– Steve Hitchen
Moving AirVenture Australia to Cessnock is one of those things that time will label either inspired or insipid. A shift away from Narromine has been an industry talking point for more than a year, fueled by dissatisfaction with accommodation and distance from any of the eastern-state capitals. Cessnock is close to Newcastle and Sydney, within reasonable flying distance of Melbourne and Brisbane, and is a city of 22,000 itself. For Adelaide flyers, AirVenture is going to be much further for them to fly, which may reduce attendances from the South Australian community. That aside, Cessnock is taking on an attractive hue, and it will solve the accomodation issue and provide a good playground for non-flying partners who don't want to be stranded at a fly-in they won't engage with. But the spanner lies in the Great Dividing Range. Some in the aviation community are thinking that Cessnock is riskier weather-wise than Narromine was and the proximity of the mountains and controlled airspace might prove unattractive. The Great Divide regularly thwarts the best-laid plans of pilots and pax in Australia and that's something we have to manage almost every time we go out, and that won't be an exception just because there's a big air show on. However, we also need to remember that Ausfly/OzKosh was also plagued by bad weather a couple of times. Are the organiser's provoking the weather gods by moving to a more critical location? We'll have to wait to see.
CASA looks like doing the big Marty McFly with the Multicom NPRM and taking us back to the future. The consultation didn't provide them with enough support for their proposal for 40 nm CTAFs and 126.7 below A050, and they may actually now implement something that was already in place before all this started. Most likely we will be presented with a procedure that amounts to nothing more than acknowledgement that where an airstrip is not charted it's OK to use the Multicom and everything else doesn't change. This whole thing became Frankenstein regulation where someone decided to take a small problem and implement the most complex solution, ignoring the KISS principle and Ockham's Razor in the process. This leaves me in the position of being unable to decide whether or not to hand CASA a glass of champagne or a poisoned chalice. I've probably already done the chalice thing, so I'll offer them some champers for making the decision to torpedo a proposal that was really not workable.
It's no small thing for AOPA Australia to embark on their concept of always having an office in the electorate of the Minister for Infrastructure and Transport. Offices, regardless of their configuration, are not cheap to maintain; even less cheap if you keep relocating them every couple of years. The job of looking after infrastructure and transport has seen four ministers since the beginning of 2015, and the electorate association with these aspirants has been from Wide Bay to Gippsland to New England to Riverina, and it would take only one part of forgiveness mixed with three parts of revenge for New England to be back in vogue again. That's the way Canberra works sometimes. The idea is perhaps sound, but is it workable? Ben Morgan says it is and also says the financial backing is there, but so many great ideas start out shiny and end up tarnished by the sooty reality of the every day. AOPA and Ben Morgan are being very ambitious, and in some ways this has characteristics of a desperate measure, but then perhaps we have indeed arrived at desperate times.
CASA has responded to my comments last week that I couldn't see the incentive for DAMEs who were never on the DAME2 schedule suddenly leaping on board to issue Class 2 medicals themselves. CASA pointed out that to last Friday, 58 DAMEs had completed the on-line training, which had actually passed the number of DAME2s that CASA had: 55. The incentive that I missed was that DAMEs who complete the training are delegates, so the issue of indemnity that so many examiners were baulking at has been removed. That being said, CASA admits that they can't force DAMEs to exercise the delegation if they don't want to, which means perhaps all but the most straightforward cases may still be referred to CASA. If that happens, those out there screaming that this is not real reform will be filling their boots.
May your gauges always be in the green,
Hitch