Sierra Del Barón Rojo

The epics of my Beechcraft Sierra.

Monday, June 19, 2006

 

Bankstown and back - 18 Jun 2006

We had another family social affair in Sydney, and despite the fact that a flight to Sydney from Canberra is a marginal flight (because you can almost drive door to door faster than you can fly up and arrange transport) I decided to fly again - I need the hours.

UMS seemed to zip along at almost the same speeds as it did before I polished the whole aircraft because this trip took the same time as the previous, the return trip was slightly faster however. It does look nice now it is polished,

This flight was uneventful because I am now used to the speeds this machine does on descent and coordinating the tasks when I get busy. I was number two for R29 right, with all 3 runways R29 Centre and R29 left active (yes there are 3 parallel runways).

Bankstown airport

Bankstown airport adjoins the Sydney CTR.
The crowded airspace

More later - I have to go to a training course for work.

Saturday, June 17, 2006

 

Canberra - 17 June 2006

What a wonderful day to go flying. My day started at about 8:00 am and I went to Super Cheap Auto and purchased a tube of 1-minute Araldite, and picked up a nozzle for my window sealing caulk tube that I forgot last time I was there, and some Wax and paper towels.

The next trip saw me at JayCar, a local electronics supplier, where I purchased some cable armour, a super-bright LED tourch and some other items and headed out to the airport.

I removed the covers from the plane and undid the pilot-side plastic trim and got out my socket set and undid the nuts holding the pilot-side windscreen in the door. This screen had been put in with Silicon Rubber sealant (silastic) and leaks like a seive when it rains. It took about 1/2 an hour and I had the screen out. The next job was to run around the fibreglass lip and cut the silastic away. The silastic grips very well to the fibreglass but not very well to the plastic screen at all.

Once I was satisfied it was clean I then laid a bead of caulking compound right around this lip and then replaced the screen. I pressed the screen down onto this compound so it spread out across the lip and then held the screen in place with the original screws, washers and the nylock nuts. I then went around the lip and ensured that the bead has spread so it covered all the gaps. I also added additional bead around the outside bottom of the screen to ensure that the bottom of the screen was doubly sealed. I then replaced the trim when I was satisifed I had done enough.

The next job was to polish the aircraft. I applied the polish to a small rag and rubbed it over the wing and it dissappeared! So I had to put more on. I did the upper surface of the wing, the stabilator the top and sides of the fuselage first. Then I got on my back and crawled underneath the aircraft and added polished to the entire bottom of the fuselage from the front cowling to the back tail-cone. Then I added polish to the bottom of the stabilator, and to the bottom of both wings. The whole process took ages.

When I inspected the upper sections of the wing to remove the polish I noticed that it didn't have any powered wax on it, so I applied more polish and did the wings again. Perhaps the polish had been sucked into the paint.

Anyway I then went around the whole plane, top and bottom and removed the dried wax which came off easily and left the paint very shiny. In fact the green stripes look very green and I could see my face reflecting from the bottom of the fuselage.
The polishing took about two hours and boy am I sore.

I then grabbed my can of trusty white-lithium spray-on grease (what will they think of next) and lubricated both control columns. Wow what a difference that made to the friction!

I also greased the seat rails and they slide very well too, and I lubricated the chain on the trim wheel - what a difference that made as well. Almost as good as the difference in the aircraft after we lubricated the aileron hinges and control linkages with Slick 50 One Lube.

I had been at the airport since 9:00am and it was now 13:30 and I was getting hungry so I packed up my gear and broke for lunch, well not quite. When I got to my truck I realised that I had not wound the cable armour onto my battery-pack cable and splitters, so I spent half-an-hour winding the split armour up all the cables. The hope is that this armour will protect the cables while in the aircraft from things such as the trim pulley chain, the seat latches, and feet when the cable is lying on the aircraft floor because I place the battery supply behind the front seats and run the cable forward to the PDA on the control column and the GPS receiver on the dashboard.

