just another jab sortee

[Russ]

early 2016 ( march,april ), it's on.....

 

NQ..Mt Isa..Tennent Ck..Kununurra..Wyndham..north to coast...then coastal to cape talbot..around the top, then coastal south to cape Levenque..Derby..then coastal south to exmouth.......then ????? east to NQ.

 

4....5 weeks should do it, lot's of enroute stopovers etc............so

 

any hints/tips/folks/ whatever.........enroute ???

 

( could entertain another jab or 2 )

 

 

[skeptic36]

( could entertain another jab or 2 )

Here, have 3

 

 

[Russ]

This "airstrips" guide we have here, query......are they bonafide/ usable/ etc etc. Planning 2016, and browsing here there and everywhere, the joint is littered with strips. But.........are they ridgy didge ??? ( no ph numbers to check )

 

 

[Kiwi303]

If they're anything like NZ here, they could well be bona fide, but a lot of them farm fert strips only used a few weeks of the year and 90% of the time covered with sheep...

 

 

[Nobody]

Here is a link to a map showing all the airports and airstrips listed in ersa. There are many other airstrips but this is a reasonable list for broad planning.

 

 

[Downunder]

I wouldn't land on anything private or unofficial with contacting someone.

 

Could have been fine last week and have irrigation pipes in the grass this week.....

 

 

[Head in the clouds]

early 2016 ( march,april ), it's on.....NQ..Mt Isa..Tennent Ck..Kununurra..Wyndham..north to coast...then coastal to cape talbot..around the top, then coastal south to cape Levenque..Derby..then coastal south to exmouth.......then ????? east to NQ.

 

4....5 weeks should do it, lot's of enroute stopovers etc............so

 

any hints/tips/folks/ whatever.........enroute ???

 

( could entertain another jab or 2 )

As you're well aware, the Top End is the best part of the country by a long way, Russ, and I'm sure you're very aware that it's also the least forgiving if anything goes wrong.

 

The first and latter parts of your trip should be easy enough, NQ to Wyndham is easy if you more-or-less follow the highway as it follows the tablelands and there are plenty of grasslands and claypans on which to put down if you have to, even for a small-wheeled aircraft. Be aware of three things mainly - most of the grassland is infested with termite mounds which are like concrete blocks if you hit one, much of the grasslands are blacksoil which turns to slippery and deep bogholes with just a few millimetres of rain, and many teardrop-shaped apparently clear areas are only temporarily clear due to bushfires either from lightning strikes or Aboriginal burn-offs. Those recently burnt areas can be covered in fire-hardened sharp stakes where scrub bushes have burnt away leaving just the stump, that's mainly to the West of the Stuart Highway in the Tanami, and is what caused the demise of Anderson and Hitchcock and the loss of the Kookaburra during the search for Kingsford-Smith in the 'Coffee-Royale' affair. So the point is, don't just look for clear areas as you cruise along, study the surface of them very carefully using binoculars if you're high.

 

From Wyndham to Broome is another kettle of fish entirely. About 80% of my flying was spent along that coastline, and while it is undeniably one of the most spectacular areas to see, it can also be very challenging - and all my flying around there was in turbine helicopters which provide a level of reliability that is thousands of times higher than a single piston engined plane, and also has hundreds of times more emergency landing opportunities than a plane, in the unlikely even that one might be needed. In fact in 13yrs full-time up there I only had 3 unscheduled landings, one for a tailrotor problem and two for hydraulics problems, so in all cases I was able to continue for a short while to a suitable landing area, and suitable in those cases all involved finding a small flat bit of rock on a high pinnacle, not something you could consider for a fixed-wing.

 

The above is not to suggest you can't fly a plane around the Kimberley coast quite safely, you can, and people do it up there every day. What it does suggest though, is you must do some very careful study for your route planning, you shouldn't just plan to keep Australia on your left because much of the coastline is unlandable, and there are extensive areas with no beaches, just rugged cliffs and huge broken boulders. There are many inlets, creeks and large rivers, all are crocodile habitat and the flats all get inundated by the large tides twice a month, so even though they look hard they are often boggy and unsuitable for landing except up at their highest edges, some of the time.

 

The area is a paradise for floatplanes (any Jabs on floats?) but more than a few have been sunk while moored overnight at idyllic rockbars at the top of the saltwater reaches, because crocs like to chew on unfamiliar objects in their territory. Talking of floatplanes and that particular trip, have you seen the documentary called Flight of the Pelican (IIRC) about three floatplanes that flew the coast of Australia?

