The Future of UKGA......

As many of you will know I have been espousing the virtues of the UKGA web site for a while now.

It is an independent web site set up by a couple of guys who run it pretty much off their own backs.

However things have now come to a head and a decisive movement is needed.

I'll let the guys themselves tell you:

As many of you will know, devoting time to UKGA has been increasingly
difficult for Phil and me during the past few years, as we’ve juggled
the demands of family, challenging clients, and of course UKGA
development and maintenance. 

Indeed, it has been a source of
some frustration to us both that we’ve not been able to devote as much
time as we would wish to development and maintenance.  The pending
queue of content has quite a backlog, and our UKGA programming progress
is frustratingly slow.  Similarly, we’ve also found the financial
pressure of UKGA increasingly difficult to bear.  Although we’ve been
able to support UKGA for several years, it bothers us that we haven’t
been able to invest in new technology as we would have wished – hosting
platforms, bandwidth, new software and services, mapping, text
messaging, and so on, have all taken second place to our immediate
family expenses.

Unfortunately both time and money have become
even more precious recently, as I was made redundant two weeks ago. 
This was an unexpected blow, and it has certainly made both of us very
conscious of where our priorities – in time and money – have to lie.

But
we also see this as a fantastic, and perhaps one-time, opportunity for
UKGA and for us – to provide the world-leading service that we’ve
always dreamt of providing: near-instant comprehensive flight planning;
and to make UKGA the best resource possible for UK general aviation
pilots.

The only way that we can make this happen is for us to
devote ourselves to UKGA and its future, by making UKGA a commercial
enterprise.  If everyone who used UKGA this year (more than 4000 of
you!) paid a membership of, say, £25, we would stand a good chance of
being able to execute our plans fully. 

In practice, of
course, 4000 won’t subscribe, but we’d like to make this decision on
the basis of facts.  We want you to send a pledge to us to show
support.  If enough of you think we’re worth backing, we’ll throw
ourselves into it lock, stock, and two smoking programmers. 

Our
development plan includes drag-and-drop route planning, better NOTAM
mapping, terrain awareness & MSAs, more airfield mapping, W&B
calculation, take-off and landing performance, group management and
booking, and much more besides. 

Send us an email to pledge@ukga.com
to show your support.  We think it’s worth it.  Do you?  Let us know. 
If you want to talk to us about this decision, our operators (me and
Phil) are standing by: 07976 200186 or 07967 323316.  We’ll be happy to
hear what you think. 

Thanks to everyone who has helped us in the past, and we sincerely hope that we can make UKGA fly.

Nev & Phil

So there you go: cough up or potentially lose this excellent resource! £25 a year is very little: It will barely buy you enough aviation fuel to run your Cessna for 30 minutes, but it will mean keeping this excellent little site working for a good while longer.

Send an email to pledge@ukga.com. Show your support!

Qantas 747 depressurisation update

You may remember back in July that a Qantas 747 en-route from Hong Kong to Melbourne experienced a sudden depressurisation that ripped a hole in the fuselage just forward of the wing. You may also remember I decried the use of sensationalistic journalism in my post about this incident.

The Air Transport Safety Board preliminary report has been produced for this incident

Apparently one of the row of oxygen containers in the hold spontaneously exploded. The explosion had 2 effects:

1) It blew the hole in the fuselage causing a sudden depressurisation
2) It forced the oxygen container up through the floor of the cabin where it damaged an exit door and an overhead bin before falling back through the hole in the cabin floor and being sucked out of the aircraft through the hole in the fuselage.

So far there is no explanation of why the oxygen tank exploded.

As per the report there was no 'plummeting', just a normal controlled descent to a more suitable altitude. Nobody was hurt in the incident and procedure was followed correctly. In fact, according to industry experts "It may seem like the aircraft is going through a radical maneuver, and
it is radical compared to normal flying, but this is standard protocol."

Nothing to worry about. Move along, please......

Three Most Dangerous Landing Mistakes Pilots Make and How to Avoid Them

By Doug Daniel

Over-shoot, under-shoot, loss of directional control, wing tip strikes ... are all symptoms of mistakes made BEFORE the pilot touches down. Mistakes that are easily to correct - but not necessarily in a way you might think.

I landed at the Nuttree Airport in a Cessna 172 in 1968. I felt pretty smug. It was a very smooth landing, one of those landings that you could hear but not feel. Then a wind gust picked me up and I landed a second time on a parallel taxiway. The pilot taxiing in the opposite direction was kind enough (or perhaps stunned enough or frightened enough) to hold short of a turn-off so I could move over to the parking apron. I couldn't look him in the eye as we went past. Red-faced, I mumbled some excuses to my passengers that I didn't believe. I had just made the three biggest (and most common) mistakes a pilot can make when landing.

