Yesterday's weather was perfect. Blue skies, very light wind, comfortable temperature. I was hoping for a rerun of that today, but it wasn't to be. When I woke up, even through the edge of my bedroom blind I could sense the muted grey light filtering through, and new instantly that there was no chance of blue skies. However, as it turned out, the weather was perfect flying weather - it just didn't look it!
Under a fairly consistent overcast at about 6000 feet was (almost) perfectly smooth air. I say almost, because predictably, the what little wind there were still caused havoc with the approach at Ararat, but I'll get to that! Manny had taken the J160 out for a post-maintenance test flight, so she was all oiled up and ready to go. There was also road and taxiway maintenance going on, so Inbound's hangar was like an island. Cut off from the rest of the airport. The advantage was that we had our taxiway to ourselves, so I could push the aircraft right on to the taxiway proper and do the startup, warm and run-ups right then and there.
I lined up on the runway, checked that I had everything I needed and applied full noise. [On a side note: I heard a interesting way of putting it on a recent podcast: "Time to turn some Dinosaurs into Decibels!". It tickled my funny bone!] With the density altitude, the aircraft practically leapt off the runway. Before I had reached the other end of the runway I was almost at five hundred feet! I kept the climb going, turned towards the centre of the airfield and then pointed the nose towards my first point - Woorndoo.
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| Climbing out of Ballarat. Even at this early stage, the Grampians are visible (in the left of frame on horizon). |
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| Mt Emu. This marks the border of my regular solo distance restrictions... Not for much longer! |
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| The route. Those playing along at home might notice some little differences compared to last weeks' flight. |
Ok. The first difference is that I didn't actually make it to Woorndoo itself. Everything went well on the first leg however, as I approached Woorndoo a shower moved in over the town and stopped me from getting right over the top of it. I had positively identified it, and could see Lake Bolac clearly off to my right. Then, mist started appearing on the windscreen, which slowly turned into rain the closer I got. With this Jabiru having a wooden propeller, spinning about forty-seven times every second at cruise power, the water droplets can cause quite a bit of damage to the surface. So I decided to take affirmative action and turn towards Lake Bolac, taking me around the shower. I could then pick up my intended track to Ararat.
I did some quick calculations to ensure I knew exactly how long it'd be before arriving at Ararat (now that I'd effectively cut the corner), and how long before I'd change to the local CTAF. When I got ten Nautical Miles out, made sure I was on the correct frequency and gave my inbound call. That's when the fun started....
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| A closer look at the Ararat area. |
Over the radio came the somewhat familiar voice from one of the instructors at SATA taking a student in VH-VTA, a beautiful new Cessna 172. He also announced that he was inbound to Ararat, but from the North, and a couple of miles closer. I peered into the distance to pick him up against the murky cloud. Eventually, I radioed back to him and asked for a more detailed position report. He told me that he was now only one or two miles from overflying the field, near a 'brown swampy lake' at 1000 feet above circuit height. Exactly the height that I was on. I didn't want to get too close to anyone, so I offered to do a small orbit to let them get into the circuit and possibly get a chance of seeing them (as seen above that little doughnut just above the bottom of the frame).
When he finally made his overhead the field call, he closed the call with Colac Traffic. I immediately jumped on the radio and confimed.
Me: "Did you say Colac, or Ararat?"
VTA: "Uh, sorry, I think I said Ararat earlier."
Me: "Yeah you did, I've been looking for you everywhere."
VTA: "My apologies. We're at Colac."
Ugh! So all this time I'd been looking for an aircraft that wasn't even there! It turns out that Ararat and Colac share the same radio frequency for their CTAFs, and they probably make many day trips to outlying airfields. I can understand the slip up, but it did take up all of my concentration for a time.
After that, it was back to normal as I was the only one around. I once again descended on the dead side of runway 30 and proceeded to do two circuits. The bumps returned the minute I got to circuit height. Apparently Ararat is renowned for them - I can see why! I'd hate to see what it is like on a bad day. Thankfully they were a little better than last week.
After the second touch-and-go I pointed my nose skyward and climbed out of Ararat, turning for home. The towering sentinels of Mount Langhi Ghiran and Mount Buangor loomed to my left. It was an amazing sight to be close-ish to quite tall mountains.
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| Mount Langhi Ghiran. On climb out of Ararat. |
The return leg was not too eventful. I had managed to get a feel for the actual wind (as opposed to the forecast strong wind), so was able to make a pretty accurate adjusted heading. I even made a new time estimate that worked out to be within a few seconds of perfect arriving back over the field.
As I got to about ten miles out, I head a familiar voice. Yep, you guessed it. It was my old friend VTA, also inbound. Thankfully they were a few miles closer to me so by the time I got overhead the field they had already joined midfield crosswind. I added one extra circuit, just for fun, and then called a full stop.
Pushing the aircraft back into the hangar, I felt a great sense of pride - like I achieved something with aviation. Don't get me wrong, going up and exploring the local area is great fun, but I think the real gems of aviation will become apparent when I'm able to go places far and wide.
From here, there is two more advanced navs dealing with a number of different scenarios from low level to controlled airspace avoidance. I'm going to do them as soon as time and weather permits.
Excited? You bet.
