Paragliders at Cooks Terrace

A few months back I fortuitously discovered the existence of paragliding spots along Sydney's Northern Beaches. Today my wife and I were celebrating the end of winter by spending a Sunday afternoon at Bongin Bongin Bay when suddenly a big rectangular shadow swept across the beach. I looked up and here they were, big colourful paragliders in the Sydney sky!

These paragliders were taking off from a point at the top of the cliff known as Cooks Terrace and described as suitable for novice pilots on the Sydney paragliding and Handgliding Club web site.

I was amazed at how long they could stay in the air. They would fly from one end of the cliff to the other and back and didn't seem to loose any altitude. As can be seen from the windsock on the photo below, we had a nice steady sea breeze throughout most of the afternoon. Wind blowing from the sea rises over the cliff and creates ideal conditions for soaring.

Cooks Terrace is the cliff on the right-hand side of the photo below. Other paragliders can be seen in the distance on the left-hand side, this is the Warriewood paragliding side. Under the right conditions, paragliders can go from Warriewood to Cooks Terrace and back.

Seen from the beach it always looked like the paragliders just cleared the cliff edge, but that's clearly just an optical illusion.

The good thing with coastal soaring is the landing on the beach is almost always a backup option if one cannot land on top of the headland.

The paragliders fly a sort of circuit around this headland with one leg along the ridge and the return leg further out at sea.

My wife commented that only an aviation tragic like me can spend a day at the beach looking upward and taking photos of paragliders and not a single time point the camera in the direction of the surfing girls in bikinis right in front of us. I had not even noticed the surf babes.

The Sydney VFR Lane of Entry, on foot and under 48 hours

Together with three friends from work I decided to participate in the 100km Oxfam Trailwalker Sydney in order to raise funds for Oxfam to fight poverty and injustice around the world. This is a 100km bushwalking race to be completed under 48 hours, sleep (or lack thereof) included, in teams of four.

This will be my first time participating in a so-called extreme sporting event. I'm very excited about it and I hope you will be able to support our team and Oxfam.

If you feel like contributing to a good cause (and get it back on tax if you're living in Australia), you can donate to Oxfam on behalf of our team here. If you've ever learnt anything useful on this blog and wondered how to show your appreciation, here's your opportunity!

We called our team the Mountain Devils after the flower of a beautiful native scrub that can be found in numerous places along the track. The track itself starts near Brooklyn Bridge (the start of the southbound VFR lane to Bankstown) and ends in Mosman, right under the flightpath of the Harbour Scenic One procedure.

So far we have walked the entire track once in three training sessions of 30, 30 and 40 kilometres respectively. The next training session will be 50km long and will start with a night section where we'll test our headlamps and try not to get lost in the Australian bush in the dark. The hardest thing with this track is going from water level to the top of the hill down the water level again many, many, many times as you can see on the track profile below.

Oxfam works in more than 26 countries around the world including Indigenous Australia. By raising money for Oxfam Australia we can all make a tremendous difference to the lives of some of the world’s most disadvantaged people. The event began in 1981 as a military exercise for the elite Queen's Gurkha Signals Regiment in Hong Kong, and has since grown into one of the world's leading sporting challenges. Oxfam Trailwalker is a global event, taking place annually in New Zealand, UK, Hong Kong and Japan.

If you would like to find out more or donate on behalf of our team please visit

http://www2.oxfam.org.au/trailwalker/Sydney/team/363

All donations, however small, are deeply and sincerely appreciated!

The photo above, taken from the back seat of Archer VH-SFR on our way to Brisbane recently, shows the area where the first couple of sections of the race will take place. That's a lot of hills to climb and a lot of creeks to cross to get to the finish line!

I hope you will forgive this departure from the usual theme of this blog in the name of a good cause. Our usual aviation programme will resume shortly.

Paragliding Sydney's Northern Beaches

Aeronautical information published by Airservices Australia goes through four amendment cycles every year: information contained in the AIP book, DAP and ERSA is updated with each amendment cycle, while charts are only updated every other amendment cycle.

