So just like when the engineers put a serviceable aircraft on the line at Syerston. The pilot walks to engineering control and signs for the aircraft once for the whole day.
I think you might be beginning to see what I mean. The Form 700 system probably works (worked?) in a service with lots of erks busy doing things and a slightly smaller number of NCOs checking up on them. The rest of the world has moved on from there.
Aeroplanes generally donāt become u/s overnight in the hangar without it being very obvious (flat tyres, fluid leaks, hangar roof fell on them etc.), in other words there is just as much relevance to doing a walk round when crews change as there is before the first flight of the day. That makes the pilot responsible for it. Since he is about to fly it we can assume that he will show due diligence.
Over maintenance can lead you into all sorts of wrong assumptions, I will quote you an instance. Years ago I flew for a company with a fleet of Aztecs. A full oil tank on a IO-540 engine is 8 quarts, so when it fell to 7 we topped up with a new can. The recorded oil consumption was about half a quart an hour.
It turns out the minimum oil for that engine is 3 quarts (plus consumption). As an experiment we started to only top up the oil when it dropped to 5 Quarts. The oil consumption promptly dropped to nil; the level stabilised at about five and a half quarts and did not need topping up between 50 hour checks. We had just been blowing it out of the breathers when the engine was full.
Perhaps we should consider that Grobs in their wisdom fitted a cowling that needed a tool (screwdriver) to remove the cowlings. An engineerās job. Since they expected the oil level to be checked regularly they provided a handy little hatch for a pilot to get at the dipstick. I would take that to mean that they didnāt expect the cowlings (which can be fitted incorrectly) to come off between 50 hour checks unless there was a problem. If it needs a tool a pilot, even one with an engineers pen in his hand, shouldnāt be doing it.
I expect someone will point out the topping up of the carb. dashpots. I refer them to the paragraphs above. On that subject, does anyone know the purpose of the dashpot?
Sorry, I donāt have any numbers, I suspect because there arenāt any.
Parachutes are only likely to be of use at altitude in two cases, mid air collision and fire. I am ignoring structural failure as that doesnāt happen. Collision are best avoided with a good lookout. In the case of fire, the Vigilant has a very high rate of descent with the airbrakes fully open and it is capable of landing in a field which would almost always be the best option.
In return for this almost useless device we get more weight and a higher level of discomfort.
Though I agree to an extent that in motor gliders the parachutes have more limited use due to more difficult egress; backed up by the fact I rarely see private Grob 109 owners with parachutes, they have proven themselves time and time again in conventional gliders. I personally know people in recent times within civilian gliding who have been saved by parachutes after mid air collisions, āCollisions will be avoided with a good lookoutā is a good in principle but even with FLARM technology collisions happen, fact. Granted the heights that most of the time VGSs fly at locally arenāt exactly high so limit the potential of the parachute, but at least itās another optionā¦
I do agree that single seater gliders, particularly in competitions, are much more vulnerable to collisions as they are often flown in very close proximity to other gliders in thermals. They also sometimes take cloud climbs where see and be seen cannot work. The level of risk is accepted as being higher by those taking part. They are also operating at higher levels where a parachute is a more practical option.
I personally always wore a parachute flying cross country in a glider; I have been in a thermal with upwards of a dozen other gliders. On the other hand I have never worn a parachute in tugs or motor gliders. Actually not quite true, I did wear a parachute in a tug when we were investigating what actually happened in a glider induced tug upset in a series of trials in the late 1970s. If anyone wants to know what happens, just ask.
my point being if they have saved one life or 100 they must be worth itā¦
Again, easy to say. The increased weight on every flight will make every flight a tiny bit more hazardous in an EFATO. The crew being trussed up in a parachute and less comfortable makes good lookout slightly more difficult and fatigue slightly more likely. We must also add the possibility of them being used when the safer option might be to stay with the aircraft.
