First solo nav: I love it when a plan comes together

Nav4 was my first solo nav. It was very enjoyable, very rewarding and, of course, amazingly quiet in the cockpit.

I showed up at the club bright and early and got started on the flight planning tasks that can only be done on the day. I downloaded the weather and NOTAMs, computed headings, ground speeds, time intervals, fuel consumption and endurance, and finally filled in the flight notification form.


Mal was about to sign me out when I mentioned that this was my first time flying VH-MSJ. This airplane is a Cessna 172N, while the other three 172s at the club are the much more recent 172SP model. The 172N model came out in 1977 and VH-MSJ was first registered in Australia in 1979, which makes it about 30 years old.

Even if it is the same type, there are sufficient differences between the two models to make an instructor uncomfortable at the thought of sending a student solo in a model he has never flown before. The model N has a 160 HP carbureted engine, while the SP has a 180 HP fuel-injected engine, which resulted in a significant increase in cruise speed, from 105kt up to 115kt. In addition, the flaps on the N model can be extended down to 40 degrees, which was later brought back to 30.

In addition to differences with the type, there’s a few idiosyncrasies with MSJ itself. As they say in the Qantas safety briefing, subtly, every aeroplane is different. You bet they are. MSJ has only one radio, which is situated on the right-hand side of the panel, making it awkward to dial frequencies. All navaids are unserviceable, even though the second ADF is not tagged as such. This is fine of course since Nav4 is pure dead reckoning in class G airspace. And although the rudder trim is forever set fully to the right, a very healthy amount of right rudder sill needs to be applied at all stages of the flight, even in cruise.


Mal suggested we go together for a few circuits so that I could familiarize myself with the airplane. So off we went. My first impression was that MSJ behaves a lot more like a 152 than the 172SP. The biggest difference is when extending the last stage of flaps on final. Mal was right, it really feels like pulling the handbrake.

We did a normal circuit, a go-around and a full-stop landing. I really had to push hard on the yoke when applying full power with 40 degrees of flaps on the go-around. This may be why Cessna limited flap extension to 30 degrees in later models; there may have were just too many accidents caused by stalls on a go-around, with the airplane pitching up violently too close to the ground for any form of stall recovery to be carried out.

We came back, Mal jumped out, I refueled, parked and took some time to set up everything nicely in the cockpit before starting again. I took-off on 07, left the circuit on downwind and maintained 1000ft as VH-TRE, one of the two C182 of the club, was inbound at 1500ft just above me. I carefully climbed under the CTA steps, identified the Woodford prison, then stopped climbing because a line of CUs had formed over the top of the ranges. After Kilcoy I resumed climbing, eventually reaching 6500ft and started to relax a little.

That’s when it really hit me, the pure pleasure of being on my own in the aircraft on my way to somewhere else than the home base. I was flying an antiquated 172 with a groundspeed of 95kt because of a headwind, but I couldn’t have been happier. You know a good flying moment when you can’t stop smiling to yourself in the cockpit.



As part of my CLEAROFF checks I kept looking for suitable areas for forced landings under me. There weren’t many in this very timbered area. I found some comfort in the idea that, at 6500ft, it would take me about 10 minutes to glide down to ground level in the even of an engine failure, which hopefully should be enough time to find a suitable landing site and conduct an approach.

Speaking of engine failure, I scared myself a little while leaning the mixture. On the 172SP, I am used to leaning the mixture using either the EGT or the fuel flow indicator. On MSJ, the only way to go is by the ear. It all worked as expected, except that the engine started running rough as I was leaning the mixture and really sounded like what I had imagined an engine quitting would sound like. It only lasted a fraction of a second but that was enough to send a chill down my spine. I gave the mixture two full turns and everything was back to normal on the rich side of peak.


The visibility was so good I could see Tarong power station far under the left wing. On my right was lake Barambah, and ahead of me I could see rooves glistening in the mid-day Queensland sun. According to my map I should have been over the tip of the lake, which meant I was off course by a few miles. Remembering the lesson I learned on Nav3, I decided to keep flying the current heading. Three towns appeared ahead of me, which matched the map and meant Wondai was the one on the left.

I found the airstrip and positively confirmed it was Wondai thanks to the big white letters that conveniently spell WONDAI near the windsock. I joined crosswind for runway 18. Somewhere in the base turn I lost track of where the runway was. My excuse is that Wondai is a grass strip in the middle of an area of similar color tones. I found myself on base and way too high. I turned final, extended full flaps and still couldn’t go down fast enough. With 1400m, the runway would have been long enough to accommodate a landing with a touchdown point somewhere mid-strip, but that would have been a display of rather poor airmanship, so I decided to go around. Good thing we practiced go-arounds with full flaps earlier in the day…

The second attempt at landing was the good one, I touched down OK, taxied down the grass runway and turned left onto the sealed apron. I parked MSJ right in front of the local terminal building and next to a King Air 200. I dipped the tanks and found 150l, exactly what I had planned to find. I love it when a plan comes together.

