- Good morning friends.
Welcome back to Moorabbin Airport.
Well it's been about three months in the making,
training with my flight instructor,
working with the engineering team,
all the preparation basically
to get myself, Kilo Juliet November,
and hopefully you guys ready
for our big trip to Outback Australia.
(jazzy music)
(airplane engine revs)
Now if you're new to the channel
and you've come here for this series,
then a really quick 10 second introduction.
My name's Stefan, I'm a private pilot,
been flying here in Australia for about 12 years.
I fly a Cirrus SR22, this is Kilo Juliet November,
you'll hear me refer to that quite a lot.
And yeah, for the next two weeks
I'm gonna be basically giving you as much
behind the scenes access as I can to the planning,
the flying, the problems we may face
and all the places that I'm gonna be going to
as I make my way from Melbourne
all the way to Western Australia,
up to the top and back down to Melbourne.
It's gonna be an epic trip,
I'm really glad you're sharing it with me.
And I've got a flight planned, departing at nine o'clock,
it's 8:35 local, so all we need to do is jump on board,
get Kilo Juliet November tested, started,
and yeah, let's head off to South Australia.
- [Radio] Romeo, Whiskey,
talking to Cirrus,
let's get Dave on off runway right track, down the line.
(engine noise)
- All right, temperature presses are good,
static RPM is good, airspeeds alive on both.
70 knots.
Up we go.
Bye Moorabbin!
Turning light off, CAPS is available, make hard turn.
Kilo Juliet November, just to avoid the weather ahead,
can we go back down to 4,000?
I'll call again when we wanna go back up.
- [Radio] Kilo Juliet November, no worries.
Kilo Juliet November, lead control, we are descending,
no traffic to 4,000
and contact me one three two decimal five five now.
- [Stefan] Descend 4,000, one three two five five,
Kilo Juliet November.
- [Radio] Then the one three three five five.
- One three three five five, Kilo Juliet November.
(jazz music playing)
All right, in clouds,
outside air temperature is 1 degree.
I've got a bit of a clicking on the line
which I'm going to try and sort out.
Sorry if that's affecting the audio a little bit.
Just going through some checks to see what that is
but I need to get out of Melbourne first and focus on that
and then I'll look at the audio.
We're out of the showers now in the Melbourne basin
and the heading out should be a lot nicer ahead of us.
We're gonna climb up to 6,000 after we get
past some cloud here just because of the freezing levels
are quite low here at the moment.
I don't wanna go into cloud,
where the temperature can drop a bit quicker than normal.
And also if the aircraft itself is cold
and we go into some cloud I don't wanna pick up any icing.
Even though it would be very moderate,
I don't really wanna muck about with icing.
Bit of cloud surfing.
Oh cool, and I think it looks like
we're leaving some of the cloud behind.
You can probably just see a little bit
on the leading edge of the wing down there,
we did just pick up a little bit of light icing,
very, very light.
- Golf, I copied 6,000 earlier.
Conserving maintaining now, 7,000.
- [Stefan] Quite busy on the radio today, yeah,
I was just saying we picked up some light icing
on the front of the wing, just as we were going
through that cloud, it was about minus four outside.
But just a very, very, thin layer of cloud
and knew we were gonna be through it in a minute or two,
but I was watching the wings, making sure that there
weren't any excessive build ups.
We could descend if we needed to as well,
'cause I knew that we could get out the cloud below.
But do take icing really seriously.
It's not something you wanna mess around with
in a small aircraft like this.
I'll talk a little bit more on this trip
about IFR and the reasons why I do and don't like flying
through cloud, but right now, just coming out of Melbourne,
I was very conscious of freezing level,
and that's why I went up to six,
noticed it was quite cold there, came back down to four,
stayed at four, but now we've come back
up to 6,000 feet again because it's a lot warmer outside.
In fact it's just gone up to two degrees on
the outside air temperatures.
So I reckon from here, all the way for the rest of the day,
shouldn't have any troubles with freezing levels.
Kilo Juliet November, request traffic for descent to 2,000.
