Passenger number two

Last Sunday I took my friend Marc for a flight around the training area. We followed a similar flight plan as for my first passenger Xuan a week before. Which makes Marc my second passenger.

Unfortunately I had booked BUQ, a two-seater Cessna 152, so I could only take one passenger with me and Marc’s two young boys had to stay behind. They came to the aerodrome nevertheless and I gave them a tour of the plane. If you can call that a tour given the amount of space inside a 152. The highlight of the day was definitely an aerobatics demonstration given by Bob Taits in the afternoon to celebrate the opening of his new facilities at Redcliffe Aerodrome.

The picture above captures pretty well the moment Christian discovered the existence of the wing strut on the 152 the hard way, while Jonathan is all smiles with his head above the wing and in the clouds. Looking inside the plane was a lot of fun too since one can explain and demonstrate the effects of controls by simply turning and pushing the yoke and looking at the control surfaces move though the window.


The weather that day was very ordinary: low dark clouds with a base between 2000 and 3000ft and a strong south-easterly wind. I left with Marc and we taxied for runway 07 and waited for MSJ, the antiquated C172N from the Redcliffe Aero Club, to finish their pre take-off checks before moving to the holding point.


We maintained 1000ft all the way to Bribie Island, crossed the island at its southern end and made a left-hand turn to the North near Bald Point.


Once we were tracking parallel to the beach, we descended to 500ft. I can't remember seeing anyone in the water on that day, but there sure were quite a few 4WD on the beach. You can tell it's low tide when the beach is wide enough for one car to overtake the other.

A few minutes later we realised that a solid wall of rain had formed right ahead of us and was moving towards us, perpendicular to our proposed route. We made a turn to the west earlier than planned to avoid the rain and remain within VMC.


Soon after the sun returned and Marc took a beautiful picture of Pumicestone Channel. In the foreground is Roys Orchards, the northernmost limit of the training area in area D629C.

We then crossed the Bruce Highway, overflew Glass House Mountains township and turned North in order to check out Australia Zoo:

Then we headed to the Glass House Mountains: Mount Coochin in the foregound, then Mt Beerwah on the right and Mt Coonowrin on the left.


Time for the obligatory souvenir picture before heading back to Redcliffe...


...where we joined crosswind for 07...


... and landed with a crosswind. Actually, if you look at the yellow windsock on the left before the runway threshold you can see that, when the picture was taken, i.e. just after turning final, the wind was blowing straight down the runway. Just one minute later, it was definitely at an angle!


The landing was not too bad, at least the nose was aligned with the runway centerline and the wings were banked into the wind.


In summary, good flying, good company, two young persons introduced to aviation, great aerobatics display by Bob Taits and 1.2 hour of command time for the logbook.

GFPT Pre-Test

My blogging got a bit out of synch recently: the order of the posts no longer reflects the progression of my training. My last story was about my first flight with a passenger, which shows to those familiar with the Australian PPL Syllabus that I have passed the General Flying Progress Test (GFPT). However, I have not yet posted anything about the test itself. And there’s a lot to say, so let’s start with the pre-test.

I do not have any photos from the pre-test day, so I’ll illustrate this post with photos of Super Decathlon aircrafts I took at Redcliffe last week-end.


The GFPT is about demonstrating that one can fly an airplane safely. The holder of the GFPT has the right to take passengers but is restricted to flights within the local training area, and must take off and land at the base aerodrome. The GFPT does not cover cross-country navigation, which is the object of the Private Pilot Licence (PPL). For most student pilots, the GFPT is not an end in itself, but rather a milestone on the way to the PPL.

The GFPT test comes in two parts. There’s a pre-test day with an instructor, and the real test conducted by a CASA Testing Officer, which in the case of the Redcliffe Aero Club is Rob Beaumont, our CFI. Incidentally, there’s something I noticed recently reading bloggers from the US: on the other side of the Pacific the acronym CFI refers to a Certificated Flight Instructor, while in Australia it is a Chief Flying Instructor, i.e. the person instructors in a flying school report to. Quite an important distinction for anyone with a flying training career.

