Travelers know this feeling. Sometimes you've just come home from a place that captivated you so much you already want to go back, and just won't be able to satisfy the compulsion until you do. I'm going through that right now, and the place I want to go back to is the cockpit of an Airvan 10. During the week I managed to jag some time at the stick of Mahinda/GippsAero's latest creation: a 10-seat utility powered along by a Rolls-Royce 250 turbine, and I was mightily impressed by this aeroplane. It maintains many of the most loved characteristics of the Airvan 8, but it will haul a heavier load and negates the need for avgas.
The thing about this aeroplane is that it's not trying to be a Caravan; its market niche is between an Airvan 8 or a C206/210 and the Caravan, a power and capability jump that is just not economical for some operators to make. The Airvan 10 is set to fill that gap and bring Jet-A1 operations to companies that thought it would be forever out of their reach. Truly this is a great aeroplane that is set to do great things. I just need to find away to wangle myself back in to the cockpit of one.
You would barely have your foot through the door on a visit to Tecnam than your host would inevitably mention the name Professore Luigi Pascale. They revered their founder and his achievements, and were fiercely proud of his contribution to not only Tecnam, but also aviation in general. The company must be feeling somewhat fatherless this week after the Professore died this week. He was the guiding hand on the designer's pencil and worked with imagination and innovation. The quality of his aeroplanes was complemented by a need for style in a very Italian way. His last masterstroke, the P2012 has been touted by many as the answer to the woes of charter companies across the world, and if the longevity of his other designs is any sort of benchmark, the Professore's influence will be with us for many years to come.
By about 3.00 pm on Friday 3 March, people at Avalon were already talking about the crowd being one of the best ever; there were people absolutely everywhere! Hence, it really was no surprise to read this week that new attendance records had been set. You can attribute that to a healthy display program, the arrival of the F-35s (the Neverhawks of the 21st century?) and sun, sun and more sun. In reality, there is not a lot more the organisers could have done to ensure success and the results show their efforts were on the mark. So where to from here? The 2019 Australian International Airshow needs to be configured to further develop and grow the event, and at the time of writing it's hard to see what more they can do to break records again. Most probably their best form of advertising will be the memories of the 2017 show.
Darren Chester's General Aviation Advisory Group kicked off in Canberra mid-March. This is a collection of aviation expertise designed to provide top-quality feedback to the government and particularly help the BITRE GA Study keep on a direct track. Whilst establishing this group to provide advice is a massive positive for GA, it is not a guarantee that the Federal Government is committed to helping GA grow and become a vibrant industry. Of concern to me is that the GA Advisory Group will keep the BITRE study on track, which will inevitably report back to the minister with some inconvenient truths. Only by the reaction to these truths can we judge the committment of the Federal Government. However, we need to lift our chins and plod on; we have more hope of reform with the advisory group than we would have without them.
Who's read the ATSB report into drone incidents? I haven't gone through it completely yet, but I didn't have to go far to come across the heart of the issue: no-one knows what's happening and they really have no way of finding out. Of the close encounter between drones and manned aircraft reported between 2012 and 2016, half occured over 1000 ft AMSL and that the drone involved was almost never identified. Add that to the fact that close encounters on weekend were "over-represented" and you can easily justify a conclusion that they're mostly private operators, not the certified ones. This, and a lot more analysis has led the ATSB to conclude that "The operation of remotely piloted aircraft is an emerging risk to transport safety ...". Best you read through the report yourself.
May your gauges always be in the green,
Hitch