At 10:44 AM 9/09/2011, you wrote:
Imagine if the powers that be rigidly set out how a club should operate
They already do. Every club shall be a training club. May have been
somewhat sensible up until 1980 or so. Not so nowadays. The Aero
clubs in Australia used to be training clubs too but many of those
have disappeared and a country town aero club is now either drinking
club or it has a C172 in a hangar with a combination lock. An
instructor may visit for those needing biannuals or flight training.
As pointed out by others CASA needs its arse kicked on this as well
in regard to expectations and payment of administration fees.
Gliders have become more and more sophisticated.
Really? Is a motorless Discus 2 or Ventus 2 really any more
complicated than a H301 Libelle from 1965?
Look at the majority of AD's issued in the past few years and they
generally pertain to motor/turbo gliders. Just how much longer can
we expect the GFA (that's us) to continue to cover these costs on
what are essentially single engine aircraft.
What costs? How much does it cost to put a link to a manufacturer's
or EASA/FAA website on the GFA website? CASA now merely says to
Registered Operators that they are responsible for acting on AD's
issued by the certifying state.
If you've had much to do with self launchers you'd know that no two
engine installations seem to be exactly the same (certified anyone?)
and few seem to meet CS22 requirements in all respects. There's a 50
hour endurance test for example with a prescribed number of starts
and power scheduling. So what about all those broken drive belts and
failed ignition systems due to vibration in under 20 hours? Self
launchers are Experimental devices at about the development level of
early 1950s British motorcycles before the Japanese showed them how
to do it. That may be unfair to 1950s British motorbikes.
I suspect a majority of GFA(our) time goes into justifying our
existence with CASA. What concerns me here is that unless we as the
GFA(us) fall into line, a little bit, we could be in real trouble.
Some say "tell CASA to jump in the lake" or words to that effect,
and point to the fact that we as members have been doing a
reasonable job over the past 60 odd years. What happens if CASA say
OK, we'll take you back into our system. I shudder to think.
About the only difference will be that trained pilots will have a
licence and not effectively be students forever and able to operate
on their own responsibility and instructors may actually have to meet
some sort of real aviation industry standards. Given the rate at
which they smash gliders and injure and kill students and passengers
this may be an improvement.
Not much else would change. CASA has a nice maintenance release form
we could use instead of inventing a GFA form, the logbooks are the
same, maintenance is the same. The aircraft still needs a C of A , a
C of R etc.
Ask our friends in the USA.
The rest was pretty sensible. Business as usual clearly isn't
working. Doing more of it, harder, won't work either. Kind of like
"the floggings will continue until morale improves".
Mike
Borgelt Instruments - manufacturers of quality soaring instruments since 1978
phone Int'l + 61 746 355784
fax Int'l + 61 746 358796
cellphone Int'l + 61 428 355784
email: [email protected]
website: www.borgeltinstruments.com
_______________________________________________
Aus-soaring mailing list
[email protected]
To check or change subscription details, visit:
http://lists.internode.on.net/mailman/listinfo/aus-soaring
