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.

The Redcliffe Automatic Weather Station

Because of the bad weather we’ve been having in South-East Queensland for the major part of the last two months, I got into the habit of checking the latest weather observations reported by the Automatic Weather Station (AWS) at Redcliffe before going flying. In the US, an AWS is known as an AWOS (Automated Weather Observing System).

On a number of occasion the weather observations showed south-easterly winds at 20 or 25 knots, i.e. almost direct crosswinds for our 07/25 runway, way in excess of the 15 knots crosswind limitation for the C152. However, when I arrived at the club, the windsock would usually show a wind somewhere between 10 and 15 knots.


This was all good news obviously since it made the difference between flying and not flying. However, this prompted me to try to find out how the weather measurements were made at Redcliffe, and why there was such a discrepancy in wind speed.

The information is not easy to find, but if you go to the page for a monthly weather report for Redcliffe, you will find this mention:

This Automatic Weather Station (AWS) is located in Talobilla Park, and sources its wind measurements from an anemometer on Redcliffe jetty.

I went to have a look today and found both the AWS and the anemometer. Apologies for the photos being a tad on the dark side, but today was really one of those days. Redcliffe received 60 mm of rains in about three hours. When I walked into the club I could see Tony and Lee hurriedly pulling planes inside the hangar before the thunderstorm hit. That was the first hint that no flying would happen. Then I looked at the weather radar with Mal and lost all hope of flying today, so we spent half an hour booking lessons for the next weeks and discussing the planning of the rest of the training, and my options for the CPL.


Back to the AWS. The anemometer is actually difficult to miss, it sits on top of a tall metal pole right at the end of the Redcliffe Jetty. The height of the pole is about 10 meters, in line with Bureau Specification 2013 on "the siting and exposure of meteorological instruments and observing facilities" which reads:

[...] ideally anemometers should be exposed over level terrain at a standard height of 10 metres above the mean ground level at locations completely free of all obstructions to the air flow.

Both wind speed and wind direction are measured here. Interestingly, there is another wind direction sensor (wind vane) on a shorter pole just a couple of meters away. On top of the pole also sits a UHF antenna similar to a rooftop TV antenna.

Finding the AWS at Talobilla Park was a bit harder. It is actually located inside a fenced enclosure on top of a hill at the back of a baseball pitch and is hidden from view by a curtain of trees.


A side effect of my search for the Redcliffe AWS was to discover the existence of the Redcliffe Leagues Padres Baseball Club. I didn't even know baseball was played in Australia. Around here we prefer to play that variant of baseball that involves a flat bat and week-long games known as cricket. The Padres' newsletter claims they are “the biggest and some would say best baseball club in Queensland”. Unfortunately I do not know how many baseball clubs there are in Queensland so I can't really put this statement into perspective.

Back to our meteorology topic. The AWS itself is your regular little white hut one meter above ground. It measures temperature, dew point temperature, atmospheric pressure, relative humidity and rainfall. I couldn't see any rain gauge though. Maybe there's an opening at the top of the box to let rain in, or maybe rain is measured somewhere else.

There is a pole nearby with two antennas similar to the one at the Redcliffe Jetty. One of the two antennas points in the direction of the jetty, most likely for a point-to-point radio link to transmit wind measurements to the AWS. The other antenna points in a different direction and is probably used for sending the measurement to the Bureau. It seems odd though that the BOM implemented their own wireless communication network while they could simply hook up the AWS to the cell phone network or a land line.

With all this information in mind, the position of the anemometer on the Redcliffe jetty may explain why the reported wind is stronger there than at the aerodrome. The anemometer is about 3 nautical miles to the east-south-east of the aerodrome. When the wind blows from the East or the South-East, it hits the anemometer first, travels over the ground and finally hits the windsock at the aerodrome. As the wind blows over populated area, it is slowed down by friction and by tumbling over buildings, houses, trees and a few small hills.