I had lunch and chatted with the pilot of the King Air, who was kind enough to let me use his mobile phone on Telstra to call the club and let them know everything was fine. Damn Vodaphone and their ridiculous coverage of rural areas. I guess you get what you pay for.


I started again and took off on runway 36 since there was virtually no wind at the time, which saved me and the airplane having to backtrack all the way back up the runway. I extended the downwind branch to establish myself on track for Kumbia. I had the Gordonbrook reservoir on my right, gave a call to the Kingaroy CTAF and enjoyed the scenery. There were lots of patches ahead of me which could have been Kumbia. I kept flying my heading and Kumbia appeared right under my nose, right when I expected it. Dead reckoning is such an absolute joy when it works perfectly well…

I made a turn to the east and passed abeam the Tarong power station on track to Kilcoy at 5500ft. I was about 10 miles west of Kilcoy and ready to switch to the CTAF frequency to make an overfly call when I heard the controller on the center frequency give traffic advisory to an IFR flight. I mentioned some “unknown VFR traffic 10nm west of kilcoy 5500ft”. I though, Hey! That’s me they’re talking about on the radio! I’m famous! I got on to the controller and told her I was MSJ and tracking to Kilcoy maintaining 5500ft.


She asked me to squawk ident. I looked at the transponder to find the “ident” button. Apart from the rotating knob there was only one button on the panel of the transponder, but I couldn’t read the label on it. It HAD to be the ident button. I pressed on it and the voice of the controller came back saying I was identified. She then asked me to report sighting IFR traffic at 6000ft in my 10 o’clock. I turned my head to the left and there it was, right under my left wing and in the opposite direction. I reported traffic sighted and clear of traffic.

After Kilcoy I descended to 3500ft and cleared the ranges. The visibility was so good I could already see the Redcliffe peninsula. I gave the Caboolture CTAF a call then landed on 07 at Redcliffe.

As I was taxing back I heard a Cessna 172 coming from the south make a call for joining the circuit at Redcliffe on a “right base 07”. That’s funny because joining base is not allowed in non-controlled aerodromes, and there are no right-hand circuits for runway 07 at Redcliffe anyway.

All in all an extremely enjoyable day. Great flying, and dead reckoning navigation worked flawlessly. I've heard about people who always prefer to fly with a passenger, even if the passenger cannot act as a safety pilot. As far as I'm concerned, I can't wait to go on a solo nav again, it's such an awesome feeling.

Nav1 and plenty of venturis at Wondai

Last Sunday I went out on a navigation exercise with Lee to Wondai (YWND) via Kumbia and came back to Redcliffe via Kilcoy. Redcliffe Aero Club members will recognize Nav1 of the PPL training.

All the navigation was done by dead reckoning. We left Redcliffe at about 11AM and tracked to the north-west, passing the townships of Hazeldean on Lake Somerset, Blackbutt, the Tarong power station and Kumbia. The flight was very enjoyable, with scattered clouds at about 4000 feet, a headwind between 10 and 15 knots and hazy conditions. We did a few corrections for drift using the 1-in-60 method as well as a ground speed check which gave us a figure of 100 knots.

At Kumbia we turned to the north-east and soon had Kingaroy under our right wing. We made a call on the Kingaroy CTAF frequency to let everyone know we were in the area. The Gordonbrook reservoir appeared under our left wing, then the township of Tingoora. Just a few minutes later it was time to start our descent to Wondai and think about how to join the circuit.


There was only one other aircraft in the CTAF, a Texan. I joined crosswind for runway 18 and performed my first landing on a grass strip. The grass was about a foot high, which definitely qualifies for "long grass" on the performance charts! The surface of the strip was uneven, and I had to keep the control column pulled all the way back to prevent damage to the nose wheel and propeller. We shut down, ate our packed lunch in front of the terminal building of this peaceful little airfield and enjoyed the serenity.


I took a few minutes to walk around camera in hand. Wondai is home to the Barambah District Aero Club, which was officially opened by none else than infamous former Queensland Premier Joh Bjelke-Petersen.



Around the corner from the clubhouse, I noticed two airplanes in open hangars.

The first one is a small taildragger with rego VH-MSP. The VH Register tells us that it is an Auster J5, first imported into Australia in 1951. Searching the Web, I discovered the work of Ed Coates, who has been collecting pictures of aircrafts for the last sixty years. His amazing Web site has two older pictures of VH-MSP taken in 1964 and 1990. It further identified the type as an Auster J5 Adventurer.

