nickduncs84

Useful for ifr procedure practice but not much else. The flying of the plane isn't very realistic but the procedures and equipment are. I use a pretty powerful pc with 4 monitors. Main view on 3 and instruments / gps on the 4th. In hindsight don't worry too much about the main view unless you're doing it for fun. 1 screen for the main view and 1 for the panel would be fine. There are a few options for software. Microsoft flight simulator fsx, p3d or xplane are the main ones. I am using p3d as I couldn't get fsx to work properly with windows 8

Went to Goulburn recently. Good airport. Friendly people including jump school. No issues from what I could tell.

Good piece of publicity http://kitplanes2.com/blog/2015/07/new-camit-distributor/

Good episode. Well worth the listen.

Seriously mate don't stress about the CTA stuff. Certainly don't go wasting 25% of every training hour on something that will take you a few trips in and out to figure out. It will take you 3 or 4 trips in and out to get comfortable enough to do it yourself. A few more times practicing yourself and you'll be fine to go pretty much anywhere. The visual pilots guide combined with a good gps make it pretty straight forward.

Why wouldn't the 6 hours count towards your RPL? Hours are hours. They can count towards your RPL, PPL or CPL as far as I'm aware. Just tell them you've done 6 hours towards your RPL, what's the difference? I've currently got an RPL and have done about 100 hours since getting it. I also have a cross country endo, retract/csu endo and CTA endo. This is essentially the same amount of training that it would take to get a PPL, except I didn't have to sit the theory exam. To convert my current RPL to a PPL would mean passing the exam and passing a flight test, there would be no extra training hours required. The only reason to get your PPL if you have an RPL is if you want to fly IFR or NVFR or want to fly a heavier plane. So if you are starting out in the GA world, you should just do the PPL, it's essentially the same thing and it will make it easier when you do decide to do your night / instrument rating. If you're looking at saving some coin, I'd get my Ra Aus certificate first and enjoy flying around for $150 an hour for as long as possible. Then when you want to move on to bigger planes, controlled airspace etc, you can convert to a CASA license then. Once you have the RPL, you could probably get checked out in something like a 172 in a few hours and then maybe 3 o4 4 more for the CTA endo.

yes i meant rocket surgery. i was trying to be funny. but i digest. back to topic.

geeez you know it's not always a bad thing to have to learn something new. it's not like any of this stuff is rocket surgery. there are many things you can do to make the UTC thing easier, even here in the halfa state! 1) Buy a cheap watch that you use for flying that's set to UTC 2) Buy a more expensive watch with 2 time zones 3) Install a clock with UTC in your panel 4) Use OzRunways to submit flight plans. When you file a flight plan, you can click 'now' which changes it to current UTC and then set the time based on that. So if you're filing an hour before departure, set the time as now, change the hour forward one and submit. Simple. 5) Use ozrunways for your weather briefing. The TAFG feature shows the conditions in a graphical way with both local and zulu time on the bottom axis. After you look at that for your departure and arrival airport, you should know the zulu start and end time of your flight without having to do any conversions which will help when looking at the area forecast...

That's the sportsman that they use the 390 in. 320 is the norm on the 2 seat version glastar I believe. There are other options from superior and a diesel option is you have a spare 50k. Re STOL I agree for the most part but in SA we have a number of places that are quite short distances by air but a real pain to get to by car. Kangaroo island for example is about 75nm from my back door but it's a 5 hour ordeal by car and ferry. The Yorke peninsula and port Lincoln are also fairly close by air. I've found that it's as much about finding an excuse to fly as it is finding a plane for the mission! The other thing about Adelaide is that even at 160 knots in the mooney, it's still a long way from everywhere! So long term I reckon that taking off from my backyard 20 minutes out of Adelaide and landing on Kangaroo Island an hour later is as close to living the dream as I'm ever likely to get!

