Mustering Advice

[yoshi]

Hi AllSo if someone wants to get into mustering, what"s required? Any advice greatly appreciated.CheersDarren

[asra]

I Will start you will need some cows, sheep or goats. :P

[Disco]

LOL, good one nick

[birdy]

First thing you gota have/do is at least 2 years on the ground.

[mattsteele]

Good on ya birdy, iv done the ground stuff just finding it hard to get in the air still.Matt.

[Adrian S]

Guys,In my experience after you can demonstrate that you have an understanding of stock behaviour you need to find a Station to sponsor your first season. My advice to most wanting to enter the business is to find a cow/sheep/goat grower that will give you a go on the basis of just covering your expenses during your first season with him/her. Tell them upfront what your objective is and what they will be saving in terms of $ with your discounted rate for giving you a go.If you do a good job then he/she will then tell others of the benefits of using you and the cost benefits of using a gyro. If you have done a half reasonable job and taken on their advice the work will come to you.Also go into it with a reasonable attitude of working hard but knowing when to say enough is enough otherwise your first bent machine due to overwork will kill your opportunity of establishing your reliability. Make sure you have a reliable gyro with basic spares such as another set of blades, prop, rotor head and undercarriage to minimise your and the growers down time. Above all dont present yourself without being able to demonstrate your knowledge of working stock from the ground and a reasonable number of flying hours otherwise they will see through you in a second and you wont get a start. If you expect to become rich in your first season, dont have a suitable gyro, dont understand working stock from the ground and have limited flying experience choose another career.As usual just my 10c worth,Adrian 0427094552

[mad max]

And remember it"s not glamorous, After 6 hrs of flying on a **** day you will be crawling on your hands and knees to bed. And the farmer is never happy with your job.

[aadc]

Ya got ta have thick skin because no matter what stuffs up its always the pilots fault its never the uneducated cattle or the $%#^ head on the bike out in front of you turning cattle back under ya hahaha ;D

[nunto]

your only as good as the people on the ground.

[mad max]

If you"re not trimming leaves out of the trees the farmer thinks you"re a wimp. He will drop fuel in a tight spot asuming you"re a helicopter, and expect you to have a fuel up turn around time of 5 mins. (You feel guilty having a ****) Your craft must stay in the air for at least 3.5 hrs. At the end of the day you must have green blade tips and long grass stuck in you"re wheels. Thats my experiance in the NT anyway. But it"s all great and teaches you to be a man.

[Brian]

All good advice.Mustering is work despite you are strapped into a seat. On the bigger places you might find yourself in the air from daylight to dark and in the summer months that can be up around 10 hours, not always. As well you must have some way of keeping hydrated, no beer wont cut it...thats for after work. A pilot has to be able to co ordinate the muster, that means working with the boss to know what"s expected for the day/ week etc, where you are starting from & where he expects you to be at the end of the day....with whatever you are mustering. The big places dont often have fences so you might say on a big cattle station, muster for a week without seeing a fence, that means you must be able to know where you are pretty much all the time so you must be able to get a picture in your noggin of what thing look like eg, waterholes / creeks/ bores...any prominent landmarks that you can use to know where you are, yes, the GPS will tell you stuff but it wont do everything.A really big thing thats important is to be able to get on well with your ground crew and be able to explain to them what you want & where to go etc. You have to know where they are & know roughly how far away from you they are so that you dont start calling blokes to ride out 25 K"s to where you are with a mob of cattle cause they will rack it pretty quickly after doing that a couple of times cause the ground crew you called out are probably in tomorrows area where you have to muster & they might not get back to camp until a couple of hours after dark & you are going to find them pretty dark on you

[bones]

i thought it was still illegael to work for reward

[Des Garvin]

Aye Brian, That referance to reward was the beer at the end of the day wasn"t it? Or was it getting some one else to buy the fuel so you can do what you love doing like flying ya gyro! Everyone knows you can"t accept money as that is not legal. Ok Bones I know I"m being a smart ass.

[Brian]

i thought it was still illegael to work for reward

[Brian]

Aye Brian, That referance to reward was the beer at the end of the day wasn"t it? Or was it getting some one else to buy the fuel so you can do what you love doing like flying ya gyro! Everyone knows you can"t accept money as that is not legal. Ok Bones I know I"m being a smart ass.