Determined to never let that happen again, I spend a great deal of time in the intervening 40 years thinking about how to avoid these mistakes. The NTSB says that a full 45% of the weather-related accidents are caused by crosswinds and gusts. I believe it. It is time to introduce some little known techniques that help prevent these accidents. But first, we should look at their causes.
Landing too fast is caused by flying the approach too fast or trying to force the airplane on the runway before it is ready. The solution is to fly a consistent approach at the same airspeed, picking a safe projected glide point (or PGP), and controlling the PGP until you land. But hold the airplane a foot or so off the runway until the airplane nose has rotated up to the landing attitude. Hold that attitude until the airplane lands. That way you will land at the right speed.

Failing to cross control in a crosswind leads to ground loops, being blown off the side of the runway (the MOST common cause of accidents in the United States), wing tip damage, or, in my case, flying over the infield and landing on a taxiway. To put it simply, cross controlling is using the rudder to keep the long axis of the airplane parallel to the long axis of the runway and using the ailerons to keep the airplane positioned over the runway. This guarantees that you will keep the airplane moving straight down the runway after the wheels touch.
Quit flying the plane before the plane is through flying is one of the most dangerous mistakes that a pilot could make. Its cause is lack of concentration. Its solution is good flying habits.


I was lucky at the Nuttree. If the crosswind had been coming from the opposite side, I could have been blown into a canal. Remember that just because the main gear is on the ground does not mean that there is no 'fly' left in the airplane. Also remember that if you keep the airplane just above the runway until it absolutely, positively will not fly any more, then it will an unusually strong gust to put it in the air again.
It is easy to be lulled into the bad habits that lead to these mistakes. When the wind is gentle and the runway is long, all will be forgiven. So the question is: how to keep these bad habits from developing?

I want to tell you about two exercises that have helped pilots more that I could have ever imagined. They are the 'very slow Dutch roll' and the 'controlled projected glide' point. Neither is difficult or dangerous. Both simplify and strengthen any pilot's ability to land.

The very slow Dutch roll is a simple exercise done at a safe altitude. It teaches two very important skills. First the pilot learns to continuously move the stick and rudders to control the airplane as conditions change, and second, the pilot learns how to cross control the airplane in the most extreme circumstances.
Here is how to do a very slow Dutch roll. Pick a point on the horizon and hold it steady as you change the angle of bank, airspeed and flap configuration. Maintain constant altitude. Change your bank very slowly. Continue to increase the angle of bank until either the aileron or the rudder is pushed to its limit. This is the angle of bank for the maximum crosswind that the airplane can handle. The cross controlled airplane slowly accelerates to the side for a minute or two. During this time, the pilot must move the flight controls continuously as the airplane accelerates to the side - an unanticipated benefit of this exercise.

Let me tell you about the projected glide point or PGP. When you approach the runway your eye will naturally gravitate toward a point on the runway that does not move in your field of vision. The phenomenon is much like when you are on a collision course with another airplane: it stays still in your field of vision but just gets bigger. Well, there is always a point on the ground where exactly the same thing happens. This is the point that you would glide to if you never made that last little flair to land. This is an extremely valuable concept that can save you many hours of landing practice. I never heard another flight instructor talk about it but I am sure that many pilots use this technique.

You can control the PGP with power and drag while keeping the airspeed constant. To move the PGP closer to you, reduce the engine's power or increase the airplanes drag - usually with flaps. To move the PGP away from you, increase the engine's power or decrease the airplane's drag

Use the two concepts together to make consistent, safe landings. Once established on final, use the center line of the runway as your reference point for very slow Dutch rolls. Use the ailerons to position the airplane on the extended centerline, the rudder to keep the long axis of the airplane parallel to that extended centerline. Move the PGP to the same place every time. I recommend the runway threshold. Consciously continue cross controlling until the airplane slows to a taxi.

These two simple techniques will get you to the same place on the runway every time in a landing configuration that compensates for crosswinds or gusts until the airplane is going so slow that you can taxi to parking.

Doug Daniel, respected flight instructor and author, recently wrote Flying Secrets, an extraordinarily popular e-book, operates a website for interacting with fellow pilots. If you want to learn more ways to refine your flying skills and get a *free report* on how even a PC-based flight simulator can help you fly better, ask his experts a question or just get the free report, click here now => http://FlyingSecretsRevealed.com/flying_questions/.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Doug_Daniel
http://EzineArticles.com/?Three-Most-Dangerous-Landing-Mistakes-Pilots-Make-and-How-to-Avoid-Them&id=1510027