Through the Eyes of a Wombat

While it's true that time flies when you're having fun, it is also true that time's fun when you're flying.

It's been over a month since I arrived in Melbourne, and a very busy month it has been indeed. The first two weeks, studying every day for the Instrument Rating EXam (IREX), passed reasonably sedately, and I'm pleased to be able to say that after two weeks full time study, I was able to pass the exam on my first go. I'm sure doing the full-time classroom study was the best way to do this, because while I'm sure it would be possible to glean all the information you need from a textbook, there's no way a textbook can cover the material in the way a good human teacher can. And this teacher is by reputation, one of the two best aviation teachers in Australia.

Having completed this exam, I was able to fully relax and enjoy Fergus and Miranda's wedding earlier this month, at a lovely vinyard somewhere in the vicinity of Brisbane. It was a great evening, with great fun had by all, and as you'd expect with these two, a great many laughs. Also great was the chance to catch up with former Sale people, many of whom I hadn't seen in years. The Yarra Valley is a lovely and picturesque part of Victoria, and it is a shame I have no idea where it is.

But fun and frivolity only lasts so long, and it was back to Melbourne to start the next phase of the training - the flying component of the Instrument Rating. So as not to make it too hard right from the start, the first few days were flown in a simulator - a nice cosy little box in a room, but in a nice first, experience in the simulator actually counts as time in my logbook! Over the course of a week, I was able to fly all around Australia without ever leaving that little box in the room.

After a few IFR flights in the venerable Piper Arrow, to get back into the swing of things, particularly since it had been over two months since I flew anything at all, I had the great pleasure a couple of days ago of flying a twin-engined aircraft for the very first time. While the instructor keeps reminding me it is so much faster than anything I've flown before, it's actually no faster, indeed a tad slower than the Cessna 210, but it does have a much better rate of climb, and far better equipped an instrument panel! I'm starting to get a feel for the aeroplane, and am learning it's little quirks, though I haven't done any operations with only one engine working quite yet.

It seems the fun stuff is still to come, on that count!

Once this rating is done, I'll be in Sale for Christmas, then hopefully able to find another flying job in the not-too-distant future. The regular job-ad website is still frequently showing light single and light twin jobs all over Australia, I had an interesting post-script to a conversation I had earlier in the year with the Ops Manager of a certain international airline, which might turn out to be rather positive, but I can't get too hopeful. Shall keep you posted, though.

On a completely different topic, I've been working for the Electoral Commission over this little event we've had in Australia lately, the federal election. In 2004 also,