So I bought some lunch close to the airport, but not at the airport because I hate airport food, and when I got back I took my flight back and started the plane and refuelled. To my horror I noticed that any spashes of AvGas instantly take the polish of the wings, so when I parked it I had to add more wax to the wings near the fuel caps and will remove the dry wax in the morning.

Anyway I warmed the engine and 25 minutes later I took UMS for a City Charlie 2 flight. Charlie stands for clockwise and 2 is the longer flight path. This long flight is about 30 nm which is not far at all and takes about 15 to 20 minutes in my plane.

I was cleared for takeoff and 1102' later I was in the air, this is one up with full fuel at an airfield elevation of 1885' and an OAT 55.4 F, which I think is pretty impressive for a heavy machine. I turned right at about 500' and backed the manifold pressure back to 25" and the revs to 2500rpm and I had to lean it and it climbed like a homesick Angel. It loves the cold air and it wasn't long before I had climbed to 4000' AMSL.

I was a little bit off track because I haven't flown a clockwise city flight for a long time, everything was backwards and almost unfamiliar from this way round.

Since Canberra airport is running with only one active runway due to extension works on the cross runway it is very busy and I was delayed to permit 737s to land.
I took this as an opportunity and requested permission to orbit Kambah. The response was orbit as much and where you like, so I circled my house 2.5 times (3 passes) and headed towards Mt Stromlo where again I was advised there would be delays. So I requested some additional airwork and was given the instruction fly wherever you like but remain west of Black Mountain tower, so I got to buz around in the West of the city as well.

I was eventually cleared to track back to Lk Ginninderra and then to the Race Track and over the Ainslie ridge for right-base onto R17. All these delays and orbits extended my flight to a long 22 minutes, almost the same amount of time I spent warming the aircraft up.

The C2 flight path

Monday, June 12, 2006

 

Bankstown - Sydney 12 June 2006

I took UMS up to Bankstown to pick up my wife.

I was delayed again, as usual, due to the heavy loading of frost, plus I refueled the aircraft and stopped the engine and got out to wipe the ice off the wings and had some trouble restarting.

I managed to take off 1.5 hours later than planned.

The trip to Bankstown was initially flown at 7500' and took 1h 2m and I saw ground speeds of 143 Knots and used a total of 47 litres of fuel.

The circuit on arrival at Bankstown

You cannot fly directly from Canberra to Bankstown because of Restricted Airspace and Dangar zones, of note is the Wilton Parachute drop zone, which must be flown around, hence the large deviation in my track from Mitagong to Picton and then back to Menagle.

Deviation around Wilton Parachute drop zone

The Wilton runways and drop zone are relatively easy to see from the air, you often see the Parachute canopies and Paracutists decending to either side of the Hume highway. I think they have an Eastern drop zone for those that fail to make it across the highway.

The Wilton runways


The return trip took longer with the headwind and the later half was flown at 8500', with ground speeds of 123 Knots, and a total of 40 Litres of fuel used in 1h 12m. I wasn't flying as hard to minimize the cabin noise for passenger comfort.

The air was crystal smooth above 6500' on the way back and perfect at all levels on the way up to Sydney.

Bankstown Takeoff

It is a little difficult to takeoff from R29 and turn south as runway heading must be extended and flown at 1000' to underfly the approach path that is maintained at 1500' and until you are right of the 2RN radio mast, because 2RN at 1500' is the inbound reporting point for joining cross-wind onto R29.

Hoxton park is also fairly close to 2RN, and with the inbound traffic, you need to keep a very keen lookout. I saw 3 aircraft on the inbound track and several aircraft to the west of me. I always feel uncomfortable in this airspace because there are many helicopters and fixed-wing aircraft on days when the weather is great and they are concentrated in the airspace below the radar control steps.

Saturday, June 10, 2006

 

Inclement weather - 10 & 11 June 2006

The onset of inclement weather
The infrared image

Well today I couldn't see the horizon, so no flying.

I went to the airport and took an old bedsheet as a rag and cleaned the streaks of the landing gear hydraulic oil from underneath the aircraft. UMS has had a serious haydraulic leak before I bought it and the inside under the floor boards the belly skins are coated with landing gear fluid, which is rather tacky like treacle and some of this fluid still manages to flow and exit between the skin at the rear of the wing root and then flows along the under belly.

