No flying today, cyclone on the way!

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

Today has become a no flying day as we prepare for the arrival of Cyclone Daryl to Broome.

At present it is a category 2 and according to the forecast map it will be a category 3 by tomorrow morning. As with all cyclones its predicted path is uncertain and it may miss us completely or go right over us, we won’t know until it gets here.

At the moment it is looking fairly benign, although the weather radar is showing some cyclonic activity in the rain patterns north of Broome and you can see the cloud cover in this satellite picture.

Expected damage from a cyclone of this strength includes:

So we’re not too concerned about it at present.

By the way, I reckon our meteorology website is pretty cool.

2

Good luck. Did you end up suffering any damage from Clare?

I think the weather radars and stuff are great too.

3

Thinking back on the available weather information in 1965 and what I have to use today, I see why a lot of flying is not as exciting as it used to be… So much better prepared these days…

4

No, we got nothing from Claire. We are already getting weather from Daryl though, as it is much closer to the coast.

GusNSpot, although we have some great weather services now, we have been plunged into the dark ages a bit here in Broome. We normally only have an NDB and a DME for an instrument approach (which is bad enough as it is,) at this time of year though, the NDB keeps getting hit by lightning. At the moment we have no navaid for an approach. With this weather, if we take-off, we are pretty much guaranteed to be landing somewhere other than home when we get back.

5

Ahhh, that sucks…

Are you WAY under minimums most of the time?

If you have DME, why no VOR approach? Or is the DME of the GPS type or Loran type? Or there used to be only a DME signal but no VOR as I recall form the old military days?

Have you all tried to get them to approve a GPS approach?

I like ADF for some places that I knew very, very well, especially those with the transmitter right on the field.

*:: Got to remember that to a pipeline patrol pilot, 100 foot ceiling and 1000 feet of visibility is VFR. :wink: :: *

6

Most of the time the weather is well above the minimums. In fact most of the time it is blue sky with afternoon thunderstorms. At the moment it is below the MSA but well above the minimums for the NDB approach. To give you an idea of the general weather here, I haven’t had to do an approach in anger in the two years I’ve been based here. Now that there’s a cyclone, and no NDB, I still won’t be doing one.

It is just a DME, no VOR. If your aircraft has a DME then there is an NDB/DME approach with lower minimums.

There is a GPS approach but no one in our company is trained to do them because the Dash 8 simulator doesn’t have a Flight Management System so we can’t test them during instrument renewels. If, for some reason, we didn’t have fuel to get to an alternate and we absolutely had to do an approach then there are a few options such as doing the NDB procedure but using the GPS waypoint for the fix instead of the NDB, illegal but safe. Or we could just plug the GPS approach into the FMS and do that, also illegal but still safe enough.

Yeah, the trick is getting down below the 100’ ceiling from FL250 without hitting anything on the way through though :)!

7

Probably a dumb question, but: Is the term “cyclone” in this context equivalent to what we folks in the northern hemisphere call a “hurricane?” I ask because I’ve heard “cyclone” used to mean a tornado, which is a short-lived but devastating funnel cloud, like the one that took Dorothy to Oz.

8

Yes, a cyclone is a hurricane is a typhoon. Unrelated to a tornado.

9

Actually, I think if you get very technical they’re all cyclones - but a cyclone near North America or Hawaii is a hurricaine, and if it’s in Asia it’s a typhoon. But don’t quote me on that, because it’s out of some dusty corner of memory.

10

Do you have any radar coverage there?

If so, how low can they see you and provide separation?

Any military fields where you could get an GCA?

Do you have many folks that will run IFR without clearance just because you are so remote? Or is that part of the continent considered remote? ( I have no idea on the actual population of that part of the world. )

11

There is no radar coverage, the nearest radar is at Darwin, 600 NM away, there is another one in Perth, 1000 NM away. Here is a picture of Australian radar coverage at 5,000’ and 10,000’ (by comparison, here is the coverage in the USA.)

I’m not familiar with a GCA. There is military airfield about 100 NM from us but it is not currently occupied. I think it is there in case we go to war with Indonesia or something. Darwin is the nearest active military base.

It is definitely remote, there is a VHF radio repeater here but if you are low level any more than 25 miles away you are reliant on HF. The local airspace is class G up to FL180 where it becomes E, from FL245 up it is class A. There is no issue with anyone flying IFR without a clearance. IFR pilots are left to their own devices when flying in G airspace, we are required to give position reports at waypoints (or scheduled reports every 30 mins in our case) and in return, ATC give us traffic information on IFR aircraft, for VFRs we hope they stick to the cruising levels and have their transponder on (we have TCAS.) I understand that in the US things are a bit different. It is almost all covered by radar and the radar controllers separate in class G airspace.

