Airshow pics - military flying

Aussie Aussie Aussie!

Susan and I have just returned from a marvelous trip to Melbourne Australia to see the Avalon Airshow 2007. While primarily I was there to see the military hardware (and believe me there there was a lot of it on display), I was surprised that it was the larger aircraft that stole the show. I took some photos with my new digital camera and I'll post them later on when I figure out how to present them properly.

Watching a C27J Spartan do an aileron roll at about 1000 feet was quite an eye opener. The DHC-4 Caribou, with its nice and loud Pratt & Whitney radials doing a combat low altitude resupply drop was simply awesome, and finally Australia's new C17 Globemaster III was amazingly quiet for such a large plane yet was able to perform a max rate turn in almost the same radius as the jet fighters, albeit a lot slower.

As for the civilian aircraft, the award has to go to the beautifully restored Lockheed Constellation, which took off on a night flight on the Friday evening with flames licking along the engine cowlings of its 4 massive supercharged dual row radials, a sight and noise I'll remember for a long time indeed.

As for the fast jets, I saw 7 types doing flying displays, starting with the RAAF BAe Hawk 127 Lead in Trainer, the RAAF F/A 18A Hornet, American F16C's and F15C's, a F/A 18F Super Hornet, a Cessna A-37 Dragonfly, and the one everyone goes to see, the RAAF F111. What I found interesting to note was that to my untrained eye, the F-16 appeared to have much better throttle response and general performance at the "airshow" altitude of around 500-7000 feet AGL. The bigger twin engined jets were no less impressive, but that little F-16 in an afterburner climb simply went ballistic.

They also had displays from the usual assortment of crazy aerobatic pilots in their souped up Pitts Specials and Sukhoi Su31s, a wonderfully graceful glider aerobatic display (the epitome of energy management), a large team of skydivers (I think there was about 40 of them), plus the odd commercial flight coming and going courtesy of JetStar's Airbus A320's.

But wait thats not all, on a whim I visited Moorabin Airport in southern Melbourne. It has an excellent Aviation Museum with some remarkable examples of yesterdays aircraft that are sadly quite rare these days. I highly recommend a visit. The second place we went to was the Royal Victorian Aero Club, located just around the corner from the museum. The weather looked pretty good from the ground and when I said I wanted to go up, they got very excited indeed. I was introduced to a delightful instructor called Sylvia who asked me where I wanted to go and what I wanted to see. I said I just wanted to see Melbourne from the air, so she suggested a loop around the CBD and then a trip south over the Mornington Peninsula and we'd go from there. I told them my current flight status and they said they had a choice of a PA28 Warrior or a Cessna 172N. In the end it was Susan who chose the plane because she finds getting into a 172 easier than clambering over the wing of a Piper.

Sylvia said after she found out we were from NZ that she had been on a holiday to NZ with her husband and they had flown to Milford Sound from Queenstown. That must have been some trip because she was still really enthusiastic reminiscing about it. Maybe I'll do the same flight in the future sometime...

I was introduced to VH-RLG, our 172N which I was going to fly. Sylvia was happy for me to pre-flight her so I did. Looking at the radio stack and nav gear I was transported back to my early days of flying ZK-ETA and ZK-JAF with those hard to turn radio knobs, but RLG also had a Garmin GPS unit installed which looked kind of out of place being so modern. It was also a return to flying a 172 with 40 degree flaps so I made a mental note about maintaining the correct nose attitude on the descent.

Compared with NZ Australia has much more stringent security in their general aviation. All parked aircraft must have a padlocked throttle as well as the usual things. I hopped in and did a quick tour of the controls to make sure they were in places where I could find them without having to look for them. While 172's generally are different, their basic layout is common so I had no nasty surprises. After declaring the aircraft airworthy, Sylvia and I escorted Susan to the aircraft and we got started. Moorabin has 5 tarmac runways and all the taxiways are clearly defined. I chose to use this to get some taxi practice in and after getting used to the rudder pedals I thought I did quite well. We went over to the runup area and I went through a normal runup, going over what I had been taught. I guess if they did things differently in Australia they must not have been that much different because Sylvia didn't make any comments.

One BIG difference between Australia and New Zealand is radio coms procedure. It is quite different to the point of me being glad Sylvia was there. We taxied to the hold point and she radioed that we were ready to depart. We were given clearance to take off and when I paused to do my pre-take off checks she said we'd better get going. I had my hand opening the throttle as she said this so it wasn't a major drama. Moorabin was quite busy that morning and I think there were about 4 or 5 aircraft in the circuit so we had to make a fairly hasty departure to maintain separation. I remember on the climb out the Tower giving clearance for the guy behind us in a Warrior to land.

