Innholdsfortegnelse for July - August 2017 i Australian Flying

Both Piper Aircraft and Textron Aviation have made changes to their dealership arrangements in Australia. In late May, Piper Aircraft appointed long-time Cessna dealer Airflite as their exclusive sales agent in both Australia and New Zealand, and Hawker Pacific took over the Cessna piston agency in the southern states. Previously, Airflite was the official dealer for Cessna pistons in SA, Vic, Tas and WA. Hawker Pacific already had the Cessna piston rights in NSW, QLD and NT, but this change makes Hawker Pacific the exclusive agent for all Cessna products in Australia. Tony Jones, Executive Vice President Strategy and Development, Hawker Pacific, says the company is honoured to be the sales partner of choice for Textron Aviation. “Hawker Pacific is very proud of its long-standing relationship with Textron Aviation and…

Airservices Australia has launched a new portal that features camera views of weather conditions at locations around Australia. The live portal, which can be found on the Airservices website, enables pilots to view actual weather conditions, opening with six sites deemed some of the most critical based on industry feedback. Airservices CEO Jason Harfield said Airservices will add more locations to the portal as the project progresses. “With valuable assistance from the Bureau of Meteorology the new portal features cameras at Archerfield, Kilmore Gap, Kingscoat [sic], Launceston, Norfolk Island and Parafield," Harfield said, "and now we will work to implement cameras at other sites based on results of an online survey.” Airservices have been working closely with the Bureau of Meteorology and airports to identify sites with existing power, communication…

Piaggio’s Avanti EVO twin turbine is a sleek and stylish head-turner. With two turbo-prop engines facing backward and three wings, the configuration defies any direct comparisons. However, the performance and comfort the EVO brings to its customer base easily negates any reservations operators may have about aircraft’s quirky looks. In short, the Avanti EVO is an executive jet in a twin turbo-prop’s clothing, which has enabled Piaggio to position their aircraft in both markets, and there are not a lot of corporate aircraft out there that can do that. Traditionally, the twin-turbine is the upper-level of propeller operations, with owners needed to upgrade to a jet to get better performance numbers. What Piaggio is saying with the Avanti EVO, is that operators can now keep their turbo-prop, but have all…

Cirrus Aircraft is bullish about the future of its single-engine SF50 Vision Jet in the Asia Pacific, after the US Federal Aviation Administration’s 4 May granting production certification cleared the company to start ramping up towards its stated goal of building 125 Vision Jets per year. Cirrus holds seven Australian orders for the 300-knot, 1200 nm aircraft, all from existing Cirrus SR customers. But Cirrus Director for Australia, New Zealand and South East Asia, Graham Horne, believes present interest is just the tip of the iceberg. “In five years or so we may have 30 to 40 Vision Jets flying in the region,” he told Australian Flying. The Cirrus SF50 first flew in 2008, one of a flock of new Very Light Jets (VLJ) taking advantage of a new small…

ong time SAAA and National Council member Bruce Towns became interested in flying when his friend invited him to go and watch a mate do circuits at Berwick in the early '70s. Bruce had no connection to flying but, standing by the fence, the two mates decided there’s no reason they couldn’t have a crack at it themselves. Forty years later both are still flying. After owning a number of light aeroplanes, Bruce pondered his next move and bought a Glasair III kit. “The cover of a US flying magazine had a photo of an aerobatic Glasair III going straight up. I thought it looked pretty impressive. Home-building in Australia hadn’t reached its peak, but I rang Peter Hodgins who was building a Glasair in NSW. I went up to…

What is this? Peak hour?” We’re all thinking the same thing, as our four aircraft jostle for position overhead the world famous Twelve Apostles in southern Victoria. There’s a dedicated frequency for this part of the world, and as we’re joined on the airwaves by multiple fixed wing and heli scenic pilots, we can understand why. It’s a glorious day in early March; it’s also Saturday morning about 11am and so no surprise that the entire local scenic world is up here with us, showing off the dress circle views of one of Australia’s most celebrated natural rock shows. We don’t care at this point that the original posse of 12 has lost a few members to the pounding ocean over time; we’re down at a thousand feet above the…

T he weather forecast was less than ideal: a typical "four seasons day" complete with marauding bands of showers and pockets of low cloud. The C182 covered the 45 nm in under half an hour, and was quickly down at 500 feet above the turbulent ocean making steep turns as a few hardy beach-goers stared up at the unusual flight path. At first glance it reads like the start of an accident report, but this wasn’t a bunch of reckless amateur pilots pushing boundaries – it was just a normal day for three volunteers in the Auckland Coastguard Air Patrol (ACAP). A surfboard was found abandoned on the shore and there were fears that someone had been swept out to sea, but thankfully that day was one of many false…

