Making Time for Flying

That sinking feeling

2011-03-26T11:29:00.002+11:00

In my list of little victories I am proud to have defeated my addiction to watching blog traffic statistics every day. To be fair, visits to this blog have become very predictable, with around forty visits per day, half of them coming from Google searches and the other half from aviation bloggers kind enough to link to some of my posts. I get an automatic notification when this blog receives more than a hundred visits in one day, which only happened a few times in the past when A-List aviation bloggers such as Aviatrix or Ben Sandilands linked to one of my stories.

One such spike occurred earlier this week, this time caused by Google searches. What search keywords drove visitors in (relative) droves to my blog? And why did most of them go read my $100 burger at Wollongong story? The answer was VH-NRF, the Archer we had flown on that day. And that's where the sinking feeling started.

A Google search on "vh-nrf" later I realised my story appeared as number 4, while the number 3 search results was an ATSB investigation report. The Daily Telegraph has the story with a few photos of VH-NRF upside-down on a suburban street in the suburb of Smithfield.

The Archer II suffered an engine failure while approaching Bankstown at the end of a flight from Ballina. It performed a forced landing on a street and both occupants and their dog walked away from the wreckage with only minor injuries. The incident happened 5 miles north west from Bankstown, which is consistent with using Prospect Reservoir as the entry point to Bankstown coming from the north. Congrats to the pilot, a forced landing in a populated area from a height of 1500ft at most is what many pilots' nightmares are made of.

Review: Fly and Earn Aerial Photography Business Kit

2011-01-17T22:09:00.014+11:00

At first I didn't completely get the tagline on the front page of flyandearn.com: Your “$100 Hamburger” days are over. Let your “$1,000 Saturdays” begin. I mean, sure, we can all find a way to spend $1000 in one day of flying, but earning $1000? While flying? As a private pilot? We've all spent hours dreaming up schemes for lowering the cost of flying, let alone making money out of it without a Commercial license, so I was pretty sure I had explored every possible loophole. But maybe not.

Jay Taffet is the man behind flyandearn.com and was kind enough to give me a copy of the Fly and Earn Aerial Photography Business Kit ebook for the purpose of this review. This ebook is available for $35 through the web site and describes every aspect of how Jay, as a private pilot, started an aerial photography business without a CPL, and without breaking any law or regulation. Jay lives in the US so obviously the business concept he describes in the book has only been tested there. I think it's a great idea, but I still have doubts it would work in Australia.

In short, since shooting aerial photography for profit is clearly not within the privileges of the private pilot licence, the idea is to have a Commercial pilot on board to cover for this. Jay even suggests enrolling an instructor and combining flying lessons with photography. This way even student pilots can start their own aerial photography business and support their flying addiction at the same time.

I have to say the book is a pleasure to read and Jay's enthusiasm for his idea and clear, friendly writing style will get even the most sceptical private pilots thinking. A large part of the book covers the basics of setting up and operating the business, but the aviation side of things is not forgotten, with instructions on how to fly a pattern around the site to be photographed, and how to communicate with ATC in order to maximise the chance of getting a clearance should the site be in controlled airspace. And of course the ebook also addresses aerial photography and post-flight photo processing.

I am not sure at all the concept would work in Australia though. First, there is a difference here between holding a Commercial Pilot Licence and being able to operate a business that sells services linked to the use of the CPL. The latter, as far as I understand, requires an AOC (Air Operator's Certificate), which means an immense amount of paperwork with CASA. Ask any Chief Pilot. From my limited understanding, the rules in the US are a lot simpler, which allows for self-employed flying instructors for example, a concept unheard of in Australia.

If you think the idea might work in the country you fly in, this business kit is a very good use of $35 and will save you tons of time. And if your local aviation regulator killed the idea in the bud, well, you still have the $100 Burger, which is not such a bad way to spend a Saturday or Sunday either after all.

One day down the coast: the video!

2010-11-17T09:00:00.002+11:00

Please excuse my tardiness, here's the video of the flight we took last July from Bankstown to Merimbula, Moruya, Gabo Island and back. I took this video on the first leg while Chris was flying, so it really only covers the Bankstown to Merimbula leg. I hope you'll enjoy it.

Because I'm lazy I didn't put any explanation in as to what is what, so I'll use a time-honoured trick favoured by teachers all around the world: I'll leave it as an exercise to the reader. See if you can spot the aerodromes of Camden, Moruya, Nowra but also Mount Dromedary and all the little coastal towns. All the scenes are in chronological order, that should help!

MBX Airways to take delivery of first all-metal Boeing 787 Dreamliner

2010-10-03T15:42:00.005+11:00

You read it here first: in order to get its delivery schedule back on track, Boeing took the dramatic decision to abandon the use of composite materials in its next-generation Boeing 787 airliner and instead revert to a traditional construction technique known as die-casting. In a statement, Boeing indicated the impact on take-off weight and payload would be "marginal".

MBX Airways took delivery of the first all-metal Dreamliner, a move that surprised even seasoned industry observers who had always assumed launch customer All Nippon Airways would get the first production 787 to roll out of the Everett assembly line.

Qantas executives were seen walking the aisles of the Woolworths supermarket in Neutral Bay, Sydney, but would not comment on when they expected the Dreamliner to enter service with the Australian flag carrier.

Qantas chief executive Alan Joyce further refused to comment on whether using the corporate Everyday Rewards card to purchase the all-metal Dreamliner from Woolworths would constitute double-dipping, and denied seeking a 4c a litre rebate on jet fuel.

Paragliders at Cooks Terrace

2010-09-26T17:39:00.008+10:00

A few months back I fortuitously discovered the existence of paragliding spots along Sydney's Northern Beaches. Today my wife and I were celebrating the end of winter by spending a Sunday afternoon at Bongin Bongin Bay when suddenly a big rectangular shadow swept across the beach. I looked up and here they were, big colourful paragliders in the Sydney sky!

These paragliders were taking off from a point at the top of the cliff known as Cooks Terrace and described as suitable for novice pilots on the Sydney paragliding and Handgliding Club web site.

I was amazed at how long they could stay in the air. They would fly from one end of the cliff to the other and back and didn't seem to loose any altitude. As can be seen from the windsock on the photo below, we had a nice steady sea breeze throughout most of the afternoon. Wind blowing from the sea rises over the cliff and creates ideal conditions for soaring.

Cooks Terrace is the cliff on the right-hand side of the photo below. Other paragliders can be seen in the distance on the left-hand side, this is the Warriewood paragliding side. Under the right conditions, paragliders can go from Warriewood to Cooks Terrace and back.

Seen from the beach it always looked like the paragliders just cleared the cliff edge, but that's clearly just an optical illusion.

The good thing with coastal soaring is the landing on the beach is almost always a backup option if one cannot land on top of the headland.

The paragliders fly a sort of circuit around this headland with one leg along the ridge and the return leg further out at sea.

My wife commented that only an aviation tragic like me can spend a day at the beach looking upward and taking photos of paragliders and not a single time point the camera in the direction of the surfing girls in bikinis right in front of us. I had not even noticed the surf babes.

One day down the coast: Nowra, Moruya, Merimbula, Gabo Island

2010-09-05T18:16:00.001+10:00

I think I am cursed. In nearly two years of flying out of Sydney, I have not managed to fly cross-country to a destination west of the Great Dividing Range a single time. A combination of weather and bad luck are to blame for that. I had an opportunity for a morning hop to Mudgee a while ago but had to bail out because of last-minute work commitment.

All my cross-country trips have therefore taken me up and down the coast and they have been fantastic trips such as Taree or Brisbane. A few weeks ago I ventured for the first time south of Sydney with a one-day trip that took Chris, myself and our passenger Ted down the coast to Gabo Island, just across the border with Victoria and back.

We had managed to book the nicest single-engine Piper the club has on offer, the Arrow VH-SFJ. It's not really the extra 10 knots in cruise that make a difference, or the retractable undercarriage, but for me it's the constant-speed propeller and the bigger engine.

Compared to the Archer or the Warrior, the engine in the Arrow is a lot smoother and the level of noise and vibration in the cabin definitely lower. I don't know if fuel-injected engines are fundamentally smoother than carburated ones, but I love this 200HP Lycoming. The advantage of the CSU is also being able to select a lower RPM for reduced noise and vibrations and still maintain a respectable cruise speed.

This aircraft comes with a DME receiver. It is not coupled to the VOR receiver so the frequency needs to be entered separately. Here we had tuned Sydney VOR and the receiver tells us we are 35.2 NM from it with a ground speed (along a radial from the navaid) of 102 knots, and that it would take us 21 minutes to get there if we were aiming for it, which we were not. Nice Australian invention by the way, just like the CVR whose Australian inventor passed away recently.

We exited the Sydney Basin via Wollongong at 4500ft. The photo above was taken just as we came on top of the escarpment, with Lake Illawarra and Wollongong in front of us. After Wollongong we had to fold the map again as we entered the airspace of Nowra.

The airspace was de-activated, as is usual over the week-end. We nevertheless followed the VFR transit lane at 2000ft, with an excursion off-track to check out Nowra aerodrome, part of a Navy base known as HMAS Albatros, the Australian Navy's only Air Station.

South of Nowra we found a thin layer of broken clouds with a base of about 2500ft so we decided to go VFR on top. A few minutes later, after climbing, we could see that the layer ahead of us was definitely overcast, so we decided to get back under through a hole over the water.

Chris decided to do a touch-and-go at Moruya. Unfortunately, I couldn't get the camera to focus on anything else than dust on the windows, which resulted in this rather artistic view of runway 18/36 at Moruya, with runway 05/23 to the bottom left.

Once on the Melbourne WAC chart we flew coastal, past Mount Dromedary. This was the name given to the mountain by Captain Cook in 1770, it's been since renamed back to its original aboriginal name of Mount Gulaga. I can't help but think that one of the hardest aspects of Captain Cook's voyages must have been to come up with names for things. Maybe they ran brainstorming sessions onboard HMS Endeavour. Or used a branding consultant.

We approached Merimbula from the north and flew a left-hand circuit for runway 21. With 1602m of concrete, that's a very long runway for this neck of the woods, big enough to get turboprops.

The photo below was taken when joining crosswind for runway 21. Note that the magnetic compass indicates roughly 210 degrees while we are obviously not parallel to runway 21. This illustrates the fact that one should not trust a magnetic compass in a turn or when climbing or descending. Or accelerating. Or decelerating. Basically, the magnetic compass should only be trusted when cruising straight and level.

Once on the ground we headed for the local café in the terminal building of Merimbula Airport called the Port Coffee Shop. Very nice food there and very friendly service. I was amazed to find such a nice place given the low volume of traffic at the airport, before realising that the main road runs at the back of the place, which obviously drives most of the traffic to the café.

The cakes were very fresh and very yummy. I should have brought a few back home, as I was reminded when I showed the photos of the trip to my wife once back home.

I flew the leg back to Bankstown. We first went south to check out Gabo Island before heading back north. Approaching Merimbula on the way north we had to orbit for a few minutes while a Rex SAAB 340 joined the circuit since out estimates for the field were exactly the same. In hindsight, we could have flown coastal at 1000ft since his circuit was 1500ft, but we played it safe and enjoyed the view.

We made a full stop at Moruya for fuel. The same aircraft that was in the circuit a few hours earlier was still in the circuit, with the same female voice on the radio. Someone must be practising circuits before the GFPT. Or maybe there's two twin sisters learning to fly at the same time.

Moruya has a very convenient 24h fuel bowser that accepts most credit cards. Convenience comes at a price though. I haven't kept the receipt, but off the top of my head the price was nearing $2 a litre. Since the jet fuel bowser is only located a few meters away, a number of checks are built into the refuelling process to make sure we get the right fuel. I think I had to confirm at least three times that it was AVGAS I wanted and not jet fuel.

VH-SFJ all tanked up for the flight back. With 136 litres in each tank, that's more than six hours of endurance, a lot more than we needed for the return flight, but as they say the only time you have too much fuel is when you're on fire. And in case of emergency or if we had to hold, that's one less thing to worry about.

Since there is no parallel taxiway I had to backtrack the whole length of runway 36 before lining up for take-off, which caused two airplanes in the circuit to go around. The first airplane understood what was going on, the second one on the other hand needed a bit more prompting. Despite my radio calls he still insisted on "turning final for touch-and-go", so I had to make a call directed specially at him, after which he wisely decided to go around. Would he have continued his approach, I always had the option of taxiing into the grass area adjacent to the runway. Which I think is technically a runway excursion that needs to be reported.

On the way back to Bankstown we crossed the Nowra airspace using the VFR lane at 2000ft. This time there was someone manning the unicom frequency, who got a bit confused with my position reports but eventually everything got sorted out. Then we tracked via Wollongong, Appin, the 2RN inbound reporting point and landed on 11 at Bankstown.

All in all in very nice day trip. Maybe a bit too much if I had flown it single pilot, but perfect for two pilots. I realised that flying down to Moruya for the day is definitely an option, and the fact that the beach there is right on the other side of the fence definitely adds to the attraction. I'll post more photos and videos from this trip as soon as I get my act together.

All downhill from here: Armidale to Sydney

2010-07-25T17:24:00.002+10:00

On the fourth and final leg of our round trip from Sydney to Brisbane I was flying and didn't take any pictures. Thanks to Chris and Dennis then for the photos and especially for the one right below, which deserves some explaining.

There is only one taxiway connecting the apron to the runway at Armidale. We had just finished our run-ups on the apron when a QuantasLink Q400 turboprop called inbound on the CTAF frequency. Rather than wait on the apron and taxi our way around him, always a risky affair, we waited at the holding point for him to land.

After he landed we entered the runway and backtracked to the threshold of runway 05, while the Q400 was backtracking the runway from the other end in the direction of the taxiway. We made all the required radio calls and then some so at all time the crew of the Q400 knew what we were doing. The photo was taken as we were already lined up for departure and holding and the Q400 was still backtracking.

From Armidale we followed the New England Highway to Tamworth. Tamworth tower was very helpful in helping us identify the visual navigation landmarks to transit their airspace. Once back in Class G airspace we kept following the Hunter valley past Willow Tree, Murrubundi, Scone, Muswellbrook, Lake Liddell, Singleton, Cessnock, Maitland and reached the coast again at Lake Macquarie.

From there we tracked for Brooklyn Bridge for the VFR lane southbound, reported inbound at Prospect and landed on 11C at Bankstown. Total time 10.4 hours, 4.8 hours northbound and 5.6 southbound. The longer return leg of course a result of our little scenic flight around Brisbane.

The photo above really speaks for itself. This was a tiring trip that left a smile on my face for the whole week after. Intense and demanding because of the failure of the GPS unit right at the start, and also a lot of fun thanks to great company and a good mix of familiar, formerly familiar and unknown places.

The long way back home

2010-07-20T18:18:00.002+10:00

On the second day of our two-day trip to Brisbane we started with a clockwise flight around Brisbane and a VFR transit of both Brisbane and Gold Coast control zones before heading back to Sydney inland via Armidale.

We took off at Archerfield on 28R and tracked northbound via the Indooroopilly Bridge, which only comes into view when one is nearly overhead it. Not too good for a tracking point, especially considering that the Centenary Bridge downstream becomes visible a lot earlier, and is an inbound reporting point. Confusing the two may have consequences.

The locals know to aim for the southern tip of Mount Coot-Tha first when flying northbound out of Archerfield and also know to stick to the hill side in order to avoid violating the nearby Brisbane CTA. From then we aimed for Lake Samson, then Deception Bay via Beachmere.

Making a radio call on 118.8 at Beachmere at 1500ft brought back lots of memories of learning to fly at Redcliffe Aero Club. Back then, flying from Redcliffe to the training area at Bribie Island felt like a cross-country flight.

Near Redcliffe we got a clearance through Brisbane CTR via Sandgate Pier, Brisbane control tower and Manly Boat Harbour at 1500ft. Flying over a large airport is always a treat. A couple of airliners took off under us on runway 19, such as this Virgin Blue 737 in the photo above.

We left the CTR and tracked to Gold Coast via Jacobs Well VOR. After that we used the VFR lane across Gold Coast CTR southbound, with Chris flying and myself navigating. I had never flow it before, and I'm not sure I'd like to do it for the first time on my own. There are plenty of navigation fixes to visually identify and things happen rather fast. The lane offers great views of the Gold Coast cluster of high-rise buildings as well as the Gold Coast hinterland.

After Stotts Island we tracked for Lismore, climbing carefully under the Gold Coast CTA steps. Clouds prevented us from climbing as high as we wanted to, and the controller cancelled flight following since he could no longer see us on his scope as we crossed the ranges.

From Lismore we navigated by dead reckoning to Tenterfield. Or at least we tried to. At some point we found ourselves not entirely sure of our position. Although the GPS had no moving map, it could still give us latitude and longitude though. I was nearly finished fixing our position on the paper map when the kind controller asked us if we were still going to Tenterfield as planned, because we were tracking west and Tenterfield was 12 miles to the south. We took the hint and followed the valley south.

Lenticular clouds were forming over the ranges, the result of wind blowing sufficiently hard across the ranges and creating mountain waves. Better stay above them. The few little puffs in the foreground are regular cumulus, the lenticular clouds are right behind and below the wingtip.

From there we tracked for Glenn Innes in the New England Highlands, the largest elevated area of land in Australia. Flying over it, it is easy to forget that the vast expanse of land below sits well above 3000ft. Glen Innes airport above was used as a base for firefighting operations last December during bushfires in the Northern Tablelands area.

The little black dots on the photo above are cows on their way to or from the watering holes. This scene reminded me of a very funny encounter Sylvia once had with cows near a VOR in the UK.

Approaching Armidale we joined the circuit downwind for 05 and Chris landed us there after 3.2 hours, which concluded the longest leg of the whole trip. The temperature on the ground was rather chilly. It reminded me of spending Easter week-end in a cottage in nearby Walcha last year. Great area, lovely people but rather cold.

We stretched our legs, had a bit to eat and visited the bathrooms in the terminal. Passengers were waiting for a QantasLink flight to Sydney. Would we make it out of Armidale before the Dash-8 arrived? After? More details in the next episode.

The local refueler topped up our tanks with fresh AVGAS. With the mixture on full rich, the fuel consumption in the Archer is about 42 litres an hour. Even though we leaned the mixture to rich-of-peak in cruise, I would be surprised if we burned less than one hundred litres on that 3.2 hour leg. There's no fuel flow meter or totaliser on the Archer.

Since we hired the airplane "wet", i.e. with fuel included, I had to surrender the fuel receipts to the club in order to get a refund, and forgot to write down how much we burned. Which is probably just as good, I would hate to know what the carbon footprint of that week-end was. Being environment-conscious and everything though, we walked to the pub and back in Brisbane on Saturday night. This must compensate for the carbon (and the lead) oxides released in the atmosphere in some way.

We swapped seats for the final leg back to Sydney. This time I was in the left seat and Chris in the right seat. It's true that sharing flying duties means one gets double the experience for the same amount of money, but the flip side of the coin is that one also gets double as tired. But I'm not complaining.

Coffs Harbour to Brisbane Archerfield

2010-07-08T18:23:00.001+10:00

The second leg of our trip from Sydney to Brisbane took us from Coffs Harbour to Brisbane Archerfield in 2.4 hours. All still without a functioning GPS. This was a bit of an aviation homecoming for me since I learned to fly in Brisbane but moved to Sydney soon after I got my PPL, and this was my first time flying back in a GA aircraft.

