– Steve Hitchen
It's great to see a small airstrip like Djarindjin get a gong in the National Airport Industry Awards held this week. This airport services a town of about 400 people, but still provides a vital link to the rest of Australia and to the offshore oil and gas plants. Djarindjin is representative of hundreds of small airports dotted around the country that perform services such as this, and any number of them could be recognised for the role they play as vital infrastructure. It could be argued that all airports have a role in Australia's transport network, and that includes the array of private airports around the country that have private and recreational GA as their core customers. Think about places like The Oaks, Tyabb, Clare Valley, Gatton, Lilydale, Serpentine, Lethbridge. These airports provide services just as vital; you could argue moreso given the training they support. They are the unsung heroes of the GA world. Except for a few that are linked to other income streams, most of these airports do a hell of a lot with not very much, often in the face of hostile opposition from non-aviation types. That's how diversified our airport network is; many types, many roles ... all coming together to make a strong network. The strength in the network comes from all the strands, from Bankstown all the way to Djarindjin.
eVTOLs have been a long time in development. Conventional aircraft generally go from drawing board to delivery in about 5-10 years depending on the design, but the idea of eVTOLs goes back 15 years to NASA's Puffin concept. Since then, the development road has been very long and several detours taken as some designs proved impractical or couldn't raise the capital to press on. The first ever delivery to a customer of an eVTOL with an MTOW of 1000 kg was in April this year. This week we have seen AMSL Aero free-flight test their Vertiia and Wisk sign-up to start developing infrastructure at Archerfield. These are signs that the eVTOL revolution is still on the March. The motivating factors behind eVTOLs are the almost unlimited potential and the need for transportation without carbon emissions. What has resisted forward motion for development has been the need for certification and the rapid advance of technology used. Certification freezes design, and in the case of electric power in aviation, the technology used is obsolete often before it can be certified. That is the world that eVTOLs are going to be born into: one where the technology around it is changing rapidly and constantly, just the way the first fixed-wing aeroplanes were at the beginning of the 20th Century.
Jabiru founder Rod Stiff was recognised last night with the Engineers Australia award for Engineering Associate of the Year. EA handed him the trophy not only for the engineering skills that produced the Jabiru range of aircraft and aviation engines, but also for his work in the field of sugar cane harvesting. Stiff is retired now and the company he founded has a new management and structure, but as long as Jabiru is still turning out aeroplanes, Rod Stiff's legacy will endure. Jabiru's design and handling doesn't fit the taste and style of every recreational pilot in Australia, but there's no denying that Jabiru has made aviation available to a horde of people for which aviation would otherwise have been out of reach. The EA award is fair recognition for Rod's engineering skills and passion for whatever field he turned his talents to.
May your gauges always be in the green,
Hitch