The truth is that with such a small chance of use they are difficult to justify. The statistics we have are that the three cadets involved in Tutor mid air collision and their pilots did not use parachutes.
Managed risk. Remember the justification for the DC3 replacing the Ford Trimotor was that the twin had a 50% less chance of an engine failure.
Just imagine how many lives would be saved by cutting the speed limit on all roads to just 20mph and limiting vehicles to that speed.
Love the discussion about signatures!
The military airworthiness policy is uniform, but the system is configurable to different platforms. The Vigilant and Viking do not use the same F700 document set as a Typhoon. Back in years gone by, when HQ Air Cadets ran the show, the F700 set was very simple. However, times changed and the military changed their document sets to align the RN, Army and RAF. For a number of years, HQ Air Cadets pretended it would not effect the VGSs so ignored it until they were told to conform. During this time, they could have been more effective at merging the old document set to the new. Since HQ Air Cadets let go of the VGSs, there has been very little interest to change it from the various FTSs - the VGSs have accepted it and just get on with it.
There are many pros and cons about it, but two things it does do is hold people accountable to their actions and provide traceability on equipment that peopleās lives ultimately depend on. Even now, if you read the DASORs for VGSs you will find a missing signature being reported. You will never find a true metric to compare the safety of VGSs to other similar organisations, simply because there isnāt an organisation like it. Near misses are only recorded when people feel compelled to do so. In the military, the reporting culture is significantly more open and detailed than in the civilian aviation world.
Back to the thread, not long now before the Chief of Air Staff agrees the way forwards ā¦ fingers crossed it will be a sensible way forwards!
For the aircraft types under discussion, I repeat, multiple signatures is over-kill.
I survived another 2 flights today, only 2 signatures.
By all means, for more complex engineering requirements (reverser locked out, or TCAS MELād as being u/s, a technicianās signature is required. Canāt see them swapping the left engine ignitor box to the right hand engine for trouble-shooting on a bloominā glider!! The ACO aircraft are very āsimple,ā keep the operating & oversight procedures simple too.
From on high in the GSA, no further news from them - so I presume 2FTS havenāt asked them to pick up any piecesā¦
I did 10 flights in a glider for a group of kids in care this summer, all over the course of one day.
Iāve flown groups of scouts on multiple occasions too.
One signature requiredā¦ The daily inspection book. In many occasions I donāt even need to sign it, because the daily inspection has already been done by someone else.
Did anybody die? Nope.
I cannot agree with this, CHIRP was running decades before the services even looked it that direction and so were flight data recorders and cockpit voice recorders. They were accepted by the flying community in that they would only ever be used for accident analysis and never in a blame seeking culture. Airmiss reports (now AirProx) have also been around for a long time.
CRM?
Great, you should become a duty holder and sign of the ACO fleets as good to go. If something was to happen of course you would be happy to stand in court and say āI know that I couldnāt be assured but no body died up till nowā.
Itās the assurance for the chaps holding the risk that started this donāt forget.
Lets keep it positive and happy, like I said itās Christmas at last lets be cheerful.
Always 1030 at our local unit and we arrive at 0900, just saying
Sorry we arrive at 0900, I must admit not sure what time the VGS staff arrive, my bad.
This year Iāve done 10 flights with cadets in a military helicopter. Iāve flown upwards of 200 troops on some days too.
The F700 needed loads of signatures, and all the work was supervised. So if weād had an accident we had an audit able trail as to how tax payers money was destroyed by the crash, and who could be culpable for the lives lost.
Did anybody die? Nope.
I fail to see your point. They are military aircraft and as such they will have to be signed for in the same way someone does a C17, or a typhoon or a tornado.
I agree with Mike itās maybe over the top but itās the rules for the organisation we fly for. Iām sure he has to take a certain ramp fuel that wonāt be the same as other carriers or there will be some bit of admin his airline has that others donāt but Iām certain that he obeys the rules for his organisation and doesnāt complain about it.
