Coffs Harbour CTA

[Guest JRMobile]

Fellow Pilots,

 

I have been looking for a safe (non tiger country) route around Coffs Harbour for a while now.

 

The controled air space around YSCH has stopped me from flying south in the past and i would like to get to Camden Haven next weekend.

 

Any suggestions:;)5:

 

Cheers

 

JR

 

 

[Guest Juliette Lima]

Hi JR,

 

I'm flying to Lismore in a week or two and hope to call into YCMH along the way.

 

I spoke to the Coffs tower a few weeks ago and I'm afraid its Tiger country during tower hours....I think you might get through early am when the zone is CTAF-R.....stand to be corrected.

 

I sussed the best route from google and driving through the area again last week, and it is as follows from the North

 

Red Rock,to Glenreagh, Nana Glen, Coramba, Tuckers Knob (sticking close to the zone) then to a waypoint a little east of Bellingen , to Mylestom (at 1000 ft) then South over Urunga.

 

This gives the most amount of potential cleared areas if encountering any problems.

 

Coffs Harbour VTC map coupled with Goggle will give you your waypoints.

 

The tower advised a ceiling of 4500 ft over the range Nth of Bellingen.

 

I reckon much would depend on winds from the West ....so for me, its max 15 Kts winds in the area before doing the trip....well perhaps 12 Kt

 

A couple of years back the tower allowed me through at 500 ft across the harbour.itself...where I'd been eating fish & chips a week or so before....

 

Frankly there was nowhere to go in the event of an engine out.

 

Plan well and I might pass you.

 

Cheers JL

 

 

[Guest thomaswb]

I have flown from Sydney to South Grafton and back in a Jabiru. On the way up I went directly from Kempsey to Bellingen, then Coramba, Glenreigh and South Grafton. The Kempsey/Bellingen stretch looks like tiger country on the map, but other than a mountain or two there are many open fields. I flew the normal hemispherical altitude of 3500' and felt quite safe, but I did climb to get over a couple of peaks.

 

The Tuckers Knob-Coramba stretch is a bit scary, but at 5000' I could have glided to Coffs Harbour if I had an engine failure.

 

The night before the return flight, the TAF was for overcast at 2000', so I couldn't return via Bellingen. So I took off from South Grafton just after 6 am, flying through the Coffs CTR well before the tower opened at 7:30 am. I made an inbound call that (as I had been taught) I would overfly the runway at the highest safe altitude (2000' was about 500' below the clouds). An RPT flight that was about to take off wasn't too happy about that, because he was about to take off to the south and our tracks would be very close. He was much happier when I volunteered to divert to the coast. I've attached a photo of him climbing past me. It's the yellow glint just above the middle of the photo. I wish I had a better camera-- to the naked eye you could see all the windows.

 

Just make sure you check the NOTAMs for hours in Coffs.

 

Regards

 

Thomas

 

Red Rock,to Glenreagh, Nana Glen, Coramba, Tuckers Knob (sticking close to the zone) then to a waypoint a little east of Bellingen , to Mylestom (at 1000 ft) then South over Urunga.