Innholdsfortegnelse for March-April 2016 i Australian Flying

They don’t do things in halves over in WA. The folk at Busselton’s aero club have their preparations in full swing for Aerofest 2016, promising to put on an even bigger and better event than their hugely successful event in 2014. On the calendar for 6 March 2016, the Busselton Aerofest brings back all the reasons that aviation enthusiasts and pilots have flocked to airports over the decades. Visitors will be treated to flying displays and the chance to roam around multiple aircraft, including vintage, warbird and light sport aircraft. There will also be displays of vintage and classic cars, restored military vehicles, emergency services, aviation-related stalls and hangar displays, food and drink plus entertainment for the kids. Project Co-ordinator, Ken Manton, is optimistic about the event. “We’ve had some…

Mooney’s M10T proof-of-concept aircraft made its maiden flight in the USA on 23 December last year. The M10T is a new single-engined, three-seat trainer powered by a Continental CD-135 diesel engine. It is constructed largely of carbon fibre and has a projected cruise speed of 140 KTAS. Test pilot Len Fox flew the aircraft for 15 minutes over Chino, California, making basic flight manoeuvres and verifying data. “The flight was a tremendous milestone for the M10 program,” said Jerry Chen, CEO of Mooney International. “Our team of engineers have been working very hard to reach this day, and we are excited to have achieved this milestone in 2015, just one year after announcing the M10 program at Zhuhai Airshow in China.” Mooney’s engineers expect to have the M10T certfied in…

Sixteen years after the first Cirrus production aircraft was delivered, partisans of the Australia general aviation market still view the SR20 and 22 with a great deal of suspicion: composite materials, glass cockpit, side-stick controls and, of course, that parachute. It looks nothing like the traditional metal-clad pistons singles that have formed the backbone of general aviation in Australia since 1955; therefore, the relatively new interloper clearly is defective in some way. The older designs are still in production and they will do us nicely, thank you! But get this: of all new four-seat piston singles sold in Australia since the start of 2011, Cirrus is out-selling Cessna and Piper combined. The harrumphs of the indignant conservatives are starting to become muffled. Such are the inroads that Cirrus has made…

Beechcraft designed the first Bonanzas to meet the needs of post-war aviation. It was an upmarket machine that boasted speed and comfort at a price, and besotted American pilots opened their wallets accordingly. Throughout the 1950s and into the early 1960s, the BE35 V-tail and later the BE33 straight tail had almost a monopoly on the fast people-mover category. Other manufacturers had competing planes, but nobody did it better than Beech and their Bonanza. But one market eluded them: charter. Just across the way in Wichita, Kansas, stood Cessna and their beefy C210 and C206, which were the high-winged kings of the charter market. They were slower than the Bonanzas, but lifted more load. Then, in 1968, Beechcraft released their challenger. The Model 36 Bonanza was longer than the 35…

The “Lurching Cave” and the “Box” are various names that professional pilots call the simulators that they regularly have to display their talents in to maintain their professional ratings, but back in the 1930s when Ed Link developed a device so that he could fly because his family couldn’t afford it, he could never have envisaged what could happen over the next 80 years. Debuting in 1929, Ed’s simulator looked like a small toy aircraft with short wings balanced on a mounting that swung and swayed using as actuators the same bellows units that his family used in their organ business. Ed Link eventually sold six of these trainers to the US Army Air Corp in the early 1930s for US$3500 each. A modern simulator can cost upwards of $25…

Bureaucratic buck-passing did not impress many of the RAPAC members. Keeping Australia’s airspace and procedures up to date is an on-going management process and for over 40 years a major grass roots consultative forum for this work has been the 300 or so volunteers who constitute the 11 Regional Airspace and Procedures Advisory Committees (RAPACs) nationwide. RAPAC members are not appointed by CASA or Airservices, but are nominated by the organisation they represent, and include all airspace users from hang gliders and parachutists up to commercial airlines and the military. Recently there has been an unfortunate, but totally avoidable, deterioration in the relationship between the RAPACs and the CASA administration via the Office of Airspace Regulation (OAR). Since July, 2014 a major RAPAC national concern has been the unintended consequences…

The Aviation Maintenance Repair and Overhaul Business Association (AMROBA) has laid the responsibility for driving reforms at CASA at the feet of the CASA board. In AMROBA’s January 2016 newsletter, Executive Director Ken Cannane says the responsibility of the board to effect changes is enshrined in directions given to them by the Federal Government. “The future of aviation in Australia is now the responsibility of the board of CASA,” Cannane states. “The DPM [Deputy Prime Minister] Statement of Expectations clearly places the responsibility on the board to produce objectives, strategies, policies and directions to the DAS [Director of Aviation Safety] on how the DAS manages CASA. “However, will this CASA board be accountable to the public? Will this board promulgate all objectives, strategies, policies and directions determined by the board…

Wrightsair pilot Matt Harnetty has a better reason than many to treasure the basic “see and avoid” rules of the road that define how two VFR aircraft in the same space should avoid a collision. As a commercial charter pilot operating scenic flights over Lake Eyre in South Australia’s outback, he knows the annual Easter to September period is likely to bring water in the usually dry salt-lake, followed closely by a riot of wildflower colour, a steady stream of scenic flight passengers and a four-fold increase in the number of aircraft sharing his airspace. Wrightsair is based in William Creek (population “six and a dog”), 100 km from Lake Eyre. The company’s fleet includes twin-engine Aerostar and Seneca aircraft, and single-engine GA8 Airvan, with Cessna’s 210, 207 and 172.…

