ayavner

Sunday was a great day for flying, despite the shroud of smoke covering the Blue Mountains almost in their entirety. This was my first trip outside of my familiar area covering Bankstown - Camden - Wollongong. Original plan was to head to Katoomba - Oberon - Bathurst, but we had to change that once we got up in the air and saw that the smoke obscured the whole area! The weather report did mention smoke, but I had expected a few plumes here and there - but at least i halfway expected it so wasn't too suprised it was there. This gave an opportunity to do an unplanned diversion - we picked a prominent spot a bit to the south, Trial Hill and headed towards that and did a nice spiral climb to 7500' where we could see clearly over everything, and put down a positive fix and new time on my map. As luck would have it, from that point, i was able to parallel my original planned track and ended up in Oberon and Bathurst only about 5 minutes after original plan... well its not luck really... good preparation and CLEAROFFs really work! Landed in Bathurst after overflying and seeing the wind direction actually favoured the dirt cross strip. That was my first landing on a dirt strip, and it went really well! I expected it to be more difficult or something. A nice gentleman in the Bathurst Aero Club allowed us to use the facilities and use the space to have a stretch and talk about the plan back. This time, the plan was to forget the plan as we were going to get lost! by then the wind changed a bit, now favouring the sealed runway 17 so we backtracked and departed to the south. Once at height, Brett took away my maps and covered all of my gauges and compass and picked a heading of 150M and told me to just fly for 10-15 minutes. After that time, he gave me back my maps and instruments and said "OK get us unlost". So knowing where my last positive fix was, and my heading, as well as a quick calculation of ground speed I was able to find a probable area which I circled on the map - then things started popping into view - powerlines here, a river there, and before long a postive fix over Teralga. He then attempted to get me completely lost, but using the same principle, I was able to DR on some power lines and substations and eventually headed towards a couple of towns and prominent reservoirs which put me between Bowral and Moss Vale. Since the original plan was to have gone Bathurst - Oberon - Camden - Bankstown, I simply followed the rail line from Bowral to Picton to Camden, then back home! This was one of the best lessons ever, it is always encouraging when you get to take the theory and put it into practice and see that it really works. Does wonders for the confidence as well. Can't wait to go up and try it again and again... Next lesson is diversions, though we had a nice unplanned preview this time due to the smoke, and low-level navs. I'll post blog link when I get it posted, thanks for reading!

Anyone hear anything about this? A coworker mentioned it to me today, but I hadn't heard anything about it this past weekend...

that was a great show.

Timbgy, do you have a pic of what it looked like when you had her? Be cool to see!

This breaks my heart :-( I, too, started down this road a little over 2 years ago as a result of a mate taking me up for a fly. I was hooked forever and can't wait to pay it forward! But, this does give me pause for thought.. and Steve, please keep us posted if you can, and I wish you all the best.

You'd also have to consider moisture evaporating up from the ground...

make sure you download the free trial version only via the App store (itunes). When your trial is over, go to ozrunways site directly using your username and purchase it there - it will save you about $25 bux, and you won't have to download anything again, it will just resume function next time it connects after you've paid for it. not sure about the basecamp thing, no doubt someone will chime in

there's a note in this month's Sport's Pilot explaining why the accident reports have been missing and a graphic that says "bring them back?". So I plan to write them and cast my vote to bring those back. The reason they gave was that it had been one person manually compiling those on his own time, and that person was no longer there.

cheaper to rent across the board.

Looks like a good one to take my 4 yo nephew to! Though his mum's a bit leery since I taught him armpit farts...

box = ticked

Well about that, just make sure you are with a school that can do both - as long as they train to the day VFR GA syllabus, then all your hours should count. My school has an arrangement with a local GA school so when we're done they ship us there and we do the bits we didn't get to do in RAA, like instruments or whatever, something like 15 hours to convert.

hey a pass is a pass, nice work! Not sure whether anyone cares about the score, I am sure others will chime in, but I am sure they'd be more concerned whether you know the material you missed rather than what the mark was. Congrats!

I used to love watching them at the airshows when I was stationed over in Mildenhall, UK. Bloody loud!!

Just got my August one today, yippee!

Agree with the above, however you may want to double your estimates around money as those are just minimums. I am probably $8000 into it, and still have the PAX and NAV yet to do for my RAAus ticket. Then sure, another minimum 15 hours or so to convert to PPL. But, that's the way I've chosen to do it, who knows it it will really work out cheaper in the end; I suspect it will be a negligible difference when its all said and done.

human factors for the win!

My best tip that has served me well with every test I've taken, if you're allowed to have a scratch paper - when you first start the test, just do a quick brain dump of everything you can recall without thinking too hard. Then as you read the questions (READ!) if there is a fact contained in the question that may or may not be relevant to that question, note that down as well in case it comes in handy later in the test. Good luck!

The say youth is wasted on the young... those same kids, when they get my age (or above) would be grateful for that money to help keep the dream alive!

No, but they are surely more likely to be able to get their hands on a decent proportion of that either through a lifetime of savings and good credit habits, or nothing else to spend it on or a combination of the two.

congrats buddy you finally got to do the victor 1! Did you do a write up on the experience? How was the traffic and radio calls etc?

True, but on the upside I am not fazed by higher traffic in the area or unusual requests from the tower so there's a bit of a trade-off I guess.

Great stuff Ivan - did you start a thread on it? I'd like to hear how that went!

Well... my thought on that is if I go for the navs first, that is at least a minimum of 10 more hours with an instructor wherein my skills can only get sharper. I am sure there is no right or wrong order, but for me that was my line of thinking. And, we might take some breaks and do an hour here or there of solo at this or that airfield and add em up that way. More than likely though, I'll go somewhere else to get that - just too hard to try and arrange out of Bankstown when Wollongong or even Jaspers Brush are relatively close and much less hassle. I joked with my CFI that so far a reasonable % of my total time includes taxiing and holding! :)

Yes, you can sit exams before flying, though as Volksy said the material makes much more sense when you've done it a few times - otherwise it's mostly a collection of abstract factoids. Maybe start with a theory book on Basic Aeronautical Knowledge (BAK) since you will need to take a test on it anyway. If you start before you fly, then when you are flying some things you read about will click. I also found that when I went back and read, I picked up more from the material. So in a way its a 2-way street, each side drawing from and reinforcing the other. So I'd say do both before and after, to get a good understanding and reinforcement. My .02c