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Annual General Meeting Saturday 14th Nov, 2015
The next SCSA club AGM will be held on
Date; Saturday 14th nov 2015
Venue; United Synergy 12-14 Ernest St Tewantin 4565.
Time; 6.00pm for a 6.30pm start.
I ask that as many members as possible please make the effort to attend as we have to elect and appoint new club admin and committee members and we have many other important matters to discuss and update regarding our flying sites. Below is the Agenda, there may be some new items listed before the meeting is conducted. Please send in your proxy votes to the secretary if you are not able to attend and want to vote on who will be on the executive.
News Update
Hi Everyone, we have some great news to report although most of you know already that our Teewah and Rainbow sites are open again for flying and Pt Cartwright permit has also been renewed with strict conditions that have to be adhered to for all sites. please read the following carefully and follow the rules as we could lose the sites if not followed. Mandatory use of radio is in effect and will help make flying and control of our sites more safer and able to follow the correct procedures for flying our sites.
Club T-Shirts
The new club shirts are now available and will be included in your next membership renewal you can pick one up at the next AGM. if we don’t have your size we can get them promptly but it will be first in best dressed at the AGM night. Safety officers will have a unique colour and wording design. they are a high quality and great for our climate and flying conditions.
Safety Officers
the club needs more safety offices so if you’re a regular flying pilot and would like to help and contribute to making our flying safer and managing or sites so we don’t lose the privilege of flying them then we want to hear from you. remember this is your club and your involvement is critical to making this club function efficiently.
Pt Cartwright/Alexander Headlands
Both Pt Cartwright and Alexander Headland are situated within the controlled airspace of the Sunshine Coast Airport. It is a federal offence to fly hang gliders or paragliders within controlled airspace. Through great cooperation between the Club, Air Services at the control tower and CASA we have been extremely lucky to obtain an exemption from the legislation but with a number of conditions. Usually these exemptions are only issued for a period of 1 year before needing to apply for a new exemption, the club has been very lucky in September to be issued with a new exemption for the next 3 years, this exemption can be viewed on the club website HERE.
At first during the application stage CASA was saying that they wouldn’t be issuing us with a new exemption because we didn’t have enough risk management in place. Although we had operating procedures in place to deal with how we fly there they wanted to see documented procedures to deal with things like site control, compliance with conditions, accident reporting. After bouncing emails back and forth with CASA modifying our risk management we finally got it to a stage that CASA was happy with. We had to include things like the Duty pilot of the day is to check the HGFA status and club membership status of pilots wanting to fly and control the operations that day and report to the club executive anything of concern. The club executive has to discuss anything of concern at every executive meeting. Once per year the club executive has to review the whole operations and sign off on the operating procedures. The duty pilot has to report any incidents or accidents to all 3, HGFA, CASA and the Australian Transport Safety Bureau.
Procedures for Pt Cartwright and Alexander Headlands:
- A Duty Pilot must be nominated in compliance with the HGFA ops manual
- The Duty Pilot must call the tower and gain clearance for operation that day
- The Duty Pilot must directly supervised operations that day
- The Duty must report any incident/accident to HGFA, CASA and ATSB
- On completion of operations the Duty Pilot must call the tower to advise them.
- If the Duty Pilot has the leave site then a new Duty Pilot has to be nominated and call the tower to advise.
- All other normal HGFA procedures apply
Teewah/Rainbow
Finally some great news to report, after several years of Teewah being closed we can now fly there again and also land on the beach at Rainbow. The Club has seen some difficult relations with National Parks (QPWS) seeing landing on the beach at Rainbow and Teewah closed on a technicality. The legislation that allows us to fly CAO 95.8 has a condition that states we must comply with all conditions set out within the HGFA ops manual. The HGFA ops manual states that when below 100ft agl we must be 25m horizontally from any public road and the beach is declared a public road at Teewah and Rainbow. Although we only needed the HGFA ops manger to write and sign an exemption from the condition in the HGFA ops manual it still needed the tick of approval of CASA. Although we managed to write an operating procedure that CASA was happy with, CASA was not willing to approve it unless QPWS were also happy with it, this became the long drawn out sticking point. After a hell of a lot of lobbing and patience it has all gone through for both Teewah and Rainbow but with certain conditions attached. Both HGFA exemptions can be viewed on the club website HERE.
Procedures for operations at Teewah:
- A Duty Pilot must be nominated in compliance with the HGFA ops manual
- The Duty Pilot shall establish procedures for the day
- Any pilot wanting to fly is aware of who the Duty Pilot is
- Any pilot wanting to fly is aware of the Radio Freq nominated for the day and there radio is in working order and set to correct freq
- Any Pilot wanting to fly has sort advice on the procedure for the day.
- Landing on the beach must be on the soft sand above the high water tide mark
- Landing on the beach is only permitted when a) doesn’t endanger any person, b) doesn’t conflict with vehicles on the beach, c) can be carried out safely
- All normal HGFA procedures apply
Procedures for landing on Rainbow Beach:
Much the same as it always was before landing on the beach was closed but now very officially documented out.
- A pilot may land only in the designated area north on the surf living bathing area
- A pilot may only land in the designated area if a) doesn’t endanger any person on the ground, b) wouldn’t conflict with any vehicle on the beach, c) can be carried out safely
- All normal HGFA procedures apply
contributed with thanks by Shane Gingell