turboplanner

Watto, there's absolutely no question that it's legal, and navigation/cross country training usually comes after Pilot Certificate.

Watto, Brett - the area in question is from the boundary of the Training Area, where the Pilot is very familiar to his surroundings to the boundary of the "new" area (25Nm) where he is not familiar with the surroundings, and so needs to navigate as he would in cross country flying.

Picking an exact amount of distance doesn't really matter - its the uncharted territory - it's possibly to get lost in a very short time if you don't know the landmarks, and there are other issues - Poteroo's example is a good one.

Having thought this over, the issue should be fixed by limiting pilots to the Training Area, but setting a suitable Training Area size. That way this thread would never have come up.

Brett, Poll?Not again!

I don't think it's World War Three - just that this thread has uncovered an oversight in the regulations. I'm pretty sure in GA it was just - Training area, then when Navigation Qualifications were passed, Australia.

To me the fix is either fit the Training area to the 25Nm and have the instructors familiarise that area, or settle on the Training Area Boundaries - the real issue was as per the scenario - the pilot getting lost because he doesn't have nav skills.

What I'm saying to you, assuming you haven't started any nav training, is that this is an operation you really want to do, but haven't yet been trained for.

After Googling the route - sure, in normal weather with a coast to watch there would be no navigation issues.

But you quickly learn once you start navigating that it can be a whole new learning curve, so I'd echo the thoughts of an earlier poster, and say do this when you've completed your Nav training

... While this nonsense was going on Turbo had finally fixed his boat....

I think we are begining to get the picture, so let's leave you out of it and pick a hypothetical Pilot, newly certified, but who has had no navigation training and no cross country training, and who, as likely as not will be finding Performance and Operations, fuel planning, true north vs magnetic, and daylight planning all new and exciting, or perhaps hasn't done that yet.

He's criss crossed the training area so many times that he knows certain strainer posts and familiar trees.

On this occasion he's decided to exercise his right to fly within the 25 Nm limit albeit with no navigation experience, and he's going to predict the weather by getting a weather report before he leaves town.

The weather prediction is for some showers and drizzle - nothing he hasn't experienced before, and he's flying coastal anyway and there's also a coastal creek behind the primary dunes as well as the highway, so off he goes.

It's an hour's drive to the remote airport, and the preflight phase to departure takes another 30 minutes.

He's driven through a couple of light showers, and there was a bit of drizzle at the airport so he's pretty comfortable with the weather, particularly since a pilot who'd just landed tells him it was ok, "just a bit of drizzle about".

As he lifts off he notices the drizzle coming in off the sea is a bit more prominent, but they did say "some" showers.

Just as he's settled in and about twenty minutes out, (110 minutes after he got the forecast, which may have been produced an hour before that), he realises the drizzle is a solid wall down to the ground and it's coming across the coast fast. (He was NOT able to predict this, and that's my point).

He realises that before he gets to Busselton he's going to be flying blind in the drizzle, so he turns and heads east and as he does so the aircraft begins to feel the approach of the rain and starts to bounce.

At this stage of his flying he may not have even brought along a map because he knows the way to Busselton, but this pilot has thought to bring a WAC Chart, and he now takes it out to use in earnest for the very first time.

He seems to remember passing Capel a little while back, but understandably he hasn't been timing his flight, and when he looks down he sees a sea of dark green scrub.

It's now time for formal navigation procedures, surface to map identification, amendemt to SARWATCH etc and heading towards the planned alternate quickly before the storm overtakes him, checking his fuel burn to date to get his endurance in case he can't get in to the alternate.....little things like that.

I'll let you into a little secret, at one stage of our flying, pretty much everyone thought they could predict the weather, that is until they got THE FRIGHT....

Don't have any problem with any of this, or the nanny State etc or THEM, and I see that Tasmania has seceded again, but what Facthunter pointed out was it was US - members of the Recreational Flyers formum, not RAA and not CASA who had put up such an overwhelming vote to force rag and tubers to carry radios.....maybe they just haven't come on line, but I'm surprised they are not putting up any arguments.

Well Mazda, we don't have rear vision mirrors, we can't jam on the brakes, our vision is affected by wings etc. and I work in the transport Industry and have a CB where it's common these days to hear two truckies working a B Double into a difficult parking point where the first driver has massive blind spots, and the most interesting command decision I've seen was when a hang glider dude opted not to follow his check procedure and jumped off a rock without attaching the hang glider - all interesting stuff,

but as Facthunter says the vote here is to mandate radios, and I would have thought this wouldn't affect an Airtourer pilot from Camden, where the radio has probably been in the aircraft for 40 years, but just the very low cost Drifter type operator, many of which stay well away from any competing traffic - so the poll is really saying at the moment that THEY must fit radios, and that's what needs to be focussed on, because that will have a major impact on them.

