Meningie and the Coorong

April 20, 2008

On saturday, Sharon and myself went on a slightly longer trip than last week. This was to test out the new ginger airsick pills Sharon bought. It was also the first landing at a different airstrip for me since I got my RAAus certificate. We left Aldinga just after midday and headed to Goolwa. Then followed along the river to its mouth, then along the coorong. It was a bit bumpy over the land but dead smooth once we where over the coorong. There was a reasonable headwind on the way as the airspeed was 85knts but the groundspeed was only around 70 as indicated by the gps. It took 50 mins to reach Meningie, which was one min longer than I calculated on my flight plan. After over flying the field to find the wind direction I decended to circuit height and joined downwind for rwy 03. coming in on finals the height can be a bit tricky as there is a small hillock before crossing the stuart highway. I did a touch n go first to test the strips surface, as I had rung up earlier for permission to land and park there and had been told that the strips were a bit dry and sandy. This was also done to scare of any wildlife as they have been some problems of rabbits. The next circuit was performed with out a hitch, and an uneventfull landing was achived. We parked the plane and found the aptly named VH-LOO shed for a quick de-fueling. The airfield was deserted so we sighned the visitors book and walked in to town. Sharon and I bought lunch at the local roadhouse and sat in the airconditioned restraunt and ate. We then walked back to the airfield, Filled up our water bottles, de-fueled again pre flighted our plane. Once ready I taxied out onto Rwy 03, lined up and comenced the take off roll. I held the tail down fairly low to make sure we wouldnt noseover, as soon as i felt the rudder had aerodynimic control I eased of the back pressure and the plane litterly jumped into the air. The take off roll only felt about 75 meters! You gotta love light aircraft with large tyres and good rate of climb(1200fpm with two adults over 1500 one up). We then backtracked along our original flight path at a slighly higher altitude as it was starting to get a bit bumpy, and to use the tailwind a bit more. Along the way we saw a couple of Nanchangs doing some aerobatics over the murray mouth. We also encounted an eagle soaring in a themal at 4100 ft. When we got to Goolwa we turned inland and headed back to Aldinga. Finished of with a greaser of a 3 pointer on runway 21. The return leg only took 36 mins, which was only one minuite less than I had worked out. We burned 22.74 litres(I computed 23) which means we used just under 16lph. As you can see by the photos the river and lake Alexandrina is very low, some parts you could walk from the mianland to the islands. The water in lake Albert didnt even reach the barrages. I hope we get some decent rain here this winter, even if it interrups good flying weather. Sorry for being so long winded in this report, I should be taking my daughter to Kangaroo Island some time this week(Ive just started 2 weeks leave from work)and will post some pictures from that.

Cheers Scott