Plane Crazy Down Under

While the technology behind ADS-B is nothing new, it is becoming the centerpiece of modern Air Traffic Management systems around the world. Unfortunately, CASA is once again taking a global concept and creating an entirely unique Australian implementation of it.

According to CASA’s Discussion Paper (DP) 1006AS Proposed Strategy and Regulatory Plan in support of the Australian Government’s Aviation White Paper, any aircraft added to the Australian register after 2013 must have an ADS-B out compliant Mode-S Transponder on board. This means large added costs for no real benefit beyond that already provided by Mode-C and Mode-S transponders.

This is creating no small level of concern in the aviation communities, including RA-Aus, ballooning and others, as can be seen from a recent discussion about DP 1006AS on the Recreational Flying site. Even the airlines who were pushing for ADS-B to improve safety at regional airports are now realising that the costs are huge (it’s not a simple upgrade of their avionics) and the benefits are minor.

With all this in mind, Bas & Grant chat with Bill Hamilton, past president & technical director of the Australian Aircraft Owners & Pilots Association (AOPA). While Bill can appreciate ADS-B’s history and benefits, he doesn’t hold back when it comes to CASA’s attempt at creating yet another uniquely Australian implementation. We discuss the differences between the US, European and Australian implementation plans, the costs associated with our version and the lack of real benefit CASA’s proposal will provide.

As the title of CASA’s Discussion Paper shows, the proposal is implementing an aspect of the Australian Government’s Aviation White Paper. If, like many, you are concerned about the costs being applied to the aviation industry for little real benefit, it is important to respond to the DP by November 30th. It is also vital that Australian aviators write to their elected representatives, members of the opposition and their aviation organisations (eg: AOPA, RA-Aus, ABF, etc) to ensure politicians are aware that the proposed solution will cause more harm than good.

You can easily find who is representing you at the Australian Government’s “Who’s Who” page. You can also find a great guide to writing effective letters to politicians over on the Crikey website.

Don’t assume others will sort this one out for you. Don’t take the classic Australian “She’ll be right” approach. Get out there and tell CASA, the politicians and your aviation group what you think, otherwise the safe skies will be achieved thanks to the removal of any non-airline aircraft.

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The 2010 RedBull AirRace season was exciting, eventful and disappointing all at once. From Adilson Kindleman’s crash in Perth to Hannes Arch’s pylon hit and Matt Hall’s “walk on water” incident, G-Stalls were everywhere. Then came the news that the last two races were cancelled and, finally, that the whole 2011 season was cancelled. As if the end of the season wasn’t bad enough, we were all stunned by the news that Alejandro Maclean had died in an aerobatic training accident.

We have already presented our “End of Season” chats with Hannes Arch and Matt Hall in previous episodes so in this one, we present our chats with Nigel Lamb and Pete McLeod.

We also officially announce the winners of our Flight City Simulator Centre B777 sim session prize (Graham Neal) and two runners up (Greg Spencer & David Mitchell), both of whom win PCDU T-Shirts.

We talk briefly about Qantas’ recent 90th Birthday event at Melbourne airport and play the quick chat we recorded with Juan Serrano, John Travolta’s chief pilot.

After another View from the Lounge segment, this time paying tribute to those serving in the military, we dive into our mailbag:

• Steve Horton form Perth is worried that the RedBull AirRace will never return to Perth and lets us know about his great photo site
• Peter Baxter wrote in asking about jet engine technology and again to share a great story about an Air New Zealand DC10 that helped a ferry flight in trouble over the Pacific
• “brettkp” has some great feedback about episode 46 in our forums on Downwind

We give a shout-out to Pieter Johnson (@NascotHornet) in the UK who has just become a very proud father: welcome Beatrice :)

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On November 4th, 2010 Qantas A380 VH-OQA (“Nancy Bird Walton”) was operating flight QF32 from Singapore to Sydney. During the climb out from Singapore, the number 2 Rolls Royce Trent 900 engine’s Intermediate Pressure Turbine appears to have failed and flown apart, sending bits through the aircraft’s wing in multiple locations and raining debris down on Batam island, Indonesia. After assessing the problem, determining their options and burning off fuel, the crew were able to return the aircraft to Singapore for a safe landing.