We departed Coffs on runway 21 in-between two arrivals: a Virgin Blue 737 and a QantasLink Q400 who was asked to extend his downwind leg to accommodate our departure.

We made a right turn and the photo below, taken on the crosswind leg, illustrates quite well what I described in the previous post: runway 10/28 is difficult to spot when coming from the south, and can momentarily be confused with that oblique taxiway. That's runway 03/21 in the foreground, the photo is looking to the north.

Soon after we left Class D airspace and tracked for Grafton. We could no longer follow the coast since our planned track took us inland in order to avoid Evans Head airspace. Navigation became a little bit harder than keeping Australia on the left as we did on the first leg. We flew IFR (I Follow Roads) to Casino, which we identified by the runway orientation and the horseshoe lagoon, which I had already spotted once from a higher altitude.

From then to the Lismore NDB, then to Byron Bay lighthouse. Byron Bay is not too difficult to find since it is the easternmost point on the Australian continent. Chris identified the lighthouse from as far away as Lismore. The photo below is my smiling self in a left turn over Byron Bay township. Notice the overhead row of switches on the Archer III, which gives it that airliner feel. The switch that's off is the fuel pump.

At Byron Bay we requested flight following because we would be flying over tiger country soon and wanted to make double sure we did not violate any controlled airspace, with Gold Coast CTA steps nearby and later on approaching Archerfield and Brisbane. And also of course ATC provided us with an extra pair of eyes, pointing traffic that we may not be able to see flying west near the end of the day. All good reasons to request flight following. And it's free.

We tracked via Nimbin TV Towers, which offered superb views of Mount Warning. Nimbin is the unofficial weed growing and smoking capital of Australia and is famous for its annual MardiGrass festival. Mount Warning is the first point of Australia to receive sun rays in the morning, even before Byron Bay which is more to the east but at sea level.

We tracked via the Laravale VOR and ATC was very helpful pointing traffic out to us. We called inbound for Archerfield at Park Ridge water tower and followed a Cessna inbound. I ended up too high and too fast for runway 28 and was instructed to join upwind instead of landing.

After a short left-hand circuit on 28L we were cleared to land on 28R. We touched down at the first taxiway and exited at the next one. The landing was slightly left of the centreline. I have since manufactured the following excuse: I did it deliberately so that the picture would look right on the video that Chris was shooting from the right seat.

The ground controller provided us with detailed taxi instructions to a grass area where we could tie the aircraft down for the night. We shut down near the biggest single-engine biplane in the world, the Antonov AN-2.

We refuelled, cancelled SARTIME and took a cab to our hotel. This was a long day with 4.8 hours in the air. A lot of work, but very rewarding work. We managed to increase our store of experience without having to draw from our store of luck.

Dennis, our student pilot passenger got a taste of what a long cross-country flight is like. He assured us that the whole flight decupled his motivation to get his PPL. Very soon, with knowledge fresh in his mind, he will be able to look back at this flight and list the mistakes we made.

Keeping Australia on the left

2010-06-29T20:53:00.000+10:00

Remember how I mentioned in a previous post a plan to fly from Sydney to Brisbane and back over Queen's Birthday week-end, and also remarked on how things in aviation have a habit of not going according to plan? Both prophecies came to pass.

The Arrow we had booked became unserviceable the day before our planned departure. The trim cable had snapped, and a replacement part wouldn't be available before the next Tuesday. Which left us without an airplane.

Ed (let him win the next AOPA Sweepstakes, his weight & balance always come 5kg under MTWO and his weather forecasts always read CAVOK), who had planned to fly with us part of the way in another airplane displayed the most amazing generosity and let us have the Archer VH-SFR for two days. Our three-day trip was shortened to two days, but we had an airplane!

With three blokes onboard, a little bit of baggage and full tanks we were about 5 kilos under maximum take-off weight when our wheels left runway 29R shortly before 9AM.

A few minutes into the flight I could see Chris repeatedly press the CLR button on the Garmin 430. Whatever the level of details selected, the moving map would only show the coastline and major roads, but no airspace at all. We restarted the unit and a message came up saying it couldn't read the Jeppesen memory card. We swapped memory slots, same story. The GPS could give us our position, track and ground speed, but didn't know any airport, waypoint or airspace. Great.

So this all turned into a week-end of visual navigation supplemented by the use of NDBs and VORs. This gave us the measure of all the bad habits we had developed relying on the GPS, so in the end I would say these 10.4 hours of hard work were also a great educational experience. It felt like a long PPL navigation exercise.

We enlisted all the help we could find, which meant following roads, applying large buffers to make sure we were not violating controlled airspace, and requesting flight following from ATC.

They say an image is worth a thousand words, so a video is probably worth one million words.

I had recently purchased a suction camera mount and was eager to try it. The good news is, it works great and provides a very solid seal with the window. The inevitable problem though is that the vibrations of the airplane reach the camera, much more so than when the camera is handheld or held on top of the soft padding on the dashboard, such as when filming a landing.

Despite having a built-in stabilisation feature, the footage captured by the camera was so shaky as to be absolutely unusable. Moving the suction pad to the bottom corner of the window, or leaving my hand on the camera while filming removed some of the shake, but not enough.

Fortunately Vegas Movie Studio, now comes with a very powerful image stabilisation feature that removed nearly all the shake. On the downside, the wing now seems to move in weird ways in front of a smooth landscape, while previously the landscape was shaking in all directions while the wing was reasonably stationary. I guess you can't have it both ways.

We flew via Patonga, Nobbys Head, followed the coastal VFR lane at 500ft around Newcastle as we had done once before, then continued on to Old Bar, Camden Haven, Port Macquarie, Kempsey and Macksville before landing at Coffs Harbour. I could have added overlays for identifying those places on the video, but I felt lazy, so this is left as an exercise for the reader.

We flew through some light showers of rain north of Newcastle, then the weather became progressively better, allowing us to climb up to 5500ft before descending to Coffs where Chris landed VH-SFR on runway 29 in a stiff crosswind.

Even though the GPS had packed in, navigation wasn't too much of an issue since it consisted in keeping the ocean to our right and the big landmass called Australia to our left. We called Coffs Tower inbound at Macksville and were given a clearance over land while another traffic was tracking in the opposite direction over water. The wind was favouring runway 21, but this would have given us a very long taxi to the AVGAS fuel pump, so we decided to go for the much shorter runway 28 instead.

This photo was taken when flying a left base leg for 28, which looks very much like a downwind leg for 21. Runway 28 comes into view quite late in the approach because of a slight rise in the terrain to the south of it. To add to the confusion, taxiway E3-E5 is the old runway 19, just without runway markings.

We landed, attended to the necessary biological functions, had a little look around in search of the refueller, found him in his little cubby house of an office, refuelled the aircraft and had a bite to eat. We swapped seats for the second leg: I took the left seat for the leg to Brisbane, with Dennis was in the back and Chris in the front right seat as radio man and navigator. All the details in the next episode.

Thanks everyone for your kind donations after I posted about my participation in the Oxfam Trailwalker fundraiser! The readers of this blog have already contributed $100, congratulations! More information on our team page here.

The Sydney VFR Lane of Entry, on foot and under 48 hours

2010-06-21T16:28:00.001+10:00

Together with three friends from work I decided to participate in the 100km Oxfam Trailwalker Sydney in order to raise funds for Oxfam to fight poverty and injustice around the world. This is a 100km bushwalking race to be completed under 48 hours, sleep (or lack thereof) included, in teams of four.

This will be my first time participating in a so-called extreme sporting event. I'm very excited about it and I hope you will be able to support our team and Oxfam.

If you feel like contributing to a good cause (and get it back on tax if you're living in Australia), you can donate to Oxfam on behalf of our team here. If you've ever learnt anything useful on this blog and wondered how to show your appreciation, here's your opportunity!

We called our team the Mountain Devils after the flower of a beautiful native scrub that can be found in numerous places along the track. The track itself starts near Brooklyn Bridge (the start of the southbound VFR lane to Bankstown) and ends in Mosman, right under the flightpath of the Harbour Scenic One procedure.

So far we have walked the entire track once in three training sessions of 30, 30 and 40 kilometres respectively. The next training session will be 50km long and will start with a night section where we'll test our headlamps and try not to get lost in the Australian bush in the dark. The hardest thing with this track is going from water level to the top of the hill down the water level again many, many, many times as you can see on the track profile below.

Oxfam works in more than 26 countries around the world including Indigenous Australia. By raising money for Oxfam Australia we can all make a tremendous difference to the lives of some of the world’s most disadvantaged people. The event began in 1981 as a military exercise for the elite Queen's Gurkha Signals Regiment in Hong Kong, and has since grown into one of the world's leading sporting challenges. Oxfam Trailwalker is a global event, taking place annually in New Zealand, UK, Hong Kong and Japan.

If you would like to find out more or donate on behalf of our team please visit

http://www2.oxfam.org.au/trailwalker/Sydney/team/363

All donations, however small, are deeply and sincerely appreciated!

The photo above, taken from the back seat of Archer VH-SFR on our way to Brisbane recently, shows the area where the first couple of sections of the race will take place. That's a lot of hills to climb and a lot of creeks to cross to get to the finish line!

I hope you will forgive this departure from the usual theme of this blog in the name of a good cause. Our usual aviation programme will resume shortly.

More info on June 3rd Class D changes

2010-06-10T18:32:00.008+10:00

A week into the new Class D rules at former GAAP airports, here are some useful bits of information I gleaned around the web. I haven't flown under the new rules yet, but that should be fixed very soon, more on that further below.

CASA released an updated version of the Sydney Basin Visual Pilot Guide. The 78-page document contains detailed information for safely navigating the airspace around Sydney under the VFR. This includes flying in and out of Bankstown and Camden which are now Class D aerodromes, the Victor 1 and Harbour Scenic procedures as well as tips on avoiding violations of controlled airspace.

The June edition of From the Tower, the newsletter from the kind ATC folks at Bankstown Tower, has a map of the manoeuvring area at Bankstown that I mentioned in the previous blog post, which can also be found on the official website of the airport. The newsletter also contains very useful examples of typical radio calls at Bankstown on the ground and in the air under the new Class D rules. And, as icing on the cake, they used Schoies airplanes and parking areas as examples!

A few changes to the Bankstown procedures as published in ERSA on June 3rd are available through NOTAMs. Pilots now need to report on downwind, and establish contact with ground after landing and clearing all runways, not just monitor ground as stated in ERSA. If you need to know more, you certainly know where to find NOTAMs too.

I flew a short dual flight last week to regain recency in the Arrow. We went to Camden via Mayfield, did a few circuits and came back even before the morning surface inversion disappeared: we could still see smoke plumes from local factories rise a little and then go flat.

Apart from that over the last few weeks I have been preparing for an exciting flying trip over the coming Queen's Birthday week-end: from Sydney to Brisbane and back in Arrow VH-SFJ, together with two other Schoies pilots. With a bit of luck we may even make it to Fraser Island for some very scenic flying.

We had a planning session in a meeting room where I work that was really successful. The 450NM journey from Sydney to Brisbane fits within four VTC charts, which when put end to end almost cover the entire length of this table.

Ed had brought in his laptop with Command Flight Planner, an awesome Australian flight planning software. With the flight planner on the video projector and all the maps on the table, this normally boring corporate meeting room took the allure of a RAAF briefing room. Or so we liked to believe.

Pizzas and Coke were brought in to sustain the intense cerebral activity. The plan so far is on day one to fly coastal from Sydney to Archerfield, the ~~GAAP~~ Class D aerodrome of Brisbane, with a stop in Coffs Harbour, fly to Fraser Island and back to Brisbane on day two, this time overnighting at Redcliffe aerodrome, and hopefully fly back to Sydney inland on day three.

That's the plan, and of course things won't go completely according to plan, which is always half the fun as long as you have a backup plan or two. Whatever happens you'll read about it either here or in the newspapers. :-)

Changes to Australian airspace on June 3rd

2010-05-30T21:15:00.000+10:00

On June 3rd, a number of changes to Australian airspace classification as well as operations at non-towered aerodromes will come into effect. Whatever one may think of the changes themselves, the communication campaign run by CASA was quite impressive and, I like to believe, effective.

I read the briefing package sent to me by CASA, I attended the workshop at Bankstown and I used the online training package. I even listened to Peter Gibson, corporate communication manager at CASA, explain the changes on the always excellent Plane Crazy Down Under podcast. And I noticed the big flashing sign at the main entrance of Bankstown airport on my way to the pilot shop.

So, what are these changes about? In short, GAAP aerodromes will become Class D aerodromes, but not the Class D as we know it, a new kind of Class D that's modelled on the FAA Class D, not the ICAO Class D. This despite the fact that one of the stated goals of the changes was stronger ICAO compliance. Go figure. And airports already in Class D will of course switch to the new Class D.

So we'll end up with three types of aerodromes instead of the current four: Class C where separation is provided by ATC through radar identification, Class D where separation is provided by ATC in a purely procedural manner, and non-towered aerodromes in Class G where pilots provide their own separation using the good old see and avoid principle.

Except that see and avoid becomes alerted see and avoid since the carriage and use of a radio at all certified, registered and military aerodromes becomes compulsory on June 3rd.

In former GAAP aerodromes, taxi clearances will now be required, but only for taxiing in the so-called maneuvering area, which contains the taxiways in direct proximity to the runways and the run-up bays. No need for a clearance to move an aircraft from one end of the apron to the other for refuelling for example.

Going from GAAP to the new Class D, VMC criteria for vertical cloud clearance are increased from clear of cloud to at least 500ft below clouds and 1000ft above. This may have major consequences for circuit operations since it is not uncommon to have good visibility with ceilings below 1500ft. Will ATC instruct pilots to fly circuits at 800ft if the cloud base is at 1300ft? Or not issue clearances for circuits at all and only allow VFR pilots to arrive or leave the control zone under Special VFR? The CASA and Airservices Australia representatives at the workshop made it clear that they will be monitoring the impact of the changes closely and may issue amendments or fine-tune local procedures at certain aerodromes using NOTAMs.

The main changes at non-towered aerodromes concern circuit entry and altitude. We are now allowed, although this is not recommended, to join the circuit on base. The larger changes are about circuit altitudes: GA aircraft remain at 1000ft AGL, but ultralight with a cruise speed under 55 knots need to fly 500ft circuits, while faster airplanes, with cruise speeds above 150kt , typically turboprops such as the SAAB 340, will be flying 1500ft circuits.

I'm curious to see how this will work out in practice. I mean, whichever altitude they fly a circuit at, all aircraft need to get down to ground level eventually. Will we be safer with different types of aircraft at different speeds and different altitudes, but with the added risk of descending or climbing through someone else's circuit altitude? At least with everybody at the same altitude faster aircraft could safely overtake slower ones.

One side-effect of this rule is that overfly altitude will mechanically move from 1500ft AGL up to 2000ft AGL if turboprops may be around. Spotting the windsock suddenly became a lot harder. There is an interesting bit of information found in the CAAP 166-1(0) which states that aerodromes with runways lengths below 1400m are unlikely to receive turboprop traffic, hence overfly can take place as in the past at 1500ft.

I realise I haven't been blogging too much recently, mostly because I didn't do too much flying, and the flying I did, although extremely enjoyable, was not terribly blogworthy. But that's all going to change soon with a planned endorsement to fly the glass cockpit DA40 that the club just put online, and a very exciting trip to Brisbane in Piper Arrow VH-SFJ planned for Queen's Birthday week-end with a few other Schofields Flying Club pilots.

Which will give us plenty of opportunities to try out the new Class D procedures at Bankstown, Coffs Harbour, Archerfield and Sunshine Coast. And hopefully also visit a few non-towered aerodromes on the way. More blogging to come, more photos and hopefully a few new videos thanks a set of camera mounts I offered myself as a birthday gift. Stay tuned!

Spot the airfield: Casino

2010-05-07T01:44:00.000+10:00

Birds do it. Bees do it. Even pilots with over 10,000 hours do it! Let's play spot the airfield again. This time on a flight from Sydney to Brisbane in a Qantas Boeing 767-300. Our track took us right over the town of Casino in Northern NSW, just south of the Queensland border.

The horseshoe-shaped lake on the right-hand side of the airport is called Horseshoe Lagoon. Casino being about 30 nautical miles from the ocean, I reckon calling this pond a lagoon is a stretch of the imagination. Global warming may prove them right eventually though.

The main runway is 10/28, with a strip for gliders right next to it. I mean, not a parallel grass runway, the glider strip is adjacent to the runway and form part of the same runway surface, the limit of which is marked by just one set of gable markers.

Casino is named after its sister city of Cassino in Italy. No significant gambling activities there, which didn't prevent a facetious person at Airservices Australia from assigning the name GAMBL to a nearby IFR waypoint.

The airfield being uncertified it does not receive any RPT traffic, the locals go to nearby Lismore to catch up a Rex flight to Sydney.

The Casino region is a big cattle farming area. With the Casino Beef Week only a few weeks away, this is as good a reason as any other for a cross-country flight. For a very tasty $100+ burger, straight from the producer!

Aviation in New Caledonia

2010-04-27T19:17:00.001+10:00

Nina and I spent ten days in New Caledonia over Easter. While the trip was not aviation-themed, one cannot avoid airports and airplanes when travelling from a very big island to a smaller island and eventually to an even smaller one.

We flew from Sydney to Nouméa in an Aircalin Airbus A320 codeshared with Qantas. While Air Calédonie flies domestic routes, Aircalin connects New Caledonia to international destination such as Australia, New Zealand, Tahiti, South Korea and Japan. The Airbus A330 below was about to leave Nouméa Tontouta airport for Tokyo Narita as flight SB800.

This 300,000-inhabitant island in the Pacific has two airlines, and the capital Nouméa has two airport: Nouméa Magenta right near the city for domestic flights and General Aviation, and Nouméa Tontouta far from the city for international flights.

We spent a few days driving around the main island, taking in the sights, feasting on fresh seafood, deer meat and untreated tropical fruits and arguing politics with a few strongly-opinionated Caldoches.

For the last part of our trip we entered an Air Calédonie ATR-72 for a 20-minute flight to the Isle of Pines. New Caledonia being a French overseas territory, airplanes are F-registered, such as the two ATR-72 F-OIPN and F-OIPS below and the one ATR-42 F-OIPI above. The ATR-72 is the stretch and re-engineered version of the ATR-42, in the same way the Qantas fleet has both old Dash-8 and new Q400 aircraft.

The last two letters of the tail number refer to the three districts that make up New Caledonia: Province du Nord, Province du Sud and Province des Iles Loyauté.

All three twin turboprops were on the tarmac at Magenta airport that morning, boarding and unboarding a mix of tourists and locals.

The tail art uses traditional Kanak elements. In the middle of the circle is a flèche faîtière, a totem-like pole structure found on the apex of most traditional dwellings in New Caledonia, as can be seen on the traditional hut represented on the left of the rudder.

Magenta airport has a local flying club called Aéro Club Calédonien, with the usual fleet of Cessnas and Pipers but also a Mooney M-20J and a couple of TB-10 Tobago. Not bad at all when you consider that there are only 15 airfields in New Caledonia. Fiji is a bit far, but I wonder how often single-engine airplanes attempt the 100-nautical mile crossing to nearby Vanuatu.

We flew back in a Qantas 767. Tontouta airport has a long runway but no parallel taxiway, which forced our airliner to backtrack the whole length of the runway so that we could depart to the south-east on runway 11.

