Ingo Noka

Posts Tagged ‘Malaysia’

, , , , , ,

Piper Archer III (PA28-181) – 9MDRJ For Sale

In Announcement, Ownership on October 20, 2013 at 6:02 pm

9M-DRJ For Sale

As some of you have picked up from my earlier post, my somewhat sudden move to Dubai requires me to sell my Piper Archer.  This is not an easy step for me, but I don’t want her to be on the ground for too long.  Aircraft that don’t fly much, don’t last long.

To make this as fair and transparent as possible, I have put all the information about the airplane into this post.  Thankfully, the previous owner of 9MDRJ was extremely helpful and open, but before that, when I was still looking for a plane to buy, I was a bit frustrated by the lack of information and I was generally surprised how little effort the sellers put into making the process easy for prospective buyers.  I hope that won’t be a problem in my case.

I am available for test flights on 8/9 and 15/16 November.  Having gone through the process of buying an aircraft recently, I can assist with the necessary paperwork (i.e. certificate of registration, insurance, maintenance organization etc).  The airplane can be handed over with immediate effect.  If the insurance company is agreeable, I may be able to add the new owner to my insurance cover, so that the new owner can start flying while sorting out the paper work.

If you are interested in buying this airplane, please use the contact function on blog.flyinasia.com or send me a message  on Facebook.

9MDRJ – Panel

Read the rest of this entry »

, , ,

Do you speak English?

In Knowledge, Private Pilot License on October 11, 2013 at 6:40 pm

Better write down what ATC is saying. I am not that young anymore.

So you think you speak English?  You are even born in a country that has English as the mother tongue?  Interesting, but DCA Malaysia wants to make sure.  And that means every pilot and air traffic controller has to do an English proficiency test.  The test will tell whether you have a pre-elementary knowledge of English (the lowest score) or whether you are an expert (the highest score).  If you fail the test (score 1 to 3) you are not a pilot anymore, no matter what your license says. And, unless you are an expert, you have to repeat the proficiency test every three years (score 4) or six years (score 5).  Only experts can forget about this for the rest of their Malaysian pilot career. (BTW: The English test has not been invented in Malaysia.  This is an ICAO requirement and has been implemented in one form or other by most countries in the world.)

My last score was a 4 and the three years will expire tomorrow.  So, I went on a Firefly flight to Subang this morning and reported at APFT (one of the approved test centers in Malaysia) to take my test.  I was secretly hoping for a six rating, but I got a five.  Not a bad result.  I won’t need to do that again for six years.  The best part of this is that I was able to take the results to DCA in Putrajaya right away and they updated my license on the spot.  Free skies of Asia – I am back in business. Off to Medan tomorrow.

Read the rest of this entry »

, , , , , , , ,

Young Eagles Day, 7 September 2013 – Subang Airport

In Flight Log, Social Life on September 8, 2013 at 8:14 pm

More than 60 children became Young Eagles this weekend.

Much has been written about the lifelong passion that many pilots have for aviation and how this passion was ignited by this one flight when the pilot was still a small child.  Even more has been written about the need and the pleasure to give back to the community what we have received from aviation over the years.  The Young Eagles Day organized by the Malaysian chapter of the EAA (Captain Siva and his crew) was a rare occasion at which we could do both.  The EAA invited children from Community Children Homes and anybody who wanted to come along.  The response was overwhelming and while I didn’t count, I am sure we had close to 70 kids.  (see picture gallery here) Read the rest of this entry »

, , , , ,

Malacca with Ian

In Aircraft, Flight Log on August 31, 2013 at 5:11 pm

Ian in Johor

Update 130901: We left the hotel in Malacca at 9:15 and touched down in Seletar at 11 am.  I had a brief chat with the very friendly immigration officer.  She told me that Malacca immigration services are available everyday from 9 am to 5 pm.  Next time, I won’t stop in Johor on the way to Malacca to get my passport stamped. The airport security desk charged me a landing fee of Ringgit 10.69 and a parking fee of Ringgit 6.27.  All very reasonable.

The weather was nice between Malacca and Batu Pahat, but then the cloud base came down to just a bit over 1000 feet around Benut.  Another aircraft, coming from Simpang Renggam was scheduled to arrive at Kulai at the same time as I, which required some coordination over the radio and old-fashioned VFR look out.

Paya Lebar Approach asked me to climb 2500 feet to join downwind 03 left at Seletar, which was odd.  Seletar then corrected to 2000, but even then I had the usual difficulties to loose height fast enough when I finally got clearance to descent for final.  I have to find a better method – maybe slowing down to flap speed earlier without descending and yank out the flaps to full even before turning to base.

Finally, here is my flight plan and the flight log to Malacca:

(FPL-9MDRJ-VG
-P28A/L-SF/C
-WMKM0200
-N0100A020 WMKM MUAR BATUPAHAT BENUT WMKJ EJBT POINTXRAY WSSL
-WSSL0105 WMKJ
-DOF/130901 EET/MUAR0013 BPAHA0027 BENUT0040 WMKJ0053 EJBT0100 WSSL0105 OPR/INGO NOKA
-E/0400 P/1 R/V S/ J/ A/WHITE AND DARK GREEN C/NOKA I +65 81275812)

Read the rest of this entry »

, , , , , ,

Weekend Flying

In Aircraft, Navigation, Social Life on August 24, 2013 at 7:05 pm

Subang Airpark is going to be closed for small airplanes

It was good to be back in the air today. For the first time I took the inland route from Singapore to Subang.  That route shaves off about 10 minutes from the flight time.  If everything goes according to plan, it is possible to fly from Singapore to Subang (block on/off) in about one hour and fifty minutes.  In most cases it will be an honest two hours however. You have to watch you altitude however.  There are some hills on the way that reach more than 1,500 feet.  In my flight route some of the hills stand right in my flight path. (Download the flight log and AFTN Flight Plan here.) Read the rest of this entry »

, , , , , , ,

Thailand – Live Updates

In Flight Log, Navigation on July 26, 2013 at 11:35 pm

9MDRJ Refuel Stop

I am ready to go.  Flight plans are filed, bag is packed and lots of paper printed out in the hope that I will find the information when I need it.