This incident, in conjunction with some other recent engine failures on Qantas 747s, has overshadowed Qantas’ 90th birthday celebrations. While the story is still unfolding and it will be some weeks before the ATSB’s preliminary investigations are completed, we have decided to quickly produce an episode dedicated to the incident.

To begin with, we talk to Captain Richard Woodward, Vice President of the Australian and International Pilots Association (AIPA). He discusses what the crew would have experienced on board as the incident unfolded, including the systems alerts & alarms, the processes to be followed and the roles over the various people on board. He also discusses the A380’s systems & redundancies and the options available to the crew when flying & landing a crippled aircraft.

We then chat with Steve Purvinas of the Australian Licenced Aircraft Engineers Association (ALAEA) about the changes that have occurred in Qantas as they have moved from an exclusively in-house engineering operation to one that relies more on outsourced maintenance performed overseas. We discuss the implications of the changes and other paths Qantas could have followed.

This episode was conceived, implemented and released within the week of the incident occurring as we felt it important to present our listeners with good background information about the aircraft, the crew’s likely experience and some of the changes at Qantas that have seen their engineering force reduced significantly compared to their heyday of the 70’s & 80’s.

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It’s been a while since our last episode but at last we’re able to present our latest update with some more great content. First up, Matt Hall joins us once again to look back on his 2010 RedBull AirRace season, discuss the lessons he’s learned and give us his thoughts about 2011 & beyond.

Next up we are proud to introduce our latest advertiser, Flight City Simulator Centre at Jandakot in Perth, with their Boeing 777 simulator. We chat with Richard Zandvliet, the CEO at Flight City, about their various simulators, the courses they can offer for the professional pilot and the packages they have for the general public. Richard also makes a generous offer of a one-hour flight package in the 777 simulator that we can give away on the show (see below).

While Grant’s been able to go flying in some full sized aircraft (check out the photos on our Facebook page), Steve’s been catching up with some slightly smaller aircraft. He’s been out to the Victorian Scale Aircraft Association’s state championships and interviewed John Lamont, Noel Whitehead & David Law from the Packenham & District Aircraft Radio Control Society.

Finally, we wind up the episode some mailbag & shout-outs:

• Peter Baxter wrote in and suggested the brilliant idea of following up some engineers about jet engine issues
• Alex James wrote in from China with some comments
• Camper English from the Alcademics blog is producing a catalog of Aircraft Drinks Menus and, as mentioned in Grant’s Fly Me Friendly blog, we think you should give him a hand
• David Vanderhoof has started his own podcast called the Hitchhiker’s Guide to Military Aviation – well worth checking out!

NOTE: We had some additional content from our Matt Hall interview that was no longer current so we’ve moved it from the episode to our Extras collection. You can find it at our “Extras” page.

Competition: Win a one hour flight package with Flight City Simulator Center’s Boeing 777 simulator

Just listen to this episode to hear a jingle from the past. If you know who owned that jingle, send us an email at [email protected] telling us who you think it was. We’ll draw the winner live on uStream in the near future.

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In an effort to reassure you that we’re not trying to cut any corners as we build towards our 50th episode, this episode comes in at over 2 hours in length (our longest ever, in fact). It’s jam packed with great content, including:

