– Steve Hitchen
This week's LMH is coming to you a bit from the past. Whilst you are reading this, I am most likely on the road somewhere between Emerald, Vic, and Kiama, NSW. You can expect me to be rolling down the Hume Highway with Eric Clapton or Creedence Clearwater Revival on the CD player and the cruise control engaged. It's that time of the year when all roads and airways point to Wings over Illawarra (WOI), and for me this year means going by road. I was in the midst of writing a newsy piece on WOI the other day when I realised how much WOI was startiing to look a lot like Oshkosh. I understand I've made a huge statement there; in reality there will never be anything else in the world to rival Osh. But in WOI we have the closest we've ever been able to get. It has the largest attendence of any annual air show (in Australia a rare thing indeed), has complete support from the ADF, Temora Aviation Museum and the Historical Aircraft Restoration Society and private owners. GA companies are starting to get on board now, and the likes of CASA, Airservices and RAAus are getting behind it as well. The only thing we really have missing is the mass fly-in of private GA aircraft. Is it that Illawarra Regional Airport is too difficult to get to thanks to the mountains due west? Or is it both the northern and southern approaches are guarded by controlled airspace? The WOI website itself alludes to what may be an increasing problem: there's nowhere to park aeroplanes. The organisers have reserved very limited space this year saying they need more land for public car parking. That could perpetuate the issue because it labels fly-ins as also-rans rather than something to be encouraged. That is probably the tallest obstacle preventing WOI from ever looking more like Oshkosh.
It seems the time has come for civil aviation to get its Act together. Last week Dick Smith made a public plea to change the Civil Aviation Act in front of 100 or so people. Dick says he got consensus for the change from Barnaby Joyce and Anthony Albanese, only for Barnaby to get himself mired in scandal and have to resign. New minister Michael McCormack baulked at making the change initially, but has since told the Australian General Aviation Alliance (AGAA) that he will consider it if the GA industry can come up with an agreement about what the intent of any changes to the act are. One of two things has happened here: the minister has melted, or he's dropped us into a political labyrinth that he knows we can't get out of. Asking for the general aviation industry for consensus on anything has been a delaying factor in everything that we've tried to do. I have been asking for it for years, but it seems consenus is ever further away with AOPA, AMROBA and the SAAA splitting from TAAAF like the Judean Peoples' Front. However, a change to the Civil Aviation Act to remove the primacy of safety and demand that regulation take into account cost impact is something the entire general aviation industry needs to be able to get together on; it has to be a point of unity. AGAA has scheduled a summit for 4-6 June in Wagga Wagga, the new home of aviation activism, and here's what we need to do. We need to create a new intent for the Act complete with proposed new wording, back it up with solid argument and evidence and lay the whole thing at the minister's feet. If we fail to do that, we hand the government every reason they need to do absolutely nothing.
We have 11 days left to respond to CASA's latest Multicom proposal. This is not really a difficult one to deal with, although some people might be raising an eyebrow over the idea of restricting the use of 126.7 at uncharted airfields to within 3 nm. Driving that restricted seems to be a desire to keep VFR flights on the area frequency as long as possible, but that doesn't seem to be an issue with 126.7 airports that are marked on charts or other CTAFs with dedicated freqencies. My concern is that someone in CASA seems preoccupied with time. If you're in a Piper Archer, 3 nm is 1.5 mins flying time, but in something like a Baron that comes down to a mere 60 seconds. Is 60 seconds enough warning of impending arrival in a circuit? It comes down to balance. What is more dangerous: the fact that an aircraft may not be on the area frequency long enough or arrival in a circuit with 60 seconds notice? As someone who regularly flies out of 126.7 airfields (charted and uncharted), I think only 60 seconds notice of a Baron up my backside is not enough. If CASA want a restriction, it would seem smarter to base it on time, not distance.
May your gauges always be in the green,
Hitch