Tell us about your last flight

[Chocolate]

Longreach to tenterfield. Lre to charleville is way too much tiger country but a crackn tailwind got me thru that. Hoh but the wind was a gettin stronger and unruly and a bit on the wrong side for the tail rotor and I didn't take enough notice of that fact. another lesson learned. bailed at Mitchell .. It was bad enough to have made me a bit airsickness...kack. Very nice publican Jan collected me for an overnight at he courthouse pub. Fuel at roma then chinchilla. Bloody landing fees set for mining company,s!! The avgas bowser at chinchilla gets in the way of the turning circle a bit but the commercial guys were very accommodating. Quick zip then to home being very careful to avoid Jennings prohibited area...you know when you get tht feelin you are being watched!

 

 

[frank marriott]

What is Jennings - Is that R608?

 

 

[Chocolate]

Heavy duty Defence munitions storage. Lots and lots of them stored there. One of the few mobile phone free places in the country! ..was on the ww2 brisbane line. A very small village now but during the war had thousands of troops stationed there. The strategic high ground I suppose.

 

 

[Old Koreelah]

Longreach to tenterfield. ...

Is there a strip at Tenterfield? I am planning a flight up through that way and can't find any airstrip in the vicinity.

History-minded tourists would find Wallangara interesting. I know of some amazing WWII installations in other areas which are still to be made public.

 

 

[frank marriott]

YTFD ALA on WAC

 

 

[Chocolate]

Ye

 

Is there a strip at Tenterfield? I am planning a flight up through that way and can't find any airstrip in the vicinity.History-minded tourists would find Wallangara interesting. I know of some amazing WWII installations in other areas which are still to be made public.

Yes. Council run. Well maintained grass strip but some distance from town. The council ranger will check strip before you arrive for livestock etc if you ph them. Happy to run you to town if needed.

 

 

[Old Koreelah]

YTFD ALA on WAC

Thanks Frank. Found it.

 

 

[Old Koreelah]

Yes. Council run. Well maintained grass strip but some distance from town. The council ranger will check strip before you arrive for livestock etc if you ph them. Happy to run you to town if needed.

Nice people- pity more Councils weren't as supportive. YTFD is not in ERSA, so people might find it difficult to contact them.

 

 

[Chocolate]

Tenterfield council.. Ask for mark cooper. Also col Mann of col Mann machinery in tenterfield has his aircraft there and he is always happy to talk aviation, and can give more info than me about the strip conditions etc.

 

 

[ExJourno]

This morning... (Thursday)... went for a short fly around Coominya area over Atkinson then west past Mt Halen and Mt Mulgowie... Climbed to 3500 only to discover it wasn't as blue up there as it looked. Got bored of avoiding cloud. Went back.

 

Air was smooooooooooooooooooth this morning there, though.

 

 

[mlpinaus]

Gidday. I fly mostly out of Murray Bridge, YMBD. 20/02 is a gravel strip, "stabilized" with some plastic goo. 27/09 is grass. The nick name for YMBD is the "quarry". The forecast for Monday 16th was reasonable, getting worse heat wise later in the week. I hope to go flying once a week, to keep the muscle memory of what to do fresh in whats left of my mind. It was a blue sky day that always seems to mean "bumpy". A couple of touch and goes, went over to "Rollos", an adjacent dirt strip in the same CTAF; touch and go. All Good. So over to Mannum and then up the Murray for 25 nM or so. The bottom reaches of the Murray seems full now. Back to a now deserted YMBD. Full stop and a good coffee at the Flying School. That is my last flight pretty much.

 

 

 

Marcus

 

 

[Ballpoint 246niner]

Still on mine! Caboolture to Whitsundays and return tomorrow, just a magnificent part of the coast... More to post on return.

 

 

[Phil Perry]

Not my LAST flight, but my LAST most interesting one ! ! !

 

I was asked by my friend Rick to travel with him to collect an aeroplane he was thinking of buying from a site on the UK East coast, as he’d hoped that using his own plane would reduce the cost of his flight training ( probably could have . . .? )

 

He drove me to the private farm strip and pointed out the aeroplane from it’s registration letters. I said,. “ Have you not seen the thing before ? “ he said that he had bought it after the seller had told him it was in very good condition and it still had two months left on it’s permit to fly. . . . ( groan)

 

The machine was a very early model Rans S6, converted from it’s original tailwheel to trike undercarriage config. I noted from a distance that the fabric appeared really tired ( No, I mean REALLY tired and faded, and it appeared as if the registration letters on the underside of the left wing fabric had been stuck on with evo-stik, and some of them were beginning to separate from the Dacron type wing fabric. . .