G others aren’t suggesting any recovery will be a short term spike before a continued slide. In the United States two potential unleaded avgas fuels are jumping through ever smaller testing hoops devised by the Piston Aviation Fuels Initiative (PAFI), counting down to a deadline of releasing a 100-octane unleaded fuel to the US general aviation fleet by the end of 2018. Of the 17 candidate fuels initially submitted from six companies in July 2014, four were chosen for US government funded PAFI Phase One evaluation. Two fuels, Shell UL100 and Swift UL102, were then selected for Phase Two. Under this detailed test regime, the two fuels will be tested in 20 engines of 15 models, ranging from carburettor-fed four cylinder engines to turbo-charged and fuel-injected sixes and representative…

ollowing the issue of an Australian Parts Manufacturing Approval (APMA) by CASA in 2015 for their Bell 206 composite tail rotor blades, Airwork Helicopters received the first directly approved FAA Supplemental Type Certificate (STC) in late March. Airwork founder and CEO, Myles Tomkins said that the blades are approved for fitment to 206A and B, with the 206L Long Ranger being recently added to the list. The carbon fibre and Kevlar blades provide increased thrust and structural strength, while producing a markedly lower noise footprint. Production is well under way at Airwork’s advanced composite manufacturing facility in Caboolture. The blades also offer twice the service life of Bell OEM items at a substantially lower unit price. Composite MRBs in Australia and NZ Three Bell Jet Ranger operators in Australia and…

afety education and promotion for the Australian aviation community is a high priority for the Civil Aviation Safety Authority. This is driven by a number of factors, not the least being these are functions set out for CASA in the Civil Aviation Act. The Act says CASA will encourage a greater acceptance of high standards of safety through comprehensive safety education and training programs and accurate and timely safety advice. We take these functions very seriously because it is clear that one of the most constructive contributions we can make to keeping Australian skies safe is to promote safety knowledge and understanding. Other functions, such as developing clear and appropriate safety standards and conducting comprehensive aviation industry surveillance, are obviously also very important. However, it is not actually CASA that…

Diamond Aircraft has announced a new range of single-engined carbon-fibre aeroplanes based on the DA50 design. The Austrian manufacturer will produce three different variants of the DA50, with a four-seat DA50-IV, five-seat DA50-V and seven-seat DA50-VII being added to their range. The new aircraft look to be aimed directly at the fast single market currently dominated by the Cirrus SR22. A prototype of the five-seat DA50-V made its first public appearance at AERO Friedrichshafen this year, sporting a 260- hp Safran diesel that is expected to drive the DA50-V to 173 KTAS. The prototype has a maximum take-off weight of 1800 kg, which in turn gives it a payload of 570 kg. “The DA50-V sets the benchmark in luxury, comfort and economy in general aviation," said Diamond CEO and owner…

Single engine turbo-props have established themselves as the new darlings of the charter companies and feeder airlines, consigning the faithful piston-engined singles and twins largely to history books and aviation magazine retrospectives. For operators around the world, the SETPs–as they are called–offer newer airframes, better short-field performance and run on jet fuel rather than avgas, which can be liquid unobtainium in some markets But many operators found their financial models condemned them to keep pushing the old pistons rather than make to switch to an SETP, because the new aircraft were expensive, and in some cases the leap to a Cessna Caravan or Pilatus PC-12 was too great to contemplate. It seemed those operators have been forgotten in the manufacturers' stampede for faster turbine aeroplanes that carry more people or…

F rom home-built oddity to mainstream material, composite aircraft construction has come of age. The material credited with revolutionising the kit-built and light aircraft industries in the 1980s now makes up half of the structures of both Boeing 787 and Airbus A350 airliners and is also finding its way in to jet engine design. The composite Cirrus SR series has been the best selling general aviation aircraft since 2002, and composite construction has improved the performance, attraction and ease of build for light sport aircraft home-builders and manufacturers alike. Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo, spearheading space tourism, is also of composite construction. Composites offer a compelling strength-to-weight ratio and the ability to create aerodynamically efficient complex curves and shapes with a cheaper, more easily scaled production process. Lighter, more aerodynamic airframes translate…

Instrument flight is not just another rating, despite what its name says. Instrument flight is a whole new way of piloting that is more complex, intense and less forgiving than visual flight. It requires pilots to surrender the role of their natural senses to electronic systems, and trust them, literally, with their own safety and the safety of others. I But done properly, instrument flight removes much of the worry and angst caused by the weather demons that haunt, in some way, every VFR flight. On days when VFR pilots look mournfully at a flight completely ruined by low cloud and rain, their instrument-rated companions are lodging flight plans and getting on with the pre-flight. The challenge for pilots comes in not just qualifying to fly on instruments, but in…

As RAAus members would know, RAAus attends accident scenes where a member is involved in either a fatal or serious accident. What members probably don't know is that we are invited to attend these scenes, and without an invitation from the local police, RAAus essentially has no jurisdiction. Further to this fact is that when we are invited, usually as a subject-matter expert, we are requested to provide a report. The provision of a report is one step in our overall process, which is documented in our Emergency Response Plan (ERP). The ERP is a detailed internal RAAus document that governs every aspect of dealing with serious and fatal accidents. This accident report component of the ERP is prepared by the staff member who leads our investigation, in conjunction with…