Have been a member for a while, but have only just taken some half decent photos of my recently-acquired V35. Fingers crossed that this picture successfully uploads …

This is her, parked outside the hangar at the famous Forrest airport, during a transcontinental trip to see the Perth round of this year’s Red Bull Air Race.


Don’t let the name ‘Forrest’ fool you. It’s in the middle of the Nullarbor Plain. ‘Nullarbor’ is Latin for ‘no trees’! And it’s a long, long way to the next AVGAS…

Clinton,

Beautiful...!

How far is it to the next avgas stop?

Clinton - thanks for the pic.

Can you perhaps give us a little write-up on the trip across the Nullarbor - your flight planning, stops, fueling and endurance, interaction with ATC? It's always good to learn about travel in other places!

Hi Arlen

Kalgoorlie, to the west of Forrest, is 344 nms away. Ceduna, to the east of Forrest, is 297 nms away. There is a strip about 64 nms to the south on the Great Australian Bight, at a place called Eucla, but it’s a dirt strip and prone to problems if there’s been recent rain. Warburton is 295 nms to the north.

So they are very ‘doable’ distances (especially if you have tip tanks like yours!) but when you’re used to short hops on the east coast like me, with lots of options for landing along the way, the distances are initially quite daunting.

Hi Spike

It’s kind of you to express an interest.

There were three main, overlapping, issues at the planning stage, one of which relates to Arlen’s question.

The first main issue was whether to do the shortest route across and back, or whether to do some sightseeing along the way. Fortunately we had a week to get across (we planned to leave on the 10th and the race started on the 17th), so we decided to do some sightseeing along the way. We planned to go via another famous place called William Creek, which is on the Oodnadatta Track, via Broken Hill, so that we could do some flying around yet another famous place called Lake Eyre.

Overnight Broken Hill then off to Wilpena Pound and Arkaroola in the Flinders Ranges (I think the oldest fossils in the world are found in the Flinders Ranges and, for a period during WWII, the Manhattan Project was based at Arkaroola) then to William Creek.

William Creek has a population of 2, a pub, and a gravel strip. I was looking forward to taxiing the aircraft up to the pub, in accordance with tradition. However, I was a little disappointed to discover that the practice has been stopped. Our accommodation for the 2 nights was a shipping container with a bullet hole in the door….

If my new-found picture uploading skills are still OK, there should be a couple of pictures of ‘Club Med’ William Creek (our accommodation), and one of the inside of the pub, below. All visitors to the pub are expected to leave a personal item at the pub, and over the decades every square inch of the walls and ceiling have become covered in these items.

Lake Eyre was in flood, as a consequence of lots of rain in Queensland. This is a relatively rare event – I think this is the first time in 17 years that the Lake has filled – and the best way to see it is, of course, from the air. After a lap around the Lake, we popped over to Coober Pedy – a famous opal mining town – for fuel and beer supplies. Both of these commodities were very expensive at William Creek.

After the second night at William Creek we went to Ceduna on the coast, for fuel, and then to Forrest, tracking along the Great Australian Bight to Eucla.

A couple of nights in Forrest - we’d only planned for 1 night there, but the WX forecast for Perth wasn’t that good, so we waited a day – then Kalgoorlie for fuel and then into Jandakot, which is the main GA airport for Perth.

The second main issue, which relates to Arlen’s question, is fuel availability.

There aren’t many airstrips with Avgas supplies in the outback, and they are becoming fewer by the year. Unfortunately, successive governments at all levels in Australia have generally neglected infrastructure for general aviation, general aviation at the ‘traditional private’ level – by which I mean folks like us in Bonanzas – has been in steady decline, and there has been a consequential decline in the willingness of fuel companies to support fuel infrastructure, given the comparatively tiny volumes of Avgas sold and the expense of supporting infrastructure in remote areas. For example, Leigh Creek to the west of the Flinders Ranges no longer has Avgas available at the airport.

So, one must be very careful to make sure that there is Avgas available where you are going. If you land somewhere in the outback that has no fuel, it can take a long time and cost a lot of money to get out again.

