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On the Airbands
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Mostly, I am in the “good books” with our military aviation people, but occasionally I offer an opinion on something military, foul myself in my own lines, and wind up paying the price! I made a remark in this column not all that long ago, that the “RAAF was essentially a weekday, nine-to-five Air Force”. I guess that was inviting trouble, although it was said largely tongue in cheek. Pete, who is in the RAAF based somewhere in NSW, wrote in to clarify the situation. Go Pete: “I am writing to correct some misconceptions you may have about the RAAF. The RAAF is a 365 days a year 24 hour a day job. We do not, as you imply, get penalty payments, we do however pay tax as does every other member of the Australian workforce. If we were to get paid overtime you would see half of the ADF driving around in Porsches and BMWs! The reason you don’t see much flying on the weekends is that the Government can’t afford it, that is to say there aren’t enough Air Traffic Controllers, Pilots, Aircraft Maintenance Engineers, and Aircraft Spares.” Aircraft have to be maintained, and this can’t be done while they’re flying, so the maintainers work throughout the day, night and every weekend of the year to keep an aging fleet in the air. They maintain a 24 hour SAR standby, prepare aircraft for Aeromedical Evacuations at very short notice, and carry the majority of ADF personnel throughout Australia and the world whilst at the same time providing a great service to the people of Australia during peacetime operations.
A J Sims lives in Glenfield, a suburb of Sydney in NSW. He writes to ask about the frequency hopping going on at the moment at Sydney Airport, which we will discuss later on in this issue, and he also provides this story: Easter Monday 1996, frequency: 120.5 MHz (Sydney Tower). VH-DUM: “Sydney Tower, Delta-Uniform-Mike, finals for One-Six-Right. Wow, what was that Tower … a meteorite in the sky?”
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