More of life's adventures

[sixtiesrelic]

Been having more adventures lately...

 

First: was to have a chunk of me, three quarters the size of a house brick hauled out of a four inch cut in my side to rid me of a kidney, it's cancerous little hitch hiker (a bit bigger than the kidney) and a slab of surrounding fat, a month ago.

 

Found by accident, early; it hasn't spread or caused any bother, so I'm having a beaut six week holiday on sick leave.

 

Second; was to go over to Stradbroke island and sleep on a friend's caravan he keeps by a hangar at Dunwich airpark. He flew in for an afternoon and we naturally had a bit of a fly in his 182. That thing has more equipment in it than we had in the DC-9 or 737-200s. Kept in immaculate condition it GOES and you know exactly where you are and how that engine is operating.

 

His mate came over in a new Decathelon for a look at the air park so we got to have a good look at that shiny little beast.

 

He's an ex Indian Airforce, Air India, and Singapore Airlines pilot who has plenty of interesting stories of flying in fighters, Curtis Commandos which they flew below radar so low, that the prop vortices left trails across lakes, through 707s to most of the 747 types... 200, 300, 400 pax and freighters.

 

It's marvellous to hear stories from blokes who've been there and done that, but aren't needing to skite or big note.

 

Lance, the old airpark caretaker is another, with a week or two's stories... best thing about his were, the number of people he'd talk about that I knew.

 

He has a wealth of ultra light / RAA stories. He was there from the start of seat of the pants, Skycraft scout flying to now, and still flies funny little collections of bits of rag and ally pipes around.

 

An interesting dude with more stories lobbed in the second day in his aircraft, so it was a magic two days of no bulldust old style aviation with no pompous gold braided "insignificants" strutting about and NO bloody annoying HELICOPTERS.

 

Long live the little out of the way airstrips.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Guest AussieFlyer]

Great pics!

 

Thanks for sharing.

 

 

[Guest Xpat]

Drool!

 

Fond memories of a day out when I lived in NZ, my mate and me would take a C180 (a real man's aeroplane) to the Coromandel for a couple of hours touch and go to keep our hand in.

 

We used to come back with big cheesy grins and when they wore off we would have to go for another fix.

 

 

[sixtiesrelic]

I have a video of five of us going for a jaunt in a Dragon in 2006.

 

The cheesy grins on three of our faces most of the trip never changed. Each had our reasons.

 

Mine was the memory of sitting on my fathers lap as an eight year old flying a Dragon out near Birdsville. My cousin, because he'd always wanted to go in one and he still flies jets as well as his DC-3 and another pilot mate because it was the first aircraft he went in as a kid.

 

Might be a dangerous old beast, but the chances of it's crashing that day were too remote to miss oiut on the fun.

 

 

[Uncle Chop Chop]

As Richie wuld say "MARVELLOUS"