A world away

[Martin Hartwell]

Just joined the site. I looking for some information and discussion on outback bush flying. I'm a bit of a bush flier here in Canada and would love to fly the outback.

 

 

[Happyflyer]

Welcome Martin. I'd have to say you'd find our bush a bit warmer and drier than yours!

 

 

[Yenn]

G'day Martin.

 

I think your bush flying will be very different from ours. What we consider to be outback bush flying is mostly flying off grass or dirt strips away from the cities or big towns, whereas I think of North American bush flying as using river beds to land or on skis or floats. Much more adventurous, but then again I may be completely wrong,

 

The biggest difference would be the heat and different vegetation from Canada. Get stuck here in the bush and it can be a very short time before you are in trouble with de hydration.

 

Tell us about bush flying in Canada please.

 

 

[WayneL]

Gidday Martin, as mentioned above our bush flying is very different to Canada's west coast, Tasmania's SW coast would be the closest to your bush flying areas on the west coast. Summer heat and isolation would be high on an Aussie bush pilots list of concerns.

 

 

[red750]

Hi Martin,

 

This video doesn't contain any flying, but shows a bit of the 'outback', the type of country you're likely to encounter around the centre of Australia, and some of the types of people you are likely to run into. Definitely not the tourism promotional stuff, more the nitty gritty.

 

[MEDIA=vimeo]193523075[/MEDIA]

 

 

[red750]

Further to my previous post, here is a drone showreel of some of Australia's landscape, and the following videos cover various areas in greater detail. They are actually promotional videos for a travel company, but there is a lot of drone footage to give you an idea of what the 'outback' holds in store.

 

[MEDIA=vimeo]188934353[/MEDIA]

 

 

[Martin Hartwell]

Thanks for the welcome gents.

 

 

 

One of the reasons that I am so interested in Aussie bush flying is because our countries are alike in many ways. Both are huge, sparsely inhabited and beautiful. Both are also losing their wildness to modern technology and civilization. Fortunately, While the rule-makers are having an impact further and further into the wilderness every day, both countries still have a long way to go before they are totally tamed. I love the freedom of bush flying in Canada and I want to experience outback flying while it is still free. More on this later.

 

 

 

I imagine the main difference between the outback and the Canadian wilderness is the changeable weather and the effect it has had on the country. While the temperature undoubtedly gets much higher in the Northern Territories and water is a rare commodity there, it is a safe bet that you will always be able to fly on wheels there. As others have noted, there is a lot more water lying around in Canada and this means there are a lot more trees and not a lot of barren desert. Strangely enough that makes the two flying experiences very similar in that the sand and rock, of which the outback has lots, becomes a surface on which you can land. In Canada, we have a lot more water so, of course, we land on that. This means that Canadian bush planes are rarely equipped with bush wheels. (We DID invent the Tundra tire though!) but we do have to have some different equipment because the water goes from wet to frozen at different times of the year.

 

 

 

In summer, I fly on floats. Floats are a great accessory for your airplane as they enable you to explore areas with no place to land but on the lakes and rivers. Many Canadian cities have a float base near the downtown and you can leave the city and be in the bush within an hour.

 

 

 

 

Any lake that is ½ mile long (Less if you are brave or have an excellent STOL plane) is your runway. It takes a bit of experience to judge water depth, current, wind, docking and obstacles but that is part of the challenge. It is enthralling and, as some have pointed out, it can be dangerous as a major mistake can cost you and your passengers your lives.

 

 

 

In winter, I change over to skis. I have several sets of skis for my plane. I first bought a set of straight skis. Straight skis are just what they sound like – metal, wood or plastic landing gear that allow the plane to slide over the surface of the snow and ice. Mine happen to be aluminum with a plastic bottom designed to prevent the ski from freezing in place when you stop. This is very common problem with straight skis and it was a huge problem in the days before plastic bottoms were common. If you are going to be there more than a few minutes, you lift the skis up off the surface on pieces of wood or taxi up onto branches to keep the skis off the ice. This is still done, plastic bottoms or not, if you are going to spend a significant amount of time parked on the ice. If the skis freeze down, it is a big job to get them cleaned off enough to let the plane take off.

 

 

 

Straight skis generally give the best performance as they are simple, and therefore lighter. The drawback with straight skis is that, in the part of Canada where I live, the temperature is often above freezing even in the coldest Winter. This means a thaw and the snow on your runway melts leaving you on skis at an airfield devoid of snow. I once left the airport in the morning and returned in the afternoon to discover that all the snow had melted. I now know that skis work fine on grass!

 

 

 

As this situation is quite normal where I live, I now use hydraulic wheel-skis. They are heavy but they are the only way that I can consistently operate in the winter and they do allow me the flexibility to stop at airports for fuel.

 

 

My wheel-skis work well but they weigh about 60lbs each. Luckily, the cold air in the winter gives you more power so the difference in performance is not very noticeable. Some pilots use a compromise between the straight ski and the wheel-ski known as the penetration ski. These are skis that have a wheel mounted within the ski such that the lower part of the tire protrudes below the surface of the ski. If you land on a hard surface, the aircraft weight rests on the wheel, if you land in snow, the weight rests on the ski surface and the wheel just drags along through the snow. Penetration skis are simpler, lighter and cheaper than wheel-skis but they give more drag than either straight skis or wheel-skis.

 

 

That is a very broad-brush overview of bush flying in Canada. There is lots more to tell but I don’t want to go on too much on a first post. Let me know if you have any subjects you would like to weigh in on. I love to learn.

 

 

[WayneL]

Very interesting information about flying off snow Martin. Is there a special endorsement pilots need to do before they can fly off skis? There is lots to know by the sounds of it.

 

Wayne.

 

 

[Martin Hartwell]

Hi Wayne,

 

No endorsement, training or checkout required for skis or for taildraggers. There is training and an endorsement required for floats but the test is to survive 5 solo landings. No kidding, that's the test!