Wilkins Runway, Antarctica

If you had to choose between Iceland, Greenland and Australia as the country which built a runway out of compacted snow and ice on top of a glacier you would be forgiven for discarding Australia straight away. And you'd be wrong.

I found the ad below in the aviation section of The Australian a while back, which reminded me of the existence of the Wilkins Runway, a 3500 meter-long (that's 11,500 feet) runway built a few years ago in Antarctica.

The scientists and support staff working at the various scientific bases over there can now enjoy the convenience of a weekly airline service, which beats having to spend two weeks on a boat crossing some of the roughest seas on the planet.

Skytraders operates this very peculiar airline with one Airbus A319 fitted with long-range tanks. The flight from Hobart, Tasmania to Wilkins Runway takes approximately 4.5 hours and takes place about once a week during the summer period.

Since meteorological conditions are rather unpredictable and unforgiving, and alternate airports are few and far between in that corner of the world, the airliner always has the option of flying all the way back to Hobart. That's quite smart, since it also eliminates the need for refuelling in Antarctica.

Photo by AAD. © Commonwealth of Australia.

The runway is actually made of hard blue ice on top of which a layer of compacted snow was laid down. Snow provides better grip than ice and also does not melt as much under the sun. Still, the Airbus 319 Flight Policy issued by the Australian Antarctic Division says that at times during the summer, flights will be constrained by temperature and friction issues at Wilkins Runway. Flights during this period may only occur during “night” hours.

There is no entry in the ERSA for Wilkins Runway, but an RNAV approach can be found. The runway is called 09T/27T. The letter T refers to the fact that all headings are in degrees true, as opposed to degrees magnetic. That's what happens when you get too near a magnetic pole: magnetic declination is too large and unpredictable to predicate aerial navigation on compass readings. The aerodrome chart mentions the existence of a PAPI on 09T.

Another thing I didn't know is that the Australian Antarctic Territory is the largest chunk of Antarctica. Amazing what you can learn through an interest in aviation.

Wings over Illawarra 2010

Three (not four) of us flew down to Wollongong last Sunday for a half (not full) day of aviation fun at the excellent Wings over Illawara airshow. The short version of what we saw and heard is in this video, the longer version follows further below.

Wollongong being only 30 nautical miles from Bankstown, every aircraft on the club's booking sheet was booked with the same destination, except one 152 and the simulator. The plan was for four of us to fly down for the day in Archer VH-SFA.

The skies over Bankstown looked friendly and flyable, however the forecast for Wollongong quickly curbed our enthusiasm: light showers of rain and overcast at 1500ft. Not very good for a VFR flight over the escarpment with a highest point at 1860ft. We decided to go anyway and have a look at the actual conditions, and fly back home if landing at Wollongong was not possible.

Chris had computed beforehand that with fuel tanks only filled up to the step (68 litres for each tank) instead of full (91 litres), we would stay under MTOW and keep the CG within limits even with four blokes in the Archer. This would give us about three hours of autonomy, more than enough for the trip, legal reserves and a comfortable safety buffer.

Since club aircraft are only refuelled to the steps every night, we were confident the plan would come together. I think you can see where this is going.

We found both tanks were near full, which brought us 40kg over MTOW. There is no safe way to pump or syphon fuel out and it would take 1.5 hours to burn the excess fuel doing circuits, clearly not an option. Carl very generously offered to give up his seat which allowed Chris, Ted and myself to depart Bankstown safely. Thanks again Carl!

We followed the M5 to the south then tracked direct to Wollongong from Menangle. Coming over the escarpment the cloud layer was a little higher and definitely not as dense as forecasted. We descended into Wollongong where Chris landed on runway 34 after a perfectly executed tight circuit.

We found a great little parking spot for the Archer next to the windsock and decided to set up camp there. That's Chris holding the fort on the photo below. We chose the spot in the hope that the Archer would learn a trick or two from the Mustang parked right behind, but much to our disappointment the Archer was still making the same 4-cylinder noise on the way back.

I was able to take photos of the airplanes on display without anyone standing in front since we flew in before the gates opened to the general public. That's a C-130 being towed by the HARS truck. Notice the clouds at the top of the escarpment.

