Cleaning, Tinkering, Flying

January 29th, 2012

A couple of weeks ago, airfield owner Grahame Onus and manager Carl Holden asked for a hand to drag out the Auster and giving her a wash.

Auster comes out for a clean

I took the chance to record a piece of history.

Auster Plate

Auster Instruments

Auster Compas

1989, Last time she flew?

Looks better after a clean

Peter Foster, advised by Errol and Muttly, worked on his Saphire.

Muttly, Peter Foster, Errol

Joe brought the new fuel trailer out. It still needs a hose and a few odds and ends.

New Fuel Cart

Newer members may not have met Jack Pittar, who lives in Canberra. Jack has been active in model aeroplanes for some time now. Jack is part of “Canberra UAV‘ (UAV, unmanned aerial vehicle), a group of enthusiasts from a number of disciplines who have entered a UAV competition.

The competition is fascinating. A model plane has to take off, unassisted, completely by its own electronic decisions, fly a search pattern, find and recognise, by iteself, a lost bushwalker, drop a bottle of water, then fly back and land.

Dr Andrew Tridgell, who I know from another life, gives a fascinating hour long talk about the project.

Andrew mentions Jack, in the radio setup phase. He talks about how his software took his model plane from an inverted stall and recovered.
The Hope transceivers he mentions are interesting. I have a few of these and have been meaning to use them for telemetry myself.

Some bloke flying

A Significant Milestone

January 22nd, 2012

Sarah Webster achieved her first solo status on Saturday, a significant milestone indeed.

Congratulations Sarah!

Sarah was the recipient of an RAA GYFTS scholarship last year. Sarah managed to achieve this while learning to drive and doing year twelve of the HSC.

Proud Nan and Pop

Proud and pleased instructors.

So light, one up...

Steady...

Congratulations Sarah, from everyone at SRFC. Your persistence, determination and good natured attitude are an inspiration.

This Year: I Will Learn to Fly

January 15th, 2012

How do I learn to fly?

One step at a time.

The first step is to take a Trial Instruction Flight – a TIF. You ring the club booking number, 0425 251 939, arrange a time on a training day, usually Saturday or Sunday, come out to the Oaks airfield and an instructor will give you an initial lesson.

You’ll be flying for about twenty minutes. You need to be aged fourteen or over and be medically fit enough to hold a car driver’s licence. You’ll need to sign an insurance indemnity form.

The main pages on this web site has the rates, currently $150 per hour, fuel and instructor included. There are also details about getting to the airfield.

That’s enough to get started.

Advanced, safe and fun planes

What happens on a TIF?

In the TIF, the instructor will talk to you for a while, explain about the plane and what will happen. The instructor will take off and land the plane, the most difficult parts of any flight.

Higher up in the air, the safest part of flight by the way, the instructor will show you how to do some simple things; hold the stick, do a gentle turn.

Amazingly, you are flying a plane!

How is a TIF different from normal flying instruction?

The surprising thing about a TIF is how similar the experience is to normal flying lessons, and how useful a TIF is in determining whether flying, and this flying club, is for you.

Dedicated to the journey

Flying looks like fun, but isn’t it dangerous and expensive?

Flying is indeed fun, but it is also a very serious business. Training is the primary method used to reduce risk.

The hourly cost of an aircraft seems steep. Most time in learning to fly, however, is spent on the ground. Often it is more difficult to find the time required rather than the money, it depends of your circumstances. Do you have family or other commitments, do you have other interests?

In any case, flying Recreational Aviation type aircraft is much cheaper than flying General Aviation aircraft. Flying at ‘The Oaks’ is much cheaper than at fully commercial airports such as Bankstown.

So how much will it cost?

To be part of the sky

The minimum number of hours required for a Recreational Aviation Pilot Certificate is twenty hours. However, you have to meet a minimum level of competency. It is rare, unless you have previous aviation experience, to achieve this competency in twenty hours.

It does not reflect on your innate ability, or level of competence, to take longer to learn to fly.  People learn at different rates, some of the best pilots took the longest to learn. Multiply the hourly rate by 20, then consider that as a starting point. Once you learn to fly, then what? You’ll probably want to fly more!

A Pilot Certificate is really only a licence to do more practise on your own.

How long will it take?

We only train on the weekends, second Thursdays and occasional Friday. Fired up with enthusiasm, you might want to get your licence in the shortest possible time.

This is great, and we fully support your desire. Having this goal will provide the motivation to see you through the ups and downs of training.

Learning to fly will be a challenge.

By training one hour on a weekend, it will take you the better part of up to a year to get your Pilot Certificate. There will be weekends when it is inconvenient for you to fly, and there will be weekends when the weather is unsuitable to fly.

Almost any age

What are the different types of aircraft?

In the Recreational Aviation category, there are a number of aircraft certified as suitable for training. These aircraft all have to be factory built and maintained by a level 2 LAME (Licensed Aircraft Maintenance Engineer) maintainer (certified aeroplane mechanic). We train with ‘fixed-wing’, conventional lookng aircraft. Two seaters, one for you, one for the instructor.

