Aldo

Jerry 210 if you can get one mine I plan 160 kts at 54 lph 182 RG Would also be good 145 kts at about 50 lph Both have good legs with full load

Jerry No matter which planning software and tablet you use they are all pretty good these days, AvPlan and OzRunways are both easy to use and plan on both have weather and notams and all the information you want or need. I personally use OzRunways and Command Flight Planner although I generally only use CFP now for printing my plans and other useful enroute information it gives you (including a cost estimate). OzRunways also allows you to install on your phone (not legal to use as an electronic flight book backup) but a very helpful backup, also have a way to charge your Ipad during flight. With the use of electronic flight books you will need to have a backup either paper charts or a second IPad I carry 2 IPads one with a sim installed so you are able to access NAIPS As far as planning goes I just did a quick Avlon to Birdsville plan (took 10 minutes including checking fuel availability at all places) I used a 172 as I don't have a PA 28 in my IPad distance is 934nm flight time 512 minutes with the longest leg being about 150 minutes. Depending on your load, availability of fuel will be your main concern as you get further west I used full fuel in my plan and the smallest margin I had was 88 litres (including a 15% flight fuel variable reserve) YMAV-YLED-YCAL-YTOC, I would use this route to get me clear of MLB airspace as quickly as possible and get to 7500 to give myself some room over the ranges, your highest lowest safe is 4700 YTOC-YCBA (Cobar) YCBA-YTGM (Thargomindah) YTGM-YBDV Took me longer to write the reply than it did to plan the flight. Regards Aldo

Thruster88 single, twin, 3 or 4 engined aeroplanes are all equally as good as each other if flown within their respective performance envelopes. In a single with an EFATO the choices are limited 10 deg either side of the nose and land ahead although there are those who think they can outsmart the laws of physics and turn back most of these are no longer around to tell the tale. Twins give you more choices but you need to have done your homework before you shove the throttles forward, understand the single engine performance and be on top of your game, blueline is paramount if you don’t have it close the throttles and land straight ahead flirting with this will produce a departure from controlled flight very quickly and a very steep nose down attitude that will be unrecoverable from low level. If you have achieved blueline manage the engine failure as per your training and the POH most importantly fly the aeroplane. 3 & 4 engined aircraft are safer again performance still needs to be understood most have excess power available. This accident I understand was a training flight it may very well be a mismanaged EFATO exercise these have killed more than enough instructors and students over the years, min alt is normally 300 feet or it may have been a real one from a lower altitude below blueline. Sad for all concerned Aldo

Mate this is not about instruments to tell you what aoa you are flying it is about feel looking out the front checking your ias and determining what you need to do next short strips and high trees can be very confronting as it can look worse than it actually is, it does take some practice

Dan it is a little concerning that this is your understanding approach speeds (in fact all speeds) in the POH are indicated airspeeds The performance (eg landing distance, take off distance etc) may change but the IAS is the same no matter what.

Turbs I can’t see it on the screenshot above but can tell you once the trees are taken into account the effective length is somewhere around 400m, I flew into Agnes Water / 1770 on Sunday morning (as I have a house there and spend every weekend there) the wind was a bit gusty and there were a few bumps around plus the temp was around 30 and I was in the 210, this strip would get a bit of turbulence from the hills around so that may have contributed, getting into that strip 2 up in a Zenith you would be as slow as possible over the trees then power off flare and land, may have been a gust and clipped a wingtip, may have been an over correction from a gust and picked up a wingtip who knows but flying in and out of this strip would require a good deal of currency and experience.

Kyle I didn’t see it but got told by a couple here that it was a Zenith, sadly seems like wife and son first on scene

Turbo, neither of those the bottom one is 1400 long and is a good strip, the top one is about 800 long and is not bad but tight the one it happened on is about a mile away short with some pretty big timber on approach which was what was hit

It happened on approach not an engine failure short strip big trees on approach got low and slow and picked up a tree happened on his own property

Yes sad day 2 men just south of Agnes Water on a private strip

Kyle I fly in and out of there every weekend give Woody a call GA $50 RA $20 landing fees RW is 14/32 if possible use 14 for landing and 32 for take off lots of kangaroos do a low level run down the strip to clear if you are lucky they will move off the strip in there in my 210 last weekend had to touch down about 350 metres in as the Roos would not shift still plenty of room but be aware.

