Tabla de contenidos para May-June 2024 en Australian Flying

When I was a child, I dreamed of being a writer. My parents joked I was the only two-year old able to say the word ‘ journalist’. As a teenager, I would make mock fashion magazines and sell them to my friends. I completed a degree in media studies, but then met a man, emigrated to Australia and had a family. Unwilling to dedicate myself to a career with young children, I instead opened a little bookshop by the beach. When my children grew up, I convinced myself it was too late to break into journalism; that it was an industry in decline. Instead, I pursued a dream I thought would only ever be a hobby: learning to fly. I had no idea how much this decision would change my…

The first flight of the new Rural Medi-Flight service took BUSHkids medical staff from Archerfield to Cunnamulla and back, a 2.5 hour one-way flight rather than several days of travel. Angel Flight carried the medics on the newly-acquired Cessna 402 Kayla, named after a passenger who made 400 flights to critical care, but who ultimately lost her battle with illness aged only 23. One of the medics on the first Rural Medi-Flight was BUSHkids speech pathologist Rebecca Scanlan. "It was a great flight and a really successful visit to Cunnamulla," she said. "Being partnered with Angel Flight means that as clinicians our travel time is reduced, and it allows us to spend more time in the community supporting more children. "It is exciting to work with another organisation that shares…

Serial adventurer Mike Smith is off again. The Victorian seaplane pilot and owner of the iconic Sun Theatre in Yarraville has already flown around the world in a Searey amphibian and took delivery of his newly-acquired SeaBear twin in Russia so he could fly it home by himself. This time, Smith’s adventure is closer to home, as he prepares SeaBear VH-OMS Southern Sun for a circumnavigation of Australia. But this is no ordinary circumnavigation. It will leave RAAF Williams at Point Cook Victoria on Saturday 6 April, and follow the exact route and schedule flown 100 years ago to date by RAAF pilots WGCDR SJ Goble and FLTLT IE McIntyre. Those two airman flew a Fairey Mk II D seaplane around Australia in 1924. It took 20 days of actual…

It was April 2021, and the world was in the grips of a pandemic. International lockdowns had spread almost as fast as the virus. State curfews, hospitalisations and total global uncertainty abounded as new variants were discovered at an alarming rate. Across the country governments were closing borders if someone so much as sneezed. State premieres and chief medical officers fronted the cameras for daily briefings telling the public the latest Covid numbers infecting the state. Nobody knew if this was going to get better or worse. In the midst of this uncertainty, a group of committed volunteers were in the middle of planning a multi-state air race to support the vital work of the Royal Flying Doctors (RFD). They had already begun the building blocks for the race in…

Welcome, dear readers, to the rantings, ravings and otherwise opining of your correspondent, Doctor Flaresalot This short article is based around the age-old mystery of just exactly how do you land a plane? You’d think, by now, that there’d be an accepted, consistent way to explain and teach it. We’ve only been teaching people to fly for, oh, a century now. in geological time, ‘tis but a blink of the eye, but you try and hold your breath for that long, especially just after your latest CASA enforced stress echocardiogram. 100 years is a long time. My instructor-instructor would chastise me every time I would obfuscate my explanations with a “it feels right” or “I just do it”. There’ve been attempts, most notably by David Jacobson, who described the Jacobson…

Listen to the Locals CAA’S REPORT CONTAINS PADDING AND REPETITION SO, IN THE INTEREST OF CLARITY, JIM DAVIS HAS PARAPHRASED EXTENSIVELY. This discussion is to promote safety and not to establish liability. Date and Time of Accident: 15 September 2013 1030Z Aircraft Registration: ZS-DWJ Type of Aircraft: Piper Cherokee 235 Name of Operator: A J Fourie Type of Operation: Private PIC License Type: Private Pilot Age: 55 License Valid: Yes PIC Total Flying: 465.5 Hours Hours on Type: 450.6 Last point of departure: Mabalingwe (FAMA), Limpopo Province Place of intended landing: Vryburg (FAVB), North West Province Airfield elevation: 3850’ Density altitude: 6750’ Location of the accident: 150 m NW of extended C/L of 04 Met: 350°/10KT, viz: 10 km, 35°C, no clouds Number of people on board: 1+3 Number of…

