Rotto With Rob

Whipped over to Rotto with my friend Rob.

Rob about to board flight SQB.

He had never been in a light aircraft before, but he was one of the people who really encouraged me when I was talking about Squibby, which helped me make the decision to buy her.

Being a Saturday morning, Jandakot was very busy. I couldn't wait to get out of the GAAP zone. There was quite a queue lining up to either take off on 06L or cross 06L to get to 06R for circuits.

Again I took quite a while to start the engine - I need to learn a better cold-start technique. I nearly ran the battery out. The trip itself to Rotto was very nice - it was a pretty good day, and Rob loved it.

The only tricky part of the flight was coming back into Jandakot, when I had to do a go-around. Again it was busy. When it's not busy, they often route you in directly onto base or final for 06L, but in this case, I had to overfly. There was a Cessna 152 coming in behind me, and it so happened that there was a gap, so they could give him that short-cut approach, putting him ahead of me, while I was joining downwind. Unfortunately, whether there wasn't sufficient room, or the 152 was slower than expected, or I was too quick joining downwind, I ended up quite close behind him. Even when I extended my downwind leg as much as I dared (didn't want to leave the circuit area), and put on some flap, I was still quite close.

Because I had extended downwind, and slowed down early, I thought I had sorted it out. I watched the 152 land, slow down, and I thought there was enough room. But then he didn't take the taxiway I expected, but kept taxiing really slowly up the runway, so I had to go around. There was no way I could wait for him to get to the next taxiway before landing. It's quite unusual to have to go around, it usually all works pretty well. So that was a bonus bit of excitement for Rob.

Several Local Flights

I've been waiting before taking Kim up for the first time. I don't know why - just to get more confidence, I suppose.

We decided to just take a quick flight up the coast. It was a fine day, and the flight went well. We had a good time looking over the city, Kim was quickly learning how to identify things from the air. Coming back in, the landing was fine, and Kim's first flight in Squibby was a success.

Kim is an A-to-B sort of girl, she likes to have a point to going places. So I doubt we'll go for more flights just for the fun of flying. More likely, it will be in order to get somewhere. But she didn't hate it, which I'm glad about.

I've been doing a few more flights with Dan over to Rottnest. We're finding it really helps our company, having time away from the office to do strategic planning. I'm getting very comfortable with the trip over to Rottnest (I've even got my own life-jackets now, so I won't even have to ask the Aero Club).

Dan brought the company video camera, so we made a video of the trip. I really like reviewing the landings - it lets me watch the final approach, round out and hold-off again and again, in the complete calm of my office. I can see when I'm on centerline, whether I could hold off for longer, and so on.

I'd post it here, but I haven't found a good compression tool to make the video a reasonable size.

ASIC Card Arrives

I finally got my ASIC card.

ASIC is the Australian Security Identification Card - it's been quite controversial here, because since 9/11, the government has become much tougher in its security procedures. One of the consequences is that suddenly every pilot in Australia needed to apply for an ASIC card.

This is not cheap (over $100), and it's time-consuming. Every application required an ASIO check, an Australian Federal Police background check, and so on. The idea is that if you're a terrorist, your application would have been knocked back. So everyone with one of these cards is OK. I am now officially considered very unlikely to be a terrorist.

Part of the controversy was the heavy-handedness and the timing. When first announced, all pilots needed to have their card by Dec 31 2005. Pilots without cards would not legally be able to step onto the tarmac at any airport with an RPT service (that includes airports with a once-per-week visit by a six-seater). Consequently, any commercial pilot who didn't get their card by that date would be technically out of a job, being unable to walk to their aircraft.

Floods of pilots put in their application months before the deadline, but the system was so swamped, that it couldn't issue the cards in time. As the deadline approached, and everyone started to get worried, the government granted an extension, but it's still taken longer than that, so it's been heavily criticised for putting out draconian regulations which turned out to be impractical.

Secondly, there was the need for these cards at all. While it clears the pilots of being terrorists, it doesn't clear the passengers. Which, after all, was the problem on 9/11.

Thirdly, it makes no distinction between someone flying an inter-continental jet and someone flying a Cessna 152. All aircraft and pilots are grouped together as an equal threat.

Finally, in my opinion it's a lot of money, effort and regulation to address one single mode of terrorism, ie getting an aircraft and flying into buildings. I think while everyone focuses on stopping that particular attack, no one likes to think about how easy it would be to load a van full of explosives (50 times more than Squibby could carry), and park it out front of a building. The whole point of terrorism is that there are almost infinite soft, easy targets, and methods of reaching those targets. Going to enormous lengths to address one method of terrorism - I'm not so sure it's worth the cost.

Echo Charlie Hotel Forced Landing

After my flight with Kim, we were watching the news that night and it was reporting a lucky escape for two pilots near Geraldton.

Turns out it was one of the Royal Aero Club Mooneys, Echo Charlie Hotel. I could read the callsign in the television stills, and it rung a bell. I checked my logbook and I had a lesson in ECH 8 years ago. This is the first time I'm aware of an aircraft which I have in my logbook being involved in any sort of incident.

It looks like they were doing a routine low-level pipeline inspection, when the engine failed and they had to do a forced landing. The pilot, Wehrner Bullman, is one of the most experienced pilots you'd ever meet, so the aircraft couldn't have been in better hands.

From the brief footage, it looked like they put down into a paddock, and rolled into a ditch/creek bed at the end, where the aircraft took quite a bit of damage. Pilot and single passenger had minor injuries.

I'll be looking forward to hearing more about what happened. The 30 second news story doesn't give many details. I hope Wehrner writes about it in the Aero Club's Tarmac Topics magazine.