RLG is only 160 hp so it didn't climb all that well, even though we only had 120 litres of fuel onboard. I set for a 65 knot climb to 200 AGL then after raising the flaps I found an 80 knot nose position and set about making the first turn, a gentle left turn towards Albert Park to the north. Sylvia wanted us to climb to 1500 and once we were near Albert Park she'd request a left hand orbit of the CBD at 1500. We were cleared as requested so I made more gentle turns to keep us away from Essendon airports airspace and around we went. There was some mechanical turbulence (mostly updrafts) but the day was nice enough for Sylvia to ask if it was OK for her to take some photos (Susan was busily snapping away in the back) for their training manual.

Once our orbit was complete we reported clear and turned east to maneuver around Moorabin airspace so we could then turn south. It was so clear that overhead St Kilda we could clearly see French Island away to the southeast in West Port Bay. We flew east as far as the foothills of the Dandenongs, then we turned south towards French Island. Sylvia took some photo's of various visual reporting points then asked me if I wanted to see the MotoGP course at Philip Island. Susan and I had been to Philip Island previously on a bus tour but we hadn't seen the race track and I wanted to see it so Sylvia tuned into the ADF and I followed that. Once we were over the water of West Port Bay the ride smoothed out and I made very slight adjustments to the trim to keep us balanced and level. I did an orbit of the race track and we headed west between Arthur's Seat and Mt Martha where Sylvia asked me to descend to 500 over the water but near the coast and we'd track up the coast. It was so smooth that I had us trimmed for straight and level at 110 knots at 500 feet in no time. Sylvia said we could slow a little so I backed off the power, raised the nose slightly, retrimmed and we were straight and level at 100 knots and 550 feet. It was not scary, I've never been afraid of low flying, and a day like the one we had was custom made for it.

After about 5 minutes of flying up the coast Sylvia pointed at a landmark up the coast and said that we needed to be at 1500 so I decided to err on the side of caution and slowly opened the throttle to begin our climb. After taking a quick snap of the visual reporting point she gained a clearance in to land and asked me if I was OK doing the landing. I said sure, she then asked me if I had done many straight in landings and I said I had, but not that many. Straight in landings are all a matter of simple mathematics and planning. I did the downwind checks early, slowed RLG up and lowered the first notch of flap. After bringing the speed back to 70 I then checked our descent and lowered the second notch. Then the third, and I noticed that our airspeed had crept up so I had to raise the nose. It was then I realised we were quite high so I lowered maximum flaps and got the airspeed back under control. I said to Sylvia that we were high but she replied that we had a lot of runway to use so just bring her down and let her float. I remember rounding out and floating so I just held the landing attitude and kept her straight and we gently touched down on the stall warning buzzer.

As we taxied back Sylvia said that I flew very well (I was still mentally kicking myself about the landing to agree) and she had enjoyed the trip as much as we had.

I should probably say something about the flight to and from Australia. Both legs were flown in a Boeing 777-200ER. My wearing of aviation clothing meant I got the window seat and the legroom while not that great was still better than a 737. The trip over was fantastic. The cloudbase was at around 10000 feet so we got a real good look at the Manukau harbour and even as far south as Mount Taranaki as we climbed to our cruise altitude of 36000 feet. On descent into Melbourne we could see the ground from about 25000 feet as we crossed 90 mile beach in eastern Victoria all the way down to the city as we were on final approach. Unfortunately on the way back the cloud cover in Melbourne was at about 4500 feet so I didn't get much of a view on the climb out. The descent into Auckland saw the cloud down to about 2000 feet so by the time we broke cloud we were well into our final approach over the Manukau harbour.

I wonder if its kind of crazy wanting to go flying when you are on holiday, Susan commented that it wasn't fair for me to do all the flying since I couldn't do any sightseeing, but when you are flying by landmarks and features you definitely get a very good look at them. :p

I'd like to go back in 2009 to farewell the F111 from the RAAF (the Avalon airshow is held biennially and the RAAF are going to retire the F111 in 2010), but I wonder if we'll be able to afford it.

Why do I fly?

Time for a more philosophical look at the general aviation pilot. I read this fantastic post on USEnet by Allan Lieberman and made me evaluate why I chose to partake in the ritual madness of flying, or more realistically, the art of converting cash into lift.