At the annual, when we lifted the floor boards, and removed inspection plates to service the pulleys and torque-tube bushes we noticed that the floor was covered in this stuff and it was so tacky that we found a $25 socket glued to the floor.

The fluid is quite difficult to remove. It came off once I wet the rag with AvGas from the fuel drains though, and half an hour later the outside belly skins were cleaned from the front to the tip of the enpennage. I also removed the dirt and grease left behind in the airstream of the landing gear from underneath the wing and the flaps and cleaned the engine oil overflow from the nose wheel hosing so now the bottom of the aircraft is relatively spotless.

The orignal source was caused by a problem in the hydraulics which was fixed before I bought the plane, but even so, I will keep an eye on this, and the level in the gear-motor reservoir, because we had to top it up at the annual.

The contanimation made the under-belly skin quite rough, aerodynamically speaking, which would have increased the drag a little. I also intend to polish the aircraft when the weather is better and I should start seeing a better speed or economy as a result.

Wednesday, June 07, 2006

 

Quick trip to Bathurst - 07 June 2006


I attempted to leave at 06:50 but my plane's wings and stabilator were covered in ice. It looked like a mixture of frost and clear ice and it was fairly thick in places, so I had to wait for the sun to rise to melt the ice. I was not prepared to takeoff with any ice on the wings, having heard stories about the extra weight, induced flutter, and distruption to the airflow that ice can cause. Some say a wing's lift can be decreased by 30 percent and the drag increased by 40 percent by small amounts of ice no thicker than sandpaper on the top of the wing. I had leading edge ice, wing ice and also ice extendind down from the leading edge to underneath the wing just aft of the leading edge chord. Some say it would have melted just after takeoff - but they are not flying my plane, and I know how my plane climbs from a high density altitude airport at MTOW.

I studied the lie of the land in GoogleEarth before planning this flight, because low cloud had been predicted from the night before. I planned via Yass, then Cowra, and then over to Bathurst, because the land is lower towards Yass and because the weather forecast was better at that time of the morning along that route.

Well I left Canberra at 4500' and continued along my planned track until I was handed-off by Melbourne Centre. I then gradually climbed to 8500' above the cloud tops but under the radar steps and kept my eye on the cloud cover.

The cloud cover direct from Canberra to Bathurst was solid 8/8 and set at 6000' AMSL but as I approached Cowra I could see that it was breaking up. This cloud bank was basically trapped above the mountains and quite extensive.

The section of the route from Cowra to Bathurst was subject to Few cloud at about 6500' and was easy to pass. Due to the fact that I had been delayed by an hour, as soon as the way was clear of cloud, I headed towards Bathurst cutting out Cowra.


My passenger was not ready when I arrived so I was delayed at Bathurst by about an hour, and during this time the clouds to the south had started to lift and break-up a little.

Because I knew I was flying into a headwind and since Canberra was clear when we left, I returned directly from Bathurst to Canberra.

We had to deviate track a little and to request our own decent profile to remain clear of cloud after we were granted airways clearance back into the Canberra control zone, and despite the headwind and small deviations, we made fairly good time back.

Sunday, June 04, 2006

 

Canberra to Moruya - Sunday June 04

Well I had my wings clipped on Saturday, and had to drive up to Campbelltown to a 50th birthday party, to return later that night; we got to sleep at 01:30.

I had itchy feet and had to fly on Sunday, it's one of those pilot's things, it just isn't right not being able to fly.

The trip tracks can be found at YSCB-YMRY and
airports for GoogleEarth GoogleEarth.

The weather was predicted as SCT / FEW clouds at 6500', lowering to 6000' ft on the coast, but broken at Merimbula and SCT at Moruya, or so they said. I decided I was going to fly to Merimbula and take the fold-up push-bikes so we could ride into town, and I made contact with a passenger, and said that the weather forecast is a little marginal but let's try and get to Merimbula.