 

The seller finally arrived ( two hours late ) after I had pleaded with Rick not to buy it.

 

He told me that he’d already DONE the deal earlier in the week and had bought the thing “sight unseen” after the owner had told him what a good deal it was. . . . ( YES FOLKS, . . .WOODDUCKS EXIST HERE IN THE UK AS WELL . . .)

 

I told him that he was wasting his money but he wouldn’t have it and after I’d walked a ditch around the damned thing for around an hour inspecting EVERYTHING,. . . We had to go and beg some batteries for the headsets which were dead, so that I could interface with the radio ( mine) and at least have some comms on the flight. . . there was an ancient Garmin GPS3 Pilot on the dash, and I thought, well,. . .at least I could use that in a dire emergency. . . .

 

I read the engineering report on the recent engine overhaul and since this had been carried out by a reputable organisation I couldn’t find any real reason not to fly it back for him. This reminded me of the old adage about . . .”You can lead a horse to water but you can’t make it drink. . . WELL, this required the opposite of that, ie, you can lead a thirsty horse to some crappy , dirty brackish water, but it’s damned hard to stop it having a bloody good drink. . . ?

 

ANYWAY . . . . the cockpit checks were not a problem in this thing as it only had an alt, asi, egt, cht, tach, and a rudimentary card compass which already indicated thirty degrees out before I’d cranked the motor into life. . . I then discovered that the headset batteries were dead, so the owner suggested we removed the batteries from the Garmin GPS3 Pilot nav unit on the dash. . . , which we did ( apparently the nearest garage was about 30 miles away. . . so the locals said. . . . ) no problem,. . .I normally use maps and the total trip was only 109 nautical miles anyway. . .

 

Rick’s eyes suddenly lit up and he asked if I’d like to use the brand new “Awarebox 5” nav thingy he’d just bought of the interweb. . . . Now, I’m not a luddite ( not completely anyway) so I agreed and I watched him spend a half hour rigging this into the cockpit ( he’s a radio tecchy bloke for the Police for a living by the way )

 

One of the members of the local club at the farm said he’d programme the thing for me and asked where I was going so I gave him the map co ords The silly bugger just placed a straight line from here to there on the awarebox ( and I found this quite amusing along the flight ) and said “There ! !” it’s all sorted you won’t have to worry now, just follow that line and you’ll be fine. . . . ( yeah,. .right )

 

The takeoff was fine, ( now come on Perry. . . .tell the truth. . . .OK OK, the takeoff was bloody rubbish because the rudder pedals had been designed for some sort of multiplegic alien, having an extra ankle joint. . . I didn’t find any problem with them during my taxi trials up and down the grass strip for ten minutes or so to get the feel of a type I hadn’t flown for some three months,. . . . but when I applied full power for the real takeoff run,. . ., I found that the wheel brakes seemed to be dragging, and this was due to the fact that the pedals appeared to have been setup for someone with very strange feet, ie, those which could articulate further backwards at the top than mine could ,. . .so I had to take my feet off and use the one inch long metal studs protruding from the inside edge of the pedals and control the rudder function with the outside edge of my boots to preclude operating the toe brakes. . . .

 

After four power runs along the strip I felt confident enough to fly like this but it WAS quite uncomfortable, and whilst I was getting used to it, any snake would have suffered a severely bad back trying to follow me through the sky. . ..

 

I’d been warned that the local overlapping RAF / American Airbase pair ( Mildenhall and Lakenheath) could be a little tetchy, and often downright unhelpful with local light aircraft, and positively rude with Microlights. . . ( ? ) but, I dutifully called Lakenheath for a MATZ crossing clearance, ( I won’t use the real reg ) “ Lakenheath approach good morning, Golf alpha bravo charlie delta is with you, currently five miles East of the zone heading two seven four at three thousand feet on the Lakenheath QNH one zero two four, request Matz transit. . .” and the lovely Southern Belle answered . . . “Roger thayat.. galf Charlee dyeltah turn raht heading zeroh wahn farve and maintain until we call you suuur. . . .. . . . .”

 

I was gobsmacked,. . .I responded immediately, “ Lakenheath from Golf Charlie Delta,. Is that heading change for traffic avoidance. . .?? She calmly replied, oh, no suur. Just turn raht heading zeeroh wahn farve please. . . . end weeel carl you soon. . . .“

 

I thought . . .bugger this for a game of soldiers,. . . that heading is going to send me straight out into the North Sea, and I don’t have enough unleaded and two stroke oil to get to Norway so sod that. . . I climbed to 3,200 feet on their QNH ( above their airspace) and ignored all further calls ( as they had advised me to do at the farm strip. . .this was a game the USAF played with the locals apparently. . . very stupid game too. . . . BUT I did have eyes like a toilet rat, just in case there was any mil traffic about. . .very rare on a weekend they tell me, unless Tony Blair had suggested to the Yanks someone else to bomb. . . .

