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Old 9th Mar 2003, 05:20
  #17 (permalink)  
Islander Jock

I don't want to be the best pilot in the world - Just the oldest
 
Join Date: Jun 2001
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Threegreens is correct! There is a huge culture of "hushing things up" in the parachuting fraternity. I'll give some examples of what I saw in my PJE flying:

1. Prop stike while taxiing over rough ground onto a strip of rubber conveyor belt near fuel drums. Result - 3 or 4 nice equally spaced slashes in the rubber which we heard happen from over 100m away. Pilot and DZ operator look at the the prop and say; "It's probably OK". No subsequent report, no engineer inspection, no bulk strip!

2. Pilot of a larger aircraft getting impatient with jumpers to load. Opens throttle with one jumper (female) only having one foot in the plane and the sliding door still open. Aircraft reported by other jumpers to be at approx 200' before jumper pulled in and door secured.

3. Same pilot referred to in previous. Took off with aileron locks still fitted. Cleared a fence and bounced it into an adjacent paddock. Again with something like 12 jumpers on board. His immediatate action was to line everyone up and demand they don't say anything about this to anyone. On landing the plane struck a wing tip but at least this time an engineer had a look and deemed there to be no significant damage.

4. Aircraft with proven weight and bal capacity for pilot + 10 jumpers regularly overloaded by operator to 12 jumpers. This went on for some time until an engineer pointed out the visual signs of overloading on the lower wing skin.

5. And my all time favourite - Pilot reported leaking gascolator when boost pump turned on. Unfortunately the pilot probably didn't write it up in the MR. DZ Operator who fancies himself as something of a bush LAME decided to remove the fuel component and have it overhauled then re-install it himself.

Items 2 and 3 above were brought to attention of CASA. Little if anything was done about it.
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