According to Bob Tait’s CPL Meteorology, surface wind speed drops by one-third over water and two-thirds over land in comparison with the speed of the gradient wind at altitude. This implies that surface wind over land is half of surface wind over water. I do not know if the distance of three miles from the jetty to the aerodrome is sufficient to slow the wind down to what can be called surface wind speed, but the order of magnitude seems about right: when the wind is blowing at 25 knots at the jetty, we get less than 15 knots at the aerodrome, which makes crosswind landings possible yet challenging.

My very own headset: a David Clark H10-60

As mentioned in my previous post, I finally decided to buy myself a headset. I decided on a David Clark H10-60. I bought it online from SkyGeek in the US and got it shipped to Australia, which saved me about $150 compared to the cheapest Australian pilot shop. To put things in perspective, that’s one hour of solo flying in the C152!

For the selection process, I first proceeded by elimination. Since I expect this headset to last me for many years, there was no point skimping on quality. This took care of some of the cheaper brands such as Altronics and Flightcom.

On the other hand, the price of some of the top-of-the-range General Aviation headsets is so incredibly high that it borders on the ridiculous. I’m sure they are all fantastic pieces of technology, especially headsets such as the Bose-X. If I ever end up with a career in aviation I think I’ll go for one of these. But not now.

I also looked at recent expensive headsets such as the Lightspeed Zulu. The ad calls it “the world’s quietest ANR headset”. It may be true, but with a price tag well over $1000 it’ll be some time before I have one in my flight bag. It’s a pity, because it has some very nice features, such as the possibility of plugging in any mobile phone with a “hand-free” feature. This may come in very handy in flight for obtaining weather reports and forecasts, checking availability of fuel or simply letting people know everything’s OK (or not, depending).

To make a long story short, I decided in the end to go for a David Clark headset. The brand has a good reputation and good worldwide service, and all the people I asked around me were very positive about this company’s products. I also found a lot of good feedback about them on pprune. Going through their list of products, I narrowed down my choice to two models, the H20-10 and the H10-60.

In the end I decided on the H10-60. I didn’t like the look of the H20-10, especially the abundance of green plastic and the squarish shape of the ear cups. From the technical description both headsets sounded comparable. My only concern was weight. The H10-60 is nearly a hundred grams heavier than the H20-10, which can make a big difference on a long flight. I couldn't find any decent comparison of General Aviation headsets online that would go beyond listing the characteristics given by the manufacturer. I could find some useful anecdotal information here and there, but that's about as useful as the Internet was in the selection process.

After considering all these different trade-offs, I decided to go for the H10-60. Now that the selection was over, the next challenge was to find where to buy it from.

I had a look at the Web sites of all the Australian pilot shops I could find. I looked at SkySupply, Airsupport, Concept Aviation, AeroShop, the Downunder Pilot Shop, Skylines, Ozpilot and SkyShop. SkySupply clearly came ahead of the pack with a price tag of $490. The other two shops that offered the model were Airsupport at $630 and the Downunder Pilot Shop at $650.

Since most headsets are manufactured in the US, why not try to order directly from there? The US are a larger market than Australia, and with lower taxes, so American pilot stores such as Sportys and SkyGeek may have a better deal. SkyGeek turned out to be the cheapest, with a price tag of US$ 314. The headset carrying bag was an extra US$ 16, and the shipping cost was only about US$ 20 with the Fedex Economy option.

I ordered from SkyGeek and I received the headset and its carrying bag one week later. All was in perfect condition, and the grand total was US$ 352. In Australian dollars I was charged exactly $409. Quite a good deal in the end, I saved about $150. It sounds to me as if the Australian pilot shops took advantage of the fall of the US dollar vs. the Aussie dollar but didn’t exactly pass on the savings to their customers. I mean, why charge $48 in Australia for the exact same headset bag sold at the equivalent of $17 in the US? That’s nearly three times the price.

