Double amputee Solo in RAF 2000

[gyroo]

Well t-bird,That"s an interesting question. This thread started out as a testament to a job well done by the double amputee gentleman and appropriate salutations by you to his trainers in South Africa, and you were at pains to explain that it was all done in a stock standard RAF. So far, so good. As other people added posts I got an impression that the focus of the thread was drifting away from the personal achievement of the double amputee and shifting to RAFs, and the impression I gained from some of your responses was that your view of RAFs is much more positive than those held by me, or Murray Barker, for instance. It was at that point I decided to jump in to the thread because I have a rather dim view of RAFs, as no doubt everyone who reads this forum will be aware.It was against that background that I threw in some detail about the recent September 21 RAF double fatality in Southern Louisiana where the blades reportedly "folded up" in flight, symptomatic of a PIO leading to PPO, and consistent with a number of similar circumstances involving RAFs going well back into the 1990"s. Deja Vu, in other words. 2 more unnecessary deaths, this time one being that of a 13 year old child.Your response to my info about the Louisiana crash was that the 48 year old pilot was not authorized to carry passengers. I hadn"t picked up that point from the several reports I read, but I"ll take your word for it.If the pilot didn"t have the proper passenger carrying authorization, and yet was clearly carrying a passenger anyway, then this could be demonstrative of a general disposition on the deceased pilot"s part to not necessarily do the right thing, and could also have wider implications such as the pilot may not have trained or been trained as conscientiously as he should have. Perhaps he was a person who cut corners or took shortcuts instead of making sure that everything was 100% kosher with his training and authorizations. I saw somewhere that he had quite low hours on gyros, but I don"t remember the number.The point that I think Eigyro and Disco are making, alongside the point that I have been trying to make, is that IF the RAF was a design that didn"t have this tendency for PIO leading to PPO in inexperienced hands, then very probably the 48 year old pilot and his 13 year old passenger would still be alive today. It"s a very simple proposition - a modern gyro design shouldn"t have any latent potential hazards that can spring out and kill the unwary or complacent.I reacted in the same way that Eigyro and Disco did

[MadMuz]

Regarding solo, and when one soloes, the following, lifted today from PPRUNE, is a good example of the mental garbage this issue seems to generate;"Forgive me if this is out of order. I"ve currently got 13.7 hours in my logbook in the Cessna 162 Skycatcher, and today was supposed to be the day of my first solo.We landed after what I thought was a crap flight, and was told the inevitable: you aren"t going solo today, Alexander. I was then told that my rudder work needs work on final approach.My mind"s telling me that I"m now a crappy pilot, even though it was quite bumpy this morning. Considering I"ve dropped my Law degree to follow the aviation path, does not going solo the first time around mean I"m a bad pilot? "See what I mean?Sorry, I don"t see what you mean? If you aren"t able to control the rudder adequately enough to satisfy the instructor you can solo, then you are not a crappy pilot, you are just not ready to go solo yet? Do you think that the instructor should let a student go solo in an aircraft if one of the most basic flight controls is not yet mastered?

[MadMuz]

Mark you can not condone flying with out a license on an open forum as an ASRA board member. Can you please show where Mark condoned anyone flying without a license? I missed that bit. I think that statement needs clarification and to be withdrawn if not able to be substantiated... not to mention an apology to Mark is in order, I believe.... that is an outrageous claim to make against probably one of the most knowledgable and notably correct members ASRA has.The PILOT will induce oscillations in a RAF without proper training. Then the machine is dangerous and needs to be made more stable?Adequate training will reduce the fatality rate as proven by RAFSA. Then rather than making the machine more stable, 50 hours of training will REDUCE the fatality rate!! Eigyro the average solo time on tandems are between 15 and 30 hours. That sounds about rightIt also depends if you are training at a controlled airport. Some pilots struggle with the Radio work. That is true and why I believe training would be better away from commercial airports to begin with, to reduce workload on pilot learning to fly the machineMurray I don"t think you have flown in a stock Raf. As stated previously, I flew in a stock RAF as a passenger only... and it is the only time I have felt nervous in a gyro.... you are free to think what you like :-*I apologise to the pilot who solo"d who this thread was originally about.... all of this going on is taking away from his proud moment.... this thread really needs to be separate from his achievement thread in my opinion. :-[

[t-bird]

Mark do you have the same opinion as Eigyro and Disco that a passenger endorsement is only a legality ?

[gyroo]

Well all,can I maybe try and extract a consensus from all of the above -The consensus seems to be a general acknowledgement that RAFs can be much trickier and much more of a handful than more modern designs such as US Dominators or most of the European tandems?I absolutely don"t doubt that what t-bird is saying is mostly valid - that someone who is trained competently and properly will just about be able to fly anything safely. I"m more interested in the latent flying qualities of any given design. I would like to think that off the drawing board a gyro design should be configured such that PIO will NOT worsen in amplitude (to the point of PPO). Rather, it should be configured so that any PIO tendency will naturally diminish in amplitude because it is configured to do that.Because gyros hang like pendulums from their hubs, really ham-fisted piloting in turbulence is quite likely to induce a bit of PIO in any design, but I like to think that the latent design qualities of any given design should automatically tend to dampen, rather than exacerbate, any PIO. With RAFs, as Murray suggests, I argue that their basic configuration is unacceptable in this modern era, and "fixes" like the stabilator and the UK style HS are band-aid solutions to a design that is fundamentally flawed (by contemporary standards). RAFs were great in the 90"s when there was really nothing else comparable being churned out by a manufacturer. But, my view is that they"ve had their day. They should be respected as a transitional design from which valuable lessons about what NOT to do have been learned by the entire gyro community. The lessons are don"t use belt-drives with a large prop axis to crankshaft offset orientated up; shy away from seat tanks installed within pods; don"t have the pod positioned very low down on the keel; avoid having a thrust-line / CofG of something like 10 to 12 inches; endeavour to build a comparable machine 100 kg lighter than a RAF; and build inherent stability into the design. Mark RMelbourne

[Disco]

Is there a difference between a passenger and a 60kg sandbag?

