New job, new house, new flying club

Near the end of last year we moved to Sydney, about 1000km down the Pacific Highway from Brisbane. New place, new job, and very little time to think about flying. I didn’t even use the flight simulator on the home computer a single time in the last three months. The fact that our new house is only fifteen minutes walk to the beach and that this is summer didn’t help either.

With the new year though the flying bug came back biting. It was time to find a new club to hire aircraft from, and hopefully also get a bit more flying training under my belt. A retractable undercarriage endorsement and a Night VFR rating are definitely on my list for 2009. We'll see how it all works out. The new job thankfully comes with a lot less overseas trips than the old one, so I won't spent a quarter of the year either away or jetlagged at home.

For someone who lives in the inner suburbs of Sydney, there’s unfortunately only one option: Bankstown airport. Sydney’s main airport is, well, the busiest in the country by far so you can forget about flying training or GA flying there. Camden sounds great but is too far for me and Hoxton Park just shut down. Which leaves us with Bankstown, about 45 minutes drive from where I live, and 35 minutes from work. Not too bad considering it used to take me about an hour to get to Redcliffe from my house in Brisbane.

Before leaving Brisbane I asked around for recommendations. Two instructors at my former aero club pointed me to the Schofields Flying Club. I also performed an exhaustive search of all the flying training organisations in Bankstown and came to the same conclusion: Schofields was the one for me.

It is the only organisation I found that seems to be a genuine flying club, as opposed to being a flying school with some social activities thrown in from time to time. I heard that Camden as a much better atmosphere than Bankstown, but it's just too far for me to drop in and have a chat or meet up with people, so that social aspect would be lost on me anyway.

So I went to Schofields on a Saturday afternoon, looked around the brand new clubhouse, sat inside a couple of their aircrafts, talked to a few people, and before I knew it I had applied for membership and booked a date with an instructor called Olivia for the next week-end for the obligatory club checkride. I chose a Piper Archer III, VH-SFR. I sat in the aircraft for a while to become familiar with where everything was and how everything looked and felt. I think I'm going to like it.

Schofields is mostly a Piper joint. Seven Warrior, four Archer, two Arrow and two Seminole. They also have a Duchess, a couple of Cessna 152 and even a 150 VH-JGJ, but that's about it for the non-Piper side of the world. I think I will miss flying the 172SP, but I'm also very much looking forward to learning to fly new types of airplanes, and forming my own opinion in the age-old debate of low wings vs high wings.


I think I'll need to hire VH-JGJ, the Cessna 150, and go for a local flight one day, just for fun. In the words of a former instructor of mine, going back to a 152 after flying larger airplanes "feels like driving a go-kart". At the other end of the range is this beautiful Piper Seminole below. It's pretty much a twin-engined version of the Piper Arrow. The club has both an Arrow III and Arrow IV. The Arrow IV, just like the Seminole, features a T-Tail. The T-tail does not require a separate endorsement, it just comes with the checkride for the type of aircraft.


I left the club and drove into Bankstown airport proper to have a look around. I noticed the Concept Aviation shop and walked in just to have a look. I bought the VTC chart for the Sydney area and a belated Christmas present to myself in the form of an Icon IC-R5 multi-band radio receiver. More on that later once I've finished exploring all the features.


In conclusion, my head is back in the clouds and for the foreseeable future my feet will be resting on rudder pedals very similar to the ones above.

PPL Test Part 3: from Gayndah back to Redcliffe

This is the third and final post on my PPL checkride last November, previous posts can be found here and here. Promised, I will go back soon to posting photos.

Short field take-off at Gayndah, and soon after the examiner pulls the throttle back to idle for a simulated EFATO (Engine Failure After Take-Off). It is generally considered poor practice to shut the engine down for simulating an engine failure, so running on idle is the next best thing. According to someone who has been through a real EFATO, there is a lot more drag from the windmilling propeller, less responsive controls and strong pilot denial when it's for real.

You have to love aviation for always coming up with five-letter acronyms. EFATO is just like a FLWOP (Forced Landing WithOut Power), the difference being you have a lot less time to react due to the proximity of the ground and the lower airspeed on climbout than in cruise. As an added bonus, if you stress the middle syllable, EFATO almost sounds like an insult in Italian.

The procedure drilled into me throughout the whole PPL training comes out easily: carby heat on, mixture full rich, fuel on (except there's no carby heat on a fuel-injected engine), trim for best glide speed, select a field within 30 degrees ahead of us and glide in that direction. I point to the examiner the paddock where I would go, he's happy with the choice and thinks we would make it. He asks for a go around. Full throttle, right rudder and away we climb.

In the corner of my eye I can see the Big Orange. Believe it or not, there are actually four Big Oranges in Australia, all in different states. The one in Gayndah houses the tourist information office. Not to be confused with the Big Pineapple, which features on the Brisbane VTC chart just west of Maroochydore airport. If you haven't been to Australia you can't understand the thing with Big Things. So far I've been to the Big Banana, Big Lobster and the Big Rocking Horse. Hopefully one day I'll visit Tamworth and finally pay homage to The Big Golden Guitar.