The David Clark carrying bag is very good, must better than the ones usually given away for free with cheaper headsets. It is made of very sturdy fabric and has three pockets, including one zipped one. In the zipped pocket I have space for my pilot license, ASIC card, wallet, car keys, mobile phone, etc. The other two pockets are great for holding a couple of pens, the local VTC and a few sheets of paper or cereal bars if need be. That’s the only bag I take when I go on local flights.


The headset itself is amazing. The gel ear seals work really well, even with sunglasses on. The headband is easy to adjust and doesn’t move. The mike stays perfectly in place. The volume controls on top of each earcup are easy to find. And you can’t even feel the weight of the headset on the top of your head. OK, I’ve only used the headset for about one hour at a time so far, so we’ll see how it behaves on longer flights. But I'm pretty confident I'll keep on calling it my very own awesome headset for many years.

Common problems with loaned general aviation headsets

Ever since I joined the Redcliffe Aero Club in March last year, I’ve been borrowing a headset each time I went flying. The club has a number of basic headsets that students can use for free during lessons, most of them of the Altronics brand. They are regularly maintained and even replaced, and they usually do the job.


I grew a bit frustrated with those headsets over the last few months though. The most common problem I experienced was with the mike boom not staying in place correctly. The mike book is the part of the headset that connects the microphone to one of the ear cups. It is usually either a hinged wire frame assembly or a flexible metal tube that can be bent so that the microphone sits just a few millimetres from the lips (the so-called “flex boom assembly”). What happens over time is that screws on the wire frame get loose, the flex tube develops a tendency to move back to its original position, or the linkage between the mike boom and the ear cup comes apart and pops out, leaving the mike boom dangling.

As a result, the mike invariably ends up moving away from my lips, which means that people on the receiving side of my radio communications experience a fainter voice and a lot more noise, i.e. a very badly degraded signal-to-noise ratio. So that’s all not very optimal.

Typically, with such a faulty headset, I would need to use my left hand to push the mike closer to my lips when making a radio call. This is not ideal in the circuit since the best practice is to make calls during turns and not after or before. This is to maximize the chance of other aircrafts sighting us. Other pilots will look for us when they hear the call (“turning base”, “turning final”, etc.), and they’re most likely to see us if we maximize the cross-section of the plane that they can see, i.e. if we are banked.

Therefore, with one hand holding the mike near my lips, that leaves only one hand for the yoke, throttle, trim and flaps. In most cases this works fine since flaps, throttle and trim are set before or after the turn. But you get the idea. It seems wrong to have my left hand busy with the “communicate” thing while both hands could be used for the “aviate” thing. In addition, it is quite disruptive when trying to have a conversation with the instructor. Try that when adjusting power in a turn and you’ll realise you need to grow a third hand. Or get your own headset.

There are a few other problems I’ve found with headsets that have seen too many hours, too many students and too many planes. On one occasion, I had one of the two jack plugs slightly come out of the socket. That was the thick one, the one connected to the speakers in my headset. I think it was helped by my right knee nudging against it, but I also suspect it was caused by wear and tear of the plug. As a result, the instructor could hear me, but I couldn’t hear him. It happened during the roll on a touch-and-go, and I realised something was wrong when Mal reached for the carby heat and firmly pushed it in.

The story was that we were practicing crosswind circuits and I had forgotten to remove carby heat on final, most likely because I was busy with all those things that keep you busy in a crosswind final. After I applied full power for take-off, Mal shouted “carby heat, carby heat” at me but I couldn’t hear him, and I can understand he got a bit cranky on this one as the end of the runway was approaching. On the climb-out we sorted out what the problem was and realized the plug was a few millimetres out.

Another thing that happened to me during training lessons was that the headband came lose and changed position in flight. Before each lesson I took time as part of the pre-flight routine to adjust the headband and make sure it felt comfortable with my sunglasses on. Still, one ear cup would drop at some point, which would force me to hand over the controls to the instructor while I was putting the headset and my sunglasses back in place. Not the kind of thing you want to be bothered with when you’re trying to make the most of a training flight.

