Innholdsfortegnelse for March/April 2020 i Australian Flying

SIGN UP TO KEEP UP! The Australian Flying website is updated daily with the latest GA news stories. Visit us online now at www.australianflying.com.au to also check out our free classifieds section, photo and video galleries, blogs, flying tips articles and comprehensive Warbird coverage. And be sure to register for our FREE weekly electronic newsletter, which delivers the latest news FREE to your inbox every Friday morning. This is the perfect way to stay up to date with the latest news in between print issue of Australian Flying. E-NEWSLETTER SIGN-UP AT WWW.AUSTRALIANFLYING.COM.AU…

Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Infrastructure and Transport Michael McCormack late last year appointed former AOPA Australia president Andrew Andersen as the chairman of the new General Aviation Advisory Network (GAAN). Andersen, who is the Vice President Pacific Council of the International Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association (IAOPA), is a 30-year pilot and aircraft owner and co-chair of the industry organisation Australian Strategic Air Traffic Management Group’s (ASTRA) Satellite-based Augmentations Systems sub-group. GAAN was previously known as the General Aviation Advisory Group (GAAG) and was chaired by former Royal Flying Doctor Service CEO Dr Martin Laverty, who has since left both the network and the RFDS. “The members of the network are selected based on their skills and expertise in the aviation industry and come from a cross-section of…

You don’t have to be a Type-A personality or the captain of the school football team to make a good defence force pilot, but you do have to have a set of skills and capabilities that will get you through training and onto an operational squadron. The Australian Defence Force (ADF) knows exactly what they’re looking for, but accurately plucking the right people from the crowd has come with its own set of problems over the years. Now they have a new weapon: the Aviation Screening Program (ASP). Australia’s defence forces used to select air crew using the process of work sampling. Suitable candidates were shipped up to Tamworth for two weeks, and in a program known as Flight Screening, were put in CT-4Bs and run through a series of…

Taxiing. It may seem so simple that there is no art to it at all; it’s one of the first in-aircraft skills we learn and we use it every time we fly. And yet, taxi-related incidents and accidents still occur frequently; the ATSB offers seven pages on ground-based incidents and runway incursions, and Airservices Australia offers an entire booklet on surface movement awareness. What is taxiing? The verb, “to taxi,” as it relates to a moving aircraft on the ground, dates to about 1911. The verb appears to be derived from the noun, “taxi,” referring to a nearly flightless training aircraft that dates to about 1909. The word may relate to the fact that flight instructors gave rides to new students in the “taxi” aeroplane. Eventually, getting around on the…

Garmin has introduced a new multi-function electronic flight instrument capable of replacing round gauges in existing instrument panels. Named the GI 275, the unit can be retrofitted to aircraft using the existing 3.125” (79 mm) panel holes. The GI 275 can be configured as a variety of instruments including, an attitude indicator, attitude directional indicator (ADI), course deviation indicator (CDI), horizontal situation indicator (HSI) and engine indication system (EIS). Beyond the traditional flight instrument display, the GI 275 adds multi-function display-like features, such as traffic, weather, terrain, airport diagrams and optional synthetic vision technology. Alternatively, a GI 275 can also be installed as a standby to a number of glass flight displays and is available with a 60-minute back-up battery. It’s also compatible with a variety of third-party autopilots and…

Developing, writing, consulting and finalising new safety regulations is a big job. As everyone knows, the task of completing the updating and rewriting of Australia’s aviation regulations has taken a long time. In part this has been due to the stop-start nature of the regulatory reform program, but it is also a fact that going through every regulation line by line and checking to make sure they are accurate and meet their intended purpose is a huge amount of work. On top of this is the need to introduce new provisions to keep up with developments in safety and technology. But after years of work to get each new Civil Aviation Safety Regulation made, we are now at the critical final stage – implementation of the last regulations. CASA has…

CASA’s new draft Advisory Circular 61-16 Spin Avoidance and Stall Recovery Training provided some good holiday reading for us. CASA’s view is now “Spin recovery training is highly recommended for any pilot at any level of licence or experience and is worth revision at any stage of a pilot's career.” Spin recovery training didn’t help in recent spin accidents involving instructors and didn’t help many of my friends. My view is that Upset Prevention and Recovery Training (UPRT) is more appropriate as ICAO states “all airplane operators, pilot schools, and training centers are encouraged to implement UPRT and to use this guidance, as applicable to the type of airplane in which training is conducted.” EASA should be applauded for mandating UPRT in CPL and ATP training courses; however, the introduction…