In order to make sure student pilots do not show up with gapping holes in their theoretical knowledge, the club asks students to prepare written answers to a list of about forty questions that will be reviewed on the day of the pre-test. This is in addition to having already passed the radio test, the pre-solo test, the pre-area solo test and the so-called Basic Aeronautical Knowledge test. If you don't like tests, stay away from aviation!

It took me ten pages in small font to answer the questionnaire properly. The questions cover regulations, aircraft systems, aerodynamics, aircraft performance, weight and balance calculations, emergency procedures and human performance. Preparing answers is not hard, it just takes a lot of time: a couple of evenings at home, plus an hour at the club since some of the questions require looking up information in the aircraft’s Flight Manual, of which I do not have a copy at home.


The instructor for the pre-test was Mal, and he was happy with my answers. He only picked on a few, very relevant, points. Then Mal briefed me on what was going to happen in the test and we went out in VH-BUQ. At Beachmere we started climbing to 3000ft to do stalls and steep turns. It was a day with broken low clouds, and all throughout this section of the flight we had to find a gap in the clouds and follow it in order to keep the ground in sight. The steep turns were just fine, it’s with stalls that I had problems.

Stalls with power off in the clean configuration were just fine. My problem was with countering the wing drop with rudder and not ailerons in the approach configuration. Approach configuration means some power and flaps down, as if we were coming in to land. Even if I knew I had to keep the ailerons neutral, I would always turn the yoke at some point during the stall recovery. This is ineffective at best, and dangerous at worst since it increases the angle of attack on the downgoing wing, thereby worsening the stall.

It goes something like this: left wing goes down, Julien turns the yoke to the right (bad!), left aileron goes down, angle of incidence of left wing near aileron increases, angle of attack for left wing is increased, left wing ends up stalled even further. The reverse happens for the right wing: the upgoing aileron reduces the angle of attack and helps move away from the stalling angle of attack.

We therefore end up with a situation where one wing remains stalled while the other wing may come unstalled. Nice recipe for a spin! We practiced this a few times and I eventually got it right, but I still have to think very hard "ailerons neutral, ailerons neutral" when demonstrating stalls. I wonder whether it will ever become natural. Maybe if I take an aerobatics course. Or maybe this is a clear indication I should stay away from any aerobatics :-)


We also practiced unusual attitude recovery. I would close my eyes and Mal would place the airplane in an unusual attitude, i.e. significantly nose up or down and banked. I then open my eyes, find the windscreen either full of sky or full of ground, and restore straight and level flight without letting the speed decay below the stalling speed or increase into the yellow arc.

After that I spent about 20 minutes under the hood for some instrument flying, then I took the hood off for a forced landing without power. This was not the best ever but we both agreed we would have made the field.

We headed back to Redcliffe for some more work in the circuit. Normal circuit, flapless landing, glide approach, precautionary search followed by a short field landing. All done with a strong crosswind. In total we flew for 1.8 hour. The unusual length of the session and the variety of exercises really got me exhausted.

Mal said that my flying was good given the difficult meteorological conditions, and that Rob would probably not take me out in similar conditions for the actual test anyway. What happened two weeks later proved him wrong. But that's a story for another day.

First Passenger and Steamed Dumplings

Last Saturday I passed the GFPT test, nearly one year after starting my flying training at the Redcliffe Aero Club. I won't talk about the test now, this deserves a full story or even two. What it means in practical terms though is that I can now take passengers with me on flights within the training area of the Redcliffe aerodrome.

The training area corresponds to the boundary of the so-called Danger Area D629, minus the part of area D629C north of Roy’s Orchards. Vertically, it extends from sea level to 3500ft AMSL or to the bottom of the overlying Class C airspace, whichever is lower. Put into the local context, this means Redcliffe, Deception Bay, Beachmere, Caboolture, Bribie Island and the Glass House Mountains National Park.

It may seem a odd or even a little perverse to put a training area in the middle of a danger area. That’s only until you realize that the training area is the very reason why the whole area is designated as dangerous.