• A chat with Bas Scheffers about:
• The impact of the Class D changes at Parafield
• The flying he’s been doing lately in his Evektor Sportstar
• The Parafield Airshow
• How the Aeroscene Flying Group is going
• A review of some of the latest RA-Aus developments (Recreational Aviation Australia)
• A chat with Hannes Arch (Red Bull Air Race pilot) where we discuss his 2010 season and his plans for 2011/2012
• An interview with an F-18F pilot that David Vanderhoof recorded at the Oceana Air Show
• A discussion between Steve & David about the history of the F-18, its current status with the Super Hornet (aka Rhino) and the implications of the F-35 JSF
• Controllers Corner #2
• The View from the Lounge: “Monkey in Business”
• We read some mail & forum items:
• Cameron Liberts enjoyed episode 42
• Turb Coriolis comments on episode 43 in our forum
• Anthony Crichton-Browne enjoys our content even if he does disagree with some of what we say :) – he also points us to video of the recently deceased Renaud Ecalle performing an aerobatics at the World Aerobatic Championships in 2009
• We give a set of Shout Outs to:
• The Flying Ant podcast by Anthony Crichton-Browne (a 767 pilot) who also has a blog
• The Flaps Podcast from the UK is an awesome new show – we highly recommend it
• Andrew Offen from Brisbane took Grant & Nykolai for a flight in his Cirrus SR22 with the new Avidyne Release 9 package – an amazing aircraft & systems and a lot of fun catching up with Andrew for a flight
• Brendan Viti is getting his IFR rating – wow!

Please note that our sound effects come from SoundSnap.com and our theme music track is "YouNameIt5" by Brian Simpson (aka t3cat5).

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Back in March we attended the Centenary Air Show at Melton airport near Diggers Rest (a short drive from Melbourne). In addition to being a great air show that celebrated 100 years of powered flight in Australia, this was also the first event where we had media passes. We recorded lots of great interviews, caught up with Owen Zupp and bumped into a few old friends.

It’s now 6 months on and we’re finally getting an episode out with these interviews plus a wrap-up chat we had with Owen Zupp after he finished his “There and Back” fund raising flight around Australia. We’ve been meaning to get this content out for a while but have had so many other things to do, it just kept getting put on the back burner.

Finally we’re able to present these interviews along with a more recent chat we had with Glyn Butchard, the organiser of the Centenary Air Show. We caught up with him this month and discussed how everything went once the dust settled and the people went home.

Here’s a list of the interviews & chats we present in this episode:

• Chris Sperou and Warren Stewart are the “Skyblazers” formation team
• Bernie Ferrie flew in a Citabria and we chatted with him while sitting under its wing
• Clin Ashton-Martin flies a gorgeous Avro Cadet biplane
• Grant’s friend Andrew Temby flew an aerobatics routine with his Yak-52TW so we had a quick chat while sitting on its wing
• Phil, Mark & Shane who were providing unicom & air show coordination services
• Grant had a quick chat with Glyn Butchard at the end of the day as everyone was leaving
• Steve & Grant have a recent chat with Glyn Butchard and we look back at how it went in the months after the show
• We chat with Owen Zupp about how things are going after his “There and Back” fundraising flight around Australia
• We give a quick shout-out to Peter Johnson from the UK who is now producing the “Across the Pond” segment for the Airplane Geeks show

NOTE: Additional music in this show was from Glenne Petersen’s “Empty Cars”

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This episode we’re joined by Will Horton from the Wings Down Under blog to chat about recent aviation news items. We also have Anthony Simmons returning for another View from the Lounge segment and a chat with Damien Rose about his flight training up in Toowoomba. The episode wraps up with some listener mail and a shout out so it’s a little long but that should make up for the three Election QuickCast episodes we released recently :)

The list of topics we discussed with Will Horton include:

