Pominaus

Can't say I've flown with them in years, but I think back 20 years ago flew with them a few times, and remember building a monarch plane as a kid lol. Big shame, but -as stupid as Brexit seems from the outside- probably not all brexit's fault? To be honest they haven't been the same since the Low costs came in I think. Probably more a straw on the preverbial camel? Just feel sorry for the staff and passengers hit by this - there's already a peak in demand thanks to Ryan Air's **** up, and now a whole carrier has gone down.

Best of luck, I don't know if you're looking for another PA28 (I know they have them at Lilydale) but I've seen them operating with the school out of Coldstream down the road as well (no idea about the school though sorry).

As I understand it, your hours should count whichever way you want to go, it sounds like everything is in order, but take your log book along with you when you're interviewing flight schools just so you can run them by pilots around (we can't see them obvs). I think the most important thing here is what's the mission? What do you want to fly? whichever way you go, it could take 15 hours, it could take another 25 to be ready for the check ride - we're all different. Sure the Jabiru's and Technams are cheaper to fly, but if you're looking to get your RPL and get back up in a PA28, you'd probably be looking at another 5-6 hours conversion from the RPB if you do all your training on the lighter Jab I'd guess, and that'd likely wipe out the bulk of the money saved by getting to the RPB just to convert it. That said, you could probably do 4/5 refresher lessons on the cheaper jab then switch to the GA plane for the rest of the RPL without much problem? Of course, if the mission's just to get up and flying and get your cross country ticket, RPC -> XC seems the most logical choice to me, you can always come back and do some PPL conversion later if you want. I think really just drive out and talk to some schools, see what they say. There's what should happen, what happened with this pilot or that pilot, and then there's reality for you and your school. Talk to them about where you want to get to, what you've done before, and when you find one that you like do a flight assessment and make a plan with your instructor. Best of luck :)

Non locking undercarriage according to TV. Looks like the pilot did a grand job, be sure to get 'em a drink!

Couldn't help but think of the episode of Ice Pilots when the trainee water bomber pilot forgets to lower the gear:rofl:

Yeah we thought about kids, but then looked at how much the cat cost us.... and he only needs clothes for the Christmas photo

Looks amazing! No official prices I can find online, but Wikipedia and a couple of forums seem to suggest €100k (I'm guessing that's a hard 'starting from') ... so by the time it gets here... A$200k and up?

Haha, ah too easy! Good job man, yeah that back one... some kind of early Jab?

Two planes here, one easy one in the background, and in the foreground is the (not exact model version) first plane I ever flew back in 99/00! Whenever someone asks me about the first flight, and I tell them about this plane I get some blank faces back, so just putting it out to the room :) [GALLERY=media, 4027]Guess Planes by Pominaus posted Oct 1, 2017 at 8:38 PM[/GALLERY] P.S. I've seen some people looking up tail numbers - naughty - so I redacted them with virtual tip-ex

Over 800 combat missions..

Well, I'll preface this by warning that I'm one of the worst plane identifiers going (once painted a model typhoon the wrong design because I didn't notice the image I looked up was a tempest until I was half way through), but, what the heck... I'm gonna guess it's a BF109G? Specific version, no clue, but what the heck, swing and a miss... BF109G-1? lol

In one sentence, describe the civil service?

On the BRS debate, as far as I can tell the only argument against (other than cost) is poor training? There was an interview with someone from Cirrus on a podcast.... I think it was aviatorcast, but could have been go flying Australia(?). There they said basically this: they installed BRS, and it didn't help, actually their fatality rate may have gone up, though I can't quite remember that specifically. The point was that they then went to install BRS and give a training course, and the fatality rate collapsed. It's an entirely new technology for light planes, I don't see why you shouldn't be required to get an enorsement on it; it needn't be an expensive one after all, and might save your life. At some point I'm certain it'll just be part of the PPL anyway.

Maybe they could do what they did with the motorbikes and buy the old factory tooling to make clones... start with the C162, and I'll pop buy in 10 years when it gets good lol

really interesting, thanks! I know nothing about the Chinese general/recreational aviation scene I'm sad to say, but ... well given China's where the money is these days and it's huge I'd image not too long before we start to see some pretty decent offerings!

