bwill157

Hi everyone, I have to say our experience with the monto fly in was generally good and we had a fairly good time. My father and I left Innisfail in the 47 ercoupe (white, rag wing) Wednesday about lunch time and got about as far as charters towers where we refueled and overnighted at the caravan park, we had a good time in charters towers, the local van park came and picked us up from the airport, there are also some good pubs in town for a counter meal. Thursday we travelled from Charters towers to springsure as a bit of a detour. Along the way we landed in clearmont, and refuelled in emerald. I have to say to any other aviators flying down this way, emerald has a fantastic new avgas refueling service there which accepts credit cards and is available 24-7. You may need an ASIC as it is a secure tarmac with Q400's rolling around. After refueling here is where our fuel pump started to play up. I quickly brought her around and landed to recheck everything. Everything seemed ok so we got airborne again, it was about half way to springsure I noticed that the header tank was getting used and the wing tanks hadn't moved. This was a bit of an eye opener for us, but we had plenty of fuel in the header tank to get to springsure so it wasn't a problem. Once we were on the ground the header tank pumped itself up. We have a mechanical diaphram pump with no backup so this is our only way to shift fuel from the low wings to the higher header tank and gravity feed into the carby. It's only a short walk from the airport at the main street of town, where we stayed. Quite a nice little quiet town I should add. Next morning we took off and everything checked out fine in the pre-flight. Shortly after take off we started to use the header tank again. Our flight plan was rollingston, thangool then monto. We landed in Rollingston and after an hour of diagnostics realised our pump had completely failed. From here on in we found small strips every 50 miles where we had to land, suck fuel out of the wings into a 5L container and manually fill the header tank. Anyhooo, finally we arrived at monto, and were marshalled to our spot. The people were nice, the food was fairly good and the air was crisp. We stayed from Friday till Monday Morning, It was fairly cool camping in the tent but it was a good change from the heat. It was good to see so many aircraft around, and so many people on short notice. We had a great time. We found a small electric pump in town which we rigged up and it worked a charm all the way home. Going home, we just flew direct in one day Monto - Innisfail. LONG day. lol Well here are some photos I took of the coupe in springsure and one on friday, we didn't have power so our phones died real quick! :) Wow that was a bit long! Monto: COLD Spring sure: Nice town, unique country

Thanks heaps I will definately give him a bell. It's excellent to see some other young members that also take a passion to flying, I think a few more wouldn't go a stray Currently I am employed by a regional airline called Skytrans as a Network Administrator, I do a bit of work in PNG as well about once a week onsite which is fairly decent. It always seems to shake things up a bit and keep it fresh. Plus while I am up there, since I have my ASIC I usually get time to check out other exotic aircraft on the ground and have a chat to the pilots from time to time which is a real experience. Thanks guys :)

Thanks! Woopse, forgot to confirm that I have already got my licence :). Yeah we have a variety of aircraft which make things interesting, although I haven't got my tail tragger endorsement so I can't fly fugly. It seams that there is a lack of Instructors in FNQ with tail draggers. Thanks for the heads up, I will keep that in mind for the RAAF :)

Hi there! Since I am new to the forums I thought that I would stop by and say hello. I have only just started to read the forums every so often for the last few weeks but have found the information quite helpful. I live in Cairns QLD but do all my flying from Innisfail 89km south usually with my father. I am 20 years old and decided to get my Recreational licence after my father had taken much interest in the sport and also since I work for an airline I figured it might help if I decided to change job paths down the track. Innisfail is an unusual place in regards to weather at times but if there are blue sky's around, chances are you will see the ercoupe burning around the skies. Currently my father has a parasail, codenamed "fugly" due to its different paint scheme, a 1948 ercoupe imported from USA in 2008 and a pietenpol in the build stages which I believe he hopes to finish in the next couple of years. We have been looking at other aircraft but that ought to do the hanger for the time being. My goal is one day to develop my flying skills and fly some fast jets, I have a real passion for flying and always look forward to an adventure. I look forward to reading the forums and being a member :) Cheers