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.

More Classics in Bad Dürkheim

The airshow I went to in Bad Dürkheim about a month ago had other classic airplanes on display besides the two beautiful Cessna 195 I mentioned in a previous post. In order of photographic appearance below, we have an Antonov An-2, three Yak-52, a Bücker Bü 181 and a Piper Cub.

The Antonov An-2, registered as D-FAIR, is one of the four An-2 operated by Classic Wings. The An-2 is still to this day (and probably for the foreseeable future) the largest biplane in the world. You will notice it only has one (radial) engine. Initially developed as an agricultural airplane, it later found a lot of other applications, such as parachute drop, water bomber or air ambulance. There's a video of the engine start-up checks on YouTube for those interested.


According to this very detailed history of the An-2, even though the An-2 was entirely designed in the USSR, most of them were built in Poland and China, where production still continues to this day. Interestingly, while planes used for spraying crops are known as "crop dusters" in the English-speaking world, they are called Кукурузник (Kukhuruznik) in Russian, meaning corn eater.


Continuing with another iconic Russian airplane, there were three Yak-52. The Yak is often found at airshows and has now become a popular aerobatics airplane, after having served as a basic trainer for many countries of the former Eastern Block. Despite its classic look, production actually only started in 1974. Today, it is AeroStar in Romania who keep on producing small batches of Yak-52. It is powered by a 9-cylinder radial engine, and one peculiarity of the type is that pneumatics are used for engine start, flaps, landing gear, and also braking and steering.

I learnt recently that one of the most renowned specialists on the topic of Russian military aircrafts is Herbert Leonard, who is is better known in France for being a romantic crooner that many people, including myself, would not hesitate to call cheesy.

Sherry Ditmer wrote a very nice story for AvWeb about her first flight in a Yak. And if you think (or dream) about buying one, RussianAeros in the UK have the lowdown on why the Yak-52 is a better value aerobatics aircraft than most of its Western competitors. There's even a tailwheel version of the aircraft.

Another military trainer, this time from WWII Germany, was the Bücker Bü 181 D-ENKM. Designed in Germany in the first few years of the war, it was produced in Germany but also in a number of countries that were either neutral, such as Sweden, or under German occupation at the time such as the Netherlands and Czechoslovakia. The German-language Wikipedia page reminds us that the Bü 181 was a departure from previous training aircrafts, such as the Bücker Bü 131, being a monoplane and, more importantly, allowing student pilot and instructor to sit side-by-side rather than one behind the other.

On the other side of the fence that prevented spectators from getting any closer to the airplanes, the local aero club had emptied one of their hangars and lined up tables for everyone to taste the local food and drinks...

...while the young ones could enjoy a ride in a non-FAA certified full-motion flight simulator for only a few euros:

Another WWII trainer, this time from the American side, was also there: a Piper Cub D-EKBO, in its original characteristic yellow livery:

Notice the tandem seating, with typically the instructor at the back and the student pilot in the front seat.

So that was all for Bad Dürkheim. The nice thing about Europe is that there are more airshows during the summer months than there are week-ends, and that most of them are within a few hours flying time from a place such as Bad Dürkheim in Germany. Which cannot exactly be said about Australia. But then again, there's many things that make flying in Australia a unique experience, including the remoteness of the place, so I guess one cannot have it both ways.

Nav 6: the part that went well

After busting controlled airspace within the first hour of Nav6, life went on in the cockpit of VH-SPQ. The end of the flight even turned out to be a very enjoyable and rewarding experience.

Approaching Mount Warning, we did some low-level flying to simulate a low ceiling. I chose to follow the side of the mountain chain, which eventually put us right back on track for Kyogle. I think I did quite well, the only thing Lee commented on was that I had forgotten to hold the map at eye level while flying low. The shorter the distance the eyes have to travel between the map and the outside, the less likely we are to fly into something, which obviously can happen very fast when flying low.

After that I spent some time under the hood, and when I came out I was lost and had to find out where I was. It actually took me a while to come up with the (right!) answer. What made it hard was that I only used features from the terrain, trying to read ground-to-map, while in fact I could also have used navaids. After getting un-lost, Lee asked me to perform a diversion and go straight to Archerfield rather than Glen Innes, as initially planned.