In all fairness, there are other factors that make the area dangerous. The Glass House Mountains are one. These are a half-dozen volcanic peak towers in the middle of an otherwise flat area of forests and fields. With Mt Beerwah at 1824ft and three other peaks above 1000ft, you do not want to be flying VFR with a low cloud base in there.

The other danger factor are the three local non-towered aerodromes: Redcliffe and Caboolture, just 9 nautical miles apart, and Caloundra a few miles over the northern boundary of the training area. That’s a lot of light airplanes, charters, ultralights, gliders and helicopters flying around, especially on week-ends. All three aerodromes share the same VHF frequency, which makes a lot of sense from a safety point of view since one can form a picture of what's happening in the whole training area. On the other hand, the amount of flying activity can really clog the airwaves and make it difficult to place radio calls at times. It is for this reason that the Redclife Aero Club decided recently that the downwind call can be considered optional in such situations.


A long time ago I had promised my friend Xuan that he would be my first passenger whenever I would be allowed to take passengers. I mentioned the idea to him earlier in the week and he said yes without hesitation. Xuan picked me up at home this morning and we started the day with a delicious Chinese brunch at his place. I think I could have meat dumplings and green tea for breakfast everyday.

We drove to Redcliffe together with Xuan’s wife Rachel. Unfortunately I had booked a Cessna 152 so I could only take one passenger, and Rachel had to wait for us at the club for a little over one hour while we went flying. Before the flight I showed the airplane to them both, explained how the controls worked and what all the instruments and the pre-flight checks were about.

Then I gave Xuan the passenger brief, with special attention paid to the fastening of the safety harness, which is a bit awkward in IVW. This airplane is a 152 Aerobat model and is fitted with a proper aerobatics harness rather than the more common car-style safety belt. I made sure to mention to him that the rudder pedals were not foot rests and that if he saw another airplane nearby I expected him to let me know.


There was a strong, slightly gusty south-easterly crosswind, and a cloud base lower than forecasted. The visibility was very good though. We took off on 07, tracked for Beachmere, climbed to 2000 ft and followed the shoreline. As we were abeam the Bribie Island bridge I looked in the distance under our left wing and could see dark clouds and showers of rain over the Glass House Mountains, precisely where our plan said we would be in 15 minutes. I decided to continue anyway since we always had the option of turning back to Redcliffe.

As we were over the Woorim Golf Course at the southern end of Bribie Island we turned north and followed the beach, climbing to 3000ft. Talking to Cara back at the club later I realised I could have made this section of the flight a lot more interesting by flying over the beach at 500ft rather than staying up high. Something to keep in mind for next time.

Approaching the top end of Bribie Island we turned left and tracked west towards the Glass House Mountains township. At that point I could see low clouds and rain right ahead of us so I started a descent and levelled off at 2000ft as we crossed the Bruce Highway. We made a right turn over the township and tracked north, keeping the Steve Irwin Way on our right.

Soon we were abeam Beerwah and had the Conondale Range to our left. We managed to find Australia Zoo, did a half-orbit around it and headed for Mt Beerwah. Finding Australia Zoo was actually very easy thanks to the adjacent parking lot and the U-shaped Crocoseum stadium. Unfortunately Xuan had left his digital camera at home and all the pictures for this post were taken with his camera phone. But I suspect Xuan did that on purpose in order to get another flying opportunity in the near future :-)


We flew in-between Mt Beerwah and Mt Coonowrin then made a large right-hand turn around Mt Beerwah. This was all the more impressive since we were flying at 2000ft around a 1824ft peak. We encountered a few turbulences in the lee of the peak. Knowing we had a south-easterly wind I could have anticipated that and flown higher or further away but I didn’t. No big drama, but one more item on the list of things to improve.

We crossed the National Park in the direction of The Twins, did a right-hand orbit there and looked down at the surrounding pineapple fields. Completing the orbit put us on the way back home. I made a call to the Caboolture CTAF to let everyone know we were over Beerburrum tracking south-east to Donnybrook at 2500ft. At Donnybrook we turned south towards Beachmere and descended to 1500ft. I pointed the Hazelton airstrip and the satellite dishes to Xuan then made our inbound call for Redcliffe. Only two aircrafts were in the circuit: YYM, a Robinson R22 helicopter based at Redcliffe, and BUQ, the other Cessna 152 from the club.

