Vag277,
The then president of SAAA's submission to the Forsyth enquiry asked that CASA force anyone building or OPERATING an amateur built Experimental to join SAAA. "To maintain the standard" Wonderful!
I own an aircraft built under 101.28 complete with stage inspections etc etc and a CASA test pilot report. Wasn't much of a standard. There were a bunch of pretty obvious things wrong with it. Mis-rigged controls, twisted flaps, wings of different span, incorrect mass balance of the elevator, dangerously flexible aileron mass balances etc etc etc. All now rectified under LAME supervision.
SAAA has also singularly and comprehensively failed to defend CAR21 or keep the pressure up to pass the necessary regulations to bring the operation in line with what happens in the US. It could do us a favour and wind itself up.
Not to mention being so incompetent as to let an employee lose $150,000 (about that so I've heard - something that seems to have been kept out of written mention).
You forgot to mention that if you build your own aircraft you need to do the SAAA maintenance course. It would be nice if it actually had anything to do with maintenance. Yes, I know how it came about - a bunch of silly people thought the 101.28 aircraft they had built were somehow "better" than Experimental and after finding out they needed to take their aircraft to a LAME for annuals instead of signing it out themselves, wanted to be able to do this. Instead of simply handing these idiots a form applying for an Experimental certificate the SAAA pandered to them and got CASA to agree to let them sign them out if they did the SAAA course. SAAA then got that made compulsory if you built your own Experimental. Same with the weighing issue. Instead of pressing for an exemption for E-AB for weighing you need to do the SAAA weighing course. Great! You can glue/rivet the mainspar but can't weigh the aircraft unless you do a course. Nice cash cows for SAAA.
Everyone I've spoken to who has done it reckons it is worthless as all it talks about is paperwork. Most of us can read. A simple .pdf on the CASA website would suffice.
The greatest danger to recreational aviation in Australia comes from the recreational aviation bodies themselves as the bunch of silly, would be, amateur aviation bureaucrats running them pander to CASA for a pat on the head or a belly rub. Really people, you don't also have to enthusiastically hump CASA's leg.