Love to fly

Okay, probably a bit (lot)verbose. But typed up for a friend after we got home last year. We carry life jackets as fly over Bass Strait a couple of times a year. Used them Aldinga to Port Pirie, and for a fairly brief low level flight along the Bunda Cliffs. As before we use a Zoleo. Love it! Lets me message a couple of reliable friends with my flight plan, fuel, pax, ETA's etc. They can track me. I can send alerts, or actual messages. I used to use a SPOT tracker but upgraded to the Zoleo awhile back as it lets me send/receive more info. ie. I've broken a nose wheel (never happened), rather than pressing an emergency button and not being able to say what the emergency is. 8/2/2024 Departed and refuelled Warracknabeal. Need to ring day prior. Easy as. Warracknabeal – Aldinga. Had arranged hangarage $15 per night. Cafe at airport is good, but not open all day. Stayed with friends for a few nights Aldinga to Tumby Bay. Stayed with friends 2 nights. Had planned 1 but wx at Ceduna meant we stayed over. Drove around Port Lincoln & Coffin Bay. Oysters in vending machines! Tumby Bay to Ceduna. 2 nights because we wanted to do the Smoky Bay Oyster Farm Tour. Hire car pre-arranged to pick up cat at Ceduna. Local has tie downs & a phone call meant we could use these rather than put stakes in in the heat. Much appreciated. Oyster Farm Tour was awesome. Ceduna to Nullarbor – refuel and lunch. Then onto Caiguna for the night. Rang both first to check runways okay and fuel available. Caiguna to Myrup. Met friends and got lift into town. Really hard to find accommodation. Friends dropped us back at plane the next morning. Flew to Esperance & refuelled. Then onto Albany. Had planned to spend a couple of days at Albany but weather was in 42 degrees there, and 49 degrees at Jurien Bay where we were heading. Hung about sight seeing for 5 nights till the temperature was in the high 30s at Albany and around 43 at Jurien Bay. Departed IFR due low cloud for a refuel at Northam, then on to Jurien Bay VFR. Had pre-arranged fuel & hangarage at Jurien Bay. Hangar really appreciated as it was HOT. Sent a week with family. Pinnacles worth seeing and flying over. Then back via Northam to Albany where other friends were picking us up for a few days. Left plane tied down on the Apron. Stayed at Nornalup/Walpole. Absolutely beautiful area. Different to everywhere else we’d been this trip, more like being back in East Gippsland. The WoW boat tour is a must. Best of its kind we’ve been on. Informative and fun. https://wowwilderness.com.au/ecocruises/ Then tried online & on phone to get Esperance accommodation for the trip home. One BnB 18 kms out of town had a room for $800. That was it. Helfpul lady from the information centre said almost impossible, nil vacancy rate September through to May. Also told me taxi from Esperance to Airport would be over a $100 each way. Hmm. Flew to Esperance, refuelled and headed to Kalgoorlie. Great accommodation in modern hotel. Large clean room $110 and short cheap taxi ride to and from the airport. Had originally planned Esperance – Caiguna -Forrest. But it had started raining at Caiguna and we were advised we may get in, but unlikely to get out so …. Departed IFR next morning for Forrest. Low clouds for about 20 minutes then cleared. We’d prearranged accommodation ages ago. Definitely worth a night there. Flew on to Ceduna the next morning. Luckily we left early as front came through and Forrest was isolated for a couple of weeks with heavy rain. Arrived in Ceduna. Refuelled. Had to put stakes in the ground, and it was really hot out there. Marty gave us a lift to the Motel. Motel dropped us back the next morning. Flew Ceduna to Port Pirie. I’d decided tie down cables/points were essential in the heat and Port Pirie has them! Even better when I rang to check the ARO said he’d meet us there and we could put the plane in the hangar over night. He then dropped us off to a motel. Good place to visit! Next day flew Port Pirie to home, via refuelling at Swan Hill

We landed at Myrup on the way over, and were offered hangarage for the night. Many phone calls later we finally found accommodation for the night. Heading East a few weeks later couldn’t find any accommodation anywhere. Local information centre said September throughout May they generally had 100% occupancy. We refuelled at Esperance and headed to Kalgoorlie for the night. Caiguna was too wet to land and we wanted to see Forrest so headed there the next night.