For me, flying is all about knowing your alive because literally your life is in your hands. You could argue that it is no different to when you drive your car or go for a walk around the block but when you are at 4000 feet and you look down knowing that coming down is inevitable, its just a matter of when and how, you really feel alive. To me, that knowledge is both exhilarating and terrifying. The other quality that feeling has, and I'd say 99% of pilots feel it, is addiction. I now understand why extreme athletes do what they do, why people jump off perfectly good bridges with an elastic band tied to their feet, why people jump out of aircraft and off mountains trusting their life to a piece of synthetic fabric. I always feel better after a flight than before, and Susan will bundle me off to the Aero Club for a flight when I start moping around home.

But its not only that, its also a very goal focussed pastime. When I started out, all I focussed on was flying the aircraft the way my instructor wanted me to fly it. That progressed to readying myself for the eventual day that I'd be asked to take an aircraft up solo. From there, things built up to my first solo cross country, then finally my PPL checkride. As I said in an earlier post, I gained my license without giving any thought to where I wanted to go next with my flying. People would ask me if I was going on to press on for a CPL and I couldn't answer them sincerely because I honestly didn't know. That lead me to feel kind of stranded because I had no reason to fly, no goal to aim at. I found out then how important having a goal is to my flying, and following other online pilots I now make goals at the beginning of each year.

I don't fly for the sake of flying, although some times thats all the motivation I need. As Allan said in his post, I am one of a privileged few who are able to take to the skies on a whim. Its a great feeling.

My first flight in an Alpha

I found out recently that Chris had gone up in an Alpha so I was moping around the Waikato Aero Club on a fine Sunday afternoon proclaiming that I must have been the only club member not to have gone up in an Alpha when CPL Student Jason got sick and tired of my rambling and offered to take me up for a few circuits. I of course jumped at the chance.

As you can see, the Alpha 160 is a fairly tight squeeze for a man of my dimensions but once I was inside and the canopy was closed it wasn't that claustrophobic at all. This was because of the fighter-esque visibility from the bubble canopy. Its much like you are sitting on the plane rather than in it, but the 5 point aerobatic harness means you are securely fastened to the plane.

I was a little apprehensive at first because my legs were blocking full aileron deflection but Jason put the stick into what he called "a max rate turn" position and it wasn't blocking off the circulation in my leg like I had thought it might. We started up and after receiving clearance taxied over to the runup area for Grass 36. I noted the ride was fairly similar to that of an Archer with the oleo type undercarriage bumping and crashing as we crawled over the uneven grass taxiway.

After a fairly simple runup and pretake off check, we lined up and off we went. The takeoff roll was about what I'd expect for an aircraft of that weight to do, once we got airborne it climbed strongly away. The cockpit nose was surprisingly loud, but not that much louder than I'm used to. Once Jason had us downwind and trimmed the Alpha was rock solid, which I had expected with its thick chord slab wings and generous dihedral. The visibility makes circuits a breeze, you can scan in any direction (except below the wings of course) with relative ease, and its reassuring to be able to scan through a turn without having to constantly clear the A pillar.

We were on finals and it comes down very similar to an Archer, the best way to land them is to be thinking a long way ahead of the plane and ease the throttle back accordingly.

The next time around the circuit I asked Jason to demonstrate a glide approach so he requested one and we were approved. The Alpha has a rather fast glide (best glide speed is 80 knots) and we came down real fast. In the turn to finals I noticed we were descending at 1000 feet per minute. We came in quite fast and drifted along in ground effect so Jason was forced to go around. I asked for a flapless final landing and Jason said they are easy, so I asked him to make it a precision approach as well. He then asked me if I was considering doing a CPL/C Cat Instructor rating because I sounded like his instructors.

He made a nice flapless landing and we taxied back to the tiedown area.

After thanking Jason for the flight I mused over the experience as I walked back to the Clubrooms. I decided that I wouldn't pursue a rating in them because I already have ratings in 2 different 4 seater types which give me access to 4 different aircraft in the Aero Clubs fleet. Maybe at a future stage I'll get rated in the Arrow but thats at least another 40 hours PIC time in the Archer before they'll let me fly it so there's no hurry. Even further down the track there's the Twin Comanche if I really feel like torturing myself and my wallet.

Off to Ardmore

Got up early and headed out to the airport for a trip to the Pilot Expo at Ardmore. Chris and I were sharing PIC duties in FWS (not really long enough to be considered a cross country but at least it was an A - B flight). Chris was to fly us into Ardmore (probably the more difficult leg) and I would fly us back to Hamilton.

