Is this NZ or OZ? When I was up in Darwin you had to call ACD when VFR inbound, not done anywhere else in Oz that I know of!
Maybe a military thing, what happens at Willy town?
Willy seems to follow convention at least as far as initial contact with them is with Approach or Centre. There is no requirement at Willy (that I am aware of - happy to be wrong) to nominate POB upon first inbound contact.
Darwin and Tindal were interesting to first timers, however Tindal was only ever usually an MBZ (a little while ago now) when I used to fly in there from Darwin early in the morning.
The best ever "rack 'em, stack'em and spin 'em" award that I have ever seen definately goes to DN ATC. One aircraft inbound, another outbound at the same level - same IAS, stacked from the MSA to 10K wedged in between a wet season cell over the RWY and another cell not that far east of Howard Springs in 2005. They also had another stack spinning somewhere to the south as well. As the cells moved through and the RWY cleared the descent and circuit entry sequence was rapid and logical.
I could imagine nothing like that has ever happened at Williamtown, where they prefer to do approaches while in VMC (CAVOK actually) from the holding pattern above for the two aircraft established in it (2000 feet apart). Visual approach not available for the higher level aircraft...... It is painful - it could be so much better.
Sorry, Hugh
did ask what happens at Williamtown.....
AUS/NZ rule differences? From what I understand there are quite a number of subtle differences between our countries rules. One that I understand is a headache for some is the rules for operation in the vicinity of an aerodrome (which aircraft will have right of way etc). Apparently they differ markedly.
Regards,
OpsN.