– Steve Hitchen
The Queen's Birthday Honours List this year included one name that is known in GA right up and down the eastern seaboard: Trevor Bange. Bange was given an OAM for services to aviation, and it is probably one of the most deserved that has ever been awarded to an aviator. His service to GA and the recreational community as a whole was probably worthy of an AM at least. We are talking about someone who learned to fly gliders in the early 1960s, has been on the committee of the Darling Downs Sport Aircraft Association for 45 years, was involved with the Air Force Cadets for 34 years, was a member of Scouts Queensland, a long-time member/convenor of the local RAPAC and has been a director of RAAus since 2013. Somehow he fitted in time to serve as a Justice of the Peace. And there's the annual Clifton Fly-in that he organises. What more can a person contribute? Every year Trevor Bange proves wrong the adage that one person can't make a difference. His OAM is more than deserved.
Although I am not a great fan of sacrificing more Class G airspace to CTA, but sometimes you have to bite the bullet and accept the inevitable. This week the CASA Office of Airspace Regulation has drawn the same conclusion and is steering the regulation down the path of introducing CTA at Ballina. This will be bad news for those pilots who traditionally eschew CTA and have made a habit of tracking coastal through that area. There is no suggested architecture on the table at the moment, but it is likely to be C over D with the C being as low as possible. It really is the only solution. Traffic through Ballina has been problematic for years, and all the band-aid solutions tried have not only had little impact, but also have compounded to produce Frankenstein procedures. First it was a CA/GRS, then a mandatory broadcast zone, then both of those things with a Surveillance Flight Information Service (SFIS) over the top. A Class D tower has been the obvious answer that it seems Canberra has been doing all it can to avoid implementing thus far. The barricading hurdle is cost. CTA stands to protect the airlines more than anything else, but they traditionally baulk at paying tower fees if they have the power to avoid them. That throws more cost burden onto the government, an institution quite skilled at evading costs themselves. A tower for Ballina is probably a fait accompli, but there's still a lot of wrangling to go through before the first clearance is issued, including deciding who's going to pay for it.
We are now on the cusp of RotorTech 2022, which kicks off in Brisbane this coming Tuesday. It is the second year in a row the helicopter and drone industries have come together to stage a comprehensive conference and exhibition program. That demonstrates a commitment to industry recovery and a deep desire to share, learn and discover more about what's going on now and in the future. There aren't very many aviation events of this scale in Australia that are held every year (WOI is another one) because of the workload, but RotorTech has the backing of AMDA Foundation and its professional approach to major aviation events. For that reason alone, I am expecting a very enlightening and busy three days in Brisbane next week. Bring it on.
A first of type sneaked into the country this week as Tecnam P2012 Traveller VH-VNV made landfall in Broome. This is a high-wing Lycoming-powered twin designed to replace traditional charter workhorses like C402s, C404s, Navajos and Chieftains, many of which are getting a bit frayed around the edges after years of hard flying. The word out of Capua in Italy is that it flies not unlike a Partenavia P68C, which makes a lot of sense given that the two share heritage in the brainstorms of Prof. Luigi Pascale. This is the largest–and most expensive–Tecnam-branded aeroplane to cross our borders and once here will immediately start work as the demonstrator of Hallmarc Aviation. After staging through Alice Springs, VNV is due into Essendon this afternoon. In the coming weeks, I expect there will be opportunities for serious prospects to the first clean-sheet piston twin of this calibre to enter service in many years. Keep your eye on it.
May your gauges always be in the green,
Hitch