Channel 9 are a pack of fucking idiots. While reporting on an aviation incident where a person died, they engaged in reckless behaviour against aviation regulations that could have caused their own incident.
This morning, a man fell from a hot air balloon and died in a northern suburb of Melbourne.
It's a tragedy.
It's under investigation by experts.
It's the responsibility of the pilot in charge to enforce passenger safety processes, so it's natural to wonder how the catastrophe happened.
Beyond that, we should not speculate on what happened.
Approximately an hour after the balloon landed, the Channel 9 helicopter arrived at the balloon's landing zone, and circled there for over an hour. For most of this time, they were at an altitude of just over 1000 feet. That's the legal minimum altitude over unpopulated ground for General Aviation. Over populated ground, the legal minimum altitude is 2000 feet. The helicopter pilot then departed the area and flew north-west to land at the airport. But, for that leg of the trip, they flew at a dangerously low altitude over heavily populated suburbs of Brunswick and Coburg.
Channel 9 has a video on their website with a reporter in the street in Preston. They interviewed a neighbour who said he heard sirens. The rest of their video is shot with a long lens and shows an SES tent from a long distance. There's about 10 seconds of aerial video of a balloon gondola packing-up in Yarra Bend Park. That's all they got but they're milking it hard for the drama and clicks. Stupid ghouls.
This is absolutely pissweak reporting, like something from "Frontline".
FAA really has to step up on mental health. FAA really has to step up on mental health. Even seeing a counselor is seen as undoable let alone a psychologist.
The FAA needs to change the rule and be 100% clear on a statement that seeing a counselor for any reason can cannot be used as actionable against you in any way. There has to be a first step taken towards mental health and seeing that first level of mental health that counselors provide is so critical.
We can have a rational discussion on what happens if additional steps need to be taken by someone going to a psychotherapist or psychologist. But there NEEDS to be a path forward that is not punitive and has real career options for those who need a medical.
There has to be a way to take a break (if/as needed), get the help, and come back with out undue career damage.
I watched a bit of the first episode of "SkyMed", a Canadian TV series about general-aviation medevac flights in northern Manitoba.
The acting is horrendous. The scripts are worse. But the King Air and hangars are kind-of cool, and the scriptwriters at least knew to have the pilot call "Radio" instead of "Tower" at an MF field.
Now, if the pilots would only stop making 90° banked turns with a critically-ill patient on board. That's a lot of Gs. 😕
I now have a callsign so I can fly under that instead of using my tail number. Since I have access to 6 different aircraft this could be beneficial for my poor smol brain.
I went flying today and had a good time. This might be one of my favorite shots I've ever taken though. I was checking how much fuel I had in the left wing tank (13.5 gallons) using my fuel straw. It is literally just a straw with markings.