Powerin

Hope it went well Pud! It must be a very special feeling to fly in a machine you've put your heart and soul into. I hope I can do the same one day.

I'd just like to put in a good word for Dave, whom I don't know and have never met except here on RecFly. A while ago Dave was offering to pay the $50 membership fee for anybody who wanted to join the Canberra Region Aviators Association. This is the group who are wanting to establish a second airport for Canberra for GA and recreational aviation. I don't even have my cert yet, and I don't live anywhere near Canberra, but I have relatives there and dream of flying there one day. The membership fee was not something I could justify at the time, but I wanted to support the cause. I am now a paid up member of the CRAA thanks to the generosity of Dave...and he lives as far away from Canberra as I do! So Dave is a guy who puts his money where his mouth is and supports recreational aviation. Thanks again Dave and I hope to pay my own way next time! Peter

Ahh...the site is owned by none other than he who shall not be named but has the initials MC and featured in a coroners report linked in another thread.

Good on you Dave. Still the half term left for you Slarti.

Welcome Jack....I'm nearly three times your age but only half the hours (*sigh*)

If I recall correctly from the "other" thread, I think the simple answer is: a lawyer was hired to convince the board it was necessary. At members expense of course...although I would assume the RAAus retains the services of a lawyer. Correct? I've been on a board where a lawyer was introduce to run through certain things. You tend to trust what they say!

The RPT guys and girls are usually great and will use standard language in their calls. It's so much easier when they just call inbound at 30 miles to the NW and using a straight in approach to runway 23. If you are in the circuit they will usually ask very nicely if you are able to extend downwind to let them land straight in or allow them to backtrack and takeoff. It's all good experience! Of course, up until now I have always had an instructor with me to handle the interactions with RPT :big_grin:

I allowed myself a couple of glances at the empty seat beside me on crosswind...just to remember the moment. After that I just went with the flow. I spent far too much brain capacity trying to decipher the REX calls. They're pretty good usually, but this guy was at this DME and on that Radial and then another aircraft called overflying on another radial. Spent a few seconds being confused when I should have been flying the aircraft!

You are allowed to equally share the cost of your flight with your passengers. So in an RAAus aircraft (ie 2 seats) you can legally ask your passenger to pay only half of the costs of the aircraft (fuel, hire etc). You cannot charge anything for your services as pilot.

It's interesting, I went from reading that to reading a thread on the Nomad (only because RecFly was offline today of course), which led to reading a bit of history on the Nomad here... http://www.fourays.org/features_2005/nomad/nomad_1.htm At the end of this article (written some time ago) is yet another offhand comment about CASA corruption. CASA wouldn't allow ex-army Nomads to be sold on the civilian market. The comment was that no one was surprised because CASA officials didn't get overseas trips by allowing local aircraft to be sold. I'm fairly new to aviation...what is it about aviation that seems to attract more than its fair share of corruption and suspect business practices?

Funnily enough today started the same way it did when I had my first flying lesson. Up at 4.30am, loaded up our truck with sheep and took them the 85kms to the Wagga Saleyards. After unloading the sheep I drove the truck over to the airport and squeezed around the narrow airport roads to the Flying School hangar. (I wonder how many other students drive trucks to their lessons?). Being in a rural area my instructor teaches quite a few farmers and the first lesson (straight and level) for farmers often consists of a flight out to the student's farm and back. And so it was with me. It's a great idea...it fills you with enthusiasm flying over your own property. As I recall I flew the circuit on the return and landed with a bit of help. Today's lesson, however, ended with me landing the aeroplane with an empty seat beside me. To be honest it's all a bit of a blur, but it started with the question "Do you want to do one on your own"? Yes was my slightly nervous answer and he turned us around and backtracked to the threshold of 05. For the first time since I've known him my cool, calm and collected instructor showed a bit of anxiety as he briefed me on what to expect. After grabbing his safety vest, he jumped out, reminded me only ONE circuit and closed the door. As everyone says, things happen a lot faster on climb out with only one person on board. But one thing I didn't expect, and don't remember reading anywhere, was how much faster the aircraft slows down too. Everything went pretty smoothly but I got a bit distracted when a REX flight made a couple of inbound calls when I was on late downwind and final. The landing was OK but I drifted a bit to the left of the centreline when I tried to straighten up from a small crab angle too early due to a bit of crosswind. I was ready to hit the throttle but everything straightened up nicely in the flare and I was down. Phew. I was just about to call "clear of all runways and still in one piece after my first solo", but I chickened out and did the regular call. :clap2: [ATTACH]13501.vB[/ATTACH] Peter