But make the call on area not the CTAF if you want emergency response

Dunlop I was in there this morning to drop off the wife as she had to go to Sydney, 35 min flight from Tara, no landing fee as I purchased fuel at a pretty cheap $1.95/litre. Went into the terminal seamless transfer from GA to RPT check in, had breakfast food was very good (wife is a chief so extremely particular). So depart home at 0900 in Sydney by 1200 probably can't do that if you live in Brisbane. Time to stop complaining and appreciate what you have on your doorstep. Aldo

Nev I have gone and done some research regarding visual flight at night and found the ATSB Avoidable Accidents No. 7 Visual Flight at night accidents. It was interesting to find that over the 20 years from 1993 - 2012 there have been an average of 1.8 accidents per year under visual conditions at night. Here is a link to the report http://www.havarikommissionen.dk/images/Bibliotek_luftfart/General_Aviation/VFR_nat.pdf From the report The ATSB reviewed night flying accidents in Australia for the 20 years between 1993 and 2012. Accidents in visual (night) conditions, excluding those that involved any sort of (actual or simulated) mechanical failure, included: 13 accidents conducted under visual flight rules by pilots with a night VFR rating 8 accidents conducted under instrument flight rules involving visual flying by pilots with a command instrument rating (CIR) 5 accidents conducted under visual flight rules by pilots without either a night VFR or CIR rating. In addition to the above 26 accidents, there were also: 10 accidents involving inadvertent VFR flight into IMC at night and/or collision with terrain/obstacle while attempting to flying below cloud at night. (Flight below LSALT) It is not just visual flight rule (VFR) flights that are affected. In general aviation, the approach and landing accident rate for single-pilot instrument flight rule (IFR) flights have been found to be 8 times higher at night than in the day, and night IFR accidents 2.5 times higher than accidents in day VFR flights.ii Flying VFR at night can be expected to have a similar or possibly even higher accident risk than IFR flights at night. Aldo

MDX is total pilot error, should never have left the Gold Coast with the reported vacuum pump issues that he apparently had (AH wasn't working correctly prior to landing at the GC). Additional to that (if I remember correctly and I may be wrong) Williamtown wouldn't issue a clearance because Sydney wasn't VMC and wouldn't accept an onwards clearance. MDX had plenty of options to land and wait out the weather the pilot elected to continue with the flight and 5 people died. Classic case of passenger pressure to get us home.

Absolutely correct and the other part is who is going to pay for all of the increased radar and services, the same people who complain about the cost of RAA and also the rest of us. Dick is all about Dick and no-one else

Nev, I totally understand that I think you need to re read my original post I said planning was the most important part of night flying and that includes whether it is a moonlit or a moonless night all these things have to be taken into consideration. Nev, I purposefully made sure I didn't say that you used auto pilot all of the time, but I did say that all of my flying, day, night & IFR was all hand flown. I'm not saying that all of your flying was on auto pilot but I understand the difficulties of flying a jet at FL 330 without an auto pilot. Nev, I'm not sure where you get this thought from, I'm GA (but have an RAA certificate as I own a Jab also). I have a PPL, night rating and a SECIR I'm not here to argue with you I respect the experience you have but if someone wants to build night hours I don't think you should come down on them like a ton of bricks and tell them they shouldn't do it. I fly single engine IFR and night I understand the risks and I'm prepared to accept the risks and I'm not wrong by accepting those risks but I ensure my planning is the best it can be. Aldo

Suit yourself mate I really don't care, I'm pretty happy with who I am and what I've done, I'm not invisible my phone number and actual name has been posted here many times, pretty sure it was you that said my post was dribble, feel free to give me a call 0429 674 790 Regards Allan Bougoure

