Bushfires Spoil Our Flight

I had planned to whip over to Rottnest with Chris, my brother-in-law, for a Sunday morning breakfast.

Weather forecast was pretty good, apart from some bushfires inland which would cause smoke in their vicinity.

I took the opportunity to get Chris to install our spare child seat in the back of Squibby, so that in the future we can take Sophie. In a car we have an anchor bolt in the rear, but in the aircraft we simply attached it via the seat belt. I don't think Squibby has an anchor point. I think standards were different in 1967 when the Musketeer was built. You just balanced the baby on your lap, cigarette in one hand, and a light touch on the yoke with the other.

There was a strong southerly blowing. In fact, the forecast wind at Rottnest was 190 degrees 30 kts gusting 40 kts. Which would make it interesting to land on the sole east-west runway. 30-40 kt crosswind: oh goody.

As soon as we took off, the bushfire smoke was much thicker than forecast. There was a pretty major fire in Dwellingup, to the south, and the smoke was blowing in from that direction. While we still had VMC, visibility was clearly deteriorating, and if it got any worse (which it probably would, blowing directly in from the fire to the south), we risked getting stranded on Rottnest, for as long as this fire/wind combination persisted.

We only had a minute or two to make the call, and I decided, conservatively, to return to Jandakot. By the time we reached the coast, we could barely identify Adventure World, and couldn't see Jandakot at all, becoming non-VMC in my opinion. We had other plans for the rest of the day which didn't involve waiting at Rotto for things to blow over.

Had a strong crosswind on return, and did a pretty mediocre landing. There were still heaps of people taking off, so I wondered if I was being overly-cautious by returning.

But as we drove home, the smoke got thicker and thicker, so I was glad to be on the ground. When I got home, I checked the amended weather, which had been updated to report widespread smoke.

Some Maintenance

I had to book Squibby in for some maintenance, specifically, AD/INST/9. It's to do with testing the condition of instruments. I had two choices:

• test all the instruments every three years,
• test the altimeter every two years.

I asked Glen what the aero club does with their aircraft, and they do the full test. But as he pointed out, their aircraft get as much use in a month as mine would in a couple of years. So, I went the cheaper option.

Smaller Headset

OK now this is cute. I had some birthday money which was to go towards flying. We haven't taken 5-month Sophie in Squibby yet, because we're a bit worried about the noise doing damage to her little ears.

Pilot Sophie tries on her new headset. It's a Softcomm C-45-10 "Child Prince" headset from http://www.mypilotstore.com. I'd recommend buying from myPilotStore again. My only gripe was how long (6 days) the headset was reportedly sitting in the warehouse before it shipped. But once they shipped it, it came in a couple of days.

She'll have to grow into it, I guess. I was impressed because this headset also has a headphone jack, allowing you to hook it up to an MP3 player or similar. Maybe we could play her some nursery rhymes? Sophie seems mostly interested in pulling all the wires at this stage. I think to have any chance of keeping the headset on, Kim would have to sit in the back with her.

I Get Some Presents

With the rest of my birthday flying money, I decided to get ASA's IP Trainer and a CH Pro USB Yoke. This means I can learn some instrument flying theory, and get a bit of practice, even though I can't afford to do an instrument rating at this stage.

My instrument training setup.

The installer was a bit quirky. It didn't like the 'custom' installation - nothing got installed, but when I chose 'typical' it went OK. It took me a while to calibrate the yoke properly. I don't like the whole calibration section of this program - I don't think it is intuitive.

But the trainer itself seems very good, at this stage. There are heaps of lessons (133 in all), and because I'm tending to do each one three times (Prompt, Practice, and Test), even a 6 minute exercise ends up taking over 20 minutes, especially when I'm getting failed every now and then. Later on, some lessons take 20 minutes, which will mean at least an hour to complete. So 133 lessons is a serious undertaking, which will take a fairly long time to complete. I'm guessing months.

We have a running joke in the house where I've banned Kim from referring to it as playing my game.

She is allowed to refer to it as studying, training, or doing my course.

Various Correspondence

As I've said before, one of the good things about this site is hearing from other people. David has been flying privately since 1963, and is just finishing up an RV-8. He writes:

"Started building my RV8, in 1997, and now its just about ready for first flight, maybe by April...has taken all of 10 years ... My aircraft is all aluminium flush riveted, 200 hp Lycoming engine, constant speed prop, cruise 170-175 KTS, stalls about 45KTS, approach speeds nice and slow at around 65-70 kts, although climb performance is brilliant at 2,400 feet per minute with one person and half fuel, .....1,800 feet per minute at 1,800 pound gross."

The RV-8 is a two-seater tandem, so you sit one in front of the other. This puts you on the aircraft centreline. I've never flown anything like that. I wonder what it must be like? These new airplanes have unbelievable performance compared to old Squibby.

	David's RV-8 in progress
	RV-8 nearing completion

Snippets

Every now and then, my non-flying friends ask about parachutes. Here's an interesting one.

The report currently states: "The pilot reported an engine failure and the intention to deploy the airframe parachute system. The parachute did not deploy and the aircraft crash landed on uneven terrain."

