Pre-history!

[tonydenton]

I'm all for the cooking it in oil and raising peoples quality of life . other than that everybody's life is what they make it, so I'm against drugo and friggen crack heads.
the forum could possibly be picked up a bit by having a "post it competition "
the most number of posts in any month or for the length of the story/post could win some thing from asra. how about some thing that everybody wants and needs like their next years licence and rego renewal.
there would have to be some rules like if you owned 2 uro gyros you can only win just once , that might leave rick out a bit as he is a bit of a media forum tart being the president and all.
doing a good job too rick. your magazine stories are top qualities stuff. the flying and the writing. your commitment to attending fly in's and waving the flag at these venues across the country would be a lot of work so congratulations and thank you.
I had asked many years ago how hard is it to get the MAG into news agents etc. maybe a special edition for them [ I can just hear CHRIS complaining about me now. ]
the quality has lifted to a new level to be more that proud of and worthy to be on shelves for sale.

[RickE]

Thanks Tony..........I think.
I'm sure ASRA would love to be in the position of being able to give things away to promote the sport and the forum. The reality is that we rely on rego and membership renewals to survive and even at this time of the year three months after the due date about one third of our members haven't renewed.

I like the idea of the Gyronews mixing it with the other mainstream magazines at newsagents, could be an opening for you there Tony????

[tonydenton]

clearly your management material RICK. I can see what you did there. [ just got to work out how to get out of it ] UHMMMNNNNN !!!!!!!!!!!!! ROSS only works 4 days a week and is better than me with computers .
ok I like your style mate. so i'll ask ross this week.. thanks for the lesson. .

[mad max]

I'd be quite happy to volunteer to fly around the bush hunting for 'Ice labs' of course. That stuff sounds pretty nasty. Trouble is most is done in back yards.

[RickE]

We would need to get our Ops Manager to do a risk assessment on that Max, sounds a bit more risky than a blade flap. Seriously though its got me buggered why they don't use gyros more for surveillance work. Government must have too much money!

[bones]

We would need to get our Ops Manager to do a risk assessment on that Max, sounds a bit more risky than a blade flap. Seriously though its got me buggered why they don't use gyros more for surveillance work. Government must have too much money!

Have you not heard of litigation, the presumption of full VH rego and a turbine motor as the safest way to fly for Gov jobs is the norm now, there was a crash of a R44 near cairns a few months ago that killed a Gov guy, pilot survived, with bad burns, word on the street is his normal chopper a R66 was U/S at the time and cross hired the R44 to do the job, now he is in the **** cause it wasn't a turbine.

[chook]

Saturday 14th January, some Bindoon pilots (2 fixed wings and 3 gyros) flew south 20NM at 700' AGL for a landing at a rural property and breakfast. The following Wednesday my wife spotted some conversations on facebook where a female questioned the activity of 2 drones operating over a road intersection. Another female then commented that she would shoot the drones down as she believed that criminals were using drones to investigate properties before raiding them.
I asked my wife to advise this group that I was actually performing a navex and that these drones were actually manned gyrocopters who were not in the slightest interested in the contents of her backyard but more concentrating on the tasks in hand.

I offer this story as an example of how some of our earthbound cretons think.

Further to this story, we recently had an open day as a celebration of becoming the owners of our airfield and opened the gates to invited guests. Interestingly of the aircraft lined up on the flightline the gyros appeared to get the most interest. I was asked by a visiting police detective if we ever performed search and rescue operations given the operating qualities of our flying platforms. My answer was only for our own downed aircraft as anything else could be construed as a commercial operation. He was disappointed and said that he would investigate further.

Regards.......Chook.

[mad max]

As I said once on the forum I was once on a gyro search for a runaway bloke with a police officer beside me and there was two blackhawks helping out. I was informed that the blackhawks were costing something like $16,000 per hr. each and I was charging $50 per hr. It seems to me that efficency is not the gov. priority. In fact wasting money is a priority as it helps our outdated economy. Sounds like drones could in the future even beat gyro costs.