The airport is surrounded by hills and mountains, so finding an elevated point to build the control tower wasn't too hard:

Tontouta is a joint civilian-military airport, with units of both the French Navy and Air Force stationed at the Base Aéronavale de Tontouta. No jet fighters though, only helicopters and transport turboprops. That's their hangars on the photo below.

The thing that I found absolutely astonishing aviation-wise is that a small airport such as Ile des Pins (NWWE) has a control tower and rescue vehicles on standy at the airport even though it never sees more than four commercial flights a day. By way of comparison, Wagga Wagga airport in Australia sees about 10,000 RPT movements a year and had its tower closed down in 1996.

The stark contrast between these two approaches to the provision of air traffic services stems from the two very different business models Airservices Australia and the French DGAC operate under. Airservices Australia is a government-owned corporation that charges fees, makes profits and even sometimes pays dividends back to the Commonwealth. The French DGAC is a government department and as such is more concerned with spending money than making money. There are pros and cons to each approach obviously.

On a more touristy note, New Caledonia is a gorgeous location with a fantastic mix of landscapes and cultures. It is also poor value for the region and the infrastructures for tourism are not as developed as one may wish. If you're looking for a resort-style holiday on a Pacific island, go to Vanuatu or Fiji.

If, on the other hand, you speak French and want to discover a fascinating place fast approaching a turning point in its short history, New Caledonia is for you. The country is still struggling with de-colonisation and reconciliation and will have to decide in a few years wether to become fully independent or remain a French overseas territory. From our very short stay, we could see that opinions on that last point are very much split.

Spot the airfield: Armidale

2010-04-05T21:39:00.000+10:00

On a Qantas flight from Brisbane to Sydney aboard a Boeing 737-800, the cloud cover turned from broken to few soon after we crossed the state border, which allowed me to spot Armidale airport. That's all part of the game of spot the airfield which I like to play from the back of the airliner.

The town centre is to the right of the shadow cast by the cumulus cloud, while the aerodrome is to the top-left of the photo, near the New England Highway .

Armidale airport (YARM) has a main 05/23 sealed runway with a comfortable length of 1738m, and a shorter 09/27 grassed gravel runway. The elevation is 3556ft, which is very high by Australian standards and is easily explained by the location of Armidale on a plateau in the middle of the Great Dividing Range. I guess local student pilots learn very early on the importance of computing take-off and landing distances.

After Armidale "our" airliner tracked in the direction of Scone, passing over lake Glenbawn and the Hunter River.

Just a minute later, an open-sky mine (of the type sung by Midnight Oil before its lead singer chose an alternative career path) could be seen south of Muswellbrook. That's still the Hunter River in the background

And for a slightly more challenging game of spot the airfield, what about photographing Boeing's factory from the International Space Station?

Paragliding Sydney's Northern Beaches

2010-03-29T17:58:00.001+11:00

Aeronautical information published by Airservices Australia goes through four amendment cycles every year: information contained in the AIP book, DAP and ERSA is updated with each amendment cycle, while charts are only updated every other amendment cycle.

This is why VFR pilots need to buy a new VTC (Visual Terminal Chart) every six months. The other reason is the constant folding, unfolding, marking tracks, erasing tracks and using the Tasman Sea area for writing clearances and the ATIS. There's only so much abuse a chart can take. I just added two bits of tape to my current VTC and it has to last me till June. And I didn't fly that much. Charts seem to be designed for self-destruction when no longer current.

Now, what happens when a chart needs urgent updating that cannot wait for the next amendment cycle? That's when NOTAMS come in, such as this one found in the FIR section of the NOTAMs for Area 21:

AMEND HANG GLIDER SYMBOLS ON AIP SYDNEY VTC AS FLW:
ADD JOINING RED LINE BTN THE SYMBOLS AT NEWPORT (S33 40.0 E151 20.0)
AND NARRABEEN TO INDICATE THAT HANG GLIDER OPS OCCUR AT OTHER POINTS
BETWEEN.
FROM 12 142123 TO PERM

Clearly, if pilots expect hand gliders only at these two points while they can in fact be found anywhere in-between, this is a safety issue. So I took my nicest red pen and joined the two points with a nice, thick and conspicuous red line.

After patting myself on the back for having read the NOTAMs in full and spotted this one, I was left wondering where those hand gliders on the Northern Beaches would launch from. The roof of the Bahá'í Temple? The top of the lighthouse at Barrenjoey Head? Or are we talking about parasailing? It's all relatively flat out there, and I couldn't remember seeing nice cliffs such as those found near Stanwell Park.

Thanks again to the Almighty Internet, I discovered the Northern Beaches Hand Glider Club. They launch both hand gliders and paragliders from a number of locations along the aforementioned red line: Newport, Mona Vale, Cooks Terrace, Warriewood, Turimetta, and all the way south to Long Reef.

Most of the launch sites have an elevation of about 100 feet. My guess is that they use a combination of thermals and ridge soaring to stay up in the air, otherwise that's a very short glide down to the beach. Pretty impressive. A pity they do not offer joyflights or instruction, those sites are much closer to my house than Bankstown airport.

Wilkins Runway, Antarctica

2010-03-15T22:29:00.002+11:00

If you had to choose between Iceland, Greenland and Australia as the country which built a runway out of compacted snow and ice on top of a glacier you would be forgiven for discarding Australia straight away. And you'd be wrong.

I found the ad below in the aviation section of The Australian a while back, which reminded me of the existence of the Wilkins Runway, a 3500 meter-long (that's 11,500 feet) runway built a few years ago in Antarctica.

The scientists and support staff working at the various scientific bases over there can now enjoy the convenience of a weekly airline service, which beats having to spend two weeks on a boat crossing some of the roughest seas on the planet.

Skytraders operates this very peculiar airline with one Airbus A319 fitted with long-range tanks. The flight from Hobart, Tasmania to Wilkins Runway takes approximately 4.5 hours and takes place about once a week during the summer period.

Since meteorological conditions are rather unpredictable and unforgiving, and alternate airports are few and far between in that corner of the world, the airliner always has the option of flying all the way back to Hobart. That's quite smart, since it also eliminates the need for refuelling in Antarctica.

Photo by AAD. © Commonwealth of Australia.

The runway is actually made of hard blue ice on top of which a layer of compacted snow was laid down. Snow provides better grip than ice and also does not melt as much under the sun. Still, the Airbus 319 Flight Policy issued by the Australian Antarctic Division says that at times during the summer, flights will be constrained by temperature and friction issues at Wilkins Runway. Flights during this period may only occur during “night” hours.

There is no entry in the ERSA for Wilkins Runway, but an RNAV approach can be found. The runway is called 09T/27T. The letter T refers to the fact that all headings are in degrees true, as opposed to degrees magnetic. That's what happens when you get too near a magnetic pole: magnetic declination is too large and unpredictable to predicate aerial navigation on compass readings. The aerodrome chart mentions the existence of a PAPI on 09T.

Another thing I didn't know is that the Australian Antarctic Territory is the largest chunk of Antarctica. Amazing what you can learn through an interest in aviation.

Wings over Illawarra 2010

2010-03-05T17:48:00.002+11:00

Three (not four) of us flew down to Wollongong last Sunday for a half (not full) day of aviation fun at the excellent Wings over Illawara airshow. The short version of what we saw and heard is in this video, the longer version follows further below.

Wollongong being only 30 nautical miles from Bankstown, every aircraft on the club's booking sheet was booked with the same destination, except one 152 and the simulator. The plan was for four of us to fly down for the day in Archer VH-SFA.

The skies over Bankstown looked friendly and flyable, however the forecast for Wollongong quickly curbed our enthusiasm: light showers of rain and overcast at 1500ft. Not very good for a VFR flight over the escarpment with a highest point at 1860ft. We decided to go anyway and have a look at the actual conditions, and fly back home if landing at Wollongong was not possible.

Chris had computed beforehand that with fuel tanks only filled up to the step (68 litres for each tank) instead of full (91 litres), we would stay under MTOW and keep the CG within limits even with four blokes in the Archer. This would give us about three hours of autonomy, more than enough for the trip, legal reserves and a comfortable safety buffer.

Since club aircraft are only refuelled to the steps every night, we were confident the plan would come together. I think you can see where this is going.

We found both tanks were near full, which brought us 40kg over MTOW. There is no safe way to pump or syphon fuel out and it would take 1.5 hours to burn the excess fuel doing circuits, clearly not an option. Carl very generously offered to give up his seat which allowed Chris, Ted and myself to depart Bankstown safely. Thanks again Carl!

We followed the M5 to the south then tracked direct to Wollongong from Menangle. Coming over the escarpment the cloud layer was a little higher and definitely not as dense as forecasted. We descended into Wollongong where Chris landed on runway 34 after a perfectly executed tight circuit.

We found a great little parking spot for the Archer next to the windsock and decided to set up camp there. That's Chris holding the fort on the photo below. We chose the spot in the hope that the Archer would learn a trick or two from the Mustang parked right behind, but much to our disappointment the Archer was still making the same 4-cylinder noise on the way back.

I was able to take photos of the airplanes on display without anyone standing in front since we flew in before the gates opened to the general public. That's a C-130 being towed by the HARS truck. Notice the clouds at the top of the escarpment.

HARS (Historical Aircraft Restoration Society) volunteers do a fantastic job bringing vintage aircraft back to airworthy condition. What they managed to achieve while running the organisation on a shoestring is just mind-boggling. Their network of volunteers is second to none, with more than 70 licensed aircraft engineers. I spoke with a truckie whose contribution to HARS is transporting aircrafts, or parts thereof, from anywhere in Australia to the HARS hangars at Wollongong. He may not be flying left seat in Connie nor rebuilding a Twin Wasp radial engine, but his contribution is just as essential as anybody else's.

This C-47 (i.e. a military DC-3) VH-EAF was built in 1945 but never saw any action in WWII and was later used for transporting dignitaries in Australia.

The Lockheed Neptune VH-IOY above was operated by the RAAF out of Townsville up until 1977 as an anti-submarine reconnaissance aircraft. A similar Neptune was once flown from Perth to the US in 2.5 days without refuelling thanks to extra fuel tanks.

Walking through the HARS hangar one doesn't know where to look. Here a radial engine shares storage space with three jet engines. Elsewhere a wooden crate contains crankshaft, master rod and connecting rods for a Twin Wasp R2000 radial engine, probably for HARS's DC-4 VH-PAF.

The highlight of the day was the Roulettes display. The Roulettes are the aerobatics display team of the RAAF and are based at East Sale in Victoria. They fly the PC-9 turboprop twin-seat aeroplane, which is also the "basic" trainer for the RAAF.

All Roulettes pilots are also instructors with the Air Force. Although designed in Switzerland, the PC-9 used by the RAAF was built under license by Hawker de Havilland in Bankstown. This is the factory that Boeing recently decided to close down and relocate to Victoria.

This De Havilland Vampire VH-FJW was actually built in Australia, at the same plant in Bankstown mentioned above. It was used by the Telstars, one of the ancestors of the Roulettes.

Also coming out of the de Havilland factory in Sydney was this de Havilland Drover VH-DHM, only one of twenty built. The aircraft suffered from initial propeller problems which lead to the loss of three airframe, and was plagued with performance problems the rest of its life in service. Difficult to see in the photo is the third engine located in the nose.

From our vantage point near the windsock we could admire all sorts of aircraft taxiing for runway 34, such as this Yak-52 VH-VHV. The nose art reads "Red Hot and Russian".

This Thorp T-18C VH-AKO was one of the first all-metal homebuilt aircraft, and the first one to use an all-flying tail . It was designed to be built out of twelve 4' x 12' sheets of aluminium. The wings of this Model C can be folded against the fuselage for storage and transportation.

The Mustang VH-MFT parked right behind us had flown in from Caboolture, Queensland where he is operated by Mustang Flights and can be seen at the Caboolture Warplane Museum. Chris made a video of the Mustang starting up the big 27-litre V12 Packard V-1650-7 engine, a variant of the better-known Rolls Royce Merlin. This should be made into a ringtone for pilots.

We had to cut our day short because a trough coming from the south was bringing in more clouds and rain. We left around 1:30PM and missed the Hornet display. I flew the leg back to Bansktown.

We could see a dark area of weather moving towards Wollongong on our left wingtip. Sydney Radar was describing it as "severe" to another pilot on the frequency, but thankfully it remained west of Camden so was not an issue for us.

Approaching Bankstown I though for an instant that I had found the strobe light of the 2RN inbound reporting point only to realise I was looking at lightning between distant clouds. We clearly left at the right time. We landed on 11L, taxied back and spent some time at the club.

Later in the afternoon I was at home putting video clips together for the youtube video when thunderstorms came in and heavy rain started to fall over Sydney. I was glad, as the saying goes, to be on the ground wishing I was in the air rather than the opposite.

A fellow flying blogger visits Sydney

2010-02-27T17:13:00.004+11:00

Without any doubt, the highlight of writing an aviation blog is meeting in real life pilots I first got in touch with through the blog. This is how I had a coffee at Frankfurt airport with Vincent in 2008, and how I went flying with Chris in 2009. 2010 promises to be a bumper year in that respect, something I am really looking forward to.

Early January I had the pleasure of playing host for one day to Michael and his lovely wife who had the very inspired idea of leaving the Michigan winter behind and spent a few weeks in Australia and New Zealand over the holiday season. Michael is the blogger behind Cleared for the Option and flies out of Willow Run airport (KYIP), near Detroit and is currently working on his instrument rating.

The three of us went for a local flight around Sydney on a Sunday morning, leaving the circuit for 11L at Bankstown on crosswind in the Archer VH-SFA.

We flew the GA lane northbound across Sydney's northern suburbs and turned southbound around Palm Beach.

I started descending to 1500ft over the water. Approaching Long Reef, we experienced some radio problems when requesting a clearance for the Harbour Scenic One procedure: the transmission was perfect one moment, chopped and hardly audible the next. I tried switching radios, still the same. I advised ATC I would do orbits outside of controlled airspace and contact them again when the problem is fixed.

Michael suggested that since I was low and doing orbits, my wing may be blocking the signal intermittently. That made a lot of sense, so I climbed and flew straight for a moment and the problem fixed itself. Thanks Michael!

Tracking towards the Harbour Bridge our traffic was a helicopter towing a massive red banner over Manly Beach. He was not going terribly fast so we overtook him on the right hand side.

This was a banner ad for WeightWatchers. I find it kind of cruel to fly a weight loss ad over the beach on a Sunday afternoon, it's really preying on beachgoers' insecurities, which I guess makes for effective advertisement.

We did a couple of orbits over the Harbour Bridge and the Opera House which offered great views of Sydney CBD. Did I already mention that The Matrix was shot here?

After that we tracked south along the coast on the Victor One route. Clouds were starting to build up, time to head back to Bankstown!

Below is Stanwell Park, not too far from where Laurence Hargrave flew his box kites which inspired many of the early pioneers of heavier-than-air flight, including the Wright brothers. Today hand gliders launch from there, the launch pad can be seen on the right-hand side of the carpark.

We flew back to Bankstown via Appin, followed the M5, called inbound at 2RN and joined final for runway 11R at Warwick Farm. All the details in the video below, and as you can see I had a lot of fun playing with Youtube's annotations feature!

Before saying goodbye we exchanged out-of-date aviation charts as we had agreed beforehand. When Michael opened the Detroit sectional chart to show me his local airspace, I couldn't believe the density of aerodromes. The scale of the chart is the same as our VNC in Australia, but there's many, many more airports. Granted, the population density of the US is eleven times that of Australia, but that's still very impressive. Michael also gave me some approach plates for his home airport of Willow Run, my first time holding approach plates in my hands actually since I do not have, nor am I training for, an instrument rating (yet).

It was great meeting Michael and his lovely wife, we had a great time flying around Sydney and exchanging pilot stories. Now I only need to find a valid reason to pay Michael a visit in Detroit and go for a local flight with him out of Willow Run. And I'm afraid setting a new record with a $2,000+ trans-Pacific hamburger run is not a valid reason.

Update: Michael posted his write-up of our flight with some extra photos, make sure to visit his blog! Thanks again Michael for getting in touch with me in the first place, this was awesome!

Saturday morning flight to Camden

2010-02-21T14:05:00.000+11:00

I realised a few days ago that I had to become current again if I wanted to fly with passengers to Wollongong next week-end for the Wings over Illawarra airshow. Three take-offs and landings within the last 90 days are required for carrying passengers, and I only had one in my logbook.

The weatherman promised all Sydneysiders that Saturday would end a long string of IFR-only week-ends, so I booked Warrior VH-SFM for a few hours in the early morning. Time to shake the rust off with a flight to Camden, only 17 nautical miles south-west of Bankstown. The weather didn't disappoint.

Of course the world and his wife had also come to the conclusion that this was a perfect day to resume VFR flying in the Sydney area. All five spots in the run-up area for 29R at Bankstown were taken, so I did my pre take-off checks and engine run-up on the taxiway. I then joined the line for the holding point, making sure to apply the park brake so that my Piper would not creep forward and chew on the tail of the Cessna in front of me.

It may have been smarter to go straight for runway 29C rather than wait for everyone else on runway left. Something to keep in mind for next time. This is a very similar dilemma to that of choosing a check-out lane at the supermarket. The other lane always go faster.

I eventually took off on 29R and flew around the training area, identifying landmarks such as the pipeline south of the Penrith R536 restricted area and Warragamba Dam. With all the rain we received in the last weeks the area was very green. I called inbound at Mayfield and advertised myself as unfamiliar with Camden. The controller gave me an upwind join for 06 rather than a base join and I made a decent (for a solo flight) full-stop landing despite flaring too high. This was my first time landing at Camden in daylight, all the previous times had been at night.

Camden is a great GA airport with more interesting aircraft types than are usually seen around Bankstown. I mentioned this airport already as a possible place for me to do a tailwheel endorsement later this year. Grass trips have magical powers when it comes to attracting vintage aircraft such as this Tiger Moth above or Curtis Aviation's T-6G Texan below.

After a little look around I departed Camden on downwind for 06 at the circuit altitude of 1300ft. On late downwind the controller gave me a traffic, a Cessna in my 2 o'clock, on descent and about to join base. By the time I found him he was right in front of me and quickly disappeared in the bottom left corner of my windscreen.

I would not call it too close for comfort, but I would have appreciated if the controller had kept him at 1800ft for an upwind join rather than descend him in front of me, even if that meant an extra circuit for the Cessna. That being said, separation is the responsibility of the pilot in a GAAP control zone, and I probably could have anticipated the traffic by listening more carefully for the inbound aircraft who most likely was inbound from Mayfield. Lesson learnt.

I followed the ranges to Warragamba Dam then kept the pipeline on my left all the way to Prospect Reservoir. An aircraft was performing aerobatics near an unnamed airfield south of Penrith so I gave it a wide berth. A Cessna and an Extra reported inbound at Prospect before me and we all joined downwind for 29R. I flared too high on that one too and all the credit for the decent landing goes to the oleo suspension of the Warrior.

After crossing the holding point I stopped for a few seconds to perform my after landing actions and checks (landing lights and strobes off, transponder on standby, flaps up, fuel pump off, switch frequency to ground) and started taxiing back to the clubhouse. That's when the ground controller called me asking me to next time please avoid stopping right after vacating the runway since I prevented the aircraft behind me from vacating. Point taken, I won't do it again.

Spot the airfield: Canberra

2010-02-15T21:53:00.000+11:00

On a flight from Sydney to Melbourne in a Qantas 767 we flew over Canberra airport. Which is not terribly surprising since Canberra is on a straight line between Sydney and Melbourne.