[t-bird]

Murray Baker I agree with everything except that the gyro produce the oscillation.

[eigyro]

Mark didn"t condone anything, and you know it.He pointed out that the illegality was not the cause of the accident, and you know that too.The more disingenuous if not downright dishonest the defence, the less likely it is to be convincing.The 15 to 30 hours before solo sounds about right for any reasonable aircraft.

[gyroo]

The PILOT will induce oscillations in a RAF without proper training. OK

[asra]

I will comment on my brief RAF experience,for what its worth.The first flight I had was with Paul Bruty at the first Coonamble nationals,I had about 400 hours at the time and I was a basic instructor.I was glad PB was on board as It went into slight airframe oscillation pretty much straight away.It wasn"t PIO as I was doing nothing but holding the stick still.From memory it was factory standard RAF.I was used to flying CLT machines with horizontal stabs. In other words sitting there fat dumb and happy,not having to do much.The second time was at Caboolture when PB was teaching Waddles to fly his brand new RAF.We had convinced Allan to put the horizontal stab that PB was selling on his RAF before solo.The HS made a huge difference I thought .Allan soloed in 6 hours.(ok yes he did have over 20,000 hrs fixed wing at the time!)The third was in Paul Campbells machine fitted with the Stabulator and a keel mounted HS.I flew Paul"s from Caboolture to Watts Bridge airfield.The only time the stick was touched was take-off and landing. 30 nautical miles.But its not what you would call stable. Almost constant use of rudder to keep it going in the right direction and constant dipping and weaving. The Stabulator seemed to get it back on track somewhat.Its not what I would call steady,relaxing flight,and you have to be constantly on the ball.I"ve experienced what a RAF has to offer and don"t need to visit that again.

[t-bird]

Mark you can not condone flying with out a license on an open forum as an ASRA board member. The PILOT will induce oscillations in a RAF without proper training. Adequate training will reduce the fatality rate as proven by RAFSA.Eigyro the average solo time on tandems are between 15 and 30 hours. It also depends if you are training at a controlled airport. Some pilots struggle with the Radio work.Murray I don"t think you have flown in a stock Raf.

[eigyro]

Regarding solo, and when one soloes, the following, lifted today from PPRUNE, is a good example of the mental garbage this issue seems to generate;"Forgive me if this is out of order. I"ve currently got 13.7 hours in my logbook in the Cessna 162 Skycatcher, and today was supposed to be the day of my first solo.We landed after what I thought was a crap flight, and was told the inevitable: you aren"t going solo today, Alexander. I was then told that my rudder work needs work on final approach.My mind"s telling me that I"m now a crappy pilot, even though it was quite bumpy this morning. Considering I"ve dropped my Law degree to follow the aviation path, does not going solo the first time around mean I"m a bad pilot? "See what I mean?

[eigyro]

I wonder do the trainers of the tandem machines in South Africa follow the same "late solo" philosophy ?If I was learning to fly something bog-stable, I would think an early solo is fair enough.If learning to fly a relatively twitchy machine, I can see the argument for a later solo.That said, the U.S. approach of just sticking a decent stab on it made a major improvement.I suspect the stabilator has made a similar improvement in South Africa, whatever one thinks of the methodology.

[MadMuz]

The most important thing about soloing at a reasonably short time, is the instructors job with a student is to prepare the student to fly their machine safely by themselves..... if the student has flown 50 hours with an instructor prior to solo, he has done all of these hours and developed habits knowing the instructor is there to help.... imo, the shortest time a student has to have the instructor there, the better.... the sooner the student gets to learn to do the right thing with no one watching over him/her....It has nothing to do with who has big balls or not..... it is all about how well people can adapt to the 3rd dimension of flying..... some people are hard to teach and some can"t be taught to fly at all. When I learned to fly it was in a group of other students (a school group) and out of 6 of us only 3 continued flying.... one guy was only able to listen to the instructor, but didn"t really learn to do it himself. I remember the instructor saying that he had the guy line up, start the roll and Wally (the instructor) just sat there in the right seat and watched.... they got to lift off speed, over lift off speed, the end piano keys, off the end of the runway.... the student was looking out the front, waiting for Wally to tell him what to do

[eigyro]

There are no prizes or safety benefits in solo-ing early.The glider fraternity only solo their students quite late in the training process, a system that seems to work very well indeed.If the total training time is about 70 hours, which is about the international average for recreational aviation, what difference if the pilot soloes at10 hours or 50 hours ?While I have no love for the RAF2000, it does, so far, appear to be operating more safely in SAF than it has ever done elsewhere.I would attribute that mostly to the stabilator, but it is possible that a radically different approach to training could also have a beneficial effect.And before you shoot down this alternative training method, consider the general safety record of gyros by the "normal" method, not good.Gyros would benefit from a little less testosterone and a little more thought.Or less balls, more brains.I have never felt comfortable with the "how many hours to solo" question. Seems to me like a baited trap.