DavidJPilkington

Editorial in the Sept-Oct issue of AOPA's magazine , Australian Pilot. "A group of us was standing around the other day discussing the death of a fellow pilot in a crash. The newspaper story on the accident which took the pilot's life (and that of his passenger), told the usual story about what a great bloke he had been and how he had died "doing what he loved." We all made the appropriate noises about how terrible the whole thing was for the man's family, especially for the family of the passenger who died. Then one member of our group muttered that the crash had not come as a surprise to him and that he would never have flown with the pilot. "He was an accident waiting to happen, that bloke," he said. Others mumbled their agreement, obviously reluctant to speak of the dead. I hadn't knowm the pilot and so pressed them for more information. Gradually, the members of the group who had known the dead pilot, admitted more and more information...

Just been reading some articles at Avweb. The first, "Lucky or Good" http://www.avweb.com/news/probablecause/probable_cause_62_lucky_or_good_198053-1.html "There's something about the typical experienced-pilot's personality that is antithetical to safety. I'm not an expert in analyzing personalities -- though I know what I like -- but it seems the very traits that make someone a "good stick" also make that same skilled pilot a safety risk." and the other, "We Worry About the Wrong Things and It's Killing Us" http://www.avweb.com/news/pilotlounge/pilots_lounge_122_we_worry_about_the_wrong_things_196933-1.html "My friend just can't figure out why we Americans so blithely accept the true risks we face while continuing to smoke, over-eat, not wear seatbelts and not raise heck about hospital procedures, yet we get ourselves all in a twitter over the low risk items and take all sorts of expensive and often-redundant preca...

I was at an aerobatic club meeting recently and observed some of the discussion about judging. There was criticism of the standard of judging and it seemed to me that criticism was directed at the Unlimited judges of which I was one. We didn't use the Fairplay System where the judges would expect an analysis of the scoring and a ranking of the judges - a pity as us judges have no knowledge of the basis of that criticism. The first that some may know about it may be when the proposed judging committee comprising "senior pilots" decides that they are no longer wanted at the contest. The Fairplay System would tell all where we stood although I wonder how it deals with a majority of the judges not detecting errors worthy of a hard zero. (I admit to missing the odd thing while judging at the nationals - no-one says that judging Unlimited is easy) Those of us who didn't compete and just participated as judges will probably respond in the following manner if this i...

All of this is just from memory of events about 15 years ago so if anything is incorrect please just treat it as fiction. We had two Pitts S-2Bs travelling about 1000 nm or so to Oshkosh and we were taking it in turns to lead the other in formation for one leg at a time. I had Cindy with me in the front seat. She hadn't been in a little aeroplane before at all. A little bit of baggage. Full fuel. Cruise at 145 kts TAS gave a safe range in still air of about 220 nm plus ½ hr reserve. We'd normally plan legs of no more than 200 nm. Mark led for the first leg. After departing Afton airfield we immediately turned right through the blind canyon. Sounds dramatic but we were rapidly climbing so always plenty of options in case of an engine failure. We were soon at 12,000 ft to get us over the 10,000 ft ridge. A while later a climb to 14,000 ft to skip over a higher ridge. At the first refuelling stop I took the lead. The tower ignored several calls from me in N727PS (that was th...

Well, if the White Paper is correct the new rules for licensing and operations will appear by the end of 2010. Here's a discussion of some of the proposed changes. CASR Part 61 – Flight crew licensing Recreational Pilot Licence to be introduced to replace passenger-carrying privileges for student pilots This was also in the draft rules of 2002 (refer to Discussion Paper 0202FS). Back then the features of the RPL were: day VFR only, max of 180 hp, 4 seats max authorisation for cross-country flight in Class G airspace available as well as specific controlled airfields Class 2 medical required although solo flying permitted not over populous areas for those without a Class 2 medical It will be interesting to see how this turns out when the details are fleshed out. One guess is that the new RPL will be very similar to the current RAA Certificate. In 2002 there were some changes to the list of design feature authorisations: (i) tailwheel; (ii) retractable undercarriage; (ii...

From the Aviation White Paper: “To maintain and improve the safety of Australia’s aviation industry the Government will: …........; >> finalise the suites of CASA’s regulations on licensing and flight operations by the end of 2010“ It has been a long while since I've looked at the draft Parts 61 and 91 so just as a start have a look at where I was 6 years ago: GENERAL This page is an update on the status of the new Australian aviation regulations with particular reference to aerobatics. The big event recently was the CASA FLOT2003 Conference held in Sydney in March, 2003. First of all, some advice for those providing comments to CASA - Read all the related documents before making your comment. Make your comments concise and to the point. The new regulations are structured differently - don't comment on just one aspect without taking the time to understand the framework and all related sections. If you like something - say so - otherwise just a handful of adverse ...

CASA's new draft maintenance regulations are available for comment until 18th December. http://www.casa.gov.au/scripts/nc.dll?WCMS:STANDARD::pc=PC_93516 A few years ago I was in Canberra for a presentation by CASA near the start of this project. The intent was to base it on EASA with local improvements for “world's best pratice” etc. The principle was to have outcome based regulations rather than prescriptive regulations. My little experience with EASA is that they are very bureacratic and only make general aviation more difficult. My quick look at CASA's draft regulations indicate that they have failed to make them outcome based – they are very prescriptive and will introduce more bureaucracy and expense to us. A few examples. I can currently do the second inspection of the control system on an aircraft (mine in particular) after maintenance. The new regulation would make it very difficult for me to do that. We currently have a maintenance release with a requir...