It is actually for this very reason that Canberra was chosen as the Australian federal capital in 1908 since neither Sydney nor Melbourne would accept the rival city as the federal capital.

The longuest of the two runways at YSCB is 17/35 with a length of nearly 3300m while runway 12/30 is about half the length. There's a great video taken from the control tower of a Russian IL-76 using every single inch of runway 17 on take-off. I'll let you decide how much chance and careful planning were involved in this successful take-off.

Right near the left edge of the photo above you can see two concentric ring roads around Capital Hill on top of which sits the Australian Federal Parliament.

It took me a while to realise which airport this was. I had only been to Canberra once before, it was at night and it was a disaster. For previous photos of airfields I took from airliners, you can start here.

It feels good to know I'm not the only one filling up blog posts with photos taken through the windows of airliners: don't miss this awesome photo of Grand Canyon taken by Rob Bremmer, the blogger behind why2fly who nicely captured the two pillars of spotting things from the sky: always carry a camera and look out the window often.

The Foxbat, the Gazelle and the mysterious Stollite

2010-02-05T22:45:00.004+11:00

After posting about the trip Chris and I took to Taree, I received an email from Jamie Honan from the Sydney Recreational Flying Club who pointed me to a slideshow of photos he took on a similar trip to Taree in a Foxbat A22.

The Sydney Recreational Flying Club is based at The Oaks, an airfield 25 nautical miles west of Bankstown. I have to admit I was never curious enough to visit the airfield and only knew The Oaks as one of the entry points to Camden aerodrome. It is now firmly on my list of places to fly to.

Looking at their web site I realised The Oaks is home to a vibrant community of aviation enthusiasts. It's not often that one comes across a flying club where a significant portion of members are not only owners, but builders of airplanes. And not only builders of kit aircrafts, which is increasingly popular and already a great achievement, but also the type of builders who master the entire process, from initial idea to flying aircraft.

The photos were taken from the FoxBat and show a Skyfox Gazelle and a Stollite in formation. Don't try to look up the manufacturer's web site for the Stollite because there's none. Arthur Armour, an instructor with SRFC who runs the Taree Wing of the club, built it himself and called it Stollite as in STOL Lite. A few performance figures and design details can be found here.

Digging deeper into the web site, I discovered SRFC members do not only build airplanes from scratch, they also build their own hangars. My hat off to them, they sure know how to keep the spirit of the pioneers of aviation alive.

Speaking of plane crazy people, I will be attending the Wings over Illawarra airshow organised by the Historical Aircraft Reconstruction Society on February 28th at Wollongong aerodrome. There's a fantastic program with the RAAF Roulettes and Connie among others, and all the profits go to a good cause. Now let's just hope the weather cooperates.

Updated: Arthur Armour kindly sent me a link to his photo gallery. Building stuff seems to be a common theme in Arthur's life: the house, the hangar and multiple airplanes: the Super Cricket, the LR-2, the Stollite and Arthur's ongoing project, the 'T'Star. An amazing range of skills.

A gem in the red dust: Windorah aerodrome

2010-01-14T22:48:00.000+11:00

There's the Australian aerodromes I have photographed from the sky, and there's the ones I have photographed from the ground: Wondai, Goondiwindi, Cherrabah or Taree. And there's a few I haven't yet mentioned on this blog, such as Windorah aerodrome (YWDH).

Windorah (pop. 60) is a well-known stop for those travelling through Outback Queensland, being roughly half-way between Blackall (pop. 1160, 400km east) and Birdsville (pop. 115, 400km west). The local Western Star Hotel has some historical information about the town.

Remember that Simpsons episode where Bart convinces a young boy from the Australian outback to walk six hours to his nearest neighbour just to double-check if water drains clockwise in the Southern Hemisphere? That's the kind of distances we are talking about here.

Being so far away from anywhere and in particular 1300km from the State capital Brisbane, political correctness is mostly unknown here, as can be inferred from the plaque above which proudly adorns the front wall of the terminal building.

This good-natured form of humour, with an aviation twist, can also be found on the door of the male toilet, which reads "unwanted baggage".

The service desk has all the amenities the modern-day regional traveller would expect. You have to admire the sign about new regulations for liquids onboard. Somewhere on the wall someone wrote the toll-free SARTIME number.

The yellow sticker advertises a watering hole ten hours drive south-east of Windorah called the Bulloo River Motel. It may be far, but at least by the time you get back home from the pub you've sobered up. The photo below was taken more than two years ago, I don't know whether the sticker survived CASA's alcohol and other drugs in aviation initiative.

Windorah for us was only a refuelling stop on our way to Birdsville so we didn't make it to town. That will have to wait for our next visit. The photo below was taken on downwind for runway 04 after taking-off from Windorah, en route to Birdsville.

This trip was part of a one-week fly-away organised in September 2007 by two instructors of the Redcliffe Aero Club where I was training for my PPL at the time. This was the trip of a lifetime (so far).

Each Cessna 172SP had one instructor and two students onboard. The two students would take turns flying or navigating (or sleeping) in the back seat. Everything was new for me: I had 15 hours total time when we started, and doubled my flying hours in just one week. I had not started this blog at the time which is why I never blogged about it until today.

I wrote an article about this adventure in the March 2008 issue of a French aviation magazine called Aviation et Pilote. There's still plenty of images of flying the Australian Outback in there if you can't read French. Having trained in Australia I found myself having to look up the French translation of aviation terms I only knew in English, which is a bit of an uneasy feeling.

I cannot finish this post without mentioning Bub, the lady who mans the fuel pump and fuel drums at Windorah. And also the gas station. Bub welcomed us with a roll of toilet paper and handed a few sheets to the pilots who she thought had performed "a shit landing". One poster on pprune.org summed it all up saying "Bub calls a spade a "bloody shovel" but is always ready with a cold drink and a helping hand. Country hospitality at its best".

It's that time of year again

2009-12-16T16:26:00.007+11:00

I am not talking about the Christmas season, although we all had a lot of fun choosing presents for Twelve Days of Christmas: An Aviation Gift Guide, but about the start of the cyclone season over the tropical part of Australia. The cyclone season Down Under usually runs from December to April.

To kick off the season we have TC Laurence, currently in the Broome area in the north-western corner of Australia, about 15 degrees latitude south. Broome, which is as far from Sydney as Vancouver is from the Gulf of Mexico or Paris is from Greenland, is the region in Australia most prone to cyclones.

Although tropical cyclones very rarely move as far south as Sydney, the influence of tropical cyclones in the north-east can be felt in the south in the form of heavy rain falls. There's a great map here with the track of all cyclones around Australia for the last hundred years or so.

The aviation weather forecast for the Broome area (Area 69) spells out what tropical cyclone means in graphic details:

OVERVIEW:
 TROPICAL CYCLONE LAURENCE 933HPA NEAR 15.4S 124.2E AT 00Z, MOVING SW
 AT 05 KNOTS [REFER TO SIGMET].
 FREQUENT EMBEDDED THUNDERSTORMS, SEVERE TURBULENCE AND WIDESPREAD
 RAIN WITHIN 120NM OF TC LAURENCE. AREAS OF RAIN WITH OCCASIONAL
 THUNDERSTORMS REMAINDER EAST OF YBRM/PRES. ISOLATED THUNDERSTORMS AND
 SHOWERS REMAINDER.
 
 WIND:
 3000     5000     7000     10000         14000         18500
 VRB/20   VRB/20   VRB/20   VRB/20 PS10   VRB/20 PS04   VRB/20 MS03
 REMARKS: [1] WINDS ALL LEVELS CLOCKWISE AROUND TROPICAL CYCLONE.
          [2] WINDS INCREASING TO 60 KNOTS WITHIN 120NM OF
              TROPICAL CYCLONE INCREASING TO 110 KNOTS TOWARDS TC
 CENTRE.

You will notice of course that winds blow clockwise around a low in the Southern Hemisphere, in opposition to how things are done north of the Equator. Blame my illustrious fellow Frenchman for that.

Interestingly, this is why this weather phenomenon is called a cyclone: a cyclonic air flow is an air flow that rotates in the same direction as the Earth. As the Earth rotates from East to West, the rotation is clockwise when seen from a point above the South Pole, and anti-clockwise when seen from a point above the North Pole. To add to the confusion, cyclones are known as hurricanes in the US and typhoons in Asia.

Depending which of the club aircraft I would choose to fly close enough to the center of TC Laurence, with a headwind of 110kt, I could either hover in the Archer (cruise speed 115kt), or even fly backwards in the Warrior (cruise speed 95kt). Not for long obviously, but a sure way to add my name to the shortlist for the Darwin Awards.

On the eleventh day of Christmas...

2009-12-11T20:07:00.000+11:00

Pick your top ten favourite aircraft of all times. Now, tell me, how many of these are tailwheel aircraft? Hmmm? My point. For Christmas, I would like a tailwheel endorsement. Because it's fun. Because it's different. Because it opens the door to a whole new world of flying adventures.

This post is the eleventh in The Twelve Days of Christmas: An Aviation Gift Guide, a series of posts on Christmas wishes by a number of aviation bloggers. Make sure you check out all the other posts for a range of very diverse aviation wishes, dreams, and talented bloggers!

From what I've heard and read, flying a taildragger is not in itself harder than flying a tricycle-gear aircraft, it is just different. In cruise the aircraft behaves the same as a tricycle-gear aircraft, it is the taxi, take-off and landing phases of flight that are more challenging. There is reduced forward visibility while taxiing to contend with, increased P-torque effects on take-off and higher sensitivity to crosswind in the landing phase. Tailwheel aircraft do not tolerate sloppy landings the same way other aircraft do, which is a good thing training-wise.

I always enjoy watching the flying videos that French private pilot Jean-Claude Garnavaud regularly puts up on his blog Carnet de Vol. Jean-Claude flies a Piper J-3 with the Aéro-Club Hispano-Suiza at Cergy-Pontoise aerodrome near Paris. The Cub is so much fun to fly he says that he does not see the point of cross-country flying, circuits and local flights are all he needs!

I had a look at taildragger schools at Camden airport near Sydney. Most of them instruct in the Citabria. The time they quoted for a tailwheel endorsement ranges from five to ten hours and the price per hour is comparable to that of hiring an Archer. The whole endorsement won't cost me much more than a Bose-X headset, and I already have a headset.

The fact that many taildraggers are also certified for aerobatics adds to the attraction. I wouldn't mind trying my hand at a few wingovers, spins, loops or rolls during the endorsement training.

The range of new airplanes available for hire by a private pilot with a tailwheel endorsement reads like an airshow line-up: Tiger Moth, Chipmunk, T-6 Texan, Cessna 180, Pitts Special and even a Beechcraft Staggerwing. And that's only for the two flying schools I visited at Camden airport.

A whole new world of flying indeed. So make yourself happy, or make your favourite pilot happy, and put a tailwheel endorsement on your aviation wish list for 2010!

On the fifth day of Christmas...

2009-12-05T16:23:00.005+11:00

A few fellow aviation bloggers and I have decided to hang our Christmas stockings to the same virtual fireplace and take turns at blogging about what we wish for Christmas. This ranges so far from a Cirrus SR-22 to Monika Petrillo's FlyAbout DVD, aviation coasters and one very impressive pilot watch.

For Christmas, I would like a Portable Collision Avoidance System, such as Zaon's PCAS MRX. This system is just as portable as a hand-held GPS unit and provides alerts on nearby traffic as long as other traffic is transponder-equipped and there is an interrogating system nearby, such as a secondary radar or an airliner overhead.

Priced at USD 449 on skygeek.com, this is a very good investment for anyone who has come too close for comfort with another aircraft and wish he had identified the threat before it turned into a real danger. I'm thinking for example of entry points to busy GA airports such as the only two compulsory entry points for Sydney's Bankstown airport. Max Trescott also identified a number of similar local hotspots such as navaids and prominent geographic features.

Blogger pilotbrad ordered the Zaon MRX, unpacked it, started using it and already reported one instance of the system picking up an aircraft Brad and his instructor would have missed otherwise.

A portable system is ideal for pilots who do not always fly the same aircraft such as private pilots who hire aircraft from flying clubs and flight instructors who may instruct in a dozen different aircraft in the course of one week. A large flying school in the US just decided to buy the Zaon product for all their flight instructors rather than equip the airplanes.

For the price of two or three hours of aircraft hire, a PCAS system may well represent the best investment for improving in-flight safety. I wouldn't be surprised to learn that Santa always takes his PCAS with him whichever sledge he's flying, even though NORAD is tracking him.

A380: The Quiet Whale of the Skies

2009-12-01T12:29:00.000+11:00

I flew in an Airbus A380 for the first time last week on a Singapore Airlines flight from Sydney to Singapore before continuing on to Frankfurt in a Boeing 747-400 and finally arriving in Stockholm in a 737-500. On the way back the aviation history timeline was retraced in chronologial order with an MD-80, a 777-300ER and again the A380. A comparison of the three long-haul airliners from the point of view of an economy class passenger is therefore in order.

The A380 has become a familiar sight in the Sydney sky since Singapore Airlines, the launch customer for the A380, started flying the aircraft on the Singapore-Sydney route in October 2007. Qantas and Emirates also operate the A380 out of Sydney.

Because it is a lot stubbier than the 747, the A380 does not look big when seen in flight. But it does look big at the gate. Think about it this way: the diameter of the fuselage of a 737 is 4 meters. The diameter of the fan of one of the Trent-900 engines on the A380 is 3 meters. This is not the largest jet engine in use though: the 777 I flew in on the way back holds the record for the largest turbofan with the GE90-115B: 3.25 meters. And it only needs two of them.

Three airbridges are used for loading the A380: one for each deck, and an additional one for the exclusive suites on the main (i.e. bottom) deck. Even though the airplane was full, boarding and un-boarding was surprisingly quick.

The cabin is bright and spacious. The nicely curved windows looks great. Windows in doors have a built-in lens so that the crew can see in the dead angle against the fuselage. Smart. Everything looks new of course, I couldn't see a single streak of oil or grease on the wing flaps from my seat.

Watching the ailerons operate at low speed is amazing: the computer moves each of the three ailerons independently for minimising load on the wing, a function known as Load Alleviation Function apparently. Plenty more technical details on flightglobal.com.

The A380 is a very quiet airplane. In cruise it is definitely quieter than the 777, and a lot quieter than the 747-400. Put on your noise-cancelling earphones and you won't hear a thing. But the most surprising thing is how quiet it is on take-off: none of the usual shaking and rattling, just an increased hum and we're airborne. The level of vibration in cruise is very low. One cannot quite forget being inside an airliner, but little by little we're getting close.

The interior and in-flight entertainment system are the same as on the refurbished 777. Actually, the new interior was initially designed for the A380, but ended up in 777s when the A380 was delayed. The seat pitch is far from generous though, and as my next-seat neighbour remarked the seats could do with an extra inch of padding.

All in all the A380 wins hands-down against the 747-400 for comfort on long-haul flights. And if Boeing manages to make the 747-800 even quieter than the A380 when it enters commercial service with Lufthansa in 2011, I may even reconsider my decision to never fly Lufthansa again on long-haul flights again.

Up the coast and down the worm: a daytrip to Taree

2009-11-04T19:55:00.016+11:00

Chris over at The Online Temple of Chris Parkes (best name ever for a personal blog if your name happens to be Chris Parkes) posted about a flight we did together from Bankstown to Taree and back. This was a great flight, and the first flight where I shared cockpit duties with a fellow pilot who was not an instructor, so this was a big first for me.

Flying from Bankstown to Taree involves crossing the restricted airspace around and above Williamtown RAAF base. Since this was the week-end most of the restricted airspace was de-activated, but we followed the prescribed VFR route anyway, both because it is good training and offers fantastic views: who would say no to following the coastline at 500ft on a CAVOK day?

There's plenty more photos and trip details in Chris's post so I won't double-up here. Let me just say that the flight up the coast was truly spectacular. Finding Taree airport wasn't too hard, it's right next to the town and not too far from where the Pacific Highway crosses the Manning River. A Rex Saab 340 was waiting for us to vacate the runway before they could backtrack and take-off since there is no taxiway alongside the runway at Taree.

We parked on the grass right in front of the Manning River Aero Club and went inside to say hello and ended up having a bit of a yarn with the local flight instructor. It's a great club-house with a very homely feel to it, really the kind of club I would love to fly with if it wasn't so bloody far away from the big city. Their fleet is very typical of a small club: one Cessna 152 and one Piper Archer.

The friendly character of the club house is confirmed by the central location of the combined kitchen and bar bench right in the middle of the clubhouse. The whole setup was probably designed long before CASA came up with the idea of the AOD Initiative.

Across the street is the Taree Airport Hotel. For my non-Australian readers, this is not a hotel, this is a pub. Many pubs in Australia are called hotels, because there used to be a time when pubs, especially in rural areas, performed the role now played by motels and budget hotel chains. Some pubs still today provide accommodation. They're few and far between though, but definitely worth it, especially in remote areas. Articles written by Shelley Ross in Australian Flying often feature great outback locations, with a dirt strip in the back paddock as a bonus.

Keeping with the aviation theme, the board used by the Airport Hotel Bottle Shop (that's a liquor store for my American readers) is a taildragger of sorts, with a long fuselage and short stubby wings. Must require a lot of rudder to enter a turn! I'm not quite sure it would take-off anyway, due to the position of the center of lift ahead of the main wheels.

I do not know what type of watering hole this is, but I can give you one piece of factual evidence: as I walked back to the airport I came across a pair of female undies in the ditch across the road. I doubt the action that lead to the loss of the garment originated from the airport.

We left and tracked west down the valley and then turned south in the direction of Gloucester, still following the train tracks. I tried to get flight following but we were too low and the controller didn't have us on radar, we would have needed to be at least 5000ft AMSL in this area to appear on his scope. So we were literally flying under the radar.

Following the tracks was easy because there was one of us flying the airplane and the other one reading the map. With an upper limit of 1000ft AMSL and hills on both side I wouldn't want to spend too much time reading the map if I was on my own. There's one section right before Dungog where the track disappears into a short tunnel but that wasn't enough to throw us off. We didn't overfly Dungog to avoid breaking the 1000ft over populated areas rule.

Being in the left seat and not in direct control of navigating or radio communication is a bit unsettling at first but I quickly adjusted to it. Of the two legs I enjoyed the second one most, i.e. the one where I was in the right seat navigating and taking care of the radios and GPS. That was the same for Chris who said he too preferred the right seat.

In my opinion the satisfaction comes from the fact that not having to hand-fly the airplane frees up time and brain space for managing the flight in a thorough manner. Flying a technically advanced aircraft with an autopilot coupled to a smart navigation system must feel the same.

Except you cannot exchange flying tales with a glass cockpit, so I'll choose Chris over George the Autopilot any day!

Why flight planning matters even more at night

2009-10-27T22:30:00.000+11:00

The first two dual navigation exercises towards my Night Rating were very different from each other. Thankfully, it was the first one that was very bad, and the second one that was rather good, so I must have learnt something in the middle. I'll spare you the usual blow-by-blow account of each flight and rather focus on what went wrong and the lessons learnt.

My first night flight beyond the confines of the local circuit took me and my instructor Ben from Bankstown to Canberra via Goulburn and back via Goulburn NDB, Bindook VOR and Camden NDB.

