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The pilot of the aircraft has been officially identified as Mark Christie, and the aircraft involved was a strut-braced Drifter Big Foot. Mark Christie had a Blog outlining his passions of photography and flying, and he also had a YouTube channel, and a Facebook page. He was Secretary of the Top End Flying Club and RA-Aus delegate for the northern Territory. https://www.youtube.com/@DoubleChook Pilot killed in ultralight plane crash at Fogg Dam, south-east of Darwin, identified - ABC News WWW.ABC.NET.AU A 63-year-old man who died in an ultralight plane crash south-east of Darwin on Sunday has been identified. About the Pilotographer – Pilotographer PILOTOGRAPHER.COM.AU My name is Mark Christie. I am the owner and pilot of a recreational aircraft called a Drifter. I first flew in a Drifter in 1984 and was immediately hooked on both the flying freedom and the visua… Pilotographer Flying Photos & Videos WWW.FACEBOOK.COM My name's Mark Christie and I fly a drifter ultralight aircraft out of MKT Airfield near Darwin, the capital of Australia's Northern Territory. I've been flying, filming and taking photographs of...

.....for them to easily be able to reach the neighbouring village, the LikLiks, to wage war on them. The LeckLiks and the LikLiks had waged war on each other incessantly for centuries, but it normally took three days of trekking through mountainous country to reach their camps and to start shooting at them. Now, it would be much easier to drop in on top of the LikLiks from the sky, and to not only get the jump on them, but to frighten them into running away, thinking the LeckLiks were some kind of Sky Gods (well, naturally, they would be, because once they were in a Turbine Flying Car, they'd be a pilot, anyway! - so, therefore, real Sky Gods!) come to...........

.....it was only when someone saw Turbo refuelling the Corvette at a bowser in a service station, that they twigged and looked for somewhere to send in a report. But Turbo was so crafty, no Govt Dept had yet been set up to deal with EV fraud, and as a result, Turbo continued to cream in massive profits, both with the Corvette, and with the Turbine Flying Car. In a stroke of further genius, Turbo had arranged a redesign of the TFC cabin (to keep the punters on their toes) to copy the appearance of a Corvette. The deposits soared as soon as the paparazzi sighted the "camouflaged" new TFC in an open field. Naturally, the factory camo was designed to be poor and to allow "sightings" of the new design to be widely circulated. However, the problems associated with the design and manufacture of the lightweight extension cord continued to nag on Turbine Industries engineers. Besides, there was also the size of the extension cord reel to be incorporated into the design. It was becoming imperative that a workable solution be found, or the punters would wise up and start asking for their deposits back. Then Turbo had a brainstorming session with the engineers. "If they can charge small electronic items wirelessly, why not a flying car?", he asked. "Well, said one engineer, "We could look into that system, but at present, I think the cord presents less issues than a wireless system of charging, and besides.........................

Just a little more news below, neither the pilot nor the aircraft type and rego has yet been publically identified. There's an article in the NT News, but it's behind a paywall. NT Police have advised they will hold a media conference in regard to the crash this afternoon (Monday 13/01/2025). The News.com.au site has a single photo showing wreckage of a microlight inverted in what appears to be shallow water or swampy vegetation, it's reported the aircraft crashed around 50M from the wall of Fogg Dam. Not a good spot to crash, or to have to search, Fogg Dam is a major croc habitat! Man dies in light plane crash in crocodile-infested waters in Fogg Dam, Darwin | Daily Mail Online WWW.DAILYMAIL.CO.UK A pilot has died after a light plane crashed into crocodile-infested waters in the Northern Territory. https://www.news.com.au/travel/travel-updates/incidents/pilot-dead-after-plane-crashed-into-crocinfested-dam-in-nt/news-story/f09131104e97ed7d068fdd2716d923dd

The NT Police are reporting the female passenger was uninjured, and confirming the deceased 63 yr old male was the pilot. Aircraft crash – Middle Point | NT Police, Fire & Emergency Services PFES.NT.GOV.AU The Northern Territory Police Force have responded to a light aircraft crash in Middle Point earlier today. Around 10.20am, police received reports of a crash involving a light aircraft in the Fogg Dam with two...

........the new Turbine Industries Flying Car. Yes, dear NES readers, you heard it here, on the NES, first. Turbo, being the ever-avaricious .... errr, sorry .... ever-adventurous, entrepreneur that he is, sighted the massive windfall profits to be made (in the share issue, of course), by producing the sleekest of the sleek version of a flying car. The Turbine Flying Car (doesn't that name conjure up great speed and power?) is so revolutionary, it's still under wraps, and only "teaser" photos are circulating - mainly on the Dark Web, naturally. The car is estimated to cost no more than a current family sedan, and have running costs no more than an EV - because the TFC is electric, of course! Turbo has confirmed that the finest aviation and electrical engineering brains he can source (for under $25 hr, of course) are currently working on solving "teething" problems with the design. It's been rumoured that the Turbine Corp engineers are beavering away at how to manufacture an ultra-light extension cord - but of course, Turbo, when questioned on this angle, is a little coy and deflects the pointed questions, citing "commercial-in-confidence" reasons for not elaborating more fully on the design, and its problems. However, Turbo is assuring would-be buyers and investors, that they can put down their hard-earned coin into the TFC Corporation and product, without any fear of monetary loss, or failure to deliver, because.........