The type was first manufactured in England in 1947 by Auster Aircraft, a British light aircraft manufacturer which ceased production in 1968. Quite a few of these planes made their way to Australia. There are some beautiful pictures taken at the Auster Rally 2007 in Wentworth in south-western New South Wales. The next edition will take place later this year at Goolwa in South Australia.


The aircraft has a surprisingly narrow engine compartment, about twice as tall as wide, with 4 prominent exhaust pipes on the underside. This looks a lot better than the ugly exhaust manifold that can be seen on these pictures of another Auster J5.


The vacuum system is driven by two venturis, one on each side. The venturi on the port side is rather small and looks similar to the venturis found on Tiger Moths, or at least is similar to the picture of a venturi used on a Tiger Moth and featured in Bob Tait's CPL Aerodynamics. the venturi on the other side is similar in size and shape to the venturis of older Cessna 172s, such as VH-DCO stationed at Redcliffe.

I could only open the door a crack to take the picture below. I would not have wanted to enter the cockpit further anyway because of the scary flying insects inside, some of them about two inches long. According to the placard on the instrument panel, the plane was (or still is?) used for glider towing. Wondai is a pretty popular place for gliders and has a winch launch system.

The J5 type was originally designed as a 4-seater, however the placard clearly says “No Passengers” and “Pilot Max Weight 100kg”. Although the aircraft is fitted with dual controls, these were probably only used for training with no glider in tow. Pilots are rarely the jockey type, and the likelihood of finding an instructor and a student with a combined weight under 100kg can be safely considered as statistically insignificant.


The instrument panel is rather antiquated. It has rocker switches for the two magnetos instead of the rotary switch found on modern aircrafts. The Airspeed Indicator shows a stall speed of about 56 knots clean and 30 knots with flaps down. In addition to the altimeter and magnetic compass, one can find oil temperature and pressure gauges, as well as a massive turn coordinator in the middle and a tachometer on the side. A Vertical Speed Indicator (VSI) was added later and sits on top of the dashboard. Only the left stick has a Push-To-Talk button. I couldn’t see any radio inside though.

In the next hangar I found VH-DID, a 1963 Cessna 172D, with two identical venturis, one on each side. The D model was the first one to feature the so-called Omni-Vision rear window which improved visibility but also increased drag.


There was virtually no wind when we started up again, so we decided to take-off on runway 36, which saved us having to taxi all the way back to the threshold of runway 18 over bumps, holes and grass. We took off, kept climbing on downwind and left the circuit overhead to the south-east in the direction of Kilcoy. The tip of Lake Barambah was about the only good navigation fix on that leg. Lee recognized Mt Monsildale, but I wouldn't have found it on my own. We found Kilcoy where we expected it, at the top end of Lake Somerset, then crossed the ranges and started our descent towards Redcliffe, leaving plenty of space between ourselves and the overlying Class C airspace.

Approaching Caboolture I made a radio call to say that we were 10 miles west and tracking for Redcliffe, only to realise that I had made the call on Brisbane Radar frequency... Oops. The call was promptly re-issued, this time on the correct frequency. We made our inbound call for Redcliffe just as we crossed the power lines west of the Bruce Highway. Lee asked if I was really sure I was 10 miles inbound. I said yes, then he pointed at the GPS that he had configured to display the distance to YRED. It showed 9.7 miles, not too bad :-)

As I was at 1500 feet overflying the live side of the circuit at Redcliffe I could see VH-MSJ right below me turning base for 07 at 1000ft. We continued to the dead side, descended to circuit height and joined crosswind for 07. The wind was straight down the runway, a very unusual occurence at Redcliffe. I landed on 07, parked between then hangars and shut down. Lee went back in and I took a few minutes to clean up the plane, write down the figures and repack my stuff.

Before leaving in the morning I had followed Lee's advice to put the flight notification acknowledgment printout at the front of the airplane folder, with a big SARTIME written across it. This was a smart move since otherwise I would have forgotten to cancel SARTIME. I called CENSAR over the phone, gave our callsign VH-RAQ, place of arrival and nominated SARTIME, and the person at the other end of the ligne confirmed the cancellation.

In the short debrief Lee explained to me how to use the DG to establish the airplane on track when leaving an airfield without overflying. He remarked on a few other things, such as the fact that I had started my fuel log using departure time and not the time of engine start-up, and that I did not properly monitor oil pressure on start-up. Appart from that he was happy with mu flying, and nav1 was therefore called a success.

Next step is my GFPT test next Friday. Back to the 152, I'd better make sure I go over the aircraft speeds and procedures again. The forecasted weather is showers of rain with lots of clouds and a near-direct crosswind of about 20 knots... Let's see if the test happens. I really hope it will, otherwise I will have to postpone it for at least several weeks, which would prevent me from going solo on navigation exercises, which would seriously delay the advancement of my PPL training. But I guess I shouldn't complain about the rain.