Phil Perry

Looking at Derek's original post. . . . it appears to me, as a bit of an 'Outsider' to Oz operations lately; that his comment was based upon fear of conflict after some Military bloke sent a fairly non descriptive and therefore useless and non-informative radio call, leading to confusion in the ear of the beholder and I agree with him wholeheartedly on this. We have a different rule book in the UK, but the brass tack bits are quite straightforward in this particular instance. When I want to inform the general flying public that I am either Approaching an airfield site with intention to land there, or Intending to overfly it en-route. In the Landing example, I call the station and say : FivePee Green Information, G-ABCD ( in phonetics of course ) Shedwing 912, one fife miles East, cruising 2,500 feet on the Birmingham QNH one zero one four, inbound, ETA wIth you at two zero, . request airfield information. . . QNH . . .Q- Nautical height. = Reference to AMSL ie, my VERTICAL displacement above mean sea level, using a GIVEN reference, ie, Birmingham ( EGBB ) international airport. This ref was given to me by Brum ATC and I flew out of there using it in all their directional instructions to maintain separation from the RPTs and also outside of their airspace. THIS reference is ALWAYS referred to as ALTITUDE setting and NOT 'Height'. I would continue to use this reference until I decided that being clear of controlled airspace, and wished to continue flying in whatever direction,. . . I would then call London Information for a regional Pressure setting ie RPS . . sometomes erroneously called AREA QNH' which is utter and complete Bollox as a QNH can only be specific to a particular station and all elevations are different ( unless you're talking about Holland ) There are 20 Altimeter setting regions in the UK, using the lowest forecast pressure in that region to provide adequate vertical separation for flights outside of controlled airspace. Hence pilots asking for 'The Regional' . . .I live in the 'Barnsley' region,. . although I am nowhere near Barnsley, the town bearing that name is is oop North somewhere in 'Coronation Street' country. . .! we even have Two of them which are all SEA areas, so that the RPS is exactly the same as the QNH, but . . well, that's the UK for you. . .! SKERRY is one,. . I can't recall the other one. . . This is all most useful, as it means that any outgoing, or other incoming traffic on FivePee's frequency are immediately aware of my general location at that time, and direction of intended travel at THAT PARTICULAR 'ALTITUDE' reference. The more 'Switched On' persons monitoring the channel, would know that my 'SHEDWING 912' is only capable of 77 and a half Knots, so they could mentally extrapolate from this, that they could easily 'Beat' me into the circuit at FivePee by around five minutes and thereby get to the Fuel Bay, or the Restaurant, or the Bog, a little faster than I could. . . . The destination airfield then give me their current QFE based upon the elevation of the field above sea level, on that particular reported pressure setting. ( Q - Field Elevation ) so that my arrival in their overhead is the same as indicated on my altimeter but this time in AGL TERMS. . . as others in circuit, or those departing that site,. . . and we are all singing from the same hymn sheet.. OK No difficulty with that. . .it works very well. If some donkey in a Heelo ( Sorry HIC, no offence intended ! ) calls on the radio and says. . .. "I'm going to overfly your site at 500 feet AGL" . . .He / she would get rapid short shrift and told to pull in His / Her head. The military hereabouts just DO NOT DO THIS. They are VERY KIND to 'Leisure Flyers' . . . hence their lack of reluctance to allow us to land at any of their bases without exception, and charge us ZERO fees for the privilege of dining in their taxpayer funded eateries. . .( ! ) It Wasn't really a can of worms that you opened Derek, . . .but that is what this site is all about. I find it most interesting to read about how things work in Australia nowadays. . ., since I left in late 1982. . . .!

Ooooh that's a big one to comment upon Bob.. . .the 'Missing' wingtips were a modification resulting from problems with 'Tip Stall' durring exteme military aerobatiics. . .you'll need to look this up as it's a bit complicated to go into here, but that doesn't mean that I do not understand it. . . .the 'Pointy Ended' wingtips so beloved of the classic Spitfire shape were not all that aerodynamically effective, this being discovered by pilots of the earlier marques of Spit. You have to bear in mind that R.J. Mitchell died just before the second world war, and even before that, did not have access to wind tunnels and massive numbers of hours of testing data of his wing design, which nowadays, would have indicated problems in the tip design. How many Kettles, saucepans and other utensils could have been be made form the aluminium saved by not making 'Pointy' wingtips is not something I've ever attempted to calculate. My Dad died from Alzheimers disease, and one of the culprits supposed to be a cause of this was,. . in the 1970s, drinking millions of cups of tea from teapots made from aluminium. . . . Did Cutoff Spitfire wings kill my DAD ?. . . we shall probably never know. My good Lady makes tea in a Ceramic pot. ME ?. . .I could never stand the taste of the stuff and I've only drunk coffee since as long as I can remember. . . . but that's another story. . .