HARS (Historical Aircraft Restoration Society) volunteers do a fantastic job bringing vintage aircraft back to airworthy condition. What they managed to achieve while running the organisation on a shoestring is just mind-boggling. Their network of volunteers is second to none, with more than 70 licensed aircraft engineers. I spoke with a truckie whose contribution to HARS is transporting aircrafts, or parts thereof, from anywhere in Australia to the HARS hangars at Wollongong. He may not be flying left seat in Connie nor rebuilding a Twin Wasp radial engine, but his contribution is just as essential as anybody else's.

This C-47 (i.e. a military DC-3) VH-EAF was built in 1945 but never saw any action in WWII and was later used for transporting dignitaries in Australia.

The Lockheed Neptune VH-IOY above was operated by the RAAF out of Townsville up until 1977 as an anti-submarine reconnaissance aircraft. A similar Neptune was once flown from Perth to the US in 2.5 days without refuelling thanks to extra fuel tanks.

Walking through the HARS hangar one doesn't know where to look. Here a radial engine shares storage space with three jet engines. Elsewhere a wooden crate contains crankshaft, master rod and connecting rods for a Twin Wasp R2000 radial engine, probably for HARS's DC-4 VH-PAF.

The highlight of the day was the Roulettes display. The Roulettes are the aerobatics display team of the RAAF and are based at East Sale in Victoria. They fly the PC-9 turboprop twin-seat aeroplane, which is also the "basic" trainer for the RAAF.

All Roulettes pilots are also instructors with the Air Force. Although designed in Switzerland, the PC-9 used by the RAAF was built under license by Hawker de Havilland in Bankstown. This is the factory that Boeing recently decided to close down and relocate to Victoria.

This De Havilland Vampire VH-FJW was actually built in Australia, at the same plant in Bankstown mentioned above. It was used by the Telstars, one of the ancestors of the Roulettes.

Also coming out of the de Havilland factory in Sydney was this de Havilland Drover VH-DHM, only one of twenty built. The aircraft suffered from initial propeller problems which lead to the loss of three airframe, and was plagued with performance problems the rest of its life in service. Difficult to see in the photo is the third engine located in the nose.

From our vantage point near the windsock we could admire all sorts of aircraft taxiing for runway 34, such as this Yak-52 VH-VHV. The nose art reads "Red Hot and Russian".

This Thorp T-18C VH-AKO was one of the first all-metal homebuilt aircraft, and the first one to use an all-flying tail . It was designed to be built out of twelve 4' x 12' sheets of aluminium. The wings of this Model C can be folded against the fuselage for storage and transportation.

The Mustang VH-MFT parked right behind us had flown in from Caboolture, Queensland where he is operated by Mustang Flights and can be seen at the Caboolture Warplane Museum. Chris made a video of the Mustang starting up the big 27-litre V12 Packard V-1650-7 engine, a variant of the better-known Rolls Royce Merlin. This should be made into a ringtone for pilots.

We had to cut our day short because a trough coming from the south was bringing in more clouds and rain. We left around 1:30PM and missed the Hornet display. I flew the leg back to Bansktown.

We could see a dark area of weather moving towards Wollongong on our left wingtip. Sydney Radar was describing it as "severe" to another pilot on the frequency, but thankfully it remained west of Camden so was not an issue for us.

Approaching Bankstown I though for an instant that I had found the strobe light of the 2RN inbound reporting point only to realise I was looking at lightning between distant clouds. We clearly left at the right time. We landed on 11L, taxied back and spent some time at the club.

Later in the afternoon I was at home putting video clips together for the youtube video when thunderstorms came in and heavy rain started to fall over Sydney. I was glad, as the saying goes, to be on the ground wishing I was in the air rather than the opposite.

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!

Saturday morning flight to Camden

I realised a few days ago that I had to become current again if I wanted to fly with passengers to Wollongong next week-end for the Wings over Illawarra airshow. Three take-offs and landings within the last 90 days are required for carrying passengers, and I only had one in my logbook.

The weatherman promised all Sydneysiders that Saturday would end a long string of IFR-only week-ends, so I booked Warrior VH-SFM for a few hours in the early morning. Time to shake the rust off with a flight to Camden, only 17 nautical miles south-west of Bankstown. The weather didn't disappoint.