 

The best time to see the Kimberley coast is just after the wet season, so your chosen time is near ideal, when the waterfalls and fishing are at their best. However, where the north is concerned you really can't plan for a fixed itinerary. Even when I had scheduled helicopter safari departures to brochure and take bookings I had to always have the early season ones (the best of them) on notice for moving their dates forward or back, and those changes might be as much as six weeks according to the great annual variation in the length and strength of the wet season. One thing you really don't want to do is get caught in late wet season thunderstorms along that remote coastline. Storms aren't often accurately forecast, they can develop very rapidly and it can be frightening enough in a helicopter where you can set down and ride it out, but potentially deadly in an aeroplane, especially if you lack the fuel range to turn around from near your destination and run away from it, all the way back to your departure point if necessary, and that's if the storm lines haven't cut you off behind.

 

So - you should really plan your trip for reaching Kununurra not before the beginning of April and be prepared to delay the Kun to Broome part until the weather is perfect and safe for the remote regions. And - if you have to hang somewhere for a month at that time of year, I can't think of a better place than Kununurra ...

 

These days Google Earth is an absolute blessing for planning remote area flights and for the Kimberley you could spend many days checking all the possibilities and eliminating a lot of the hazards from your route.

 

A good small survival kit is essential, we had a thread about them a while back, with some good contributions - Survival Pack

 

Also, a satphone is essential as radio coverage is poor up there, even if you have an HF its coverage is patchy and often overwritten by unlicenced operators, mainly Indonesian fishing boats. I have a small (large mobile phone size) satphone which I always carry when in remote areas. Even though the place is abundant in terms of food and water as long as you know how to fish and hunt, a satphone will save your life if you are injured because you can get help very quickly since there are so many helicopters up there, all are used to despatching at a moment's notice, when needed.

 

I won't be using it until DooMaw is flying so you are very welcome to borrow the satphone for your trip if you like.

 

 

[Russ]

Thanks HIC.........i've had several runs out to the coast from kununarra, ( victoria river mouth etc ), stayed bullo river as well, the "top end" is to see to believe.

 

Jab on floats............what a combination.

 

Sat ph...have one, carry it always.

 

first aide kit....carry one

 

carry a "survival rifle", it's a combo.....210, and 22mag ( 2 barrels ) folding 2 piece rifle, really small.

 

space blankets,light weight tent,water,cig lighter,flares etc etc........carry, but intend to put together a more comprehensive pack.....thanks for your extra tips

 

Have actually received a mail from interested member here to maybe join in.........that'd be great. And yes.....as you said, be able to park up for ?? days, if weather comes in. We've planned 5....6 weeks, that should be perfect time span.

 

One concern.....but small, wife is the camera operator, and she sits RHS.......coast is LHS. ( spoze she could poke the camera out on a selfie stick )...or...fly west to east ??

 

 

[flyvulcan]

One concern.....but small, wife is the camera operator, and she sits RHS.......coast is LHS. ( spoze she could poke the camera out on a selfie stick )...or...fly west to east ??

Another option, the wife holds the camera upside down and you fly down the coastline inverted?

 

 

[Head in the clouds]

One concern.....but small, wife is the camera operator, and she sits RHS.......coast is LHS. ( spoze she could poke the camera out on a selfie stick )...or...fly west to east ??

Flying west to east is quite as OK as doing it east to west but if you're planning to then go on down the west coast you'll be flying a lot of extra hours doing Kun-Broome direct twice, mind you the inland fly is great too and if you only fly coastal you'll have missed that. In any case you need to spend time well inland to see places like Argyle diamond mine, Purnululu (the Bungle Bungle range), Wolfe Creek crater, the King Leopold range and various gorges therein.

 

However - the very mention of wifey on the right and filming to the left suggests you're still thinking that you'd be flying the coast and keeping Oz on your left whereas it just won't happen that way unless you want to be vulnerable for more than 95% of the trip. I can assure you that even if you like to fly as I do and prefer not ever to be vulnerable (i.e. nowhere to go in event of engine failure), flying that region there will be more than enough 'uncomfortable' time even with the best pre-flight route planning unless you stay above 8000ft for much of the time, and that would make the scenery much less enjoyable.

 

As you investigate your route via Earth you will find that not all of the coastline is 'spectacular' by a long way, like most other rugged regions there are 'special places' and you should plan to see them as excursions from your safe route north and then west.