My airmanship was all over the place. Soon after departing Bankstown I realised that making any sense of the ERC chart at night was going to be very, very difficult, especially when trying to distinguish between the blue and the green lines under red light. The track I had carefully drawn and highlighted was also undistinguishable from the million other lines on the chart, and the large yellow streak of highlighter had disappeared.

It would have taken me five seconds to look at the chart at home under red light and anticipate the problem. But I didn't and ended up giving Ben a massive headache on the way back when I descended at more than double the standard rate in order to stay under controlled airspace. Staying ahead of the airplane is hard when you are reading the chart with your finger like a six-year-old.

I had also forgotten to write down the PAL frequency for Goulburn. No problem I thought, let me look it up in the ERSA. Where's the ERSA? In my flight bag. Where's the flight bag? On the back seat. I turn around. While flying on instruments. Where's my black bag? Which bag is which? I can't see anything. I hand over the controls to Ben who kindly accepts, at that stage probably wondering what he got himself into when he took me on as a student.

Ah good, here's my bag. I can feel the spiral-bound book, I pull it out. Bad luck, that's the VFG, which is also spiral-bound. Second try lucky, that's the ERSA. Flip, flip, flip to the page for Goulburn. PAL is 119.6. Scribble it down and tune it in. End of the minor drama, which could have been altogether avoided with five extra seconds of preparation at home, namely writing the PAL frequency down on my flight plan, next to the YGLB waypoint. Lesson learnt.

My two circuits at Canberra were so abysmally bad I still feel the full pain of utter embarrassment writing about it. And that was in controlled airspace, with someone telling me what altitude to keep and when to turn base in order to avoid the big hill not too far from the threshold of runway 30. The hill was named Disaster Hill, after what is known as the Canberra Air Disaster of 1940.

When initially approaching the airport coming from Goulburn I mistook one runway for the other, which threw me off right from the start. I was soon overwhelmed by loss of situational awareness, flying a circuit at an airport I had never been to before, even by day, listening to and talking to the controller at the same time. Which could all have been saved with preparation since I knew exactly which direction I would be coming from.

I was obviously very upset with myself after the flight. It was one of those moments I mentioned earlier when I wonder if flying is really the thing for me and if am I not deluding myself thinking I can reach the standard required for the test, let alone fly an airplane safely.

But going through the (many) notes I took during the debrief and after counselling myself on the topic I decided to make the next flight an absolute success by being thoroughly prepared.

The other flight took us to Cessnock for circuits via the Calga and Mount McQuoid NDB, then east to the Norah Head lighthouse and following the coastline south to Barrenjoey Head, a Harbour Scenic procedure at 2500ft and back to Bankstown down the GA lane.

Apart from a bad approach on the first circuit when I decided to go-around, the rest of the flight was fine and even very enjoyable. I was most of the time sufficiently ahead of the airplane and could anticipate turns, climbs, descents and all frequency changes. The only thing that threw me off was situating the aerodrome relative to the town of Cessnock. That was the only bit I had forgotten to prepare, and it came back to bite me. In the photo below the town is the yellow area on the left, which turns into a thin outline under red light.

How did I prepare for the flight? I had drawn a number of mud maps, one for each section of the flight. I didn't invent the concept, it is recommended in the Civil Aviation Advisory Publication about Night Flying. Here's what a mud map looks like:

It's a schematic representation of the flight that contains all the information I need for flying the flight as planned, and only that information. Obviously if I had to perform a diversion I would have to revert to the regular documentation. Preparing the mud map is also of course a great way to rehearse the flight at home. I drew my mud maps using only a lead pencil on A5 portrait sheets so that they would fit on my kneeboard.

Because we are navigating by instruments, we do not need topographical information, and angles and distances do not have to be accurate. I write down track and altitude for each leg, frequencies for ATC and navaids, boundaries where to change frequency, and anything else that may be useful, such as circuit altitude or forecast QNH for an aerodrome. Writing this I realise that one thing is missing, it is the lowest safe altitude for the area, which I would need for a diversion.

It only costs the time it takes to draw the mud map, and it makes a world of a difference. It is amazing how much difference preparation can make. And not just being prepared as I would for a day flight, but being prepared for navigating at night. Which by now you must have realised is a very different kettle of fish.

I knew I had to be very prepared for flying at night. I read about it. I even blogged about it. But for some reason I had to get burnt once for the lesson to permeate my thick skull.

Or, as I read recently, good judgment comes from experience. Unfortunately, the experience usually comes from bad judgement.

Instrument Flying in the Flight Simulator

2009-10-17T19:27:00.000+11:00

Part of my training towards a Night VFR Rating happens in a flight simulator rather than in an actual aircraft. I have had four sim sessions of about one hour each where we practised instrument flying and navigation using navaids. We flew NDB and VOR intercepts, first without and then with wind, before putting everything together.

Training in the sim helps lower costs, but also makes training safer and more comprehensive. It is safer because it does not involve flying an actual single-engine airplane in the dark over mountains around a navaid that attracts training flights like a honey pot attracts bees, but also because some situations that can be easily simulated would be either impractical or too dangerous to practice in flight.

The sim installed at the club is an Elite Airtrainer AT-21 which can simulate a range of single and twin-engine airplanes, including the Piper Archer. It is a Category B Approved Synthetic Trainer (all the details in CASA-speak here), meaning it can be used for teaching the parts of the curriculum that have to do with instrument flying but I can only log time as instrument time in simulator, not as regular flying hours.

If I had to sum up my experience with the simulator so far, I would say that the sim is very effective and efficient as a training device, but absolutely underwhelming as an experience. I think this has more to do with the sim I trained in itself than simulated flying in general. Max Trescott blogged a while ago about all the fun he had training in the Cessna Caravan simulator, so there's hope!

The sim comes in two parts: a small enclosed cockpit for the student to pretend he is flying a real airplane, and a workstation for the instructor to monitor the student and control the world he is flying in. The instructor can change winds, turn navaids off or fail airplane equipment. It must feel like playing God.

The cockpit itself is not very different from the set-up many flight simulator enthusiasts have at home. It's all PC-based, and the hardware such as yokes, radio stacks and rudder pedals can be purchased from Elite. The controls have some element of force feedback in them but fail at getting anywhere near realistic. Trimming the aircraft is really hard because one cannot really feel the simulated airplane through the controls.

The avionics are more realistic than the flight controls, with dedicated buttons and LED displays for the radio stack and an ersatz Garmin 430. The switches, knobs and buttons all feel a bit flimsy compared to the real thing. The PCB can be felt flexing behind when a button is pushed.

That's the instructor's view of the panel in the photo above, which is exactly the same as what the student has in front of him. The screen resolution is 1024x768, which may sound like enough, but picture yourself trying to read the tiny compass for aligning the DG: there's less pixels than degrees displayed!

The graphics are inferior to what one would find in, for example, the latest versions of MS Flight Simulator or X-Plane, but that's no big deal at all since I was flying in the dark and concentrating on the instruments. As far as I could tell the flight model is realistic enough. There's a feature built in that puts the airplane into a very extreme attitude if no control input is detected for about 5 seconds. A very effective reminder to fly the airplane whatever happens!

There's a placard on the flight sim that always draws a smile from me: instructions for "real emergency procedures". There are the emergency procedures that you practice in the sim and that won't kill you and may even make you a better pilot, and there's the real ones, such as the computer catching fire, which forces the student to get out of the room while the instructor hoses the fire down using a real-world fire extinguisher.

The sim does not care about the weather outside, hence training in the sim is never canceled. Or so does the sales pitch goes. My limited experience though is that the sim itself is in the end no more reliable than the real world. I may have been unlucky, but out of four sessions one was postponed because the sim had broken down. From the warning sign above, I suspect this was not a one-off, there are more systemic issues with that sim.

All in all, the simulator is an efficient, safe and cost-effective training device which falls short of being exciting or fun. This is very far from the full-motion flight simulators with sound and smoke effects used by the airlines. But then again the price tag is very different. Still, $50 an hour just for the sim ($118 with the instructor) seems a bit high for me. Knowing the software industry, I suspect a large part of the costs goes into the maintenance contract.

How much does learning to fly really cost?

2009-10-11T18:50:00.001+11:00

The cost of learning to fly is often found to be the main obstacle standing between aviation enthusiasts and their dream of one day flying an airplane on their own. In this post I hope to shed some light on the topic by sharing the actual cost figures for my initial flying training, from pushing the door of the Redcliffe Aero Club for the first time on March 17th, 2007 to obtaining my Private Pilot Licence 585 days and 76 flight hours later.

The dollars quoted here are Australian dollars. One unit of our national currency is worth 90 US cents and 60 eurocents. The cost of flying training varies considerably between countries, so if you're reading this from overseas any direct conversion of the costs into your local currency won't help you much. As a rule of thumb, flying training in Australia is a bit more expensive than in the US but a lot cheaper than in Europe.

Granted, the figures given below are extracted from a statistical sample of exactly one, but at least these are real figures. Which begs the question, how representative is yours truly of the average student pilot? Let me put it this way: no-one ever referred to me as a problem student (at least not while I was listening) but I was never called a born aviator either.

Some flying skills I acquired rather easily, others took much longer to sink in. I trained in very typical General Aviation aircraft, namely C152s up to GFPT and C172s up to PPL. My training schedule was disturbed many times by spells of bad weather and multi-week business trips overseas. I also had to fit flying lessons within the typical schedule of someone with a full-time job, a partner and a social life. There are a couple of navigation exercises that I had to do twice, either due to weather or because of me busting controlled airspace.

There were also a couple of occasions when I walked back to my car after a flying lesson thinking that flying was not the thing for me after all. Of course each time I came back and of course the next time was great. So all in all I think my experience is fairly representative.

The costs of PPL training can be broken down into five categories:

Dual hire of the aircraft: you pay for the aircraft and for the instructor sitting next to you in the right seat.
Solo hire of the aircraft: you pay for aircraft hire only.
Briefings: that's when you receive one-on-one classroom-style instruction from your instructor, typically before and after each flight.
Fees: you cannot escape paying fees for your medical, for theoretical exams and flight tests, and for that useless ASIC card.
Pilot paraphernalia: maps, ERSA, textbooks, protractor, ruler, flight computer, headset, etc.

Without further ado, here's the figures:

Total budget is therefore $19,382. It's a lot, but notice that 87% of the budget went directly toward time spent in the air, either solo or under direct instruction. I flew 76 hours in total, i.e. 25 hours more than the 51 hours that are considered as a minimum by the training curriculum of the aero club where I learnt.

Because $19,382 is a scary figure, we'll now talk about it in terms of a monthly flying training budget, since most flying schools follow a pay-as-you-go charging model: you pay if and only if you fly.

In my case the monthly expenses averaged $1000. This is only an average: be prepared for an increase in the cash-burn rate in the final few months though. The last two or three navigation exercises in the PPL are long flights, which can easily add up to more than 10 hours of flying in one month if you're lucky with the weather.

This is why I would recommend saving money before starting training so that you know from the start that you will not have to put flying training on hold because of a cash-flow problem. The more often you fly the less you have to re-learn with each lesson, and therefore the lower the overall number of flight hours required. For example, you could have $10,000 saved beforehand and then set aside $500 each month for flying expenses over 20 months.

In conclusion, learning to fly is expensive. There's no two ways about it.

That being said, I believe anyone whose income allows them some degree of discretionary spending can afford flying training up to the Private Pilot Licence and even beyond, provided they plan their training properly and have their priorities straight in the entertainment and hobbies department.

You may have to cut back on other discretionary expenses, but once you've caught the bug you won't look back. And you will need to free time up anyway, because for the next year or so learning to fly will consume a lot of your free time and spare brain cycles.

You may also want to check with your family and partner that they are in agreement and supportive of your plan. Discuss financial arrangement of course but also the time demand flying training is going to put on your evenings and week-ends. Don't downplay the risk factor either, there are inherent risks with flying and you'd better be upfront about it and use the opportunity to dispel common misconceptions about those little airplanes who keep falling off the sky.

The price tag may be expensive, but the benefits of learning to fly reach far beyond the cockpit. Vincent at Plastic Pilot said it all once: how flying improved my life. I can relate to each and every on the list. The only thing I regret about learning to fly is to not have made the decision years earlier. If you're reading this thinking you may want to give it a go, ring your local aero club and book a trial introductory flight. You'll never regret it.

The Robert Brothers' Flying Flea

2009-10-03T07:49:00.002+10:00

I discovered the amazing life of George Roberts by reading his obituary in the Sydney Morning Herald. A very gifted person with all things mechanical, George Roberts was the oldest living former employee of Qantas where he had contributed in a major fashion to aircraft maintenance and flying safety before, during and after World War II.

Other national and local newspapers also carried the story and the forum thread on pprune has a photo of George Roberts as well as messages from people who crossed paths with him and unanimously remember him as a gentleman and a great bloke.

His dedication to the Flying Kangaroo did not stop when he retired in 1970 as he went on and volunteered his time to preserving the history of the early days of Qantas. Such a priceless treasure trove of information he was that a book was written about the pioneering years of Australian aviation seen through his eyes.

I would like to expand on one particular story from his very rich life.

In 1935, one year before he joined Qantas at Archerfield near Brisbane, George together with brothers Norm and Don built a Flying Flea aircraft. Building anything from plans was certainly no challenge for the three brothers who grew up building cars in the family's motor shop in Ipswich.

The aircraft only flew once and is now on display at the Queensland Museum in Brisbane. The fact that no-one got hurt in the maiden flight is more than many can say about the Flying Flea. On a recent visit to the museum I took a few photos of what was probably the first aircraft design in history made available to amateurs who wanted to build and fly it themselves.

As these photos unfortunately fail to show, the Flying Flea has two staggered wings. The pilot controls the angle of attack of the larger wing above his head by moving the stick forward and back, while the smaller wing behind the pilot is fixed and is actually more of a horizontal stabiliser. There are no ailerons, which explains the very large rudder: roll is obtained indirectly as a secondary effect of yaw. There's nothing wrong with that: the first-generation ultralights in the 70's were designed this way.

The text next to the display has this to say:

The ultra-lightweight Flying Flea was designed in France by Henri Mignet for hobby builders. Considerable numbers were constructed throughout the world. This example was built by members of the Roberts family in Ipswich in 1935. Due to the large number of crashes of Flying Fleas, particularly in England, the Roberts' aircraft was not officially allowed to fly. After one unofficial test it was stored under their Ipswich house, until they donated it to the Queensland Museum in 1982. The aircraft is constructed of plywood and fabric, and is powered by a 23 h.p. (17 kW), 4 cylinder Henderson motorcycle engine.

Note how the lateral movement of the stick controls both the rudder and the tailwheel using external cables, very similar to a billycart. Legend has it that Mignet failed at flying regular 3-axis airplanes because of his lack of coordination between hands and feet, hence the absence of rudder pedals in his design.

Later designs of the Flying Flea solved the aerodynamics problems that killed many flying enthusiasts in the late 1930's and convinced the Roberts brothers not to attempt a second flight in what people started calling the Crashing Flea. In the video below Henri Mignet can be seen showcasing his airplane in England after flying across the English Channel, 26 years after Louis Blériot.

The video also shows a Flying Flea built by a young English pilot by the name of Stephen Appleby, with sponsoring from the Daily Express. After an unsteady take-off, the footage captured his airplane performing a somersault after landing in a ploughed field. The pilot was unhurt and went on to rebuild the machine, again with sponsorship from the Daily Express.

The Flying Flea today serves as a reminder of a time when flying was new, trendy, accessible and dangerous. An era nicely captured in the 1958 French film Les Copains du Dimanche and plenty others.

Homebuilt aircraft are now on the come-back. Safe designs are available as pre-built kits. Some use wood and fabric, others are all-metal or even composite airframes. And enthusiasts can still be found who build and fly Flying Fleas.

It is a big understatement to say that aviation safety has come a long way since the time of the pioneers. Every single aspect of aviation, from weather forecasting to pilot training and from engines to airframes and instruments is now many orders of magnitude safer than it was back then. Something we have to thank people like George Roberts for.

Warbirds at Cessnock: Albatros, Trojan and Avenger

2009-09-27T12:51:00.003+10:00

After shutting down at Cessnock on our $100 wine bottle flight we noticed a nearby hangar with shiny warbirds inside: a T-28 Trojan, a Grumman Avenger, and two L-39 Albatros. All airplanes that rank far higher on the aviation coolness scale than our Piper Archer. But we love the Archer too.

We walked into the hangar and asked for permission to look at the warbirds from up close and snap a few photos. The friendly pilot in a flight suit invited us to join the guided tour, which for $10 each meant we could take as many photos as we wanted, sit in the cockpits and ask all our questions. Bargain.

Let me say it again: we were allowed to sit in the cockpits. In many aviation museums they won't even let you approach the airplanes, probably for good reasons. I've seen a small child hang with both hands from a pitot tube once. But today was different because this was not a museum, this was a hangar full of airworthy aircraft.

This is Ingo on the photo above reluctantly extracting himself from the Czechoslovakia-made jet trainer L-39 Albatros. The Albatros is a very popular aircraft with private owners since it is relatively cheap to maintain and operate as long as you are able to buy it in the first place. The cockpit has a definite military feel to it. The parts that do not have inscriptions in cyrillic characters on them are standard General Aviation avionics, such as the VHF-COM unit, transponder and ELT who are exactly the same models as in our Archer.

Not only are the two Albatros airworthy, they're also available for joyrides. This explains why we were allowed to sit in the cockpits. Just the age-old foot-in-the-door marketing technique: if at first you think $3040 is a ludicrous amount of money for 30 minutes of engine time, after having spent 2 minutes sitting in the cockpit looking at the dials you start thinking of reasons why this may not be so ridiculous after all. This is only 32 times as expensive as hiring a Piper Archer after all. Half an hour in a jet above Cessnock or a cross-country fight from Sydney to Ayers Rock? Entre les deux mon coeur balance.

The other side of the hangar contained a beautiful T-28 Trojan, this time from the other side of the iron curtain. It was used by both the US Air Force and the US Navy as a trainer, and saw some action in Vietnam. As is rather obvious from the photo below, it is a single-engine 9-cylinder radial engine driving a massive tri-blade metal propeller.

Climbing into the cockpit is surprisingly easy thanks to a number of handles and footsteps built into the (lowered) wing flaps. When sitting in the cockpit (did I mention we were allowed to sit in the cockpits?), the controls feel amazingly light, thanks to counterweights. The stick can be moved in all directions with only two fingers. I checked, the control surfaces moved accordingly!

The engine is an air-cooled Wright R-1820-86 Cyclone 9 radial engine, the same as on the B-17 Flying Fortress. A single row of nine cylinders delivers 1425 hp. The dark blue case in-between the cylinders and the propeller is a planetary reduction gear box which allows the propeller to rotate slower than the engine crankshaft. Propellers become less efficient when the linear speed of the blade tips approaches the speed of sound. Linear speed is proportional to the length of the propeller blades, and this is a rather large propeller, which explains why it needs a reduction gearbox while our Archer doesn't.

The last warbird of the lot was a Grumman Avenger. Just like the Corsair, its wings can be folded back for easy storage onboard aircraft carriers where space is at a premium.

Note the old-style attitude indicator with only a white line on a uniformly dark background to signify the horizon. No way to tell if you are up or down if you find yourself in an unusual attitude!

Near the center, right next to the "bomb bay" lever is the "wing folding" lever. It operates the hydraulic system which folds and unfolds the wings automatically, without any external help required. A very very cool training video explains the basics of piloting an F4U Corsair, including spreading the wings. A D-handle in the cockpit is used to lock the wings in place, it may be the same mechanism in the Avenger, I didn't check. The last few seconds of the video show the Corsair taxiing with the wings folded over the top. The Corsair was the fighter aircraft used by Pappy Boyington's squadron in WWII, made famous by the Baa Baa Black Sheep TV series.

