the clearance is not given so the pilot then starts to track towards Craven. Now I ask you – how do you find Craven on a pitch dark night? It’s simply a reporting point and these are the days before GPS.
Same way we all did it pre-GPS, careful route selection to put us over aids at suitable intervals plus a bit of dead reckoning as required. Hard to do with just a single ADF and VOR and no DME, which by the flightplan seems to be the case here. Hard to understand why you would show Craven as a turning point on your FP when it is going to be nigh impossible to get a fix either visually (NVFR) or using aids.
they expect the aircraft to be tracking between Craven and Singleton, but in fact it is some thirty miles away. Yes, thirty miles away! It has crossed the Range and has actually crossed the Mt Sandon to Singleton track. That means that for over thirty minutes it has headed in exactly the wrong direction and no-one has told the pilot.
Looking at the current Sydney TAC it looks to me like he had overshot Craven but as I read it would not have crossed the Mt Sandon - Singleton track. Just re-enforces the unsuitability of the FP route.
Interesting listening to the radio transmissions last night. The PIC referred on a number of occasions to "having a little problem" - electrical issues, vac pump failure, electrical fire, ADF failure, unreliable compass, can't maintain altitude, icing!
Freeing up access to Williamstown airspace is one thing - but leave the MDX mess out of it!