Sierra Del Barón Rojo

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.)