On my way out to the Aero Club the morning weather changed from a gloriously still summer morning to thick fog, and in its center was Hamilton airport. We also found out that the Royal New Zealand Airforce had an open day at their Whenuapai Base in Auckland so we were not expecting much traffic at Ardmore. The only problem was, we had to wait till the fog cleared sufficiently for us to safely climb to altitude, so a planned 8.30am departure was delayed until 9am, then 9.30am, until finally it lifted sufficiently just before 10am for Chris to be happy about going and away we went. There was a thin layer of cloud at about 700 feet AMSL which Hamilton tower said we could climb through as it was not very thick. Chris chose to wait till he spotted a gap and up we went. I have a vague recollection of him levelling out rather exuberantly and I felt all the blood rushing up from my feet. Not a pleasant experience.

Above the cloud we could see the ground below and noticed that most of the low stuff was starting to dissipate but we still steered for clearer air where we could pick out potential landing sites. Chris had brought along his handheld GPS and we used it as a backup to the map. The ride at 2500 was mill pond smooth at that time of the morning and we made excellent progress, the DME and GPS telling us we had a 130 knot ground speed.

When we were overhead Mercer township (pretty much the halfway point if you are driving from Hamilton to Auckland) we copied down the AWIB (which was using runway 21 not 03 grrrr) so I had to quickly find the approach procedure and read it out for Chris. There was some circuit traffic on the Ardmore frequency but no more than Hamilton on a busy day. We joined lefthand downwind for 21 number 3 (Ardmore has no ATC so things can be stressful when it is busy) and landed without drama (although Chris was unhappy with his landing). We then cleared the runway and eventually found the taxiway we were supposed to take to get to the parking area.

The event staff had kindly organised Follow Me cars and we made our way to our park and shut down.

The main reason for me going is that I wanted to attend a seminar on mountain flying from Fly Wanaka. We do have some limited mountain flying possible near Hamilton, but this is the real deal. The Southern Alps of NZ's south island are aptly named. The tallest peak, Mt Cook (Aorangi) is almost 12500 feet high and the average height of the range is well above 9000 feet. These guys have plenty of time in the air in and around the mountains so I hung on every word. I'm considering heading down there to do their mountain flying course one day.

After the seminar, Chris and I walked around the stalls and aircraft while Chris took photos of everything. Everything from a brand new Cirrus SR22 to a Cessna 172B of 1950's vintage was either on display or on sale. I marvelled at a Cessna 172 SP with dual Garmin MFDs - they certainly tidy up the instruments.

We chatted to a nice middle aged guy sitting next to a Robinson R22 helicopter and found out later when he handed us his card he is an A Category instructor! I definitely cannot afford to learn to fly a Helicopter but I do want to take a trial flight at some point to say I've done it. It would look cool in my logbook too. :-)

After eating some lunch and realising we'd pretty much seen everything we got a courtesy car back to our plane and made ready to leave. Once again the Follow Me car came and escorted us back to the runway. I wasted little time in announcing on Unicom we were lining up and rolling and as soon as we were lined up I made a quick check of the instruments and opened the throttle. Chris noted that I had not lowered flaps but I made a decision that I wanted to get as much altitude as we could once we got off the ground and the tarmac runway meant I could roll along till we indicated way more than the 60 knots required before FWS would fly itself off the runway so I used as much as I could and we shot into the air.

Chris read me the departure procedure and I made sure I followed it while keeping clear of Auckland International airspace. We climbed initially to 1500 feet until we were well clear of the Auckland airspace above 2500 and then climbed firstly to 2000 feet, and then when the turbulence was still present, to 2500. I levelled off and we started the trip back. The visibility at that time of day was at least 50km so I had no problems visually navigating. I kept an eye on the GPS to make sure that I didn't get too far off our planned track but I chose to cross the hills between Huntly and Taupiri to the east of the track where the hills were not so high in an attempt to avoid turbulence.

I grabbed the ATIS and reported 19nm DME north of Hamilton and was cleared for a north arrival. I started a cruise descent t0 1700 and once we were inside the Hamilton CTR I kept us at 1700 as there was traffic overhead Hamilton, which we didn't initially see because they weren't where we were told to look for them. Once I picked them up and had informed the tower (and the other plane) that I had them in sight I was cleared to descend to join right base for grass 18. We came in on a rather wide right base and I chose to get us into a landing configuration early so I could control the approach.

I put the first notch of flaps in early and set a nose attitude for 80 knots. Then I put down the second notch and trimmed for 70 knots and then deployed full flap and kept the speed at 70 so we had some airspeed to play with. At short final I let the airspeed come back to 65, I reduced power to idle and let the plane sink as we'd had problems with float because of the hot day and a low wing aircraft meant we were getting lots of ground effect. As we got close to the ground I raised the nose and we touched down, bounced gently, then floated, before finally settling again on the stall warning horn.

I taxied clear and we crawled slowly back to the Aero Club. 0.8 in the logbook, not a real cross country but a fun day.