From Gayndah I establish myself on track for the Maleny VOR and turn the nose a couple of degrees right of our south-easterly track in order to offset the southerly wind. The examiner announces that upon reaching a certain point on the track, I will have to perform a diversion. That point is when we cross the Widebay Highway, 45 nautical miles from Gayndah, which gives me some time to get prepared. And the diversion will be to Kilcoy, 50 nautical miles after the diversion. The examiner is kind enough to turn the autopilot on for me while I struggle with re-folding the map and measuring distances and headings with my protactor and ruler.

I make a call to Center to tell them that at 46 nautical miles on the 307 radial of the Maleny VOR I will divert to Kilcoy. The controller pulls out my flight plan and seems confused as to whether I'm on the leg from Maroochydore to Gayndah or Gayndah back to Redcliffe. We clear the confusion and our flight plan is confirmed as amended. A few minutes later I turn onto the new heading. Now comes the time for instrument flying,

The examiner has me put on the hood and I start about 20 minutes of instrument flying, maintaining an altitude and a heading. I know the heading is wrong, since the moment when one puts the hood on is usually when the examiner takes advantage of the temporary blindness of the person in the left seat to mess with the directional gyro and get them lost. Fair enough. I fly whatever heading I have to fly and when told come out from under the hood. The idea now is to find out where I am.

I proceed methodically. Write down the time. Slow the airplane down to 80 knots, lower a stage of flaps, choose an anchor point and orbit around it. Given the time spent under the hood and how much the DG was off the magnetic compass, I draw a circle around where I should, in all likelihood, be. To the West I can see a lake with a dam and I am very relieved to find a lake with a dam inside the circle on the map. That's Borumba Reservoir. The rest matches, i.e. roads and nearby town, so I declare us unlost and the examiner is happy.

We track south to Kilcoy where I expect another engine failure, this time in cruise. I get it after we clear the ranges coming from the north, and luckily enough I am within gliding range of the Kilcoy grass runway. I plan an approach in such a way as to fly two legs of the circuit, taking into account the strong westerly wind. Yes, the wind has changed direction, a sure sign we should hurry up back home. I am lined up on final with the grass strip, and the examiner agrees I would make it.

Around we go for a bit of low-level following the D'Aguilar Highway in the direction of the coast. What follows is a standard approach to Recliffe, staying under the CTA steps. Radio call to Caboolture then landing at Redcliffe. Still high and fast, damn, third time in one day... I taxi back, park the aircraft between the hangars. The examiner goes back in and I clean up the aircraft. So far so good. I feel very very tired, this was a 3.8 hour flight, i.e. 3 hours and 48 minutes. I call CENSAR and cancel my SARTIME.

We managed to beat the weather and perform all the planned test flight. But the oral theoretical exam is till waiting. I take a little break and join the examiner in a briefing room. He looks at the Knowledge Deficiency Report from the theoretical exam and asks me questions about hypoxia, stall speed and the oil system as I expected. No problem here. He makes me double-check in the CAO that the maximum altitude for flights without supplemental oxygen is 10,000ft. Then he asks me a trick question about minimum runway width at unlicensed aerodromes. It takes me a while to find the right answer but I make it. He smiles, tell me I passed and shakes my hand. There's quite a bit of paperwork left, but that's of course quite a pleasure.

I would love to say that I was overjoyed at getting the PPL, but that would be a lie. What I felt instead was immense relief, and also a sense of emptiness. Something was clearly over. I had been waiting for that moment for the last 18 months, and the journey had been just as nice as the destination. Now, what next?

I understood for the first time why some people quit flying after obtaining their PPL. Going from zero to being able to fly an airplane safely to any destination with passengers is a big personal achievement in itself. My theory is that many people think they learn flying because they enjoy flying in itself, while in fact what attracts them is eventually knowing that they are capable of flying an aircraft, which is an entirely different thing.

There's absolutely nothing wrong with that. And it is truly a massive personal achievement, no doubt. The closest thing I could compare it to is getting a PhD. You work hard on doing research for years, you get results, publications, write up a dissertation, the big day comes, and you finally get the degree. Only to realise this was only the first step in a lifelong pursuit of knowledge. Or the lifelong pursuit of tenure and research grants, but that's a different topic. Some people keep on doing research, others are just happy to have done it, get a regular, better paying job and maybe add "Dr" in front of their name on their credit card.

So that concludes the PPL chapter of this blog. Learning to fly was a very big part of my life for 18 months but not all my life. In the meantime I also managed to propose to the woman of my dreams, get married, obtain Permanent Residency in Australia, change jobs and change town. It's been a busy but very fulfilling time.

Thanks for reading that far. More adventures to come in the next months with learning to fly Pipers in Sydney, getting a retractable endorsement and possibly a night rating next Winter. And hopefully there'll be plenty of trips to remote landing strips or fly-ins to report on. Stay tuned!

PPL Test Part 1: from Redcliffe to Maroochydore

So the big day of the final PPL test finally came to pass, 582 days after my first flying lesson. And it was a... success! I’m happy to report that I am now the proud holder of an Australian Private Pilot Licence for fixed-wing aeroplanes.