I have to admit it is still a bit of a mystery to me how a folding wing can be structurally strong without a main spar going through the wing from the wing box all the way to the wingtip. We are talking about airplanes with no limitations on aerobatics and that can pull out of a dive with a load factor of 7G. All the load seems to be placed on the hinge pins that lock into place when the wing is completely unfolded. But then again, I studied software engineering, not mechanical engineering, so my knowledge is quite modest in that department.

On the photo below, the hydraulics on the right-hand side which control the wing folding mechanism, the ones on the left hand side operate the retractable landing gear, whose leg can be seen at the bottom of the picture.

Here again we have a radial engine, a Wright R-2600-20, but this time it's actually two engines rolled into one: two rows of seven cylinders each acting on the same crankshaft. The two rows are back-to-back, which makes cooling less effective on the back row since it gets less air than the front row.

I found a beautifully nerdy article about how Pratt & Whitney engineers managed to solve the torsional vibration problem caused by having two engines hammer the same crankshaft at a different position. The article relates to a similar engine, the R-2800 Double Wasp. More information that you would ever want to know, but you have to admire the dedication of the engineers who solved such a problem by trial and error, without any computer for simulating vibration modes.

All radial engines leak oil because not all of the bottom cylinders have their valves closed, and oil may also leak from other engine components such as push rods and rocker arms. I suspect the drip tray on the ground comes straight from your regular 4-burner gas barbecue. In the photo above the bomb bay and the cowl flaps are in the open position.

The Albatros flight may be expensive, but in comparison $1500 for 25 minutes in the T-28 sounds almost like a good deal. Too bad my wedding was last month, I would have happily added this item to the wedding registry. Anyway, I'm already very lucky to be able to fly smaller airplanes such as the Archer, so I'll stop here. But a loop, a slow roll or even a take-off in the T-28 must really be something special.

I should never have walked into that hangar. I should never have sat in that cockpit.

I can't drink I'm flying

2009-09-20T14:04:00.000+10:00

This felt so weird and so good at the same time. Sorry, I won't be tasting wine because, you see, I'm the pilot and, well, you know, eight hours from bottle to throttle and all that kind of things. Yes, small airplane, we flew in from Sydney. Beautiful day for flying indeed. My passengers wouldn't mind tasting the Semillon though. And we'll take a couple of bottles back with us, thank you very much. Yes, we walked from the airport. No, walking alongside the highway is not terribly pleasant.

That scene played out at a winery in the Hunter Valley on a beautiful early spring Sunday a couple of weeks ago. Susanne and Ingo had joined me as passengers and plane spotters on a day trip to the wine growing region north of Sydney. And they even brought lunch with them. You may remember Ingo from the $100 burger in Wollongong episode. With his better half around lunch was a lot healthier than the famous Aviator Burger.

We left Bankstown in Piper Archer VH-SFR and proceeded up the GA lane through Sydney's northern suburbs. Approaching Warnervale Ingo spotted a couple of ultralights about to cut across our route, so I made an early right turn to Norah Head lighthouse. We drew a couple of orbits at 1500ft. I could have flown lower orbits at 1000ft or even 500ft but since we didn't have life jackets with us I preferred to stay within safe gliding distance of the mainland.

We then tracked to Swansea, weaving our way around low dark cumulus clouds. Since we were below 3000ft we only had to remain clear of clouds, with no minimum distance from clouds required either vertically or horizontally. So this was all legal. Being legal does not however automatically imply being safe (that'd be too easy), so I kept my eyes out and steered our craft away from the fluffy stuff.

It's in situations like that that I realise how easy it would be to enter clouds inadvertently. I remember sitting at home earlier on reading reports about VFR flights into IMC and thinking "come on, how can you not realise you're about to enter a cloud?" Well, spend only five seconds with your head down in the cockpit looking up a frequency in the ERSA, finding a landmark on the map or twidling the GPS buttons and you've already covered 300m. In the photo above, five seconds would have put me rather close to that big opaque flying collection of water droplets.

Approaching Newcastle we tracked inland and the scenery changed quickly from waves, rocks and beaches to hills, pastures and trees. The skyscape also changed to more friendly-looking fair weather cumulus clouds.

As we were only a couple of miles away from Cessnock aerodrome a Twin Comanche overtook us on our right at the same level The manoeuvre was definitely safe but the pilot lost karma points on this one. A radio call on the CTAF frequency would have been a nice display of airmanship. I followed him to the dead side and we both joined crosswind for a left-hand circuit to runway 17.

We taxied and parked our little Archer III not too far from a hangar full of warbirds available for joyrides, hoping that the Piper would learn a trick or two over lunchtime. We took a very informative tour of the hangar, the best part of course being sitting in the cockpit of an L-39 Albatros, a T-28 Trojan and an Avenger. Photos and details in a future post if I don't forget.

After lunch, which was delicious but way too healthy for an aviation-themed day out, we walked to the Hunter Valley visitor center, very conveniently located a few hundred meters from the aerodrome, and from there to the De Bortoli winery. Not that we had ever heard about it before, but it happened to be within walking distance from the airport. As can be seen in the photo below, patches of wineyards can be found right up to the airport fence, in-between the runway and the highway so to speak.

Wine connoisseurs would certainly tell you that this very unique terroir, right on the extended centerline of runway 35, is responsible for the wine's unique bouquet, a delicate balance of wild strawberries, citrus fruits, fumes of unleaded mogas from the road and unburned avgas sprinkled by 152s doing circuits with the mixture on full rich.

People who already shared a bottle or two with me know that one of my pet peeves is the overly lyrical labels found on the back of rather ordinary wines. I like to think good wine sells itself. And don't get me started on wines bottles featuring a dozen gold medals from obscure competitions held in unknown places.

After replacing burnt aviation fuel in the tanks with bottles of wine in the baggage compartment, we took off again and headed further west up the Hunter Valley. From Cessnock we tracked to the Singleton NDB to make sure we didn't infringe on the Dochra restricted area and then west to Lake Liddell and back the same way.

It's difficult to tell vineyards from other crops from altitude, but there is one thing that cannot be mistaken for anything else in this part of the world: open-sky mines.

We flew back via Cessnock, Warnervale, Calga NDB and Brooklyn Bridge. Good thing I made a number of inbound calls before overflying Cessnock since another aircraft on the frequency was about to drop skydivers over the area. He waited for me to report overhead Cessnock before dropping what pilots affectionately refer to as meat bombs.

The trip back to Bankstown was uneventful, which is good, except for a very, very ordinary landing with some crosswind which saw me float and drift way too far from the centreline.

The great thing with flying with passengers, in addition to making the whole day more enjoyable, eating a healthy lunch and sharing costs, is that they take videos during take-offs and landings. I tried to compress three hours of flying into about 2 minutes of video, result below.

We finished the day at home with a beautiful coq au vin that Nina had prepared while we were away, which of course we washed down with one of the bottles that had survived my landing at Bankstown. Thinking about it, we could call this type of flying trip the $100 wine bottle.

Moisture in the air and water in the tanks

2009-09-02T20:55:00.000+10:00

The date was sometime in July, and the intended destination was Taree, NSW, with the idea of getting back into cross-country flying. There's only so much pottering around the Sydney basin one can do, as beautiful as it is, and the glimpse of the area I got while competing above Warnervale enticed me to come back.

At first it looked as if I had been very lucky with picking Saturday morning for flying, since this was the only day in the week with no rain and even a bit of sunshine. Even the aviation weather forecast on the day before looked hopeful.

I arrived at the club and checked the weather. The trip to Taree was not going to work. Most of the aerodromes along the way had forecasted or reported conditions with either low clouds, fog, showers of rain or a combination thereof. With full tanks I would be able to fly to Taree and fly back to Bankstown without refueling if I couldn't land. But rain was coming in from the south-west later in the afternoon, reaching Sydney around 4PM which would result in visibility of 4000m, below VFR minimums. I could visualise the holes in the Swiss cheese slowly lining up. A Plan B was needed.

I decided instead to fly an abbreviated version of the planned flight and go to Cessnock via Warnervale and Newcastle. This way I could still fly part of the planned flight, and would be back early enough to avoid the rain. Flight planning took a little while, the flight notification was eventually submitted and I was on my way to preflight the aircraft.

Yes, in the picture above there is actually water at the bottom of the fuel tester. Moisture in the air and cold temperatures overnight result in water condensing inside the half-empty fuel tanks. The phenomenon is more common in low-wing aircraft where the wings are closer to the ground and therefore exposed to lower temperatures at night. This is no big deal at all, just a reminder to always perform a thorough pre-flight. Which I did.

From the ground I could see rather low clouds in the GA lane, but I decided to go anyway since there was enough space between the low clouds to turn back to the airport or go to the training area should the lane northbound be obscured by clouds. Taking off in those conditions pushed me a little bit outside of my comfort zone, but not to the point where I felt unsafe.

I took off on 29R, maintained 1000ft until well outside the control zone and climbed to 2000ft. Contrary to what the area forecast had said, there were still plenty of low clouds still firmly seated in the valleys to the west, over the Berowra area. And it didn't look like they planned on dissipating anytime soon.

After Patonga I adjusted my heading slightly toward Warnervale at 3500ft, with still lots of clouds in the Kariong area. I found Warnervale aerodrome, which is not really a challenge given its prominent location between the Pacific Highway and Tuggerah Lake. One lonely Cessna 152 was doing circuits at Warnervale. I made a call on the CTAF frequency advising everyone I was overflying the aerodrome and kept tracking north.

I flew over Vales Point power station and then over Lake Macquarie. This is Eraring Power Station at the back of the picture above. I was maintaining 3500ft, so you can tell from the photo that there was one point where the weather forecast was spot on: cumulus and stratocumulus clouds with a base of 3000ft.

Swansea was easy to identify thanks to the breakwaters and the bridge. The Aeropelican aerodrome appeared immediately after. How much nicer is it to see it from the bumpy and noisy comfort of a small airplane rather than from the relative comfort of an airliner?

Nobbys Heads was also very easy to find, thanks to the very distinctive shape of the coastline and the lighthouse. If the Williamtown military control zone had been active I would have been in trouble by then, but the ATIS had told me that it was de-active, as is generally the case on week-ends, so all was good.

My aircraft on the day, the Piper Archer VH-SFA, was fitted with a carburettor temperature gauge, so I applied carby heat from time to time to keep the needle away from the yellow zone since there was plenty of moisture in the air. I think I would have done that anyway, but the gauge acted as a useful reminder that high humidity and winter temperatures increase the risk of carburettor icing.

At Nobbys Head I turned left and flew west toward Cessnock. I passed Mount Sugarloaf and its twin masts.

The town in front of me was Kurri Kurri, but where had Cessnock airport gone? Answer: it was hiding under the blankies! The cloud blanket that is. I was at 2500ft by then and the clouds looked much lower than that, so instead of going scud running to find an airport I had never been to before, I decided to head south to Warnervale, which I had planned to overfly anyway on my way back from Cessnock. This way, I would get back onto my planned flight.

I couldn't take a direct heading to Warnervale since this would have taken me over high terrain with little space left between the fluffy stuff in the air and the hard stuff on the ground, so I headed for a gap in the hills.

I flew past the Cooranbong aerodrome, which is no longer used as one can tell from the big white crosses at the threshold of each runway. It's sad because it looks like a very nice airport, with a long sealed runway. Apparently, Avondale College used to run an aviation degree out of here up until 2006.

I overflew Warnervale. The same Cessna with the same pilot was still doing circuits. I tuned the Calga NDB and tried my best to track to the aid. Not a big success, but then again I was keeping my eyes out and not flying on instruments. And I have a proof of that: I could spot Mardi Reservoir, and later Somersby aerodrome.

After Calga I tracked to Brookly Bridge, the entry point for the GA lane southbound. This is the highway bridge right above the cowling in the photo below, not the one more to the east which is only for trains, and also dangerously close to the GA lane northbound.

This was my first time flying the GA lane southbound and everything went absolutely according to plan. I had watched the CASA DVD on flying around Sydney a couple of times the day before, which really helped. I also had the GPS on, just to make double sure I would not infringe on Richmond Military CTR. I even slowed down a little to give me more time for thinking and finding the landmarks.

I found the Berowra strobe exactly where I was expecting it, then identified the power substation, the rifle range to my left and Dural Tanks with the strobe on top. I managed to maintain 2500ft all the way down the lane, with some minor zigzagging around clouds required. The picture above says it all.

I picked up the Bankstown ATIS and started a descent in order to be at 1500ft at Prospect Reservoir. I was about to make my inbound call to Bankstown Tower when a pilot came onto the frequency. One could tell immediately from his voice that he was very distressed. But that's a story I'll tell in the next post. I landed on 29R, taxied back to the club house, shut down, wrote down the numbers and tidied up the airplane.

All in all a nice flight even though it didn't go according to plan, and not even according to the revised plan. This was clearly a case of experience is what you get when you don't get what you want.

I was happy with my decision making throughout the flight though. At every point in the flight I had a Plan B and even a Plan C, so I like to think this was a safe flight. The thorough flight preparation definitely paid off. Flying in marginal weather was a good experience too. Now with the summer ahead of us, I'm looking forward to really making it to Taree sometime soon.

Spot the airfield: Gold Coast, Queensland

2009-08-29T19:36:00.001+10:00

On a flight from Sydney to Brisbane in a Qantas 767-338, Air Traffic Control gave us one turn in the hold over Gold Coast airport, which created a photo opportunity for the seventh instalment of our "spot the airfield" series, where I try to spot, photograph and later identify airfields from a window seat at the back of an airliner.

Previous episodes featured Stuttgart, Dalby, Mitchell and Charleville, Lombadina, Clermont, Southport and more recently Aeropelican.

I am not instrument rated (yet), so you'll forgive the approximate description of the procedure: the airplane first flies over the navigation aid (Gold Coast VOR in our case), makes a 180-degree rate-one right turn, flies straight ahead for one minute, one more 180-degree rate-one turn, then one more minute to get back to the navaid. Each half-turn takes one minute (rate-one turn means a heading change of three degrees per second). Flying the entire holding pattern therefore takes four minutes.

The picture above was taken as we were about to complete the turn away from the navaid. The airplane bit in the bottom left corner is the trailing edge of the right wing. The Pacific Highway can be seen running across the pictures, right above the airport.

The airport's little name is YBCG, CG for Coolangatta which was the name of the airport up until 1999. It is a controlled airport, with one very long 14/32 runway and a very short 17/35 cross runway whose sole purpose is, in my opinion, to introduce confusion in the mind of student pilots trying to comply with a taxi clearance there.

It may not very obvious from the taxiway diagram in the ERSA, but a taxi clearance from the GA parking area to the run-up bay for runway 32 for example actually involves crossing runway 17/35 after taxiway Golf before turning on to Foxtrot. That's the bit marked "Runway Incursion Hotspot".

I flew into Gold Coast a few times during my PPL training. The green patch near the water in the top-right corner of the picture above is Burleigh Head, a VFR reporting point used when flying inbound from the north.

The bit of airplane here is the leading edge of the right wing. The four little vertical metal blades are vortex generators, designed to improve the airflow over the wing. That's pretty much all I know on the topic.

As to the function of the yellow piece of metal with a hole in the middle on the right, this mystery was solved by Plastic Pilot a little while ago.

You'll come a-Flying Matilda, with me

2009-08-22T17:19:00.001+10:00

Whatever the rules are for choosing 5-character names for IFR waypoints, there is still plenty of room left for poetic licence. There's a GAMBL waypoint not too far from the town of Casino and a WOOLY JUMPA somewhere over the Pacific. And SEXXI NIPPL have been reported in the Philippines.

In the case of a string of waypoints off the coast of Western Australia, inspiration was drawn from a well-known poem by none other than Banjo Paterson, Australia's best-known bush poet:

WONSA JOLLY SWAGY CAMBS BUIYA BYLLA BONGS UNDER ACOOL EBARR TREES

Sing it out loud with me and you'll get the first two verses of Waltzing Matilda, Australia's unofficial national anthem:

Once a jolly swagman camped by a billabong,

Under the shade of a Coolibah tree

Pretty cool, isn't it? There's lots of waypoint trivia out there. Plastic Pilot once proposed to learn French using French IFR waypoints. Pprune.org has some more. The ultimate reference though, at least for trivia related to the UK airspace, is Nick Locke's reportingpoints.info.

David at Land and Hold Short has come full circle: he's not using a song for naming waypoints, he's composing with navaid idents. Combine that with The Checklist Song and you may get the overture of an aviation opera.

Less Bliss and more Boredom

2009-08-16T09:37:00.012+10:00

Three weeks after our inbound flight, it was time to say goodbye to the European summer and brace for the Australian winter. Not that we noticed much difference: we spent our first afternoon back in Australia soaking in the sun at Balmoral Beach, officially for the sole purpose of helping our Circadian Clock readjust itself to Australian time.

The flight back was very long, entirely experienced in economy class and entirely uneventful. The photo below was taken at sunrise over the Queensland coast, about one hour before touchdown at Sydney.

The Great Circle from Frankfurt to Seoul took us over Berlin, Gdansk at sunset, the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad, Riga and Tartu before entering Russian airspace not too far from St Petersburg.

Entering Russian airspace in a Korean Air 747 brings back memories of KAL 007, the airliner shot down by the USSR Air Force in 1983. I was only nine at the time but I remember reading about it in the Midi Libre newspaper while on summer holidays with my grandparents in the South of France. Not that I was reading international news at such an early age, I was most likely attracted to the article by a photo of the airliner.

In Russian airspace we used a metric flight level at 11000 meters. However, when flying from Poland to Lithuania through the small Russian territory around Kaliningrad, we stayed at FL 350, i.e. 35,000 feet above the reference datum of 1013.25 hPa.

The landscapes of the Gobi desert over Mongolia and north-western China reminded me of the Australian Outback, minus the color red. Then I realised that, since the Great Wall of China was built in order to ward off Mongolian invasions our flightpath would eventualy cross it and I could maybe spot it from the airplane. I remembered something about it being visible from space, so if I kept my face glued to the window I would not miss it. How awesome would that be.

Unfortunately this was not meant to be as a thick layer of stratus clouds started building below us as we approached Beijing from the north-west. Soon after the airliner altered its south-easterly course to track due south towards Beijing, before resuming a more direct route to Seoul.

The reason for the dogleg could be seen right out the window: a massive thunderstorm had developped right on our intended flightpath.

On approach to Seoul I could observe the little crystals of ice that build up on the inside side of the window quickly melt as we passed through the freezing level at about 15,000ft. Yes, I was utterly bored at this stage of the flight.

By the way, I learnt by reading a German flying magazine on holidays that the German word for freezing level is Nullgradgrenze, literaly "zero degree limit". Another funny one is Wolkenuntergrenze, which means cloud base.

We approached Sydney at sunrise, Brooklyn bridge is sort of visible on the photo below.

We landed on 34L at Sydney after a left-hand circuit. We cleared Customs and Quarantine relatively quickly and jumped into a cab direction home. Just like most cabs it had a GPS on the dashboard.

It's amazing how in the space of a couple of decades a classified military technology initially developed during the Cold War to guide ICBMs has now found its way into most cars, mobile phones and of course airplanes.

