Beechcraft Musketeer Sport III 19A VH-SQB
Leg 2: Portland to Adelaide (Parafield)
Front ~ Next - Leg 3: Adelaide to Port Augusta
Simon took the left-hand seat, and we took off again. As we took off, the weather looked a bit ominous. The cloud seemed to be getting darker and lower. The forecast had indicated that it would get better towards Adelaide, and it was easily high enough to fly under, so we felt OK about pressing on, provided we kept our eye on the conditions.
| Ominous grey cloud on take-off, but we figured it would lift as we headed north. |
I was doing the navigation on this leg, and was able to get some good position fixes, so we always knew exactly where we were. In less than 20 minutes, we crossed the Victoria - South Australia border. We were tracking directly for the Mount Gambier townsite. I knew nothing about this part of the world, but Simon explained that Mount Gambier was easy to spot from a distance. It has a distinctive 'cauldron' - an ancient volcano with a bright deep blue lake in the middle of it.
| The ancient volcano crater at Mt Gambier stuck out clearly from the surrounds |
| The distinctive blue lake in the cauldron |
We were calling the Mt Gambier MBZ, but got no reply. We were mystified for a while. It was only later we found our radio was turned down. Whoops - pretty basic mistake, but at least we identified the problem. After Mt Gambier, navigation got more difficult. Moving away from the coast, the land flattened out, and there were far fewer navigational features. Our track didn't take us within site of any town for at least an hour. As we flew northwards, the farmland changed from green to gold, reflecting the change in rainfall in the different regions. Regarding navigation, I found it hard to get many good position fixes on this section - the main problem was that there were too many features on the ground - lots of forestry roads, which made it hard to spot 'real' roads, and a lot of lakes, not all on the map. But on a grand scale, we knew we had the coast on the left, which we could often see - plus there were major power lines on our right which would tell us if we were getting off track. So we couldn't go far wrong.
| Landscape changing colour, clouds lifting as we head further into South Australia |
We approached Tailem Bend - which marked the start of our VFR approach into Parafield. Our VFR approach route would keep us below controlled airspace, and take us directly in to the Parafield GAAP. From Tailem Bend, we followed the Murray river for a few minutes, to Murray Bridge. We had to plot a course which would keep us clear of an army firing range, but we had enough features on the VTC chart which made it pretty easy. At Murray Bridge, we turned right, to Caloote, which is on a very distinctive bend on the river, then onwards to South Para Reservoir. We found everything easily.
| Tailem Bend |
| Murray Bridge |
| Distinctive U-turn in the Murray River at Caloote |
This was our first time into Parafield, so we were unfamiliar with all the visual navigation features, and the aerodrome itself. We knew we had to navigate accurately because of the Military airspace to the North, and Controlled Airspace to the south of Parafield. Actually, the corridoor is quite wide, and the landmarks are pretty big, but not knowing what features were going to look like from the air, we were both being vigilant to make sure we didn't miss anything.
Tracking from Caloote to South Para Reservoir, we tried to tune into the ATIS, but couldn't pick it up. We double-checked the frequencies, and started to think there was a problem with our radio, or our documentation. After checking with Adelaide Approach, it turned out that the ATIS had a low range over the Adelaide hills - much lower than we expected.
We only started to pick it up around South Para Reservoir. This meant that it was a bit tough getting organised for our approach, because we were still trying to listen to the ATIS much closer to Parafield than we wanted to, trying to figure out which runway we were going to be steered onto. The worst thing was that even when we could hear it, we had a lot of trouble comprehending it. The recording spoke too quickly, and didn't annunciate clearly enough - probably fine if you're experienced with Parafield, but very difficult for us. We had to listen to it about 8 times, to understand everything it was saying.
| South Para Reservoir, a VFR approach point |
| Substation just on the left, partially obscured by the GPS antenna. Easy to see because there were millions of powerlines all leading towards it. |
We found the substation OK, then were on to Parafield, for a straight-in approach for 21 Left. Parafield was extremely quiet, especially considering it was a Sunday. It was the end of a long leg, Simon got a bit of a bounce, and squeezed a bit of power to fix it. I was hoping to see this, so I could see how he would recover.
| Final approach onto 21L at Parafield. |
We had arrived at Adelaide, concluding the best day of flying I think I've ever had. We left instructions for the refuellers to fill it an inch from the top of the tanks, because we didn't need full tanks, and wanted to keep our weight down. We had time for a few beers before bed.