I, like many others stuck at home, managed to gain a few kilos during the pandemic. Ok, a lot. Maybe even carry-on range. By the time you read this, RAAus will finally have the regulatory framework to apply for the extra weight category, which would be available to members in the first half of 2022. The details of the new Part 103 are inside this edition, but basically, we got the 760kg MTOW limit that we were hoping for. If you’re not doing little fist punches right now, well, you should be. This has been a long time coming and has been due to the persistence of RAAus, CASA and a whole host of people who have been working on it. If there’s a sour note in the whole matter, it’s the stall speed at 45 knots. I’m told, however, that CASA will shortly be consulting on this unnecessary limitation along with controlled airspace access, so let’s hope that these can finally be put to bed, once and for all. The detail of this new privilege, how it’s going to work and what things such as maintenance requirements might look like will all have to be developed. But for now, we can get suitably excited at what is a major win for our category of aviation. As the owner of a Van’s RV6 with an MTOW of 750kg and a landing configuration stall speed of 43 knots, which potentially will be in this new category, I look forward to the detail being developed. While it will be a while coming, I also look forward to the new aircraft that might be developed to fit this category. I expect it will probably be the ownerbuilders leading the way.
The last issue – the 100th issue of Australian SportPilot – received many warm letters of praise and it is a great pleasure to receive such feedback on behalf of the team. Now that we are coming out of lockdown, we have focussed this issue on travel and destinations. We hope it inspires you. So go on, strap on an aircraft and get out there. There’s a whole country for you to discover. Fly safe and enjoy the skies.
