Tell us about your last flight

Jabiru7252 · April 24, 2019

That's one of those things used to find illegals working on farms etc.

Downunder · April 24, 2019

Sitting at YBDG waiting for the temps to come up and this flew over
[ATTACH]39164[/ATTACH]

Very interesting. I've never seen one....

Phil Perry · April 24, 2019

It's YBDG and that is Bendigo Vic.

YAY ! ! ! ! I Guessed YBDG ! ! ! ! when I flew there a few times, nobody used 'Y' codes. . . ( 1972 - 75 ) I guessed YMMB too, but others are not so easy peasy.

Being a total Pillock I once landed at Bendigo in a C-210 with a couple of Pommie convicts with whom I had shared a dining room table on the convict ship. I called the tower guy / FSO while still ten NM out. . . but he had gone for a coffee break. I misread the windsock slightly . . by 180 degrees and the tyres screeched a bit on touchdown, as one might expect when landing with a 17Kt tailwind..

I put this down to yabbering to the guest victims instead of bloody concentrating on the job.

On the plus side,. . .I NEVER EVER landed downwind again. ?

red750 · April 24, 2019

YAY ! ! ! ! I Guessed YBDG ! ! ! ! when I flew there a few times, nobody used 'Y' codes.

Phil, the easiest thing is to Google the ICAO code. If you don't get an airport name, add the word 'airport' to you search.

BusaKaine · April 25, 2019

Flew to YMDG for a few nights stay at the Hangar House. Amazing place. Great flight down from YBAF on Tuesday. Preparing to fly back today, going to miss this place. So nice and relaxing.

Yenn · April 26, 2019

I needed a flight review, so organised to do it on Wednesday. It is a half hour flight from my base to Monduran where the instructor is and the weather looked grim, but I reckoned it was acceptable. The nearer I got to Monduran, the better the weather and it was clear with a ten knot crosswind on arrival. I had to do the review in a Beech Musketeer as my RV is not set up with dual controls.

Never flown a Beech before and I found it like all spam cans, heavy, especially on the ground. It needed full rudder and brake to steer it and the rudder was stiff. The good part was that it was fully instrumented with steam gauges. I haven't flown instruments since the nineties and then I lost it after about ten minutes. This time was different, I had a good instructor, who gave me a few pointers before we started and it all went well, climbs and descents were OK straight and level I had to work really hard to keep heading and also height wandered about 200'. I did about 20 or more minutes and finished up sweating madly, but what a great time it was.

Returning to Rods Bay the weather got gloomier and gloomier, until the clouds were only just above the hilltops and it was so murky I couldn't see the Awoonga Dam even when I was just a few miles from it. Plenty of guides to keep clear of the hill tops and find the airstrip. I really enjoyed a flight review for a change. A top knotch instructor was the reason.

facthunter · April 26, 2019

Great when you can organize it to be value for money as well as covering the requirements.. Nev

Thruster88 · April 26, 2019

it was clear with a ten knot crosswind on arrival. I had to do the review in a Beech Musketeer as my RV is not set up with dual controls.

Never flown a Beech before and I found it like all spam cans, heavy, especially on the ground. It needed full rudder and brake to steer it and the rudder was stiff.

Pleased to hear someone is still instructing in a musketeer, they must be good person. Can be more difficult to get a nice landing due to the stiff non shock absorbing u/c. The nose leg has a lot more friction than the oleo types. I have difficulty taxiing mine in a dead strait line.

Have done a couple of flight revues in unfamiliar types and always enjoyed the challenge, highly recommend it.

Phil Perry · April 26, 2019

I needed a flight review, so organised to do it on Wednesday. It is a half hour flight from my base to Monduran where the instructor is and the weather looked grim, but I reckoned it was acceptable. The nearer I got to Monduran, the better the weather and it was clear with a ten knot crosswind on arrival. I had to do the review in a Beech Musketeer as my RV is not set up with dual controls.

Never flown a Beech before and I found it like all spam cans, heavy, especially on the ground. It needed full rudder and brake to steer it and the rudder was stiff. The good part was that it was fully instrumented with steam gauges. I haven't flown instruments since the nineties and then I lost it after about ten minutes. This time was different, I had a good instructor, who gave me a few pointers before we started and it all went well, climbs and descents were OK straight and level I had to work really hard to keep heading and also height wandered about 200'. I did about 20 or more minutes and finished up sweating madly, but what a great time it was.

Returning to Rods Bay the weather got gloomier and gloomier, until the clouds were only just above the hilltops and it was so murky I couldn't see the Awoonga Dam even when I was just a few miles from it. Plenty of guides to keep clear of the hill tops and find the airstrip. I really enjoyed a flight review for a change. A top knotch instructor was the reason.