Editor’s Pick The debate about a fleet of CL415 firebombers is not new; it has been mooted before, but with almost zero progress. With the industry divided on the subject, this summers disastrous fires have reignited the argument and this reader believes it is time to make something of the concept. Wanted: one Fleet of Firebombers Dear Steve, I am a past member of the RAAF, a private pilot, I was a rural firefighter for eight years and an Auxiliary firefighter for five years. I know a lot about aerial attack on bush fires. I am trying to get support for an idea of mine to get the Australian government to purchase a squadron of about 12 CL415 firebombers that would be owned and operated by the RAAF. Every year…

An order for nine Avanti EVO twin turbo-props signed just days before Christmas last year looks set to revitalise Piaggio Aerospace and resurrect aircraft manufacture. The contract with the Italian defence force is worth around €196 million. Piaggio Aerospace has been under administration since declaring insolvency in November 2018 and was put on the open market in May last year. The agreement provides for the Italian manufacturer to produce and deliver five airframes in passenger transport and ambulance configuration and four aircraft for flight inspection over four years. Under the same contract, Piaggio Aerospace will retrofit a P.180 already operated by Italian Armed Forces. The value of the aircraft and retrofit has been put at €130 million. According to the agreement, the ministry will also finalise a commitment within two…

Last December, the Governor-General signed three pieces of aviation regulation that signified the end of a 31-year reform program. The three parts–103, 105 and 131–complete the regulation reform started in 1988 to migrate the Civil Aviation Regulation (CAR) and other instruments into the Civil Aviation Safety Regulations (CASR). CASA CEO and Director of Aviation Safety Shane Carmody said he was pleased the reform program was finally complete and praised industry representatives that assisted with the program. “Two years ago we had 10 regulations to complete the CASR suite. I made a commitment to industry that we’d get them done and today I am pleased we have finally got there,” he said. “I would like to thank everyone who has contributed to the regulation development program, particularly the Aviation Safety Advisory…

Cirrus recently announced an IFR capable training version of their best-selling SR series, single engine aircraft, known as the TRAC. The SR20 version of the TRAC is powered by the 215 hp Lycoming. This smooth-running engine has proven popular in the G6 version of the SR20 and yields a great turn of speed. The fixed gear TRAC aircraft have a gear lever and gear lights, but the wheels do not actually retract. There is a panel for instructors to simulate gear failure. I was offered the opportunity to fly the TRAC, observe a fleet delivery, ask lots of questions of the director of the SR product line, Ivy McIver, and to delve into those behind the announcement features such as multimedia training and support offerings, including “iFOM,” an interactive Flight…

It seems to have been around forever. The classic piston twin workhorse, slugging away in remote areas, on poor quality airstrips, in the tropics, in the deserts, and in the big city airports. That familiar aircraft is the Britten-Norman Islander. While the Islander is quite familiar, the company Britten-Norman is not. It is based in the most unlikely of aircraft manufacturing locations: the Isle of Wight in the English Channel. In perhaps a sad reflection on the demise of the British aircraft industry, Britten-Norman is now the only privately-owned commercial aircraft producer in the UK. Beginnings John Britten and Desmond Norman, who worked together at de Havilland, formed the company in the early 1950s to convert Tiger Moths for crop-dusting (for export to New Zealand). That work led them to…

The origins of business aviation post World War I and for two decades following World War II have been covered in recent editions of Australian Flying. I now turn to the very exciting period when turbine powered business aircraft began to change the way business is conducted throughout the world. Manufacture of turbo-prop business aircraft commenced in the late 1950s with the Gulfstream GI, which paved the way for others to be introduced to the market in the 1960s and 1970s. These included the Beech King Air 90 in 1964 and Swearingen Merlin II in 1965. These were followed by Cessna 441 Conquest, Rockwell Commander 690, Piper Cheyenne, Merlin III/IV and Beech King Air 100 and Super King Air 200 in the 1970s. During the 1960s, jets also began to…