The most popular type of plane in Australia to train in is the Jabiru.  This is a very good Australian designed and built aircraft, but we don’t train in them.

We have a Foxbat A22 as our primary trainer.

If you have flown the Foxbat after other planes, the advantages become quickly apparent.

To belong to the fraternity of aviation

Once I learn to fly, can I just fly anywhere?

Unfortunately, flying light planes is often not a practical mode of transport.

Regular Passenger Transport (RPT), is a highly specialised activity.  It transports lumps of warm, breathing meat long distances to specific, limited locations in a safe, economical and often unpleasant way.

The kind of aviation we are involved with, while superficially similar, has different goals.

First of all, the basic Pilot Certificate only allows you to fly within twenty five nautical miles of your airfield, without a passenger.

You need to get a cross country endorsement, and passenger endorsement to fly further.

You need to take into account the expense. The hourly hire rate of planes is not a ‘made up’ number. It really does reflect the cost of running the plane; the capital cost, the maintenance, the fuel.
You can reduce the capital and maintenance cost by building and maintaining your own plane, this will consume even more of your time. Some people don’t see this as a burden, but as part of their enjoyment of flying.

The kinds of planes we fly have smaller fuel tanks, and are quite a bit slower than passenger jets, or even larger general aviation aircraft.

To give you an idea of range and duration, our Foxbat A22 has a large 90 litre fuel capacity. It has a comfortable cruise speed of 80 knots (one knot equals one nautical mile per hour). At that speed, it will use about eighteen litres of fuel an hour. Typical of this class of plane, the fuel is premium unleaded.

This is quite an advanced plane, many don’t have this kind of range or speed.

Then there is the weather. Recreational Aviation is daytime VFR, or Visual Flight Rules, only. You can’t fly when it is raining, or dark or too windy.

There are surprisingly few days when it is unsuitable to fly, but they can and will happen when you have promised to be somewhere; really, really want to be somewhere, or have to get home for work the next day.

You may not have a willing passenger. Light planes fly at much lower altitudes than jets, and tend to react to gusts. Part of the fun of flying are maneuvers such banked turns. For a passenger unused to the sensations of light planes, these can be disconcerting, even leading to motion sickness.

On top of all these things, you cannot generally fly in certain controlled airspaces, that is around major airports or military zones.

Having poured water all over dreams of flying to work, or to the family farm, there are many cases of experienced pilots popping up to Cessnock or Tarree to visit friends or for a weekend away.

There are surprising amounts of airspace in major cities that you can fly in. CASA (Civil Aviation Safety Authority) provide some handbooks that show how you can have a great flight up Sydney Harbour and around the Northern Beaches.

The study of weather is a fascinating part of aviation. The ability to go to places that normal commercial aviation doesn’t go to, the ability to fly when you want, without many restrictions, the views when you do fly, these things more than make up for the limitations.

Friendly club atmosphere. One for all, and all for one.

Why learn to fly?

Flying is a complicated business. I don’t mean the business of pointing a plane in the air, of getting it off and onto a runway safely.

The mechanical skills and in-flight judgement required for an ordinary circuit are difficult at first, but can be mastered quickly.

There is a lot more to flying than just these simple mechanical aspects.  For that reason, your goals will likely change over time.  Your initial reasons for learning to fly are unlikely to be the reasons you continue to fly.

These reasons will be individual, specific to you. To discover what they are, you have to experience the first part, learning to fly, first.

When you start learning to fly, you may have certain ideas and hopes in your mind. It may be that no-one directly disabuses you of those hopes and ideas.

People are not being dishonest in not contradicting you. Who is to say whether you will magically learn to fly in twenty hours flying time? It is possible. You may have enough money to fly a super advanced composite fibre $120,000 plane, one you can afford to fly every second day. It is possible, but not likely.

What is likely is that you will enjoy flying, enjoy discovering something about yourself you never knew.

There is a chance that flying will become an important part of your life, and will completely change the way you look at life, yourself, and the relative importance you place on things.

Having experienced the joy of receiving the gift of flight, the joy can be redoubled in sharing.

The destination is another dimension in yourself.

Member News

January 8th, 2012

Welcome new member, Michael Quigg.

Michael Quigg

Michael is another convert from the world of GA, via a few hours in Jabirus. He was so impressed with his TIF in the Foxbat and his instructor, he joined the club on the spot.

In other news, Joe Newham and Mark Dawson have been working on the new fuel tank and electric pump. Nearly ready!

Darryl starts his new job Monday. Best of luck Darryl!

Michel Geurts writes:

I am flying out on January 4 to Bougainville (Brisbane to Port Moresby in a Fokker 100, must be the last one on the planet, and the following leg in something that probably has no recognisable brand) on my first mission with MSF (Médecins Sans Frontières), which will be for six months.