Also a tutor tech log has a similar amount of stuff as a f700 regards signatures both for training baby aircrew and for accountability purposes.
When you say āsupervisedā, do you mean actually supervised or just signed as being supervised. If it was actually supervised, what was the point of the first signature?
Looking back over this topic I can see lots of use of the words āblameā and āfaultā (although āculpableā has only just arrived). This from an organisation that claims to just want to be safe and open. Those words give the lie. No-one sets out to make or allow an aircraft to be unsafe and if it happens it is almost always the result of a mistake. Human error, or poor training.
Blame is not what you should be seeking. Blame should not be part of a safety system. Blame allocation is what makes things secret and stops people reporting things. Good supervision all year will work far better than an audit that only checks the paperwork, whether we are talking engineering or flying. Good supervision does not mean breathing down peopleās necks all the time, nor does it involve signatures. It means a supervisor/manager that knows what is going on.
The recent incident of Airbus cowlings coming off in flight was not caused by a lack of signatures; the signatures were all there, mainly because they were made before the work was finished. Bad practice, but it is thought it had been going on for a while, still, the signatures were all correct and no-one, not least the manager, realised. Because of the signatures everyone else thought that there wasnāt a problem and didnāt investigate further. If you think something similar could never happen in your hangar, let me assure you that it, or something similar, probably already is.
āComplacency? That could never happen here, all our signatures are correct.ā
EU Ops in short, standard ārulesā - but still some scope to incorporate changes if the rules donāt fit the commercial circumstances.
Fuel-wise, we take āextraā on top of the mandatory minimums, & I actually have a great deal of freedom to be āsmartā if circumstances change during the day. For example, we normally tanker fuel where possible, but If iI know that I will be delayed at one airport, our pax donāt want to be late on departure at their airport just because the company would like to save a few Ā£Ā£Ā£ on fuel; the pax timings are much more impertant! So, I will load āthrough tripā fuel from the previous (fuel more expensive) airport in order to reduce delays at the next. As long as I have a logical reason (& of course performance or safety are not prejudiced), all is good. 
As far as I see it, the RAF is over-controlling & over-complicating the operating aspects ofvery simple & basic aircraft. Yes, safety is has to be top of the list, but associated administration should be kept as basic as possible.
If you knew the structure of RAF supervision youād know that supervision means for some tasks 100% check is required for others it is simply someone checking the work has been done correctly. If it had been work done on the head the supervisor independently checks the work as its a flying control. In some circumstances there is no supervision needed at all. I donāt have an encyclopaedic knowledge of it sadly, RAās on the other handā¦
We use this because on a squadron we have some guys working on aircraft that have been on the same thing for 20years and some 16 year olds straight out of training. I think that the system works well on a vgs given the same vast differences in experience.
The point isnāt to blame anyone and the MOD have the whole just culture but to guard against it, but then most people probably donāt mean to run someone over but if theyāve done something that means it isnāt an accident then they hold some of the fault. For the MAAās better explaination look up the DAFair matrix.
Mike that all makes sense, as an aircraft captain on any type of course we all get paid to have some scope to change stuff but I think itās safe to say that you sitting in the left hand seat of an airliner, or a captain of a military aircraft, or a maintainer signing for crucial work in either organisation has vastly more experience than the average VGS instructor let alone staff cadet.
The F700 as someone said above is vastly simplified in terms of stuff inside it from one for any frontline type. I think there is a happy medium because to ask for a bespoke system for VGS is really far fetched, frankly we donāt have the manpower to come up with it.
Clearly I say average as there are some very experienced vgs people that have been in the system for years or fly professionally in some way.
OMG, you mean it can get more complicated! 
Umā¦ a bespoke system is too complicated? How many fleets does the RAF have that are that big? As for manpower, just photocopy the CAA simple types system. there are a lot of Grob 109s that have been flying on the civil register since long before the RAF bought theirs; I delivered some of them.
I suspect that anyone who has only seen one system cannot really imagine anything else.