Sorry by the way for the delay in posting the news. I passed the test more than two months ago but have since been very busy with starting a new job and moving to a new city, which left no time for blogging, let alone flying.

A few days before the test, Rob, the CASA Testing Officer who would be conducting both the ground and air-based parts of the test, called to give me the itinerary I would fly on the day. It all sounded reasonably straightforward with three legs: from Redcliffe to Maroochydore, then to Gayndah and finally back to Redcliffe via the Maleny VOR navaid. The only bit of controlled airspace was around Maroochydore airport. Of course there would be diversions, lost procedures, simulated engine failure and system failures thrown in.

As usual, everything that could be planned beforehand was planned beforehand. Twice this time. I even spent a fair amount of time reading the WAC and VTC charts and making mental notes of ground features that I could use to get un-lost when Rob would get me lost. I double-checked all the figures, prepared the flight notification form and annotated my WAC chart with frequencies and half-way points. I read about the three topics on which I gave wrong answers on the theory test: hypoxia, effect of power on stall speed and oil system. And I showed up on time at 8AM.

I got the weather forecast and all the relevant NOTAMs. Nothing too flash. Acceptable in the morning, then getting increasingly worse in the afternoon with a TEMPO for thunderstorms at Brisbane airport, just around the time when we would be coming back to Redcliffe. I computed headings and fuel plan. Because of the probability of thunderstoms at Redcliffe on the way back I had to plan extra fuel for 60 minutes holding , which brought within a few litres of the legal limit, but on the right side of it.

I discussed the plan with Rob and he proposed to swap the in-flight and ground-based parts of the test so that we would do the flying first thing while the weather was still OK, then come back and go through the oral examination. I was happy with that, the last thing I wanted was to postpone the test, knowing it would probably mean a delay of a couple of months at least.

I pre-flighted and refuelled VH-SPP, a Cessna 172SP, then came back into the clubhouse for a pre-flight briefing. Rob explained what would happen on the flight. I would not use the Maroochydore VOR out of Maroochydore because that leg was about testing my dead reckoning navigation skills. At Gaydah I would do a short-field full-stop landing. After take-off there I’ll have a simulated engine failure. On the way to Maleny I will have to do a bit of instrument flying, then perform a diversion and a simulated forced landing. On the way back to Redcliffe there’ll be some low-level flying following the roads, and the landing at Redcliffe will be a flapless. I was surprised by how detailed the briefing was. I didn’t expect him to tell me when and where things would happen. It came as a bonus in a way.

We took off on 07 and tracked to Bribie Island via Beachmere in order to remain within gliding distance of the land. I re-captured my track at Godwin Beach and turned onto a direct heading to Moffat Head, the VFR reporting point for Maroochydore. I was nearly finished with the turn when I realised this was not going to work.

There was a forest fire on Bribie Island right where I wanted to go. The wind coming from the East was blowing the smoke plume to the west, so I dog-legged my way to the east of the fire. Rob sounded pleased with my decision. With the smoke now behind me, I didn’t bother trying to re-capture my track and tracked direct for Moffat Head, which was clearly visible from where I was.

I gave a call to the Caloundra CTAF, took down the ATIS for Maroochydore and made my inbound call to Maroochy Tower. I got cleared direct Maroochydore via Point Cartwright at 1000ft. Tower asked if I wouldn’t prefer runway 12 instead of 18 because of the smaller crosswind component. I decided for runway 18 because I felt quite confident in my ability to demonstrate a good crosswind landing, and I had landed on 18 twice in the last months, while my last time landing on 12 was more than six months ago, and not very good by any standards.

We were the only aircraft on the frequency, which probably explains why we got cleared to land as soon as I joined downwind. I turned base a bit too early, which got me high and fast for the turn to final since the easterly wind really shortened the base leg. I pulled power off, lowered full flaps and performed a decent landing despite a long float. A powered approach and less flaps would have been better though.

Once on the ground Rob asked if I would be OK with departing straight away or if I wanted a break. Clearly he wanted to get back as soon as possible to beat the bad weather. I thought about it for a half-second and opted for a five-minute break on the ground. I wanted the time to prepare for the next leg, re-fold my maps, have a quick bite at a cereal bar and something to drink. No-one can fail you for taking a break. But flying a leg with underoptimal cockpit organisation and low blood sugar level can lead to mistakes that you can be failed on.

So we re-started, taxied back to the holding point of runway 18, did the run-ups, and I called ready requesting an intersection departure. We got cleared to land with a right-hand turn and a climb to 2500ft. I made my departure report and reported again leaving controlled airspace. “Frequency change approved” came back and I switched to a listening watch on the center frequency for the long leg to Gayndah.

Nav7: Back to Redcliffe

Before starting up in Goondiwindi for the last leg of Nav7 I didn't forget to turn the GPS logger back on, so this post will be illustrated with the actual track I flew. Hopefully this will compensate for the lack of photos. GPS tracking is the aviation equivalent of reality TV: no details will be spared, and all embarassing navigation mistakes will be exposed.