I agree entirely about the choice of Instructor ! but to be fair, I've only had what I could describe as a poor one,. . .he was newly qualified and, from what I could see, was attempting to mark his superiority by criticizing Everything that I did. He didn't say, "Why don't you try doing it like this" or anything helpful at all. On a crosswind takeoff, he grabbed the yoke of the 182 without any 'I have control' niceties and said I needed some hours of practice before he would sign me off. This was a biennial review by the way, and after an hour of this I felt quite deflated ! He refused to sign my logbook. I admit that I hd not flown a C-182 since I left Australia six years previously, but I did tell him that at the outset.

I was very busy workwise at the time, so didn't pursue the reval until a month later. I Booked another reval at an airfield near where I was working away in the South of England.

I got a Lady Instructor, in her mid forties I'd guess. What a breath of fresh air she was ! Bloody heck, she made me feel so comfortable, utterly no nonsense professional. We flew their C-210 as it was the only thing available on the day. She looked at my logbook and said, let's go an fly around a bit, then we'll do some stuff under the hood. We flew out of Southampton Airport and tracked down the coast for a short while, allowing me to do all the radio calls etc. She then asked me if it would be OK if we landed at Sandown, on the Isle of Wight so she could have a word with someone there. I was enjoying this as she was good company and we had some good banter. When we got back to Southampton, she signed me off straight away. She had been asking some good questions as we flew, but not trying to trip me up. . .On the whole it was the most enjoyable reval I'd ever had. I found out later that she occasionally flew a 2 seat spitfire out of Popham as well. . . Jeeze, I would have loved to have done the reval in THAT ! though I doubt if I could have afforded the Avgas !. . .

*Edit - I forgot to mention after departing sandown, she stuck me under the hood and made me fly back to long final on the clocks . . I had an I/R anyway so that wasnt a problem, but a bit scary when you're being given all the headings and data by the right seat passenger !

Phil Perry · April 26, 2019

Phil, the easiest thing is to Google the ICAO code. If you don't get an airport name, add the word 'airport' to you search.

Thanks Peter,. . I DO know this, but what I was getting at is that flying GA in Australia at the time I did, no one I knew ever mentioned the ICAO codes, unless it was for filling out a flight plan. . .I always went on Sartime. . .never filed a plan although I was taught how.

Ony used them in the UK when GPS became available to us unwashed Plebs for entering into the satnav so that it knew where you wanted to go. . . . .in the early days, I had a Garmin GPS 12 hand held unit. . .which got us out of trouble when I was right seat pax with a mate in his Piper Arrow 3 on the way to the TT races in the Isle of Man. . he flew into the haze over the Irish sea and became UOP ( Uncertain of position ! ) and I found that if he slowed the aeroplane down to just under 100 Kts, that the GPS would actually work ! (It was limited to 99Kt ) which was pretty lucky as the viz got worse, and we didn't see Ronaldsway Airport until we were midpoint downwind Rwy 26/08, but still at 3,000 ft. . . I had memorized the ICAO locator code following previous visits there, using the mnemonic EG Norton Suzuki EGNS. . .

Just in case you think my mate Mick was a derroe,. . the aids at EGNS were not working. . the VOR / DME was offline and it was VFR or nothing.

Phil Perry · April 26, 2019

it was clear with a ten knot crosswind on arrival. I had to do the review in a Beech Musketeer as my RV is not set up with dual controls.

Never flown a Beech before and I found it like all spam cans, heavy, especially on the ground. It needed full rudder and brake to steer it and the rudder was stiff.

Pleased to hear someone is still instructing in a musketeer, they must be good person. Can be more difficult to get a nice landing due to the stiff non shock absorbing u/c. The nose leg has a lot more friction than the oleo types. I have difficulty taxiing mine in a dead strait line.

Have done a couple of flight revues in unfamiliar types and always enjoyed the challenge, highly recommend it.

Nice one mate. . . well done.

I did part of my Night rating in a Beechcraft Sundowner, which I think is fairly similar. . . .when I was flying from YMMB. I couldn't complete it in that aircraft though, as an instructor at the school had a major blue with his girlfriend,. . got ratted and took the sundowner out on a night flight where he flew around and in between the tall buildings in Melbourne city, and finally landed it half intact at Moorabbin, but the wings were bent and overstressed, so gawd knows what he had been doing with it in the dark. I have told this story before on this site, but long ago. . . During the investigation it turned out that the same bloke had been sitting Commercial Pilot examinations for other pilots for cash.. . .Oh dear. . .I only flew with him Once on my first attempt at Night circuiits at YMMB. . and he seemed a nice enough chap.

You never Know. . .A lot of men have been swerved from the straight and narrow by Women, Strong Drink and filthy lucre it seems. . .