 

Anyway, I noticed that the Aware box trackline was suggesting I flew further North than my map line, and it was then that I realised that the well meaning retard at the farm aero club had just plotted a straight line from his place to mine, so I just ignored it and followed my map. Otherwise I would have busted a couple of parachute sites and some other airspace which, whilst not overly serious, would not have been very sensible, nor looked good on my CV.

 

At around 40 NM into the trip, the weather began to deteriorate, which was against the forecast , which had been for fairly clear air for the entire route, but HEY this is England. . . . and I also noticed from the clear plastic fuel sight tube on the cockpit rear wall that the petrol seemed rto be disappearing at a rather alarming rate, ie, I was NOT going to make it back to base with what I had in the main and only tank. . . ., even though I certainly Should have been able so to do, assuming that the Rotax 503 was consuming fuel at the predicted and planned for rate. It wasn’t. It was drinking about one and a half times that. . . .

 

Whilst studying the map for a convenient refuelling stopover, ( I had a 20 litre jerry can of mixed fuel on the passenger seat, so all I needed was a runway or decent field somewhere ) I lost concentration for a moment, and when I looked up from the map the aeroplane was in a very steep banked turn to the right, and descending rapidly in what appeared to be a heavy shower of rain with very low scud.

 

At around the same time I hit some moderate turbulence and the awarebox parted company with it’s plastic windscreen sucker bracket and bounced onto the floor between my legs and went underneath the seat somewhere .

 

I had recovered to level flight again fairly quickly, . . no heroics required, it wasn’t actually much of an excursion, but it DOES happen if you take your mind off the job for too long in unstable conditions. . . by now there was serious ingress of water into the comfort zone and I was getting a little hungry, so I decided to divert to Leicester Airport as they had a really nice café.

 

Only problem was, I didn’t know precisely where the hell I was after that little spiral dive excursion, compass around 30 degrees out one way or the other,. . . and the cloud was now quite low , ie around 1000 / 1100 feet agl and the viz was rubbish so I tried to recover the awarebox from under the seat. . . .no way could I find it. . . .then I remembered my old trusty Garmin GPS12, this was in my little flight bag and I dug it out only to find that the batteries had gone all manky, with a white residue all over the terminals when I opened the cover. Well, I hadn’t used it for around three years.

 

Looking at the fuel sight tube I reckoned I’d got around a half hour or so of flight time left so I had me a little think, and then pulled out my Canon Sureshot digital camera. After fumbling with it for a couple of minutes, I removed the four duracell AA batteries, which was quite handy,. . .as that’s what the GPS 12 used as well . . .

 

I was aware that the database in that Garmin must have been at least three to four years old, so I couldn’t sensibly use it for proper airspace nav, but it remembered where Leicester airport was, bless it’s little soul. . . and I was in their circuit in less than a quarter hour. As I rounded out for the landing. . ., I was distracted by a sudden fluttering on the left side,. . .this was the letter “G” of the aeroplane registration tearing off the wing underside and blowing down the runway, much to the mirth of those bloody Leicester clubbites watching from the elevated cafe. . . .

 

The radio guy asked me if I could hurry up and park and come and sign in to the booking in office. I found out why, . . . .If I’d been five minutes later, the airfield licensing hours would be ended for the day and the barstard would NOT have been able to charge me the bloody twelve Pounds and fifty pence sodding landing fee.

 

Yep, the world still contains A**holes, and one of them works at Leicester airport in the booking - in office. So. . . . that’s more or less the end of my last flight story,. . . .I got some fuel, but not from Leicester, as the fuel guy who dispenses the Avgas goes home at the same time,. . . ! I used the contents of my buddy tank in the aeroplane. . . the trip back from there to base was uneventful, other than a near miss with a bell jetranger from low right right to high left as I crossed the Northern edge of the Leiceseter residential conurbation,. . . but that was really a non event as it missed me by at least a hundred feet. . . . Thanks to the monster tailwind which had sprung up during the time I was on the ground at Leicester,. . .I was in the overhead at base in less than thirty minutes, with an average groundspeed of 88.5 knots,. . . . not bad for a 503 Rotax eh ?

