boleropilot

anybody know why a Basair Beech Baron B55 VH-BWZ is conducting a search pattern over Tamrookum at 1000 hours this morning ? looks like it's heading back to Archerfield now (1020 hrs)

when I was in Army Aviation at Oakey we had a Cessna 180 call in an emergency, he returned to the base (which was in fine weather) with the 180 almost a write-off not only did it have giant holes in the windscreen from hail, the turbulence nearly ripped the control surfaces off - the pilot and his passenger both thought they were going to die funny thing is they swear they were giving the storm a wide berth but they described it's expansion as "explosive" - they couldn't outrun it.....

yeah kg, terrible news and I don't know when we are going to all learn The Lesson. What happened to the Stinson in 1937 (in the same area) was one of the first indications of when the power of the mountains + bad weather = not a good outcome. anyone close to the family who has information on the 'goodbyes', please post details here so I can attend to pay my respects. RIP guys. BP

A real shame, only just heard on the news it was the Dull brothers - I knew Owen quite well, lovely guy, very quiet, he told me he soloed on a Drifter in 5 hours... He was a brilliant engineer too, designed and built his own enclosed cockpit gyrocopter - it looked like it had come straight out of a factory in Germany, superb workmanship Blue skies and tailwinds for the brothers from now, deepest condolences to their family members. BP

sorry, forget to mention a couple of other interesting facts: the Korean Air Force and the U.S. Air Force have been big buddies ever since the Korean war - real close... the pilots that flew KAL007 were not supposed to fly this trip - they were over hours flown and another crew had been tasked, but they showed up and said "this is our flight" another Korean Air 747 flew the same route about 10 minutes away from KAL007 - during the flight they radioed false position reports for 007 so everyone thought they were on track Korean Air had very strict rules about fuel aboard at takeoff - not one pound above what they needed was allowed - Captain Chun loaded an extra 10,000 lbs of fuel and so on, and so on.....

thanks again for the replies, especially willedoos link to the airspace magazine article - I read every word...unbelievable one of the new items read in the book described information about a "hole in the ground" near Sakhalin that was suspected to be the crash site of an RC-135. It was claimed that Russian Generals themselves visited the scene and brought along with them a fuel truck - the truck was driven into the hole and the cocks opened, then they set fire to it. Witnesses said that it burned for 8 hours, and after it finally died down, they bulldozed the whole thing to flat ground and told everyone present they would end up in Siberia if they breathed a word of it to anyone. no wonder it's difficult to find out the truth about what happened to those airmen...

g'day guys, thanks for the responses.. page 66 "the piece of debris was too light to be stainless steel and its workmanship was very advanced. It looked like part of the leading edge of a sharply swept-back wing and appeared to be made of titanium. I had been able to obtain a fragment in Wakkanai; and a little later in Tokyo I had it analyzed. The metal was an alloy, 89 percent titanium. This triangular piece of high-tech aviation debris could, indeed, been the forward point of a wing from an SR-71" the complete breakdown of materials are as follows: titanium 88.96%, aluminium 5.70%, molybdenum 4.12%, silicon 0.73%, tin 0.39%, vanadium 0.11%. I agree that with "normal" aircraft any loss would be common knowledge, but the SR-71 "type" of aircraft had 3 variants totalling 50 aircraft - Thruster88 is spot on about the 32 SR-71 variants. As far as accidents/losses are concerned, there were a LOT in the early years, starting in 1967. The last loss is listed on the SR-71 website is listed as occurring in 1989, so they were definitely still flying in 1983 when the air battle occurred. One thing we must always keep in mind is that we really have no idea what the U.S. was flying at the time, or where they ended up. also, page 138 "if, however, it did not come from an SR-71, it came from a similar high performance U.S. military or intelligence aircraft" at the moment the U.S. losses as detailed in the book are (perhaps): 1 or 2 RC-135, 1 or 2 F-111, and 1 "who knows" but obviously a very high tech aircraft.... watch this space ! BP