BusaKaine · April 26, 2019

What a great day flying yesterday, flew back home to YBAF after spending 4 days in Mudgee, staying at the Hangar House.

The Hangar House is amazing, great location right on the airport at the RWY 22 so you can see planes landing (if they don’t stuff up too much and land long). Then you get to see them of they use RWY 04 in their climb.

The rooms are all aviation themed and I picked the Connie room, it is their largest and has a double person spa in it.

The Hangar itself was available so I could park our Arrow II in it.

It did feel a little funny as we didn’t see the owners until the 3rd day, we had a call and some txt. It turns out that they have sold the Hangar House, I’m not sure if everyone had seen that it had been on the market for a year or so.

Later that day the new owner was had come by and they are also very nice and going to keep it running, so this amazing place will still be available.

The flight back was great, as I departed on RWY 22, from downwind (right hand circuit) climbed through to 7500’ to make sure we had nice height to get over the 4000’ great dividing range. My wife was busy taking pics of the range and I was casually adjusting to avoid the puffy whites that had formed along the range.

Tracking to Lake Keepit (YKEP) to avoid Tamworth (YSTW) then on to Park Ridge Water Tower (PKR). A few times I had to reduce to some odd heights to stay away from the cloud, between Inverell and Glen Innes, flying near the Wind Farm they are at 4000’ and the cloud had dropped to around 7000’ so some careful separation and a great view.

After the wind farm the cloud lifted again and I was back at my filed 7500’ and back on radar, BN CEN was following us again and able to give us some early traffic warnings.

As we got closer to Brisbane, it was smooth air, I thought plenty of time to go so why don’t we do a flight plan amendment and stop at Kooralbyn (YKBN) for a coffee and lunch, but no sooner than I thought that, I could see that we were only a few miles away and the radio is now getting busy. So we skipped coffee and I started my descent from 7500’ to 1500’ for the water tower.

I already had the second radio setup with the AWIS, took down the details, started to SQUAK 3000, contacted YBAF Tower 118, “ME: Archerfield Tower, Piper Arrow WJO, Park Ridge Water Tower, 1500’ inbound with Golf, 2 POB for full stop at the Fuel”.

After crossing the Logan, they advised to join final 28L (damn, now I need to taxi around to get fuel, then back to our parking). As I started to prepare to turn final, the joyful words came cross the air: WJO, change RWY 28R. Awesome, they do an amazing job there in the tower and now I get to save some time on the ground. a few seconds later, the airways were alive again, tower: WJO 28R cleared to land. So now I do my final PUF check, look at the wind socks to make sure everything is still going the way we were expecting. A greased landing, cleaned up and took B3 exit, cleared 04R and contacted ground for taxi clearance.

Then it was just a matter of topping back to tabs and to put WJO away. Tied her down, had a quick chat with a few of the other pilots getting ready to enjoy the amazing day.

So a big kudos to the Archerfield Tower, always do an amazing job, Brisbane Centre, even when they are busy, they are still cool under pressure. My wife, for the company (she was super happy I paired her A20’s to her phone this time so she had music all the way).

Blueadventures · April 27, 2019

Fitted in a fly before the rain arrived. The only bit of sun and clear sky was just to the south west in the Eton area. When I landed the rain soon started and allowed a good clean water wash then polish of the bug splats.

cscotthendry · May 4, 2019

Victor 1 on a beautiful Autumn morning.

Graham Pukallus · May 5, 2019

It was a great trip, here are some photos of our time flying Victor 1, arriving at Wollongong and then at Cowra at the Japanese Gardens etc before being transferred to Canowindra for the World Balloon Championships and festival, by our great tour guide Allan of Ideal Tours at Cowra. Canowindra doesn’t have a airstrip any longer.

We stopped into Moree on our way home and did the Cotton Gin Tour while stopping at the Old faithful Phoenix Dragon Motel with hot springs.

A memorable trip with a great crew.

planedriver · May 5, 2019

Looks like a nice and memorable trip Graham. I thought the balloon shot was spectacular.

red750 · May 5, 2019

Very nice as always Graham. Personal choice I know, but I prefer to rename my images with something more descriptive. See the enlarged versions of my photos in the Gallery of the Aircraft section profiles. More meaningful than a string of numbers and letters. Just sayin'.

Or this one from the Media section. The numbers are shot date in YYYYMMDD format.

Graham Pukallus · May 12, 2019

GATTON AIRPARK ANNUAL BREAKFAST FLY-IN SUNDAY MAY 12

A Mother's Day ritual ! We enjoyed a hearty breakfast provided by the Mens Shed crew, in picture perfect conditions with 42+ aircraft of all different types including a new RV 10.

A great thank you to all who made it possible, all the mothers and visitors who attended were made very welcomed indeed.