The plan was to fly from Goondiwindi (YGDI) back to Redcliffe (YRED) via Millmerran (YMMN), Toowoomba (YTWB) and the township of Esk. As can be seen below, I departed Goondiwindi on runway 22, flew a short crosswind leg, turned downwind and kept climbing for an overhead departure.

I could have made my life simpler by departing on downwind rather than overhead since my outbound track was nearly parallel to the downwind leg. Another thing I could have done better would have been to make sure the extended outbound track pointed at the airfield instead of being about one mile to the north of it.

I kept climbing to 5500ft while maintaining a heading of 033 degrees to Millmerran. The track to Millmerran as drawn on the map was actually 041, but given the forecasted westerly winds at 25 knots I had computed before the flight that the nose of the airplane had to be pointed 8 degrees left of track to compensate for the expected drift. The idea was to keep flying the planned heading and check later if I was where I expected to be or if any adjustements had to be made. In a nutshell, that's the navigation technique known as dead reckoning.

About two thirds of the way to Millmerran I could see on the left-hand side a power line oriented north-south crossing a road oriented south-west north-east. From the WAC chart I could easily tell where I was, which was good, except this was not where I was supposed to be!

I was actually about 5 miles north of the track. I had already flown 45 miles from Goondiwindi, with 20 more to go before Millmerran. Maybe the wind was not as strong as forecasted or had assumed a different direction, resulting in my heading over-correcting the expected drift and taking me further to the left of track. Or maybe I misaligned the compass and the DG. Finding why it happened was anyway secondary to fixing the problem.

That's when the navigation technique known as one-in-sixty comes in handy. It is based on the fact that being off track by 1 mile after 60 miles flown means an angular error of 1 degree. 2 miles after 60 miles mean 2 degrees, and so on. It works great, at least for small angles. From a mathematical point of view, this relies on the fact that the function tan(x) can be approximated as x for small values of x. But let's not complicate things, since the beauty of the method is that it can be done in the cockpit while flying.

It goes a little bit like this: I am off track by about 5 miles after about 45 miles flown. Let's say 50 instead of 45 because it makes calculations easier. 5 in 50 is like 6 in 60. So I was over-correcting drift by 6 degrees. If I turn right 6 degrees now, I will fly parallel to my intended track. However, if I do that I will still be 5 miles off-track. So I need another one-in-sixty calculation to determine the closing angle that will take me straight to my destination. I still have 20 miles to run till Millmerran, 5 in 20 is like 15 in 60, so if I add an extra 15 degrees to the 6 degrees found previously, this means I need to turn right 21 degrees to be on a track to Millmerran. New heading is therefore 012.

And it works, as can be seen in the picture above: after turning onto the new heading my new track was pointing at Millmerran. Near Millmerran I went a bit right of track in order to keep the aerodrome on my left, simply out of curiosity. Then I turned onto a new heading and tracked for the Toowoomba aerodrome. I used the drift correction from the one-in-sixty exercise conducted a few minutes before to compute a new heading.

I picked up the ATIS for Oakey on their VOR frequency. The sequence letter for the information was Zulu, meaning the military control zone was not active and had reverted to a CTAF. My track only clipped the CTR by a mile or so, but I would nevertheless have needed to request a clearance if it had been active. No need to upset the military. I prefer to see fighter jets and big black helicopters at airshows rather than at the end of my left wingtip.

Toowoomba is blessed with an NDB navaid, so I tuned it in and the needle on the ADF was pointing straight ahead. The ADF needle points at the navaid in relation to the airframe, not in relation to the track as is the case with VOR navaids, so one has to take drift into account. However, since I was no longer offsetting a lot of drift, the nose of the airplane was pretty much pointing where the airplane was going, and therefore the needle pointing straight ahead was good news.

I made a couple of calls on the Toowoomba CTAF to let everyone know I was intending to overfly the field at 5500ft. At this altitude I couldn't really have conflicted with traffic in the circuit, but it's good practice. The GPS logger can be cold and cruel at times, pointing mistakes that would otherwise go unnoticed, but in the present case I'm happy to report that my track took me right overhead the airfield.

After Toowoomba I tracked for Esk. Under my left wing were the Cressbrook and Perseverance Creek reservoirs that I had overflown on Nav3 six months ago on my way to Oakey. The hilly scenery was really beautiful in the low light near the end of this winter afternoon. I found Esk and confirmed it with Mount Esk, the racetrack and the red rooves of the Esk Hospital. I descended to 3500ft and once clear of the ranges kept descending to 1500ft to remain under the CTA steps of Brisbane International. 

The GPS logger got its revenge when I joined the circuit at Redcliffe. I was coming in from the west at 1500ft and my track was taking me straight to the airfield. I turned right a little so as to be on the south side of the extended centerline for runway 07/25.

The dead side at Redcliffe is always to the south because all circuits are over the water, i.e. left-hand circuits for 07 and right-hand circuits for 25. That's both for reasons of not overflying populated areas, and avoiding any controlled airspace violation. The Brisbane CTA step over the Redcliffe aerodrome is at 1500ft, and there's a 1000ft step just a couple of miles south of the field.

