Pearo

I had a full size iPad, requested a mini for Christmas. The full size iPad is too big I reckon. The mini on the knee is a perfect size.

True, there is a lot of high rise development on the Gold Coast, and we need those riggers!

Well clearly NZ have failed to date!!

Nice pics JG. I passed over there this morning on the way home from Warwick. Never seen the airspace so quiet, only traffic I heard was a few commercial flights on BNE centre. The plane I was flying has Traffic Information Service, and not so much as a peep out of it today either.

I was trained to always submit a flight plan and sartime , so thats what I will continue to do. About the only time I dont is short hops from Redcliffe to do scenics around Moreton or Glasshouse etc. WRT to my flight to YWOL, I plan to stop at Coffs Harbour on the way, I am pretty happy with that leg. Its after Coffs that is all new territory to me. So I guess the main question is, how to request flight following. Is it a simple as "Brisbane Centre, Alpha Bravo Charlie Cessna 182 Request Flight Following"? There is some mention of it in that brief as posted above, but it really does not cover much of the formal stuff. I will take a look at the AIP later and see if that mentions much on the topic. Also, say I request flight following out of Coffs Harbour on 122.6 will I get passed onto the controller on 120.55 (At South West Rocks) or do you have to re-request flight following again on the new frequency? Where does your area start Ian? I might do a day trip to Coffs Harbour next month and try out the service. I wouldn't mind contacting whoever will be handling it first though (or centre, not sure how that would work either), just so I can touch base first and let them know I am a flight following virgin!

Overwater greater than 25nm, and I wasn't aware of any NVFR restrictions either, but that would be a show stopper for me also. The interest in RAAus stems from the affordability of aircraft moreso than anything. Done the CSU, not done retract yet. I am always interested in going flying. I weigh in at 100kg, so the aircraft might start turning right! Always keen for a flight.

Fair enough. Just looking at that legislation gives me enough incentive to avoid RAAus registered aircraft. I was thinking about heading down that path but it basically puts a stop to a large part of the flying I intend to do. Learn something new everyday.

Show the the legsialtion that shows the CAO's dont apply to RAAus aircraft

I am not familiar with RAAus rules, but I assume rules of the air are the same regardless.

Until I read this thread here http://www.recreationalflying.com/threads/raa-altitude-limitations.143984/page-4 where Nathan mention flight following, I had no idea this service existed in Australia, nor do I have any idea on how to use it. So I am planning a flight to YWOL from Brisbane next year. I intend to fly to Coffs Harbour, then to Woolongong. Given I am not overly familiar with Sydney Airspace, I think flight following would be hugely beneficial to me. I have so many questions to ask about it though, like if I cant get clearance through Williamstown and have to divert west or via the coastal VFR route how does that affect flight following, and is it possible to obtain flight following in this case? Seems such a good resource, perhaps underutilised or perhaps not promoted by Airservices due to ATC workload?

I do lots of overwater flights, so I am well versed on this subject. I also got smashed on this subject in my PPL pretest and my flight test because they all know I am a sailor and nautical fanatic who loves the coast and ocean!! For private flights, you need life jackets if not in gilding distance of land. If not in gliding distance of land, you need to carry lifejackets. The lifejackets must be worn if flying below 2000ft. PAX must be briefed on operation and use of lifejackets. The part about gliding distance is in CAR 258 The part about carrying life jackets if not in gliding distance of land is in CAO 20.11 5.1.1(a) The part about when to wear is CAO 20.11 5.1.7 (I just found a mistake in the VFRG!! They say CAO 20.11 5.1.4) VFRG is your best resource. Every pilot should have a copy of this. Its my go to resource when needing to know legislation. As per the error in the VFRG above, always check the legislation! There is also further requirements for ELT and life rafts and reporting when venturing further out, but I think this would most likely only apply to those crossing Bass Straight.

Both use the cellular network to obtain position information, so they can only track live when you have cellular coverage. http://www.flightsafetyaustralia.com/2015/11/tablets-of-wisdom/

The iPad can only Receive from satellites, it cant transmit to them. So to transmit your location, it does so via cellular network. I posted an article about this recently, your iPad receives the GPS data, then sends it to OzRunways via the cellular network. I am sure that if you are out of range of network, then OzRunways would still cache you track for upload when it gets in range of a phone tower. SpotTracker actually sends data to a Satellite rather than a phone tower, so as long as it can see the sky (more or less) it can send your location... Why use it as opposed to OzRunways, flight plan and Sartime? Easy, to reassure family members.

More entertaining for those in the air intending to descend and join.

I use a spot tracker for motorcycling. It is satellite based and requires a subscription so it works where there is not phone reception. I do a lot of back country riding, so its piece of mind for both my wife and I. She can see I am still on the move and not dead, plus when I stop I hit the check in button so she knows I am stopped by choice. The bonus is I also have piece of mind because I can hit the help button and know that my wife can follow up for me. Bit like a Pan Pan style PLB! Here is a recent trip I did: https://spotwalla.com/tripViewer.php?id=f09f56138b9589779 as you can see I did not turn it on one day (Southern Cross to Cocklebiddy), my wife says its because I went via Kalgoorlie, which I did but only to chase an oil change for the bike!!

https://www.atsb.gov.au/publications/investigation_reports/2013/aair/ao-2013-148.aspx https://www.atsb.gov.au/publications/investigation_reports/2015/aair/ao-2015-130.aspx Interesting. I have had VH-BJE taxi onto the runway on 3 separate occasions whilst on late final forcing me to go around. I am not the only one either. I have also seen this aircraft perform aerobatic maneuvers on the dead side at low altitude.

https://www.casa.gov.au/sites/g/files/net351/f/_assets/main/download/caaps/ops/166-1.pdf This should be the only way.

