I had a strong desire to fly, so I decided to book a plane for Friday and head west to Cobden where I and another passenger would meet someone who owns a property nearby to catch up. One the morning of the flight it was blue skies and light winds, but I was aware of the TAFs and ARFORs that suggested rain and thunderstorms after 10am. I pulled out of the flight and rescheduled for Tuesday which turned out to be the right move as the weather turned sour.

Yesterday morning the conditions were looking great, but the ARFOR suggested isolated thunderstorms en-route. This was amended at 8am with the weather looking good- the thunderstorms were expected to be further north. Everything was CAVOK except for a minor blemish on the Moorabbin TAF that read “PROB30 INTER 1503/1510 VRB20G35KT 3000 THUNDERSTORMS SCT050CB”. This meant the chance of some bad weather between 2pm and 9pm. Departure time was 1:00, so I decided to carry on with the trip and carefully watch the METARs and other information as the trip progressed.

The plane was a little late getting back from its previous aerial photography job, and the camera assembly took some time to be removed. Finally the aircraft was ours for the rest of the day, and I had the tanks filled up to full and we were on our way. There were three aircraft in front on the runway waiting for takeoff, but these got moving pretty quickly and soon we were airborne at 2:12pm and tracking south. I decided that, due to the similarity in distance, we would head to Cobden around the Port Phillip Heads and head home around the city (north of the bay). The cloud was quite high and we cruised at 4500’ with a generous tailwind pushing us along at 120kts.

The route took us over the familiar territory of the Port Phillip Heads. We then passed over Barwon Heads Airport and continued to head west. The area was familiar from my first few navs out west and it was déjà vu as we passed Lake Colac and headed over the southern part of Lake Corangamite.  On the western shore, it was time to call Cobden and to commence a descent. Spotting the airport was no problem as I had already identified it using Google Earth. The CTAF chatter suggested the use of runway 36, which had a light crosswind (Cobden only has RWY 18/36) from the east (in tune with our tailwind in-flight).

The aircraft at Cobden

We landed and taxied to the terminal building (or Cobden aeroclub) which was pretty much deserted. Parking wasn’t a problem and I locked the aircraft and then headed into Cobden, spending a few hours. While we had a ride to the main street, it is a short walk from the airport making it a great destination for flying in without ground transport.

As 5:00pm rolled around, it was time to hit the air. The TAF had been amended suggesting that the thunderstorm wasn’t due at Moorabbin until later in the evening. We said our goodbyes and got airborne again, this time tracking direct to Avalon airport. The GPS and VOR working together was a real luxury on this leg. We had a headwind, but as we climbed a little higher this eased off giving us a reasonable cruising speed home. Due to the new Class E airspace at Avalon, we were able to fly right over the top of the airport at 3000’ without having to worry about a clearance while monitoring Avalon Approach on 133.55. This still seems to confuse people, and you can often hear controllers explaining that VFR aircraft do not require a clearance on the frequency.

We then followed the bay around and headed back to the airport. The tower directed me to join final from Brighton for Runway 13R- a runway I had never used before (only 17/35). The landing was uneventful and we were soon back at the parking area with another 2.6 hours of flight time. The only problem with having a PPL is that you can’t do just 1 hour flights around the training area anymore- every flight has to be a minimum of 2 hours to some exciting new destination. This means flying less often due to the cost and the amount of time needed, but in a couple of weeks I am hoping to get up and do some circuits for an hour to keep my landing skills.