Instrument flying in the GFPT

The Australian PPL syllabus requires student pilots to have completed two hours of instrument flying before attempting the GFPT test. Instrument flying is when the pilot flies the airplane only by reference to the instruments inside the plane, as opposed to visual flying, when the pilot looks outside the window at the ground, the sky and the horizon to find out where he is and which way is up.

The picture above shows the instrument panel of a Cessna 152 on the ground. Since the engine is not running, no suction is available from the engine-driven vacuum pump for spinning gyroscope-driven instruments such as the artificial horizon. This is why the artificial horizon shows the airplane as being banked to the left with a nose-down attitude, although it is sitting on even ground.

Luckily for us visual flyers, light aircrafts have quite a few windows. The big one at the front with bugs squashed onto it is the windscreen. That's the one you should be looking out of most of the time when doing visual flying.

Side windows are nearly as important, especially for clearing turns and checking where the airplane is in relation to the runway when coming in to land. Just try to fly a circuit in a flight simulator without changing views and you’ll realize how hard it is without side windows, especially when turning base or final.

The great thing with most Cessna airplanes is that they have a back window, which comes in handy for checking where the runway is after take-off and correcting for drift. And if you happen to fly a C152 Aerobat such as VH-IVW, there are even two narrow elongated sky windows for orientation when performing aerobatics manoeuvres.

Instrument flying assumes there is nothing useful to see through the windows. The airplane could be in clouds, or in conditions of poor visibility such as in heavy rain, fog or smoke. The way such situations are simulated in training flights is by having the student put on the so-called IFR hood.

The hood is like a big plastic baseball cap with a long curved visor sticking out the front. It is sometimes referred to as a view limiting device, which is as accurate a description as you can get since it prevents whoever is wearing it from seeing anything outside the cockpit, while still being able to look at all the instruments on the panel. In the purely hypothetical situation where the instructor would realise at 2000 feet and halfway to the training area that the hood was left behind at the club, a sheet of paper or a folded map stuck under a regular cap does a pretty fine job too.

Going back one step, why do we train for instrument flying in the PPL, since the holder of such as licence is only allowed to fly during daytime and then only according to Visual Flight Rules, i.e. with sufficient visibility to fly by reference to the outside, and never ever into clouds? Well, precisely because of what happens when one accidentally flies into clouds.

VFR flying into IMC conditions is one of the biggest killers of general aviation pilots. Research conducted at the University of Illinois in the early 90s showed that, on average, pilots start suffering from spatial disorientation on average 178 seconds after entering IMC conditions. That’s just 2 seconds short of 3 minutes. In each case, the (simulated) airplane entered a graveyard spiral with a predictable fatal outcome. The pilots being tested only knew they participated in an experiment about instrument flying, not that it was about spatial disorientation. There's a good CASA video on the topic here. Not very coincidentally, the length of the video is 178 seconds.

The rationale for instrument flying training in the PPL is therefore to teach VFR pilots how to get out of clouds as quickly as possible using only instruments. This is why the training concentrates on making turns, climbing and descending, and does not even mention about IFR procedures.

I really enjoyed these two hours of instrument flying. It is very challenging and rewarding at the same time.

The challenge comes from the fact that one has to keep a very quick scan going across the instruments on the panel. The eyes go from one instrument to the next, always going back to the artificial horizon between any two instruments. This is easier said than done. One problem I had was with not keeping a scan that was quick enough. I would then realise there was a problem once the problem had started to develop, making it harder to fix.

Or if the instructor gave me an instruction such as “turn right to a heading of 230 and climb to 2500ft”, my scan would concentrate on the Directional Gyro and the altimeter, and would forget the Airspeed Indicator. It happened once when the instructor attracted my attention to the ASI. The airspeed was bleeding, nearing the bottom of the green arc, approaching the stall. Not good.

One thing I noticed when flying on instruments is that I used the throttle a lot more than usual, making lots of adjustments to get the rate of climb where I wanted it. This was not good, since it introduced an extra independent variable into the system, i.e. one more reason why things may go wrong. The right way to do things was to set an attitude using the artifical horizon, see how the plane reacted, then adjust again when needed.

