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Recreational Aviation Australia Inc home page

Welcome to Australian Recreational Aviation

Published by Recreational Aviation Australia Incorporated (RA-Aus) for its members, and for those interested in flying in a friendly environment — just for the sheer fun of it — or in building or buying their own aircraft; or maybe just interested in learning about grass-roots aviation.

Page revision 200 — the page content was last changed 9 February 2010 (CAGI trophy relocated)



The RA-Aus monthly journal 'Recreational Aviation Australia' — mailed to all association members — is our main communication medium. It is also available to the public via the usual retail outlets, or by subscription. The primary aim of this article-based Web service is to provide an information repository that increases airmanship and safety awareness amongst recreational pilots — world-wide. RA-Aus recommends such aviators review the articles in the Web service tutorials and the index to airmanship and safety matters.   All persons have unrestricted access to all material on this site.



Web service tutorials and guides [html]

These tutorials are dedicated to the memory of
Wing Commander A.M. (Mick) Parer
'An operator who had a passion
for flight and a passion to teach'

1935 — 2005


Please note: when reading these tutorials if you set screen width resolution to 800 dpi with a mid-size font, or 1024 to 1280 with a larger font size, the article text will be presented at 70–80 print characters per line, which is best for reading and will also present a suitable image size.

The tutorials currently contain 470 000 words of text, plus illustrations. If the tutorials were published in standard textbook format the total page count would be around 950 pages but unfortunately there are no PDF format versions. The tutorials are edited by Dave Gardiner of Red Lettuce Communications.

Flight Theory
Learning to Fly guide
Aviation Meteorology in Australia
Flight Planning and Navigation
VHF Radiocommunications
Coping with Emergencies
Airmanship and safety matters
Decreasing your exposure to risk
Builders guide to safe aircraft materials

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Aircraft purchase and construction
RA-Aus aircraft register
New aircraft and kits
Used aircraft for sale
Home-builts: building your own

Flight schools, clubs & events
RA-Aus flight school details
Flight school location listing
Events calendar
Clubs

RA-Aus manuals
Operations Manual issue 6 [2008]
Technical Manual issue 3 [2008]

Application forms, ASICs, documents, subscriptions, insurance, purchases, payments

Members on-line payment facility
Membership, pilot and aircraft registration applications, insurance and other documents.
(Please note: the BFR form was updated December 2, 2009.)
RA-Aus on-line shop

Site map & search

RA-Aus Aircraft Operators!

Latest AIRWORTHINESS NOTICES

February 2, 2010: Mandatory inspection of swaged cable control fittings on Skyfox Gazelle.

January 11, 2010: Information on Tundra tyre modification to Airborne Edge X trikes.

January 11, 2010: All current Service Bulletins for Tecnam aircraft LSA & UL.

See the airworthiness notices page.

GYFTS program

The Giving Young People Flight Training Support is a member funded program aiming to provide scholarships for flight training. Each year, if every one of our members donates just $2, the fund could support 5 flight training scholarships of over $3000 each.

For the next three years, 2010–2012 inclusive, Airservices Australia have very generously provided funding to support GYFTS with further scholarships. For more information on GYFTS, and to download the application forms, see the notice board.

Airservices Australia website

RA-Aus bulletins

See the NATFLY page for information on the
RA-Aus members' annual National Fly-in
at Temora NSW, 2–4 April 2010.


The Notice Board contains the following new notices plus older items which may still be of interest to RA-Aus members.

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January 22, 2010: 2009 highlights.

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January 14, 2010: RA-Aus membership at 11 January 2010.

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January 14, 2010: Number of aircraft on RA-Aus register.

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The CAGIT trophy's last known location was Aero Club of Broken Hill, NSW (February 8).

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Jabiru ultralight aircraft

Australian summer: Geoff Hennig's Jabiru amongst the hay bales.

An Australian design two seat 'amateur-built' category aircraft typical of the newer generation RA-Aus aeroplanes constructed in fibre reinforced polymer materials. In December 2005 the Bundaberg, Queensland factory marked the delivery of their 1000th Jabiru and some 4500 Jabiru series aero-engines.
Learn to fly!

It is possible to achieve the RA-Aus Pilot Certificate with just 20 hours of in-flight instruction! If you would like to be able to fly an aeroplane then check out our LEARNING TO FLY GUIDE. It provides a broad overview of what is involved in learning to fly in the friendly, fun world of Australian recreational aviation.



Design, build or buy your own aeroplane!

     At December 23, 2009 RA-Aus had 9207 members with voting rights and there were 2955 aircraft with valid RA-Aus registration and an estimated market value of $102 million.

The ownership of those aircraft comprises:
    • those enthusiasts who designed and fabricated their own truly experimental aircraft;
    • those who fully fabricated from commercially-supplied plans;
    • those who partly fabricated and assembled their own aircraft from a factory-supplied kit;
    • those who preferred to purchase a new certificated, factory- built aircraft
    • and those many members who chose to buy a pre-owned aircraft, whether factory-built or home-built.

     Pre-owned aircraft are advertised for sale in the 'Member's Market' while you can view a few home-builder projects in 'Home-builts: building your own'. New factory-built aircraft and aircraft kits, currently available in Australia and accepted for registration by RA-Aus, are listed in the 'Buyer's Guide'.




Next - History of ultralightsNEWCOMERS GUIDED TOUR
The material in this site is wide-ranging in content. This short 10 page guided tour will provide a quick overview — the first page we look at is a potted history of ultralight aviation in Australia.


Web tutorials author: John Brandon     (contact information)