i'm going to be doing something today that i generally don't do very often when i go flying
i've got to get up to Mildura in the northwestern part of the state
but instead of just flying there in one big straight line like i normally would
i thought i'd make an extra couple of stops along the way
yankees i've landed at every certified aerodrome to victoria
cleared for take off
currently maintaining 2500 request clearance
melbourne centre you're identified standby for clearance there's no traffic
okay and we wait we wait for clearance with a sea of clouds and storms in front of us
echo yankee zulu cleared to portland via avalon planned routes climb 5000 melbourne q h 1020.
cleared portland by avalon andrew 5000-1020 all right
i've got to keep a really close eye on this this is prime icing conditions
i know we're going to be out of it soon but it can build up on you very quickly
well the center echo yankee zulu maintaining 8 000. we're just picking
up a little bit of light ice at the top of the clouds request non-standard 9000
all right let's get us out of this
okay that's much better out of the ice on top of the cloud
i can see the ice going off the wing now so i can turn the de-icing or the anti-icing i
should say i can turn that off on the wings so the wings are going to stop weeping fluid
icing something that you don't want to muck around with at all i'm glad i'm out of that
i figured we're going to be stuck in our own backyards well we have been for pretty
much most of last year and i think a lot of this year is going to be the same as well
with what's happening in the world at the moment but i don't want to restrict
the amount of travel i do and so that's the challenge what i want to do is by the end
of 2020 i want to say that i've landed at every certified aerodrome here in the state of victoria
so i have visited quite a few airfields to date i've visited about half of all the airfields
in victoria and when i say airfields i should say these are certified aerodromes
so it's not every single airstrip because a that would be impossible in this aircraft
and b that would take a long time the rules of my landing at every airport in victoria challenge
which probably needs a catchier title i'll be honest rules of the challenge are pretty
straightforward a landing has to be a full stop landing so one of the reasons why avalon airport
isn't on my list despite the fact i've flown the ils and the vor i've never actually touched down
and stopped at avalon airport portland's another one flown over it passed it around it many times
never actually landed at it so that's why we're going to portland today might be nice to take off
maybe another three or four on the trip today we have enough time i reckon we can do that
control service terminated contact one two five that small height
control service terminated at one two five eight okay
roman center echo yankee
thank you thanks
watching the icing again that's freezing zero degrees outside
so
good i know it seems sunny here now but i'm going to make a decision i was supposed to be flying
vfr so visual flight rules from here to ararat but there's a lot of rain around and i could see that
when i was coming in so i'm not sure this is one of those grey area moments as a pilot i'm not sure
every time you say i'm not sure as a pilot you should worry but i'm not sure whether
to fly vfr to my next destination or file ifr try and go over the top and see if we can cancel
i've been sitting here now for the last probably 10
15 minutes just debating what to do can you hear the wind
is rolling runway two six we're making a left circuit
departing overhead to the north for the traffic
for departure
okay thank you silly melbourne center there's no
reported eye for trafficking your scorecard is four two four seven
four two four seven echoing
echo yankees departure okay uh portland now we're tracking to hamilton passing three thousand eight
hundred climbing eight thousand okay thank you so much thanks identified qh1020 one zero two
one and a zero thousand feet to go to our assigned altitude of eight thousand
i really hope we get over the top of the cloud at that level
outside air temperature is zero once again we're in the cloud zero degrees celsius but i do have
the tks running on the wing again just to hopefully prevent any ice from building up
yeah look at that
ah brilliant i'm so happy with that decision on the ground and now look at this just look at this
and we have a tailwind win-win everything's coming up steph look at that we've got a tailwind of 22
knots we've got a ground speed just short up 180 knots and when you're just this high above
the clouds you get a real impression speed you're flying i'm so happy i love it up here
now it's getting thinner
the clouds are definitely thinning out now a lot more as we get closer to mildura i've gone past
a few of the airfields i wanted to land that are further back in the in the patchy
stuff but there's one more airfield there's a place called houghton that i wanted to land at
all right let's go down
turning final runway full stop
wow this is a super smooth runway
air conditioning
wow there's really not a lot happening
excellent okay and hyped into the list that's another one down next stop mildura
really cannot get over how smooth this runway is
anyone flies out of houghton and you know if this this runway must have been resurfaced recently
this is brilliant this is one of the best runways i've landed on airspeed's increasing 70 already
will be entering a left crosswind for runway zero nine
just a correction on that we'll be joining uh well we're up downwind
and we'll be landing on runway 1.8 mildura traffic
range of heart looking at the windsock much more favorable to land on one eye
look jack they named a chinese after
you