This week's clip is of a Father and Son enjoying their passion for flying together in a fk9-mk4 ultralite aircraft. They are dressed for the occassion in matching 'top gun' sunnies and are accompanied by Status Quo's song "Wild Side of Life"  - what a great way to spend time with your dad! We wish all the father's out there a Happy  Father's Day for this Sunday!

I just had to highlight this post in the pilot forum.....a job going for the begging is being advertised!

------------------------------

Bush flying SE VFR, minimum 800TT or 600 hours C200 series, remote location, small boat and mechancial skills an advantage. Good wage and accomodation provided. Australian CPL, current medical and current DG essential.

Nothing guaranteed for anyone, including a response, this is aviation! I am not the employer and don't make the decisions. Contact me through this site.

Click here for the post

You can read the first article in this series by clicking here.

For those that haven't flown around Melbourne CBD the procedure is to change the transponder frequency to 0100 and then request an airways clearance from Essendon for an orbit (left or right) around the city. It was a bit of a surprise when we were denied our airways clearance and told to stay outside controlled airspace. So what was going on?

It just so happens that there were already three aircraft doing both left and right orbits of the CBD at varying altitudes combined with about five helicopters going in and out. Behind us there was another aircraft requesting their airways clearance plus another coming in from the south-west. I knew I wanted a controlled airspace work-out but this was getting ridiculous!

I pulled the Archer over the water to the south and began orbiting while I waited for the helpful guys at Essendon to give me the verbal thumbs up. It just so happened that where I was orbiting was relatively close to a VFR route south of the city so the passengers and I had our eyes well and truly outside the cockpit. Needless to say the chatter in the headset was almost continuous as the tower kept everyone safe and secure.

We finally received our clearance for a right hand orbit and were told to climb another five hundred feet. The tension in the cockpit immediately reduced as my passengers heard the helpful traffic controllers guide us to a spectacular view of the city while sticking a mattress of protection around us from all the other bits of metal hovering or flying around.

After peering down for the second time to watch a game of Aussie Rules taking place in the Melbourne Cricket Ground the ATC directed us along our designated flight plan to the south-west and eventually gave us permission to changed frequencies.

With the Point Cook airfield looming close I was doing a two-step on the radio to ensure that they knew what was going on and to let any aircraft know our intentions. If you plan on doing a similar flight plan make sure you have all of your radios and frequencies lined up well before hand as you'll be doing a lot of swapping in this area.

With Point Cook past us we flew on down to Avalon. Yes, I know that we could have avoided Avalon by heading across the bay earlier but that would have required wearing life jackets and for some reason I still have an aversion to potentially having to land on a large expanse of water.

Avalon is categorised as Class-D so we had a chat with the tower and let them know what we planned on doing. Personally, I just wanted to see an A320 land beneath us as we did an overfly. I did this in my training and wanted to show my wife and daughter what it was all about. Sadly, the A320 didn't turn up so we headed on down to the Port Phillip Heads without that little buzz.

The heads are a narrow gap between two headlands which form the mouth of the bay and the ocean currents can be seen ripping through the area. They are so strong that ships often have to time the tide before traversing this stretch of water. From the air it's an absolutely stunning view with the ocean side and bay side of the coastline of the Mornington Peninsula painted out before us with incredible colours.

The final installment in this series covers a Cessna in a lot of trouble and the problem with wake turbulence.

It is every aviation enthusiasts dream to be able to attend Oshkosh  dubbed the "Worlds greatest aviation celebration!"  For those of  yet to realize that dream it is always great to see as many clips of the amazing feats of flying as possible. This is one of many fantastic videos and gives you a taste of what it's all about. If your thinking of going to Oshkosh July 25th - 31, 2011 the countdown has already started!

Like all good aviation stories this one begins with a beautiful day. Waking up to the sun shining through the bedroom window in the middle of winter is one of a pilot's greatest joys. Making it through the tumultuously inconsistent weather from June until August with only a fly every now and then is like a drug addict popping aspirin rather than the stuff that will get them into trouble with CASA. But today was a good day to fly!

It wasn't long before I'd booked my favourite Archer for a flight with my wife around Melbourne and Port Phillip Bay. I thought that it was about time that I'd had a good work-out in controlled airspace and so I purposely planned to fly around the CBD which would require an airways clearance from Essendon.

This brings up an interesting point. I've never really understood the reticence that many private pilots have about going into controlled airspace. I've chatted with a host of pilots that seem to do everything they can to avoid entering a "zone" so they don't have to talk on the radio. Personally, I've always taken the view that my taxes have paid for the air traffic controllers so I want to get my money's worth.

I've never spoken to an air traffic controller yet that wasn't helpful, polite and willing to crawl across broken glass for a pilot in trouble (more on that later). They're incredible human beings that when you think about it they have one of the most boring terrifying jobs in the world. Boring because it must be the same routine over and over again and terrifying when it's not. I think that if it was me directing thousands of people around the sky then I'd end up as a person with a bipolar disorder. Thank goodness I'm not in charge!

Air traffic controllers are like the policeman standing at an motor vehicle intersection telling the traffic to stop with the power of their hand. It's simply amazing. The policeman puts their hand up and a lumbering, eighteen wheeled monstrosity grinds to a halt. In reality despite all of their physical training the policeman can't stop the truck but the force that they represent can. Likewise, an air traffic controller softly speaks into their microphone and an A380 carefully dodges around a Piper Warrior.