I tracked for the Laravale VOR, which was one of the turning points in my original flight plan. Approaching from the south, the entry point to Archerfield is the Park Ridge Water Tower. I knew from reading the NOTAMs that the flashing light on top of the tower was not working, so I didn’t waste any time looking for it. The tower appeared right under the nose of the plane at exactly the time I expected it to be there, so that was an easy one.

I made an inbound call and Archer Tower asked me to report crossing the Logan Motorway. We joined downwind for runway 10R. On base the tower gave us the option to use 10L instead, which we accepted since it meant a shorter taxi to the terminal.

We stretched our legs briefly and started up again. No taxi clearance required since this is a GAAP aerodrome, and we taxied for 10L. The run-up bay is huge and could easily hold a half-dozen of small aircrafts. The weather at Archerfield was very ordinary, which showers of rain and a few low-hanging dark clouds.

We called ready, lined up and took off, mindful of not drifting into the circuit of the parallel runway. We aimed for the south end of Mount Coot-Tha, found the Centenary Bridge, then tracked north to Petrie at 1000ft. We landed at Redcliffe on 07 then debriefed the flight. Lee said I would have to do the controlled airspace part of the nav again, which I was absolutely fine with.

Little did I know at the time that it would be more than two months before I could do Nav6 again. A bad case of overseas trip, sick instructors, high demand for flying training and bad weather.

The plan for the Nav6 re-run is to go Redcliffe - Gold Coast - Laravale VOR - Archerfield - Toowomba - Redcliffe, and is scheduled two weeks from now. Fingers crossed the flight actually goes ahead, otherwise that'll really put a big spanner in the works. I also have my CSU (Constant Speed Unit) endorsement on the C182 lined up for about the same time, so that's going to be a long week-end packed with lots of aviation, with hopefully a sign-off for the solo nav in controlled airspace, the actual solo nav and the CSU endorsement at the end.

From Mig 23s to a Cessna 172

Today's post is a guest post from my friend and colleague Marek.

After a long string of posts on old airplanes, airport spotting, NAVx, and the superiority of kangaroos over airplanes, the time has come for some amateur's report on flying with Julien. He was kind enough to invite me to write a guest post after a flight we made a few weeks ago, so here it is!

But before I go into details of the flight with Julien, let me try to give you an idea of what planes and flying mean to me.

I spent most of my childhood in northern Poland in a town 10 kilometers from a Soviet Air Army base watching and listening to the roar of MiG 23s flying a few hundred meters or so above beaches. The Soviet base was exterritorial, surrounded with barbwire with only one or two official entrances and dozens of soldiers making sure comrades from Poland did not invade them. During that time it was often hard to buy even basic goods, including petrol, sugar, alcohol, cigarettes, or even toilet paper.

Together with a few friends, we once were very desperate to get into the base because we had heard that in one of their stores they had very cheap sweets - and you could just enter the store and buy it, no vouchers needed! Pretty exciting for 10-year olds. However, we couldn't enter the base - the soldiers wouldn't let us through the gate - we didn't have proper documents. So what would a desperate kid do? We went into the woods and crawled under the barbwire. We got our "kanfiety" (sweets), and used the main entrance to exit the base. But before that, we peeked at the MiGs. They were great! I guess this was my first close contact with "real" planes. The Soviets are gone now, but I still visit the former base every few years to see if the huge plane hangars are still there.

I hadn't flown until 2000. Living in Europe, most of the attractions were reachable by car, and that was much cheaper than flying. My first flight was actually one to Australia, and since then I have been keeping notes on every commercial flight I have taken. And there were quite a few of them. I keep all the dates, times, airport names, flight numbers, durations, even seat numbers. Now you get the idea of what kind of person I am. And Julien was the first person to appreciate this peculiar hobby of mine (or at least that was the impression I had). It became quite natural, that one day we would fly together with him as the pilot.

After Julien has passed his GFPT he invited me to fly together with him. I was in Europe at that time, and the suggested date was the very first weekend after my come-back to Australia. That was a very exciting idea, but I feared that I wouldn't be very welcome at home after having spent my first few hours in Australia with Julien instead of being a good family man. So I had to reject the offer and ask to change the booking. Julien was quite flexible, and finally we decided to fly together on another Saturday. It was just after Julien had returned from his trip to the Outback, so it was a tight schedule again.