Comfort is another problem with “best value” headsets. Last September I went on a one-week air safari from Redcliffe to Ayers Rock, for which we spent about 30 hours in the plane. I’ll talk more about this trip in future posts. For the time being, let’s just say that after 4 to 5 hours in the plane each day I had the impression that the headset had grown spikes that were slowly making their way through my skull. Granted, I do not have much hair to offer as a cushion between the headset band and my skull. But still, a nice cushion around the headband would have been nice.

So, little by little, I made up my mind about buying my own headset sooner rather than later. I had in mind to buy one after I got my GFPT as a gift to myself, so why not now rather than in two months? According to what I heard and read, proper GA headsets can last decades if properly taken care of, so delaying that purchase did not make sense. I ended up buying a pair of David Clark H10-60 which I find absolutely awesome. This post is getting a bit long now, I’ll go through the details of the selection and purchasing process in the next post.

Steep turns and compass turns

Now that I have demonstrated sufficient proficiency in crosswind landings to be allowed to fly solo to the training area, I can get on with the other remaining lessons for the GFPT.

According to the Redcliffe Aero Club syllabus, I still need to do compass turns, precautionary search, maximum performance circuits and two hours of instrument flying. Plus a couple of hours of solo airwork in the training area. If everything goes according to plan, I should be able to get all that done within the next two weeks. Fingers crossed.


On Wednesday I went back to the training area with Lee to practice compass turns and steep turns. I had already done one session of steep turns two months ago. What I remembered was that steep turns with 45 degrees angle of bank were no big problem, not really different from a 30 degree turn really. There was however a lot more difference going from 45 to 60 than there is from 30 to 45.

At 60 degrees I really had to pull the control column all the way back to maintain a constant altitude in the turn. The acceleration experienced in the frame of reference of the plane is 2 G. I could feel the skin on my face, especially the cheeks, being pulled downward. In one turn I tried to raise my right hand and it really felt twice the weight. I know, this shouldn't come as a surprise, but as always it's one thing to read it in the book and another thing to experience it in the plane.

This time it all went a bit more smoothly then the first time. I did well at maintaining altitude within the required 100ft margin for a full-circle steep turn. This despite the fact that the horizon was hard to find on that day. Lee noticed that I didn’t wait for the nose to start falling before pulling the control column, I’ll try to work on that when I go solo. We also discussed how much power to add in steep turns in order to keep a good safety margin between us and the stall speed. I was not consistent enough however with rolling out within 10 degrees of the target heading, so that’s also something to work on.

Compass turns were rather uneventful. As long as you remember the ONUS (Overshoot on North and Undershoot on South) and SAND (apparent turn South when Accelerate, North when Decelerate) rules that apply for the Southern Hemisphere, then it’s just practice.

The nice thing in Redcliffe is that because of the 07/25 orientation of the runway, the compass error linked to acceleration is very obvious when accelerating on take-off. With the nosewheel on the centreline for a take-off on 07, the compass swings well past East in the few seconds after applying full power.

It probably is also quite obvious when decelerating during a short-field landing, but keeping the plane going straight while braking keeps me busy enough to not have had the opportunity to stare at the compass so far. What's also quite likely is that on landing the various shocks and vibrations will prevent an accurate reading of the compass.

Lots of flying booked for the next weeks. Getting up at 4:45 twice this week was hard, but I’m happy I did it. Booking lessons within a few days of each-other really helps with not loosing the feel for the plane, but that may turn out to be a costly habit in the long run :-)

Crosswinds tick!

Some absolutely awesome flying was had yesterday morning. At 6AM the windsock was showing a strong crosswind from the south, so I took off with Lee in BUQ, the other Cessna 152, for a session of crosswind circuits. This was pretty much the same drill as last time, using runway 07 with a strong crosswind from the right, just with no rain.