I knew from listening to the CTAF frequency that runway 07 was in use, which I confirmed by looking at the windsock as I was descending to circuit height over the dead side. The winds had changed since earlier in the day when I took off on 25.

I joined crosswind above the opposite end of the runway. I turned downwind a bit too early so I widened the leg a bit. This is why the track does not look anything like the nice figures in flying training books. I landed on 07, taxied out and refuelled the airplane. I cancelled SARTIME by phone then sat down a few minutes to jot down some notes about the flight so that I could blog about it later. Total flying time today 4.3 hours, at $185 an hour plus $29 for landing at Archerfield. Oops. Looking forward to being able to take passengers with me to share the cost.

So that's it. The navigation part of the PPL is now over. It's a bit of a weird feeling. Next step, PPL pre-test and then test. And hopefully many more adventures after that. And I need to blog about the CSU endorsement. And the PPL theory test. And the airshow in Singapore. And write a guest post for Plastic Pilot. Too many blog topics, not enough time.

Nav7: from Redcliffe to Archerfield

Nav7 is the last solo nav before the PPL pre-test and test. Last chance to fix bad habits before it's too late. The plan was to go from Redcliffe to Archerfield and refuel there, then to Goondiwindi via Gatton, Warwick and Inglewood. The third and final leg took me back to Redcliffe via Millmerran, Toowoomba and Esk. The total time spent in the air for this trip was 4.3 hours and the airplane was VH-SPP, a Cessna 172SP. A very long flight, so I'll break up the story into three posts.

For this flight I used a PhotoTrackr device that I borrowed from my friend Christian. It's basically a GPS receiver that records GPS fixes to a flash memory that can later be read by plugging the device into a PC. It is powered by a single AA battery and requires only one button to operate. The roof hook at the back of the 172 provided a perfect hanging point for maximising the number of satellites that the device can see.

The track for the first leg starts with a take-off to the west from Redcliffe Aerodrome, then south-west to the TV Towers, south-east to the Centenary Bridge and finally joining the circuit for a full-stop landing on 28R at Archerfield at 10:45AM.

The day started a lot earlier though. When I left home it was 7AM and only 6 degrees outside. Quite cold for a Queensland winter. I drove to Redcliffe with virtually no traffic and pulled into the small shopping centre next to Bunnings for a coffee and a slice of cake. Then I walked into Subway next door.

The lady was kind enough to serve me even though the store was not open yet. She even called me "keen and early". This was the first time in my entire life that these two adjectives were used in conjunction to describe my personality. It must be one of those things flying does to you. I got a foot-long roast beef sandwich with no sauce since I know from past experience how soggy the sauce can make the bread after 3 or 4 hours spent in a plastic bag at the back of the plane.

At the club I helped push planes out of the hangar then sat down for flight planning. The weather forecast was amazingly good with not a single cloud in sight, unlimited visibility and some wind from the west thanks to a large low over Tasmania. The westerlies were expected to grow stronger and gustier in the afternoon though because of an approaching cold front. The forecasted winds at the surface were 15 knots gusting at 25 for Oakey, and 16 gusting at 26 for Toowoomba. Goondiwindi had 14 knots of wind with no gusts and a crosswind component of 7 knots.

I got Tony to double-check my flight notification form. He made sure I knew where controlled airspace was and how and where to check if I needed a clearance into it or not. And also that I had checked the crosswind component for Goondiwindi. Then he signed me out and asked that I rang the club from Goondiwindi to let everyone know I had landed safely.

I took some time to pre-flight the airplane and prepare the cabin for the long flight. I made sure everything was within reach of my seat, including water, spare pencils and flight computer. I took off on 25, kept flying the runway heading then tracked for the township of Samford at 1500ft. As soon as I had a bit of time I tuned and wrote down the ATIS for Archerfield.

After Samford I started flying south, overflew the Enoggera Reservoir and made my inbound call for Archerfield abeam the TV Towers. Then I tracked 153 degrees for the Centenary Bridge. The bridge is sitting very low on the water and is hidden from view by a curtain of trees, which means it only becomes visible when one is practically over it.

Archer Tower asked me to join downwind for 28R. As I reported downwind tower informed me I was number 4 in the circuit and that I should widen my downwind leg. I reported sighting the plane in front of me and widened the circuit a bit. Then a few second later I saw another plane, a lot more to my left, and a lot closer than the previous one I had spotted. This was actually the plane I was expected to follow, not the previous one... Oops... This time around I really widened downwind, doubling the distance between me and the runway. In hindsight, I should have made sure I sighted all three airplanes ahead of me in the circuit when I was told I was number 4, not just the airplane I thought was the one prior to me in the sequence.

I landed on 28R and exited via the second taxiway. Then I taxied to the transient parking area in front of the terminal and called the refuel truck on the radio. He showed up a few minutes later and I asked him to fill up the tanks to the top. He noticed the name of the Redcliffe Aero Club etched onto the BP fuel swipe card and asked if I was on my way to Goondiwindi. I guess I'm not the first student pilot to stop at Archerfield for refuel on Nav7. He added 130 litres, which brought the tanks to their combined maximum of 201 litres.