This is why VFR pilots need to buy a new VTC (Visual Terminal Chart) every six months. The other reason is the constant folding, unfolding, marking tracks, erasing tracks and using the Tasman Sea area for writing clearances and the ATIS. There's only so much abuse a chart can take. I just added two bits of tape to my current VTC and it has to last me till June. And I didn't fly that much. Charts seem to be designed for self-destruction when no longer current.

Now, what happens when a chart needs urgent updating that cannot wait for the next amendment cycle? That's when NOTAMS come in, such as this one found in the FIR section of the NOTAMs for Area 21:

AMEND HANG GLIDER SYMBOLS ON AIP SYDNEY VTC AS FLW:
ADD JOINING RED LINE BTN THE SYMBOLS AT NEWPORT (S33 40.0 E151 20.0)
AND NARRABEEN TO INDICATE THAT HANG GLIDER OPS OCCUR AT OTHER POINTS
BETWEEN.
FROM 12 142123 TO PERM

Clearly, if pilots expect hand gliders only at these two points while they can in fact be found anywhere in-between, this is a safety issue. So I took my nicest red pen and joined the two points with a nice, thick and conspicuous red line.

After patting myself on the back for having read the NOTAMs in full and spotted this one, I was left wondering where those hand gliders on the Northern Beaches would launch from. The roof of the Bahá'í Temple? The top of the lighthouse at Barrenjoey Head? Or are we talking about parasailing? It's all relatively flat out there, and I couldn't remember seeing nice cliffs such as those found near Stanwell Park.

Thanks again to the Almighty Internet, I discovered the Northern Beaches Hand Glider Club. They launch both hand gliders and paragliders from a number of locations along the aforementioned red line: Newport, Mona Vale, Cooks Terrace, Warriewood, Turimetta, and all the way south to Long Reef.

Most of the launch sites have an elevation of about 100 feet. My guess is that they use a combination of thermals and ridge soaring to stay up in the air, otherwise that's a very short glide down to the beach. Pretty impressive. A pity they do not offer joyflights or instruction, those sites are much closer to my house than Bankstown airport.

A fellow flying blogger visits Sydney

Without any doubt, the highlight of writing an aviation blog is meeting in real life pilots I first got in touch with through the blog. This is how I had a coffee at Frankfurt airport with Vincent in 2008, and how I went flying with Chris in 2009. 2010 promises to be a bumper year in that respect, something I am really looking forward to.

Early January I had the pleasure of playing host for one day to Michael and his lovely wife who had the very inspired idea of leaving the Michigan winter behind and spent a few weeks in Australia and New Zealand over the holiday season. Michael is the blogger behind Cleared for the Option and flies out of Willow Run airport (KYIP), near Detroit and is currently working on his instrument rating.

The three of us went for a local flight around Sydney on a Sunday morning, leaving the circuit for 11L at Bankstown on crosswind in the Archer VH-SFA.

We flew the GA lane northbound across Sydney's northern suburbs and turned southbound around Palm Beach.

I started descending to 1500ft over the water. Approaching Long Reef, we experienced some radio problems when requesting a clearance for the Harbour Scenic One procedure: the transmission was perfect one moment, chopped and hardly audible the next. I tried switching radios, still the same. I advised ATC I would do orbits outside of controlled airspace and contact them again when the problem is fixed.

Michael suggested that since I was low and doing orbits, my wing may be blocking the signal intermittently. That made a lot of sense, so I climbed and flew straight for a moment and the problem fixed itself. Thanks Michael!

Tracking towards the Harbour Bridge our traffic was a helicopter towing a massive red banner over Manly Beach. He was not going terribly fast so we overtook him on the right hand side.

This was a banner ad for WeightWatchers. I find it kind of cruel to fly a weight loss ad over the beach on a Sunday afternoon, it's really preying on beachgoers' insecurities, which I guess makes for effective advertisement.

We did a couple of orbits over the Harbour Bridge and the Opera House which offered great views of Sydney CBD. Did I already mention that The Matrix was shot here?

After that we tracked south along the coast on the Victor One route. Clouds were starting to build up, time to head back to Bankstown!

Below is Stanwell Park, not too far from where Laurence Hargrave flew his box kites which inspired many of the early pioneers of heavier-than-air flight, including the Wright brothers. Today hand gliders launch from there, the launch pad can be seen on the right-hand side of the carpark.