The third main issue was weight and balance. As all V35 flyers know, it’s very easy to load a V35 outside the rear of the envelope. For the reasons set out above, I needed to fill to full fuel on each stop. With 2 pax, there was not too much margin left for bags. Further, all those bags couldn’t be loaded in the baggage comartment. I therefore insisted on the bare minimum of baggage, and I loaded all of the heavier ones on the spare seat in the second row. I also made the pax move their seats to the full forward position for take-off. The aircraft handled well in all phases of flight, so I’m confident those procedures worked. (I also of course ran the numbers through the weight and balance calculator to confirm we would be within the envelope.)

The WX for the race in Perth was perfect, and was perfect for the trip back.

We didn’t have as much time to get back, so we planned the fastest route.

The prevailing winds are usually strong westerlies, which make the trip east quicker. Based on the forecast, I planned to go direct from Jandakot to Forrest – 632 nms and the longest single hop I’ve ever flown in a ‘lightie’. Fortunately, the winds were the usual strong westerlies, and at 9,500 we managed to get a groundspeed around 190kts. We even touched 200kts at one point during the cruise.

On arrival at Forrest we still had 85 litres left on board.

Forrest to Port Pirie, at the top of the Spencer Gulf, for fuel, then to Mildura overnight. Mildura to Canberra and back to reality!

Planning a trip to Ayers Rock now …

Ventilation hole!? Has Tom G been vacationing down there?

Chris,

Awesome trip write up, and pretty airplane, too!

If you get a chance to post them, I would love to see some of the aerial photos you tooks of the sites you describe.

Drew

Hi Drew

One of my colleagues was the unofficial trip photographer. He’s going to send me a DVD when he’s had a chance to download all the photos and videos. I’ll post the more interesting ones.

Just to ‘close the loop’ on Spike’s question about interaction with ATC, the short answer is that there was almost no interaction with ATC. Almost all of trip was outside of controlled airspace, and a substantial part of the trip was outside VHF range to Centre.

Canberra Ground and Canberra Tower on departure, and Jandakot Tower and Ground on arrival, was about it on the way over. The only other interaction with ATC on the way over was with Perth Radar, who called me to confirm my intentions to stay outside Perth controlled airspace while I was orbiting waiting for some low cloud to clear on the standard track into Jandakot.

On the way back it was Jandakot Ground and Tower at one end, and Canberra Approach, Tower and Ground on arrival at the other end, and that was it.

I did radio checks on the HF while out of VHF range, to confirm that I could call Centre if I needed to.

Clinton:

Thank you very much for that.

I very badly want to have such an adventure when next I get to Australia; my sister is an Australian with a mild Texas accent in Adelaide.

Unfortunately, I see little chance of realistic aircraft rental options; a few years back, Lilydale had a couple of V-tails, and the $USD was not yet play-money, so it looked do-able. Now, not so much...

...so, I live the Australian flying dream through the BTers from Down Under, and hope perhaps to beg rides from some such when opportunity knocks.

Such an amazing place you live...

Ah yes, the exchange rate...

I can remember that not long ago the Aussie Dollar (or the 'Pacific Peso' as we called it back then) was worth less than 60 US cents.

I hope you won't begrudge us Aussie aircraft owners (I mean owners of USA-built aircaft in Austalia) from cheering the value of the AUD up. I've got my sights on a custom cover from Bruce, an upgrade of the EDM 700 to the EDM 730 and various other 'dollar intensive' 'investments' that will be less painful at better exchange rates.

On a related subject, in an amazing coincidence I realise that I was in the USA, as a young boy on a family holiday - my only uncle lives in the USA, in the same year that my V35 was built! I'm doing some research to find out how close I physically came to the Beech production line during that trip back in '67. The exchange rate back then was fixed to about $1.20 US to $1.00 AUD. Them were the good ol' days! No wonder they imported so many GA aircraft into Australia back then!

When you're next hankering for a trip over here, get the Australian Bonanza Society to put its feelers out to find you a Bonanza for hire. I know there was one - from Lilydale - available for hire for the BPPP held recently in Dubbo. If you can't get an aircraft, I'm sure there'd be a cheap seat available on various adventures by various ABS members.

Regards

Clinton