After he left I checked fuel level and all fuel drains and did a quick walk around the airplane to make sure everything was still fine. I taxied to the grass run-up bay for 28L, making sure no plane was on final for 28R when crossing at the back of 28R on taxiway A9. After run-up checks I made sure everything was ready for take-off before calling ready, not like that time at Gold Coast when I forgot to switch the transponder on. ATIS had not changed, strobes, nav lights, transponder, DG and compass aligned, mixture on full rich, flaps up. I called ready for take-off at the holding point and was cleared for take-off and a departure to the west.

Next stop Goondiwindi. 171 nautical miles to cover with strong headwinds. Estimated duration of the leg one hour and fifty-two minutes. Average ground speed about 90 knots. That'll give us plenty of time to admire South-East Queensland unfold below us.

The tiger, the chicken and the Russian lady

I try to always have my camera with me when I come near an airport. Good blogging material may pop out of nowhere and be gone in an instant. A few weeks ago I was at Redcliffe aerodrome for my Nav7 briefing and my photographic obsession was rewarded with a visiting Yak-18T VH-KGU parked right in front of the Redcliffe Aero Club clubhouse.

No-one could be seen near or inside the aircraft, except for the guard tiger crouched over the right-hand seat. I walked around, took pictures and wondered at many of the peculiar features of this airplane.

The Yak-18 is a full-aerobatic trainer designed right after WWII ended. Remarkably, it is still in production today, although the later models are quite different from the earlier ones. The distinctive shape of the canopy of earlier two-seat tandem models make them easily distinguishable from the later Yak-18T and its four seats in a side-by-side arrangement. This model was designed as a trainer for Aeroflot pilots and production began in 1972.

It is painted in the so-called Yellow 44 Lilya Litvak livery, after the Yak-1B airplane flown by Russian WWII hero Lilya Litvak, one of the first female fighter pilots. The legend (or, perhaps more accurately, Soviet propaganda) has it that she had painted a white lilly on the fuselage of her airplane, which earned her the nickname "The White Rose of Stalingrad", probably from male fighter pilots who couldn't tell the difference between a rose and a lilly. According to IMDB, there's a movie currently in production about Lilya Litvak's life, to be released in 2010.

On the left wing is a half-meter long heated pitot tube, with an unusual pitot tube cover in the shape of a happy-looking rubber chicken.

The engine is the M-14P, a very reliable 9-cylinder radial engine that delivers 360 HP. It uses 45 litres of fuel an hour for a cruise speed of about 130 knots and a maximum take-off weight of 1503 kg. This is quite remarkable when compared to a more modern GA aircraft from the other side of the now defunct iron curtain, such as the Cessna 172SP. The cruise speed and fuel consumption are comparable, but the Yak-18T can carry nearly 350 kg more, is fully aerobatic, and costs a lot less to buy! Granted, the Yak-18T goes through half a litre of oil an hour, but that's part of the charm of radial engines.

And just like with most radial engines, the cylinder that ends up head-down after the engine is stopped has a tendency to leak oil. Which I think is the reason for the plastic Coke bottle at the end of the pipe. I'm not quite sure the Soviet Union officials would have approved of the use of such a blatant symbol of American Imperialism on one of their iconic flying machines though.

Looking up information on russianaeros.com, I came across this page with a lot of practical information about the M-14P, including a discussion of the hydraulic lock problem, i.e. what happens when you start a radial engine that has one cylinder with its combustion chamber full of oil. Hint: oil is not compressible, and Fred Abramson in the article above describes what happens as "very dramatic, with the airplane practically jumping off the ground". Not good.

The propeller is variable pitch. VH-KGU seems to have the original 2-blade propeller. Modifications are possible to fit a three-blade propeller for increased performance.

VH-KGU also appears near the top of this Web page, both in its current condition but also as how it once was in the Soviet Union before making its way to Australia.

On the leading edge of the left wing, not too far from the chicken-guarded pitot tube, is a stall warning vane. When the angle of attack increases above a certain value, the vane is pushed upwards and triggers an audible warning in the cockpit.

There's an air intake right under the engine cowling and another one near the root of the right wing. Note that the size of the doors only covers the landing gear leg. As a consequence, the wheels are still visible when retracted.

The air intake on the right wing provides cooling for the oil radiator situated inside the intake. The white lilly can be seen on the door, as well as the name of Lylia V Litvak in Cyrillic characters.

Last curiosity: a pin located on the upper side of each wing right above the landing gear acts as a visual indicator that the landing gear is down and locked. It took me a while to find this one out until I saw it mentioned in a flight-test article on the Yak-18T written by Peter March in the December 2001 issue of the UK Pilot magazine.

So that's all I had to say about the Yak-18T. Great plane to walk around, great plane to blog about. A lot of what I know now about the Yak-18T I wouldn't have bothered looking up if it wasn't for writing this blog entry, so once again blogging is really a two-way street.