I am going to fly an old bloke in there who has terminal cancer. The landing fees are stupid for GA, but this lad really wants to see the place and I would love to be the one to fly and old retired pilot in there for a look. So I am going to hire a smhick glass cockpit 182 in the new year and take him there for a look. I will happily suck up the stupid costs this time.

The fact that you say its is correct 99% of the time sums it up well. I have flown through big Amberley on several occasion where it was active and OzRunways shows it as inactive, even says in ERSA it can become active in short notice and to refer to ATIS.

Please do not do this otherwise you will end up with VCA notice from Airservices. Ozrunways almost never gets this right. Restricted airspace can often become active at short notice, neither NOTAMS or Ozrunways are reliable. Call Centre to check. If the RA has a ATIS that is available for civilian use then you can also find out from that. Last but not least, monitor the CTAF for the RA, as they will announce if the airspace is going to become active so you can obtain clearance BEFORE it becomes active.

Its an RA2, so you are not allowed to flight plan through it. As Aldo said, all you have to do is call centre and ask for the status.

Hi Geoff, here is a good school at Redcliffe to do your unusual attitude training with, they specialise in this subject. You could also get your tail wheel endorsement while you are at it. Will drop there card under your hangar door today. I plan to do some stuff with them next year.

Just spotted this article from CASA http://www.flightsafetyaustralia.com/2015/11/tablets-of-wisdom/ I would like to say that I think what both OzRunways and AvPlan are doing is great. Anything that can improve safety is great. But often there is the side effect that is complacency. In my brain I thought that once I did the PPL test, my days of paper charts and written flight plans were going to be over. Being a sailor, I have an inherent distrust of electronic instruments for navigation use, the main reason being salt water and electronics are not good friends. I have never set to sea without paper charts and some plan to DR if I needed (although I doubt I would be able to use a sextant these days). So as with flying, my caution was inevitably going to prevail, wisely so. Whilst being an RPL holder, I did a lot of flying. I started using the iPad early on as a tool so when I got my PPL I would be familiar. The first thing I discovered is that when I needed to get a frequency for the Brisbane ATIS, the iPad had no phone reception at Cape Moreton and I had not downloaded the relevant ersa page or DAP chart. Thankfully I had a hardcopy of the ERSA in the back in my flight bag. Post PPL test, I decided to try and use the iPad exclusively for my second flight under my knew privileges. The OzRunways locked up and I had no idea how to kill the app. I had paper charts and a written flight plan and ended up using them. Now, this problem is not exclusive to the iPad either. On my PPL test after completing everything, the only thing to do was fly home. I was given the option to use a radio nav aid or the GPS to get me home. I chose the GPS, The G1000 has a moving map, its pretty neat. But that moving map has no CTA altitude steps, only has the lines where the steps are. Guess what, I had to revert back to paper charts again. Maybe I should have opted for the VOR and paper map in the first place!! I love technology (its what I do for a living) and I so badly want this stuff to work for me! Maybe its just not meant for some of us!

IF you are departing/arriving into class G you still will need to make the appropriate calls regardless of the rules of your flight, and if you are concerned about a conflict you should make a call on the local frequency. On the odd occasion where I am not on a local frequency, its usually heading onto class C or D so I have centre on one com and tower/approach on the other com. In this case, I ALWAYS make a call on the CTAF/local broadcasting my current position and altitude stating that I am changing to the approach frequency. On the centre frequency, The controllers know where you are, so no real need to give a call. You will hear it all the time from Centre, ie "unidentified VFR traffic n miles to the SE at 6500, intentions unknown", and the other aircraft will usually respond with "copy traffic" or something similar. However, if you want to let centre know, just call them up and say "Brisbane Centre, tecnam 1234 is currently at dunwich 1500 tracking direct to jacobs well" . I personally would not bother unless conditions were marginal. There is one massive bonus you get from monitoring centre frequency, is that they will often broadcast potential conflicts. There is a bit of conjecture about what frequency you should monitor (ie local or centre), and casa just published some guidelines on this. I cant find them at the moment but I will try track it down the next couple of days. My personal opinion is that if you only have one com, monitor ctaf below 5000, and centre above 5000. I wouldn't make that a hard rule, but its basically outlines where my attention is focussed when flying with 2 coms.

WRT to altitude and requirements, its all in the AIP document I provided earlier. To the people argung vis, rules are nothing to do with RAAus, its all listed in AIP ENR 1.2. other details regarding VMC can be found in the relevant CAR's as well as the AIP. I doubt many people can remember this stuff ( I cant), so go buy yourself a VFRG, its got everything you need. And, its possible for an aircraft to file and IFR flight in perfect VMC. This is why the rules exist about 5000ft. Hemispherical rules apply above 5000ft (refere AIP ENR 1.7)