NAS and Dick 2; warning

[Chimbu chuckles]

I'd be prepared to bet a substantial amount that the second one was written by DS...it is in his style.

Please Mr Bertram outline for all of us the formal qualifications of Mr DS and Houston in airspace design...or yourself/any other members of the AOPA.

I would suggest to you that not only is DS not professionally qualified in airspace design/risk management etc but he is a rank amatuer.

I would suggest to you that a (clearly successfull) career in the RAAF does NOT of itself prepare someone to comment knowledgably on civil airspace....given that his experience in civil flying would be dramatically less than the amatuer DS.

I would never be so arrogant as to tell DS how to market Vaginamite...nor could I ever envisage telling Angus Houston how to run the airforce (ie how to kill people and break their stuff).

The airspace over Australia, whether you want to admit it or not, is commercial airspace. The system is there to facilitate the safe conduct of commercial aviation which is necesary for the financial well being of Australia/Australians.

Those of us who fly for fun in our own aircraft or those of others MUST acknowledge this and ensure we have the knowledge and skills to fit in to that system...not change it to suite the smallest sector of the industry who also contribute the least towards its running costs.

I enjoy privately flying my own aircraft around when I'm home in Oz...but I do not enjoy shepherding a 767 into BNE wondering whether a light aircraft with defective/no transponder is going to wander across my bows....completely invisable against the backdrop of a lit up city.

When I want a clearance across BN I simply ask for it and it's given. When I go somewhere far enough away to warrant it I put in a flightplan. When I'm enroute I want to be on the correct frequency...I don't want to spend 5 minutes looking for it in 3 different publications. I only carry Jepps when I fly + those nice wac style charts that they have for parts of the J curve that used to have frequencies on them. If I'm enroute I want to be on the frequency everyone else in the altitude band I'm flying in is on. That means I look at the chart and dial up the area frequency. When on descent to a CTAF/MBZ I call up on that freq when appropriate (having been monitoring it for some time on my comm 2) and make an all stations call. Approaching GAAPs I track via the appropriate place and call inbound on tower freq. Approaching C airspace I call Center and ask for a clearance in plenty of time for them to have a look at my flightplan details and issue clearance. If there are RPT Operations inbound/outbound I happily hold/accept a modified clearance. I've NEVER had to hold except in a widebody in CTA due lots of other widebodies wanting to use the same runway...ever.

I have, ONCE, been denied a VFR clearance over Sydney...I didn't immediately assume it was a conspiracy and happily tracked via the LOE...and didn't feel my life was endangered as a result...I don't fly 100s of miles over open ocean in se aircraft.


It's called airmanship.

The NAS 2b airspace is so fundamentally flawed that I can only assume the 'safety first' culture you claim is at the forefront of AOPA Comittee's thoughts and actions is just so much BS. Its been a VERY long time since I let my AOPA membership lapse...it will be a cold day in hell before I reversed that situation.