One thing that still bothers me though is that from the figures I've come across a Yak-18T could be cheaper to own and operate than, say a Cessna 182, for a comparable cruise speed and better payload. Either there's something I'm missing or there is actually an attractive and exotic alternative to the ubiquitous Cessnas and Pipers.

Not that I am in a position to even think about owning a plane. But it's nice to know that good engineering withstands the test of time.

Nav6: Solo tick at last

Remember how a few things went well but how I also busted controlled airspace on Nav 6 last May? As a logical consequence, it was decided that I would do the controlled airspace part of this navigation exercise again.

I got around to doing this so-called supp nav (for supplementary navigation exercise) only in the first half of August. The three-month delay can be explained by a long overseas trip I took in June and later by a combination of sick instructors, bad weather, and a very busy booking sheet at the Redcliffe Aero Club.

Let me kill any sense of suspense right from the onset by saying that yes, I received a tick to move on to Nav7, which is a solo nav in controlled airspace. Congratulations to me then, even though the flight was far from perfect.

The plan was to go from Redcliffe to Gold Coast through the controlled airspace around Brisbane airport then to the GAAP airport of Archerfield via the Laravale VOR before heading to Toowoomba and eventually going back home.

The airplane VH-SPP and the instructor were booked for the afternoon only, so I had the whole morning to prepare for the flight. At 1PM Mal rocked up and I was ready to go, with maps drawn, flight planned, weather and NOTAM checked, airplane pre-flighted and refueled.

We took off on 25, climbed to 1500ft and requested our airways clearance through Class C airspace. The approach frequency was very busy with incoming jet traffic into Brisbane. While waiting I orbited overhead the aerodrome at 1500ft, which was not a very smart thing to do, as I realised later during the debrief.

I couldn't go higher since 1500ft is the lower limit of the overlying controlled airspace. But 1500ft also happens to be the altitude at which other airplanes inbound to Redcliffe from the north overfly the field on their way to the dead side before joining the circuit.


To make matters worse, I was listening to Brisbane Approach and not to the CTAF frequency since I was waiting for my clearance, and given the congestion on the frequency I didn't fancy having to ask the controller to say again. This means that I wouldn't even have known if there had been a flight inbound. Not good.

In hindsight, orbiting near Castlereagh Point at 1500ft would have been a lot better since my track wouldn't have infringed on the circuit. I'm sure this was covered at some point in a briefing in the past, but it somewhat managed to fall between the cracks. One more item on the list of things to do better next time.

We eventually got cleared for Hornibrook Viaduct, Brisbane Control Tower, Manly Boat Harbour and Jacobs Well VOR at 1500ft, with a clearance limit at the tower. This is the standard clearance for transiting this airspace and is actually published in the Flight Plan Requirements section of the ERSA.

Obviously, since this was a dual nav and I was being assessed, even I could realise that taking pictures in-flight, even for blogging purpose, was not a smart idea. So I didn't. I was lucky enough though to fly twice to Sydney on business the week after, which allowed me to take a few pictures to illustrate this post. On both flights the Qantas airliner flew via the Laravale VOR, which took me back to the same neck of the woods where this Nav took place.

I took the picture below from a Qantas Boeing 767 soon after take-off from Brisbane. You can see the control tower right under the wing of the aeroplane. Redcliffe is the peninsula right below the horizon and to the right. In-between Redcliffe and the airport is Bramble Bay. The Hornibrook Viaduct is on the far side of the bay, somewhat up from the Domestic Terminal.

Back to the nav in the Cessna 172. Approaching Brisbane control tower, the controller asked us to track for the threshold of runway 19 where two Virgin jets were waiting for take-off. We continued on to Manly Boat Harbor, after what we left controlled airspace and tracked to Gold Coast via the Jacobs Well VOR at 1500ft. Manly Boat Harbour is visible near the center of the picture below. The winglet belongs to a Qantas Boeing 737-800.

This time I made sure that I Tuned-Identified-Tested all the navaids, which was an issue the last time when I confused the Gold Coast VOR with the Jacobs Well VOR. Speaking of Jacobs Well, I was at the West End Market recently when the name Jacobs Well jumped up at me from the label of an egg box.


I so wanted to do a good job of using the navaids that I spent an awful lot of time with my head in the cockpit. Not good. I should of course have spent more time looking outside the window and use my planned heading and time intervals at the primary navigation aid, and only use the navaids as a secondary navigation aid. Especially on that day, the visibility was excellent, which made dead reckoning a piece of cake, especially when you're aiming for Q1, the world's tallest residential tower.


I made a call when 10 nautical miles to the north of Southport aerodrome to let everyone in the area know that I would be tracking nearly overhead the aerodrome at 1500ft then I switched back to the area frequency. In hindsight, I should have treated the Southport CTAF with a lot more caution, remaining on the frequency and making more calls while there was a risk that I would interfere with traffic coming in or out of Southport, or even doing circuits there. One more item for the do-better-next-time list.