Actually profits have never been much of a problem for them - it's how they became the biggest operator in Europe. It's all about the population density and freedom of movement in the EU. The longest distances fly are shorter than flying from Melbourne to Perth, and the EU basically makes it so for airlines it's really no different than being a domestic carrier. Most flights are about 2 hours, and once you look at it against Australia - similar sized area to cover but with 510 million people living there whilst we have 22million here in Aus the economics start to become clear. The short version is basically that there's so many people wanting to travel over a relatively short distance that it's very easy to keep the planes pretty full and off the ground. They make over a billion euros a year in profit. To be honest this current shambles is because they treat their pilots and staff as a whole worse than macca's would treat a Christmas casual

To be honest it did used to make sense to fly with Ryan Air - they were much better at customer service and such than Easy Jet and very, very cheap. To be honest though, nowadays, and this might just be me being a bit older and not as hard up (although I think a bit smarter with money too) it's harder to justify it. I first flew with them in the late 90's and early 2000's, and to be honest, I loved it. They didn't actually feel that budget. Sure if you wanted a drink on board you paid for it, but it was a 2 hour flight... it was just like getting a train really. They did used to give you normal baggage allowance for free, 15KG I think, and there were no other charges other than £1.50 booking fee. It didn't feel as cheap and cattle class as their orange competitor, but it was cheap, really cheap. The first few seats on planes came up so cheap that if you could shop around for dates, my word. I flew London-ish to Stockholm-ish for £1.50 there and £5 back, Austria return for under £10, to dublin for £4, etc. I flew a lot over the space of about 3 years with them, and the most I ever spent on return flight tickets was £20. But of course their costs have gone up and their competitor prices have gone down, along with their standard of service. Last time I flew with them was 2008 and it was just such a bad experience, whilst the price difference between a human-rights obeying airline was down to ~£50. it honestly just wasn't worth it anymore to deal with them. Sure when you're shopping flights every dollar counts, you obsess over every saving you can make, but the more I've flown, the more I've accepted there's just so many other costs; getting to the airport, your holiday, attractions, food, etc. that that small saving you get there becomes often irrelevant, whilst a bad flying experience can ruin your mood for days. Basically their service is so bad, there has to be quite a large price difference to go through the stress of travelling with them rather than just paying a bit extra not to have the start and end of your trip be totally miserable. Just as a point proving exercise to myself, I just went and looked for 3 random routes in three months time on RyanAir's site and added baggage. Most seemed to end up at just under £100 return. Then I went over to Expedia and found with a little day wiggling I could fly with BA or Air Lingus for within $20 each time even without any date wiggling the biggest gap I saw was £60. I mean, sure it's just three random examples ... but surely it's a no brainer. Ryan Air or BA? Actually when I just checked London to Austria, BA was £2 cheaper! I wonder how many people fly with Ryan Air just because of the perception they will save money regardless? only checking the budget airlines websites and that pass them through the cost-adding steps so they won't really know how much the flight costs until you're entering your card details, without realising other airlines aren't that far off.

Fortunately the CAA over there are paying attention. Though the British are being all Brexit, the EU laws still currently apply to them, so whilst O' sleazy has said he won't pay for passengers to fly on other airlines, Ryan Air doesn't actually have a choice in situations like yours. They must offer a refund, alternative flight or put you on a competator's plane (at their expense) if they can't provide a suitable flight. Now right now with 400,000 tickets cancelled they are refusing to do this until someone makes them, but at least in the UK, the CAA are now threatening legal action against them. It's tough to know what to do. On the one hand you can hold out until regulators force them to do the right thing, on the other, this is huge, it's not unforeseeable that it could collapse the company; getting your money out and paying the diff yourself could also make sense. Personally I think they've realised that it will be cheaper to ignore the law and take the fine when it comes than rebook 400,000 passengers at short notice, sadly. I hope the regulators make an example of them if they do that.

Seen this at Wilson's Prom National park - people yelling at a park ranger, along the lines that it's incredibly dangerous 'allowing' kangaroo and emu on the roads at night. Don't get me wrong, legislation in aviation is definitely a good thing overall and saves lives. People pine for the old days of buying your own plane, reading the manual and teaching yourself to fly, but ... well yeah we know how that goes. However surely people also need to be held responsible for their actions. If I was doing a reno by myself and someone broke in to my house and electrocuted themselves, common sense says that my liability should end at the point where I locked the front door.

