Anti-aircraft noise programme

[Maxflyer]

The following came from e-mails to and from a club member of Northants School Of Flying.

Fellow Ppruners may find this of interest and would perhaps like to add their two penneth.

Maxflyer


The BBC has decided to run an anti-aircraft noise programme. I have emailed the BBC
and received the following reply.

Thank you for responding to my request for people to take
part in our film about the noise nuisance from private
planes. I wonder if you could give me a call, or give me a
contact number so I can call you please? It's much easier
to explain what we're doing on the phone than by mail!
I can be reached 01603 284376
Stephanie Crowther
Current Affairs Dept,
BBC East.

tel: removed
mail: [email protected]


I have spoken to Stephanie, the reason for the programme is the noise she suffers
in North Suffolk. Her main beef appears to be microlights. It is obvious from our short
conversation she has no idea about flying, and thinks it is all totally unregulated.
She is looking for people suffering with a noise problem, if you wish to offer a
balanced view please contact her.

[Flyin'Dutch']

MF,

Impressed by your pro-active stance and decided to email Stephanie as well.

Mailed the following.

Dear Stephanie,

I was pointed to your email address by a fellow member of the PPRuNe forum.

It is great to see that you are addressing this issue and I hope you will
manage to highlight it in the balanced manner we have come to expect from
the Beeb.

I, like many other aviators, would like our planes to be a bit less loud but
this is not as easy to achieve as would appear at face value. There are a
number of technical and regulatory issues which are difficult to negotiate.

As we are aware that non-aviators do not have the benefit of flying through
the surly skies and encounter noise generated by others we try to avoid
overflying inhabited areas and give them a wide berth wherever possible. A
lot of airfields have noise abatement procedures and do not take friendly to
anyone upsetting the neighbours!

It may well be easier to discuss the various angles of this complex issue
either over the telephone or in person. If the latter is preferred it may
well be possible to arrange for you or anyone associated with this program
to have a go with one of us.

May be it demonstrates why we are so keen on flying and put up with the less
nice bits!

I hope you find this information helpful.



After all, I would be happilly flying without the noise.
May be things like this will help to get things moving in the right direction.

FD

[Timothy]

My contribution: You may be aware that there are a number of technologies available to reduce the noise from light aircraft. The two principle ones are exhaust silencers and noise reducing propellors, which have more, shorter blades.

Many owner operators would love to fit this equipment and would happily pay the engineering costs to do so, but are prevented from doing so by the Civil Aviation Authority, who treat these as major modifications which would require the re-certification of the aircraft, a process costing tens of thousands of pounds.

I wrote a submission to the Parliamentary Transport Sub-Committee about this some months ago. I would be happy to try and find a copy to try and send you.

If you want to be helpful in reducing noise, your prime target should be CAA bureaucracy, not the owners, pilots or airfields, who really, really do our very best to keep the noise down (with the exception of a few who don't care and give the rest of us a bad name.)W

[IO540]

I am not convinced that a prop with more blades is going to be of interest to many people, due to the cost, unless you are talking about a fixed pitch one made of some composite.

I've recently paid £10,500 plus VAT for a 3-blade Hartzell VP prop for a 250hp plane. A 5- or 6-blade prop, the sort you get on the commercial turboprops, and which runs at a lower RPM to really get the noise down, is likely to cost way more than that, and then how do you get the RPM down? You can't.

The most cost-effective thing to have a go at, by far, is the exhaust system, IMHO.

To get wide acceptance, the solution has to be cheap, £1000 or less. Look at how many people moan about mandatory transponder fitting.

[M14P]

I airtested a Warrior (or Archer, can't remember but you get the drift) that had been imported from Germany. As usual for German aircraft it was absolutely immaculate in every way - clearly it had been loved by its previous owner. When it arrived over here it was fitted with a nice low noise exhaust, some wing root fillets and gap seals for drag reduction. In other words it was more efficent and quieter than any similar PA28 on the British Register. By the time it had received its 'G' register the exhaust and all of the drag mods had been removed at the request of our darling CAA.

Perhaps the logic of that situation (a fully certificated and environmentally superior aircraft being imported from another JAA state only to be made noisier and less 'green') has escaped me but there's only one organisation that caused that to happen and that was the dear old Authority. Why the punitive cost Mr CAA?

Why are we not encouraging low noise exhausts to be fitted?

[BlueRobin]

the reason for the programme is the noise she suffers
in North Suffolk. Her main beef appears to be microlights. It is obvious from our short conversation she has no idea about flying

So the story is generated purely out of self-interest? Doesn't bode well!

Was thinking of something to write, but FD put it succintly. :)


BR

BBC motto: 'Nation shall speak peace unto nation'

[t'aint natural]

I've referred her to David Ogilvy at AOPA, who's a mine of information on general aviation's contribution to the economy. Whether she's interested in facts I don't know; the Beeb's record in Iraq doesn't bode well.

[Timothy]

IO540

I think (I hope) that you are agreeing that both exhaust silencers and propellors with more, fatter, shorter blades lead (between them, and let's not argue about whether it's 60/40 one way or the other) to quieter aeroplanes, and that quieter aeroplanes lead to fewer compaints and therefore fewer restrictions on our activities.

Both technologies cost more than they should because the market is very small. They both cost less in Germany because there are stringent noise measures which "encourage" owners to fit the kit, thus producing some economies of scale.

The situation is the opposite here, where the CAA sits somewhere between discouraging and forbidding the use of these technologies. I think the public should be made aware that it is the CAA who are ensuring that we must continue to fly aeroplanes which are as noisy as those 50 years ago (unlike transport aircraft, which have made huge strides in the same period) and not the selfish, rich, thoughtless Nigels who swan about the sky deliberately making everyone else's lives a misery, as they might see it.

If we can get the BBC to tell the world, would it not be a good thing?

W

[darko]

T'aint natural, glad you have made David Ogilvy aware of this.

I am sorry that Stephanie is suffering from excessive noise. Lets all hope that despite her personal trouble she will endeavour to provide a balanced view. A bit of a problem I imagine if her knowledge on flying isn't up to scratch.

I am sure that David has had to educate the uninitiated in the past and can't imagine that I could add much. I am happy to try by emailing her if it is though if it is generally thought that this will do any good.

[Maxflyer]

I have been asked to remove the contact details from my original posting, as the nice people at the BBC have been inundated with calls from PPRuNers.

Let's hope it has had a positive effect.

Many thanks to everyone who has helped.

MF

[Ludwig]

God forbid that the poor little bbc person should have to speak to people who might know something about the subject, that might :mad: up the story line. Is it not our bbc!

I don't suppose the story will begin, "When I bought my house in Suffolk, amoungst perhaps the greatest density of airfields in the UK, it never occured to me that planes might fly over my house. Now I realsie that I should have given more thought to the location, I want to change everything around me, because that is far more important to the world than anything else. I am grateful to my emloyer, and you the licence fee payers, for allowing me a soup box on which to excercise my vested interest".
:yuk:

[BRL]

I closed this thread upon request of Maxflyer.

Thank you for the 'nice' e-mails demanding to know why it is closed.........

[BRL]

.............and re-opened today after a request by Maxflyer.

[Flyin'Dutch']

Hi L

Thank you for reopening this thread. I was not sure why it was closed but hesitated to ask you.

I think that this issue is at the heart of the anti-aviation lobby.

To be able to contact people like Stephanie so that we can put our points across is very valuable.

Mind you not heard anything back as a result of my email, just hope it did not go straight into the 'bin'

FD

[IO540]

WCollins

I agree with you entirely. Exposing the CAA policies on this would be a good approach.