Approaching Q1 at 1500ft I requested a clearance from Gold Coast tower. A controller came back saying I was actually talking to Gold Coast Ground, not Gold Coast Tower, and would I please remain outside of Class C airspace while requesting my clearance on the right frequency this time. Oops...

What happened was that I had read (what I thought was) the tower frequency as 121.8 in the TAC chart for Brisbane, while the correct frequency was 118.7. To be honest, I find the line in the box that reads "TWR 121.8/118.7" very misleading. Of course, I wouldn't have had this problem if I had read it out of the ERSA or even from the VTC chart. Or if I had listened to the frequency long enough to hear the callsign of the ATS unit. I guess one lives to learn...


Once on the right frequency we received a clearance for making a visual approach to Runway 32 with a right base turn. My base leg was a bit too close to the runway and when I turned final the preceding aircraft was just touching down. It was a small Cessna so no problem with wake turbulence, but for a moment I thought I would have to go around. I was actually cleared to land and did an acceptable landing, much better than the time when I just fell onto the runway at the same airport.

We taxied to the GA parking, taxied back to the holding point for Runway 32 soon after and took off. Our airways clearance was to track for the Laravale VOR at 4500ft. We had originally asked for 6500ft, but I guess they wanted to get us out of their airspace as quickly as possible.

A couple of minutes after take-off the tower controller for Gold Coast asked us to turn our transponder on. The first thought that crossed my mind was that for some reason the transponder had failed. Blaming instruments is so much easier. Then I looked at the mode switch and realised it was still on "SBY" and not on "ALT". Oops. I should have turned it on before calling ready at the holding point, which I didn't do obviously. Instrument OK, pilot defective.

I couldn't pick up the Laravale VOR because of the mountain range between us and the station. And I forgot that I could use the corresponding outbound radial of the Gold Coast VOR. So I flew the heading and once over the ranges I picked up the Laravale VOR and I wasn't too much off track. Approaching the station Mal put me under the hood for a dozen minutes after which I had to perform a lost procedure, i.e. finding where I was.

This went fine, and after that Mal asked me to go to the township of Beaudesert by flying low level and following the road. This was as simple as following the highway, being mindful of not overflying house at less than 1000ft. Soon after Beaudesert we saw the Park Ridge water tower. Mal asked me to request a clearance to overfly Archerfield on our way back to Redcliffe.

On the picture below, taken from the same 767 mentioned earlier, this would mean flying from left to right. Archerfield aerodrome is near the center of the picture, with runway 28R/10L clearly visible as a dark strip oriented top left/bottom right. To the back is the Brisbane river. To the left is the Centenary Bridge, a reporting point when coming in from the north. Near the right side of the picture is the Indooroopilly Bridge, a tracking point when flying out of Archerfield to the north.

So we tracked for overhead the runway at 1500ft. A Metroliner was taking off on runway 28R as we overflew the runway at 1500ft. It was also tracking north, but at 1000ft and was much much faster than us.

A few minutes later we landed on 25 at Redcliffe, taxied back to the hangar and I cleaned up the airplane and canceled SARTIME. We had a half-hour debrief during which Mal greatly enriched my list of things to do better in the future. The objective of this nav were met though, so Mal gave me the tick to move on to Nav7. I'm really looking forward to it. This will be my second solo nav, and given how much of a blast the first one was, I can hardly wait to take the airplane somewhere else than Redcliffe all on my own.

And I have a little handy GPS tracking device that will add a new dimension to such blog posts in the future. More on that next time.

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.

Kangaroo 1 - Airplane 0

Aviatrix just recently posted a story about towing airplanes with the hand brake on, and how this could result in a nasty flat patch on the tires. This reminded me of a tire I saw in the corner of a hangar at Redcliffe a few months ago:

The two tow bars at the back are of the type Aviatrix refers to as the giant tuning fork. I guess if you're a whale, elephant, hippopotamus, rhinoceros, giraffe, okapi, or alligator, all animals known to use infrasounds, this would indeed be a handy tuning fork for your very long vocal wavelengths.

That tire came from the main wheel of a C172SP. I think the story is that a kangaroo jumped in front of the plane right after touchdown on 07 at Redcliffe. The pilot jumped on the brakes and blew up one of the tires, but fortunately enough the airplane didn't suffer any other sort of damage. No idea what happened to the kangaroo though. Probably hopped his way back to the pub with a good story to tell.

That's actually quite a facetious bunch of kangaroos we have at Redcliffe. The entire mob lives south of the threshold of runway 07. I saw them a few times in the distance when flying early in the morning. I think during the day they just retreat in the shade.

The close-up picture above does not require much explaining, it's very consistent with blocking the brakes. Which makes me think, why don't airplanes come fitted with anti-lock braking?

Thanks to the irreplaceable Wikipedia, I just found out that the first anti-lock braking system was actually developed in 1929 for use in airplanes by French automobile and aircraft pioneer Gabriel Voisin. He and his brother designed the Antoinette III, the first airplane on the European continent to succeed in landing back where it had taken off after flying a pre-assigned 1 kilometer long closed circuit.

What one can learn with just a few clicks of the mouse will never cease to amaze me.

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.