I’ll be part of the coordination team in the north of the island, supporting a hospital in the south. I hope to be back in the Foxbat after July, when I’m due back, something which is quite frankly largely in the hands of the local PNG pilots, claimed to be some of the best in the profession. I’ll let you know if that’s true.

Please give my best wishes to the rest of the club.

Owain Roberts writes:

I was doing my usual annual budget preparations the other night and came to the agonising realisation that, in order to achieve my property ownership ambitions in 2012, I will have to make some serious budget cuts.  My RA flying is one of the sacrifices I’ll have to make.  And I still haven’t gone solo – so close but bad luck played a part in preventing it.  I’m pretty sad about it.  But I’m not giving up – I’ll continue by studying the guides, go back to flight-simming and, if I get a spare couple hundred from somewhere, I’ll consider a flight.

So long as the Mayans were wrong about the calendar, I’ll be back in 2013, more ambitious than ever to get myself in the air, solo.

Best regards and fly safe,

The club has a new phone number for the field. 0478224516

This number should be operational now, and the old number will still work till the end of January. The booking number still remains the same.

The new number is a 3G mobile number which also has an internet data component. We now have internet at the field, and will soon have a policy on wifi access. This means we will be able to get weather, forms, check for rules online.

We will have to see how this works in practise. To start with, we have a 1Gig per month data allocation.

Helping Hand

January 1st, 2012

Ian “Muttly” Fletcher has been working on his Zenith 601 for quite some time now. He asked Darryl and myself (Jamie) to come down to Dapto to help put the wings on for tests.

Muttly was concerned about the wings being level. Apparently some of the drilling took place when he was living in a caravan. The story seems to be that parts were poking out of various windows.

Muttly had been feeling poorly lately, with visits to the hospital for more tests. Darryl and I were released from domestic duties and made a day of it, flying to Albion Park to be picked up by Muttly for our mechanical tasks.

The cloud base was low to start the day, but the forecast was for improved conditions, which did eventuate.

View of YWOL

Holiday traffic, er, I mean "Lineing Up"

Muttly heard our ten mile call and headed out to pick us up. The traffic was very heavy heading down the highway.

Sans Wings

Plane projects are nearly always described as 90% complete. It’s just the last 10% that takes another 90% of the time.

Muttly has tinkered with many bit and pieces, the latest was moving rudder pedals. The canopy has a remote control mechanism as an optional extra!

#$** Bolts

Darryl and I helped bolt on the wings, supervised by the ‘expert’. So many bolts, so much fiddling, lining up, cursing…

They fit!

It certainly looks the real deal when they are on.

... and they're level!

Back to bed

Muttly’s workshop has all kinds of treasures.

Medicine Cabinet, AKA AN Bolts

Undoing the tie-downs. Flight home looks no probs. Thanks driver.

Going home

Helping a mate by flying down doesn’t seem a chore. Hope it all goes well Ian, and that 2012 is a great year.

Fly Neighbourly

December 28th, 2011

Carl Holden, our airfield manager, is anxious to improve relations with our neighbours. There’s some broken fences to be mended.

On a nearby property relatives were visiting, one working at Williamstown. Carl took the chance to collar instructor Darryl into taking him up.

Didn’t require much persuasion.

Dean

In the air

and on the ground

Views of the neighbourhood

Darryl congratulates Dean

In other news, Carol Richards has sent a promotional flyer for Natfly 2012, a downloadable pdf: Natfly website promo 2012_2

Airfield Doings

December 18th, 2011

Fifteen year old Angus Ashbrook was shouted a TIF by relative David Cotterill. Dave says Angus has a lot of aviation genes from his wife’s side.

Angus Ashbrook

Greg took 81 and Peter Sackett up for a test flight. A few bugs to be ironed out, but definitely on the road ahead.

Peter had a lot of trepidation, the last time he flew, a few years back, he collected some momentos.

Despite the butterflies, on track again

81 shows off again

81 looks better than ever, though.

We may be hosting more gliders. Carl has invited The Southern Cross club to practise outlandings at The Oaks.

Human powered glider

Into the skies

Night of the Ians

December 18th, 2011

It was Ians’ night for awards on Saturday, 10th December 2011.

Ian Salmon was awarded student of the year, Ian Young for longest flight and Ian Fletcher fellowship award.

Ian Salmon, Roger, Phil, Elaine

Ruth and Bec

Many thanks must go to Dave and particularly Ruth for hosting this year’s party.

Sarah and family

Rosemary, Ian, Joe

Ian Young and Joe

Mark Dawson, Ian Fletcher, Darryl and Mimi Montgomery, Ian Salmon

Thanks to Rosemary for the photos.

Wedderburn SAAA Christmas BBQ

December 12th, 2011

Mark Dawson took the opportunity to participate in the SAAA Christmas BBQ on Sunday.

Barefoot Bowls Photos

December 11th, 2011

Mark, Greg, Bec, Joe

Ian, Phil, Rosemary, Dave

Mark, Rusell, Bec, Joe, Greg

Sue, Ian, Sura, Owain

Peter, Tim, Nan, Mark