We flew back to Bankstown via Appin, followed the M5, called inbound at 2RN and joined final for runway 11R at Warwick Farm. All the details in the video below, and as you can see I had a lot of fun playing with Youtube's annotations feature!

Before saying goodbye we exchanged out-of-date aviation charts as we had agreed beforehand. When Michael opened the Detroit sectional chart to show me his local airspace, I couldn't believe the density of aerodromes. The scale of the chart is the same as our VNC in Australia, but there's many, many more airports. Granted, the population density of the US is eleven times that of Australia, but that's still very impressive. Michael also gave me some approach plates for his home airport of Willow Run, my first time holding approach plates in my hands actually since I do not have, nor am I training for, an instrument rating (yet).

It was great meeting Michael and his lovely wife, we had a great time flying around Sydney and exchanging pilot stories. Now I only need to find a valid reason to pay Michael a visit in Detroit and go for a local flight with him out of Willow Run. And I'm afraid setting a new record with a $2,000+ trans-Pacific hamburger run is not a valid reason.

Update: Michael posted his write-up of our flight with some extra photos, make sure to visit his blog! Thanks again Michael for getting in touch with me in the first place, this was awesome!

Spot the airfield: Southport, Queensland

On a flight from Sydney to Brisbane in a Qantas Boeing 737-800, I spotted Southport aerodrome (YSPT) as we were on descent into Brisbane International.

Southport (YSPT) is a private aerodrome run by the Southport Flying Club. Unless in an emergency, the approval of a club member is required for landing there. The runway is 01/19 and all circuits are on the west side of the runway, on the far side of the photo. This, I imagine, as a way to limit noise pollution over the nearby houses.

Prior to our descent into Brisbane, we made one turn in the hold above Gold Coast airport. This is how I got this nice shot of Cape Byron, the easternmost point on the Australian continent.

Earlier in the day, we took off on 34R at Sydney airport, right behind a Saab 340 from Rex which performed an intersection departure from taxiway T5 holding short of T4. Our airplane was on T6.

The departure to the north was glorious as usual, offering great views of the city.

My plan for my next flight to Brisbane is to spot Heck's Field, a small airfield just north of Southport. Thanks to Qantas online check-in, I know I will have a window seat on the left hand side that's not obstructed by the wing. I wonder though if I should bring baby wipes to clean the window beforehand.

Around Sydney we fly

Last Saturday I took Nina on a scenic flight around Sydney. This was our first time flying together since we moved from Queensland to New South Wales late last year. The plan was to follow the VFR route out of Bankstown northbound, fly the Victor 1 coastal route southbound, then head west to the Blue Mountains before going back to Bankstown. With a little surprise thrown in.

Early in the morning the area forecast mentioned broken stratus clouds at 1000ft near the coast, 1500ft over the slopes and 3000ft over the ranges, with thunderstorms coming in from the south later on in the day. The Sydney part of the trip was still do-able, but I wasn’t so sure about the part that involved climbing to 6500ft for flying over the mountains. The wind was blowing at 25 knots from the north-west, which translated into a planned ground speed of 89 knots on the slowest leg, with a direct headwind, and 140 knots on the fastest leg, with a near-direct tailwind.

By averaging the two values you get our airspeed, which was planned at 115 knots. The planned duration of the flight was about two hours in the Archer. But things rarely go according to plan in aviation.

At Schofields I signed in, hired two life jackets and one headset for Nina, and off we went to the grass parking area. One tank was filled up to the tab but the other one was slightly below the tab. I called the fuel truck, their phone number being in the ERSA, and asked them to come refuel VH-SFR with full tanks. Maybe this was being extra cautious since the fuel already onboard gave us an hour of endurance on top of what was required for the flight plus legal reserves. But as the aviation adage goes, fuel in the tanks is life insurance.

The red and yellow truck arrived shortly after and while he was filling up both tanks I added a bottle of oil to keep the engine happy since the dipstick was showing below 6 quarts. After the fuel truck had left, Nina noticed liquid dripping from under the left wing. I checked and it was fuel coming out of the overflow pipe for the now-full left tank, probably because the aircraft was parked on a slight slope. I knew I made the right choice when I married her.