CAO 95.32 lists our exemptions from CARs. And one of the things it does not exempt us from is carrying a POH?

I think Airbus aircraft have live telemetry back to the factory?

Classical pipe organ for me....two hands, two feet, lots of buttons...bit like flying. Play piano/keyboard too. Welcome to RecFly!

Have a look at the Stolspeed website in the Outback Adventures section... http://www.stolspeed.com/id/12

I admire the pioneers of the RAAus, AUF and before. But there are probably quite a few of us RAAus members that come from the other end of the flying spectrum: those that could never afford GA. Minimalist rag and tube is not for me and holds even less appeal to my family who would never have let me fly one. If it were not for the high performance, but far more affordable than GA, side of RAAus I would not be flying now and would not be a member. So it works both ways.....I suspect getting back to basics would not increase membership or decrease membership fees. As others have said ,the increase is a very small proportion of the cost of flying even minimalist aircraft isn't it?

Cooma (Snowy aviation academy at Polo Flat flies Jabs I think) and Tumut might be some other choices. If you're really keen on driving there are Jabs and Tecnams at Wagga. There is a group in Canberra that is trying to get a recreational/GA airfield built in the ACT which you might be interested in. Their website is here.

Good on you Rach! The Savvy is most happy landing in paddocks. I have a heap for you to try out! Peter

Good on Steve R for stepping up to the plate. Does the RAAus treasurer's job have any recompense? If not I've got to hand it to them. To handle the books of a 10,000 member association is not a job I would do for nothing.

Congrats Win!!

That's an excellent idea actually. Sunrise (I hate them too) and Today are always on the lookout for interesting places to do the weather from. A number of years ago we got Today to come to our local Agricultural field days for a morning of weather crosses. Maybe Carol Richards or even Temora Council might be interested in approaching the networks to do a weather cross to Natfly? You could have someone quickly show off their aircraft and explain how easy it is to get an RAAus certificate. I reckon it'd be pretty impressive to get a field full of aircraft on TV and you would get Australia wide coverage.

Off topic.... Isn't it sort of sad that the above web page has a section on how to travel to Bacchus Marsh by air, but doesn't even mention Bacchus Marsh's OWN airport! One day (when I eventually get my cert) I hope to be able to fly down to Melbourne to visit family or go to the odd meeting or even to the footy. I never even thought of Bacchus Marsh as a possibility. Wouldn't it be nice if towns recognised how good an asset their local airport could be for them.

You can buy a module to do this. It's called a Wigwag in the US....not sure if it's called the same here. Here's one example: http://www.periheliondesign.com/wigwagmnl.htm And here's an extremely poor quality video of an Airvan taking off from our farm with one operating:

From observing STOL aircraft and playing around with them on a Flight Sim (Cub, Storch, PC6) it seems one of the "tricks" for a really short landing is to get behind the drag curve. You can use pretty high angles of attack (achieved by thick wings and slats or VGs) and you get to a point where you gradually raise the nose higher, increase power, go slower, but maintain your approach angle. I would assume however that this is a fairly risky mode of flight. A bit of wind shear or sink would be hard to recover from (think brick) as you don't have as much reserve of power or lift. As I said, the above is purely from observation not experience! Edit: ahh....Ballpoint beat me posting. Read his post...ignore mine