Friday, March 25, 2011

post from the RAA

I was riding on a vacuum cleaner all around the house this morning and could barely heard the door bell ringing. I wasn't expecting anyone and was really surprised to see the post man with a pretty big package. He wasn't mistaking and the package was addressed to me. It turned out to be post from the RAA. I was actually expecting a little envelope with my freshly earned pilot certificate. The package included:
  • pilot certificate
  • printed form of the operations manual
  • member CD (ops manual, tech manual, tutorial, member forms, reference docs)
  • March 2011 Recreational Aviation Australia magazine
  • shopping bag with RAA logo

Somebody might say that I'm again praising foreign aviation authorities. The point though is to show that it's apparently not a really big deal to organize. The pilot has all the rules printed out and in an electronic form which may prevent him from asking embarrassing questions on discussion forums. Assuming he will make the effort to go through before formulating the question. Such a little thing makes the pilot feel good about being part of the association and also motivates him to pay the membership fees. He can also show off going shopping with the bag ;-) 
And no, it doesn't cost a fortune. A yearly membership will cost you A$ 185 and people are willing to pay knowing that in addition to everything they will get a monthly magazine to read.
I guess that's just a simple way to make it all work ...

wedding and Condor time

It's not all about flying and from time to time one needs some cultural entertainment to balance the airport atmosphere. We decided to go and participate in the Dimboola Wedding play next weekend. There are various opinions about it but you never know until you see it yourself.


The play is a celebration of the wedding of Morrie McAdam—a Protestant, to Reen Delaney—a Catholic.No holds are barred as the two families come together for the wedding which Jack Hibberd (the author) calls: "the testing of strengths of the newly conjugated tribes". The family members try to preserve social grace and dignity in the face of impending disasters. And disasters there are aplenty! After the drink has flowed a little too freely, mayhem and humour ensues when the families exchange insults and punches, as they resolve to come to terms with the situation.
The play uses audience participation to a very high degree. Audience members are greeted by the father of the bride and the new arrivals are announced to the audience. Glasses of sherry and food are served by the actors, the auditorium is set up with tables and decorated with ballons and streamers. Audience members are assigned characters and actors improvise with them during the play's fights and shenanigans. The alcohol consumed on stage is often real. We, as guests, will be having a 3 course meal served and BYO alcohol.
It is a 1960's wedding and we are supposed to be properly dressed as well. There is a costume rental in Horsham (who would have thought that) with a huge variety of clothes. We went there yesterday and after a few fittings found the right elegant 60's dress for me. I will also get a matching hat, gloves and bag. Zig will be wearing a black suit. Men always have it easier when it comes to that.
I'm really looking forward to this event.

Ziggy started showing first glider withdrawal symptoms and didn't want to give me a break on installing and playing Condor sim. I gave up and installed the thing yesterday. We also went to Dick Smith and bought a HDMI cable to make my computer talk to the TV. It works and we spent the whole afternoon trying not to crash the glider. Flying in real seems so much easier to me though.

hmmm ... I wonder how to make it work

And then he just kept ending up with one wing only. I couldn't see it anymore and thought it just can't be that hard. So I made the mistake and grabbed the stick to "show him". He was then just lying down, rolling on the floor and laughing himself to death. Oh well, it seems to me that all the beginnings are hard.

crashed again

I wonder how long is his enthusiasm gonna last ...


Monday, March 21, 2011

bouncing down the runway

There is more and more people showing up at the airport every weekend. Somebody must have told them that Ziggy is performing powered flying attempts. We will call it powered flying a bit later ;-)

flying Sunday

We got lucky yesterday and had some x-wind so that I could finish my RAA conversion. I went up with Peter for a few patterns and the bloody engine kept "quitting" in any possible configuration. This just has to be Pete's favorite since he's laughing out loud every time he pulls the throttle. He did something that would normally scare the shit out of me if I was flying in my home club in Szczecin. He pulled throttle right after TO approx. 100 ft off the ground. It's a piece of cake in Horsham though. You can always just land straight ahead on a paddock that is twice the airport size. This is the advantage of not having an airport in the middle of a big congested city.

figuring out where to go

The plan was to find some x-wind somewhere and since there are quite a few strips within 50 km radius this was not a problem. We ended up never leaving YHSM though. There was just enough x-wind for the required excercises.

24-5109 cockpit

I'm done with my training. I finished up with a written test on Human Factor yesterday afternoon. I didn't have any time at all for preparation and just went for it. It turned out not to be too hard and I ended up with 17 right answers out of 20. Good enough. All there is left to do is to send out my paperwork and I'll be waiting for my RAA licence.

If you have ever wondered how many men it takes to program a remote control for the airport gate ... here it is. Phil organized the control for us and all there was left was programing it. Men just don't RTFD (Read The F...ing Directions) and started figuring it out themselves having the directions in their hands. Check out the pics:

"oh, this is just directions ... we'll do better without..."

And then there were more of them ...

"oh well ... maybe we'll just have a quick look on the manual"

Finally they succeeded after "wasting" one whole minute on reading the chapter "How to program your remote". I would have thought reading that would be a good start and would probably save them some time and take just one of them. All right, maybe two: one who can read and the other one to understand and perform the activities required. 
Please don't take the above description too seriously guys. You are all great anyways ;-)

And then it was Ziggy's turn ... again. Him and Peter kept going up and down for an hour or so.

Zig explaining Pete the newest yet unknown landing techniques

All in all it was a nice and successful weekend. Ziggy is not 100% happy with his success though trying to find explanation for the bouncing Jabiru. As they say BTDT (Been There Done That). One day you'll figure it out Zig!