Aviation

Last Saturday David and I had fun flying down to Goulburn. We took off from Bankstown, flew over the top of Wollongong (well, BHP steel works to be precise), then down over Gerroa and Seven Mile Beach. Flying the Nowra airspace VFR route we got as far as Comerong Island when I had to turn around due to lowering ceilings and visibility.

We may have been able to squeak through all the way to Ulladulla but the inland route back to Goulburn would not have been an option as the cloud deck was down to less than 1200 feet and the hills along the coast go up to over 3500 feet in places. Not a good combination.

So... turning around we tracked back to Kiama (here's a photo of the hills vs clouds near Kiama) then onward to Goulburn. We landed there for a spot of lunch. Here's a photo of me and one of Dave. We saw some interesting flying machines down there including a turboprop powered DC-3, a Long EZE (which joined the circuit pretty much precisely the same time as we did) and a gyrocopter.

Flying back to Bankstown up along the Wollondilly River has some great scenery. David (as is often the case) fell fast asleep. Even shaking him vigorously for the landing (always a good bit) didn't have any effect. He was fast asleep till we parked the aircraft - well, at least it shows he's relaxed.

We had a first this morning - for the first time David went flying with Dad by himself - no Mum on board. We were planning on going Bankstown to Bathurst (landing) then back to Bankstown. What actually happened was we got up there and found the low cloud and very low visibility kept us within the Sydney basin. To give you an idea it was like flying inside a small gold fish bowl filled with cigar smoke.

So instead of our planned trip we flew up over our house, did a few orbits (Chelsea and Caroline were enjoying breakfast and didn't come out and wave). We then high tailed it back to Bankstown in case the visibility dropped to the point which would have made landing a challenge. Dave and I had fun though it would have been nice to have gone for a longer flight. Here, here and here are some photos.

We took David flying the other day as he hasn't been up for ages. Chelsea was baby-sat as she's still a bit young yet. Actually we took Dave up at 6 months so that's not a very good excuse. The weather was fairly average with low cloud and rain cells so we just flew from Camden (in a Cessna 172R) up to Prospect Reservoir, across over the top of Parramatta then up the Sydney lane of entry (doing an orbit over our house on the way). We then flew up the coast as far as Norah Head (to the south of Newcastle). From the photos you may notice the very large waves battering the coast (large low pressure system off the coast). By the time we got to Norah Head David was fast asleep and he slept all the way back to Camden. In fact I asked Caroline to wake him up on approach so he could be awake to enjoy the landing. At least we know he's a good sleeper. Here are some photos.

Dave and I finally got around to seeing the Singapore Airlines A380 the other day. It's been flying into Sydney since late October. We first saw the A380 in 2006 at the Farborough air show - it was pouring down that afternoon so it was nice to see the thing finally in sunlight. A good spot to see aircraft at Kingsford Smith is right down near the ATC tower on Ross Smith drive. Here are some not very exciting photos.

We took David flying today (first time since 7th May 2006). The weather wasn't too good (flew thru a number of rain showers) as a front was coming thru. We went from Bankstown up over our house (flew over and said 'Hi' to Chelsea who stayed at home). Then flew up the Sydney Northern Beaches and out to sea a bit to fly over a tanker. Then flew up to 'The Entrance' - it's amazing how many ships are anchored off Newcastle waiting to go into the port. By this stage Dave had fallen asleep (as he always seems to do when I take him flying). He woke up just in time for a nice 'greaser' of a landing by me (one of my best ever - but he still said it was bumpy (the little sod)). Here are some photos.

I've wanted my own aeroplane since learning to fly 10 or so years ago. It was always a very unrealistic dream as about the only thing I could afford was an old pile of rusted junk, anything new and fast would run into the several hundreds of thousands of dollars. Then in 2004 I visited AirVenture at Oshkosh Wisconsin. There for the first time I starting thinking seriously about building my own "new" aeroplane from a kit. Up until then my idea of a kit was of something flimsy like a microlight. Was I wrong - modern kit aircraft are often better built, more efficient, faster and more advanced than their certificated counterparts like Cessna and Piper. I chose a kit from Van's Aircraft in Oregon as there are over 5000 RV's flying around the world. That's means it's a very well known and supported family of aeroplanes. I went for the RV-7, it's a side-by-side two seater aircraft, it cruises at around 170 knots, so about 200mph or 315km/hr - that's much faster than the tired old aeroplanes I currently rent. A four seater would have been better of course, but most of my flying is either solo or with one other person - so the extra expense of building and operating a 4 seater (RV-10) just wasn't worth it. The RV-7 will do just fine - it's aerobatic - but I suspect I won't be using it for that purpose - basically it will be a fast touring aircraft which we're going to use to get out there and see all of Australia.