 

For instance, departing Wyndham there's only Cambridge Gulf to see in the first half hour and it's best seen from high up to properly appreciate its majesty where five of Australia's larger rivers reach a confluence forming extensive whirlpools, creek and mangrove lined mudflats as far as the eye can see. If you track to the mouth of the Gulf there's little else to enjoy and much risk for lack of safe outlanding places so the better approach is to aim to meet the coast halfway to the Berkeley river mouth where precipitous cliffs edge the plateau. With good fuel and happy Ts and Ps the only way to enjoy that section is to get down low and trust the machine for a few minutes while you track north with nowhere to go if it goes quiet. Certainly the filming will be to the left in that area.

 

Within minutes the coast turns hard left into a large horseshoe and so you will have land on your right and left, and there are a couple of short gorges that you're bound to track up and down again, so your filming will be in all directions - just don't fall into the spiral dive/stall/crash trap trying to turn ever tighter onto a Kodak opportunity, remember to fly away from the target shot, turn back and approach to one side of it - and that'll be how you get your images of most of the classic Kimberley spots, not by just having the camera person on the 'Australia side'.

 

The next really picturesque place is the Berkeley river, a long mangrove estuary that becomes an ever-tightening gorge, then the freshwater rockbar/tidal falls and a larger falls higher up. You'll fly up the river then back down it again as there's nothing of any consequence after the falls. So the camera person will see all of it on their side as you fly up the gorge and back again.

 

Just north of the Berkeley mouth are some large and impressive sand blows but then there's nothing much else until you reach the mouth of the King George, so you might as well just track high and direct to the mouth and then once again track the gorge to the falls and back. From there probably fly high and direct to Faraway and then the same again to Kalumburu via a look at the rivers and eastern edge of the bay to the north. There's no point in tracking coastal around the northern cape, nothing better to see than you'll already have seen.

 

Years ago I opened up visits to Truscott, I don't know what the go is now but if you can get permission to land and/or stay overnight it's a quite well preserved WW2 airbase with some fascinating history and an abundance of relics to seek out. I spent a few weeks there initially, mapping a lot of the relics and probably only found half of them, they extend all over the peninsular and are in remarkably good order. They include the well known ones nearby, officers mess, latrines, truck workshops, the airstrip of course and taxyways, revetments, armoury, several crashed planes including fighters, a couple of Ansons, a couple of B24s, C47s, a DC3 etc, further out there is the fuel dump and several AA batteries, searchlight batteries and so on. Much further north are parts of a B24 which dead-sticked onto a claypan after bombing Iwo Jima, IIRC, shooting down a Zero and running out of fuel about twelve miles out. It damaged the noseleg and props and was repaired onsite and flown out again, the damaged bits are still there as well as the nose turret and bullet casings, and the 'camp' used while repairing it. I learnt about the existence of a lot of this stuff from the actual former engineers, air and ground crew who built and manned the place because we flew them back and accommodated them there in 1995 for a reunion and the dawn service on ANZAC day. What a bunch of treasures those fellas are and were.

 

I won't try and detail the whole of the rest of the trip for you but I think you get the gist of it. Down the west coast there are even fewer potential outlandings in some areas, in a fixed-wing you pretty much have to fly high from place to place. Mitchell Plateau airport is the next stop after a lap around the falls, then there's nowhere much on-track to land before Derby, if you go down anywhere along there it would be another coffee-royal affair if you were high at the time and able to get to a clearing of some kind, or statistics if not. The Prince Regent is the absolute jewel in the Kimberley crown but there is nowhere to land a plane at all, just huge rock cliffs and boulders and deep chasms and gorges. The river is the longest straight river on Earth because it's an open fault-line, consequently the entire area is broken ground.

 

Horizontal falls is worth a look if you get there during the tidal rip and the Archipelagos are beautiful from high up.

 

As far as filming is concerned, consider building an active gimballed external camera mount. For professional film work I used to rent a Continental mount which mounts to the front of a Jetranger by removing the LHS chin bubble. The camera was then traversed and elevated remotely using a joystick via push-pull cables. Since the camera operator's eye was remote from the camera, in the early days it was guesswork exactly where the camera was pointing so most aerial shots were done wide-angle. Later we found a tiny 'spy' camera and mounted that on top of the mainVideo (or 35mm movie) camera, and connected that to a small monitor in the cabin, so that performed as an accurate viewfinder and allowed use of some zooming of the main camera.

 

Given the image stabilisation of video cameras these days you could do some remarkable cinematography with a small remote controlled camera (my little Nikon can be controlled via wifi and/or bluetooth, using my smartphone as the controller), and it wouldn't be hard to build a small gimballed mount that could be driven by tiny stepper motors instead of push-pull cables, and controlled by a custom written smartphone app. I wonder how many of those you could sell?