I hope this issue was solved, but as a 6'5'' person myself, just thought I'd add my experiences. For reference I typically take a 34''/86cm leg in pants (I say typically because even though mens clothes come in sizes that supposedly use international standardised units, they all seem to be different.), and most of that distance is in my thigh I think - can't sit facing straight forward in most bus/shorthaul economy seats without wedging myself in. Honestly the thing that surprised me most was how much room there is in the light sport trainers! The first one I went to see was a jab 170 (I think inside it's the same as a 160?) and walking up to the plane I was just looking at it like "no way, not possible", and as I got closer, it got smaller and smaller - If I recall the top of the wings is about chest height on me. But actually it's very easy to get in and out of (bum first of course) and when you're in with the cushions off it felt surprisingly big. I had to bend my knees of course, but a good inch clearance from the instrument panel and not in the way. If anything the only problem was the centre Y stick - I ever had to pull it hard left, I'd have to move my legs I'd expect. Headroom was incredible - several inches over my head for sure. You could be quite a bit taller in the body, maybe an extra inch or two in the legs before it starts to get silly. I also tried the Foxbat. Really that was the only one where I sat there thinking "this is actually too uncomfortable, it's going to distract me". My legs fit I suppose, but I just felt squished & twisted the whole way and as others have said the top clearance isn't great, with the bar right infront of your brain particularly disturbing. It wasn't impossible, but it was uncomfortable and after just half an hour riding in it I felt I was getting stiff and needed to stretch my legs - you don't need that! Sad really, because there's something about the Foxbat that appeals to me and I really wanted to like it! Next was the Technam P92. First up this had a control stick for each pilot - not a central Y stick like the other 2, so my legs never got in the way. Headroom was sufficient - it's hard to compare to the jab as I was doing TIF's at different schools over a few weeks to try them out, but I think the jab was taller inside. Leg room: again I fit, although the instrument panel felt low, it might be my memory, but I think it was one of the lowest but also further away. I could easily angle my legs into a comfortable position making room for the stick. Last was the Bristell. It felt big to be honest. Nearly no headroom problems (we had to taxi back across bumpy grass an I lightly bumped my head on the side... though probably my fault). I was a bit worried when the lid came down I'd get a bump on the noggin, but no, bags of space. Legs.. I think my knees were further forward than designed for but there was enough total room to be comfortable. Overall I think the Technam was probably my favourite... But I'll probably be going with a Jab just because I preferred the overall school and instructor. Nothing wrong with the Bristell, but the school is too far away realistically - I just wanted to round out all my options. Finally I just wanted to reiterate how easy it was to rock up at a school say "I'm thinking of doing a trial flight, Do you think I'd fit in your planes" and be lead out the back door to try sitting in them right away. Obvs call ahead on a busy weekend, but yeah too easy. They want to sell you lessons, so they probably will put you in their GA aircraft first (some of those are more cramped than the LSA's!), but they're also very accommodating to any questions. Ultimately if you go to a school and they can't be bothered to deal with you (only one school I visited of 5), don't give them money whatever plane they have.

Thanks for expanding :) I've always wondered, with a rotary engine, obviously all those parts rotating around a hub... there needs to be a high level of accuracy in the manufacture so it doesn't shake itself clean off the plane. Do you know if they had the technology at the time to achieve that, or were there any fun little "hacks" like cutting/adding weight to balance the mass?

Thanks for sharing; great to see inside! Just thought I'd add that pre about 1920, it was actually the cylinders that rotated (with the propeller attached to the cylinders essentially), and the crankshaft stayed stationary, basically just bolted to the front of the plane. The main advantage was that as nearly all the mass of the engine was rotating, it basically became it's own fly wheel. This saved weight (having a separate flywheel) and because the engine had a very large mass, improved reliability just by having a lot more energy stored in the flywheel. To get fuel, air and oil to the engine, it was fed through the crank case and centrifugally pulled to the cylinders. Ultimately though reliability of engines improved and the downsides ended their reign - they're a total loss system, as the centrifugal force wont allow the oil to go in any other direction than away from the crank case; the spinning cylinders create drag as they spin & add a gyroscopic effect that interferes with handling; planes were getting faster (as were engines) compounding the problems. Plus as they were fading out, designers were starting to realise you could get a little thrust boost by shaping the cowling on a radial engine - essentially the beginnings of a journey that lead to the jet engine - and that worked better on stationary cyllinders that interfered less with the airflow across them. Hope it's interesting/new info to some :)

I don't know much, but I hear it's a great place to hone your skills with lots of mountains and some funky winds! Absolutely nowhere near you'll be, not even the same Island, but I've bookmarked this little club up in Thames outside Aukland for a future trip - dream is to go out there and do some aerobatics practice one day, so just forwarding the dream (website's what one might expect from a remote kiwi club): www.haurakiaeroclub.co.nz

Not to derail, but I think the UK still has freeview - their free to air digital TV system that's built into most all TV's there. I think the reason few have roof antenna is because when they launched freeview they made a big deal that they had enough masts up that you only needed a small "digital-ready" antenna in your living room. Though outside of cities you do still need a roof antenna most of the time. The cable TV isn't replacing it, it's just that most of the UK had a US-style cable TV network installed in the 90's by a private company (basically whther you were a customer or not, your street got cable) and that changed hands a few times before ending up with Virgin. Now they offer internet, TV and phone through the cable, so it's a thing you can choose to pay for. It's sort of like choosing to have foxtel here; free to air still exists, It's just that in the age of basically having to have an internet connection, and most people still want a home phone, the package to have foxtel/cable at home as well starts to look more attractive. About half of the people I know in the UK have paid TV (either cable or satelite) as far as I'm aware. Then again, lots of young people I know have basically switched to netflix & co lol, and when you look at things like the cost of paid TV you can see why! Then again they never abolished their TV tax, so I guess, yeah no such thing as free TV in the UK lol!