No Nev it's not, in fact it can actually be easier than bouncing around below 10,000 feet on a 40 deg day trying to write and read maps. I also quantified above that I believe NVFR is to extend daylight not to charging off at 8.00pm on Of course you will need a torch or as I do I wear a head band with lighting attached (red and two levels of intensity white) as well as 2 shock proof torches. Pretty sure I covered that one above Nev You have way more hours and experience than I have (I only have 2000+ total time) but all of my hours have been hand flown, I have never had the luxury of an auto pilot, I only have a PPL (but that is all I need for business, I never wanted to be a passenger jock), I also have a Command Instrument Rating and most of my flying has been in singles (generally because it comes out of my pocket and not someone else's). I know you have walked the walk but just because some of us are not flying around in shiny 727's doesn't mean we don't know what we are doing or that we don't understand the risks. I think I have a reasonable level of experience to comment. I actually think we understand the risks better than the passenger jocks because all our flying is below 10,000 feet where most of the crap weather is, we don't have weather radar so any time you are in cloud you are not comfortable, on top of that in this space is where all the other traffic is, so that compounds the issues, we are generally in class G so it doesn't matter whether I file IFR or just go no details VFR I have to be able to find all the conflicting traffic as well. Marginal VFR conditions are the worst with the scud running VFR pilots you have no idea where they may pop up. Nev, If you don't have a pretty good idea what the wind is doing with all of the fancy toys we have in the cockpit today you probably shouldn't be flying. Night flying with the correct approach is not an issue, night flying without understanding the possible risks can be deadly. I'm not even going to bother with Ben87's dribble, the 87 is probably the year in which he was born, still wet behind the ears, I have children that old. Aldo

Happy Close to 3% but a lot of countries do not allow private flying you would need to do some extra digging to really see how we rate on a world scale, I would think we would be pretty good in relation to most others.

Wow I don't believe some of the comments around NVFR (used to be Class IV), the guy/girl (totalreaction) simply asked a question and now NVFR is just slightly worse than going to war. TR obviously needs to build hours for some reason it may just be for a commercial or an instrument rating (you still need 10 hrs at night for a CIR) and for some jobs you need a minimum number of night hours. Now NFFR in my opinion for most private pilots should be utilised as an extension of daylight so you can get back to base, not to go charging off at 2000 hrs on a 4 hour flight. If you are going to go flying at night make sure it is on a full moon that way if the noise up front stops (and that is very unlikely and if it does it will get your heart rate going) you have the best chance of being able to pick a reasonable place to put down (it's still not going to be pretty but maybe survivable). Night flying is no more difficult than day flying you just need to be current, competent and ensure your planning ability is second to none (this is the part that will bring you undone) Aldo

If you can afford 1000 then put in 1000 we could only manage 960 but we can get most things in and out fully loaded.

It’s all about procedure if you follow the procedure you will not f it up. Downwind checks Breaks Undercarriage- down 3 greens Mixture - Full rich Pitch - full fine or top of green Fuel on and sufficient Hatches & Harnesses - secure Final Undercarriage - verify 3 green Runway clear/clear to land Pitch - full fine Follow the above and you will never land with the wheels up (baring landing gear failure) Aldo

Good on them, I hope they enjoy the privilege. Aldo

Here are a couple of references that state that GNSS (GPS) should only be used as a supplementary tool for VFR flight. However there appears to be no mandatory qualifications for VFR flight by day using GNSS. http://www.airservicesaustralia.com/wp-content/uploads/Safety_Net_Using_GPS_as_a_VFR_navigation_tool.pdf (not sure if this is still relevant) CAAP 179A 5.1 Visual Navigation Pilots operating under the VFR may use GPS to supplement map reading and other visual navigation techniques. It must be stressed that this is not an approval to replace visual navigation techniques with GNSS. “Blind” faith in GPS is often blamed for a sharp rise in the number of violations of controlled and restricted airspace by VFR aircraft. Pilots should also be aware of the human factors and technical standards issues associated with different types of receivers and installations, as described earlier in this CAAP. Pilot Qualifications There are no mandatory qualifications required to use GPS by day under the VFR. However, pilots are strongly encouraged to become familiar with their equipment before flight and keep appropriate operating instructions within easy reach. Aldo