[分享] Sport Flying in Taiwan (sort of)

[JackChung (小鍾鍾)]

蹭一下環球飛行少女的熱度 轉貼一篇我去年在屏東飛過LSA之後用英文寫給美國GA飛行員
的心得
原文位置: https://whchung.medium.com/?p=8bccf3049379

Sport Flying in Taiwan (sort of)

Dear fellow Austin pilots, I’m currently in Taiwan, my home country, to
enjoy the holidays with my family. Also I took some time last weekend to
understand how it works to fly there.

Compared with the liberty and freedom in the US, it’s *very* restrictive to
fly in Taiwan. I’m so glad I made the right choice moving to the US to fly.

There are a couple of tiny uncontrolled airspaces where the government turns
a blind eye. Entering controlled airspace is *PROHIBITED*. Therefore
transponders, airband radios, ADS-B out are also *PROHIBITED*. No weather
service, VFR sectional charts or ATC service whatsoever. Flight following?
Practice approaches? Fat chance. Basically the government don’t like to see
you on the radar and they don’t want to talk to you in the sky.

Pilots have to carry handheld radios talking on the VHF amateur radio band as
CTAF. Mandarin is the standard language. Checklists and the POH are in
English still.

Only LSA aircrafts flying day VFR are allowed. No XC is legally possible
because uncontrolled airspaces are segmented and disjoint. If you saw someone
coming in from another field you knew some rules were broken.

Helicopters are deliberately removed from allowed category/class. There was a
crackdown earlier this year to confiscate all unlawful R-22s, after a guy
foolishly landed his unregistered chopper near a bus stop, and got himself on
a viral video.

The nearest Japanese airport is only 80nm away, and flying 120nm take you to
the closest field in the Philippines. But LSA aircrafts are NOT allowed to
carry B- tail numbers so you can’t fly out of Taipei FIR and go visit other
countries.

Flying to China, which is about 100nm away? You risk getting shot down by an
F-16 in Taiwan, or a Su-27 by the Chinese, plus stirring a geopolitical
crisis over a troubled water, the Taiwan Strait.

To become a pilot flying LSA for fun, you join one of the flying clubs and go
through some red tapes certifying you are not a domestic terrorist before the
training. It takes about 3 weeks just for the application process. Checkrides
are given only 4 times a year. Discovery flight is available for anyone
though. Most flying clubs don’t allow students flying solo even after you
get your certificate. Due to all those restrictive uncontrolled airspaces, it
’s literally impossible to practice stall recovery. Traffic pattern altitude
is 500AGL.

AFAIK there are only 3 legal private aerodromes and most of the runways are
less than 1200’, so every landing is a short field landing. Float on the
runway means going around. “Public” airports are within controlled
airspaces so they are off limits. They are only for airlines and the Air
Force.

Importing aircrafts is possible, and the government treat all certified
aircrafts as if they are experimental amateur built. A stringent check on all
the documents and the aircraft itself would be conducted, with some hours of
test flights, before an airworthiness certificate is issued.
After that onerous effort, annual inspection is self-certified. Some clubs
follow a strict 50-hours rule. Registration is good for 2 years if I
understand correctly, and you need to show proofs that all ADs are followed.

Pretty much all of the LSAs I saw (CTLS, Sling, FM250, Rans) use Rotax 912.
There’s one local company authorized to service and overhaul the powerplant.
Supply of 100LL is severely limited so 98 RON auto gas is used. The going
price is about $3.56/gal.
There is no WAAS so GPS accuracy is less precise. For day VFR it’s good
enough. There are NDBs and VORs around but I don’t think it’s legal to use
them. Don’t bother to think about ILS or LDA because public airports are off
limits. ADS-B out is prohibited so makes no sense for ADS-B in either.

On the other side of the fence, for aspiring pilots who want to fly for
airlines there is a complete separate path which closely follows FAR Part 61
and Part 141 so it feels much more normal. There is only one such school in
Taiwan, you fly out of one designated public airport and enjoy all the
weather, NOTAM, and ATC services you expect flying in the US. ADS-B is of
course mandatory. eAIP, an online, bilingual (Chinese and English) version of
AIM clearly documents all the IFR procedures into every public field.
Everybody speaks English with standard phraseology. Probably the only
difference is QNH is given in millibars. But it was way too expensive even
for a discovery flight so I didn’t do it. The medical exam alone takes 2
days with treadmill runs, psychological evaluation, and asks for $500.

There is also a Part 142-like training center with level D sims which caters
for airline pilots. They are EASA-certified, not FAA-certified, so I couldn’
t log my hours flying a A320 sim there, plus it’s extremely expensive.

I spent 1.0 flying a Sling LSA. It was a small and nimble trainer. The
instructor was a knowledgeable senior gentleman who have been flying
weight-shifts, powered parachutes, and LSAs for 40 years. He told me he
misses Oshkosh.

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