Australian Flying

When visual pilots fly into cloud, there is only one instinct they can trust to give them accurate information: the one in their gut that thinks “Oh, hell! What have I done?” The immediate reaction is to want to go back to when they made a decision t

Steve, Your article about Glen [Buckley – Australian Flying September-October 2019] is excellent. My Cobden Aero Club has written to our local MP Dan Tehan asking for a deputation in order to address the many ills of GA. Our Club has little hope of b

Matt Hall’s Red Bull Air Race (RBAR) career clock was at two minutes to midnight when he strapped himself into his MXS-R racer for what would be his last ever run. After eight seasons his ambition to be RBAR world champion was still unfulfilled. Seco

Applications for the latest round of the Remote Airstrip Upgrade Program (RAUP) opened on 1 October this year. The 2018–19 Federal Budget allocated $28.3 million over four years to fund works designed to improve the safety and capacity of remote airs

One of the aims of AirVenture Australia this year was to promote aviation to school students via a science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) program. Despite the challenging conditions, AirVenture organisers are hailing the program as a

The Australian Division of the Royal Aeronautical Society (RAeS) and Australian Flying magazine are proud to announce the winners of the 2019 Wings Awards. The Wings Awards were inaugurated in 2014 to recognise the efforts of the many people who have

You are just back from (EAA) Oshkosh. What were your main impressions and learnings as may be applicable to Australia? This was a personal trip, for which I paid my own way, so I was there as a pilot and aviation enthusiast, like so many of the 650,0

Under the maxim that all ratings make pilots better and safer, I arrived at Icon’s Vacaville, California, training facility to complete a seaplane rating. Before the trip I had spent a day of seaplane introduction with Kevin Bowe in Noosa. We flew in

If you have ever looked at a European sports car like a Porsche 911 or an Audi RS and thought, “if only it had wings for that price”, the new JMB VL3 Evolution might be the recreational aeroplane you are after. The Evolution is every bit like a Europ

Many readers of Australian Flying will remember a GA pre-flight ritual, which sometimes took longer than the flight itself: attend the briefing office, collect NOTAMs and weather forecasts, fill out the flight plan form. Sometimes, the weather justif

I am probably not alone in having the Tiger Moth feature in my childhood daydreams of being a pilot. In fact, most pilots seem to reserve a special fondness for this iconic aeroplane. When you get a chance to learn to fly a Tiger Moth, it starts to g

Flying schools are the breeding grounds that spawn the pilots of the future. They are the genesis of the Airbus and Boeing skippers that steer hundreds of thousands of passengers across continents and oceans to business meetings and holiday destinati

In Florida in 2000, the pilot of a Piper Cherokee Six, carrying Henry George Anhalt and his family, collapsed at the controls. Anhalt, who had no aviation training, had to learn to fly – and on the spot. Anhalt, his wife and their three sons were on

There are owners for whom it’s the best or nothing, and their aircraft reflect that. Camden based, twin Cessna 340A, VH-VVK, is one of those aircraft VVK is owned by Chris Panayiotou, who learned to fly at Camden in 1994, adding an instrument rating

Fifteen hour over-water flights are taxing enough in today's pressurised airliners with comfortable seats and drinks at the push of a button. We arrive tired and weary in even the best aircraft. Can we then honestly imagine doing it in the noisy, cra

The concept of business aviation commenced in the 1920s in Wichita, Kansas and at a few other air-minded locations throughout the world. The concept rapidly turned into reality with substantial growth in the 1930s. Since WWII, the real benefits of bu

Following the release of a Defence White Paper in 2016, which foreshadowed the early retirement of the Australian Defence Force’s Eurocopter EC665 Tiger Armed Reconnaissance Helicopter (ARH) fleet, the Australian Army is planning to replace the helic

The Osprey GP 4 is a scratch-built aircraft, the fourth aircraft from designer George Pereira, It is a low wing side-by-side retractable gear aircraft of wood construction. It has a single spar stressed to +8 to -6g loading. The aircraft’s wooden con

I have always been fascinated with time, so much so that one of my major assignments in high school was based on time. I researched the great philosophers who have examined the concept of time through the ages: Galileo, McTaggart, Newton and others.

The risks of visual flight rules (VFR) pilots flying into low visibility including instrument meteorological conditions (IMC) are well documented, and has been the focus of numerous Australian Transport Safety Bureau (ATSB) accident investigations an