- [Radio] Kilo Juliet November, no reported IFR traffic.
- [Stefan] Kilo Juliet November.
(chill music)
- Aldinga traffic, IFR Cirrus Kilo Juliet November
is one five miles to the East.
Inbound 2,900
estimate over flying the circuit time two two, Aldinga.
Okay, backtracking, let's go get some fuel
and have a quick break, have a quick drink.
Wow, that wind's picked up quite a lot actually.
Was it that windy when we were landing?
I don't think so, anyway, I've just gotta move the plane
and then we're gonna go get a coffee.
All right KJN has got some fuel.
I'm just gonna leave it there for a second
and go and have a look inside
here at the airport at Aldinga.
Like I say I've never been here before,
but apparently, apparently the baked goods
and coffee is very good, so let's go check it out.
- [Ian] Welcome to Aldinga.
- [Stefan] Thank you, it's nice to be here.
Just finished, probably actually, that was probably
one of the nicest chocolate brownies I think I've had
for a long time, and a delicious cup of coffee
here at Aldinga, thank you very much to Ian,
who bought that for me.
- You're welcome.
- Ian and I have been chatting online for a little
while in the past cause Ian's also a pilot.
He does quite a lot of filming on YouTube.
- What the YouTube channel really is,
is a record of every one of my,
virtually every one of my student pilots.
All recreational aviation pilots.
And it seemed to me that one of the hardest parts
of teaching somebody, is that you have
an hour lesson and you go away and you have another week
before the next one.
So most of my students get an upload.
Normally 2 or 3 hours a week goes up
and they're available to everybody,
but in the main they're for my students.
So my channel is Biggles Aviator, it's on YouTube,
and there you'll find 150 different lessons.
So I'd love everyone to sign up and watch.
- Yeah, definitely, you know, check it out.
So Biggles Aviation.
- Biggles Aviator.
- Sorry, Biggles Aviator,
I should know cause I've watched it enough.
So Biggles Aviator, I'll put a link down below as well,
if you wanna click on the link, check it out.
- Sure. - Thank you for the cake, Ian.
- You're welcome. - Nice to meet you as well.
Thanks very much. - Take care.
- [Stefan] Tractor on the runway.
(groovy music playing)
Holding the traffic, Kilo Juliet November,
departing time zero two, we're climbing to 4,000,
just passing 3,600.
Tracking a westerly, Aldinga.
- [Radio] Thank you Kilo Juliet November,
you're identified verify level
with departure no longer required.
- Kilo Juliet November now maintaining 4,000.
- [Radio] Kilo Juliet November.
- Well one thing I do have to admit
I didn't do before we took off, is I did not start the GoPro
on the wing, so we're not gonna get any footage
from the GoPro wing on this leg.
And it's not as if we're not flying over, like, this really,
beautiful bit of water or anything
and we've got amazing views that I would be able
to enjoy from that so, you know.
Although I think I can connect to it.
I think I can connect to it on my phone,
'cause I can pick up the Wifi on the GoPro.
Let me see if I can do that,
just whilst we're trucking along.
The WiFi might be on, hang on a minute
this could be quite good, I think the Wifi signal's on
on the camera.
Ah, look, I don't know whether you can see that,
I can see the camera on the wing, hang on, here we go.
If I press that, that should start recording!
Oh, wireless on GoPros for the win!
(chill dance music playing)
That's the first bit of water that we're going over.
That in itself was a little bit nerve-wracking.
Even though we've got life-jackets and we're well within
the tolerances so we don't need a life-raft,
because of the distance
and the time it takes us to get across.
I'm carrying a life jacket just in case I need it.
But the next bit of water is slightly longer Leg
and even in Kilo Juliet November
with a ground speed of 165 knots
you're still always,
you're a bit little more conscious,
you're watching the engine a little bit more closely
whenever you're flying over water.
Which we will be doing again in a second.
Beautiful.
Absolutely stunning, look at that.
I just contacted Melbourne Center,
you can see we're just turning now at the moment,
because there are some showers ahead.
So just asked if I can get about 10 miles
left and right of our track.
