Night IFR below LSALT

[gum boots]

Just curious as to what the requirements are for IFR flight below LSALT at night?

Saw an aircraft flying around a city south of Sydney (which has a large steelworks) a couple of weeks ago, at night, at 1500 feet, below the height of the moutains (2000 feet) which are 2 miles to the west of the city and conducting continous orbits over the town, considering the LSALT to the north of that aerodrome is 3600 feet.

I believe the aircraft has a contract requirement to always flight plan IFR and was not conducting any search and rescue at the time.

[colonel cameron]

WIND UP ALERT.

IFR or VFR for search and rescue is a good double. Ask Polair.

[rmcdonal]

Could be anything.
Night circuits to keep current, radar vectors to LSALT, was it cloudy? Visual approach? Could be anything

[gum boots]

To answer the above....

It was not a search and rescue tasking (either federal or state level).

And the aerodrome is located 10nm SW from the city CBD (so well oustside circuit, GPS NPA and NDB approach altitudes).

The company involved consistantly performs these training exercises, purely for training purposes. Not for actual SAR tasking, as these are very few and far between (even though the public think otherwise).

If POLAIR were conducting the training I would be happy to let them fly around at low altitiude as each pilot has several thousand hours of experience and im sure their operations manual and CASA approvals would also reflect this.

[maxgrad]

You sound as though you know the operator. Ask them and then work with their reply???

[swh]

gum boots,

Last time I looked CASA had issued over 180 instructions/permissions/approvals/exemptions for CAR 174B (http://scaleplus.law.gov.au/html/pastereg/0/51/0/PR004940.htm).

maxgrad has made a good suggestion.

:ok: