From the President.

The last month has been pretty dreadful weather-wise, at least in regard to flying. In fact the last year has I believe been the worst one for many many years and consequently our flying hours are down.

In spite of this, our appointment of Peter Milne as a full time instructor has already turned out to be of benefit. Peter has been pretty well booked out for all the days in which flying training was feasible. Sam Merlo has been away on the mainland for extended periods and without Peter our flying training and utilisation would have almost ground to a halt.

The charges for instructing have been increased as from the beginning of this month. This is due to amounts being paid to instructors employed by Freycinet Air Pty Ltd (the AOC holder) having to be substantially increased and would have happened regardless of whether we had appointed Peter as our own instructor or not. Instructor charges for GA have been increased by $10 and for RAA by $5 an hour. The increase in payments to instructors by Freycinet is quite a bit more than this and they have absorbed the extra cost for the time being. We can expect instructor rates to increase again after a few months.

Fuel costs are also rising and avgas is now  $2.05/litre. As mentioned in the last letter we hope to be able to decrease fuel costs to a certain extent by utilising the STC for operation on mogas for KSR and PIX. There is still some organisation to be done before we can implement this.

Club Open Day - Change of Date

The club was due to hold its open day on Sunday 22nd of May. This has been postponed.

The weather forecast for Sunday is at the moment particularly bad with strong winds and a front predicted to pass through around the middle of the day. We have a significant advertising expense for the event on which a final decision on go/nogo had to be made by today (wed 18th). Therefore a decision was made to postpone it.

The revised date for the open day will be Sunday 5th June. Hopefully we may have better weather that day!

Vale - Phil Petersen

Sadly, Phil passed away while flying his trike in Victoria having suffered a heart attack whilst in the air. There was a memorial service for Phil in Hobart on Thursday 12th which was attended by a large number of people including by a number of club members.

Phil was a very successful businessman with a passion for flying as well as most other forms of transport. He was instrumental in making IPEC a successful company in the 1970's and 1980's as well as other transport and freight companies since then. He retired a few years ago and was pursuing his passion for various forms of flying, the latest being his purchase of a trike in which he was making a tour of parts of the mainland in company with a few others.

Our condolences go to Sylvia and family.

Club Aircraft

KOT

The club has ordered a new engine for KOT and it is expected that it will be installed within a couple of months. We have chosen to obtain the upgrade to 180hp and get a factory remanufactured engine rather than just get the current one overhauled in Australia. The upgrade in power will add significantly to the utility of KOT as it will gain the ability to carry an extra person while still operating with full or nearly full fuel tanks.

We have been fortunate in obtaining the engine at a favourable price because the quote we obtained was at the very peak of favourable exchange rates with the $US. The club has funds set aside for replacement of engines and we are in a position to pay cash for it.

KSR

We have had long discussions together with our maintenance organisation on what to do about refurbishing KSR. Whilst it has high hours it is still a very sound and useful aircraft but we have been very strongly advised that it needs a significant refurbishment in order to keep it that way. We are not in a financial position where we could purchase a much newer aircraft even if we got a very good price for selling KSR (which is most unlikely).

We have made a decision to go ahead with refurbishment. This will entail a complete strip of all paint, attention to all areas of possible corrosion, total repaint, replacement of wiring and an upgrade of the audio panel and avionics. Whilst expensive, this will give us an aircraft that looks and functions almost like new and we expect that we will get rid of those niggly little problems that occur in the electrics and electronics all too frequently.

We expect this aircraft to still give many more thousands of hours of service once it has been brought up to a high standard of condition. Economically, it is cheaper to do this than to purchase a much newer (but still second hand) aircraft and we can be sure that our aircraft is in top condition whereas another secondhand aircraft though newer may have some unknowns. Our advice is that, should a buyer come forward (eg the Indonesians) and if we wanted to sell it, the value of the aircraft would be increased by at at least an equivalent amount to the cost of refurbishment.

The club has the funds to do this and we would fully expect that the additional expenditure would be more than justified by future income from this, our most economical and best income earning aircraft.

Sportcruiser

A major cost of running an aircraft is fuel.There are other factors to consider of course, but a fairly general rule of thumb for the cost of running an aircraft is 3 times the cost of fuel. I've owned an aircraft for 39 years now and this formula has held more or less true over all that time with various aircraft but fuel is now becoming a higher proportion of the cost and this is likely to get worse. RAA aircraft should provide some relief in costs if we can swing at least some of our training for all pilots into them. This is why we are still seriously considering training in RAA aircraft and expanding the RAA role. There is some question as to whether the Sportcruiser is the best aircraft for initial training.

Peter Milne has conducted an analysis of the usage of this aircraft and its training utilisation. We will be considering this over the next month or two and making a decision as  to the best way to proceed with RAA training and flying.

Whilst the club is based in controlled airspace and rules remain as they are now, our end focus will continue to be on GA flying but if we can cut the overall cost of a GA licence by doing a substantial portion of training in RAA then this should be pursued.

Happy and safe flying,

Graeme Martin

President.