News just in, is reporting another light aircraft crash in the region of Fogg Dam recreational area, S.E. of Darwin. Rescuers have reported one POB is deceased (a 63 yr old male - possibly the pilot), and a 29 yr old female passenger was winched from the aircraft wreckage and transported to Darwin hospital for assessment. Sixty-three-year-old man dies in light plane crash south-east of Darwin - ABC News WWW.ABC.NET.AU A man has died and a woman is in hospital after a light aircraft crashed into the Fogg Dam recreational area south-east of Darwin.

Webpage viewing numbers must be data-crunched. From my 25 years of buying and selling on the 'net, these are the critical data figures. For every 100 clicks on average on a webpage, only one is actually interested in what has been written. The other 99 are accidental clicks, or "drive-by" clicks, because a viewer just wanted to find if the written info was interesting (and it wasn't), and dozens of "bot clicks" by Google bots, and a hundred other internet data miners. Of the 90 people who actually read the entire article and are interested in it, 85 would be aviation enthusiasts with maybe a couple of dozen pilots amongst them. The other 5 viewers would be "industry professionals" trying to see if there's any new take-home information in it. They wouldn't take long to realise there isn't. I think you place too much emphasis on the ABC's ability to influence decision-making as regards recreational flying rules and regulations. The problems only start when the webpage viewers are in the hundreds of thousands, and the article is on multiple major media sites, and social media pages - and there's a dedicated media "push" against the subject of the article, with multiple articles continuing the same theme. I'm more concerned about the major media sites - and in particular, a local major newspaper - producing articles after aircraft crashes, trying to link unconnected events by tenuous links, to make events appear related, and an ongoing problem. I'm referring to the seaplane crash off Rottnest where the media are linking unrelated seaplane crashes, and even the death of a previous owner of the seaplane business (in a helicopter crash), as indicative that the seaplane charter industry is full of shonks and cowboys, all cutting corners and putting pax at risk. It's pure media clickbait at its best.

Must be time to lock the thread, it's way past the informative aim of the original poster, and into personal attacks.

There has been further interesting development in the examination of the FDR and CVR of the above ill-fated B737. Investigators have discovered that the FDR and CVR both stopped recording 4 mins before the crash impact. The aircraft crashed at 0903hrs local time, but the FDR and CVR both stopped recording at 0859hrs. Ominously, the Captain reported the "bird strike" at 0859hrs. It appears that something has cut the power (including the backup power) to both the FDR and CVR at the same time. Whether that was debris ejected from a damaged engine that cut wiring or damaged electrical components, or something else, has yet to be discovered. The investigators reported that they were "surprised" to find nothing recorded by the FDR and CVR during the last 4 minutes of flight - but that the missing information, despite being desirable to have, will not prevent the investigators from examining numerous other sources of flight and crash information, to try and determine the sequence of events prior to the crash. Black boxes of crashed Jeju Air plane missing final 4 minutes of data WWW.KOREAHERALD.COM The black boxes of the Jeju Air Co. passenger plane involved in last month's fatal crash has been found to lack data from the final four minutes before the explosion, according to investigative authorities...

The "pushy" always get to the front of a photo if the photographer doesn't issue strict instructions. Just look at Trump, he shoves others aside to get front and centre of any photo opportunity.

.......something else happened during that dreadful aviation experience, that Turbo is playing down. As most NES'ers know, when Turbo tells a story, it's always......errr....."embellished" shall we say - and that there's always a lot more to the story than Turbo is prepared to reveal. So, while he's keeping the audience enthralled with stories of Churchillian bunkers, previously-unrevealed assassination attempts, secret meetings that changed the course of the worlds history, etc, etc, - the real truth of what actually happened, is far more mundane. In the case of the XT582 Tundra Microlight and the dust devil, it was actually revealed during an RS-Aus investigation (which investigation records seem to have mysteriously disappeared), that Turbo took off with BOTH legs outside the cockpit - as well as no hands on the control bar, in a daring display of showoff, gung-ho flying - which silliness led to Turbo being unable to avoid the dust devil that promptly appeared at the end of the runway, and which dust devil promptly turned the XT581 Tundra on to...........

......he's swallowed a John Laws recording, and it's on permanent playback at full speed, and the docs will have to find a way to extract it from him, possibly through his rear orifice. Either that, or he's planning to take to the stage for a historical event recreation, and he's got a............ (by the way, OT wants to know how Cappy got his number, and even more so, how he got past his sister on the switchboard? ....)