 

And how did Rick get on with his new plane you ask. . . .? ? ?

 

Well,. . . he didn’t tie it down properly and it blew inverted in a storm and was a total write - off after he’d only had it for 3 months with 2 hours of instruction. . . . . .

 

Oh dear. . . .

 

Phil

 

 

[metalman]

Quite a story mate, do you have much uncontrolled airspace in the UK?

 

Matty

 

 

[Keenaviator]

P P P P P P

 

Laurie

 

 

[DrZoos]

Phil you should have refused, your a long time dead.

 

But thats a valuable read cause most blokes that happens to are not here to tell us about it.

 

 

[Guest Maj Millard]

Back to home base this morning after departing Heathrow at 06 30. Had spent three days at Heathrow enjoying what really must be called a self indulgent fly fest !......

 

Early morning flights each day , and lovely late afternoon flights along beaches rocking wings to kayackers enjoying the tropical waters below.

 

One morning a 40 minute flight down to Palmyra at Mackay to check out Hongies recently acquired 601 HD, and this stretch of coast line is one of the most scenic I've flown, with multitudes of islands off the coast, and landable tropical beaches below all the way. Late yesterday at Heathrow we were treated to watching two foot-launched Paramoters do their thing, as we flew around them, with two stages of flap out trying to (in vain) match their airspeed !...

 

One of them was the first early morning arrival into Heathrow today, after launching from a field near Proserpine to the north. He was quickly followed by an inbound CH 701 from nearby 'Taylorwood'. The 701 and Cab Sav departed just before I did for yet another run down the coast to Palmyra to once again look at Hongies new 601.

 

The WX over the Xmas period has just been great for flying with warm temps and nil rain, although everybody is hoping we get some soon.

 

Can't say your NQ member is not getting around visiting his fellow flyers !.....................Maj.....

 

 

[DrZoos]

Did some lazy 8's and lots of stalls and slow slow flying to get to know my beast before it ever tries to bite. Then the mandatory coastal scenic just for the fun of it...

 

 

[pmccarthy]

Saturday had planned a long trip but the forecast was not encouraging, total fire ban and a front mid afternoon with strong gusts. So a quick trip to Bendigo, coffee in the clubhouse and back to Kyneton for the Saturday pie. Circled my mate in Elphinstone fire tower on the way back. By the time I got home we had a major grass fire with 35 units attending, near home but moving away. They got it under control. After the front came through the temp fell to about 15 degrees with strong wind, had to put a jacket on. Those flights on the Qld coast sound idyllic.

 

 

[metalman]

Saturday had planned a long trip but the forecast was not encouraging, total fire ban and a front mid afternoon with strong gusts. So a quick trip to Bendigo, coffee in the clubhouse and back to Kyneton for the Saturday pie. Circled my mate in Elphinstone fire tower on the way back. By the time I got home we had a major grass fire with 35 units attending, near home but moving away. They got it under control. After the front came through the temp fell to about 15 degrees with strong wind, had to put a jacket on. Those flights on the Qld coast sound idyllic.

Saturday looked like a good day to be on the ground over our way ( which I sadly am for awhile) today was nice from reports, a bit bumpy but doable,

Matty

 

 

[sfGnome]

Took a flight in a glider today, courtesy of the good folk at Mt Beauty Gliding Club. Just a half hour (couldn't afford longer) to experience the feel of a very different aircraft. Much fun, but I think I'll stick with my motor for the time being... :)

 

 

[Gnarly Gnu]

some sort of multiplegic alien, having an extra ankle joint. . . BUT I did have eyes like a toilet rat, just in case....

Just fantastic, thanks Phil!

 

 

[JG3]

My last flight was sunrise this morning New Years Day.

 

Took off at first light and met the sun at 6700 ft.

 

This was over Point Byron, the easternmost point of Australia.

 

So I was probably the first in the country to see the sun this year.

 

Sure is a heck of lot better than head under a pillow with a hangover.....

 

I have a great photo but don't know how to post it here???

 

Wishing everyone a fun flying year to come.

 

JG

 

 

[Piet Fil]

Last flight was 30th dec. smashed out a bunch of circuits, including: two simulated engine failures in the circuit, two flapless landings and six landings in normal configuration. Good fun session. Started around 0845 to avoid the turbulence, which just started to kick in as I was finishing.

 

Phil

 

 

[crashley]

Flew up to Echuca for a couple of days, great trip up nice blue skies and calm. It was overcast and cold as we left Echuca today headed towards glenburn gap but was met by rain so flew further east and came in over blue rock dam back home to Latrobe valley good trip but overcast and a bit wet