All in all I think I did good, and instrument flying really opened my eyes to a completely new way of flying the airplane, one where the relationship between power, attitude and performance becomes a lot more obvious. Thinking about it, the variables received as input and the ones available as output are the same for human pilots under the hood and for the autopilot. Not having to fight spatial disorientation may even make the job of the autopilot easier in comparison. But what makes it special for us humans is that we get such a tremendous amount of fun out of it.

Passenger number two

Last Sunday I took my friend Marc for a flight around the training area. We followed a similar flight plan as for my first passenger Xuan a week before. Which makes Marc my second passenger.

Unfortunately I had booked BUQ, a two-seater Cessna 152, so I could only take one passenger with me and Marc’s two young boys had to stay behind. They came to the aerodrome nevertheless and I gave them a tour of the plane. If you can call that a tour given the amount of space inside a 152. The highlight of the day was definitely an aerobatics demonstration given by Bob Taits in the afternoon to celebrate the opening of his new facilities at Redcliffe Aerodrome.

The picture above captures pretty well the moment Christian discovered the existence of the wing strut on the 152 the hard way, while Jonathan is all smiles with his head above the wing and in the clouds. Looking inside the plane was a lot of fun too since one can explain and demonstrate the effects of controls by simply turning and pushing the yoke and looking at the control surfaces move though the window.


The weather that day was very ordinary: low dark clouds with a base between 2000 and 3000ft and a strong south-easterly wind. I left with Marc and we taxied for runway 07 and waited for MSJ, the antiquated C172N from the Redcliffe Aero Club, to finish their pre take-off checks before moving to the holding point.


We maintained 1000ft all the way to Bribie Island, crossed the island at its southern end and made a left-hand turn to the North near Bald Point.


Once we were tracking parallel to the beach, we descended to 500ft. I can't remember seeing anyone in the water on that day, but there sure were quite a few 4WD on the beach. You can tell it's low tide when the beach is wide enough for one car to overtake the other.

A few minutes later we realised that a solid wall of rain had formed right ahead of us and was moving towards us, perpendicular to our proposed route. We made a turn to the west earlier than planned to avoid the rain and remain within VMC.


Soon after the sun returned and Marc took a beautiful picture of Pumicestone Channel. In the foreground is Roys Orchards, the northernmost limit of the training area in area D629C.

We then crossed the Bruce Highway, overflew Glass House Mountains township and turned North in order to check out Australia Zoo:

Then we headed to the Glass House Mountains: Mount Coochin in the foregound, then Mt Beerwah on the right and Mt Coonowrin on the left.


Time for the obligatory souvenir picture before heading back to Redcliffe...


...where we joined crosswind for 07...


... and landed with a crosswind. Actually, if you look at the yellow windsock on the left before the runway threshold you can see that, when the picture was taken, i.e. just after turning final, the wind was blowing straight down the runway. Just one minute later, it was definitely at an angle!


The landing was not too bad, at least the nose was aligned with the runway centerline and the wings were banked into the wind.


In summary, good flying, good company, two young persons introduced to aviation, great aerobatics display by Bob Taits and 1.2 hour of command time for the logbook.

GFPT Pre-Test

My blogging got a bit out of synch recently: the order of the posts no longer reflects the progression of my training. My last story was about my first flight with a passenger, which shows to those familiar with the Australian PPL Syllabus that I have passed the General Flying Progress Test (GFPT). However, I have not yet posted anything about the test itself. And there’s a lot to say, so let’s start with the pre-test.

I do not have any photos from the pre-test day, so I’ll illustrate this post with photos of Super Decathlon aircrafts I took at Redcliffe last week-end.


The GFPT is about demonstrating that one can fly an airplane safely. The holder of the GFPT has the right to take passengers but is restricted to flights within the local training area, and must take off and land at the base aerodrome. The GFPT does not cover cross-country navigation, which is the object of the Private Pilot Licence (PPL). For most student pilots, the GFPT is not an end in itself, but rather a milestone on the way to the PPL.