​Pilots, maintenance personnel, aircraft owners and operators gathered recently to learn about the Satellite-Based Augmentation System (SBAS) and its implementation in Australia and New Zealand. SBAS systems have already been successfully established through North America’s WAAS system, Europe’s EGNOS and India’s GAGAN, amongst others. Geoscience Australia and Toitū Te Whenua Land Information New Zealand are building the Southern Positioning Augmentation Network, or SouthPAN, in a major project that will bring SBAS to Australia and New Zealand, and with it, approved vertical guidance to instrument flight procedures at many airports. SouthPAN is expected to be certified for aviation use in 2028. Bankstown Airport’s recently refurbished passenger terminal was the venue for the seminar. In a brief address, Aeria Management Group’s new Aviation Operations Manager, Brett McCartney, welcomed attendees to the impressive…

WSI will operate as a digitised airport, with more than 20 high-resolution cameras monitoring the airport and immediate airspace, with vision transmitted to a central Digital Aerodrome Service (DAS), to be located at Eastern Creek. CDC and Frequentis Australasia will work with Airservices to develop the WSI DAS using internationally proven technology that will provide greater situational awareness to ATC. Airservices Australia CEO Jason Harfield said DAS technology would improve the capability of air traffic controllers as airspace management became increasingly complex “Airservices is proud to partner with WSI to deliver this first-of-its-kind aerodrome in Australia,” he said. “DAS is world-class technology that will improve the capability of our controllers, enabling us to deliver even greater levels of safety and increased capacity.” WSI CEO Simon Hickey said DAS was tried,…

As a private pilot who is passionate about general aviation, and a teacher and educator, I am extremely interested in the relatively high number of neurodiverse individuals within the aviation community, particularly pilots. As someone who has worked with hundreds of neurodiverse children and adults, I am driven to dispel myths, change perceptions, increase understanding and flip societies thinking and atitiudes towards neurodiversity. So what does being neurodiverse mean? In one sense, it could be true to say that we are all neurodiverse to some degree, as no two brains are exactly the same (you’d hope not, that would be creepy!). However, the term neurodiversity is generally used to refer to individuals whose brains are ‘wired differently’ to what might be considered ‘the norm,’ (if there is such a thing.)…

“No young people will read your story on older pilots,” exclaimed one young instructor. “That’s ok,” I said, “The key thing is that older pilots, those in the most ignored, forgotten and unloved minority group in aviation, do.” There are multiple programs and scholarships for young pilots, female pilots, indigenous pilots, and disadvantaged groups. But rarely do we see senior or older pilot opportunities. Confirmation of how large and unloved the older pilot group is came when posting on an Australian Pilot Facebook page, asking for older pilots who had a story to tell, or advice to give, to make contact. I was inundated with offers. It simply wasn’t possible to speak with everyone who replied. There are many older pilots who either did not start flying until after 40…

During the Australia Day Honours List, Kestrel Aviation’s founder Ray Cronin received an Order of Australia. Ray, who is also the President of the Australian Helicopter Industry Association (AHIA), has a career spanning nearly 50 years. Ray started Kestrel in the mid 1980’s to train pilots at his helicopter school. Today the company is one of the largest Australian owned and operated companies providing a diverse fleet of helicopter types performing services including aerial crane, transport, and aerial firefighting. Ray Cronin is also the helicopter specialist on CASA’s Aviation Safety Advisory Panel (ASAP) and was the winner in 2018 of the Col Pay Award for a Lifetime of Service to General Aviation. ​The pilot of an R22 helicopter that collided with terrain south of Katherine in December 2023 had taken…