In the morning, following the good tradition of using GPS to get to the airport we took a completely new and unintuitive way to the Redcliffe Aero Club, which turned out not to be too bad after all. We went there with my wife, who claimed that since airplanes are means of taking one from A to B, and we were planning to fly from A to A, it made no sense for her to jump onboard. The Jura coffee machine in the Aero Club was the ultimate nail in the coffin. She just loves coffee. Good coffee.

At the airport, Julien took me through all the steps required to start your flight. And so now I know that renting a plane is not much different from renting a car. You just go to a desk, ask for keys and a few pieces of paper, then go to the plane, check the mileage, look for scratches, make sure there's enough fuel, then leave all the documents and off you go.

Well, not quite. Checking the plane is much more crucial than examining a car. And so I learnt a bit about flaps and what could happen to them, why even the smallest cracks on propellers might be a big problem, why adding water to petrol (hey, why does this remind me of my childhood?) is not a good thing, why I should not push these big black pedals when taking off and landing, and so on... That was exciting!

Well, exciting for me. Before you get too bored, dear readers, here's a quick summary of what happened next. We taxied to the landing strip just like regular large planes, and we even had to wait a bit for our turn. Apparently Redcliffe Aerodrome is quite a busy place, especially on week-ends.

Taking off went smoothly and it was a bit surprising that the speed needed to take off is much lower than in large commercial airplanes. We took off even before I started to prepare for it.

We took a nice scenic route around Bribie Island and the Glasshouse Mountains. Below you can see the map of our route. This time we had to draw it ourselves (thanks for help, Julien!), but we have made a decision to do a proper GPS tracking of the route we take the next time.

Julien was the pilot, but our Cessna, as most small planes, had yokes on both sides. I was even allowed to put my hands on the yoke for a while! (Below you can see Julien's hand, but you get the impression, right?) Observing Julien's actions, the first impression is that flying an airplane is not much different than sailing. There's just one additional dimension to take into account.

Since Julien was piloting and taking care of all the flight parameters, I had the very responsible role of a plane spotter. Actually I didn't spot any of the two planes we saw while flying (Julien did that), but keeping my eye on them after that was much easier. There was not much traffic in the area, just one vintage plane and another small vessel.

Flying over Glasshouse Mountains gave us an opportunity to see things one doesn't normally see when driving there. We had a peek at the Australia ZOO, completely free of charge! In fact, with a bigger lens we could probably have spotted a few crocodiles. Speaking about lenses: as you can see, most of the photos have none of those pesky reflections that usually appear on photos taken from inside a plane. We managed to get rid of most of the reflections by using a standard polarising filter. It takes a while to find an appropriate orientation of the filter, and it is extremely hard to find one if there are reflections coming from different sources. But in general the result is really good.

While flying above Glasshouse Mountains, we could also see the huge construction site of the Northern Pipeline Interconnector. So far, I only read about it and never had a chance to see it. And it really is a huge construction work, comparable in size to a highway.

We could get really close to Glasshouse mountains, and flying between them was pure fun! That was when we spotted the second airplane this day. We quickly changed the direction of our flight, and didn't have to worry about the other visitor to Glasshouse mountains anymore. From Glasshouse mountains we flew almost directly back to the airport - first towards the beaches and then along the shore. At this stage we had to change our altitude. Going down 5m/s is pretty quick, and you can really feel it in your ears if you're descending too quickly. Apparently humans are equipped with a pretty sensitive avionics! Note from Julien: sorry for that, will try not to exceed a descent rate of 500 feet per minute next time!

And then we approached the airport and, after a couple of minutes, landed. I was quite surprised that Julien was talking so much over the radio, and yet I couldn't hear anyone responding to him. Normally I would worry a bit, but so far I had such a positive impression, that I understood that this was how it was supposed to be. Later on Julien confirmed that. It seems that before landing you have quite a long monologue to perform... The touchdown was pretty smooth. Definitely much smoother than a typical airliner. I am pretty sure I wouldn't have spilt my coffee, would Julien have served it en route.

After landing, Julien had to refuel the plane. He used a fleet card that comes with a plane. The refuelling was very similar to refuelling a car, there was just a small difference - Julien had to use a ladder. There's not much choice when it comes to petrol type, and dockets from Coles do not give you any discounts...

Then he taxied back while I was shooting a few planes

And finally we parked the plane, using some manpower to push it to its proper position at the very last moment.

We found Anetta in the airport building, a few metres away from the coffee machine. We took a few must-take photos before leaving...


And off we went... Back to the real life!