The GFPT test comes in two parts. There’s a pre-test day with an instructor, and the real test conducted by a CASA Testing Officer, which in the case of the Redcliffe Aero Club is Rob Beaumont, our CFI. Incidentally, there’s something I noticed recently reading bloggers from the US: on the other side of the Pacific the acronym CFI refers to a Certificated Flight Instructor, while in Australia it is a Chief Flying Instructor, i.e. the person instructors in a flying school report to. Quite an important distinction for anyone with a flying training career.

In order to make sure student pilots do not show up with gapping holes in their theoretical knowledge, the club asks students to prepare written answers to a list of about forty questions that will be reviewed on the day of the pre-test. This is in addition to having already passed the radio test, the pre-solo test, the pre-area solo test and the so-called Basic Aeronautical Knowledge test. If you don't like tests, stay away from aviation!

It took me ten pages in small font to answer the questionnaire properly. The questions cover regulations, aircraft systems, aerodynamics, aircraft performance, weight and balance calculations, emergency procedures and human performance. Preparing answers is not hard, it just takes a lot of time: a couple of evenings at home, plus an hour at the club since some of the questions require looking up information in the aircraft’s Flight Manual, of which I do not have a copy at home.


The instructor for the pre-test was Mal, and he was happy with my answers. He only picked on a few, very relevant, points. Then Mal briefed me on what was going to happen in the test and we went out in VH-BUQ. At Beachmere we started climbing to 3000ft to do stalls and steep turns. It was a day with broken low clouds, and all throughout this section of the flight we had to find a gap in the clouds and follow it in order to keep the ground in sight. The steep turns were just fine, it’s with stalls that I had problems.

Stalls with power off in the clean configuration were just fine. My problem was with countering the wing drop with rudder and not ailerons in the approach configuration. Approach configuration means some power and flaps down, as if we were coming in to land. Even if I knew I had to keep the ailerons neutral, I would always turn the yoke at some point during the stall recovery. This is ineffective at best, and dangerous at worst since it increases the angle of attack on the downgoing wing, thereby worsening the stall.

It goes something like this: left wing goes down, Julien turns the yoke to the right (bad!), left aileron goes down, angle of incidence of left wing near aileron increases, angle of attack for left wing is increased, left wing ends up stalled even further. The reverse happens for the right wing: the upgoing aileron reduces the angle of attack and helps move away from the stalling angle of attack.

We therefore end up with a situation where one wing remains stalled while the other wing may come unstalled. Nice recipe for a spin! We practiced this a few times and I eventually got it right, but I still have to think very hard "ailerons neutral, ailerons neutral" when demonstrating stalls. I wonder whether it will ever become natural. Maybe if I take an aerobatics course. Or maybe this is a clear indication I should stay away from any aerobatics :-)


We also practiced unusual attitude recovery. I would close my eyes and Mal would place the airplane in an unusual attitude, i.e. significantly nose up or down and banked. I then open my eyes, find the windscreen either full of sky or full of ground, and restore straight and level flight without letting the speed decay below the stalling speed or increase into the yellow arc.

After that I spent about 20 minutes under the hood for some instrument flying, then I took the hood off for a forced landing without power. This was not the best ever but we both agreed we would have made the field.

We headed back to Redcliffe for some more work in the circuit. Normal circuit, flapless landing, glide approach, precautionary search followed by a short field landing. All done with a strong crosswind. In total we flew for 1.8 hour. The unusual length of the session and the variety of exercises really got me exhausted.

Mal said that my flying was good given the difficult meteorological conditions, and that Rob would probably not take me out in similar conditions for the actual test anyway. What happened two weeks later proved him wrong. But that's a story for another day.

First Passenger and Steamed Dumplings

Last Saturday I passed the GFPT test, nearly one year after starting my flying training at the Redcliffe Aero Club. I won't talk about the test now, this deserves a full story or even two. What it means in practical terms though is that I can now take passengers with me on flights within the training area of the Redcliffe aerodrome.

The training area corresponds to the boundary of the so-called Danger Area D629, minus the part of area D629C north of Roy’s Orchards. Vertically, it extends from sea level to 3500ft AMSL or to the bottom of the overlying Class C airspace, whichever is lower. Put into the local context, this means Redcliffe, Deception Bay, Beachmere, Caboolture, Bribie Island and the Glass House Mountains National Park.

