Learning to Fly in Australia

by: Chris Hobbs

Sitting in the departure lounge in Ottawa with Laurie Davis and our wives Alison and Elva and realising that my log book was in its normal place on the shelf in the kitchen at home was an aeronautical low point of our three week trip to Australia.

Being told at Sydney's Bankstown airport that conversion to a VFR Australian licence would require a 1 hour familiarisation flight, two 2.5 hour navigation exercises and a 2 hour Biennial Flight Review (BFR) was, however, the nadir.

The extensive navigation exercises were needed because of the way in which navigation is taught in North America: VOR to VOR. Since there are few VORs in Australia, North American pilots tend to get lost and the exercises were to teach us to look out of the window. I had found the flight school on the Internet while still in Canada; it advertised itself as specialising in conversion of foreign licences and seemed ideal. Having explained about the 8 hour conversion process (say C$1400), the school then broke the news that, when we had converted, they would have no aircraft available for rental. At this disappointment Laurie and I looked at each other and then asked whether there were any other flying schools on the field. Apparently the only other one had gone out of business a couple of weeks previously. We paid for the ground briefing that we'd already had and wandered disconsolately into the mid-day sun to check the other flight school. The furniture was being removed.

Luck then took a hand: we wandered back into the excellent pilot shop on the field. The woman behind the counter, Lori, from whom we'd bought maps earlier in the day, must have seen our looks of dejection because she asked how we'd got on. We explained. She turned out to be a part-time instructor at Schofields Flying Club, also on the field at Bankstown. She said that having two 2.5 hour navigation exercises was ridiculous and suggested we try Schofields; she promptly got leave of absence from the shop and drove us to it. What a contrast! A friendly atmosphere redolent of Rockcliffe, instructors willing to work with us to minimise our check-out time and plenty of aircraft (predominantly Piper Warriors) to book for flights.

It now being late in the day, we decided to book the entire up-coming Monday for the checkouts: two familiarisation flights to explain the complex airspace around Bankstown (me flying with Laurie in the back and Laurie flying with me in the back so that we both got as much exposure as possible) and then a two hour BFR each (including a navigation exercise).

In fact weather intervened: our presence caused the 2 year drought to break but over a couple of days we did complete the check-out.

What's different down under? Bankstown is a so-called GAAP airport, an Australian phenomenon. It is essentially a controlled airport without clearance delivery and without the need to talk to ground control. In fact I did talk to ground control for the solo flights I made and found them perfectly happy to give me progressive taxi instructions when I got lost. The only dangerous moment came when, at the hold-short point, I contacted tower to tell them I was ready for take-off: WARRIOR HOTEL QUEBEC ROMEO READY RUNWAY ONE ONE LEFT DOWNWIND DEPARTURE. From my Canadian experience I expected CLEAR FOR TAKEOFF, HOLD SHORT OF RUNWAY ONE ONE LEFT or TAKE POSITION AND HOLD. What actually came back was: HOTEL QUEBEC ROMEO HOLD POSITION. I interpreted this, incorrectly and dangerously, as a clearance to "take position and hold". Luckily I read it back as such and immediately got the controller telling me not to move: there was an aircraft on short final.

Another surprise was the way in which we were taught to avoid controlled airspace. In Ottawa we tend to talk to the controllers, get a transponder code and then fly freely across airspace delineations. In Sydney we were taught to pick our way carefully around the controlled airspace: "make sure that you keep the pipeline on your left", "don't climb above 1500 feet until you cross the second railway line". Once, coming back from a familiarisation flight with an instructor, we were monitoring Sydney Radar (equivalent to our terminal control) when they called us blind: "aircraft flying south west at 1500 feet in the VFR corridor, you are close to the XYZ restricted area, suggest a turn to 180".

A useful feature of the Australian system was being able to enter flight plans over the web: something that we have been promised for some time here in Canada. For one of our flights, Laurie and I struggled for a while with the 11 hour difference between local time and Zulu time before entering the correct search-and-rescue time but on the wrong date. Clearly some human reads these flight plans because we had Melbourne Centre on the telephone before we departed to check that we really didn't want search-and-rescue for 24 hours after our expected time of arrival.

My familiarisation flight took place with scrappy cloud at 2000 feet and 8 to 10 mile visibility. The instructor, Rodney, said that, given the normally excellent Sydney weather, very few Australian VFR pilots would fly in those terrible conditions. Laurie and I hadn't noticed that the conditions were bad.

The BFR turned out to be a mini-flight test, something all Australian pilots have to undergo, eponymously, every two years. Following some ground questioning, Laurie and I had to complete some landing and takeoff distance and some weight and balance calculations and then fly a 50nm cross-country with air exercises on the way back. The only problem was the secrecy with which the aircraft's balance arms were treated: instead of being able to do a nice balance calculation we had to use a complex chart which seemed to require a PhD in weight-and-balance calculations and which hid the actual mechanism of the calculation. We managed it and feel better for it.

Rodney told us that one of us was going to make a trip to Wollongong in the South, the other to Warnervale in the North. I drew the Southerly straw and planned the trip to Wollongong. The only problem was picking the way between the bits of controlled and restricted airspace. On the way back I had to demonstrate a 20nm diversion to a totally invisible point called Picton and do a couple of steep turns and stalls. The engine "failed" three times on the flight: once on downwind at Wollongong, once, rather nastily, at 150 feet or so climbing out at Wollongong and once at altitude on the way back. I then had a rather disgusting meat pie from the local garage while Laurie completed his BFR, flying to Warnervale. On neither trip did we actually touch wheels at the destination airport since almost all Australian airports have landing fees! Fees actually don't stop at landing: ATC charges IFR flights at so many dollars per km!