I've flown an RV-6 at Camden (it's basically a older version of the RV-7). Flying an RV is wonderful. It's like strapping wings on your back, the thing becomes an extension of your thoughts. You think it, and it does it. That's completely unlike flying a Cessna or Piper - where you are basically steering the thing about, a lot like you do in a car (or a small bus).

I'll be keeping a builder's construction log of what I'm up to - this is going to be a long project. It will probably take up to 5 years to build, maybe more. Having done a builder's workshop out at Temora with Sam Richards last year I know (slightly) what I'm getting myself into - the panic since pressing the 'order' button has subsided somewhat and I'm looking forward to starting the project - the tools should arrive some time next week, and the empennage (horizontal and vertical stabilizers/rudder/elevators) soon after that. Once I've built the empennage, I'll order the wing kit, then the fuselage etc. etc.

Yes, it's going to take a long time to build - but what an adventure! I think to make life worthwhile you need a hobby. Work shouldn't be the 'be all and end all' as I know it is for many people. The day you keel over work will carry on regardless. Neither should kids be the ultimate centre of your universe (wow, that's controversial). One day they'll have grown up and you'll be left feeling very alone. That's not to say the kids aren't the most important things in our lives - they are. But that doesn't translate into doing nothing but entertain the kids 24x7! I don't want to look back when I'm old and think "gee, I'm happy I spent so much time watching sitcoms on TV and going to the shopping mall". I want to feel a sense of achievement - that's what this project is all about - it's not just the destination, it's the journey that's going to be so much fun!

Our construction log is here - check back often for updates.

What could be better than going for a flight on Easter Monday? The plan was to fly from Bankstown, over the top of Camden and Wollongong, then down the Nowra military airspace VFR route, from Kiama down to Ulladulla. So a nice flight down across the beaches and Jervis Bay. The plan was then to fly direct from overhead Ulladulla to Shelleys NDB (near Marulan in the Southern Highlands) and then back to Bankstown. That was the plan...

Taking off from Bankstown the weather didn't look that promising - but it's always worth having a closer look (as long as you make sure you've given yourself an 'out'). There was no way we could have made it in a direct line from Camden to Wollongong - the cloud over the ranges was down at tree top level. Instead we flew down to Mittagong and finally decided to call it a day - there was no way we'd be able to get across to the coast. So, poodling about a bit I decided to climb up and get a better look - that only confirmed things - there was no way we'd get over the ranges. So, back to Bankstown. Well, that was the intention - as it turned out we couldn't get back as the whole area to the south of Camden had now in effect been blocked off by low cloud/rain/ultra low (nil?) visibility. So... I decided we'd divert to Goulburn to wait out the bad weather. Next thing we hear over the radio "hazard alert for Goulburn aerodrome, reduced visibility, very heavy rain"). Hmmm... so blocked off to the south, north and east... oh goody. Next - try Mittagong - nearby, a private, semi-sealed strip - but would do... so off we go to Mittagong. Approaching the field from the south is little old LSG, from the north is a massive rain cell.
By the time we would have joined and made a proper circuit it would have put the cell pretty much on top of the field. So in all probability on very short finals I'd either be flying into a white-out heavy shower or if I had to go around I might go into instrument conditions (non visual) extremely close to the ground. Not a good operational decision. So Mittagong was out. Next aerodrome please... Crookwell was to the west and conditions in that direction were markedly better. So off we head to Crookwell. Then I think - why not call Flightwatch and ask for the actual weather for Goulburn. It turns out to be not so bad now - so we land at Goulburn. After wandering around a turboprop powered DC3 and getting a loan of a fuel card to top up on Avgas from a really helpful guy from Canberra it's time to sit down and wait.

We don't wait long - maybe half an hour. As I'm doing the run-ups our Canberra mate flys back in - he's tried to get up to Camden and failed - same story as us - though he says the view out to the coast has improved. So that's it - we decide to fly back basically direct Goulburn - Wollongong - just making sure to avoid the Nowra restricted airspace. The gap between cloud base and ranges is enough to make me comfortable - though it's definitely at the lower end of my comfort range. Once at the coast (near Gerroa) we easily make it up the coast past Wollongong, Port Kemba and then inland to Appin (just avoiding a large rain cell). Then into Bankstown landing on runway 11C. While the trip wasn't quite what I planned it was still a fun way of spending a monday morning. And of course - here are some photos.