It may seem a odd or even a little perverse to put a training area in the middle of a danger area. That’s only until you realize that the training area is the very reason why the whole area is designated as dangerous.

In all fairness, there are other factors that make the area dangerous. The Glass House Mountains are one. These are a half-dozen volcanic peak towers in the middle of an otherwise flat area of forests and fields. With Mt Beerwah at 1824ft and three other peaks above 1000ft, you do not want to be flying VFR with a low cloud base in there.

The other danger factor are the three local non-towered aerodromes: Redcliffe and Caboolture, just 9 nautical miles apart, and Caloundra a few miles over the northern boundary of the training area. That’s a lot of light airplanes, charters, ultralights, gliders and helicopters flying around, especially on week-ends. All three aerodromes share the same VHF frequency, which makes a lot of sense from a safety point of view since one can form a picture of what's happening in the whole training area. On the other hand, the amount of flying activity can really clog the airwaves and make it difficult to place radio calls at times. It is for this reason that the Redclife Aero Club decided recently that the downwind call can be considered optional in such situations.


A long time ago I had promised my friend Xuan that he would be my first passenger whenever I would be allowed to take passengers. I mentioned the idea to him earlier in the week and he said yes without hesitation. Xuan picked me up at home this morning and we started the day with a delicious Chinese brunch at his place. I think I could have meat dumplings and green tea for breakfast everyday.

We drove to Redcliffe together with Xuan’s wife Rachel. Unfortunately I had booked a Cessna 152 so I could only take one passenger, and Rachel had to wait for us at the club for a little over one hour while we went flying. Before the flight I showed the airplane to them both, explained how the controls worked and what all the instruments and the pre-flight checks were about.

Then I gave Xuan the passenger brief, with special attention paid to the fastening of the safety harness, which is a bit awkward in IVW. This airplane is a 152 Aerobat model and is fitted with a proper aerobatics harness rather than the more common car-style safety belt. I made sure to mention to him that the rudder pedals were not foot rests and that if he saw another airplane nearby I expected him to let me know.


There was a strong, slightly gusty south-easterly crosswind, and a cloud base lower than forecasted. The visibility was very good though. We took off on 07, tracked for Beachmere, climbed to 2000 ft and followed the shoreline. As we were abeam the Bribie Island bridge I looked in the distance under our left wing and could see dark clouds and showers of rain over the Glass House Mountains, precisely where our plan said we would be in 15 minutes. I decided to continue anyway since we always had the option of turning back to Redcliffe.

As we were over the Woorim Golf Course at the southern end of Bribie Island we turned north and followed the beach, climbing to 3000ft. Talking to Cara back at the club later I realised I could have made this section of the flight a lot more interesting by flying over the beach at 500ft rather than staying up high. Something to keep in mind for next time.

Approaching the top end of Bribie Island we turned left and tracked west towards the Glass House Mountains township. At that point I could see low clouds and rain right ahead of us so I started a descent and levelled off at 2000ft as we crossed the Bruce Highway. We made a right turn over the township and tracked north, keeping the Steve Irwin Way on our right.

Soon we were abeam Beerwah and had the Conondale Range to our left. We managed to find Australia Zoo, did a half-orbit around it and headed for Mt Beerwah. Finding Australia Zoo was actually very easy thanks to the adjacent parking lot and the U-shaped Crocoseum stadium. Unfortunately Xuan had left his digital camera at home and all the pictures for this post were taken with his camera phone. But I suspect Xuan did that on purpose in order to get another flying opportunity in the near future :-)


We flew in-between Mt Beerwah and Mt Coonowrin then made a large right-hand turn around Mt Beerwah. This was all the more impressive since we were flying at 2000ft around a 1824ft peak. We encountered a few turbulences in the lee of the peak. Knowing we had a south-easterly wind I could have anticipated that and flown higher or further away but I didn’t. No big drama, but one more item on the list of things to improve.

