covered operating the aircraft in
the environment. How do you
protect a propeller on a gravel
runway? Why should you use
the largest turning circle and not
the smallest? How do you stack
the load if you're facing a 13-stop
mail run? My brain was pretty
maxed-out at the end of the day,
and I still had to complete the
engineering paper!
The following morning I got
to see it all in action. Mackneybundled me off to Hardy
Aviation, where I was booked on
the early-morning Caravan run
from Darwin to Bathurst Island.
I was tucked in Row Two and
plugged into the intercom so I
could hear pilot Tom Gregerson
going through the paces of an
average single-pilot RPT. The
experience taught me that there
is a lot going on even on such a
short run, and the pilot is up there
alone. Operators can't afford the
luxury of a second pilot; they need
to know the skipper can do the job
and do it right.Flying stuff
That afternoon Rafa and I
prepared C210 Lima Hotel Lima
for our familiarisation f light with
one eye on darkening skies that
heralded the scheduled afternoon
thunderstorms. Our plan was to
head west for Delissaville, but that
was where the sky was perhaps
its most sullen. With Mackney in
the right seat and me fat, dumb
and happy in the back, Rafa took
us out of Darwin and into our
training zone.
The plan was basic handling:
steep turns, stalls, practice forced
landings followed by an inspection
of Delissaville and a landing to
swap students.
As we weaved amongst the
isolated thunderstorms and rain
patches, we learned that the
C210 is a remarkable aeroplane
that holds turns well, has stall
characteristics about as aggressive
as a groodle puppy and with only
three on board and half tanks,
plenty of power to spare. With
that all settled, Rafa did a couple
of low passes over Delissaville to
practice checking the condition of
a bush runway.
Practice turned in to reality
when the three of us decided the
runway was in fact no good for
landing due to standing water,
forcing Mackney to direct Rafa to
head back to Darwin for circuits."Sorry," Mackney said to me.
"We'll get your handling done on
the overnight trip tomorrow."
That's f lying, that's Darwin ...
that's NT weather. There's
no teacher like encountering
a real situation.
The upside for me was that I got
to sit in the back and observe Rafa
as he experienced Darwin and its
Land and Hold Short (LAHSO)
ops for the first time. LAHSO is
a part of being a professional pilot
in the NT, and Flight Standards
make sure you pass the course
properly qualified.AUSTRALIAN FLYING July – August 201846 Charter Pilot Training australianflying.com.au
something that might look very
good on a revised edition.
Our first class room was within
the CASA building at Darwin.
Flight Standards believes that
a greater understanding of the
regulator's aims and philosophies
adds to the professionalism of
charter CPLs. We graduated
from there to the RAAF control
tower; seeing how it works from
the heart of the system adds good
experience for a CPL.
We spent the bulk of Day
One in the Flight Standards
class room with Mackney taking
us through all the systems and
performance of the weapon of
choice: Cessna's C210 Centurion.
For those unfamiliar: a single-
engined retractable strutless high-
wing dragged along by a 300-hp
motor. This is one bullock of
an aeroplane with fantastic load
capacity and spectacular take-off
and landing performance. They're
old; Cessna stopped building them
in 1985, and operators in the NT
keep them running because no-
one has yet built something with
same combination of capacity,
performance and speed.
But it was not just a matter of
reading out a heap of numbers
and pointing at PowerPoint
slides; the ground school also“ I understood that being a
good charter pilot means
being a good organiser”
on a relevant aircraft type, and
knowledge and attitude: the areas
of knowledge that they need to
have to be useful in GA in remote
Australia, and the attitudes they
need to have in approaching the job.
"Often what you will get with
new pilots looking for work and
they've been up here for a few
months away from the f lying
school environment, is that they
aren't even current anymore.
"Flying is a perishable skill,
particularly with aircraft
manipulation and particularly in
the formative stages of a career. A
200-hour or 150-hour pilot has
extraordinarily perishable skills."Ground school
My first impression on arriving
at Darwin was that it was hot,
damned hot. And humid as soup.
Yet somehow the local pilots
strolled around in crisp white
shirts looking like they were
followed by their own personal air
conditioner, and achieving that is a
skill in itself.
My learning partner was Rafa,
a Gold Coast native who'd come
to Darwin via University of
South Australia f light training.
He'd been passing out résumés
to no avail, and soon identified
the Flight Standards course asGetting down
and dirty: Rafa
and Ben go
through the
intricacies
of the C210
undercarriage.