FAA Unrestricted

Managed to finish my checkride today. I passed.

Flew out from Wings (KLOM) under an inversion (which was around 8000 ft), so I had visibility of around 8 miles or so under haze, but the ride was super smooth.

The DPE Tom C was great. It was a pleasure to fly next to a very experienced pilot.

After speaking with a FSDO office, I will now have a number of licenses: the full Australian PPL, the FAA license based on my foreign privs and now a new cert number for the unrestricted license I just passed.

Time for instrument work, however after posting on http://pilotsofamerica.org I think I will complete a tail-wheel endorsement before completing the instrument.

In other news, things are brewing on the flying club front. More to come later, however as a sneak peek... I have partnered with someone else from Wings and we have been gathering interest and doing work behind the scenes to start another fractional. Working out whether it will be an equity or non-equity club. Time will tell.

RV10

I am now in possession of RV10 plans for my birthday. A great 4 seater aircraft from Vans.

I've spoken about building an aircraft, which was going to start with the RV7 however my general "mission" when flying has changed somewhat.

The house I made an offer on that I expect to get has a great two car garage which will more than suit the building of the 10.

I will be in Maryland tomorrow, so I am also taking the opportunity to grab a ride in an RV10 with Mitch from Vans.

Aside from the building, which will take me a few years, I'm also looking to get a C182 or start a flying club with a few people I recently met at a Pilots of America forum FlyBQ at Wings field (KLOM).

The plan would be to start the building within the next 6-8 months as well as buying a 182 to take care of the interim flying.

Superhawking

Flight hours: 4.4

You may recall that the engine was well over TBO and although performing strongly, it was time to use the insurance money to buy a new engine.

The decision was made to move to a Penn Yan beast, which also requires a new prop... Who cares? 180 HP, ability to carry full fuel and 4 adults in a 172... Sold.

The engine will take a few weeks to arrive by sea freight and another two weeks for installation.

The outcome should show a 125 kt cruise (130+ kt fast cruise) at around 40 litres per hour fuel burn.

Maintenance & APEC

Flight hours: 3

I haven't posted over the last few months so have quite a bit to cover.

The windshield was replaced and is fantastic. Photos turn out so much better and now I will have no problem with glare when landing into the sun.

The hail damage post I made some months back, well it has been decided to take the money from the insurance company offered and increase the premiums a little to bring the insured value of the aircraft back into acceptable figures.

What this means is that instead of total replacement of the hail damaged skins, I will have the control surface skins replaced and use the remainder of the money to buy the new engine (the engine is 25% over TBO, but running really well). This will see an upgrade to 180HP.

Recently I have also taken a few more managers from the US and India for flights around the Sydney basin area. Flying however was put on hold for some period of time due to APEC being in the city. A 45nm radius around Sydney was evoked and if you flew without proper procedures and clearance you would be visited by a couple of F-18's. One such pilot had the privilege of this on the second last day of the restrictions even though procedures were followed.

Apart from that, some more news coming down the line soon regarding my flying and what the future holds.

Maintenance hell is frozen… For now.

Flight hours: 0
Aviation Reading: Aviation Magazines

Well, what a pleasant surprise!

The mechanic (actually a L.A.M.E (Licensed Aircraft Maintenance Engineer)) cleared the plane for another hundred hours before engine overhaul! That extra hundred hourly on-condition sign-off allows me to take the engine up to 400 hours past TBO.

The Lycoming O-320 in the plane was compression tested and oil consumption was in the middle of normal limits along with no metal being found in the oil filter.

What does this mean? Financial raping of engine overhaul/replacement has been diverted for now. Hell is frozen and is thawing over the next hundred hours of flight. It also gives me a few months reprieve in departing with my cash.

On other financial news, the windsheild will get replaced in the coming week or so.

Special VFR

Flight hours: 0.3 (air switch time)
Study hours: 0
Aviation Reading: Killing Zone: How and why pilots die

The weather forecast looked promising at the start of the weekend and Saturday was a great day to fly. As I was still a little tired from a previous big night out, I decided to postpone and go flying on the Sunday.

The weather changed overnight and by morning, a broken to overcast cloud cover rested at around 3000 feet. The weather was calm with almost no wind. I decided to take the flight anyway, bringing someone along for the ride. The plan was to do a simple CBD orbit and the low altitude Victor 1 route under the clouds.

Pre-flighting was a breeze and I pulled the plane out of the hangar, had a fuel truck fill her up and then started to taxi for the run-up bay. The ATIS reported visibility at greater than 8km below 3000 feet at that time.