In the pre-flight briefing we had decided to use only 20 degrees of flaps and aim for 75 knots on base and 70 on final. Crosswind landings require a lot of rudder and aileron work, and these 5 extra knots make a real difference when the moment comes to swing the nose of the plane back onto the centreline and keep it there while flaring.

The other advantage of an increased airspeed is in reducing the angle of attack required for creating a given amount of lift, which increases the margin between our angle of attack at any given moment and the angle of attack at which stall happens. This is particularly important in turbulent and gusty conditions, such as this morning, since a sudden change in airflow direction could stall one wing, or both, which is a sure recipe for disaster at a few hundred feet above the ground.


On the base leg I applied myself to maintaining 75 knots and controlling our rate of descent so as to end up between 600 and 700ft when turning final. The reason behind that is to ensure that we are established on final not below 500ft. This is not an actual regulation, but more of a best practice to make sure we have enough time to get ourselves sorted out on final.

This is not really hard in fact, just a matter of concentrating and maintaining the proper scan between the runway, the ASI and the altimeter. One reason why you want to really stick to the airspeed of 75 knots in the Cessna 152 is that Vfe is 85 knots. It only takes a gust of headwind and a couple of seconds of inattention for the airspeed to reach the end of the white arc.

My landings this time were a lot better than the time before. I was careful to really fly the plane all the way down. I only flared too high on one occasion today, which is a definite improvement over last time too. Lee suggested that I removed the crab as I crossed the fence, i.e. way earlier than in my previous session. This worked wonders.


Doing so gave me enough time to transition properly to the wing-down technique after removing the crab and make sure I was tracking along the centreline before starting to flare. After flaring I forced myself to give the plane enough time to float above the runway and decide itself when to touch the ground. This was no problem since I could control track and heading with rudder and aileron. On a couple of occasions I could even distinctly hear the upwind main wheel touch the ground before the other one (and before the nose wheel), which is very rewarding.

In total I did five good landings, and as a result Lee gave me a tick for crosswinds. This means I can now go solo to the training area over Bribie Island. Actually, I already went solo there about a month ago, but that was early in the morning on a day with no wind, either actual or forecasted. I still need to complete about two hours of solo airwork before being able to attempt the GFPT test, which is still scheduled for February 29th.

During one circuit this morning a Cessna Caravan called inbound from above Brisbane International control tower as we were turning onto the crosswind leg. Lee called him and proposed to extend our downwind leg to let him land first, which the pilot of the Caravan gladly accepted. On late downwind the Caravan called a short base turn. I looked over my left shoulder and could see the Caravan in a tight descending turn that clearly indicated there weren’t any passengers on board. This was a Caravan from Seair Pacific, a Queensland charter operator based on the Gold Coast. A few minutes later it made a departure call for Lady Elliot Island, which is about 50 nautical miles north-east of Bundaberg, in the top right corner of the Brisbane WAC chart.

Tomorrow morning, weather permitting, we’ll go to the training area to practice compass turns. This is again a 6AM-8AM booking, which means getting up at sparrow’s fart for the second day in a row. But flying in the early morning has this way of putting a smile on my face for the rest of the day, so I really cannot complain.

More crosswind landings and a shutdown blunder

Last Friday I went flying in the early afternoon. The cloud base was definitely above 1000ft, but wind was a concern. As usual when bad weather is forecasted I rang the club before leaving home. Mal asked what I intended to do, I said crosswind circuits, which he was happy to hear since that was pretty much the only thing on the menu in Redcliffe on that day.

We did six landings on runway 07 in the course of 1.1 hour. I did the first one, then Mal demonstrated the second one, which was of great help, and I did all the other ones. We had rain from time to time but not much, and certainly less than the last time.

Before taking off we discussed where the wind would be coming from on all legs of the circuit, and what that would mean for our angle of climb or descent and how we would counter drift in each case. The wind was a south-easterly, which gave us a crosswind coming from the right on take-off and on final.