There're only small showers.
I'm actually going to descend as well, I think.
Kilo Juliet November request traffic for descent, 6,000.
- [Radio] Kilo Juliet November,
no reported IFR traffic for descent, 6,000.
- [Stefan] Kilo Juliet November.
And what I'm gonna do as well is just get the mixture in,
'cause I don't really wanna fly into this.
So we go altitude, 6,000,
let's get us down relatively steeply.
I can already feel a little bit more turbulence
just as we come under here.
Now these aren't very big showers
but as we're looking out the front of the aircraft
the showers are going from left to right,
and the worst stuff is over to my right-hand side.
And I'm doing that on purpose
because I don't wanna be downwind of the showers.
I don't want them to basically be blown towards me.
It's coming down a little bit more,
so I think I'm gonna take us down even further.
Kilo Juliet November request traffic descent 4,000.
- [Radio] Kilo Juliet November,
no reported IFR traffic 4,000.
- [Stefan] Kilo Juliet November.
All right, let's get down even more.
Fairly big cell, well, not a big cell
but a fairly decent size rain shower out to our left
which I don't really want to get into.
What that looks like here on, in AMPLAN which I'm using
at the moment, you can see our aircraft here
and there's that large cell that you just saw
out to the left-hand side.
We just kind of picked our way through here.
Slightly lower down, little bit bumpy
and there's a bit of rain on the windshield
but you know, nothing too dramatic.
We definitely didn't want to fly through that.
And then we can put all that nasty stuff, all the storms
and the showers behind us,
and I've looked up the weather before.
I know that the weather at Ceduna
is gonna be, it's like seven knots, clear skies.
So very light winds, very clear skies
and that should be the last of the weather
that we have to deal with on this trip.
Ceduna traffic, Kilo Juliet November,
turning final runway one one, full stop, Ceduna.
Ceduna traffic, Kilo Juliet November
is backtracking at runway one one, Ceduna.
That's an interesting one,
I think we might have had a slight tailwind
looking at that windsock on landing.
That's why we floated a bit longer than I was expecting.
- Ceduna, we made it.
It's pretty quiet here right now.
Okay let me just fuel up the aircraft,
and I'll park it around there
and then work out how we're gonna get into town.
(knocking and creaking)
There's a beautiful sunset here tonight,
over the Great Australian Bight.
I've just had a wash back in the room
so I feel a bit more human again, just had a shower
and doing some planning now.
So I said I'd talk talk to you
about what happening tomorrow.
The plan as it currently stands is I'm supposed to be,
I'd originally planned to fly from Ceduna
to Esperance on the South Coast tomorrow
and then I was gonna go from Esperance to Perth
the day after, but there's a big low pressure system
coming in through Perth over the next couple of days.
And it does seem like the closer to the coast you are,
obviously the more moisture that's gonna be brought in,
and so there's gonna be more low cloud,
there's some thunder storms coming in.
I'm trying to see if there's a possibility
that I can actually get to Perth tomorrow.
Which I'm not sure which I'll be able to do
because of the storms that are coming in.
But at the very least what I think I might do
is I might change my plan and instead of flying
to Esperance on the coast I'll actually go inland
through the Nullarbor, so across the desert,
and end up in Calgooli tomorrow night.
Which is a but closer to Perth
and then I'll see if I can get from Calgooli to Perth
at some point on Wednesday.
We'll see.
So I'm gonna sit here now with an iPad,
work out a bit of a plan for tomorrow's weather.
Watching the sun go down as well which is pretty beautiful.
Thank you very much for watching,
hope you enjoyed today's vlog.
Tune in tomorrow, to find out if I get to Esperance
or Calgooli, or Perth, or none of the three.
If you enjoyed that give us a like I do appreciate it.
It's good to know you're enjoying the content.
If you're not already subscribed
click that subscribe button.
Daily vlogs hopefully coming out for the next two weeks
as I go around the outback.
Otherwise thank you always for watching.
It was great to have you along on the trip
and I'll catch you tomorrow.
(jazz music playing)