mnewbery

I'd be looking around for a private strip near home then getting the instructor to come to me. This is what aviation is actually for - overcoming the tyranny of distance. If you really are in the stix I bet there are dozens of private strips all over and nearby work or home that you don't even know about. There are 20 active strips in the Darling Downs within 50Km of Toowoomba airport and many more besides that only get mowed when the owner needs to fly in or out. I can't imagine Victoria being any different. If you go down this path, there are costs and benefits. Consider, it might cost a little more and require some research but you will have a greater choice of flight training facilities (Albury?) , instructors, aircraft types (as long as they are insured to land on grass one imagines), you will get to fly out of a field nearer home, make some very useful contacts and be exposed to the chance of bartering whatever you can with the land owner and possibly the other people who fly from there. Once you have whatever it takes (hours of experience) to not be a danger to your self, the furniture or the hardware you may begin to hear of flight sharing or syndicate opportunities. The big one for me - your training area will be much closer to the start of the flight and much less crowded than Sunbury. Aeroplanes are like kangaroos, they tend to mob together. If you know where one is, I bet there's more hiding nearby.

BRISBANE WEST WELLCAMP (YBWW) TAF YBWW 140030Z 1402/1414 34012KT CAVOK FM140700 04014KT CAVOK RMK T 32 35 32 26 Q 1017 1014 1014 1016 Feels like it sounds

I'm singing the chorus in my head right now and it is not a pretty thing

These lessons are for reviewing at least annually if not quarterly in order to maintain competent hand, foot, eye and ear co-ordination even after the final exam. However this is not an exhaustive list I might even go out and practise this afternoon. Caveat: I am not an instructor

http://podcastingpassion.com

http://generalaviationnews.com/2013/07/22/10-tips-for-frugal-pilots/ http://fixedwingbuddha.com/pilots-guide-to-flying-on-a-budget/

There is a J230 for training and hire at Top End Flying Club. I am a member there (sadly not living with 1000 miles of YMKT) http://tefcnt.weebly.com/flight-training.html

$3 a day for 10 years is over $10K. Save that now and you will be able to do all your flight training and then some, in one go, in ten years time. Not like me

Better than being locked in her shed doing the ironing

Not so much bumpy as thermally. Briefed passenger accordingly. Got a good lift out of Pittsworth. 1.1 hours and some good views of Wellcamp from the air

Allegedly...

Try to stay out of the newspapers between Redcliffe and Wondai. Scenic and quite well wooded.

Which part of the country?

It was huge

Jet fuel will be the same price as it costs at Amberley, Roma, Emerald and everywhere else it goes ... http://www.recreationalflying.com/threads/all-jet-fuel-in-australia-to-be-imported-in-2014.103914/#post-388710

Look again. Those people flying in from Sydney aren't all locals coming home for the weekend

Airfield operators certificate still not handed over by CASA?

Exactly. Anyone riding a motorbike would immediately understand this is a good way to train and have waaaaaaay too much fun doing it. 80hp with the same wing area as a drifter and about the same mass would be a winning combination for ab-initio training. North of the Tweed river a least Will there be a tail dragger?

1280m actually, I could put something glib in here but I'll stick to "more runway in front of you is better".

Airfield altitude? Prevailing wind direction vs airfield orientation? Summer daytime temperature? Grass, gravel or paved? Slope? Obstacles? How's it go when it's wet? Houses or settlements nearby? ... As they say "it depends" Cao 20.7.4 flight planning for aircraft performance requires TORA to be 15% greater than TODR for starters. I just flew off a 1200m strip near Darwin which was fine for the SB Drifter running a Rotax 582 but it was dead flat and gravel. Some days 800m will feel quite short, especially with a laminar flow wing and a teeny tiny tail wind (J160)

http://www.eaa.org/eaa ..for the people who will impart their aviation knowledge, usually for free

Worth a read Supplement H62/14 http://airservicesaustralia.com/aip/current/sup/s14-h62.pdf

Your family might find some comfort in a ballistic parachute on a plane As far as likes, wants and budget, a person might like to create a list and order it most to least important. Speed might be more important for the cross country traveller but rough field operation is at odds with this so you need a bigger donk and a much bigger wallet... rather than spoiling it for you, your own research will show this to be so. I find that bit fun, the trade offs can be "interesting". So you might need three planes instead - one fast, one low and slow and one for upside-down fun. It was ever thus. Something to keep you motivated: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/airspeed/id208990540#

Yes you can try mixing a sample of fuel and pure water, shaking it then letting it settle for maybe 30 minutes. Look at where the water meets the petrol and see it it's a neat line. If not, the fuel is toxic waste. All of it. A "GATS" jar will help you separate the fuel and re-use the good part. My ground instructor told me fuel contamination happens a lot on the coast when a plane is parked outside in the rain overnight. All tanks breathe in the moisture by the effect of the fuel and air inside cooling and getting smaller. When it's raining an aircraft tank can breathe in a lot of moisture - we are talking 100 mL for a 100 gallon wing tank. Pilot comes along, sumps out the now liquid water until the fuel runs clean and that's it. Gravity at work. If you're in a desert, the fuel will most likely last forever.

Depends on the ambient air temperature. Flash point is a very low -40C. This is the temperature at which the vapour will cease to burn by itself. The vapour pressure will be about zero at -40C and increase to atmospheric pressure at the boiling point. Auto ignition temperature is 450C for 100LL so the cigarette would need to be that hot at the tip. The vapour will stratify in the can and vapour will leak out. On a cold day the vapour will be correct for a "bang" closer to the bottom. On a hot day the air/vapour mixture will be correct near or outside the top of the can. The range if flammability is quite narrow when compared to hydrogen gas. The cigarette in question needs to burn to keep hot and putting it in an air fuel vapour mixture will starve then cool it. You see the old western movies where the cowboy tokes on a big FAT cigar a few times before applying it to the fuse string for dramatic effect. Nobody in their right mind would drop a lit cigar into a tin of petrol. Waste of a cigar. There is a very real chance the cigarette will go out before the bang because there just isn't enough of it that is hot, invalidating the experimental result. This is why petrol chemists use a "b0mb calorimeter" and a bucket of water. Seriously. DON'T try this at home. Best I can offer is add a 50/50 mixture of the sample fuel and PURE water in a fuel tester. If the sample separates cleanly and still reads 50/50 by volume it is good to go. Avgas stores for years with a vent to the atmosphere and regularly separates out water at the bottom of its container by design of the chemistry. Just don't agitate the container and ensure a good in line filter does catch the water by the effect of gravity. The last 10% of any fuel container will have some contamination including the tanks in your plane. Caveat. If you follow this advice I am not responsible for the result.