The airfield here is a CTAF but has a mixture of B737, DHC8, BAE146, Metro, Brazilia, and a heap of light aircraft operating in and out daily.

12

Most excelent links…

I thought that things were more populas than that.

In a way I envy you your being more in control of your self than we get to be here. It reminds me of the 1950’s here.

I bet the new pilots there are much better with the charts than the ones here that have all the constant radar contact and GPS toys.

How many navigational aids are scattered through the interior?

We used to have a lot of commercial broadcast towers noted ( info for navigation, not just VFR avoidance) but that is not so much anymore.

Way back when I was just a ‘cub’ we still had some low frequency ranges in operation and I got to play with the old loop set ups. A & N and the cone of silence in the headphones… Fun stuff since I did not have to do it for real.

Thanks for the replies…

13

Has Daryl reached the coast yet?

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The airspace and radar coverage here has been the source of debate for some time now. There is an Australia businessman named Dick Smith who has been intent on adopting the US system. One of the sticking points has been his insistence on having a layer of class E over everything at about 8,500’ (and later on the class E would go down to the ground at non-towered airfields.) This means that we have class E over the top of class D towers. This would be fine except that places that don’t have radar coverage are going to end up with IFR jets and turbo-props descending through airspace where VFRs are allowed to fly without a clearance or any other notification to ATC. Without a radar, ATC can’t see them. We can with TCAS, but TCAS should not be used as a primary separation tool. TCAS is also not that good for identifying an aircraft’s position. The class E idea has been modified and is now just in areas with radar coverage.

There are not many aids through the interior. The closest main town in that direction is Alice Springs, which is right in the middle of the country. Flying from Broome to Ayers Rock, which is quite close to Alice, you have a 652 nm leg between navigation aids. They are dotted with some regularity around the coast though.

Most light aircraft seem to have GPS these days, and if they don’t, the pilots carry their own hand held GPS. Charts are difficult to use for VFR as the interior is so featureless.

I learnt to fly in the South Island of New Zealand where the clear air and hilly terrain allowed VFR navigation to be done by identifying the nearest hill/mountain to your destination 100 nm away, and flying straight to it. In bad weather you could just follow a river system to the coast and then fly the coast to your destination (in bad weather you’d generally be stuck down in the valleys anyway.) I think the Australian VFR guys would be much better at the hold-a-heading-and-use-your-watch type of flying, particularly those flying in the outback before GPS became common.

Yes, all of the broadcast towers are noted in our Jepessen manuals, they aren’t on the IFR charts though, as far as I can tell.

It would’ve been pretty interesting flying in the old days with the old beacons. I haven’t been any closer to one other than reading about them in Fate is the Hunter.

Cunctator, Daryl has passed Broome without upsetting anything too much and is now continuing to head southwest. They were initially forecasting it to cross the coast somewhere around Karratha (again, they got Claire too), but it now appears to be tracking parallel to the coast and might not hit land at all.

He is now a category 3. If they make a movie about him, it’ll have to be called Category 3: Day of Minor Damage :).

15

One of the best flying reads of all time IMO.

I know people who knew him and others from that time, a few who are now dead of course, but were contemporaries of his and I weep for the lost knowledge and ability of those who did so much with so little.

16

Although I have read it, I don’t own a copy so I’ve just ordered it. It is a book that should be on every pilot’s book shelf.

Flying was a different beast back then.

17

I don’t own a GPS and have never used one - I rely on dead reckoning and pilotage to get me from A to B. I don’t get lost. Sometimes I am unsure of my position :wink: Mind you, I am on the east coast, where there are plenty of ground features and navaids to help out. I reckon if I was way out west I’d prefer a GPS, but only to back me up.

I’m curious about the GPS approach for Broome - there were a few fatal accidents involving them over the last couple of years, but no one seems to want to point the finger at some systemic problem with them. Am I the only one to think there might be some hidden danger with using them, possibly with confusion of the final approach fix and minimum approach point?

And yeah - Fate if the Hunter is as much a standard as Stick and Rudder.

18

Well, I’m not trained on the GPS approaches so I can’t provide too much input. Broome is a bit of a non-event for any approach as the land is flat as a pancake for hundreds of miles so you’re unlikely to hit something.

I think some questions have been raised with the GPS NPA because the GPS only shows you the distance to run to the next waypoint which makes it harder to gross error check your altitude (3 x distance to run + aerodrome altitude should be your current altitude.) If you have a DME readout you could use that, but a lot of small aerodromes have the GPS NPA as their only approach, so there is no DME.

On the other hand, it is a very accurate approach and you can use the VNAV feature of your GPS which will tell you what altitude you should be at at any time.

Our company is very reliant on GPS as our flying is off shore over the ocean and out of range of any navaids or geographic features.