Soon after, we took off and straight into fairly crap visibility above 1000 feet. I would have estimated a distance of around 6 kilometres by this stage and in haze. It certainly looked much better from the ground, just not great for photos.

As we approached Parramatta and then started for Pennant Hills, I told my passenger we will reschedule this flight for another time due to visibility, which by now, was more like 5 kilometres, still legal in the VFR sense as I was clear of clouds, however it could easily deteriorate further. I started a descent and swung the aircraft towards Prospect to go back to Bankstown. I did however manage a small diversion to allow my passenger to take a photo of their apartment.

The visibility in the area of Prospect and looking South-East to Bankstown must have dropped to around 3 kilometres. The ATIS was still reporting the original weather.

After my inbound call, I was needing to reference the instruments a lot more to ensure I was on track for joining downwind on 29R. I also was utilising my colour GPS, which is a much quicker way of confirming instruments along with landmark identification.

As I joined the extended downwind, the tower informed of a new ATIS, which was now Special VFR with a visibility of 3 kilometres. I was mid-downwind when the call was completed and soon after, the landing was a greaser.

On other news, the plane has only 10 hours to run before the hundred hourly maintenance release expires and we all know what this means... Prepare for financial rape! Engine replacement, windshield replacement along with most of the aircraft panels.

My next flight will be on ANZAC day and I am sure this flight will be the last before it's massive maintenance.

Sydney Jaunt

Flight hours: 6 (3 via Human Mailing Tubes)
Study hours: 0
Aviation Reading: None

I finally managed to get some time in the air and not just my usual RPT flying, yes folks, I took my plane for a spin.

It ended up being a very late afternoon flight and very pleasant. I let Ajanta control the aircraft at times and she did quite well... that is if your discount the screeching of excitement at various times.

We flew over the harbour and Johnny Howard's Kirribilli residence a few times before heading back into an excellent sunset. I will post photos when AJ gets back from New Zealand.

AJ decided to extend her trip downunder up to her maximum 3 month visa limit (she has been continually extending her trip since it originally was only going to be for 3 or so weeks) and now she has decided to move to Australia. Until that time, her visa tourist day count needs resetting, so she flew over to New Zealand for a couple of weeks so that when back in Oz, the count will be zeroed off again.

The plane has around 45 hours left until its hundred hourly, which also coincides with the engine and windshield replacement along with some insurance work on the hail damaged areas. Time to buckle down on the money saving.

Hail!!

Flight hours: 3 (via Human Mailing Tubes)
Study hours: 0
Aviation Reading: Aviation Safety

So much has happened over the last few weeks, this thing called life is getting in the way of my aviation adventures. At least I'm still having an adventurous life. If only I can put the two closer together. Hmm. Possible, but not for a while.

I still haven't had the time to get a podcast episode out. This episode is actually an interview with an Airservices Australia Air Traffic Controller. We need to record a few sections again and after mixing, voila!

A few weeks ago, my aircraft was parked at Bathurst when a storm came through and dumped large hail stones everywhere. The aircraft did take some damage, luckily all cosmetic, although it does reduce the value of the plane.

It was decided through different discussions with insurance and my mechanic that when the engine gets replaced (The engine is reaching TBO), it would be a good opportunity to replace the main canopy (windshield) along with replacing or repairing the hail damaged panels.

Because of the large amounts of money needed for engine replacement and repairs, I have significantly reduced my flying time so that my wallet still has a little bit of weight to it after I get financially raped.

For maintaining currency I'm going up for a spin during this week, just a little jaunt around Sydney with someone I met in India. She is going back home to the US in a week, so best we get this done when the weather clears.

Hey honey, we bought an airplane

That's nice dear.

As I mentioned, the syndicate found me. They currently have seven members and I was to replace the last remaining original member who had purchased a Jabiru in recent times.

The plane is a Cessna 172M, always hangared and is in great condition.

Along with the usual items found in general aviation aircraft, this one has:

• Aux Tanks
• Two NavCom's
• Two ADF's
• Two GPS's

One of the GPS' is TSO'd (GNC 300XL), which means it is certified for IFR. The other GPS is a old portable Garmin GPS 95 which has been attached to the instrument panel. I also have my Garmin GPSMap 296. I bought it not long after Garmin released the GPSMap 496, seeing as the price for the 296 came down considerably being twice superceded and all.