Gliding Course

Chris asked me if I wanted to do a gliding course at Easter time. Now, this is something I've never considered. I just like my engine. But I seriously thought about doing it. They do a camp each year where they zoom around the Stirling range, which looks pretty amazing.

http://www.narroginglidingclub.org.au/photo_gallery%20wave%20camps.htm

The biggest issue for me now is that with a new baby, Kim and I are getting less quality time together. I would be crazy to book myself into a four-day course over the biggest holiday since Sophie's birth.

Simon's RV Makes Cover

Simon, the previous owner of Squibby, has made the cover of February 2007 Aviation Trader with his RV:

Busselton and the South-West

Dan has occasionally mentioned that the flights to Rottnest are almost too short. You just get going, and it's time to land. So I've been thinking of taking him on a longer flight for a while. With my folks in Dunsborough this week, it seemed like a good time to head to the South-West. So we planned to meet them in Busselton.

We made a fairly early start, although we had to put fuel in, which always takes extra time. I just can't leave Squibby on full tanks at the moment, because, as mentioned before, the left tank loses fuel. Now is it disappearing, or is it shifting to the right. I'd swear it's sometimes moving to the right tank, but I've checked with some knowledgeable sources who tell me that it's just not possible provided:

• the fuel is turned off
• the fuel selector valve works properly.

Also, if the right tanks is full, how can the left tank flow into it? Where does the fuel go? There's no big dead patch of grass like you'd expect. It's a mystery. During pre-flight, I noticed that the left hand (fuel-lossy tank) drain was a lot dirtier than the right. What's causing that?

We ended up departing by around 9am. It's lucky we didn't leave too much earlier, since there was a reasonable fog this morning, although it was mostly lifted by the time we were airborne. There was also some low coastal cloud forecast, but we never hit any on the way.

Because it was early, it was a beautifully smooth flight. We had a slight headwind, but we still made good progress. I think it normally takes me three hours to drive to Busselton, but this flight was only around 75 minutes. It's just so easy to find your way along this coastline.

Dan was surprised how long you can see things before you reach them. We could see Bunbury from Mandurah, though it took a while to reach there.

I had never seen the Busselton strip before, but it's enormous. 1800 metres, and when you fly from Bunbury, you're pretty much lined up with runway 21 all the way. There was nobody in the circuit area. I did an overfly, then joined mid-downwind for 21. In hindsight, I probably could have made a straight in approach, since I knew what runway I'd be landing on, and there was nobody else around.

	Just south of Rockingham
	Dawesville Cut, near Mandurah. This cut was man-made, with the intention of flushing the water in the inlet, to keep the inlet healthy. Note the canal homesites just in front of the bridge.
	Bunbury
	Busselton in the mid-distance. You can see the 1-mile jetty extending out into the bay.
	The Busselton Aero club. Nice new building. Actually, there was a fair bit of activity around the airport. It's a good place to visit.
	Inside the main terminal, they have some displays, the major one being this replica. They also have displays from the local schools, which is a good idea.
	I can keep my eye on Squibby from in here. Dan's dad, Nigel, gave some portable wheel chocks, and this is their first real test. Squibby is not tied down, and the chocks have to hold it there.

We phoned a taxi and had to wait a while. After around 15 mins, a taxi came and gave us a lift into town. We meandered down to the Busselton jetty. There was already a bit of sting in the sun, and we had no sunscreen, so a 3km round trip out to the end of the jetty suddenly didn't seem like a good idea. Dan wandered past a payment window where you were supposed to pay before going for a walk on the jetty. I had to call him back.

	Jetty extending out for 1.6 km.
	A beautiful summer's day.

We had our company meeting at a place called The Goose. During that, my parents called up, and were only a three minute walk away. We went out to lunch with them, before they drove us back to the airport. So it wasn't a long stay in Busselton, because I had to get back to Perth in time for Kim to go to the Gym. We departed around 1:30pm.

Flight back was easy again. I stayed down at 3500. Some of the lakes on the way back were pretty amazing colours. I did an entry to Jandakot via "Shipyards". After 180-odd hours, mostly at Jandakot, that's the first time I've come in that way. Normally it's Powerhouse or Six South.

Lots of long north-south lakes, especially between Bunbury and Mandurah. I wondered if the fire was deliberately lit, since it seems to have started right next to a road.

Three waters: inlet, salt lake, Indian Ocean.

I did a tired old landing, drifting across the runway in a slight crosswind, then doing a little hop when I touched down. But overall, it was a very successful trip. Another 2.7 hours on the Hobbs.

Robert, from Hawaii, asked me about Squibby's performance. I did some measurements this time:

• Started with full tanks 120L/120L.
• Burnt 87 minutes on Left, 73 minutes on Right, for total 160 minutes.
• At the end, tanks were 65L Left, 70L Right.

So it looks like I used 105 L for 160 minutes, giving just over 39 litres per hr. On the ferry flight, we measured 38. I'm going to keep my eye on consumption, just to get clearer about my numbers. On the positive side, Squibby is not getting through much oil, but I guess you'd expect that with new cylinders. Looks like we travelled 203 nautical miles, which, if you allocated 10 minutes of taxi on each leg (20 total), gives you 140 minutes, for an average speed of 87 knots. Given that I plan on 90 knots, that all looks reasonable.