The unprecedented and deadly beginning to Australia’s 2019-20 fire season saw record numbers of rotary- and fixed-wing aircraft responding to numerous fires burning around the country. On Australia’s east coast, fires have been burning since September in southern Queensland, Victoria and northern New South Wales. By mid-November, more than 70 bushfires had already triggered evacuations from Bundaberg down to the Gold Coast, with some fire attack operations occurring as far north as Cairns. The NSW bushfires burnt through millions of hectares; an area almost twice the size of greater Sydney. Forecasts held little good news, with the weeks leading up to Christmas and beyond seeing continued high temperatures and strong winds. The majority of the aircraft working on these fires were contracted by the National Aerial Firefighting Centre (NAFC) on…

MTOW INCREASE PG 12 PIAGGIO AEROSPACE PG 14 AUSFLY DATES PG 14 ADVISORY NETWORK PG 16 REGULATORY REFORM PG 18 CASA will proceed with a project to allow Approved Self-administering Aviation Organisations (ASAO) like RAAus to administer aircraft up to 760 kg maximum take-off weight after feedback published last year showed overwhelming support for the idea. Currently, an ASAO is restricted to administering aircraft up to only 600 kg MTOW, which RAAus has been lobbying to raise for a number of years. Last year, CASA put three options to the industry in a discussion paper: According to CASA, the feedback has significantly endorsed a new weight increase, either completely or with some modifications to the proposed new rule. “The aviation community has expressed strong support for an increase in the…

The Sport Aircraft Association of Australia (SAAA) has announced the dates of their national fly-in and air show. Ausfly 2020 is scheduled to be held at Narromine in central NSW from 8-10 October this year. The event co-incides with the 65th anniversary of the SAAA. “There will be aircraft static and flying displays, educational sessions and industry exhibitors,” the announcement said. “This is the opportunity to get up and close with aircraft, discover an amazing part of Australian aviation history at the Narromine Aviation Museum, and simply catch up with fellow aviators and like-minded people. “The planning for 2020 has already begun and we expect many exciting announcements over the coming months of what to expect.” Organised in conjunction with Australian General Aviation Alliance (AGAA), last year’s Ausfly presented one-and-a-half…

In 1919 Prime Minister Billy Hughes, sensing the important role aviation may one day have for his young nation, put up a challenge, aimed squarely at the wiley Australia pilot service men waiting to return home from The Great War. He put up a £10,000 prize for the first to fly from the UK to Australia, open to land and seaplanes. Multiple parties set out and the Great Air Race turned out to be demanding, difficult and was finished by few. Ultimately no seaplanes participated in 1919, yet with the new Southern Sun flying boat in Russia needing to be brought home, retracing the historic 1919 Vicker’s Vimy flight led by brothers Keith and Ross Smith, winners of the Great Air Race, from London to Darwin, was an exciting opportunity…

Bryce England knew his days in green were over. The Blackhawk pilot had a set of skills that were a perfect match for the Australian Army, but finding a civil career that challenged his abilities and valued those skills was problematic. Not for him flying tourists around Uluru in a Bell 206; not for him teaching in a Robinson R22. He needed to fly complex missions in a large twin-engined helicopter, and he needed to keep serving the community in some capacity. England targeted the career that was closest to military flying: helicopter emergency medical services (HEMS). When the perfect vacancy arose, England turned in his army boots, threw his Commanding Officer a final salute and packed his bags for Canberra. Today, he is one of five pilots that operate…

The EFB revolution has forever changed aircraft cockpits to the extent that even commercial aviation companies, aircraft manufacturers and the Australian Defence Force have absorbed them into their day-to-day operations. The flexibility and speed they offer crews increases safety whilst simultaneously saving time and money. And when you’ve got a fleet of aircraft to run, that few minutes or few dollars saved can add up to significant amounts at the end of the financial year. But with EFBs came a problem: easy customisation. Users could add and subtract features, functions, charts, aircraft and all sorts of things to tailor their own EFB to their own needs. Fantastic … unless you operate a fleet of aircraft each with its own EFB and you want them all to be the same. Then…

Andrew Kendrick always wanted to fly as a kid, growing up in Wallan under the approach path to the airport. With an electronic engineering degree under his belt, Andrew then took a Trial Instructional Flight on his birthday. With only another 29 or so hours to go to a licence, Andrew spend the next few years at Tristar Aviation in Moorabbin learning to fly in a C172. Years later he wanted something cheap and easy to build. Money, the great restrainer of fun on many levels, forced him to seek a cheaper way into aircraft ownership. “I keep building things anyway,” says Andrew. “I always wanted to build an aeroplane, but it wasn’t until I heard about the SAAA that things really started to progress. The people I met at…