After lining up I turned the ailerons into the wind to prevent the wind from lifting up the upwind wing during the take-off roll. A few seconds after leaving the ground the plane started to weathercock into the wind. It is a good thing to let the plane turn into the wind a little to counteract the crosswind and track along the extended runway centerline, but not too much otherwise you’ll end up flying straight into the wind!

On the crosswind leg we had a tailwind and therefore an increased groundspeed, which made our angle of climb shallower. As a consequence, it was not possible to reach 1000ft before turning downwind, so I turned downwind at about 800ft and kept climbing.

On downwind the wind came from the left and had to be offset by pointing the nose to the left of where I wanted the plane to go. The turn to base gave us a headwind, which meant that I had to add a bit of extra power to get a lower rate of descent while maintaining an airspeed of 70kt. Mal had me look at the ground to better realize how slow our groundspeed was, and indeed the ground wasn’t moving very fast.

We made the turn to final in such a way as to end up on the upwind side of the extended centreline, i.e. to the right in our case. I pointed the nose to the right of the runway and crabbed it all the way down. I managed to maintain the final speed of 65kt reasonably well.

Prior to entering the plane I had discussed with Mal my initial idea of removing the crab ahead of time in order to not have to do too many things at the same time. He didn’t recommend it, saying it was something that would come later with experience, rather than a useful technique to learn crosswinds.

I did a couple of good landings, and even one where the upwind wheel touched the ground before the other main wheel, followed by the nose wheel. OK, I also did a landing when all three wheels contacted the ground at about the same time, which was less good. And even one where, according to Mal, I was very lucky not to have the tail hit the ground.

I faced a number of problems on that day that need fixing if I want to be able to land safely in strong crosswinds. They’re more or less all related to the timing of the flare.

The first problem was with keeping the nose down and maintaining the 65kt airspeed all the way down final before the flare. I would start to pull the nose up slightly at about 100ft which could potentially bring us dangerously close to the stall speed. My normal scan on short final is to go back and forth between the runway and the airspeed indicator. I think I spent too much time looking at my position with respect of the runway because of the crosswind and didn’t notice the airspeed decrease.

A related problem was that I flared too high on almost every landing. I don’t really understand why, since I had managed to get the flare consistently right in the past on landings where the crosswind component was negligible. My guess is that after I removed the crab I was concerned with not letting the airplane drift downwind, which is why I hurried the landing sequence by flaring too early. Not that it would have made the plane touch the ground any earlier of course.

After landing and clearing the runway we taxied back to the apron making sure to turn the ailerons into the wind. During the shutdown checklist I did one of the most stupid things I have done so far in an airplane.


When doing the magneto check before turning off the engine, I turned the key one notch too far to the left when selecting the right magneto, i.e. to the “off” position. I realised immediately what I had done and turned the key all the way to the “both” position. The engine ran rough for a second or so and then returned to normal. This in itself was no big deal, and is even a normal part of the shutdown sequence on some aircrafts. It is known as a dead-cut check and is supposed to check that the grounding of the magneto switch is correct, i.e. that no magneto is live after shutdown. A bunch of people with a lot more experience than I have discussed the pros and cons of the dead-cut check on pprune.org.

What was really stupid is that I got distracted by this small incident and carried on to switching the engine off using the key, just like a car. The normal procedure is to starve the engine of fuel by bringing the mixture control to the aptly named idle cut-off position. The engine of course eventually stopped after I realised my mistake and pulled the mixture control all the way back. But for a few long seconds the engine made unhappy noises. Maybe it was just fatigue at the end of a demanding hour in the air, but if that’s the case that’s worrying, the flight is only over when the engine is shut down. I still feel upset at myself for doing such a stupid thing.

In summary, some progress made on crosswind landings, but more work still needs to be done, especially on safely controlling the aircraft in the final stage of the landing. Keep the nose down when the runway is approaching, maintain that 65kt airspeed, remove the crab and then flare normally as I would do on any “normal” landing.