We crossed the National Park in the direction of The Twins, did a right-hand orbit there and looked down at the surrounding pineapple fields. Completing the orbit put us on the way back home. I made a call to the Caboolture CTAF to let everyone know we were over Beerburrum tracking south-east to Donnybrook at 2500ft. At Donnybrook we turned south towards Beachmere and descended to 1500ft. I pointed the Hazelton airstrip and the satellite dishes to Xuan then made our inbound call for Redcliffe. Only two aircrafts were in the circuit: YYM, a Robinson R22 helicopter based at Redcliffe, and BUQ, the other Cessna 152 from the club.

As we overflew the field the windsock was still pointing at 07 with a strong crosswind from the right. Below me I could see the meat-bombing Chieftain at the holding point. We descended over the dead side and joined the circuit crosswind. Before turning base I extended 10 degrees of flaps and slowed the aircraft down to 70 knots, about 10 knots slower than I would usually do. I did that because turning base with such a crosswind means turning into a headwind, which automatically increases the airspeed, and could take us outside of the white arc.

We encountered a few bumps and strong windshear at about 200ft on final and I had to add a lot of power to keep the airspeed at about 65 knots. As we passed the threshold I removed the crab and lowered the right wing. The angle of bank I set was probably too much because we started drifting to the right. A bit less aileron, a bit more rudder to keep straight and we made a decent touch-down on the right-hand side of the centerline, right wheel first, then left wheel, and nose wheel soon after.


We parked right in front of the clubhouse. As I was dipping the tanks I realised I had less that 50 liters left should have stopped at the fuel bowser on the way back. I was about to start again to go refuel when I noticed the Chieftain just pulling in at the bowser. No refuelling this time, the next person flying IVW will have to do it. Here goes one aviation Karma point.

I went back inside, paid 1.0 hour for the flight (private hire of club aircraft is on tacho at RAC, i.e. it does not include taxi time) and added 1.1 hour of Pilot-In-Command time to my logbook (counted on VDO, i.e. from start to shutdown of the engine). Good deal, I feel like I got 0.1 hour for free!

We left the club and stopped in Redcliffe on the way back to Brisbane and had a stroll on the beach. The wind was a lot stronger there than at the aerodrome. A few parachute jumpers landed on the beach in front of us. They had most likely jumped out of the Chieftain we saw earlier.

A coffee later we headed back to Brisbane under the guidance of George W. Bush’s voice coming out of Xuan’s GPS. We had a hard time choosing between him, the Queen of England and Kim Cattrall. We hanged out at Xuan’s place for a while and then had a beautiful homemade Chinese dinner with a number of different dishes from different parts of China. I only wish all future passengers would feed me in a similar way.


All in all I am quite happy with my first passenger-carrying experience. I was a bit nervous about it in the days before since it was Xuan's first flight in a light aircraft and also because of the forecasted crosswind. Even if it was only a local flight, I had drawn the proposed itinerary properly on the map, and even rehearsed the whole thing once flying a C172SP in the flight simulator on the PC at home.

I really enjoyed the experience and I can't wait to take passengers again. In that respect flying is like holidaying: it's a lot more fun visiting new places with other people rather than on your own. I booked a C152 again for next week-end, but the weather forescast says showers and clouds. Let's see how it all works out and who may be sitting in the right seat and subsequently feeding me next week-end.

Clouds, rain and demanding crosswind landings

I went flying on Friday. Sort of. At lunchtime the reported wind in Redcliffe was 15 knots with a crosswind component of about 12 knots, much better than the days before. Still quite close to the 15 knots crosswind limitation of the 152 though, but the wind was expected to fall in the afternoon, so there was a glimmer of hope that I would go flying.

I called the club and Scott, one of the new instructors, said that if I wanted to come over we could go do some crosswind circuits. That sounded like a plan, so I grabbed my flight bag and drove to Redcliffe. Soon after I hit the Bruce Highway the rain grew very strong. I spotted a car in the ditch at the Redcliffe exit ramp which looked like it had spun out of control after taking the turn too fast.

It was a full house at the club since no-one was flying. Lots of new faces on the other side of the counter too since the club hired quite a few new instructors recently. I said hi, grabbed the folder for VH-IVW and went to pre-flight the plane under light rain. Everything was in order with full tanks, so I went back inside to fill in the sign-out sheet and soon Scott and I made our way to the plane.