Of course the world and his wife had also come to the conclusion that this was a perfect day to resume VFR flying in the Sydney area. All five spots in the run-up area for 29R at Bankstown were taken, so I did my pre take-off checks and engine run-up on the taxiway. I then joined the line for the holding point, making sure to apply the park brake so that my Piper would not creep forward and chew on the tail of the Cessna in front of me.

It may have been smarter to go straight for runway 29C rather than wait for everyone else on runway left. Something to keep in mind for next time. This is a very similar dilemma to that of choosing a check-out lane at the supermarket. The other lane always go faster.

I eventually took off on 29R and flew around the training area, identifying landmarks such as the pipeline south of the Penrith R536 restricted area and Warragamba Dam. With all the rain we received in the last weeks the area was very green. I called inbound at Mayfield and advertised myself as unfamiliar with Camden. The controller gave me an upwind join for 06 rather than a base join and I made a decent (for a solo flight) full-stop landing despite flaring too high. This was my first time landing at Camden in daylight, all the previous times had been at night.

Camden is a great GA airport with more interesting aircraft types than are usually seen around Bankstown. I mentioned this airport already as a possible place for me to do a tailwheel endorsement later this year. Grass trips have magical powers when it comes to attracting vintage aircraft such as this Tiger Moth above or Curtis Aviation's T-6G Texan below.

After a little look around I departed Camden on downwind for 06 at the circuit altitude of 1300ft. On late downwind the controller gave me a traffic, a Cessna in my 2 o'clock, on descent and about to join base. By the time I found him he was right in front of me and quickly disappeared in the bottom left corner of my windscreen.

I would not call it too close for comfort, but I would have appreciated if the controller had kept him at 1800ft for an upwind join rather than descend him in front of me, even if that meant an extra circuit for the Cessna. That being said, separation is the responsibility of the pilot in a GAAP control zone, and I probably could have anticipated the traffic by listening more carefully for the inbound aircraft who most likely was inbound from Mayfield. Lesson learnt.

I followed the ranges to Warragamba Dam then kept the pipeline on my left all the way to Prospect Reservoir. An aircraft was performing aerobatics near an unnamed airfield south of Penrith so I gave it a wide berth. A Cessna and an Extra reported inbound at Prospect before me and we all joined downwind for 29R. I flared too high on that one too and all the credit for the decent landing goes to the oleo suspension of the Warrior.


After crossing the holding point I stopped for a few seconds to perform my after landing actions and checks (landing lights and strobes off, transponder on standby, flaps up, fuel pump off, switch frequency to ground) and started taxiing back to the clubhouse. That's when the ground controller called me asking me to next time please avoid stopping right after vacating the runway since I prevented the aircraft behind me from vacating. Point taken, I won't do it again.

Spot the airfield: Canberra

On a flight from Sydney to Melbourne in a Qantas 767 we flew over Canberra airport. Which is not terribly surprising since Canberra is on a straight line between Sydney and Melbourne.

It is actually for this very reason that Canberra was chosen as the Australian federal capital in 1908 since neither Sydney nor Melbourne would accept the rival city as the federal capital.

The longuest of the two runways at YSCB is 17/35 with a length of nearly 3300m while runway 12/30 is about half the length. There's a great video taken from the control tower of a Russian IL-76 using every single inch of runway 17 on take-off. I'll let you decide how much chance and careful planning were involved in this successful take-off.

Right near the left edge of the photo above you can see two concentric ring roads around Capital Hill on top of which sits the Australian Federal Parliament.

It took me a while to realise which airport this was. I had only been to Canberra once before, it was at night and it was a disaster. For previous photos of airfields I took from airliners, you can start here.

It feels good to know I'm not the only one filling up blog posts with photos taken through the windows of airliners: don't miss this awesome photo of Grand Canyon taken by Rob Bremmer, the blogger behind why2fly who nicely captured the two pillars of spotting things from the sky: always carry a camera and look out the window often.

The Foxbat, the Gazelle and the mysterious Stollite

After posting about the trip Chris and I took to Taree, I received an email from Jamie Honan from the Sydney Recreational Flying Club who pointed me to a slideshow of photos he took on a similar trip to Taree in a Foxbat A22.

The Sydney Recreational Flying Club is based at The Oaks, an airfield 25 nautical miles west of Bankstown. I have to admit I was never curious enough to visit the airfield and only knew The Oaks as one of the entry points to Camden aerodrome. It is now firmly on my list of places to fly to.

