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On the Airbands
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As a birthday gift, I recently went on a “Red Baron” scenic flight lasting an hour or so from Sydney’s Bankstown Airport in a Pitts Special S-2 biplane. Callsign was “Triple Foxtrot” (VH-FFF) and during the flight, pilot Noel Kruse performed some aerobatics north of Barrenjoey.
This particular flight proved a classic example of how complex our radio procedures operations are with an enormous number of frequency changes required on our supposedly simple one hour sortie. I’ll list them to show just how many times the radios had to be retuned. First up, Sydney Terminal on 135.1 for clearance into the Sydney Control Zone, then Bankstown Ground 119.9, then Tower 132.8, and Sydney Departures 125.3. We tracked Picnic Point, Sutherland, Bundeena, and then came over the coastline and turned north to fly up the “Victor 1” lane at 500 feet. Here, we did a general broadcast to aircraft in the lane on 120.8 (no ground station monitoring) and then again asked Sydney Terminal on 135.1 for circuits in the Sydney Harbour area. Then Departures 123.0, Area frequency 125.8, and as we tracked to Hornsby and Westmead we again spoke to Bankstown Tower on 132.8 MHz. Noel Kruse recognised his friend Bob Livingstone (Senior Tower) at Bankstown on the radio and called him by name. As well as Noel using the aeronautical transceiver, this writer was using a VHF handheld on the amateur radio bands on simplex frequency 145.14 MHz, talking to numerous amateur radio operators (hams) throughout the Greater Sydney area. Maybe you heard us if you live in Sydney, and own a scanner which receives VHF “ham” radio.
Dick Ryland lives in Cranbourne Victoria, and is heavily involved in aeronautical pursuits. His impressive background includes three thousand skydiving descents, four hundred hours in gliders, and considerable time in powered aircraft. Dick listens to the airbands on a Uniden Bearcat 175XL scanner. His first contribution to the column involves an incident he monitored a few years back, when an airline aircraft came up on an Air Traffic Control frequency with some very non standard information. The crewmember using the microphone was the Captain, who introduced himself enthusiastically to his passengers over the cabin address system, and then proceeded to tell them all about the aircraft and the passenger facilities on board, the meals, movies, and everything else he could squeeze in.
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