The long way back home

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.

First go-around in a commercial airplane

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.

Nav6: Errol Flynn in command

Relating what happened to me on Nav6 is going to take more than one post. It’s not that this flight was any longer than the previous ones. It's simply that the first leg was a comedy of errors so farcical it will take a full post just to list all the mistakes I managed to cram into not even one hour. Hopefully someone can learn from my mistakes, or at least have a good laugh.

This training flight was a dual navigation exercise for the purpose of assessing whether I was ready to go solo into controlled airspace. The first leg of the flight took us from Redcliffe to Gold Coast at 1500ft. This was the same route as on Nav5, but the lower altitude meant I had to exit Class C controlled airspace after transiting Brisbane International and re-enter it approaching Gold Coast.

The night before, I had made sure that everything that could be prepared before the flight was prepared. I had a cheat sheet with all the frequencies I would need for the whole flight, in the order in which they would most likely be needed. I even had an enlarged printout of the Gold Coast airport diagram with enough space to write down clearances and ATIS. All NOTAMs were printed out, read and relevant ones highlighted. Pencils sharpened, maps folded, ruler, ERSA and protractor within reach in the cockpit. I was more prepared for the flight than I had ever been.

After start-up I dialled the first frequencies I would need to talk on as well as that of the navaids. I requested a code while taxying, took off on 25 and switched to Brisbane Radar for my clearance. They identified us and handed me over to Brisbane Approach who issued the expected clearance for transiting Brisbane International: Hornibrook Viaduct, Brisbane Control Tower, Manly Boat Harbor and then direct to the Jacobs Well VOR.

Our traffic was a Bell helicopter coming in the opposite direction, which we only spotted when it flew by us, despite having all 4 eyes looking outside. We switched to tower who asked us to go behind a single-engine light aircraft which was landing on runway 19. After that we tracked for Manly Boat Harbor, which for a moment I confused with the Cleveland boat harbor, right behind it. Lee was kind enough to give me a nudge on this one, and I turned to intercept radial 146 of JCW.

Once the radial intercepted, we tracked for the Jacobs Well VOR. Or what I thought was JCW. Because, you see, I had forgotten to properly Tune-Identify-Test it. And it very rightfully came back to bite me. I found out later that I had tuned in Gold Coast VOR (CG) instead. The error was not obvious at first because radial 146 of JCW and radial 146 of CG are only one mile apart. I realised my mistake when the station passage didn’t happen on time, and I knew from looking outside that the station was behind me.

What happened was that I had tuned the wrong navaid frequency on the ground, as part of my let’s-get-as-much-as-possible-done-on-the-ground plan. But because VORs require line-of-sight radio communication, I couldn’t identify and test on the ground, so I left it for later. And when the moment came to use the navaid, I had forgotten about the missing identify and test. This definitely qualifies as a learning experience.

We then tracked for Gold Coast. I wrote down the ATIS for YBCG, and I was about to contact Brisbane Approach for requesting a clearance to enter Gold Coast Classs C airspace when Lee stopped me. Where are we? Approaching Q1 at 1500ft. And what does the ERSA say? That we may request our clearance directly from Gold Coast tower. Which is also the scenario we had discussed in the briefing before the flight. Which I had forgotten. Bad. On to Gold Coast tower, who clear us to track for Gold Coast airport with a clearance limit of Burleigh Heads. The frequency is very busy with the usual mix of jet and GA traffic.

At Burleigh Heads they clear us for joining final for runway 14. We haven’t been in the air for 30 minutes at that stage and I already can’t believe I made so many mistakes. Did I mention I also completely forgot to make a call on the CTAF frequency for Southport, even though we came within a few miles of the field at 1500ft?

I decide to finish this leg on a good note and apply myself to making a very nice landing. We cross the threshold. There’s plenty of runway in front of us. I remove power. I let the plane go down, and when the ground gets closer I bring the nose slightly over the horizon. The stall indicator goes off. All good so far. We haven’t touched the ground yet and we’re near stall speed, this should make for a nice landing, letting the plane touch the ground only when it decides to.

Suddenly the plane really stalls. Usually this is followed very soon by the nice and reassuring chirping sound of the main wheels touching the ground. Except that in our case nothing but a deafening silence happened for the next two seconds, and then we hit the ground. I could feel the struts absorb the energy of our plane falling down onto the runway from a height of about 2 meters. Lee is laughing. I fell victim to a textbook optical illusion: because the runway here is a lot larger and darker than at Redcliffe, I underestimated our height, and flared too high. For estimating our height, I should have looked at the horizon ahead of me rather then look to the side and down at the runway surface.

We exit the runway, hold short for a Jetstar A320, taxi to the GA parking, shut down and stretch our legs a little. I prepare the cockpit for the next leg. We won’t be able to fly at 6500ft to Kyogle as planned because of clouds over the ranges. We decide to go for 2500ft instead.

Startup again, ask for an amended clearance at 2500ft which we obtain. Take-off on 14, right turn to intercept radial 215 of Gold Coast and we climb to 2500ft and level off there. Just a couple of minutes later Brisbane Approach tells us we’re leaving controlled airspace, which I read back dutifully.


I do my CLEAR-OFF checks and start computing an estimate for Kyogle. Lee points at the altimeter which is now reading 2700ft. I use the trim to make the plane slowly loose altitude and get back to 2500ft. Lee says I need to be more aggressive than that and push the nose down now to get back to 2500ft as soon as possible because we’re currently busting controlled airspace. Busting controlled airspace? That doesn’t sound good.