Looking at their web site I realised The Oaks is home to a vibrant community of aviation enthusiasts. It's not often that one comes across a flying club where a significant portion of members are not only owners, but builders of airplanes. And not only builders of kit aircrafts, which is increasingly popular and already a great achievement, but also the type of builders who master the entire process, from initial idea to flying aircraft.

The photos were taken from the FoxBat and show a Skyfox Gazelle and a Stollite in formation. Don't try to look up the manufacturer's web site for the Stollite because there's none. Arthur Armour, an instructor with SRFC who runs the Taree Wing of the club, built it himself and called it Stollite as in STOL Lite. A few performance figures and design details can be found here.


Digging deeper into the web site, I discovered SRFC members do not only build airplanes from scratch, they also build their own hangars. My hat off to them, they sure know how to keep the spirit of the pioneers of aviation alive.

Speaking of plane crazy people, I will be attending the Wings over Illawarra airshow organised by the Historical Aircraft Reconstruction Society on February 28th at Wollongong aerodrome. There's a fantastic program with the RAAF Roulettes and Connie among others, and all the profits go to a good cause. Now let's just hope the weather cooperates.

Updated: Arthur Armour kindly sent me a link to his photo gallery. Building stuff seems to be a common theme in Arthur's life: the house, the hangar and multiple airplanes: the Super Cricket, the LR-2, the Stollite and Arthur's ongoing project, the 'T'Star. An amazing range of skills.

A gem in the red dust: Windorah aerodrome

There's the Australian aerodromes I have photographed from the sky, and there's the ones I have photographed from the ground: Wondai, Goondiwindi, Cherrabah or Taree. And there's a few I haven't yet mentioned on this blog, such as Windorah aerodrome (YWDH).

Windorah (pop. 60) is a well-known stop for those travelling through Outback Queensland, being roughly half-way between Blackall (pop. 1160, 400km east) and Birdsville (pop. 115, 400km west). The local Western Star Hotel has some historical information about the town.

Remember that Simpsons episode where Bart convinces a young boy from the Australian outback to walk six hours to his nearest neighbour just to double-check if water drains clockwise in the Southern Hemisphere? That's the kind of distances we are talking about here.

Being so far away from anywhere and in particular 1300km from the State capital Brisbane, political correctness is mostly unknown here, as can be inferred from the plaque above which proudly adorns the front wall of the terminal building.

This good-natured form of humour, with an aviation twist, can also be found on the door of the male toilet, which reads "unwanted baggage".

The service desk has all the amenities the modern-day regional traveller would expect. You have to admire the sign about new regulations for liquids onboard. Somewhere on the wall someone wrote the toll-free SARTIME number.

The yellow sticker advertises a watering hole ten hours drive south-east of Windorah called the Bulloo River Motel. It may be far, but at least by the time you get back home from the pub you've sobered up. The photo below was taken more than two years ago, I don't know whether the sticker survived CASA's alcohol and other drugs in aviation initiative.

Windorah for us was only a refuelling stop on our way to Birdsville so we didn't make it to town. That will have to wait for our next visit. The photo below was taken on downwind for runway 04 after taking-off from Windorah, en route to Birdsville.

This trip was part of a one-week fly-away organised in September 2007 by two instructors of the Redcliffe Aero Club where I was training for my PPL at the time. This was the trip of a lifetime (so far).

Each Cessna 172SP had one instructor and two students onboard. The two students would take turns flying or navigating (or sleeping) in the back seat. Everything was new for me: I had 15 hours total time when we started, and doubled my flying hours in just one week. I had not started this blog at the time which is why I never blogged about it until today.

I wrote an article about this adventure in the March 2008 issue of a French aviation magazine called Aviation et Pilote. There's still plenty of images of flying the Australian Outback in there if you can't read French. Having trained in Australia I found myself having to look up the French translation of aviation terms I only knew in English, which is a bit of an uneasy feeling.

I cannot finish this post without mentioning Bub, the lady who mans the fuel pump and fuel drums at Windorah. And also the gas station. Bub welcomed us with a roll of toilet paper and handed a few sheets to the pilots who she thought had performed "a shit landing". One poster on pprune.org summed it all up saying "Bub calls a spade a "bloody shovel" but is always ready with a cold drink and a helping hand. Country hospitality at its best".