Right after leaving our parking spot I tested my brakes and the left main wheel skidded on the wet tarmac. We taxied for runway 25 and couldn’t hear anyone on the CTAF frequency at all, even though it is shared between the aerodromes of Redcliffe, Caboolture and Caloundra.

Soon after take-off it became clear that we were heading straight into one of the numerous dark fractostratus clouds that were hanging around the aerodrome. Scott said we’ll be doing 500ft circuits today instead of the normal 1000ft so as to stay clear of clouds. That sounded like a very sensible idea. Scott said he had been to Maroochydore in the morning and at some point the cloud base was as low as 400ft.

On the first circuit my downwind leg was a bit too far, I doubt I could have glided back to the runway in case of engine failure. The crosswind final was OK, I had no problem maintain my track along the extended runway centreline. I had a bit of trouble removing the crab and lining up the plane with the runway on short final though, so Scott jumped in and gave me a hand with the flare and rudder work.

On the second circuit my spacing was better. On downwind I was flying parallel to the runway and in the direction of the marina at the tip of the Redcliffe peninsula. I tried to maintain exactly 65 knots on final which helped with the landing flare but I didn’t put enough right rudder in, so here again Scott had to jump in. As soon as the nose of the plane was pointing down the runway again, Scott handed the controls back to me. Heels on the ground, flaps to 10, ailerons into the wind, full power and soon we were airborne again for our third circuit.

The rain grew a lot stronger on the crosswind leg, and by the time I turned downwind it was pounding the poor 152. The rain was coming in from the sea and reduced our visibility to the point that I could only see the tip of the peninsula as a darker shade of gray through the rain. As we passed abeam the threshold of runway 25 Scott decided to take over the controls and perform a full stop landing. The cool thing is that I could witness a textbook crosswind landing. During the flare Scott kept the height of the plane constant with lots of small pitch adjustments. We touched on the upwind wheel first, then the other main wheel, then the nose wheel. Just like it says in the book :-)

All in all that was only .4 of an hour spent in the air but I don’t regret going. That was my first time flying in such poor meteorological conditions. I started my training last March, at the end of the Australian summer, so I’ve had mostly very pleasant conditions so far. Only once last year did I have to cancel a lesson because of the weather.

I spent the next half-hour at the club booking lessons for the next month and a bit. I had to reschedule my GFPT pre-test and actual test because the weather won’t allow me to finish all the flying before the end of January as originally planned. The test is now scheduled for February 29th, which hopefully will give me ample time to prepare.

I realised that I still need to do a lot of work on crosswind landings. Parts of my problem today was due to the fact that I removed the crab too late, which meant I had to do too many things at the same time: straighten the nose with rudder, roll the wings into the wind while at the same time keeping an eye on the airspeed, controlling the flare and checking for drift.

What I’ll do next time is remove the crab a lot earlier, say when I pass 200ft and remove carby heat, so that hopefully I will have the longitudinal axis of the plane nicely aligned with the runway centreline and drift countered with aileron by the time I start the flare.

I have a lesson booked for next week Thursday. If the weather ends up as forecasted it’ll be a crosswind lesson again. My objective is to fly well enough so that the instructor will not have to take over at any stage. Let's see how we do on this one.

On the medical certificate and CASA's cost recovery model

In Australia, you do not need a medical certificate to start learning to fly, but you definitely need one when the time has come to fly on your own.

As a beginning student pilot, it was difficult for me to imagine that my first solo may be just a few months away. Everything was new. The plane liked to behave in seemingly unpredictable manners. There was never enough time in a circuit to perform all the required actions and go through all the checklists, even when flying a 152 that could barely go faster than the end of the white arc with two people onboard.

Even if you see your first solo as a distant point in the future, you want to be ready for that special day when you’ll take off on your own for the first time. Not being able to fly solo because you delayed going to the doctor would be rather sad.

The process for obtaining the medical certificate is not overly complicated. The price is another story, and I’ll come back to that later.

You start by choosing a doctor in the list given by CASA, and show up on the day with your ARN and photo identification. The nice lady at reception will have you fill in a medical questionnaire, after which you’ll see the doctor. Make sure you go for a Class 2 medical certificate. Class 1 certificates are for professional pilots, while Class 3 are for ATC personnel.