Yes really nice aircraft. But you'll be in it for close to 200k by the time you're done. Also the preferred engine is a io-390 I believe which can't run mogas. You'd have to look at a lower compression superior which would mean a accepting less power. Still it's a very impressive plane. I'd say wait as long as you can. I'm 3 years in and my 'ideal' plane has changed multiple times from a jabiru to a 4 place tourer to a STOL tail wheel. Just fly as many different planes as you can and be realistic about your main 'mission'.

I'm a bit of a tech nerd ie I often get stuff I don't really need just to try it out. As such, I have switched between OzR and AvPlan for the past 2 years. To be honest with you, I always end up back with OzR. I just find it easier to use in general and I find the weather planning a lot more useful in OzR than AvPlan. I'll probably keep subscribing to AvPlan and re evaluate every now and again, especially when I do my instrument rating, but for now I think OzR is a better platform. I have also found that AvPlan has been buggier than OzR has been. The last time I tried to use it I gave up because whenever I left the app and tried to get back into it, it would crash. I guess the biggest thing for me is that with OzR I have never needed to look at the instructions. For people who are familiar with technology, they will be able to work out 95% of the features just by playing with it a few times...

Have you seen the weather feature in the flight planning screen in Oz runways? It's far more useful than a plain weather area forecast. It basically shows the various aspects of the area forecast overlayed on your flight path. There really isn't much decoding needed after that.

There are two tabs in OzR. The unmodified version still exists. The TAF Graph in OzR is another manipulation of the same data that is far more useful than the plain english thing. I'd hate to see that disappear because of some pesky lawyers.

It's a good learning tool, but I hope people don't see it as an excuse not to learn. There are a number of good reasons to know how to read standard format aviation reports/forecasts. The main one from a practical sense is that once you do know how to read them, you can pick up a lot of information from a quick scan of a report. Saves time when planning but also is useful in the air. With the new iwatch for example, you can have an entire metar or taf on your wrist and pick up the key points in a couple of seconds from the one screen....all of that being said, as a learning tool it's great. If you see something in a report that you don't understand, it's good to be able to change tabs and have it right there. I doubt the international format will be changed anytime soon. Reading weather reports is a pretty basic skill it isn't an unreasonable expectation to think that a pilot of any class should be able to learn it.

Well, seeing as this topic is about Dick Smith, I'll throw in my 2 cents to get back on topic. IMHO, how anyone who loves aviation can be opposed to Dick Smith is beyond me. Threads like this only reiterate why we have a problem in the first place. All this moaning and nitpicking amongst those that should be able to band together to fight the real issues that impact on all of general / recreational aviation. Rotax vs Jabiru, RA Aus vs GA, Dick Smith having an opinion on something related to aviation that you don't agree with. I'm not saying that we shouldn't be free to discuss it, because after all, it's our passion for aviation that makes us passionate about aviation related topics, but when push comes to shove, we would all be better off if we learned to get along a little more often on the things that really matter. Dick Smith is an aviation enthusiast. To put it bluntly, if he was the Prime Minister, general and recreational aviation in Australia would be better for it. What some people don't seem to understand is that for the vast majority, recreational and general aviation doesn't matter. Governments do have the ability to totally kill (and I mean totally kill, not just almost kill as it now stands) all forms of affordable recreational aviation just like they have the ability to upset any small subset of the population without consequence. At the end of the day, love him or hate him, I would like to think that if you ever get the chance to vote for him, you don't let the small stuff get in the way of what should really matter.

Yes that's what I meant sorry

Yes a great little app. Syncs with apple watch as well to give you a depiction of runways relative to where you are as well as ad frequencies. If the aerodrome has a metar available it will also display a windsock on the runway diagram which is pretty cool.

Well not the kind of HUD you're talking about. That's just what they call the feature. I'm referring to the boxes at the top of the map screen. You can hold down on them to change them.

I use photoshop but that aint free. there are lots of free options though. most people don't realise how useful the built in app Preview is....it can definitely take care of resizing and cropping. look under the tools menu. to crop make your selection then tools->crop. skitch is another very useful tool on the mac. now linked to evernote. good for capturing screenshots, making notes and sending on.