Which brings me to my point. If you're a private pilot and avoid controlled airspace then you're not only wasting a lot of fuel flying around Class-C airspace but also avoiding the safest place to be. My experience has been that in controlled airspace you have someone holding their hands beneath you the whole way, making sure that your safe from all the big stuff and not going to collide into mountain. So why fly more dangerously around controlled airspace when you can have a nice chat with a very pleasant person while they look after you. How good is that!

So back at home, I powered up my PC (actually I didn't as I always leave it on) and began planning my flight for the day in my electronic flight planner. Some may ask why I don't manually plan my flights anymore? I have a really simple answer, working out distances with a ruler and course headings with a protractor is a lot of fun but when you want to get a job done quickly then flight planning software is the only way to go.

I submitted the plan via the software and called up to make sure that everything was done correctly. I know that I'm a bit of a geek (I run downwind.com.au after all) but speaking to someone on the phone gives me that warm fuzzy feeling that everything is OK.

After tossing everything into the back of the car I noticed that my youngest decided to tag along. The weight and balance still checked out so we headed off to the airport, pre-flighted the aircraft and was quickly airborne.

Read the next article in the series in a few days time. It covers an experience in controlled air space and handling pressure in the cockpit.

Continuing with our August theme of 'short airstrips' we go to another small airport on the Caribbean island of Saint Barthelemy which  is only 650 metres in length.  The arrival descent is extremely steep over the hilltop traffic circle and departing planes fly right over the heads of sunbathers. Even though the airport has a reputation for being one of the most dangerous in the world, there have been very few accidents there. The pilot in this  clip should have had better judgment than to proceed with landing considering the amount of runway he had left!

Every now and then I get a bee in my bonnet and decide that it's worth starting a "David versus Goliath" battle against the bureaucracy that we call government. These times normally occur on a Friday afternoon when I've just had enough of the stupidity of some aviation regulation that we all love to hate. So what issue got me motivated towards proper civil expression?

It all started when I received a notice in the mail from our friends at CASA letting me know that I needed to renew my ASIC. The covering letter included eleven different steps that needed to be completed followed by a payment of $186.

The website address asked me to dutifully fill out the form and pay the money and then at the end it asked me to print the whole lot off so that I could post it to them. In this day and age why would I want to print something out and put it in the mail when I've just filled the thing out online! Go figure?????

Let's explore for a minute the problem that an ASIC is trying to solve. There is a belief in some circles of government that a private/recreational pilot could very possibly be a lethal instrument of some terrorist organisation. This then suggest that what the government is trying to protect us all against is some bright spark flying a Piper Warrior into a building. I can guess the outcome of that conflict, building 1, warrior 0. This level of paranoia is what we have all given up a portion of a freedom for. It's simply ludicrous.

Is a little plastic card going to stop planes flying into buildings? Not a chance. The security around ninety percent of country airports in range of a capital city is almost non-existent. I say almost because there's quite often thirty metres or so of fence that can't even keep out a kangaroo let alone a terrorist. In fact, more often than not you can just walk around the fence! If there is a gate with a "security lock" just enter in the CTAF frequency or the number written on a plaque on the wall next to it to gain access.

If I was suicidally inclined and wanted to steal a plane for some "nasty work" then I'd hop down to my local country airport, walk around the fence and jump in a plane. Let's face it, the majority of aging aircraft in Australia don't have functioning locks or an ignition that couldn't be turned with your fingernail let alone a screw driver.

Better yet, why don't I just drive a semi-trailer full of fertiliser and a box of matches into the foyer of a building. I imagine that will do the job much better than a Cessna and I don't need any sort of special security clearance.

I think that the majority of pilots are absolutely fed up with imposts like the ASIC as they actually don't do anything to solve the perceived problem. Private and recreational pilots have a license with a photograph - let that be our security check and do away with the thing dangling around our necks. Organisations like CASA obviously believe that this sort of activity is important but how depressing would it be trying to enforce something that clearly doesn't make sense. It almost makes you feel sorry for them.....almost.

So why do I think we have ASICs? I'm from the old school which means following the money trail.

It was at this point that I began to do some calculations around this legislated monopoly. My guess (and it is a guess) there are roughly 30,000 ASICs issued each year to pilots, engineers, stewards, catering personnel and the guy who fixes the lights on the runways. This makes the ASIC a $5,580,000 (30,000 x $186) monopoly that pumps out little plastic cards!

Some may say that there are high costs associated with the security checks that need to be offset. Let me understand this for a moment. As part of my ASIC renewal I had to provide both a passport and a drivers license. Is CASA suggesting that the security check conducted on a pilot who flies a Cessna 152 is more thorough than for a passport? Maybe we are going to get into a turf war on who has the toughest security, the department of foreign affairs and trade (ie. the passport people) or CASA?

Like I said in the beginning, I got a bee in my bonnet and so I decided to take some action. Two weeks ago I contacted the Department of Infrastructure's media division to enquire about how the rules for ASICs could be changed. They suggested that I send a list of questions to them and an hour or so later my email sped off through the ether. Since I hadn't heard from anyone I contacted them again today to let them know that I was writing this article. I was promised a returned phone call and still nothing came.....our taxes at work.

Queen Juliana International Airport, St. Maarten's, Saba in the Caribbean holds the title of the world's shortest commercial runway  and requires a low approach over the beach to the delight of plane spotters.

Unfortunately takeoffs can be a little uncomfortable for beach goers.........