It's in 1983 that the Reagan Administration took the decision to declassify the NAVSTAR GPS satellite navigation system in order to allow civilian applications, such as better navigation systems for airplanes. It became operational in 1990, just in time for the first Gulf War.

A decision that was taken when it became clear that the downing of Korean Airlines flight KAL 007 by a Russian fighter jet had been triggered by a navigation error that took it over a prohibited section of Russian airspace.

Bliss is Being Bumped up and Bibimbap

2009-08-12T03:28:00.001+10:00

This is a post written from an airliner seat I can plug my netbook into, which seasoned travellers will immediately recognise as a Good Sign. A very good sign that the Gods of Seat Assignment finally smiled at me and bumped me up to Business Class. Bumped us up to business class actually since I have the pleasure of travelling with my wife.

This post is low on the usual aviation technicalities, although as we might see later the subtelties of flight level assignment in Mongolian and Russian airspace can be sensed from a passenger seat for passengers with an inquisitive or bored mind.

For a change, this transcontinental trip was not a business trip, which is why we didn't fly Qantas or Singapore Airlines as usual. When the time came to book our tickets for our (Northern Hemisphere) summer holidays, we decided to go with Korean Airlines, who offered the cheapest fares among all the acceptable airlines. We flew Sydney to Seoul in the half-empty A330-300 in the photo above. Note the Emirates A380 in the background. Maybe next time.

As Nina sat in her seat she couldn't suppress a cry of surprise. Her finger was pointing at the back of the seat in front of her, and at the obvious absence of any personal in-flight entertainment system. There was a screen at the other end of our section, but it all looked like a scene out of the movie Airplane.

Our in-flight entertainment came under the guise of the making of Bibimbap. The choice for food was beef or Bibimbap, which the flight attendant explained was a traditional Korean dish. Being the curious and culturally sensitive couple that we are, we both went for Bibimbap, to the obvious delight of the flight attendant.

That's the only in-flight meal I have ever been served that comes with a five-step instruction sheet. Thinking about it, that's the only meal I ever had that comes with printed instructions. On completing step 5 I recognized the dish as something I ordered a couple of times in the past in a small Korean eatery in the Elizabeth Street Arcade in Brisbane.

Bibimbap is a very healthy mix of vegetables, beef, mushrooms and steamed rice. Sesame oil and hot pepper sauce come as separate ingredients. I enjoyed the dish and washed everything down with a big bowl of seaweed soup, not too bad either, just like a Miso soup, but without the evil tofu.

The cabin crew insisted on having all passengers pull the window shades down even though we were right in the middle of the day. This is all the less understandable since there is only one hour time difference between Sydney and Seoul, so it's not like fake night will help us shift our circadian rhythm to our destination. When asked, the flight attendant said it was "rest time". I felt like I was in Kindergarten again, when they forced us to stop playing and take a nap. Anyway, sticking to our theme of cultural sensitiveness, we accepted the Korean Siesta.

Maybe because the cabin was in the dark, a flight attendant carrying a tray full of glasses down the aisle stumbled as she walked by us and spilled some water over Nina's blanket. No drama at all, the spillage was quickly removed using a single napkin, and no garment got stained in the process. The ensuing display of apologies by the flight attendant, and later by the cabin chief was just amazing. I joked to Nina that she should have played the offended customer and ask for a business class upgrade on our next flight.

After a night in Seoul we resumed our journey with a long 12-hour flight to Frankfurt in a 747-400. I had seat 19B. I entered the airplane, turned right and started looking for my row number on the overhead baggage compartment. Suddenly the most bizarre thing happened. The numbers jumped from 12 to 39. I was so surprised that I asked the flight attendant who directed me upstairs. I climbed up the stairs, turned left and found my wife who had followed instructions and arrived there before me. We looked at the wide seat and exchange a very big smile. Business class. And not any business class seats. Exit row business class seats. To paraphrase Flight of the Conchords, It's Business Time.

After that stupid smile left my face and I had finished playing with the controls of the eight different ways in which I could adjust my seat, I looked through the window and saw lots of convective activity down below in the steppes. We were north-west of Beijing, approaching the border with Mongolia.

Then of course came time for our Korean siesta, even though flight KE905 left at 1:15 PM and arrived in Frankfurt at 5:35 PM. I started exploring the options of the in-flight entertainment system. The flight information gave our cruising altitude over Mongolia as 31494ft. Not a round number? How comes? Cruising altitudes obey the rule of flight levels, which typically work in increments of 1000ft.

Then I clicked on the "Metric" box and it said 9600m. Ah ah... Maybe just like the Russians, Mongolia uses the metric system in aviation. That wouldn't be terribly surprising given Mongolia's history of close alignment with the Soviet Union in the 20th century.

The mystery got thicker later when over Russia we cruised at 38094ft / 11611m for over an hour. Maybe the aiplane was assigned a block level and chose the most efficient altitude. Or maybe something else.

The rest of the flight was absolutely uneventful, which is good. I had a Tuna and Kimchi Onigiri sandwich which wasn't bad at all, very filling and quite likely very healthy too. The good thing with flying Seoul to Frankfurt is that it makes one realise how freaking huge Russia is. You could fit a couple of Australias in there. Which to my European appreciation of distances is simply mind-boggling.

Alone in the dark

2009-07-21T23:02:00.000+10:00

I was driving to the airport from work for my first night solo when rain started to fall. Great. Just what I needed, a wet runway and the likelihood of reduced visibility in the circuit. Or even no night solo at all if Dan estimated it was not safe enough for me to go.

I preflighted the airplane under the rain. It took me a while to understand that the navigation lights on that airplane are activated by the panel lights switch, as opposed to having a dedicated switch like on other airplanes. The landing light had been fixed since the first time I flew the airplane, so I wouldn't have to rely on the wing-mounted light this time. Good. The ground was soaked with water which made it difficult to check the flap hinges or the fuel drains without covering myself in mud.

I went out for three circuits with Dan, the Deputy Chief Flying Instructor, so that he could check that I actually knew what I was doing before signing me out for solo at night. We taxied to 11C, did two normal circuits, one go-around, one normal circuit with no landing light and one full-stop behind a rescue helicopter.

On my first circuit I ended up too high on final so I decided to perform a sideslip to loose altitude without gaining airspeed. "Do you know you're sideslipping?" asked Dan. Yes I answered. I guess I should have verbalised the manoeuvre instead of letting him believe I had developed a habit of unwittingly flying with crossed controls.

Dan explained that sideslips should be avoided at night since judging height is harder than in daytime. Better work on fixing the problem of being high on final rather than on the unsafe solution required to recapture the correct descent profile. 1500 rpm when turning base is the magical number said Dan if I want to be at 500 feet when turning final. Of course this all assumes I fly circuits of correct dimensions, i.e. one minute for each of the last two legs.

Dan said he was happy with me going solo for another hour of circuits. He added that if the airplane started to skid on the wet runway on landing I should apply full power and take-off immediately rather than trying to control the airplane on the ground.

Dan jumped out of the airplane and I taxied back to the run-up bay and then to 11C for ten more circuits. VH-SFA and VH-SFR were the other two aircraft in the circuit, with Dan in one and Ben in the other. So I had two pairs of instructor eyes looking after me. Nice of them to not leave me alone in the dark.

The clouds had cleared a bit by now, and the full moon had risen to the east. On downwind the full moon lit up the entire panel. Having only one person on board allows the 160 hp Warrior to climb and accelerate a lot better. At some point after a touch-and-go I even found myself catching up with a 152 in front so requested and obtained an extended upwind leg for spacing.

The rule when night flying though is to spend the entire upwind leg on instruments and not look outside below 500ft, when ready to turn crosswind. I find that difficult with an aircraft in front of me in the circuit, both because the anti-collision light of the preceding aircraft appear in my peripheral field of vision, right above the dashboard, and also because I want to positively maintain separation, not just rely on ATC spacing aircraft correctly in the circuit. As a matter of fact, in GAAP control zones ATC do not provide separation, the responsibility for avoiding collisions rests entirely with the pilots.

On one circuit I learned a valuable lesson. I had just turned final and the preceding aircraft was on short final. It looked like it was too much to the right so I kept an eye on him to see how he was landing. This distracted me from my scan, and when I next looked at the PAPI lights I saw 4 red lights! I got a bit scared since I didn't how far below the glideslope I was and in addition I remembered there's a line of tall trees in the area. More power, back up to the glideslope.

I landed a few minutes before the tower closed and taxied back to the club house. We spent a bit of time going through all the paperwork required and putting a new stamp in my logbook that says I am competent to fly solo at night in PA28 aircraft at night according to the requirements of CAR 5.01A.

It was starting to get a bit late and I was hungry so I said thank you and good bye to Dan and Ben and walked back to my car. I had not turned round the corner of the airport when rain started to fall again. I made a special mental note that I was lucky with weather this time, so that I won't get too upset next time weather Karma does not go my way.

First go-around in a commercial airplane

2009-07-15T22:37:00.000+10:00

Tuesday morning, about 7:30AM. I am half-awake in a window seat on the left-hand side of a Qantas Boeing 737-400 on approach to Brisbane airport. We just flew past the tip of North Stradbroke Island, and in a minute or two the airplane will touch down on runway 19. The landing gear goes down, soon followed by flaps. We make a left turn onto final. More flaps.

This is a beautiful Queensland winter morning, with high clouds and amazing visibility. I can see Brisbane CBD very clearly, and in the distance the towers of Swanbank power station, some 50km away. The sight brings back memories of screwing up majorly in this very area on a PPL navigation exercise about a year ago. But back to our story.

My seat is a perfect vantage point for observing the trailing edge of the left wing. We're now aligned with the runway. The flaps move down a little more and then stop. They're about half-way down, definitely not extended as they should be for landing. A few seconds pass and then we pitch up for a go-around. Some power is applied, but not full take-off power, or at least it doesn't sound like it. The rate of climb is moderate.

We make a series of left turns back to the Mud Island area. The captain makes an announcement saying that we went around because of a problem with the flight controls, that this is a routine procedure, no need to worry, we will be on the ground shortly, and sorry for the inconvenience. The flaps haven't moved at all since final. We come back for a very uneventful landing on 19.

As we taxi to the gate the flaps are still in the same partially extended position. They only come back up a few minutes after we reach the gate. The flaps actually come up very slowly, possibly because the backup electrical flap retraction mechanism was used, rather than the normal hydraulic one. That's my guess based on those notes, and I'll stop here with the armchair incident investigation.

As I was walking out of the narrowbody airplane I noticed the captain standing at the cockpit door saying goodbye to passengers, which is rather unusual for Qantas. I asked him if this was a flaps failure and he confirmed with a wink.

So that was all for the adventure. Nothing spectacular really. Sorry for indulging in Gonzo journalism, but that's la loi du genre. The fact that this was my first go-around ever on a commercial flight after hundreds of flights on airliners I guess should be taken as a testimony to the reliability of airline flying.

Speaking about journalism, I found this article about a similar incident on the same type of airplane in Alaska. They quote an FAA person as saying that they do not regard the failure of flaps to be a safety hazard. Which makes a lot of sense. Some airplanes do not have flaps at all. Student pilots perform flapless landings routinely. Flaps are a very convenient luxury.

I was momentarily impressed by how a local newspaper actually sought qualified technical advice when reporting about an aviation incident that didn't even involve injured passengers or a bent airplane. That was before I read the final two paragraphs, where they quote a local ham radio operator who describes the radio transmissions as "dramatic and alarming to hear" and offers a piece of definitive advice by saying "I would definitely be watching and questioning. I would be kind of apprehensive". I guess the opinion of the FAA person was too sensible to end an aviation story with.

More night circuits and a bit of daylight

2009-07-09T22:54:00.002+10:00

My last session of night circuits was much, much better than the previous one. Ben said he is now ready to send me solo at night, which will happen as soon as my schedule and the weather conditions agree. So all the beating myself up and rehearsing circuit procedures in my head and on paper paid off.

This time I was prepared. I had eaten a triple cheeseburger on the way to Bankstown. For some reason whenever I go flying I feel excused for eating junk food. I was hydrated but not too much. I had my own torchlight and the pre-flight visit didn't reveal any nasty surprise. Earlier in the day the wind was blowing at 15 knots gusting to 25, but as night fell so did the wind, down to a more manageable 8 knots. There was a catch though: the forecast called for moderate to severe turbulence below 5000ft, which combined with the crosswind made for a few challenging final legs.

The aircraft that night was VH-SFK, still a Warrior but much better equipped than IJK which I flew the time before. As you can see on the photo above, the row of switches actually lights up on this aircraft. The Garmin 430 automatically dims the display at night. Ben showed me the settings page where the display brightness can be adjusted. If you look back at the photos taken on my very first night flight, you can tell the GPS display was still on full bright. The lights of the annunciator panel can also be dimmed.

I flashed the landing light three times as a warning sign for anyone around to stay clear of the aircraft and started the engine after a bit of priming. We taxied for left-hand circuits on 29C. As we approached the main apron two Aero Commander crossed in front of us, following a larger Metroliner, like ducklings lined up behind their mother.

For some unknown reason, we were the only training aircraft in the circuit that evening, in contrast with the time before when we had to wait twenty minutes in the run-up bay before someone left the circuit and the controller allowed us to join the merry-go-round. Maybe the forecasted turbulence discouraged other pilots. Maybe we were just lucky. Maybe there was something good on TV for a change.

We started with two normal circuits to get me back in the saddle. Preparation paid off, I didn't forget anything and the shape of the circuits was acceptable this time. Not great, but acceptable. There was a crosswind from the right on final which I managed to handle reasonably well, even though we drifted a bit far from the centreline on a couple of occasions. I should have put more ailerons in after removing the crab. Landings were a lot harder than the previous time, but my excuse is that that's what one wants with crosswind landings: a long float means the possibility of drifting downwind of the centreline, and flying with crossed control in the flare means more drag.

The crosswind was blowing our downwind leg a bit too far away from the runway, and the moving map on the GPS showed us a bit too close to the edge of the control zone for comfort. The control zone at Bankstown is more or less a circle with a radius of 3 nautical miles, so the correct analogy for circuits there would be a goldfish in his bowl. Ben suggested I do not fly a straight crosswind leg, but rather fly a climbing turn from upwind to downwind, which definitely helped bring us closer to the runway.

Then came lighting failures. Ben turned all the interior lights off. I took my torchlight which I had kept handy, turned it on and stuck it to the side of my headset, right above the earcup gel. It works fantastically well, and the red glow from the torchlight illuminated the whole panel. The added bonus of sticking the torchlight under the headset of course is that the light follows where the pilot is looking.

We did four or five circuits like that. The torchlight didn't move. Ben asked the tower controller to shine at us the green light that would indicate we are cleared to land in the event of a radio failure. On the next circuit the controller showed us the red light for a so-called "tower-initiated go-around". I didn't forget to clean up the aircraft this time. We did an uneventful flapless landing, another normal circuit and then it was time to call it a night.

Back at the clubhouse we looked at the syllabus for Night VFR and realised that I cannot go solo before I have practiced unusual attitude recovery under the hood in daytime. I guess CASA does not like the idea of people practicing spiral dives and approaching the stall in a climbing turn at night.

So on the next Sunday we went out to the training area for practicing unusual attitude recovery. There's only two techniques to remember, depending on whether the nose is pointing up or down, so that wasn't too hard. Nose up, full power, push nose down, wings level. Nose down, power to idle, wings level, pull nose up. And in both cases finish by re-establishing straight and level flying at cruise power.

The good thing on that short 0.7 hour flight is that I spent 0.4 hour under the hood. I put the hood on as we passed 500 ft after take-off. Ben handled the radios and gave me vectors to the training area to perform unusual attitude recovery exercises and later back to Bankstown via Prospect and all the way to late downwind where I took the hood off before landing on 29R.

So I'm now officially ready to go solo at night. I'm just waiting for the planets to align between my availability, that of my instructor and that crap weather we've been having for the last three months. Even though it is obviously not the same as a first solo, this is still very exciting.

Flying Competition at Warnervale

2009-06-29T20:21:00.022+10:00

I recently participated in a flying competition organised by the club at Warnervale aerodrome. Another pilot had already put his hand up for ferrying the Warrior from Bankstown for the day, so I decided to drive instead, Warnervale being about an hour drive north of Sydney. And since the weather forecast was good and we had not explored that corner of New South Wales yet, Nina and I decided to make a day trip out of it.

We drove from Sydney and crossed the Hawkesbury River at Brooklyn Bridge. Not to be confused with the bridge of the same name in New York City. The area seems to have more than a coincidental relationship with the Big Apple since the bridge itself was built by American contractors, and the suburb across the river is called Long Island.

Brooklyn Bridge happens to be the entry point for the Bankstown GA Lane southbound. The lane is a north-south corridor of Class G airspace squeezed in-between the Richmond RAAF base to the west and the Sydney CTR to the east. The lane has an upper limit of 2500 ft.

Warnervale aerodrome is very easy too find, just a couple of kilometers off the motorway. It's one of those typical country aerodromes. What's also unfortunately typical about it is that it's soon going to be closed down under the pressure of property developers. A sign on the wall in the clubhouse seemed to indicate that the flying activities will be relocated to Aeropelican, about 15 nautical miles to the North-East.

Because there was a suspected problem with the starter motor on VH-IJK, we didn't stop the engine in-between competitors. Lindsay, the instructor, would stand on the wing while pilots swapped places. I have to say I love the idea of just sitting down in the airplane, fastening the seat belt and pushing the throttle forward. Feels just like driving a flying car.

We taxied to the run-up bay and then down a dirt track to the holding point where we decided to take-off immediately rather than wait for the aircraft on base to land. As I lined up I was shocked at how narrow the runway was. It really looked like we had taken the wrong turn down a local farmer's driveway. The irreplaceable Google Earth told me later that the runway is about 8 metres wide, compared to 18 at Redcliffe or 30 metres at Bankstown.

At 400 feet Lindsay took over while I put on the hood. Then she got me to do some climbing turns, straight climbs and straight and level flying under the hood. At the stage we were about 3000 feet. Lindsay briefly took over to put the aircraft into an unusual attitude (a spiral dive) from which I had to recover on instruments. Throttle back smoothly, wings level, pull the yoke back without stalling and recover.

Next was a simulated forced landing without power. Throttle to idle, carby heat, mixture, fuel, capture and trim for glide attitude. Finding where to land was not too hard since we were right overhead the aerodrome. I had plenty of altitude to expend before landing so I brought the flaps in early and we touched down not too far from the threshold. Full power and one more circuit, this time for a precision landing.

My precision landing was anything but precise. The only precise thing about it is the height above the runway I maintained while floating for a long long time. My approach was actually good, but soon after I turned final I got a bit spooked by the line of trees that seemed very close to the approach path. I added a bit of power and pulled the nose up to give myself more clearance over the trees, and as a consequence I ended up way too fast on short final, probably 10 or 15 knots too fast. All this energy had to go somewhere hence the long float. We taxied back on a muddy dirt taxiway this time, with one main wheel skidding in the mud.

I checked my score with John who was organising the whole event and realised that this time around I wouldn't make it into the top three. Last time was probably a fluke, cause by people not wanting to get up too early on a Sunday.

We then drove to Toukley and went for a walk on the local beach. We came across the cutest sand castle ever, played fetch with a local dog for a little while and enjoyed the end of the afternoon while a 152 was performing airwork above our heads.

