I do an annual wrap-up every year, but I don’t post it here.
But here’s a copy and paste of 2024 anyway
- mark
Guess who has two thumbs and 125.9 more hours?
It's time for my 2024 #avgeek hoe-down, yee-haw.
This year I shared VH-SOL's cockpit with Brian Grinter, Jason Newton, Riley Oconnell, Thomas Youngdahl, Nick Andrew, Martin Russell, Paul Qiu, and Partha Palanisamy. My usual thanks to all of you for trusting me to keep you safe, with a reminder that you all owe me a flight if and when you get your pilot licenses.
My favorite new airport in a long time was Kingaroy. The Freedom Formation Display Team showed up there for an impromptu training camp, having lost quite a number of training days due to weather this year, and the Kingaroy folks really rolled out the red carpet for us. Special thanks to the Kingaroy Soaring Club for letting us use their clubhouse facilities and keeping us all fed and watered, to the local council for helping with some of our unique requirements, and to all the local townfolk who wondered what all the noise was and assembled en masse along the fence to watch us practice.
Kingaroy brings my airport total to 132, and is also the northern-most airport SOL has ever operated from.
The aircraft continues to produce excellent reliability. The only significant squawk for 2024 was low hydraulic fluid in the left brake master cylinder, which meant I had to teach myself how to bleed the brakes on an RV-6. Fixing that in early August held until Lyndon could do a complete disassembly and reseal during the annual in October.
The other thing that happened at the annual was the replacement of the aircraft’s navigation system, its Garmin GNS 430W.
This product line was discontinued by Garmin about 15 years ago. There are spare parts warehoused for most of its components (the screen being a notable exception: Damage to the display is now unrepairable), and the unit is notionally still “supported” by the manufacturer, but the support process begins with a non-refundable US$3500 inspection/assessment fee, and at the end of a successful repair you still have an obsolete unit designed more than a quarter of a century ago, so I’ve always held the thought at the back of my mind that if it developed any faults I’d probably replace it with current generation gear instead of repairing it.
Well, that happened this year: The modulation circuit on the COM card developed a fault which made audio transmitted on its internal radio sound like it’d been muffled by a mattress or something. Still serviceable, but also still clearly deficient, so I spent several months doing all my transmitting on the other COM and made plans to replace the GNS 430W with a Garmin GTN 650Xi.
I probably should have done that years ago. The step-up in capability from the new gear is significant. The GTN integrates very well with the rest of my G3X Touch avionics systems, has a better user interface, and automates a lot of IFR operations which the old unit made me do manually, such as holds, descent planning during arrivals, and following glide profiles on GPS approaches. I can’t say enough good things about it.
Operationally: There haven’t been many cancellations this year. My flyable weather envelope has been expanding since I got my instrument rating. Every cross country flight longer than an hour or so in duration has been IFR this year, including a long weekend trip to Melbourne early in the year, a trip to Wentworth for the SAAA AusFly event, several trips to Temora for airshow practice, a lunch daytrip with Jason to Merimbula, the trips to and from Queensland for the Pacific Airshow, the trip to and from Mt Gambier for my father’s funeral, and to and from Adelaide for the aircraft’s annual.
The Mt Gambier trip in particular was very satisfying. It was hard-IMC pretty much the entire way from the Grampians until the last 1000’ of the instrument approach. One of those days that really made me think about how the journey I’d just taken would have been completely impossible as a VFR pilot.
Our second appearance at the Pacific Airshow went well. It was certainly a lot bigger than the first – I think everyone on the Gold Coast is working out that Code Four, the event management company that runs the show, is as serious as a heart attack and entirely capable of delivering on the expansion plans they’ve forecast.
This year’s event was almost twice the size as the inaugural showing, with an audience in excess of 400,000, described afterwards as the largest single event in Gold Coast history. We all did our best to wow the crowd, safely, showing Experimental/Amateur-Built aircraft in the best light that we could. I think maybe this year we bit off a little bit more than we could chew, but we rose to the occasion and chewed it anyway. I couldn’t be prouder of what we did, and I’ve surprised myself a little bit by signing up for next year after previously signalling that 2024 might be my last year, so it must have been a lot of fun huh?
Upcoming plans for 2025:
SAAA AusFly is at Wentworth near Mildura in April. We can’t speak highly enough of the support SAAA has provided to our team, and want to give back to support them. There’s a discussion underway about how much of the sponsorship they’ve given us should be spent getting the team to and from Wentworth versus preparing us for the big event on the Gold Coast where we can really wave the flag.
They’ve also asked for static display Experimental aircraft for Avalon, and a couple of us have stuck our hands up for that. I can probably only do Wentworth or Avalon but not both, and I’m not fussed about which one, I’m just happy to be giving back in whatever way helps them. We’ll all figure it out soon and I’ll pretty much do what I’m told.
So that’s a long-winded way of saying the Freedom to Fly Formation Team will probably be doing an abbreviated version of our routine at Wentworth, and I might be making an appearance at the Australian International Airshow at Avalon in 2025. Watch this space.
(and if you know anyone who’s prepared to offer sponsorship to a display team at the biggest airshow in Australia, please step forward!)
We’re also going to be back for the Pacific Airshow again in August. Once again, the organizers want to make it bigger, and this time everyone believes them. We’re going to help by adding a bunch of new members to our team.
I’m so incredibly pleased that Matilda Mendham will be flying with us in 2025 instead of doing ground support as crew chief, Lorenzo will be inside a cockpit with a GoPro instead of on the ground with a Canon, and Kiana Kosseris will be showing us that Unicorns have wings too.
Last year I mentioned my long service leave. I’m letting it sit and bake until G can collect hers late in 2025. I think I have a month or two of annual leave banked anyway (I can’t be precise without logging in to work systems, and I’m on holidays so there’s not much chance of that!) and maybe I’ll use some of it on flying exploits in the upcoming year.
This year’s photo is from Duncan Fenn Photography, taken on the beach during the opening of our Pacific Airshow routine. I’m in the back. It’s exactly the kind of photo I expected when we started working-up the show: We open by executing a three-phase on-crowd bomb-burst, and the last element involves me and Ollie crossing over horizontally while Trent in lead pulls up. Duncan has captured precisely what I wanted the crowd to see here, a whole mess of aluminium and smoke with wings sticking out in all directions. Just superb.
Remember: Aviation is accessible and achievable, even though most people think it isn’t. Yes, it’s true that the training is costly enough to need planning and commitment, and it’s certainly possible to conduct aviation very expensively, but the cost to own and operate a modern small single-engine airplane doesn’t have to be that much worse than the cost of operating a second car.
If you think you want to be part of it, yell out and I’ll try to help you make it happen. It’s one of the most rewarding things you can do, and I love sharing it. Come along with me, you’re very welcome.