Well the weather was not as predicted, and there were bits of scud dangling down under the clouds, so we turned East and crossed the escarpment so we could decend in a valley to fly to the coast. We also decided to discontinue Merimbula as a target and headed back up to Moruya, which was our return leg. We flew through many patches of rain with varying droplet sizes. The best thing is watching the water run up the windscreen and out over the side windows - we have no wipers. The worst rain is when the droplet size is so small that it doesn't coallesce and just sits on the windscreen until sufficient gathers for it to form bigger droplets. Sometimes the small droplets are ice and then they just stick there, but we had no icing on this trip.

We intercepted the return track and were flying in sunlight and we could see that the way down to Merimbula along the coast was clear. So having flown over to our return-track we were now an hour ahead of where we planned, and thus we flew back North and landed at Moruya and visited the Aero Club and had lunch.

While we were there the weather lifted so the wait was a positive thing in this case, and it is always good to be where the weather is better.

Turning to join cross wind just past the windsock near the intersection of R23/R36 - which is now behind us. Yes we fly over the ocean.

Final to R18 Moruya - there is some turbulence throwing UMS around.

UMS was parked on the grass outside the club house and some grass parrots decided to feed closeby. My zoom was at its limit, and I couldn't get close enough to them to get good shots, but they looked pretty contrasted against the Orange paint scheme on UMS, so I had to take a shot.

Grass Parots near VH-UMS

It took 1h 8m to meander around cloud and change track back to Moruya and only 38 minutes to return from Moruya to Canberra, including nearly a 250 degree turn to join track and a cruise climb to 6500'. We were 47 nm from Canberra at top-of-climb and very quickly had to call into for airway's clearance. During the decent phase we saw ground speeds of 168 Kts. UMS is a slippery aircraft in a power decent, while I am trying to keep the engine warm. Such speeds cause problems for me because the controllers do not expect my plane to go so fast. I still haven't educated some of them who keep calling it a Beechcraft Sundowner. The standard cruise speed is 131 Kts, which is considerably faster than a Sundowner and a Cessna 172 for that matter.

Friday, June 02, 2006

 

Warnervale Sydney Canberra - 28 May 06

UMS panel

The weather the next day saw BKN to full cloud cover in the Warnervale region, where it nearly always rains when a southerly change hits.

I own two bouyancy vests and fitted one before leaving Warnervale because I had planned to fly out at 2000' and then head down the coast on decent to Victor 1 at 500'.

I reached Long Reef at 500' AMSL and made my Victor 1 call. By the time I had reached North Head my radio calls had provided me with a response - I had company.

So from here on the reporting saw that the accompanying aircraft was in front of me by 10 to 15 nautical miles. I slowed down to 108 Kts so I could point my mounted video camera at the scenery while all the while I was looking out to see if I could find the aircraft.

I caught up with WWM when I approached the start of Port Hacking. A Cessna 150 looks small when you are 5 nautical miles behind it!

Catching up to WWM

WWM a C150 near Port Hacking

I saw WWM turn in and head across the skyline near Sutherland Cronulla, and I was catching up with it fast. By the time we got to Jibbon Point I announced that I would have to overtake on the right very soon, to which WWM wiggled its wings and headed left a little.


Turning back out from Cronulla


I decided to increase pitch and manifold pressure to work UMS up to 120 Knots. I overtook WWM and then climbed up to 1000' to the bottom of the radar step.
Further along I climbed to 2000' near Stanwell park while keeping my eyes on the hang-gliders launching from the cliff, and then a gradual cruise climb at 300 fpm underneath all the radar steps heading towards Mittagong, and from there up to 8500' for the trip back to Canberra.

The flight data can be found at
Wagga Warnervale Victor 1 Google Earth track and my local airport markers at Airports for Google Earth.

 

Canberra Wagga Katoomba Richmond Warnervale - 27 May 06

An Eastern Dash 8 on the glide slope at R05 Wagga

Well I flew my daughter back to Charles Sturt University, we had 140 Litres of fuel and two people and my girl's luggage, which filled the luggage compartment, the hat tray, and the the second row seats. It was basically fairly light luggage except for a few books and an oil heater.