I use both iPad and RWY on my HTC phone. As an OZR user you probably know most of this, but for the benefit of others who might not have used it on an ipad.... 1) RWY is by no means as feature packed as the iPad version. The weather tool on the iPad is especially useful on XC flights. It basically pulls all the weather info and gives you a graphical depiction of the various elements superimposed on your flight route. It really allows you to get a good idea of where the weather is and where it is going in relation to your flight path. Another great weather feature is the TAFG or TAF graph which plots all relevant information from the TAF at an aerodrome. Really useful. There are other useful things that the iPad does in flight that the RWY doesn't. many of the HUD options including current / next area frequencies, closest local QNH, etc aren't on the iPad. 2) RWY does a lot of things well which makes it a viable backup. I'm not sure if its legal as a backup due to screen size?? so I always have the paper in the back seat, but realistically, RWY is my backup and I have had to use it. I was on my way to a class D airport and my iPad completely died (screen was faulty). I was able to pull up the charts, frequencies, etc from my phone very easily as well as navigate to the approach point. So I guess it really depends on what you are planning on using it for, but for me, the weather feature on the iPad alone is enough to justify spending the extra dollars on an iPad vs Android tablet.

I'm sure it's somewhere, but from a practical perspective any time you're with ATC, which for IFR aircraft is always, you're on whatever QNH they tell you.

Thanks Patrick this is all very helpful. The aircraft is maintained IFR and has just had an annual. It's also used for IFR flights regularly and spends a lot of time in the Adelaide control zone and other then my two encounters, there haven't been any other issues.... That we know of. Either way probably prudent to get it checked.

I get it, that makes a lot more sense. The transponder is the original 1979 so no altitude readout. It's starting to sound like there is a problem with it. I might give Adelaide a call next time I'm up and they aren't busy to see if I can do a comparison. Thanks for your help!

That's interesting. Are you saying that ATC don't have equipment to adjust what is being transmitted at 1013 to local QNH so that what they are looking at on their screen is correct?? Certainly would explain it yesterday at QNH 1027. That's a 420 ft difference, which explains why he said he saw me up around 5,000. Makes sense, but doesn't make sense at the same time!

Here's one for the ATC guys, or at least people that know the ins and outs of how it all works. Twice in the past month I've had an ATC at Adelaide Centre call me up saying that I was at the wrong height. The first time, I was tracking coastal along the Adelaide coast within the control zone. The required altitude is at or below 500. Obviously not much room for error, so you're pretty much watching the altimeter the whole time. When he called, he said he had me at 700 feet. on Adelaide QNH I was looking at the altimeter, verified the QNH and the altimeter was reading about 490 feet. So I really had no idea what to say other than. "Confirm QNH currently showing 490 ft". He then came back and said that I was 'just within tolerances' but to carry on. At the time, I didn't think much of it. I know what I was seeing on the altimeter so thought he might of made a mistake and didn't want to elaborate more hence the 'just within tolerances' comment. Then yesterday, I was under the 4,500 step heading east away from the zone. There was a few clouds about so I was up and down a little, but made sure I was on Adelaide QNH and never went above 4,500. Adelaide Centre called me up and after we established communications he made a comment to the effect of 'I have you on SSR varying between 4,000 and 5,000 please confirm ops normal and that you will stay outside class charlie at 4,500.' Note that in both circumstances it was the same controller. So now it's got me thinking. I know that the altimeter is correct for a number of reasons, one of which is that it matches up with the GPS altitude on the Garmin with the QNH set on the GPS. I'm also assuming that the equipment at Adelaide is operating normally. So what is most likely: 1) There is a problem with the altitude reporting from the transponder? 2) The controller is just letting me know that he sees me. Might explain the second one, but not the first one?? And finally, what are you supposed to say when you get a comment from ATC like this and you're looking at information in the cockpit that doesn't match what they are saying?