We taxied, performed the pre take-off checks, took off on 11L and left the aerodrome on downwind, on climb to 1500ft. Tracking north we soon passed the Sydney Olympic Park, purposely built for the Sydney Olympics in 2000, and crossed the Parramatta River. One thing I forgot though was to bring cushions for Nina, who ended up having to look at the views through the side windows only since her eyes couldn't see over the dashboard. Bad husband will keep little things like that in mind for next time.

At Parramatta I called Sydney Terminal with an estimate for Long Reef and requested a clearance into the CTR for a scenic flight. This was the surprise element of the flight. At that stage the controller simply asked me to stay outside of Class C airspace and standby. We kept flying north via Pennant Hills and soon had Cottage Point under our right wing. Cottage Point is not only a very pleasant place for spending a day near the water or on the water, it is also a seaplane base for those who fly in from Rose Bay for a lunch at the Cottage Point Inn.

The controller came back to us with a transponder code and Sydney QNH and asked us to contact Sydney Departure approaching Long Reef for clearance. He also asked us to "verify level", i.e. tell him which altitude we were cruising at (2100 ft was the answer) so that he could cross-check with the altitude reported by our transponder and displayed on his radar scope. At Patonga we turned right and tracked south-east to Long Reef, overflying Narrabeen.

I had not told Nina about the scenic part of the flight since this was subject to a clearance which may or may not be granted depending on a number of things such as which runway was in use at Sydney International and how many other week-end flyers had the same brilliant idea. Approaching Long Reef the controller working Sydney Departure gave us a clearance for the Harbour Scenic One procedure. Yey! Clearance granted! And two big smiles in the cockpit. We tracked direct to the Harbour Bridge at 1500ft, overflying Manly Beach.

Spit Bridge was soon on our right, and we even had the pleasure of overflying our local beach.

Approaching the bridge I slowed the airplane down to 80 knots and extended one stage of flaps. The rule for the Harbour Scenic One procedure is to stay east of the bridge and north of the Opera House at all times, which we did. Left-hand orbits are required, which unfortunately does not give the passenger the best view, especially in a low-wing aircraft. Nina managed nevertheless to snap a few nice photos of the harbour.

The airspace below 1500ft is for seaplanes and helicopters, and we saw one of each kind fly right under us. I still find it amazing that a procedure such as the Harbour Scenic exists. We are very privileged in Australia to be able to fly that close to many of our iconic landmarks such as Uluru, the Great Barrier Reef or the Twelve Apostles.

After completing two orbits I requested a clearance to Sydney Heads for entering Victor 1. It all went just like the scenario explained in the Sydney Basin Visual Pilot Guide: the controller asked me to leave the controlled airspace on descent and call him back when established on Victor 1. We flew east over the water, headed south, descended to 500ft and broadcasted our position on the broadcast frequency for Victor 1, 120.8. Only one helicopter on the frequency, behind us and maintaining 200ft. I reported established to the controller, who asked us to squawk 1200 and approved the frequency change. Back into non-controlled airspace and trying to keep my eyes out of the cockpit as much as I could.

After the Harbour Bridge and the Opera House another iconic Sydney landmark appeared in front of us: Bondi Beach. Because of the proximity of Sydney control zone we couldn't overfly the beach but the view was breathtaking nevertheless. Flying south overwater we passed Coogee Beach, Maroubra Beach, the airport, Cronula, Marley Lagoon and crossed over to the land at Sea Cliff Bridge.

Less pictures of the rest of the flight I'm afraid because my favorite passenger felt asleep, which I interpreted as a sign of absolute trust in my superior flying skills. Or something approaching that. By then it was clear that the increasing layer of clouds wouldn't let us go to the Blue Mountains, so we headed back to Bankstown via Prospect Reservoir after overflying Camden aerodrome and the Warragamba Dam.

The photo above is Chipping Norton Lake, a couple of nautical miles from Bankstown airport. The facetious tower controllers at Bankstown had turned the airport around while we were away so we joined on a downwind for 29R and landed right behind a white Cessna and a red Robin. Total flying time 1.8 hours, and I have the suspicion I will get plenty of other occasions to fly that same scenic route in the future. Which I am very much looking forward to.