Just wondering if anyone else has read the book Incident at Sakhalin by Michel Brun, where he conducts an incredible investigation of the shootdown of Korean Air Flight KAL007 on 1st September 1983. My original information was gained from the book Shootdown - The Verdict on KAL007, by R W Johnson (1986). Michel Bruns' book was written in 1995, and a huge amount of information has been discovered (or released by governments) during the decade between these two books. To give you an idea of what actually happened at the time this 'incident' occurred, Michel Brun states on the cover of his book the following: "The book establishes that as the Korean Boeing 747 approached the Russian island of Sakhalin, so too did a number of U.S. military and reconnaissance aircraft in an ill-conceived intelligence and provocation operation that turned into a two-hour battle in which 30 or more U.S. Air Force and Navy personnel were killed and ten or more U.S. aircraft were shot down." This is not a beat-up story by some journalist trying to make a name for himself, nor is it some kind of conspiracy theorist garbage. The information in Bruns' book appears to be incredibly well detailed and investigated, with much of the detective work conducted by him personally. The fact that wreckage from the battle included parts that were reliably identified as coming from aircraft such as an F-111 and an SR71 gives you some idea of the incredible scale of what really happened on that night. I am about half way through the book and at this stage I have not read the final information on either USA or USSR losses - I'll keep you posted. BP

nobody has mentioned the E word - would have to be an option, albeit not a cheap one I'm surprised nobody has made a comment about the video of my "scary" airfield....used only for RC aircraft now, probably better suited to that really - yes, the Drifter has been sold - needed a LOT of recon work BP

OK Johno, you get into the ceiling over the bar and cut those speaker wires, we'll see you back in the bar for free drinks.....

haven't been typing here for some time due to some unforeseen dramas in my life - my apologies to those who asked for info and photos of 0455, never got around to sorting that and (as expected) 0455 sold to the first lookers the price was reduced due to sailcloth degradation but the new owners (3 young blokes - well, young at heart!!!) are now busily restoring 0455 in the same hangar at least I can still 'fly' the lil' beasty on my computer....cheers for now, I'll try to keep in touch - with some of the 0455 funds being spent on a car hoist, work on the Renaults will be going ahead in leaps and bounds cheers BP

I've got one I took off a 582 that might fit - only bought a new one because the old one had been unused on acft for 4 years The Mikuni Oz guys are good, but a rebuild kit costs a fair bit so I just bought a new one - all the interior parts on the old one are intact - but.... Happy to post this one to ya - PM me if ya want it m8 BP

I saw a doco about an aircraft that crashed after takeoff when the flightcrew lost control of the aircraft due to multiple 'instrument failures' it was a classic Swiss cheese accident - they took off at night and flew out to sea, so no horizon or lights on the ground to help them a 'new' ground worker had covered the pitot ports before the aircraft was pressure washed he didn't know he was supposed to use orange sticky tape only, not silver (the same colour as the fuselage) his supervisor called in sick and there was nobody to replace him, so the new aircraft washer didn't have anyone to check his work the first officer did a walk around with a torch before the flight but didn't notice the covered pitot port due to the silver tape no survivors BP

just checked the link, it takes you to the home page - you'll have to click Products, then Flight Simulator X, then scroll through a bit...

btw Kyle, you wanna try turbulence, try my Drifter on a hot January day - blue up = good, blue up = good, oops, blue is down, what just happened? oh - big thermal - bugger !!! BP

wow you're in luck (I think) - not sure if this is close enough to your real life aircraft but Carenado is a prolific developer of FSX aircraft and their products are brilliant (and well priced) I have a couple of their aircraft in my virtual hangar and I can recommend them unreservedly - any help you need with setting up a flightsim system, let me know, happy to help and No it's not the real thing (doh), lot's of flightsim haters out there...I 'flew' a trip from Boonah to Lismore a few times before the real flight and it was a real eye opener for me BP Carenado.com

have a think about 'flying' the route with a flight simulator before you go - FSX combined with a good quality scenery mesh will give you extremely good information navigation wise as far as weather is concerned, you can choose any weather for the sim flight, or on any day with similar weather to your expected flight you can do the 'flight' with real-time weather to get some kind of accurate aircraft response to the conditions you would also need to get a payware aircraft - I'm going to do a search now to see if I can find one for ya... BP