Just round the corner we climbed up the stairs to the Norah Head lighthouse. According to this web site maintained by lighthouse nerds, this lighthouse shares a similar design with its two other NSW siblings at Cape Byron and Point Perpendicular (you have to love the name). Lighthouses tend themselves quite well to aerial photography, and the three of them could be covered in a day's flight... here's an idea for a Sunday flight with a difference.

It's been a hard day's night flying session

2009-06-27T18:59:00.008+10:00

Remember how I said in my previous post that I loved the idea of flying at night on weekdays because it freed me from having to take time off work or planning my week-ends around flying lessons? Well, I just came across a huge downside of this nice little theory: after a full day at work, it is very, very hard to empty your mind, restore energy levels and focus on the flying. As a result, my first night flying lesson was very, very messy and I was quite upset with that.

I met my instructor Ben in the clubhouse and we started with a quick whiteboard briefing about taxiway and runway lighting and how night circuits are flown differently from daytime circuits.

Because I had forgotten my torchlight at home, I had to borrow Ben's for preflighting the aircraft. The pre-flight visit is essentially the same as in daylight, with the addition of landing and navigation lights. I noticed that the landing light was not working. That's the light right at the front of the aircraft, below the engine air intake, the one that's used for lighting up the runway on take-off and landing at night. Can't really go without it at night. Ben said we could use the other landing light instead, the one situated near the middle of the leading edge of the right wing. Problem solved.

The aircraft on that night was VH-IJK, the oldest Warrior in the club's fleet. It could definitely do with a new interior trim, but that didn't bother me much in the dark. Before startup, Ben showed me how to use the panel lighting. Unfortunately, the row of switches is not lit up, and I had to be extra careful not to switch the electrical master off when going for the fuel pump switch.

We taxied to 11C and Ben reminded me to perform taxi checks when turning. Keeping the nose wheel on the taxiway centerline was quite hard because the light was coming from the side and not all yellow taxi lines at Bankstown have green lights down the middle. Ben explained that one common mistake is to taxi too fast at night because the pilot has less cues in his field of vision for gauging speed. The trick is to look in the general direction of the wingtip to get a better idea of how fast we are going.

The circuit was already full, with five or six aircraft practicing night circuits. The tower told us to expect a delay and that we would not be cleared before an airplane currently in the circuit makes a full-stop landing. We shut down everything and agreed with the tower controller that he would shine a torchlight at us when he wanted us to start up and talk to him again. The light eventually came and we lined up for a session of about 7 or 8 circuits.

Maintaining the runway centerline on take-off is hard without a front landing light, so I concentrated instead on keeping the picture drawn by the runway side lights and the distant threshold symmetrical while accelerating to take-off speed. The upwind section of the climb is done on instruments up to 500 feet. Wings level, maintain best rate of climb speed with the airspeed indicator and maintain runway heading with the DG. And keep that instrument scan going.

On crosswind when the opposite threshold is about 45 degrees behind us I turn downwind, make my downwind call, BUMFHH checks and try to maintain the runway about one third of the way down from the wingtip. Same story with the other threshold before turning base. Ben explained that the trick for knowing when to turn final is to watch for when the first runway side light on the near side aligns with the third light on the far side. This worked quite well, but I always ended up too high on final. Ben identified the source of the problem as me not flying a square base, but rather having the base leg point toward the threshold, thereby giving myself less time for descending.

A few times when I ended up too high on the glideslope I managed to recapture the correct approach profile (2 red lights and 2 white lights on the PAPI), only to go too high again on late final. Ben insisted that I do not push the nose down below 300 feet to recapture the perfect glideslope otherwise I'll end up touching nose wheel first: if it's too high, just accept it and fly it. 300 feet is also the magical number for the altitude where I more often than not forgot to turn carby heat off. Not good.

On one circuit Ben asked the tower to switch the PAPI lights off, which lead to a good landing actually. Flare and touchdown require a bit of a leap of faith at night though. We tried without the landing light, which worked well too. Having the lights off forces the pilot to concentrate on the picture of the whole runway rather than the beam of light from the landing light.

On one circuit we had a rescue helicopter join the circuit on final from Prospect when we were on downwind. That's because, as per the ERSA, helicopters at Bankstown must use fixed-wing procedures at night. The tower advised us of possible wake turbulence and I extended downwind to allow more time for the turbulence to dissipate. Not that it helped anyway. I was on short final when the aircraft suddenly rolled to the left. Very similar story to what happened to Chris recently. Right rudder, full power and we went around. I forgot to retract the flaps though and it took me an embarrassingly long amount of time to find out why I wasn't climbing as well as in the previous circuits. That and leaving carby heat on are really the kind of beginner's mistakes that make me very upset with myself. Power up, nose up, clean up and speak up. It's not that hard.

Because of our late start we were alone in the circuit when the tower shut down and the control zone reverted to a CTAF. We did one more circuit and taxied back to the club house. We had a debrief where we went through the list of things that could have been done better. Ben gave me a copy of the Night Rating syllabus so that I know what's coming up. We booked two circuits sessions for next week, any one of which can be converted to a simulator session should the weather be less than ideal.

Very attractive the dark side of flying is

2009-06-22T17:02:00.000+10:00

A month ago I took advantage of a social event organised by the club to go flying at night for the first time. Three pilots and one instructor in a Warrior, $100 for three circuits, a great way to discover how vastly different things are at night. Not only different, but also exciting, challenging, and ultimately rewarding. Which pretty much sums up why I fly.

I took me an hour to drive to Bankstown from work through Friday afternoon traffic, only to run into airspace congestion once airborne. And that's with us starting quickly, hoping to beat the "Bank Runners", i.e. the swarm of aircraft, most of them cargo, landing and taking-off at YSBK when night falls.

We were only half-successful at that: I was in my second circuit when the tower requested we make the next landing a full stop. Danial, our instructor and the club's Deputy CFI, quickly came up with a Plan B: we swapped pilots on the ground and departed for Camden to give the other two pilots an opportunity to fly. So I only flew two circuits instead of three, but on the other hand I could experience a short cross-country flight at night, albeit from the back seat.

Saying that things are very different at night is a big understatement. Take-off attitude, for example, is set using the Artificial Horizon (about 10 degrees of pitch) rather than using familiar references outside the cockpit, such as where the horizon intersects the nose cowling. It's an interesting mix of visual flying and instrument flying techniques.

In the circuit, I realised that all the familiar reference points on the ground are gone. No more big green shed, railway tracks, racecourse or farm. Positioning in the circuit is done by reference to the runway, which thankfully is very well lit up. This is of course the way flying a circuit should always be done, even during the day, since it makes life a lot easier when visiting unfamiliar airfields. But we are only humans, and humans like creating cognitive shortcuts in familiar environments. So I was a bit lost, and consequently very thankful for Danial's guidance.

We were using runway 11C, which is the default runway at night. The photo above was taken as we were waiting at the holding point for the aircraft that looks like a white and red worm to land. Apologies for the quality of the photos by the way. Taken with a five-year-old point-and-shoot camera from the back seat at night in a vibrating airplane, I didn't stand much chance of a sharp shot. The big bright rectangle in the other two photos is the screen of the Garmin 430 GPS unit.

Each time we turned final, the PAPI lights would help us establish the correct angle of descent. Judging height over the runway at night is hard, so we flare by putting the nose on the horizon and then wait for things to happen. Which works amazingly well. My two landings were very good, much to my amazement and delight. Must be beginner's luck.

One thing that really threw me off was identifying gauges on the panel. I didn't expect that. This may be due to my lack of familiarity with the Warrior, having only a dozen hours in the type. The 6-pack of instruments didn't pose a problem, but it's really with the engine instruments that I struggled. Which one is oil temp, which one is oil pressure? Is the needle really in the green? Green at night is not the same as daylight green. Sloppy daylight flying habits sure come out at night to bite you!

One funny thing about this night is that a couple of weeks later I stumbled upon Chris's blog and found a post about that very same night flying session. Chris also flies at Schofields and went flying on that same night but in a different airplane and probably at a different time, which is why we didn't meet then. I left a comment on the post and Chris reciprocated. Hopefully we'll manage to catch up at the club one of those days, or even go flying together if my blog posts have not managed to scare him.

In conclusion, everything is harder at night, which translates into more demanding flying, which is good. I can officially say now that I am hooked, and my goal is to complete a Night Rating before Daylight Saving Time kicks back in on October 4th. On October 3rd last light will be 6:24PM, which fits perfectly with the 6:30PM - 8:30PM flying slot. But on October 4th though last light will be 7:25PM, which is getting late, especially for the night cross-country flights or the final flight test.

First lesson planned for tomorrow with Ben. And I won't even have to take time off or fly on week-ends: just like me Ben has a day job, and weekday evenings seem to suit him best. That will also be my first time using a simulator for training since the 4 hours that relate to navaids and instrument flying are done in the club's Elite AT-21 Airtrainer. One more thing to look forward to! In addition to experiencing the power of the dark side of course.

First $100 burger at Wollongong airport

2009-05-31T17:54:00.000+10:00

The $100 burger is a concept of mythical dimensions in aviation. I had come across it many times on other people's blogs, but never had a chance to perform the ritual myself. During my PPL training I had a $800 sub once on a long cross-country solo, but no $100 burger. I'm happy to report that since last week-end this gap in my aviation culture is a thing of the past.

The $100 burger refers to the cost of flying somewhere away from the home base for the sole purpose of eating a burger, and then flying back. This is as good an excuse as any other one to go flying. Taken more broadly, it is the acknowledgment that real good reasons to go flying are scarce compared to how often we feel the itch, hence creativity and rationalisation are required.

I had booked a Warrior for Saturday, and I didn't have too much trouble convincing my friends Ingo and Marcus to join the adventure. The plan was to fly out of Bankstown northbound, do a few orbits over Sydney Harbour, fly Victor One southbound and land at Wollongong to have a burger at the Aviator Lounge, and then fly back to Bankstown after lunch.

Looking at the weather forecast on Friday evening I decided to postpone the flight till Sunday. There were quite a few things I was not too happy with, starting with the very strong westerly winds:

WIND:
2000     5000     7000     10000
250/35   250/45   250/50   260/55

35 knots at 2000ft and 45 knots at 5000ft. With a cruise airspeed of 105 knots in the Warrior, this translates to a miserly 60 knots ground speed on the way back to Bankstown. Barely faster than the cars below on the M5. Strong winds aloft are surely a nuisance, but not necessarily a safety problem unless they come with turbulence. Which takes us to the next section of the area forecast:

TURBULENCE:
OCNL SEV BLW 10000FT ON/LEE OF RANGES GRADUALLY EASING.
MOD REMAINDER BLW 8000FT GRADUALLY EASING.

Westerlies blowing over the ranges create this "occasionally severe" turbulence as the wind tumbles down the hills. This is particularly bad in Wollongong since the city is built in a natural amphitheatre with very sharp cliffs to the west, as can be seen in the picture above. This makes for dramatic views from the airport, but also dramatic aerodrome forecasts:

WOLLONGONG (YWOL)
TAF YWOL 151827Z 1520/1608
27025G41KT CAVOK
BECMG 1522/1524 24015G25KT 9999 FEW045
RMK FM152000 MOD/SEV TURB BLW 5000FT TILL 152400
FM152400 MOD TURB BLW 5000FT

Wind at 25 knots with gusts up to 41 knots? And moderate to severe turbulence below 5000ft? I don't think so. I would be nervous taxiing in such conditions, let alone landing or taking off. Crosswind in these conditions is a major problem for the main 16/34 runway, and a smaller problem for runway 08/26. However, given my low time on this aircraft type, little of which includes crosswind landings, I wasn't keen to chance it. The decision to postpone was easy to take, and my passengers were more than happy to fly on a calmer day.

The forecast was for conditions to improve overnight, and Sunday was indeed a beautiful VFR flying day. All the Warriors were booked so we took VH-NRF, a Piper Archer instead.

We took off from Bankstown on 29R flew north to Patonga and then to Long Reef. Approaching Long Reef I requested a clearance for a Harbour Scenic One procedure, which was granted and led to dozens of glorious digital photographs being taken. I particularly like the photo of Barrenjoey Head below, with the left wing flap and the reflection of the sun over the top of the stabilator.

We exited Victor One then climbed and tracked south to Wollongong. I knew from other airplanes on the CTAF frequency that runway 34 was being used. I overflew the airfield anyway to have a look at the windsock. It seemed to point at the threshold of runway 16, but with very little wind in it I decided to do like everyone else and joined crosswind for 34.

My first circuit was really tight and of course I ended up too high on final. I thought about sideslipping my way down for an instant but decided against it, out of consideration for safety, comfort, and the eardrums of everyone onboard.

The second circuit was a lot better, mainly because I was following another airplane which seemed to know his way around the place. I extended downwind all the way to the hills south of the airfield, and when I turned final the picture in the windscreen looked much more normal than on my first attempt. Landing was good, although I held the nose up a bit too much and soon after the stall warning horn went off we fell onto the runway from an altitude of about one foot.

The burger and fries at the Aviator Lounge didn't disappoint, which is what you expect from a $14.50 burger really. It was fresh and delicious, and came with the obligatory two slices of beetroot.

After lunch we took off on 34. A Seminole was performing a GPS approach to Runway 16, which he discontinued early enough to not create a problem and he passed us on our right. Navigation back to Bankstown was performed using a bit of dead reckoning and a lot of navigation by reference to the ground: Cordeaux lake, then tracking to Menangle to meet the M5 and follow it northbound till we find the 2RN entry point for Bankstown airport.

We joined final for 11L and I performed what must have been my best landing so far in the Archer. During the flare I kept my eyes focused on the end of the runway, and the nose on the horizon. I didn't realise we were on the ground until I heard the wheel rotate. A real greaser of a landing, and captured on video to boot:

Total flying time 2.1 hours, plus landing taxes, lifejacket and headset hire, amounted to $458. Divided by three, and leaving the cost of the burger proper out of the equation, we get a $150 burger. Not a bad way to spend a Sunday.

C182 performs wheeler landing at Canberra airport

2009-05-29T21:27:00.001+10:00

I was in Canberra recently and came across this article on the front page of the local Canberra Times:

The nose wheel of a Cessna 182 fell off in flight, the pilot didn't notice and obviously was in for a little surprise on landing when he lowered what he thought was the nose wheel onto the runway at Canberra International Airport. The pilot was unharmed, the runway was closed for a little while and the ATSB is not investigating the incident.

This may sound odd at first, but when you look at their prioritization guidelines you understand why: no-one died or even got hurt and this was a private flight (priority level 6 out of 7, only above "High risk personal recreation/sports aviation/experimental aircraft operations"). In addition, and that's only my own uneducated guess, there is probably very little to be learned from this freak incident that would improve safety. Unless 182s around the world start loosing nose wheels in flight, investigating why this happened is not worth it.

The article goes on to say:

''[The pilot] said it was a very crunchy landing, but that he didn't know until he got out of the plane that he had lost the wheel,'' Ms Davy said.

This may sound funny, but is actually perfectly logical. There's no way the pilot can tell that the nose wheel fell in flight. The wheel just fell, and the pilot cannot see the front wheel from the cockpit anyway. Losing the nose wheel may reduce drag a little, but nothing noticeable through either the controls or the airspeed indicator.

On landing the noise of the nose wheel fork ploughing the runway must indeed have been very "crunchy", and the nose-down attitude surely indicated that something had gone wrong.

I just love the fact that the pilot went to the turf farm a week or so later to collect the missing wheel. Goes to show you never know where aviation might take you.

Spot the airfield: Aeropelican, New South Wales

2009-05-22T23:47:00.001+10:00

On a Qantas flight from Sydney to Brisbane, I was lucky enough to catch a glimpse of the Aeropelican unlicensed airfield (YPEC) between the clouds.

The airfield is located in-between the highway and Lake Macquarie, which is why the ERSA entry says "high vehicles on the highway at the eastern end of the runway, or high masted vessels on the extended centre-line to the west, may infringe obstacle clearance gradient from the runways ends". The runway is oriented 07/25, is 820 meters long and is kind of sealed near the middle.

My guess is that the airfield is named after the Aeropelican regional airline which used to operate from the field, and now flies a modest fleet of three BAE Jetstream 32 turboprops out of Williamstown, north of Newcastle.

Even more interesting than Aeropelican is the tiny bit of land in the top left corner of the photo. This is the suburb of Rathmines, which used to be home to the largest RAAF seaplane base during WWII.

Retract endorsement a complex affair

2009-05-09T21:09:00.000+10:00

Second and last flight for my retractable undercarriage endorsement, two days after the first one. I spent a full evening in-between writing down lists of checks and actions for each leg of the circuit, and drawing flow patterns that take me in a sequence through each gauge or control required at any stage of the circuit.

This proved quite useful, although there is as always a big difference between rehearsing things at home and doing them for real in the cockpit. Plenty of things come in the way, such as other aircraft in the circuit, that pesky instructor in the right seat, or the tower controller. Not even talking about the effect of stress on cognitive abilities. It is a well known fact that one only has half a brain left when flying an airplane, which makes planning and rehearsing beforehand all the more important.

So we did about 7 or 8 circuits in the Arrow IV on runway 29L. It's true that because of the T-Tail one has to pull harder on the yoke to get the airplane to rotate or flare, even with the trim slightly aft of neutral. The accepted explanation is that because the stabilator is outside the propeller slipstream, it becomes less effective at low speed. All other things being equal.

But are the other things really equal? The moment arm between the center of gravity and the stabilator is longer in the T-Tail Arrow IV compared to the Arrow III, which should help. Maybe the surface of the stabilator is smaller. Or maybe the reason for the design change is to be found elsewhere. According to this pilotfriend.com article on the Arrow IV, in 1979, Piper made a controversial design decision, opting to equip many of its airplanes with trendy, fashionable T-tails. So it may all boil down to a marketing fad in the end.

This turned out to be a lot of work in the circuit, which really stresses the importance of having sequences of actions and checklists memorised. I forgot quite a few times to touch the brakes before retracting the gear, which is not good since the wheels keep spinning inside the well, which may create some wear on the tires. Olivia had to use the Law of Intensity on me so that this particular aspect of operating a retractable undercarriage would stick with me, and it worked.

I made a conscious effort to slow down in the circuit to maintain separation with the other slower aircraft. It's actually a nice way to measure the ground covered since I started learning to fly in the C152 at Redcliffe two years ago: I am no longer the slowest guy in the circuit.

In the last circuit Olivia pulled the circuit breaker of the landing gear pump on me. I noticed that the three green lights didn't light up. She was happy I noticed, pushed the circuit breaker back in and asked what I would have done otherwise. I said I would have flown to the training area to perform the emergency landing gear extension procedure, which was the right answer. Olivia also insisted I verbalise out loud "three greens" as part of my pre-landing checks.

On each landing I tried to not float as much as on the previous one. The airspeed on final recommended by the club is 80 knots, while 1.3 Vs is 71 knots. The extra 9 knots add a lot of energy to the airplane, which also means that as it slows down from 80 knots it crosses a region of lower total drag, which does not help with slowing down further obviously. This was actually the topic of a recent training tip in AOPA ePilot newsletter.

We taxied back and Olivia put a new stamp into my logbook with an endorsement for the P28RT type, where R stands for Retractable and T for T-Tail. So I am now allowed to fly "complex aircraft" solo. Complex aircraft refers to aircraft with flaps, variable-pitch propeller and retractable undercarriage.

It's a very impressive term that conjures up a picture of aircraft mightier than a Piper Arrow. If I wasn't married I may even be tempted to use my newest endorsement in order to impress girls. Not unlike that scene from a movie we all know.