[tonydenton]

I saw a bloke driving a car on a dirt road once and I ended up in supreme court as a witness in a murder trial.
the bloke told the police when they caught him that he had seen the police helicopter looking for him. when actually it was just little old me flying around my sand pit.
the barrister asked which way was I flying the first time I saw the car and I said I didn't know because I never had a compass..

[Tim]

On the subject of Pre-History, I think a good start to re-incarnate the forum would be to re-instate all the old 30+ year old forum archived topics, posts AND accompanying photos. As Max and Tony said there was a wealth of information there, including many comments from Chuck Beaty, probably the most followed technical gyro expert in the world. He had the happy knack of short and intelligent discussions and answers in a way that even the thickest Gyronaught could get his head around. It's a pity some of the new generation of gyro manufacturers didn't consult with blokes like Chuck before embarking on some of their head strong inexperienced ideas on gyroplane design.
I don't pretend to be an IT guru but I believe that information cannot just "disappear", it has to be either deleted or have a hard-drive melt down. Surely no one would have deleted it!
As far as getting some intelligent and experienced discussion back, the forum must be somehow made more user friendly. All ASRA members and other Administrator approved posters should be able to log in automatically whenever they wish without having to use passwords, as long as they sign off with their name. Of course offending posters and their posts can easily be banned at any time.
I have tried many times since the new forum has been installed and I am still having difficulty using and understanding it, and I regularly use 5 different forums, with no problems with the other 4.
Tim

[MadMuz]

I would be very wary of publicly using gyros for drug spotting would just make every gyro a target, either a target of ground interference or shooting at gyrocopters (any gyrocopter) I remember a few years ago a Robinson R22 in England was shot at and unfortunately the pilot hit and killed... I don't think he was even looking fr crops... just wrong place and wrong time.... made a bad guy nervous.

I would prefer that gyros were actively NOT looking for crops.... after all, we are not allowed to legally muster, spot fish or be professional photographic platforms, so therefore we would not allowed to spot crops for a living (or any commercial spotting)

Naturally, if one happened to fly over an area and see something a bit too green.... it might accidently get reported.... but I think better to let drones attract the lead.... and make gyro flyers publicly known to not be actively looking.

Let them target drones instead.... they might get a few.... which is a few less for us to get hit by ....

Edit: This is Kamerika.... but there ARE people like this here too

http://www.grandforksherald.com/news...-faces-federal

[mad max]

I agree with you MM (Good to see you back) Let the drones be the 'clay pigeons' our arses are too valuable!

[blakemorem]

Pre history, Yeah i'm beginning to feel a bit like that. Ive been reading through this topic just to get my mind away from work a little. It's burning my brains out. I think first issue i encountered was the forum timing out whilst posting a reply. The easy fix was copy before post so when it dumps every thing you typed for the last 30 min just re paste and post or log in again and find topic then post. I delved into my set up and could not find any options to stay logged in. The other issue i found was renewing rego and membership online just didnt work. Solution was scan docs and send email. Putting credit card on unsecured web server is risky anyway. So what is the solution for my and other possible unanswered problems. How about a web techno topic so you could refer to fix user application or a reference for administrator to fix web app probs.Just an idea. There seems to be a lot of those little quad thingy's out there more commercially these days and heard recently that they are training staff at mine sites to use them for site surveying on their gas wells sites. Shark watch at beaches next will be dept of natural resources surveying National parks, there gunna be every where. Only problem with gyro surveillance ops is taking a round because that's the mentality you are dealing with these days. Just a few weeks ago it was demonstrated by an idiot at pub talking about wanting to take a shot at a gyro. So if they get a surveillance reputation you wanna start thinking of bolting on some 10mm steal plate on and if it's too heavy to fly even better.

[Russell]

[MadMuz]

I doubt anything with a pilot will be required for anything like photography, shark spotting or surveillance from now on. Everything will just be done by drone. When there is some form of aircraft with a pilot, there is a chance the pilot might not make it back.... which may somehow become the responsibility of the hirer. Better to use unmanned aircraft... if that doesn't come back, oh well, fire up another one.

Speaking of drones tho, one of our American brothers (Greg Spikola) had a near miss with a drone of some description just recently, so keep your eyes peeled for drones.... because it is of no interest to the drone operator where you or I might be....

http://skywolverines.com/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=4821