HeadInTheClouds

Supposedly visibility was >10km, but with seeing those aircraft literally just pop out of the haze I think depending on which way you looked it was closer to 1km!

So today I finally got onto the long awaited circuits. It was a bit windy today, between 15-18 knots but fortunately it was more or less straight down the runway. Didn't start out too bad, taxied out to the runway and I did a relatively passable takeoff considering I hadn't flown in a while. After the first circuit was when it got interesting, I couldn't mentally cope with how much had to be done as well, between the checks, radio calls and looking out for other aircraft, my instructor ended up doing all the radio today. On the first circuit we followed a warrior right in with not much dramas. On the second though we had to extend upwind for a while and look for an aircraft which had been told to go around behind us, turned crosswind to find 2! RPT's lined up on the runway, with the Dash 8 first and a 737 right behind it. While we were on downwind both of them took off. We also had 2 warriors in the pattern ahead of us, and so all the time we were trying to spot them until they finally popped out of all the haze hanging over the ocean. Circuit 3 was much the same, this time we had to extend downwind until we could see the aformentioned 2 warriors through the haze, on final there was one of them just in the flare, another just coming down towards the threshold and then us behind them, and another warrior behind us. Came in for what I considered to be a good landing as it was one of my first with zero assistance, and the tower had to send the warrior behind us around because we weren't off the runway in time. Anyway a busy day indeed, hopefully this will be improved on next time. Think I might go for an early morning session next!

Haven't flown since early October Attempted to go up on Friday morning early to start circuits but winds gusting to 20 knots weren't really ideal for my first go at circuits. Planning to go flying Tuesday afternoon but the forecasted winds of 30 knots may have other plans. Damned weather! On a similar note we had a lightning storm hanging off the coast last night that looked nothing short of apocalyptic, seriously it would have been lucky to have been a half second gap between bolts shooting across the sky for hours. A spectacular sight indeed.... but these daily storms don't help my flying!

That makes me feel better about my landings :)

Nice video! Were you at 500' the whole way along the coast? Wollongong area actually looks like a nice place to fly, all I know it for is the pollution whenever I am down there seeing family.

Better electric motors would also make self-launching gliders much more viable. Have been looking into how much it costs to fly gliders recently and they seem to work out pretty darned cheap from a winch launch, however some places I have looked at that use self-launching gliders or motor gliders seem to charge close to or more than the cost of renting out an average RAA craft for an hour.... I'm sure an electric PPG motor would be popular as well, also something which I want to get into one day. I can imagine that having an electric motor strapped to your back would be far less noisy than a 2 stroke! Probably more reliable to turn off and on as well

Electric motors aren't perfectly efficient though, but there is the potential to have superconductors used to transmit electricity in the engine meaning zero heat loss, however at the moment this would involve carrying around a tank of liquid nitrogen.... But the potential is there. Hopefully one day a decent electric motor will be made that can be built to suit the purpose of conversions, for example there might be some made to substitute the 2-stroke engine in a Drifter or the like, or one that can be swapped straight into a Jab as a replacement engine. Can't wait for the day when it will cost less than $10 to power a light aircraft for an hour... Solar is another story, future developments could mean that batteries could be charged enroute to extend range... The future looks promising

The only thing really holding back electric anything is batteries, their life, weight and speed to charge/reliability is the issue. In the future if someone were to invent a battery system which was lightweight, reliable in that monitoring the level of charge was accurate, and easy to be charged, in say an hour or two I think a lot more of everything would run on battery. Reminds me of an ad I saw once:

Hopefully when it comes time for me to buy my own aircraft electric power is starting to be the normal thing, it really is the future. Shame about battery technology currently though. Wonder if a nuclear powered aircraft engine could ever work, I'm sure there would be people who would love not having to refuel for 1000 or so years

Those wings can take a lot of g's!!

They must glide a hell of a long way. I bet that any glider pilots converting into powered would find powered aircraft to have the gliding ability of a large rock... Must try this sometime I think.... Looks like a lot of fun!

Hey, Thought I might post up some things which I have always wondered about gliders and how they work, but which I've never been able to find solid answers for. After Tomo's recent thread and a bit of youtube I've decided it is something I want to learn one day, might wait till I get my RAA cert though. The first thing I'm curious as to know is how on Earth do glider pilots judge how far they can glide? Like in a powered aircraft say you were on approach and were going to undershoot the runway, you just add some power to pull you into the threshold. What happens if this occurs in a glider? I've also seen videos of gliders doing low passes or just flying low in general, how on Earth does this work? Is it just a case of simple physics where you would be carrying a lot of speed flying low then convert that speed back to height when you need a bit of altitude? I've also seen videos of winch launches on youtube, how can so much height be attained from a cable of finite length? Are gliders usually able to do aerobatics too? This is also something that pops up often on youtube... Anyone in the know who could be bothered to even respond to one of my curiosities would be appreciated

I see... Now I get it

Not a fan of paragliding?? haha

Paragliding is on my to do list, does that count? Wouldn't mind having a go in a glider one day too.

Jabirus probably have lower running costs too at a guess?

Probably should have chosen a better word than yanking! Trying to get across the fact of how hard it is to stall a foxbat, you can pull it to idle and slowly let the speed drop off and pretty much fly it on the point of stall for as long as you want, but to actually enter one you have to keep coming back on the yoke a fair bit from that point of stall, otherwise it's just buffet and not much else. Was trying to imply how going that slow and keeping on pulling back just goes against absolutely everything I'm thinking of in my mind!

Apparently the first flight back into the air was an A380 to Melbourne.... allegedly with no passengers on board. Now that is logic...... http://www.smh.com.au/travel/live-coverage-qantas-ordered-back-in-the-air-20111031-1mqtm.html

What I still find to be one of the most hypocritical, arrogant, self-centred and greedy things about Joyce is that there has been talk of cutting 1000 jobs at Qantas to save money, but he is still happy to have a 71% pay rise.

Wish I didnt have exams so I could have drove up to Grafton for a look... How long is it flying from Grafton to Coffs? Wouldn't be more than 20 minutes would it?

Wasn't a decision supposed to be reached by now?

Looking forward to that video Carl!

I wonder if Qantas does fall apart will Eastern Australia aka QantasLink (In NSW anyway) start running things by themselves? Or would they not have the facility to?

If I was a charter operator right now I'd be out waving signs at crowds of people offering flights with the guarantee of no grounding

It's looking that way, Virgin must be laughing all the way to the bank right about now... And if it continues so will charter operators all over the place.