Thought you guys might be interested to hear that Australia is leading the way in this area...

Reading up ahead of forthcoming trip to Australia including some planned flying in he Sydney Basin area, I was very impressed with the quality of the documents - freely available on the web - which CASA makes available to aid visual VFR flight relatively in busy / complex areas, i.e. the VPG's (http://www.casa.gov.au/avreg/pilot/pilotgde.htm)

In response to a growing number of airspace infringements here in the UK - increasingly caused by private pilots according to the stats - UK CAA have announced in a recent article in the Royal Institue of Navigators magazine that "we will follow the Australian CAA [sic] and make digital mapping available on the Web." They go onto explain that they are beginning by trialling A4 sized cut-down versions of our 1:250,000 maps, with associated aerial photographs of VRPs, to make negotiating some of our VFR corridors more easy for those unfamiliar to the area, e.g. the 1500' max ALT low-level route that runs north-south between Liverpool and Manchester, under the Manchester TMA.

So well done Australia for showing the way! Its a great example of how we can ALL learn from each others systems, e.g. taking the best of ICAO, US, European and Australian approaches where appropriate.

Cheers all,

I took a set of charts, Sy VTC, a VFG and the Sydney basin pilots guide with me on my last trip to the States. They thought it was the best thing they'd ever seen, they wished the FAA would do the same.

Sometimes, CASA DOES get it right.

CASA get it right !!!!!!!!

NEVER use 'CASA' and 'RIGHT' in the same sentence.

The maps are good sure, but there are other more important
things they should be getting right aswell.

Sorry, I should not get started by having a gripe,

But, Geeze...........

G'day G11 - sorry, didn't mean to imply CASA get everything right - just that they seem to have got this more right than other similar bodies worldwide.

Never let it be forgotten that according to Jeppesen, the good people who provide competition to Air Services in term of charts etc. Australia (read Air Services & CASA) require more 'updates' to the paperwork than any other country in the world.

Think of all those trees cut down to provide that sea of paper !

Next thing that everyone will want to copy is the way that CASA and AsA have cooperated over the years to make GPS NPAs a reality. I've worked with the prime movers in both organisations and know that those folks are very talented indeed.

Nice to get some good news on CASA and AsA every once in a while!

What's NPA? Non-precision approach I presume.. is there somewhere I can read about this? Thinking here is very conservative on the issue, so I would like to read up on what's what down there these days.

Many thanks,

Yeah ozzie, they got the GPS NPA's right. That's something. Andy, you are correct, they are Non Precision Approaches, not overlays of NDB's and such, and are practical and safe. They are all runway approaches, well all the ones i've seen anyway. Look at the CASA website mate, you'll find out a little more there I think.

See

http://www.casa.gov.au/avreg/fsa/00jan.htm