What happened was that our amended clearance made us leave controlled airspace at 2500ft and fly right below the next Class C step, whose base is precisely at 2500ft. Class C airspace around airports is pretty much like an inverted wedding cake. Flying a bit lower than 2500ft would not have been a big drama, but flying one foot higher is a big no no. Especially when it’s not one foot but 200 feet and the objective of the day is to assess my ability to fly solo in controlled airspace. Needless to say I didn't get a tick on that one.

Mal has an expression for that, he calls it an Errol Flynn day, in reference to the Australian-born actor who apparently had a reputation for breaking anything he touched. My Errol Flynn day lasted less than one hour, but I still have trouble understanding how I could get so many things wrong, even though a similar exercise a few weeks earlier went without problem.

As a consequence, I’ll have to redo the controlled airspace part of Nav6. The plan will be to go from Redcliffe to Gold Coast, then to Toowoomba via the Laravale VOR and back to Redcliffe. This will give us plenty of Class C airspace to get in and out of and hopefully a chance for me to demonstrate that I can do better than on my Errol Flynn day.

Nav5: seven controller, a few street lamps and a diversion

The first leg of Nav5 took us from Redcliffe to Gold Coast through the Brisbane Class C airspace. I think I talked to more controllers in the first 30 minutes of this flight that in all my flying training to this day.

Redcliffe being a non-towered aerodrome, my only contacts with controllers so far were during navs to Archerfield, Maroochydore and Oakey. On a couple of occasions I also contacted Brisbane Radar to request a radio check early in the morning when no one was answering on the local CTAF frequency.

We requested a code and clearance from Brisbane Radar, who immediately handed us over to Brisbane Approach. We got cleared for the Hornibrook Viaduct, Brisbane Control Tower and Manly boat harbour at 1500ft.

As we approached the tower, the controller gave us a landing clearance for runway 14. Hmmm... that was very nice of him, but we never intended to land at YBBN, and never asked for a clearance... Before I could think of what to say he came back and corrected his mistake. A minute later we overflew the threshold of runway 01 and I could see three Qantas airliners queuing up at the holding point right under us.

Tower handed us over to approach on the other side of Brisbane airport. We overflew the Jacobs Well VOR, jotted down the ATIS for Gold Coast then switched frequencies again a few more times through approach, tower and ground for Gold Coast. In total, I talked to seven different controllers. My radio calls were good, thanks to careful preparation and quite a bit of rehearsal at home beforehand.


We landed at Gold Coast on runway 32, taxied to the GA parking and started up again soon after for Cherrabah. Gold Coast was very busy that morning, we had to wait for a little while at the holding point. Finally the controller gave us an immediate departure and we took off just as a Virgin Blue 737 was coming in to land. As we departed I glanced back at the runway to realise that, instead of the normal Virgin Blue red livery, this aircraft was entirely painted in blue. Sean explained that this was Virgin Blue’s 50th Boeing 737, and that the names of all employees, including his from a past non-flying job with the airline, were printed on the overhead lockers.

According to Wikipedia, Virgin Blue’s name if a play on the predominantly red livery and the Australian slang tradition of calling a red-headed male 'Blue' or 'Bluey'. So I guess this solves the mistery of why Virgin Blue planes are usually painted red.

We climbed to 6500ft to clear the ranges of the Gold Coast hinterland and tracked for Cherrabah. That was quite a long leg, with spectacular views of the mountains. We identified Palen Creek Prison Farm. Sean tried to convince me to stop doing 'track crawling', i.e. spending my time with my nose in the map in order to always know where I was. Our ground speed was higher than planned, so we entered the open country near Killarney earlier than expected. This threw me off for a moment, then we kept flying the heading and, sure enough, we found Cherrabah a few minutes later.


In the morning when I had called the Cherrabah Homestead to request permission to land, the person on the phone had requested that we overfly the runway once before landing “to scare the roos”. We did one 100ft overfly but couldn’t see any kangaroos. Sean talked me through the approach and landing. Quite a challenging approach actually, with hills on all slides and a sloppy runway.


The airfield is one of those places you have to see to believe. Too bad Shane didn’t get to see it on his Nav5 and got diverted to Warwick and its swarms of flies instead! The runway itself is actually quite nice, it was upgraded from a grass strip to a sealed runway a while ago. Cherrabah is not a licensed aerodrome, so I guess they do not have to comply with too many regulations about runway lighting, and obviously they let their creativity go wild with these beautiful solar-powered replicas of classical street lamps in the Australian bush. The terminal building, although empty, is well worth the picture too.


We took off on 28 and did some low-level flying following a road and a river, pretending the cloud ceiling was so low we were following natural features on our way to Warwick. This is what some people call IFR Flying: I Follow the Road. We then tracked north to Toowoomba, and as we were near Allora we diverted direct back to Redcliffe. I requested and obtained a clearance for crossing Amberley airspace and amended our flight plan.

We flew a few miles south of Lake Wivenhoe, crossed the ranges, kept our eyes out for airplanes tracking south for the "TV Towers" entry lane to Archerfield, found Petrie, the nearby paper mill, then approached Redcliffe from the dead side and landed on 07. We had a thorough debrief during which Sean said that the two things I really had to work on were holding an accurate altitude and heading, so I'll have to make this a priority for the next navs. And avoiding track crawling.

Nav5 was my last time flying at the front of the aircraft for a little while. After that I had two weeks of business travel, half a week of jetlag, some busy days catching up on work, and almost a week of vacations. There was a lot of flying of course, but unfortunately only of the kind that involves sitting at the back of an airliner for more than ten hours in an economy seat that makes the cockpit of a 152 feel like luxury.