 

Russ - I've sent you a PM as well ...

 

 

[Kununurra]

early 2016 ( march,april ), it's on.....NQ..Mt Isa..Tennent Ck..Kununurra..Wyndham..north to coast...then coastal to cape talbot..around the top, then coastal south to cape Levenque..Derby..then coastal south to exmouth.......then ????? east to NQ.

 

4....5 weeks should do it, lot's of enroute stopovers etc............so

 

any hints/tips/folks/ whatever.........enroute ???

 

( could entertain another jab or 2 )

Russ

When you get a little more into your planning let me know and if I can help you with anything while you are in Kununurra I will.

 

If you plan for after April or at least late April the weather should be more in your favour.

 

Cheers

 

 

[pmccarthy]

I love Kununurra. Had a holiday there two years ago. Say some amazing rock art that is way off the tourist trail. Next time will come with an aeroplane and really look around.

 

 

 

[Russ]

Minor changes....maybe.

 

 

[Russ]

RussWhen you get a little more into your planning let me know and if I can help you with anything while you are in Kununurra I will.

If you plan for after April or at least late April the weather should be more in your favour.

 

Cheers

will be stopping over at john storey's farm ( just north of kununurra ) strip about 1000m, then couple days home valley stn, then north to coastal regions. Lots of stopovers over the expected weeks duration. Shoot me your ph number

 

 

[Russ]

Lake ayre ( spelt wrong ), is filling up real good right now........bewdy, have heard of "painted hills", anybody have more info.

 

 

[Russ]

All's good.......got info

 

 

[Russ]

Booked/planned.....now waiting for my radio to be returned ( broke )

 

NQ coastal Cooktown, up around into princess Charlotte bay, inland to musgrave stn , over night, then 3 days Weipa, coastal to horn island, 4 days fishing/ relaxing/ island hopping etc, coastal south cairns/home.

 

Forgot........in me trusty jab. ( the BIG trip next mth )

 

Was going to upload a screen shot ( route) ozrunway....site won't allow anymore ??? ( strange.....was ok before )

 

 

[Robbo]

Was going to upload a screen shot ( route) ozrunway....site won't allow anymore ??? ( strange.....was ok before )

Works here, maybe the image is to large.

 

Can upload to www.imgur.com and direct link it.

 

 

[Russ]

Have posted screen shots before, no probs........no longer

 

 

[Jabiru Phil]

early 2016 ( march,april ), it's on.....NQ..Mt Isa..Tennent Ck..Kununurra..Wyndham..north to coast...then coastal to cape talbot..around the top, then coastal south to cape Levenque..Derby..then coastal south to exmouth.......then ????? east to NQ.

 

4....5 weeks should do it, lot's of enroute stopovers etc............so

 

any hints/tips/folks/ whatever.........enroute ???

 

( could entertain another jab or 2 )

Hi Russ,

If any help to you, I did a couple of trips as a tag along in my 230 with three other craft through Stawell Aviation to

 

The Kimberly region.

 

I have the itinerary with all coordinates distance etc if you would like to have a look.

 

No idea how I can send to you except snail mail?

 

The route was similar to your plans, so maybe of some help.

 

Yes, you need to be well organised with forward and up to date contact with the strip operators for pick up times,

 

No iPhone connections,

 

Pm we if you want the info.

 

Great journey, something you you never forget.

 

HIC is obviously the guru for this area!

 

Best wishes,

 

PHIL.

 

 

[Russ]

Bugger me.....I've managed to crop it.

 

This trip is the precursor to the BIG ONE, ( NT....WA....QLD )

 

 

 

[Russ]

Just replaced my 8yr old battery, the next time I meet up with Rod S, I'll rip his family jewells out.......had to cut chunks off the fibreglass holder to manipulate the mongrel battery out.....Grrrrrrrr

 

 

[alf jessup]

Safe travels Russ and enjoy your trip

 

 

[kaz3g]

Have a fantastic trip mate and thank you again for the contacts you sent me. After my next one, I'm going to do the top end as I couldn't fit it in this time.

 

So this is where I am planning to go to in July-August God willing...Kaz

 

 

[Jabiru7252]

Just replaced my 8yr old battery, the next time I meet up with Rod S, I'll rip his family jewells out.......had to cut chunks off the fibreglass holder to manipulate the mongrel battery out.....Grrrrrrrr

Yes, getting the battery in and out is a prick of a job, but you shouldn't have to cut chunks out of the holder. Just hold your tongue right and skin two knuckles and it'll go in.