The RV build is coming along - I've now almost completed the Horizontal Stabiliser. I expect to have finished the entire empennage by Christmas. I've decided to go with the Quick Build kit for the wings and fuselage. The Quick Build kit takes about 4 months from time of order to delivery. So what that really means is I need to place the order soon. In turn what that means is that I need to decide whether or not this is going to be an RV-7 or an RV-7A. The RV-7 is a tailwheel aicraft, affectionately known as a taildragger. The RV-7A has a more modern tricycle undercarriage (derisively referred to as a nosedragger).

All my time (close to 400 hours) has been in nosedraggers - with only less than 3 hours (in a Tiger Moth, North American T-6 Texan and RV-6) in taildraggers. Even then I had help with the landings.

So this morning I was out at Curtis Aviation at Camden spending some time getting to know the Citabria (7GCBC). Click on the photo above for a larger version - this is the actual aircraft I flew this morning. After some practice handling in the training area we shot circuits for about 40 minutes. Well, I can now do three point landings in a tailwheel aircraft.
That doesn't mean of course I will be able to do them again - so more training is definitely required. It will probably take about 6 hours to get my tail wheel endorsement. So does that mean I've decided to go with the RV-7, not the RV-7A? Probably! If I can get competent flying taildraggers then I'll definitely go with the RV-7. Why? Well RV-7's look better than the nosewheel version. They can handle landing on rougher strips. And most importantly they don't suffer from the nosewheel problems experienced by some nosewheel RV's.

My latest lesson was Spinning. How to get into them and more importantly how to get out of them. We climbed to 6500 feet near 'The Oaks' which is a small airstrip to the south-west of Camden. You need to be at 6500 feet because it takes a fair bit of airspace to spin/recover in. In fact in a stable spin our rate of descent is about 6000 feet per minute - so as you can imagine the whole thing from start to recovery is done in a fairly short amount of time. To enter the spin - slow to 60 knots, smoothly apply full back elevator and full rudder (left or right) in unison. The airplane sort of tumbles and after a couple of rotations is established in a stable spin if everything works out OK. If the speed is rising dramatically you're in an accelerated spiral dive rather than a stable spin. If you are in a stable spin you just sit there watching the altimeter unwind. You're rotating around 360 degrees per second. At 5500 feet it's time to recover. We use the Müller-Beggs recovery technique. Throttle to idle, Hands up on the dash, identify direction of rotation, boot in full opposite rudder - wait till the rotation stops. Actually the rotation speeds up just before it stops (as per the physics principle of conservation of angular momentum). Then feet off the rudders, hands on the stick, make sure wings are level and then pull out of the (now vertical) dive. Oh and while all this is going on the engine typically stops - so we have to do air-starts - preferably by pulling 4G's - if that doesn't work it's time to press the starter button. We did 6 spin sequences - for the first couple my head was still spinning after the airplane had stopped spinning - I then started to get used to it. By the end of it I was actually enjoying myself (odd I know!).

It's not often I actually go 'wow' about anything on the internet. But today I actually came across something rather useful. The GPS Visualiser site allows you to feed in GPS tracks from your GPS and generate Google Earth .kmz files. The picture here is of some orbits I made over Sydney Habour. I've added some examples (just save the file and open with Google Earth). Here are some flights that I've made around Sydney and you can find some of the tracks from our UK 2006 holiday here and here Enjoy!

Next up was a lesson comprised of standard side slipping, slipping turns and the Falling Leaf manoeuvre. Slipping is pretty straighforward and I have done a fair bit of it over the years. What I had not experienced however was the Falling Leaf. Have a look at the video on this page for an idea of what the Falling Leaf looks like. Basically you put the aeroplane into a deep stall (both hands pulling the stick all the way back), then initiate the manoeuvre by stepping on a rudder (causing an incipient spin), then as you swing up one way you reverse the movement with opposite rudder, swinging back and forth. The key is not to get into a rhythm of just left/right/left/right (or right/left/right/left) with your feet (like on a step machine) - instead use opposite rudder when you see the aircraft's nose slide parallel to the horizon. It's harder to explain than do! After some initial squeamish-ness I enjoyed doing a few myself.

Given the absolutely stupid world we're living in and given this is a public blog I should probably add a disclaimer that anyone moronic enough to try any of the manoeuvres I've described in this blog without adequate training with a suitable flight instructor and aerobatic aicraft is probably going to wind up a smoking hole in the ground somewhere. Have a nice day y'all.