Mildura Airport ILS - Wrong Way?
 

Is the Mildura ILS being built at the 'wrong' end..?

https://www.msn.com/en-au/news/austr...?ocid=msedgdhp

Cheers (?)

How very Australian.

Real question is why are they bothering with ILS. Should be GLS in both directions.

Hahahahaha. Typical. Geez this country and all the politicians in it are useless. What a waste of $2 million plus. Morons.

If its going in as a training aid it needs to accomodate the highest use runway direction. If it's going in as a Cat 1 that is actually useful it needs about $3 million worth of additional lights. It appears to be neither. Would it have helped back when Qantas and Virgin were running on fumes? If so, goodo and may save someones skin in the future.

If one of the main beneficiaries is a local flying school, can your average bug smasher even fly a GLS approach?

Cockpit presentation is exactly the same as ILS. Easy as . All you need is a multi mode receiver. ILS will be a back up navaid in 10 years time.

No that's why it has to be a ILS.

And how much does that cost and how much weight will it add??

The other issue with the ILS being at the other end will be opposite direction traffic problems. ie aircraft landing into wind with people doing practice ILS's on the other end with the tailwind.

Typical of Australian aviation to spend millions on an installation just as it is becoming obsolete.
GBAS , GLS and RNP are the future. Training new pilots to fly an ILS only is as useful as an NDB approach.
But , of course , this is Australia. Sigh............

What is wrong with pprune? In one thread you all bash the decommissioning of ground based aids then in the next you scoff at an ILS being put in.

?

Not me.

Have flown hundreds of GLS and RNP approaches. They are the best thing since sliced bread , especially in remote areas outside conventional navaid coverage. Spending millions on an ILS is idiotic.

I 100% agree. But the cost of that technology is greater than the purchase price of your average small aircraft. F100's/EMB 120's/SAAB 340 don't do RNP/GLS approaches either and they are a significant number of aircraft on the Australian Register flying to remote areas.

Have to agree with George there, RNP approaches are the way to go for the future. I've flown a handful albeit in VMC and it was nice to watch a curved approach between terrain down close to an ILS cat 1 minima. As for GLS, aren't QF the only operator approved to fly a GLS approach at the moment?

Mildura Airport management has decided to install the ILS on what it calls the "Adelaide end" of its main runway, even though weather conditions suggest the equipment would be more useful at the opposite end.

So what do they call the other end of the runway, "The Canberra end". So if you win the toss, which end are you going to kick.
Just imagine if Dick kept writing "Two Years in the Aviation Hall of Doom" what number edition would be up too.

Which runway to install an ILS on can be influenced by a number of factors such as average wind, noise sensitive area and protection of the signal out to the specified angles and distances. The missed approach procedure may be a factor as well, At some airports, such as Phuket, the localiser can't be lined up with the runway because it ends in the sea and is situated at the side of the runway before the end instead. A slightly offset approach with a higher minima is required, 1.4' offset with a D/H 458 feet agl for CAT C aircraft rather than a typical 200 feet agl D/H.

In Cairns, the ILS often goes out during a cyclone due to it going underwater.

Like most things in aviation, it's a compromise.

Which is why we invented RNP.........
The original QF RNP charts had curved approaches down to 200’ . Everywhere. Then the geniuses at AirServices decided that it was no good having QF only doing these special approaches. Generic, all type , all operator approaches were the solution! Minima shot up to around 700’.
Useless. The technology is way ahead of the regulators. Cat 3 GLS has been demonstrated . ILS installations will soon be stranded assets.

Which is great in theory in your jet but still useless to the predominate users of the airfield, Saab’s, Dashes and GA.

Operators comply with the regulations that they have to comply with. Nothing more , nothing less . And they hate spending money . And regulators hate change. But fact is that price of Multimode Receivers is plummeting as they become common everywhere else in the world but Australia. They will be standard in the not too distant future. Spending millions on an ILS is idiotic. Australia leading from behind , as usual.

'History' repeating itself......... It reminds me of 'de good ole days' when the FSU that USED to be there was built......

Apparently, during construction, the foreman or whoever, got his N mixed up with his S, or L with R, or whatever, and the pad for the building was installed - the wrong way around.

So they simply finished the construction, including the internal fit- out, and the MET had had the nice look out over the RWYS, whilst the FSO viewed the carpark and the lawn where the 'Stevenson Screen' was.!

(Yeah, I am acutely aware that 'we' were not supposed to look out of the window anyway - but in locations where 'we' could, it certainly assisted in the occasional emergency... e.g. Dubbo (Upstairs) Derby (Upstairs), KAL - ground floor but BIG window installed especially....)