Live Updates will appear on Facebook and Twitter  and I will attempt to post a summary of my exploits every day, but cannot guarantee I will have enough energy left in the evening.

If the weather is VMC at Seletar tomorrow morning, I will try to take of by 7:30 am, so that I can be in Penang before noon and in Hat Yai by 2 pm.

First fuel stop is Penang, but I am not going to fill up to the top, because I have to buy fuel in Hat Yay in 100L increments.  I am hoping they will keep the fuel I don’t need tomorrow for two days, so that I do not waste too much fuel.

, , , , , ,

How much is it?

In Aircraft, Knowledge, Ownership on July 20, 2013 at 8:39 pm

Busy Senai Airport and Beautiful Flying Weather

Today we had beautiful flying weather and Senai airport was teeming with GA activity.  A heart warming sight after many weeks of being grounded because of haze and recently because of aircraft maintenance.

On a day like this it is bad form to talk about money, but anyway, today I picked up 9MDRJ  after the Annual Maintenance and paid a couple of bills, which prompted me to provide some pointers to the operating cost of small Malaysian registered GA aircraft.

Read the rest of this entry »

, , , ,

Flight Plans in Malaysia

In Flight Bag, Knowledge, Navigation on June 16, 2013 at 10:54 am

DCA Tower Penang

The Malaysian ATC expects you to file a flight plan for all VFR flights, unless you just stay in the training areas or do a few circuits to practice your landings.

Most pilots will fill in a flight plan form on paper and fax it to the ATC unit of the departure airport. ATC will forward the FPL using the usual data exchange network. That means most of the formatting will be done by the controller and the pilot does not really need to know much about the FPL message formats.

As soon as you are crossing borders, this changes, however. Suddenly you are confronted with the need to send your flight plan to all control units along your proposed route and you have to be careful with the formatting and completeness of your flight plan message.

I have found two flight plan filing systems that work very well for me. The first one is a web based system from the UK, which is available under www.eurofpl.eu. The second one is a Java application that is provided by the Singapore CAAS.

All three methods (fax, web, application) have their benefits and issues. I personally prefer the web-based system, followed by the Java application and finally the fax.

I usually combine the fax method with an online fax application called eFax. With my iPhone acting as a personal hotspot for my laptop, I am able to fax flight plans from anywhere, including the parking apron.

In my next posts on this topic, I’ll give you an overview of how the three methods work and how flight plan messages are formatted in general.

, , , , ,

Buying an Airplane II

In Equipment, Gear, Ownership on March 2, 2013 at 11:15 pm

9M-DRJ and me

Hurray – I bought an airplane! You probably ask whether I ended up buying the Cessna 182 or the Diamond DA40.  Well, neither.

The thing is that I forgot to talk about money in my first post.  The issue is that you need to have enough money left to maintain and fly the aircraft.  If you max out your budget buying the plane, you won’t be happy.

So I decided to go for a relatively new and affordable Piper Archer III.  It does not have a glass cockpit.  The instruments are all analog with two VOR/Localizer CDIs one glide-slope indicator, ADF, KAP140, KLN89B, etc. – basically the original Silvercrown Bendix/King stack. One of the coolest features is the Piper Aire air conditioning.  I don’t think you can go wrong with an a/c in the tropical climate down here.   The call sign is 9M-DRJ and I will post a lot more about my new toy.

9M-DRJ Instrument Panel

Read the rest of this entry »

, , , , , , , , ,

VFR Reporting Points

In Flight Bag, Navigation on February 10, 2013 at 10:33 pm

VFR Reporting Points on the Malaysian Peninsula

28 April 2013: Added waypoints along the east coast and two routes from KL to Kota Bahru.

In Malaysia ATC follows all VFR flights regardless of the classification of the airspace and pilots must submit a flight plan for all VFR cross-country flights.  This practice requires some common understanding of acceptable reporting points between VFR pilots and ATC.  Given the importance of reporting points for VFR flying in Malaysia, there is surprisingly little information and documentation about them.  As I have written in my post about the availability of aviation charts, there is no such thing as up-to-date sectional charts that could be used for flight planning and pilotage navigation.  for small parts of the airspace (Langkawi, Johor, Tioman, KL) I have tried to rectify this by drawing my own maps, but this is a very poor replacement for proper charts.

In addition to drawing my own charts, I have also collected reporting points I have used in my cross-country flying.  And with this post, I am going to share this information (download different versions here V1 V2 V3 V4 V5).  Most pilots own GPS devices and use them for navigational purposes.  Some devices or applications on the iPad or iPhone can import geographical points in certain formats, so I am providing the data in GPX format as well.  I am able to convert this file into other formats, so if you tell me what you need, I may be able to help.  I would certainly be interested in hearing if you have been successful in using the file with your GPS device or application.  I do know for certain that the file can be imported into Google Maps and into the MotionX GPS application on the iPad and iPhone.

Read the rest of this entry »