Pudniks The Para Glider - Katoomba Court 26 April?
 

The allegedly errant para glider, Mr Pudniks appeared in Katoomba Court 26 April. Anyone know what happened? Did he get to test his theories of Democracy, the Constitution and "the vibe"?

While doing some research on a related matter, I came across some material to indicate that - sadly, but unsurprisingly given his stubborn refusal to heed any of the advice he was given in this thread - Mr Pudniks crashed and burned in both the court and the AAT.

The decision of the Katoomba Local Court to find him guilty of 16 counts of performing a duty essential to the operation of an Australian aircraft during flight time, without the required authorisation, is unsurprising, because his primary if not only argument was that his paraglider is not an "aircraft" within the meaning in the civil aviation rules. An amusing aside in a newspaper report Blackheath paraglider Kurt Pudniks fined $9,600 for operating aircraft unauthorised was what the Magistrate said about the volume of civil aviation legislation:The article says Mr Pudniks was contemplating an appeal, but 8 months on I've heard nothing further.

And despite being told, repeatedly, that the AAT had no jurisdiction in relation to his (company's) application to be an ASAO, because no reviewable decision had been made, he pressed on with his AAT application. The AAT's decision is only 9 paragraphs long, the last one of which says:

What an extraordinary statement from the magistrate. And so true.

Ha ha, that's funny. No, it will be useless in another trial because it will all be amended.

Apologies for Thread Drift.
Those comments reminded me of a cartoon once pinned to the notice board of the old Tony Kingham Flying School in Waikerie back in the early 80`s.

It showed a Van driving past a block of land which had a sign on it saying `This Block of Land Intentionally Vacant` The Van had a sign on its side saying DCA (amended) DoT (amended) Dof A (amended) and whatever was the following rename! Under all of that was the word DOCUMENTS.

The Van was followed by a Semi Trailer with identical wording on it, but labelled AMENDMENTS.

Oh, and there was a small margin on the LHS of the paper, labelled `This portion not required. Tear off and discard.`

Think I still have a copy of it somewhere.....

Back to Thread.

The whole saga is emblematic of the larger regulatory landscape.

An ever-growing mountain of legislation produced by the regulatory ‘reform’ program which is yet to be completed (despite all the lies to the contrary) and has become a self-perpetuating regulatory workload.

An individual para glider pilot who’s his own worst enemy picked off as an easy target and prosecuted, with the outcome for the safety of air navigation being….

Meanwhile, double digit deaths in midairs and great swathes of TIBA and TRA airspace and other reductions in air services for extended periods. No systemic issues to see here. All’s fine in CASA, ATSB and Airservices.