All downhill from here: Armidale to Sydney

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.

Keeping Australia on the left

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.

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!

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

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!

I can't drink I'm flying

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.

First $100 burger at Wollongong airport

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.

Piper Archer III Checkride

Second lesson in the Piper Archer III. Circuits on the menu today. When I say menu I should say wish list, because circuits at Bankstown are more of a privilege than a due as I learned near the end of the previous flight. As for any airport, there is an upper limit on the number of aircraft that can fit in the circuit for obvious reasons of separation between aircraft. In addition, Bankstown is currently suffering from a shortage of Air Traffic Controllers, which forced the tower manager to limit circuits during certain hours. Of course local flying training organisations are less than pleased but don't have any other choice than grin and bear it.


I pre-flighted the airplane, on my own this time. My instructor Olivia arrived with two brightly colored cushions, one for her back and the second one perpendicular to the first one. I started up, taxied for the run-up bay of 11R, which means a very very long taxi all the way around the airport, performed my pre-take-off checks and called ready at the holding point. The tower cleared us for circuits with an expedited take-off, and I left the transponder on standby since we'd stay in the circuit.

We did a number of circuits, about 6 or 7 in total. Two flapless. One go-around. One engine failure after take-off. Olivia pointed at a number of local landmarks I can use for different legs of the circuit. Point the nose at the big green building on downwind. Turn base before the racecourse. Watch out for those tall trees on final. There were only two other airplanes in the circuit, which was good.


This was actually my first time doing circuits at a controlled aerodrome, since all my training took place in a CTAF at Redcliffe. I had been in the circuit at Archerfield a few times, but only with the purpose of landing there. Nothing too weird about it though. We call downwind on downwind, and get cleared touch-and-go usually on final. Maintaining sufficient separation with the aircraft in front is not only the right thing to do for safety, it is also the smart thing to do if you don't want to be told to go around on short final because the aircraft in front is still on the runway.

The downwind BUMFHH checklist works for the Piper the same way it works for the Cessna, except for the (F)uel item. On the Cessna, because fuel is fed to the engine by gravity, (F) consists only in checking that the fuel selector is on Both. In the Archer, this also means turning the electric fuel pump and landing lights on. The fuel pump is turned off with the after-take-off checklist passing 400ft. Carby heat is a small lever on the right-hand side of the throttle quadrant, turned on before descending on late downwind and off on short final to prepare for a potential go-around. The throttle quadrant unfortunately blocks the view, so I had to lean over to the right to double-check if off was up or down.

Where I learned to fly, we didn't turn the landing lights on and off with each touch-and-go. I think the reason it's done this way at Bankstown is to make our airplane easily visible to the controller in the tower. It's not a Cessna vs Piper thing. In a CTAF such as Redcliffe, there's no controller, and landing lights would not help other aircrafts see us better, that's the role of the rotating beacon, nav lights and strobes. Or maybe I was taught this way to avoid having to change expensive lightbulbs.


As can be seen on the picture above, the mag switches are guarded with a metal bar so that one cannot turn the magnetos off while trying to turn landing lights off. Of course the switch being turned off should always be positively identified, but this is an extra layer of safety.

Speaking about fuel earlier, safety is also built into the fuel selector: it can be simply rotated from one tank to the other, but rotating it all the way to "off" required depressing a little button on the selector.

All my landings were good, but all floated way too much. I need to take a few knots off my short final speed in the future. The ground effect provides long floats, but also makes most landings nice and soft, with ample time for the stall horn to go off.

On our last circuit Olivia asked for a full-stop on 11L to shorten taxi back to the clubhouse, which was denied. We landed on 11R, vacated the runway and waited for clearance to cross 11C and 11L. At Bankstown you do not ask for clearance to cross runways, you just wait for it in order to limit congestion on the frequency.

As we taxi back Olivia asks if I think I'm ready to go solo in that airplane. I say yes. She says she thinks so too. We park on the grass in front of the clubhouse and shut down. I meet Olivia inside a few minutes later and she stamps and signs my logbook with the mention "competent to fly solo by day in PA-28B". Awesome.

Looking at the stamp again later, I realise Olivia's ARN number is greater than mine, which means she started learning to fly after me. I started flying training two years ago, almost to the day, and after two years have a PPL and a CSU endorsement. In less time, Olivia progressed from zero to Grade 2 instructor. Not bad. I wonder how far I would have got without a full-time job. Probably not very far since I would have run out of money fairly soon!