An aeroplane cockpit is a complex environment; one which can prove challenging due to the amount of input presented to the pilot's senses. Gauges and screens for the eyes, knobs and buttons for touch, noises for the ears. Together they all make up the total cockpit experience. Over the years, engineers have put a lot of innovative effort into improving what we look at through colour-coded gauges, moving map GPS systems and now glass cockpits. It is the same for touch: flap levers, landing gear switches and propeller knobs are specific shapes to cue a pilot that the hand has reached the desired control. But perhaps the one that aircraft engineers have been unable to influence the most is noise. Propellers spinning at 2500 rpm can make a bit of…

In August 2015 a storm hit Chandler Municipal Airport in the US State of Arizona, destroying or damaging more than 30 aircraft and causing more than $1 million worth of damage. The storm dislodged a three-tonne hangar door from its mounts and blew ground support equipment across a packed parking area. Witnesses described watching as aircraft “flipped up, cart-wheeled, turned over on the ground, slammed, picked up and turned back over again.” One owner of a single-engine Piper Warrior spoke of arriving at the airport to find his pride-and-joy fully 200 metres away from its normal parking position, unfortunately on its back. The Saratoga parked right next to the Warrior was undamaged. The Chandler example was perhaps an extreme case, for which no aircraft owner forced to park their aircraft…

Australian helicopter training operators want the new Part 141 training regulations broadened to include add-on modules for specialist skills, the higher-end Part 142 reserved for multi-engine training for helicopters above 5700 kg MTOW and comprehensive and consistent transition guidance materials for both, according to industry feedback delivered to the Australian Helicopter Industry Association (AHIA) through a 12 January teleconference. More than half of Australia’s 30 or so helicopter training organisations joined the call with AHIA president Peter Crook and vice president Ray Cronin, covering topics from the need for conformity of certificate application requirements between regions to the definition of a Part 141 or Part 142 training organisation and removing the requirement for basic instrument training as part of a standard commercial helicopter pilot licence. The discussion was robust and…

New twin pilots always underestimate how much dead-engine cooling happens in those few minutes. Date of Accident: 12 September 2002 Time of Accident: 1043Z Aircraft Registration: ZS-KHG Type of Aircraft: BEECH 76 Pilot-in-command Licence type: Commercial Licence Valid: Yes Age: 40 Total Flying Hours: 1043.3 Hours on Type: 4.9 Last point of departure: Wonderboom Next point of intended landing: Wonderboom Location of the accident site: Approximately 7 nm NE of Wonderboom Meteorological Information: CAVOK, Wind NE at 8 Knots Number of people on board: 2+0 No. of people injured: 0 No. of people killed: 0 SYNOPSIS The student pilot was accompanied by an instructor to the Pretoria General Flying Training Area No. 2 for the completion of an initial twin conversion. Prior to the flight, the student was unable to…

Team Matt Hall Racing will carry significant momentum into the 2016 Red Bull Air Race World Championship on the strength of two race wins and second place in the standings last year. With the season beginning in Abu Dhabi on 11 March, the team knows they are capable of turning potential into results, and Matt Hall believes the 2015 outcome will prove a solid foundation for another good season. “[the wins] were hugely important in the context of a career and also in the context of the 2015 season,” he told Australian Flying. “We were confident we could win a race but the question was always there: when would we win a race? Now that question is answered.” Hall doesn’t attribute either win to a specific tactic, but says the…

The Federal Aviation Administration issued the type certificate for the twin-engined HondaJet in early December last year, with the first customer delivery occuring only two days before Christmas. The FAA presented the type certificate to Honda Aircraft Company President and CEO Michimasa Fujino on 11 December in front of more than 2000 people. “Achieving FAA type certification for the HondaJet is a monumental milestone for Honda,” said Fujino. “We established Honda Aircraft as a new aerospace company and introduced our first product: an advanced light jet with technologies developed from serious research activities. We designed, tested, and have now certified this clean-sheet design aircraft – an unprecedented challenge for Honda.” The $US4.5 million jet project has been beset by delays since its conception during the “very light jet” outbreak of…

He’s on a roll, now! Rossy’s found a great game to amuse himself. “Go on, catch that one. See how long it takes us to pass him.” Tracking west along the Great Australian Bight, I peer down at the long straight ribbon of bitumen beneath us and spot a three-trailer road train rumbling westwards along the Eyre Highway. We’d just mucked around down at the coast attempting a creative photo shoot of the cliffs, but since the results were showing signs of dubious success, I was happy to move on. “OK, I’ll get him on a hill,” I joked, as a million miles of perfectly flat Australia spreads out in front of us. As usual, my hired Cessna 182 from Curtis Aviation has settled into her task admirably and doesn’t…

It is refreshing to see the phrase “game changer” bestowed on someone who actually deserves it. Too often, this term is usurped by marketing people who have run out of ideas on how to brand their latest product, service or superstar. However, when used to describe Virgin Australia boss John Borghetti, there is no more appropriate use. In his new book Game Changer, former editor and publisher of Australian Flying Doug Nancarrow explains with intimate detail how the son of an Italian immigrant worked his way almost to the top of the management tree in Qantas, then compelled the airline game in Australia to change just to keep up with his energy and drive once he took his obvious talent to Virgin Australia. His strategy was failing; Borghetti’s was flourishing.…

Shirley Harding looks like any other pilot going about her business at Serpentine Airfield, 60 km south of Perth, WA, and home of the Sport Aircraft Association of Australia’s Chapter 16. But if you follow Shirley back to the hangar she shares with her husband Andrew, you will soon learn that the flashy red RV-6 was their joint-build project, and the blue RV-12 is her own latest achievement. With Andrew often working away, Shirley says that she felt the need for something productive to do. “It occurred to me that I would like another aircraft building project, if I could find something manageable without a full time assistant,” says Shirley. “I chose the RV-12 because it is largely constructed with blind rivets, which I can set by myself without the…