Cheeerrrrssss (?):eek:

I say dust off DME [A] and be all Australian. We know best in all things aviation. Just read PPRUNE..

Wonder who is going to maintain it? Airservices normally maintain navaids. Also, if they are going to charge you $55 a time to use it, how will they know if you used it or not, or will it be assumed that if you are on an IFR plan and approach from the "Adelaide end" you used it (even if you did not)?

GBAS isn't a practical option for most non heavy jet operators but SBAS is and I believe it is belatedly on its way to this part of the world. Not before time.

Wrong way round or upside down!

Easy lads, break out at 200' with a 40 knot westerly, visual circuit at 200', and bingo land 27. :hmm:

The article states users will be charged $55 every time they make an “ILS landing”.... whatever one of those is. I’m trying to get my head around how they will know that their prized new ILS is being “used”. Does this mean you only get charged if met. conditions are below non precision minima? Or does an inbound call now have to include reading out your credit card number to allow someone to turn on the GP transmitter? And what if you do a missed approach and come back for another one do you get charged $110 for using it twice? Do training aircraft who make multiple practise ILS approaches with GAs and never actually land on 27 get to use it for free?

Conundrums of The Swamp.

Maybe they just want to do lots of LOC backcourse training.

They’ll turn it off and leave it turned off until someone requests it be turned on for a practice ILS and then pay someone $30 an hour to flick the switch and take note of the rego at 200’. ERSA to read “Switching person only available 9.30-4.30 Mon -Thurs and 10-3 on Friday. ILS not available in IMC, for early morning arrivals in fg or br, or on weekends”. Simples. The Australian Way.

I predict advances in location technology and autopilot logic will make ILS and the whole panoply of IFR operations redundant in a few years. Assuming straight forward design of the approach, any experimental bug smasher will have the capability-whether CASA and Airservices approves it or not. This phenomenon is called “being overtaken by disruptive technology”.

Anecdotally I’m told that some in the RV community already toy with IMC conditions without any approvals.

Hi Griffo. Yep the view of the stevenson screen was truly a magnificent sight but my wife (not an FSO) and i enjoyed a great six years there.

And for what its worth based on my time there RWY 27 was used significantly more than RWY 09.

Fly safe and play hard (when you can)

Cheers Hoss 58

Anyone who "toys" with IMC is likely to have their toys smashed when they discover that IMC is not to be played with.

Thats what the brains trust at Virgin flight standards will have you do. Single engine and the offsider incapacitated.

Paying for a practice ILS is nothing new. I vaguely remember Essendon and Avalon charging GA aircraft for practice ILS's about 15 years ago (probably still the case now). Of course it's much easier to track who's doing the ILS when operating in CTA and charge them accordingly. I'd imagine in class G, you'd have someone listening on the CTAF frequency for inbound calls with a cash register till beside them.

Tell ‘em you’re doing the RNAV 09 (and have the ILS on as well) - they would both align pretty well 🤪

They are If only because you don’t need transmitter hardware to publish new approaches but ILS isn’t going to disappear anytime soon and needs to be trained. I fly around Europe and have a single Alpine airport where RNP is required for the approach.

GLS in a Boeing is almost identical to an ILS with almost no training differences , except that it is a whole lot better . No beam interference and one station covers up to 30nm radius . And Cat III will be certified soon . Cost might be an issue now but I’ll bet there will be cheap MMRs for GA aircraft sooner rather than later.
If you had the choice why would you spend money on an ILS ?

Mildura doesn't need an ILS. Qantas and Virgin proved that! :E

I slight drift here but anybody tell me what the approach was at NZQN pre RNP?

Copy of a chart would be of interest

Don’t have a chart but from memory it was a VOR/DME with a 5.4% gradient and a stupidly high minima. Not for the faint hearted.

Problem with that argument is that the technology is already 25 years old and the CAT III was supposed to be around in the mid 2000s. Now here we are in 2020, with only late model airliners fitted with the equipment and the Nav Aids only found in Sydney and Melbourne I think you will be waiting a long time for your cheap GA unit.

The fact that Cat III doesn’t exist in Australia and that Cat II has only been introduced in the last couple of years has nothing to do with technology and everything to do with bureaucratic inertia and stupidity. The argument from AirServices and CASA for twenty years was that weather and traffic didn’t justify Cat II in Sydney and Melbourne. Until it did. We never lead. We are never proactive. Would be nice if just once we did something innovative. Do a google search and you’ll find that the anticipated market for MMRs is huge. Just not in Australia........