It took 3 or 4 trips to fill the plane, and quite a long time to unload and shuffle the luggage through the Wagga terminal.

The boys arrived fairly promptly, 3 of them, to escort my daughter back to Uni. Everthing except one bag fit in the large boot of the friend's car, along with the driver's toolbox. I instructed my daughter to find some friends who drove and she was just following my instructions I guess - because she doesn't have a driver's licence yet.

So I bade my daughter goodbye and then parked UMS alonside the fuel bowser and filled her up, probably 7 litres aside shy of full-fuel, which was enough to fly from Wagga to Warnervale, and then back to Canberra via Victor 1 the next day, and still have plenty spare for some local flying as well.

The cloud was FEW to SCT at 8000' when we left Canberra, but as we approach Wee Jasper a large clump of cloud had formed with a towering top that probably exceeded 10,000', and I was still in controlled air-space! So I informed the controller that I would have to change course to avoid cloud, and he asked by how much, and I said 30 degrees. We flew on that heading until class E airpsace and I eventually got to turn around the cloud and head back and intercept the track at Tumut using the VOR.



We flew VFR on top of SCT to FEW for some time, and began the decent into Wagga about 20 nm out, from 8500' down to 2000' in about 10 minutes - which was just about right.

After refueling and waiting around for lunch to settle, I set off and performed a cruise climb @ 94Kts to 9500', which took forever. By the time I had reached Boorowa the cloud base was changing from FEW to SCT and then BKN, so I was forced to decend to 7500'.

Further along towards Oberon I was forced to decend to 5,500' and the trip across the Blue Mountains was made at this altitude until near Richmond, which had to be flown at 4000' clear of cloud.


Looking to the south-east while crossing over to Katoomba

I had originally planned to fly from Katoomba to St Albans and then across to Warnervale but the cloud was such a concern that the controller permitted me to change track and head Richmond direct to Warnervale.

At the edge of the control-zone steps on the Sydney side of Richmond I decended to 3500' and went into class G airspace and was sumarily dismissed by Sydney Approach and left to my own devices (without even a request to squawk 1200 - just a goodbye) to find Warnervale on my own across the tiger-country near the Hawkesbury river.

This part of the trip was almost IMC with visibility significantly reduced by smoke from a bush fire that was blowing towards the Hawkesbury river - no one cared because it was going to blow out with the southerly wind pushing it upgainst the southern shoreline of the river.

I decended down to 2000' in the thick of the smoke, and with the overhead cloud somewhere around 4000' it was beginning to get dark.

The large factory and the hangars at Warnervale became obvious as I got closer and I slowed down to 80 Kts by dropping the landing gear. I was in communication with the parachute operator and by agreement I was to pass the centreline and approach from the East of the field while he dropped the parachutist (meat-balls) from the western side.

I joined a long left-hand down-wind for R20 and had a Twin, a C150 and a C182 jump in front of me - I saw them all. Partway mid down-wind a Jabiru announced it was overflying the field at 2000' and heading west and there he was cutting in front of me at 1100' AMSL right through the circuit, about 1/2 a mile ahead of me. I am not sure what QNH he was running? I quickly called that I was in late down-wind R20 position and actually had to fly wider and longer than I wanted thinking he was in circuit, and so I announced it looks like I am number 3. To which this Jabiru quickly turned left to the west and I realized he was not in circuit.

I corrected my position report and continued my approach but I had to contain my speed while watching number 1 come in for a touch-and-go. It looked like a C150 and seemed to take for ever to get down, roll along the ground, and then take-off again.

Warnervale is now a very busy airport because quite a few planes have moved there from Bankstown due to the increase in Bankstown parking fees and navigation charges. There were operational twins and DC3s parked on the grass on the Northern end, as well as the regular planes, parked along the wires on the southern end of the field.

The flight track can be found at the trip.

(I don't have any still images so I ripped these images from my video camera - hence the lower quality.)

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