We then booked an aircraft for a day later in the week with the intention of flying to Parkes, a town lying to the West of the Blue Mountains and immortalised recently by the film "The Dish". My son works at the dish (Radio Telescope) and, although he was in Sydney at the time, we thought it would be nice to see the Blue Mountains from above and get an idea of what lay beyond them (when we got there Laurie said that it reminded him of Saskatchewan. (This is apparently not a negative comment.).

Sydney has been suffering from severe drought for the past two years. This was evident during my trip to Wollongong where three large reservoirs were, from the map, obvious way-points. As we flew over, it was clear that the water levels were very low in each. Well, we broke the drought! When we turned up for our flight to Parkes there were clouds in the sky! In fact the cloud bottoms were somewhat lower than the mountain tops. So we decided to stay along the coastal strip instead and fly north to Maitland in the Hunter Valley (a wine-producing district) but even here we were a little uncomfortable when we were told that a student had just cancelled his commercial flight test which was to have taken him to Maitland because of the weather. Laurie and I studied the forecast again, helped by another friendly instructor, Michelle, but we couldn't see anything that was worse than broken at 2000 feet. So we set off with our wives in the back for a stimulating flight to the Royal Newcastle Flying Club in Maitland where we read the NOTAM about kangaroos possibly on runway and had an excellent lunch. As we picked our way around Class C airspace and enormous military zones, we were again reminded of how much airspace the Australian pilots have given up: very reminiscent of the USA.

We booked another aircraft for later in the week to try Parkes again.The scenery on the trip to Parkes was unbelievable. My wife Alison has had her palate jaded by hundreds of hours flying over beautiful places in Canada (but not Saskatchewan), but even she was ecstatic. She said the whole flight was "one of the most exhilarating ever". We climbed, as soon as airspace allowed, to 6500 feet for the trip over the Blue Mountains which we crossed at Katoomba. The deep valleys and steep cliffs were breathtaking as we flew over the edges of the ravines. We emerged above the high plateau on their western side and flew over Bathurst and Orange before reaching Parkes. As we opened the door on the ramp the heat hit us. A dry, intense heat which seemed to radiate from everywhere: buildings, the ground, the sky. We had been told, incorrectly, that food would be available at Parkes. Luckily Alison, expecting such an occurrence, had, as usual, packed a small snack which we shared in the deserted terminal building.

After taking off, we went to circle "The Dish", a large radio telescope some 20km North of the airport and then set off for Bankstown. With the sun now behind us, the mountains were casting different shadows and the view was again overwhelming.

So, what did we learn?

Firstly, to make sure that you get a second opinion about licence conversion when flying in Australia. The first school we went to had a good web page, was efficient and professional but inflexible and not particularly helpful.

Schofields Flying Club was a delight. Efficient, professional, extremely flexible and wonderfully helpful. I had booked ahead from Canada at the first flight school and they were unable to accommodate us; we turned up effectively unannounced at Schofields and they made us welcome and reworked schedules for instructors and aircraft to help us.

Secondly, that Australian aviation maps are pretty useless. Around Sydney there is a VTC (equivalent to our VTA) which is reasonable but gives no Morse code for any of the NDB and VOR identifiers. Beyond the VTC, there are eight VNCs covering a tiny fraction of Australia. These at least do have the Morse code for the identifiers but do not even stretch as far as Parkes. Otherwise pilots use WACs which do not even have the airspace classifications marked.

Yes, flying over most of Australia is carried out with maps which do not have airspace classification and restricted areas shewn. Nor do they give the Morse code, or even the frequency of navigational aids. Clearly we need to look out of the window more.

Thirdly, we at Rockcliffe can learn a lot from Schofields. They have built a professional and friendly club on aircraft rental, rather than on owner-pilots, something at which we have been unsuccessful. Their magazine shews a lively club with regular meetings and fly-aways. Their next big trip being planned is to Oshkosh in 2003 with some US and Canadian flying while there are up here. I'm sure that we'll make any of them that make the extra trip to Rockcliffe very welcome: I'm looking forward to giving Rodney his checkout (wait and see what sort of weight-and-balance calculation he'll have to do).

Fourthly that Australia seems to have gone mad over ratings and licences. They have a useful PIFR rating which allows a pilot to fly IFR non-commercially but even this is broken down into an en route licence which allows IFR flying but not departure and approach (sic!), a departure rating and an approach rating. But in addition they have retractable ratings, constant speed propeller ratings and taildragger ratings. Rodney shewed us his licence: several pages long and kept in a binder.

And the log book on our kitchen shelf? Well, Carol Hinde, answering a telephonic cri de coeur from Australia with characteristic efficiency faxed the necessary pages to the Australian authorities. Thanks again, Carol.

I thoroughly enjoyed my flying in Australia. I would strongly recommend Schofields Flying Club (http://www.schofields-flying-club.com.au/) to anyone visiting the Sydney Area. And I would recommend anyone going over there to remember his or her log book.