• A review of the recent Asia/Pacific Aviation Outlook Summit in Sydney
• The Asia/Pacific outlook for airlines includes a prediction for strong growth
• “Buy local” for Russia (Sukhoi) & China (Comac) plus India building up its local aeronautics capabilities along with Mahindra & Mahindra buying into Australian aviation companies such as Gippsland Aeronautics
• Cathay Pacific’s Boeing 777-300 and Airbus A350-900 order
• V Australia’s 777 useage in Fiji & Bali plus the use of wide bodies (eg: 767/A330) on domestic routes due to slot restrictions
• Qantas wanting to fly 787s into China & on to Europe
• Jetstar being boosted over Qantas (if it’s new it’s JQ) and using Singapore as a hub into Europe
• Qantas’s new smart card system for check-in that relies on elite frequent flyers who are with Qantas, not Jetstar
• AirAsia setting up a Frequent Flyer program
• Crawford Rix @ Tiger Airways is against frequent flyer programs as they’re anticompetitive and is hinting that Tiger could go down the RyanAir path (standing seats, pay loos, etc) – at least for the publicity :)
• Customers in Australia and Asia/Pacific wanting a higher level of standards
• Tiger setting up a franchise in Thailand (51% Thai owned but still Tiger Thailand)
• China more likely to have standing seats as the Chinese can lay down the law for their own operations – no need to align with FAA/EASA standards although they’re investing in highspeed trains)
• AirAsia wants to enter the Australian domestic & trans-tasman market
• The high quality of the AirAsia experience (a discount carrier that doesn’t nickle & dime their passengers) will hit Jetstar hard
• Pacific Blue is pulling out of the New Zealand domestic market
• Repurposing of V Australia’s 777s off the Fiji route
• United is not worried about Delta-V
• Qantas’ financial results

Steve & Grant also talk afterwards about Virgin Blue’s financial results which came out after we spoke with Will, along with their news about adding A330s, dropping the E170s (while keeping the E190s) and linking up with Etihad.

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In our third & final Election QuickCast, we take a look at the published transportation policies from the The Greens and the Labor Party’s “Aviation White Paper.” Sadly, Christine Milne from the Greens and Anthony Albanese from Labor were unable to accommodate us in their busy schedules. Both groups have indicated that they’ll be happy to talk to us once the dust has settled from the election so we look forward to bringing them on for future episodes.

Meanwhile, Steve & I didn’t have much time for a full analysis & discussion but we did record our thoughts on the information we could gather. As you’d expect, the Greens are very much into public transport and eco-friendly fuels while the Labor party are standing very firmly behind their Aviation White Paper.

As previously noted, we’re not trying to tell you how to vote, just doing our bit to raise awareness of the importance of aviation within the political community and hopefully give you some information that might help you make an informed decision.

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Australians are about to go to the election booths on Saturday 21st August so we’re working to bring our listeners information about the aviation policies of the various political parties. We’re not trying to tell you how to vote, just doing our bit to raise awareness of the importance of aviation within the political community and hopefully give you some information that might help you make an informed decision.

In our second Election QuickCast, we’re taking to two representatives from one of Australia’s more “interesting” parties. This party approaches politics from the small business and civil liberties environment and has a rather distinctive, catchy and memorable name: The Australian Sex Party.

We were fortunate enough to speak with Ken Hill and Tim Sheen about their views on the current election, Australian politics and aviation. Ken is a private pilot in Melbourne who is working on the party’s aviation & transportation policies while Tim Sheen is a candidate for the Sex Party in Queensland and also a commercial pilot flying in the New Guinea area.

The discussion covers a lot of issues that are of importance to pilots within Australia and raises a number of the problems currently facing people who are trying to make a living in this industry.

This podcast uses the following third-party services for analysis:

Blubrry - https://create.blubrry.com/resources/about-blubrry/privacy-policy

Australians are about to go to the election booths on Saturday 21st August so we’re working to bring our listeners information about the aviation policies of the various political parties. We’re not trying to tell you how to vote, just doing our bit to raise awareness of the importance of aviation within the political community and hopefully give you some information that might help you make an informed decision.

In our first Election QuickCast, we’re interviewing Warren Truss, the leader of the National Party and shadow minister for trade, transport and local government. Warren was gracious enough to give us some time to talk about his interest in aviation as well as his party’s views on the importance of aviation to Australia, the cost of flying, airspace safety, airport encroachment and ways to get more people flying. We even touch on high speed rail and how it stands compared to airlines. We also discover that Warren’s a bit of an aircraft lover and has a good collection of models in his office.

We’re working with the other parties to see if we can get time with their representatives before the election. Everyone is, of course, extremely busy in the final days of meeting constituents, appearing at events and being in the media. Watch the space to see who else we can get for you :)

This podcast uses the following third-party services for analysis:

Blubrry - https://create.blubrry.com/resources/about-blubrry/privacy-policy