", because one assumes, it's a matter of piloting to know the limits of the aircraft and thus, has little bearing on the accident rate (aircraft without brakes I would guess have probably no more accidents than those with, because pilots know how far it takes them to stop).

I would say you would have been in the same place as you would have been if the engine had coughed and spluttered 2 or 3 meters later when even the fully operational brakes were insufficient to stop in the distance available. You know the stopping distance required for your aircraft with brakes, and thus, you plan for that. If you know the stopping distance required without brakes (and you definitely should), you can plan for that too. Obviously you prefer to have brakes over no brakes, especially in a slippery aircraft, but I think that's no reason to strand yourself if you can SAFELY PLAN for operating without them in order to get back to a place of repair. There's plenty of aircraft in worse state been flown back for repair: Optimal Jet, Aviation Videos. panoramic pictures, aircraft parts 20 min video, WELL worth the watch.

Nobody is going to criticize you for activating your beacon in a situation where you may soon need rescue. I am sure that emergency responders would much rather find you and your beacon alive and well quickly after an activation which wasn't in the end necessary, than they would spend a week looking for your body when you didn't activate it because you thought "she'll be right" but it wasn't. Activate early, if you wind up not needing it, give a phone/radio call to the police or search coordination, if you can't do that you probably need it activated anyway! In short, if you are at any time thinking "should I switch on the beacon now?", I would say that is very much the time to switch it on.

Well, they can try, but surely they wouldn't get far in the courts I expect... fair use if you own the paper to media-shift it to digital, surely.

Hear hear! Totally agree with Nev on this, contrary to what Bill suggests we do see it here in NZ too. Certain elements (particularly the more aged among us) in all the different areas of GA have serious "them and us" issues, it's not just GA to RA, both sides tend to think the other is in some way undesirable. It's not helpful, it's not productive. There are not bad RA pilots and bad GA pilots, there are just bad pilots full stop. If GA pilots have problems with RA pilots, there's no point just saying "oh those RA pilots, they're rubbish" these people should stand up and say how they think the situation should be improved, and "get rid of RA" is not a valid or even possible resolution! And the same goes in reverse.

If you're visiting you should get it back when you leave, not even sure if you need to stump up the full GST. Of course, you could get a Carnet de Passage, pretty sure they are accepted.

Compared to fixed wing. From what I see in the gyros available.. Bensen/RAF type for not that much. BIG GAP Xenon for quite large amounts. There is a large area in the middle there that either doesn't exist or just isn't much advertised. Compare this to fixed wing where there is literally something for every budget, and a quite comfortable fully enclosed and capable machine in good nick can be had on the second hand market pretty easily for the 30k mark. Of course, this is to be expected, since demand for gyros is low, so prices remain relatively high.

It's not the running costs, it's the initial purchase. It's quite a chunk of change if you want to be remotely civilized about it :-)

Helicopters and Gyros look (and are) so much fun... but the cost (unless you are happy with something resembling a flying bedstead you are talking fair megabucks), and the thought of the failure scenarios... it is a hard thing to get over.

Pah, Aussies, no commitment. Engine doesn't know you're over water!

AU to NZ and vice versa, I'd guess that... 1. You'll probably need to have a PPL, I'd be a bit surprised if CASA or CAA would allow you to attempt it without. The CAA would not allow an RA-AUS pilot to fly here without converting to one of our Part 149 organizations first anyway. 2. You'd need special permission to operate your (RA-AUS) aircraft outside Australia I expect. 3. You'd special permission to operate your aircraft in the other country, because we are talking about non-certified aircraft they won't be covered by the ICAO. I suspect you might have problems bringing an RA-AUS reg'd aircraft and operating it without getting it ZK permitted, bringing a VH reg would be much easier. The established route is through Lord Howe and Norfolk, neither of which really have any "alternate" that does not involve getting wet, cold and potentially dead, there will be a definite point of no return by which you will want to be able to evaluate the situation, satellite phones are comparatively cheap to hire. In Europe there is much free-er travel of similar aircraft with many countries having standing permissions for microlight/ultralight/light-sport/whatever aircraft from other countries. I guess they have the advantage of not being surrounded by lots of inhospitable sea water.

RA-Aus issues - PPRuNe Forums

I thought the failures had been largely attributed to flutter (hence the requirements to check and adjust the cables), and so.. wouldn't static load testing not actually be of a huge amount of relevance here? I'm sure the wings can support many G static loads, but if you setup a rapid harmonic resonance in those same strong joints, fatigue is going to set in quickly to cause a failure. Not saying the guys analysis is wrong, or not independent (although have to say, it sounds a bit "pro zenith" to be truly independent), just that maybe it's not looking at the right stuff?

Nice one on Barnstormers at the moment, but not exactly a do-er-upper. BARNSTORMERS.COM

The details for ordering this are at the original YouTube... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=feXN_ddBJOc

I think this video is being directly pulled from YouTube but isn't in the YouTube player? It would be good if the videos were linked back to the original source so that we can see 1. the description 2. the comments there 3. the normal embedding code Embedding video like this likely violates 4.c of the YouTube Terms of Use... "C. You agree not to access User Submissions (defined below) or YouTube Content through any technology or means other than the video playback pages of the Website itself, the YouTube Embeddable Player, or other explicitly authorized means YouTube may designate."

I would have made a moderated forum and appointed suitably knowledgeable people from different areas of aviation to be moderators (not limited to instructors), plus a few general "staff". I would have also added a means to clearly indicate in that forum if a post is from a (verified) instructor (eg, change the background colour of the post so it really REALLY stands out as "probably good advice"). Even age-old experienced instructors get it wrong sometimes or simply have different opinions, even on fundamentals. Like wise, even low time pilots get it right sometimes, and have valuable contributions to make. The student's task since long before the dawn of the internet, is to interpret what instructors tell them AND the general hangar chat, and whatever other sources of knowledge they draw from, then put all this together to form their own opinions. There should be no spoon feeding "this is the answer" from somebody without the possibility for open, civil and organised debate if somebody disagrees, if people don't think about things critically and discuss things, there is no advancement in the combined knowledge (ie "flat earth").