Just a little reminder that the end of month meeting is on tomorrow night - Friday 30 July. If you haven't paid your club dues or hanger fees, the meeting would be a good time to pay.

Well it is that time of year again. Details are sketchy but looks another wonderful Merlin Magic night will be held on the 7th of August. If there are any further details, please leave a comment.

If you can imagine a darkened moonless night, flames from engines, aircraft converging on a world war II airstrip, campfires, folk songs and good fun then Merlin Magic is the event.

Aerial - Merlin Magic 2009

5 Jul 2009

While the V8 cars were belting around Hidden Valley on Sunday, Top end Flying Club pilots and friends of MKT Airfield were participating in our flying competition. With our new bitumen surface less than a week old, it also made sense to combine an official opening by Kath Meyering with the event.

Competition on the day was fierce and so was the Southerly wind that had my drifter and many of the trikes pointing their noses at the airstrip on the downwind leg (which means that we were flying sideways.

Photos in main part of entry...

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Yesterday marked a special day in the history of MKT. The airstrip that has been here serving light aircraft needs (and military, customs, coastwatch, firefighting aviation needs) is now a bitumen strip. This is a very significant event made possible by the contributions of the people who use MKT and the Meyering family who own the airstrip. It is fair to say that the cost of creating that one kilometre of black ribbon was not cheap, but it was paid for by the people, not through a government grant.

Want to see what it looks like/ read on...

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I attended the monthly meeting last Friday and it was entertaining and productive with a great salad and sausage sizzzle to top it off. Thanks to Arti. We learnt that MKT will be covered in 1km of bitumen in about two weeks time and this will be paid by friends of MKT without any external funding from taxpayers to top up, prop up or support this massive infrastructure investment.

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The end of month meeting will be held this Friday at the MKT clubhouse. Lots to discuss as always. I am pretty sure the upcoming bitumisation of MKT will be on the agenda and I understand that yet another helicopter is to be added to the Toy Box.

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Despite some shaky events including the granting of only a formal three year extension by the Government to the existing permission to allow the Top End Flying Club to operate at MKT Airfield (which is not under threat as it is an authorised landing area in the formal and traditional definition of the term) we are still going from strength to strength.

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I went to a CASA safety presentation the other day. John Bradley, Steve Allen, Vince Cassaniti (late again), Ron Lawford, Skippy and myself made up the TEFC representation at the presentation, again hosted by the extremely professional Peter Ball who chaired a great presentation by Mark Richardson (Richo) who is no stranger to Darwin or these presentations.

Follow the more link to find out how to access their eLearning material...

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My Drifter brakes are terrible. I am getting a new set of wheels, tyres and brake fittings made. The wheel rims I have sourced from Adelaide and cost 45$ AUD (6 inch) plus postage and handling. http://www.edwardskartwheels.com.au/otherproductsultralightaircraftrims/ 

Unfortunately the tyres I have on the aircraft are actually golf cart tyres and I may need wider rims (8 inch). The other thing I need to do is measure the axle size to ensure that the bearings are the right size.

There are a couple of important things to note here. Firstly, my aircraft is a a factory built strut braced drifter. This means that any modification to the aircraft requires CAR 35 Design approval by the holder of a CAR 35 instrument which really means that they are authorised by CASA to sign off design modifications to aircraft.

Even though these people are as rare as hen's teeth, it is important that any modifications are signed off. A great bit of news is that like the ASIC processing that RA-Aus provides as a service, we are working on streamlining the design change process. Here is a snippet from the technical manual in regard to modification. 

IMPLEMENTATION
3. CAO 95.55 paragraph 1.4 requires modifications to “old” CAO 95.25 aircraft to be approved by a person holding a CASA Instrument of Appointment under CAR 35. This requirement extends to ultralight aircraft types approved to qualified to CAO 101.28 and CAO 101.55 standards. Modifications to CAO 101.55 or CAO 101.28 type aircraft registered with the RA-Aus must be approved by a person holding a CASA Instrument of Appointment under CAR 35. Once approved, these modifications can be manufactured and installed by a person
holding an RA-Aus Level two Maintenance Authority. Both the manufacturer and the installer are to annotate the aircraft log book with the work they have completed, their signature, name in block letters, RA-Aus membership number and the date the entry was made.

 A side note...

We all hear stories about that one niggling design problem with a particular aircraft and in the case of the Drifter there are a few... The castor wheel used as a tailwheel rattles the you know whats out of the tail boom on any airstrip that is gravel or bitumen. The seatbelt adjustment connections are hard to adjust and work their way loose in the back seat fraying the join points to the rear support point. And the brakes... The brakes on a standard Drifter are legendary because as is, they don't work that well.

I think that if we move to a streamlined solution for submitting modifications to the owner of the aircraft type approval, there should be the ability for the clubroom comments about a particular aircraft to find their way without fear or favour to a location where they can be reviewed objectively and any that add long term benefit to pilot or aircraft should be recommended and processed. This is not a problem in the case of the newer aircraft with active manufacturers but older aircraft of the rag and wire variety can languish as there is no proactive support for imporovement by the aircraft type certificate holder.