On Sat, 18 Dec 2004 23:03:24 +1100, "smjmitchell"
wrote:

One thing I really noticed is that nobody complained about the high
taxes. All the civilians I met sort of didn't care that they were
paying about 40% in income tax and another 10% imbedded in everything
they bought as a federal sales tax.

I care ..... it is a bloody rip off compared to the US and Europe ! That is
the price we pay for the social wellfare system we run ...

I was
complaining about CASA when I got back here to my buddies at the FAA
and they said that at one time there were 1400 CASA employees and only
700 airplanes in all of Australia. Interesting.

Not true .... I don't know exactly how many airplanes we have here at the
moment but my guess is that it is approx 15000 + all the ultralights and
homebuilts that don't carry a state VH registration number.


I almost missed all this.
recent outages in my isp's news server were almost the death of BWB's
post.
a beautiful piece of imagery.

the Stealth Pilot lives in Perth.

the post regarding the lancair was based on 3 lost aircraft and 6
fatalaties. at one stage 30% of the australian lancairs had been lost
during test flying or familiarisation flights by new owners.
undoubtedly there are a few models of lancair mixed in there.
one of our accident investigators with the atsb did a spreadsheet
calculating aircraft losses by design and was stunned that the lancair
sat on the top of the list with the highest statistic by far.

the stats regarding casa are pretty well correct. they date from the
late 70's when the department of civil aviation ran all the major
airfields, all the air traffic control, the accident investigation and
the regulatory side of things as one all encompassing entity.
the stat was that casa (or whatever its name was then) employed THREE
people per aircraft while the FAA employed 1 person per 15 aircraft.
needless to say a lot has changed since then though Oshkosh still has
more aircraft attending each year than on the australian VH
register.(which excludes ultralights, gliders, weight shift and
powered parachutes)

the thing that we get right in australia is the absence of weapons.
lots of us own guns and use them but we dont carry the things as a
routine thing. if the guy you meet isnt going to shoot you then you
will be more friendly and can have a more irreverent sense of humour.
I see that you noticed the difference.

the thing that we get wrong is that we dont pursue technology as much
as we should. the stupid troglodytes (greens) have a grip on the place
and stifle all innovation. our manufacturing has all been shipped to
china because they are 5 - 10% cheaper and of course it is always
easier to piggyback on a country as large as the USA than to get the
finger out get on with life ourselves.

btw as a W8 tailwind pilot myself I have no problems with lancairs as
a design. if they were being given out I'd have one in a flash :-)

Stealth Pilot

ps the outback desert area is known in australian aviation as the
GAFFA which translates as the great australian f**k all. 'cause
there's f**k all out there but knee high scrub and rabbit burrows.
it is GPS country for sure.