Since I did not have any significant medical history, the medical examination was not different from a routine check-up at the doctor. On the topic of ears I mentioned that I am prone to ear infections while swimming and diving. The doctor picked up on that and was very happy to show me the pictures of his last diving trip to Vanuatu.

Speaking of diving, I found this medical examination actually less thorough than the one required for the PADI Open Water Diver course. That’s probably because private pilots do not fly airplanes through water while breathing through a regulator. Both medical examinations put your sense of balance to the test though. I guess that’s because spatial disorientation may occur in pretty much the same way whether you’re (accidentally) flying through clouds as a private pilot or diving in murky water.

The medical examination itself was $170, on top of which CASA happily slaps a $130 “processing fee”, which brings the total cost of the medical to $300.

In-between the SPL and ASIC applications (see my previous post) and the medical certificate, that’s $510 that a student pilot needs to shell out in overhead costs before his first solo. Just to put things in aeronautical perspective, that’s 2.4 hours of dual instruction in a 152.

Now, I understand that the doctor needs to be remunerated for the medical examination, even though one may find $170 a bit much for what amounts in practice to a long visit to the doctor.

The level of CASA fees can be explained by the so-called cost recovery model, which forces CASA to recover costs “for providing regulatory services to the aviation industry “. Actually, I just found out that the processing fee had been reduced from $130 down to $75 as of July 1^st, 2007. That should help a little bit, even if the principle of cost recovery remains in place.

Talking about the cost of training, CASA recently release a comparative study of the cost of flying training in Australia, New Zealand, the US and the UK. The bottom line is that the UK is most expensive, Oz and NZ are comparable, and the US are a bit cheaper. What I also discovered is that administrative costs in the US are near zero, including for the medical, as shown in the diagram below, taken from the survey.

However, CASA does not see this as impacting the viability of flying training organisations in Australia, so there’s unfortunately no sign that Australia would be moving to the American model anytime soon.

Paperwork for student pilots in Australia

My friend Jacob finally decided to start his training towards a PPL at the Redcliffe Aero Club. Congratulations to him, I hope he’ll enjoy the experience as much as I did.

There’s a few tips I came across when I started my training earlier this year; I thought I would share them with other student pilots. Let’s start with paperwork. What I’m going to say applies only to Australia, apologies to overseas readers.

If there’s a name that’s going to come up a lot in your training, and in conversations with fellow pilots, that’s CASA. The Civil Aviation Safety Authority is the regulatory authority for civil aviation in Australia. In that role, they’re the equivalent of the FAA in the US or the DGAC in France. Among other things, they’re the people who will eventually deliver your pilot licence, so that’s one big reason to make sure you get the paperwork right.

The first step is to obtain an ARN number. This Aviation Reference Number is a personal identification number that will be required for any future interaction with CASA. The application process is rather straightforward: just fill in the form, fax it to CASA, and a week or two later a letter will pop up in your mailbox with your ARN number. So far so good.

The next step is to apply for a Student Pilot Licence (SPL) and an ASIC (Aviation Security Identity Card). This can be done in one go using form 639. The process is a tiny bit more involved here since it requires someone official to check your identity and, for non-Australians, your proficiency in the English language.

In Redcliffe the CFI can do that and the club will then lodge the application for you. However, between Rob’s busy schedule and my own, I found it hard to get hold of him for that purpose, so I decided to lodge the application directly with the regional CASA office. The office is located in Hendra, near Brisbane airport, and is pretty much on the way for anyone who drives from Brisbane’s inner suburbs to Redcliffe.

That was a painless process. I had made sure I had all the required documentation with me, and the whole thing took less than 15 minutes. The English proficiency test took the form of a two-minute informal conversation with a CASA person who, on learning that I was French, explained to me how he used to ferry Airbuses from Toulouse in France to Malaysia.

The SPL and the ASIC card turned up in the mail about 3 weeks later. The whole thing was quick and easy, but not cheap: I left CASA with $210 less in my pocket: $65 for the SPL, and $145 for the ASIC. Next step: the medical examination.