If you want to find out your phones technical capabilities, GSM Arena is the go-to site. It will give you the full technical specifications of every phone made and the important part is it will tell you the models applicable to your country. Some of the phone manufacturers produce up to about a dozen models of phones, depending on the country, because networks vary so much, world wide. It's not likely that Telstra or any other carrier gets phones specifically manufactured for them, they simply add their branding/logo to the home screen of standard phones. But the phones our carriers sell are Australian models, people get caught buying cheap phones in overseas locations, they may or not work here, and if they do appear to work, they may not have all the frequencies we use here installed. The frequencies being used here are constantly changing. There are so many 4G frequencies now, the manufacturers refer to them by a 1 or 2 digit number, instead of the actual frequency. GSMArena.com - mobile phone reviews, news, specifications and more... WWW.GSMARENA.COM GSMArena.com - The ultimate resource for GSM handset information When you find your phone model, go to "Network" and click on "Expand" at the RHS to see the range of frequencies your phone is capable of handling.

The aircraft was built in 2015, so I guess that makes it an "early" model?

The aircraft has been recovered today and taken to the mainland. The ATSB says the wreckage will be transported to Canberra for complete examination. The wind and wave conditions today were vastly better than on the day of the crash. Wreckage recovered as ATSB investigators piece together moments before Rottnest seaplane crash - ABC News WWW.ABC.NET.AU The wreckage of a seaplane that crashed off Rottnest Island on Tuesday afternoon, killing three people, has been pulled from the water and taken back to the mainland for further investigation.

I believe this is the aircraft in question, and it wears RA-Aus rego, 19-8645.

There's one factor that has come out of this crash that has made a big difference to the outcome - and that was the fact that recreational boaters were nearby, and on the scene within a minute, and helped rescue survivors from the wreckage. I note that Col Blanch, the W.A. Police Commissioner made reference to this and expressed great appreciation towards the boaties involved. These people have possibly made a substantial difference to the final number of fatalities by grabbing the pax that were within reach of the surface. The aircraft sank in 8 metres of water, but not very far away, the water is considerably shallower (3-5M), and there's a curved section of shallow rock called Natural Jetty, that runs from the Island to Phillip Rock. The Natural Jetty rock formation is fully exposed at low tide, except for about a 50M section that stays underwater. The C208 took off at what appears to be high tide. In addition, Phillip Rock used to be much higher and larger, but during WW2, when the Military controlled Rottnest Island (there are large ex-military barracks there), and Rottnest was being used as "first line of Naval Defence" (with the impressive 142 tonnes, 9.2" Naval gun still in place on Oliver Hill), a decision was made by the military that Phillip Rock posed an enemy visibility threat and needed to be lowered! Accordingly, the Rock was blasted with a substantial number of artillery shells, which reduced the Rocks height to only about a third of its original height! All that rock blasted from Phillip Rock, now litters the area around the rock. Photos - 1. Original Rock size (prior to WW2) 2. & 3. Views of the Rock today from (2) the West and from (3), the NE.

It's claimed the crashed Bearhawk weighed 421kgs empty. He must have found a lot of light composites to use in the construction! He certainly wouldn't have had much fuel capacity with pilot and passenger aboard, under RA-Aus regulations. Log into Facebook WWW.FACEBOOK.COM Log into Facebook to start sharing and connecting with your friends, family, and people you know.

......a thriving cottage industry producing wing and fuselage covering materials utilising secondhand ex-military parachutes, that were cut up and re-sewn into wing and fuselage cladding sections. However, no-one foresaw the awkward development, whereby the parachute material, which had always been designed to plummet (there's that word again) earthwards at all times, started plummetting earthwards regularly again, straight after it was used to cover microlight wings and fuselages. This rather startling result - that only occurred once the microlight had exceeded jump height - caused so much concern, a committee was formed to address the problem and find a cure. To that end, an Official Investigator was appointed, and the person chosen just happened to be another Turbine family member with extensive aviation and jump experience (he was known to jump anything, a common Turbine family failing, but we won't digress at this point), a gent named "Chute" Turbine. His real name had long been forgotten, because his nickname had been used so regularly, everyone thought it WAS his real name. He was nicknamed "Chute" because of his constant habit of indulging in that well-known wombat habit of, "eat...........

I believe only the one was produced, because after it was completed, the designer couldn't ever see the blueprints again!

The ATSB is seeking crash witness information on their site, they have a specific webpage set up for witnesses to provide details. https://www.atsb.gov.au/media/2025/rottnest-island-cessna-208-accident

Many times, it's simply the luck of the draw that determines whether people survive air crashes. Being seated in the rearmost seating appears to enhance your chances of survival in most cases, unless it's head-on into cumulus granitus.

It's the pictures that ask me to identify the items with wings, that cause me to fail every time!!

Yes, that news that the pilot is one of the deceased is correct. A major update in the link below. Three confirmed dead in Rottnest plane crash THEWEST.COM.AU Premier Roger Cook has confirmed three bodies have been recovered from the wreckage of a seaplane which crashed off Rottnest Island on Tuesday.