I was checking out a Jabiru in a hangar the other day and noticed a little bit of mud near the propellor hub - had a closer look and discovered a HUGE mud wasp nest, hidden very carefully in and around the hub. if it were missed during pre-flight I reckon it would have caused massive imbalance, hopefully it would have been felt as soon as the motor started the Jabiru obviously hadn't been flown in some time - I left a note on the dash advising the pilot and suggesting he check the rest of the aircraft before slipping any surly bonds.... BP

hey Bruce, if you married Mrs Ten, and you decided to keep both names hyphenated, you'd be Bruce Tuncks-Ten what would you call your children ?????

one of the best T shirts I ever saw had this printed on the front: IF ITS TOO LOUD, YOUR TOO OLD in my opinion, he may just as well have worn a T shirt that pronounced: I'M AN IDIOT, I CAN'T SPELL AND NEITHER CAN THE IDIOTS WHO MADE THIS T SHIRT BP

with our fingers crossed, I imagine...

'someone' noticed I was not co-ordinating my turns correctly - he showed me what happens (in a Drifter) when you wash off speed in an un-coordinated climbing turn (as you could do climbing away after a take-off) the Drifter virtually flicked inverted and it took 700 feet for a full recovery - and then he said "now imagine what would happen if you did that at 500 feet in the circuit, David" as an instructor he is a demon on airspeed and co-ordination in turns, which may be something to do with the fact that I'm still here.....which brings me to this: did anyone else notice the article in the latest Sport Pilot magazine, where it was stated in an aircraft flight review: "The instrument panel is missing a balance ball so you can never be flying out of balance, or indeed in balance". this is obviously a flippant comment, but I do wonder about the lack of balance information being communicated to the pilot This was in relation to a pusher prop aircraft, so (as per on Drifters) the little piece of red wool taped to the bottom of the 'screen gives you all the info you need as far as 'balance' is concerned...

BRM came up with an idea for their Formula One motor - a H16 - basically two flat 8s on top of one another....not competitive, too heavy, too complicated, but wow, what a motor... BP

So there I was, flying along with my subordinate who happened to have conjunctivitis, and a connector failed on the aircraft, like, and, like, we had an injun failure, and, like, I was so confused I forgot to call Finals So then I realised there was only ONE final, like, ONE Downwind, ONE Base, and ONE Final, and then I got really confused and dint keep my speed up and we stalled and all they found was the wreckage and a fibula... I'm just sayin"...... BP

2 points I would like to make - 1 - the Qld ambulance payment concept is brilliant. I had a short fall off a deck, spun around to catch a downpipe nearby (missed it, don't think it wooda saved me), fell about a metre and landed on my back across a 2 inch wide beam = four broken ribs, quite a few cracked - oh yeah - and a punctured lung. we live on acreage, the nearest ambo station is 30 minutes drive. they sent an ambulance, it got to within 4km of us, and discovered a flooded creek. they called for a 4wd ambulance, it picked me up, took me down through the creek, swapped me into the other ambulance, and drove for 45 minutes to the nearest hospital that could cover those injuries. must have been close to a ride in a helicopter. imagine what the bill could have added up to.... 2 - the old adage of Aviate Navigate Communicate is life saving advice - my priorities will always be (1) get the aircraft on the ground in a manner that gives me the best chance of survival - PLB ON immediately, check where I'm going to put 'er down, and concentrate on that - if I get comfortable enough to talk to someone, a mayday call could be a life saver too - forget about circuit legs, just concentrate on AIRSPEED and keeping the best glide going - better high than low, learn to sideslip for rapid height loss if too high, maybe even practice a ground loop or two... oh yeah - and stop starting sentences with "So"........