As we overflew the field the windsock was still pointing at 07 with a strong crosswind from the right. Below me I could see the meat-bombing Chieftain at the holding point. We descended over the dead side and joined the circuit crosswind. Before turning base I extended 10 degrees of flaps and slowed the aircraft down to 70 knots, about 10 knots slower than I would usually do. I did that because turning base with such a crosswind means turning into a headwind, which automatically increases the airspeed, and could take us outside of the white arc.

We encountered a few bumps and strong windshear at about 200ft on final and I had to add a lot of power to keep the airspeed at about 65 knots. As we passed the threshold I removed the crab and lowered the right wing. The angle of bank I set was probably too much because we started drifting to the right. A bit less aileron, a bit more rudder to keep straight and we made a decent touch-down on the right-hand side of the centerline, right wheel first, then left wheel, and nose wheel soon after.


We parked right in front of the clubhouse. As I was dipping the tanks I realised I had less that 50 liters left should have stopped at the fuel bowser on the way back. I was about to start again to go refuel when I noticed the Chieftain just pulling in at the bowser. No refuelling this time, the next person flying IVW will have to do it. Here goes one aviation Karma point.

I went back inside, paid 1.0 hour for the flight (private hire of club aircraft is on tacho at RAC, i.e. it does not include taxi time) and added 1.1 hour of Pilot-In-Command time to my logbook (counted on VDO, i.e. from start to shutdown of the engine). Good deal, I feel like I got 0.1 hour for free!

We left the club and stopped in Redcliffe on the way back to Brisbane and had a stroll on the beach. The wind was a lot stronger there than at the aerodrome. A few parachute jumpers landed on the beach in front of us. They had most likely jumped out of the Chieftain we saw earlier.

A coffee later we headed back to Brisbane under the guidance of George W. Bush’s voice coming out of Xuan’s GPS. We had a hard time choosing between him, the Queen of England and Kim Cattrall. We hanged out at Xuan’s place for a while and then had a beautiful homemade Chinese dinner with a number of different dishes from different parts of China. I only wish all future passengers would feed me in a similar way.


All in all I am quite happy with my first passenger-carrying experience. I was a bit nervous about it in the days before since it was Xuan's first flight in a light aircraft and also because of the forecasted crosswind. Even if it was only a local flight, I had drawn the proposed itinerary properly on the map, and even rehearsed the whole thing once flying a C172SP in the flight simulator on the PC at home.

I really enjoyed the experience and I can't wait to take passengers again. In that respect flying is like holidaying: it's a lot more fun visiting new places with other people rather than on your own. I booked a C152 again for next week-end, but the weather forescast says showers and clouds. Let's see how it all works out and who may be sitting in the right seat and subsequently feeding me next week-end.

Lenticular cloud over Obergurgl

About a year ago we spent one week on the ski slopes of the tiny Austrian village of Obergurgl. Perfect weather all week long, great food, great company and great skiing despite bad ski shoes. But that's a different story.


One day at lunchtime, as we were washing down sausages and fries with Almdudler, I noticed a lenticular cloud across the valley. This very special type of cloud is formed when the wind blows perpendicular to a mountain range and creates a system of standing waves.

There’s a lot more pictures of lenticular clouds over at the Cloud Appreciation Society, exactly 282 of them. This other Web site has some absolutely stunning pictures of lenticular clouds. It's just freakish how some of them just look like flying saucers.

Speaking of weird clouds, the most recent issue of Australian Flying discusses the Morning Glory weather phenomenon, and how riding this very special cloud is the Holy Grail of Australian gliders. Makes me want to learn gliding actually. The one and only time I flew in a glider was with a friend of my father when I was 15. That was an amazing experience. Hmmm, here's an idea for when the PPL is over....

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.