The GPSMap 296 greatly enhances awareness during VFR flight and it certainly helps reduce the cockpit workload especially when you are skirting near airspace boundaries. A bonus is that my flight planning software can communicate with the GPS to upload my flight plans and waypoints.

The flight planning software was only a recent addition to my "flight bag". It will help me plan the bigger trips since you can view and overlay multiple maps at the same time.When you have finished planning within the software, it can submit the flight plan, provide fuel logs, a passenger route guide (keeps them occupied and feeling like a co-pilot) and overlay notes on the pertinent areas of the charts you require such as frequency changes or altitude planning. All of these things further help to reduce cockpit workload for the pilot, which is a good thing.

That being said, I still ensure I am no stranger to old school flight planning. Give me a chart, compass, plotter, pencil and a timepiece and I can navigate to you to any location. We can sort out the wind correction, groundspeed and ETA's whilst flying.

The additional auxiliary tanks provide roughly 6.5 hours endurance. My bladder may not last that long at times, but it is good to know I can take 2.8 people a long distance without re-fuelling. It will be very suited to some of the long trips I would like to make.

One of those long trips involves George, a work colleague from the west coast of Australia. We will be planning a trip to the centre of Australia to visit Uluru among other things. George also has his pilot’s license and seeing as I'm over in Perth for Christmas this year, George and I can go somewhere quiet and plan that trip.

Awesome, I now have my own plane, the only down side is that I still want to build a plane. I think I can put that off for at least five more years, maybe less.

Adventures of an Aussie Pilot

That title may be a little misleading... I do have my pilots license, but it's only my private certificate, so I don't fly for a living. I'm an Aussie, currently living in Sydney and working for a US multi-national company.

I'm the kind of person that flutters between hobbies. Unfortunately, the ones I like usually cost quite a bit of money or require a rather large commitment to get anything out of it. Fortunately, I have a career that provides me enough time and money to do them...

Same examples include:

• Kung Fu (Black Sash)
• Racing Motorcycles (one season)
• Snowboarding (Revolves around three countries)
• Firearms (I own handguns)
  
  and of course the reason this blog exists... My pilots license!
  

I started flying (fixed wing) around 2000. It took me just over a year to get my private license and then for some unknown reason (perhaps I had too many hobbies?) the following years regrettably saw me not use any of those skills as often as I liked... think 5 hours per year flying excluding my BFR's (biennial flight reviews).

Most of those flying hours were for recency requirements that come with holding a pilots license. I would have to at least do three (3) take-offs and landings per ninety (90) days, in order to carry passengers. But seeing as I wasn't even flying myself let alone passengers, it got disturbing and this is a hobby that I will not let go of so easily.

I recently put flying back on the agenda in an unusual manner... I decided I wanted to build my own aircraft as I knew that will get me back into flying or being around aircraft. I joined the SAAA (an organisation in Australia that brings homebuilders together) and started making new friends who are all building, wanting to build or has built a flying contraption.

I narrowed down the choices and started researching more, costing out the project in terms of finance and time along with starting to make arrangements to move into bigger living quarters, seeing as it's ideal to have a double garage.

I started on the search for a new place to live. The search continued for weeks and the market just did not present what I was looking for. Considering I like to do things spur of the moment, the choice was made for me. I will advertise in the Aviation Trader that I am looking for some other people interested in creating a syndicate to purchase an aircraft around the same age as myself. The syndicate found me.

I purchased an aircraft (well, I purchased 1/7th of a share in one) in a syndicate that also has 3.5 owners whom are practically non-flying.

I have started flying a lot more and even had the fortunate ability to recently incorporate it into my work travel.

This blog will serve as the chronicles in clocking up my logbook hours with a bit of my life thrown in for good measure. I will definitely obtain my Commercial license (CPL) when I hit the required hours and who knows, perhaps I can dream of finding a company that will pay for my ratings or endorsements and in return, I will work for free to allow the company to recoup much more than the incurred training costs.

aut viam inveniam aut faciam

Plug: If you are in a position to offer a pilot role in a Sydney based training or charter company, to instruct or become a freight dog and provide me with the bargain salary of $0, contact me.

Perhaps I need to revise my plug à la A-Team.

"In 1976 a child was born, sent to a life of I.T. for a crime he didn't commit. This man promptly escaped from this life by adopting too many hobbies. Today, still wanted by the I.T. world, he survives as soldiers of fortune. If you have a problem, if no one else can help, and if you can find him, maybe you can hire the Oz Pilot**."

** Oz Pilot is offering pilot skills to any outstanding training or charter company. Terms and conditions apply.


Yep, that's better.