Ah yes, the weather - an unexpected diversion to the planned alternate.....

One thing about this thread is that the TV News is going to be very interesting if the SAR crew has to go looking for the SAR guy..

Mike, you don't need to be a lawyer - we are talking about airmanship here - the ability to make a decision not to do something you haven't been trained for - that would appear to me to be a no brainer.

Walter, I wouldn't say there is a general resentment from GA - a lot of GA guys regularly choose to participate in this site - they fly recreationally and have a common interest - just look at the photos of RA Fly Ins, and we have a number of guys who fly both.

There's about the same percentage of bigotry in flyers as there is in the general community.

Yenn, on the other hand a circuit full or aircraft all transmitting as they should can really help you, particularly with smaller white aircraft who call turning base etc and the flats of their wings show up at just the right spot.

There's obviously a second argument here - correct use of radio for safety reasons.

Sorry Brett, the jargon got me - OpsMan

No man's land in this case wasn't geographical, but in the area Facthunter said.

If your CFI approved this, I'm curious as to why "RA Ops" was involved and why you would put the question on a Forum with mixed experience.

I have always thought of myself as a careful and safe pilot but one mistake and not following your plan can kill you - Please be careful in bad or marginal weather.

Yes, Dexter, but the worry is that he is in no man's land - considered to have the skills to fly the aircraft in familiar circumstances, but not to navigate it. This can be a dangerous little no man's land.

Things like altitude differential, pattern habits of the destination airfield, weight and balance, alternates, weather issues etc which you learn as you do the Nav phase.

Also, having lived in the area, I presume that's on the ground - orientation can be a problem from the air if you haven't flown over the area.

Finally the old "I only ever fly when the weather is good trick" which brings so many unstuck in the most obvious locations - what's plan B if fog/cloud brankets the coast.

Maybe none of these comes into play with your flight, but I'll bet a lot of people have read these posts and thought they would do something similar, when the vital Nav and cross country learning is only a few hours from completion.

My main point was that while the two systems have much in common, they are slightly different which leads to some confusion at times, and frustration to people flying recreationally (now and again) in both systems (GA and RA).

Slarti, Gary's experience is very timely, and as embarrassing is it might be to him, it will serve to warn others just how tight the envelope can be (along the lines that if someone like him can run out of elevator authority, a freshly graduated pilot needs to REALLY check every proposed flight.)

I'm building up a mythical aircraft - the Falcon, which hopefully will become unflyable at a much lower out of balance not to fly - for some P&O theory)

You're not listening Brett, and worse, you've given others a chance at a loophole.

Destiny, there are people like that on both sides of the fence.

I was blessed with instructors in GA and RA who really stressed the live and let live principle, not getting flustered by someone else doing the wrong thing, and going with the flow of whatever the day brings. Mightn't sound that way from some of my posts, but it does lower the blood pressure, and it does keep you away from incidents.

I can think of two words that justify having radio onboard.One is "Pan" the other,... well you can guess.

...."cake"???

This thread has taken off like a bushfire, but guys the same debate raged in the fifties in GA, one of the most popular defences of not having radios being that tiger moths would be too heavy to fly/be safe, and the radio would cost more than the aircraft, but like the argument over car seat belts, the statistics finally showed which was the safer route.

So this is a bit of a dead argument, but shows that a Tasmanian can stir up mainlanders any day.

Looking at your beautiful photo I can see where you're coming from.

Inbound with seven unseen aircraft with varying standards of PIC, I can see where they are coming from.

I've suggested several times that RA could do with a layered approach, with the very basic tube and rag flying out of the horse paddock at one end, and four place CTA/Crosscountry aircraft (let's just look ahead for a minute) at the other.

So if all youwanted to do is fly from your paddock down to the local beach, you could select an endoresement level to do that.

It is already working well in the truck industry, where you can drive some trucks on a car licence, step up to a medium truck with not much more than a question and answer session, then step up to a heavier truck, then a semi, then a B Double.

That system would take care of your fears and bring better safety to dense traffic areas at the same time.

They've got your number though Slarti - that spotted cat has drawn their attention and they're just waiting for you to stuff up.......

Don't get too upset by this guys, GA twin pilots are like crayfish - brains in theor ar*e and a head full of Sh*t.