Aviation in New Caledonia

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.