We found commodation really expensive at Esperance on our way West. Totally unavailable on our way home so refuelled and went to Kalgoorlie for the night. Taxi into Esperance from the airport would have been over $100. I put together a list of where we stopped, highlights etc last year. I'll dig it up tomorrow.

Tocumwal to Jurien Bay last year, February - March. Knew it would be hot but had family reasons for going then. Mid/high 40’s is just too hot though. Aircraft performance, pilot performance, tyres all suffer. Most of the trip was high 30’s, low 40’s so not as bad. And important to realise that some of the roadhouse runways aren’t usable when they’ve had a lot of rain. Caiguna was out for our trip home. We use a ZOLEO and recommend it, or something similar. You can send/receive tests and emails via satellite when out of mobile range and your friends can track you in real time. I’m no expert, but happy to try and answer any questions you have.

My comments were just in relation to doing a comns check every flight. I don't for obvious reasons. But I do check that tx comes up when I give a taxi call.

Sure. But a lot if ALA's don't.

Genuine question. I routinely take off from airports where there is no one else flying, and you can't reach CTR till 4,500'. How do you suggest I do a comms check?

Thank you. Not sure what happened. Posted. Put phone down. Picked it up and duplicates. 🤷‍♀️ And there's another one now 🤦

Thanks for the correction. I was basing this on comments made elsewhere on the Web. I should kniw better 🤷‍♀️

Hmm what about an electrical failure. I’m told no manual fuel pump, just the electric one. Fuel pump is electric, No transponder, radio, fuel could be an issue methinks.

Just checked. VFR not PIFR or IFR. Do need TSO’d GNSS and need to be certified competent to use it.

Actually no.. You set the schedule. Generally more regularly than that methinks.,certainly when I've done them, heard others etc.

Isn't there something about GNSS certified and visual fix every 2 hours? Been awhile since I've looked so may be wrong.

Beacon, sure. You still need to be able to turn it on in time. Skeds are recommended not mandatory.

Think the issue would be one person business and he has been in the states for Oshkosh.

Interesting thread. We have ADSB in/out in our aircraft, not connected to the iPad . But I use AvPlan which also displays ADSB traffic including some FLARM (gliders). I assumed OzR did similar. Surprised to find it doesn’t. AvPlan also cleverly filters out duplicates, so if my phone, iPads (AvPlan & AvTraffic) and our transponder are transmitting the same info to AvPlan Live only the one aircraft shows on the iPad. I do also use AvTraffic as it picks up more of the gliders which is really relevant here where I’m based. But .. I do worry we’re getting more fixated on screens as opposed to looking out the window.

We flew Bairnsdale to Tocumwal IFR yesterday. Went the long way as freezing levels were 5,000. Day before they were even lower. W could hear the rescuer aircraft. Horrible feeling, and still hoping for a good outcome.

Beautiful flight to Bairnsdale last week. Family stuff till today. Now patiently waiting for the weather to improve to fly home. Don’t think it will be for a couple of days though.

Not all pilots are blokey though 🙃 and many eons ago I used to be asked by blokey friends to get them pantyhose for long days riding endurance horses. Many jockeys/track riders used to wear them. Chafe protection not warmth being the main goal here. Pantyhose do come in all sizes. 🤷‍♂️

I hate flying in boots or heavy shoes. We do have a heater in our plane, rarely use it though. And flew the last one for many years before having a heater installed. For me pantyhose or merino thermals tucked in to heatwarmer brand socks works for me. It was -3 degrees at 9,000’ today flying over the ranges to Bairnsdale and my feet and legs were fine.

Painted Hills, also Kings Canyon & Gosses Bluff.

I got some great shots. Will post them later.

Lots of green. Still some standing water. Will post some pics in the next few days. Also Tekin from AridAir posted some advice re calls etc around Lake Eyre on Facebook. Worth looking at before you come.

At Birdsville now. But we’ve been to Coober Pedy, Cadney Homestead, Curtin Dprings, Ayers Rock and Alice Springs since we left William Creek.