My first flight in a DC-3 was my first time flying a twin-engine aircraft, a tail wheel, and my first experience in multi-crew airline flying. Affectionately known as the Dakota, the DC-3 holds a special place in the hearts of aviation enthusiasts. It certainly does for my dad. Covering 1.5 million square miles, the aircraft flew over Western Australia and the Northern Territory during the 1950s and 1960s, playing a vital role in our aviation history. The post-World War II era marked a period of significant growth and development in Western Australia’s aviation industry. With vast distances to cover and remote communities to connect, reliable air transport became indispensable. Enter the Douglas DC-3 and MacRobertson Miller Airlines (MMA). The aircraft’s versatility soon saw it become the backbone of regional air…

There was a highly competitive tender process and four specialised suppliers have been selected to deliver projects that will help to shift the dial on diversity, inclusion and representation in Australia’s aviation industry. This includes forums to support emerging women leaders in aviation, an Aviation Career Explorer program to boost aviation interest amongst high school students, and encouraging male champions in the industry to drive long-term cultural change to increase inclusion for everyone – all to be delivered by WAI Australian Chapter. « The theme for this year’s International Women’s Day was ‘Count Her In: Invest in Women. Accelerate Progress’. » The Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology will run programs for flight instructors to foster leadership and inclusion skills, as well as for high school students to develop their interest…

The General Aviation Manufacturers' Association (GAMA) has published figures that showed aircraft deliveries combined passed the 4000-unit mark for the first time since GAMA began recording helicopter shipments in 2011. The result came despite ongoing supply chain issues that have hampered manufacturing right across the world, leading manufacturers to reach for bottles of Veuve Clicquot. "Compared to 2022, which was already a very successful year, Pilatus achieved a 10% increase in sales and added 6% to its operating income," Pilatus Aircraft said in a statement. "The total number of aircraft deliveries is impressive, too: all in all, 47 PC-24s and 101 PC-12s were handed over to customers last year." Markus Bucher, CEO of Pilatus Aircraft added: “These impressive results will provide the basis for a promising, successful, sustainable future.” Pilatus…

Born in Hong Kong, Kennedy moved to Melbourne when he was 13 and did his masters of physiotherapy at La Trobe University. “I was seeing about 60-70 patients a week,” he says, when he found himself wanting to take a career sabbatical. As he was feeling burnt out, generally just over it and wrestling with a lack of career progression, the 29-year-old started remembering a Hong Kong television series he loved as a teen called Triumph in the Skies screening in the early 2000s. It was a drama about the lives of pilots working for the fictional Solar Airways, which was based on Cathay Pacific Airways. “After four years of work as a physio, I decided I wanted to pursue another pathway.” He applied for flight school with Qantas in…

I didn’t think the loop was that bad. It was my first time at the controls of a Spitfire MK VIII and naturally I had to try it. I’d looped both a Mustang and a P-40 before, so the Spit should be easy. On top of the loop I throttled back the Merlin, then pulled back on the control ring as we headed earthward inverted. I pulled even harder as the ground got bigger in the windscreen, but it soon became apparent that I’d overdone it, and pulled her into a high-speed stall. Rookie mistake. The Spit began flicking left and right like a drunken seesaw and stopped responding to my frantic, panicked over-controlling. I was a passenger, powerless to avoid catastrophe. Now the ground was so big there was…

As many of us are aware, as well as CASA’s general aviation licensing, and all the fun in part 61, there’s also Recreational Aviation Australia. If you’re not familiar with the organisation, it’s been around in various forms for donkey’s years, and started off as a body overseeing ultralights. You know, the old two stroke things that fell out of the sky a lot. The old joke, “friends don’t let friends fly two-strokes”, may have originated as a tribute, back when the world of pilots mostly appreciated irony and black humour. Well, RA-Aus has come a long way since the rickety old homemade lawnmower power days. Did you know that CASA recognises the RAAUS recreational pilot certificate (RPC) as an equivalent to the Part 61 recreational pilot licence (RPL). It’s…