Wondai – Bribie Island – FLWOP – steep turns – stalls – dead reckoning

The CPL training continued on February 27, 2021. As they say, practice makes perfect, so I was off on another cross country flight in ROC, accompanied by Brett, fellow Cirrus pilot, who for once agreed to fly in an aircraft that doesn’t have its own air frame parachute. The first leg was a dead reckoning one from Redcliffe to Linville, originally planned for 4500ft but limited to 3000ft by scattered friendly cumulus cloud. There was a 6 knot cross wind from the right (don’t you love a G1000?) so I changed our heading by 3 degrees to the right and it brought us right over the top. After an orbit over the town we were off on another dead reckoning leg to a place called “Boomtown” near the Bunya mountains where OzRunways allege there’s an airstrip, so we tried to find it. There had been no strip showing on Google Earth so I was interested to see whether we could find anything in real life. Passing over Blackbutt we were on track and on schedule and we arrived over the airstrip location on time but there was no airstrip to be seen. Deciding it was all a ploy by OzRunways to check whether other app creators were copying their database we headed north on a further dead reckoning leg to Wondai, flying to the west of Kingaroy, listening out for traffic on the approach as someone did circuits there.

At Wondai we did a couple of short field landings and takeoffs then did a full stop landing for a short break to chat with one of the locals and sign the visitors’ book.

After about 20 minutes we took off again and I did three practice glide approaches with touch and go landings, while contending with an RAAus pilot who was doing circuits and refused to respond to my radio calls. The first two approaches were a bit high and steep but we landed smoothly nevertheless. The third approach was pretty much textbook. Next was a final dead reckoning leg to Jimna, initially at 3000ft to remain under the clouds but as the ground rose to meet us we climbed to 3500ft to remain 1000ft above ground level while remaining clear of cloud. Once again there was a slight heading correction for cross wind and we arrived over Jimna right on time. Originally I’d planned some steep turns overhead but the clouds limited our height above ground so we headed for Bribie Island via the Kilcoy Gap to avoid the tiger country and hills, practising a FLWOP near Woodford. There was quite a bit of traffic around Bribie but I managed a few good steep turns before heading back to Redcliffe and a flapless landing. A good bit of practice on a lovely morning.