On 21/04/2016 8:40 AM, emillis prelgauskas wrote:
There was a very good reason that gliding had ‘exemptions’ globally in the Regulations. To avoid this mismatch between commercial aviation and our sport specific needs.
It's probably worth some time to chat with you privately to get some details on where these can be found. Unfortunately I am now far more intimate with both Oz and international airworthiness regulations than I really would like to be. If these exemptions do exist written down that you are claiming, I cannot find them, nor can anyone else at the GFA - perhaps they went up in smoke with the rest of our paperwork a few years ago?
The regulatory framework that existed in the utopian past has changed, rather dramatically on us, so things that may have been in place before just don't work any more - if we can find the documentation of them at all. I see a lot of what is happening now as no different to then - someone finds yet another stupid rule, everyone mulls it over for a time, an exemption gets made according to the paperwork framework of the day, everyone shakes hands and moves on.
I'd like to understand how you find this particular issue (T&B on MEL) any different to the fire-extinguisher example you cite. Both seem to involve a silly rule that doesn't apply to us, someone working out a way to get an exemption within the rules of the day, and everyone just moves on (and then 30 years down the track someone recounts it as a funny story of "Kids these days! Back in my day....").
Including that the best results are achieved when GFA told CASA to stick it - that we are the experts in our sport, which needs to operate in specific ways in order to be safe. Remember the primacy - SAFETY.
And, they in turn can tell us the same and stop gliding in it's tracks completely, or make it so financially uncomfortable for us to have the same effect. Neither is a good outcome for us. So, work out when to bend with the wind, and when to stand firm against it. Everyone has a different interpretation of that point.
We, luckily, have some very good people on the GFA side that know the system inside and out as they deal with it professionally every day. So, when weird stuff like this happens, they already know what to do and slip in that extra one sentence into our paperwork so that the guys on the ground like you and I can continue to operate mostly unaffected.
How does making the paper mound higher and in multiple mounds (the compliant, the interpreted work around, the reality) contribute positively to this? The argument that ‘society demands this’ is so hollow - as if the public bystander leaning on the aerodrome fence is able to tell the operator how to do things because of the unformed opinions - regulation by social media.
The utopia of the good old days no longer exists and we do have to put up with this stuff whether we like it or not. I bet 40 years ago the elders of the time were decrying "adding more mounds of paperwork" too, comparing it to pre-WWII gliding. The more things change, the more they stay the same.
Yes the world is getting more litigious (specially insurance companies!). On top of that, we now have a bunch of know-it-alls on social media condemning everything that can gut something almost instantaneously regardless of good intentions or not of the target. We can't live in a vacuum and pretend the world doesn't exist around us. If genetics have much to say, I have at least another 40 years of enjoying this sport - I'd like to still be able to have that option should I, and all the younger guys I'm trying to mentor, be interested.
Anyway, I'll shoot you (emillis) a private email to see what we can dig up from historical paperwork and get into electronic form and weave into the current reality.
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