Not 'Quirky' but Historical ( And nice. . .) Seven Mk12 Spitfires of 41 Squadron RAF, based at Friston in Sussex. Seen here flying over the South Downs.

I know precisely what you mean. . . when the Missus asks, 'Does my bum look big in this ? ?' You realise instantly what lethal ground you're standing upon and that ONE wrong word could mean instant death. . .

That oil transfer would be unbelievable, if the entire crew didn't vouch for it: In flight, he climbed out onto the underwing strut and made his way to the failed starboard engine. (On the way he would have nothing to hold onto, just the air pressing him to the LE of the wing). On arrival, he bled oil from the engine into some sort of flask. (The engine must have had a drain tap, surely he wasn't carrying a flask and a wrench, and surely he couldn't fill the flask then put a bung back in while hanging on out there?) He then made his way back (pressed again to the LE). Back at the fuse, they tipped the oil into some sort of empty case provided by the navigator. Then he went back for more. With some amount in the case, he then repeated the operation on the port side, transferring flasks of oil out to that engine. And, if I recall, each time he did this, Kingsford Smith backed off the throttle on the port engine, so it was done in a series of slow climbs up from sea level, sinking back down each time Taylor was topping it up. As someone who has done a bit of clambering outside flying aircraft, I find this astonishing. Not replacing oil, BUT.,. . .there is a post somewhere on this site where a crew member went outside the aircraft to put out a fire, OR some other problem which couldn't be fixed any other way. . . on the Stbd engine of a Wellington Bomber. He had to kick or Cut holes in the upper wing fabric to maintain footholds against the airflow. The story is substantiated with a photograph of the offending inner wing area and the engine nacelle taken from the inner trailing edge of the Stbd wing and illustrating his footholds. . .. I may well have posted this myself, I honestly can't remember. . . .got to be at least 3-4 years back though.. . .can't recall if the hero actually hacked a hole in the fuselage fabric to get to where he went. . .

Ooooh yes. . . would love to tour the Pacific Islands aboard one of those. . .rather like that company which used to fly out from Sydney in the 50s / 60s The book about that airline was called 'Bird of the Islands' . . .can't remember the Author's name though. . .fascinating illustrated tale about a 'One Horse' airline. . .

Indded Sir !. . .Only, this time, using circular windows. . .so no more corner stress cracks eh ?

Sorry mate, I can't improve on Onetrack's comment in that regard . . . Some 'safety' features can be regarded as a simple aide memoire to reinforce concentration and commonsense. . ., without going to a ridiculous degree such as 'Stop' signs at the top of a ladder etc. . . Humans are seemingly prone by nature towards being easily distracted; sometimes leading to others saying afterwards things like "How on Earth did the silly bugger forget to do that ! ".

Agree entirely Cobber. I like to see accuracy too. Phil.

Welcome Andrew. . Keep us informed about how your training is going Mate ! !

Thanks Onetrack Sir. THIS. . . .Is one of the man reasons that I tend to post these historical snippets. they always elicit some really good replies and discussions thereby increasing my own tiny knowledge of the various subjects. It is a shame that we do not have a '?' option in the response Icons at the bottom of a comment page though. As this would ( in my view anyway ) draw immediate attention and annotate a query of some kind to the comment responded to, rather than a 'Caution' sign . . . which is a 'Warning'. I would expect to get one of these if I suggested an incorrect medicinal solution which was likely to cause someone harm . . . :-) Perhaps Uncle Ian could consider a' ?' in the next control panel review ( as if the poor bloke has nothing better to do with his time ! ) I have been in receipt of a few of these 'Cautions' myself, but after re-reading my comments, could not see what element was being referred to.as the reason for same . . Some bloody good historians on here.. . . .RESPEK !

It certainly is. . . my aircraft have always had this simple safety feature.

Och Aye ! tis a wee thingy indeed. . . . . there is a photo of a German official standing next to an unexploded 'Highball' which probably skipped over a dam wall and ended up in the woods. . . without the water pressure at the the dam wall, the barometric fuse would not have activated. . . That bomb was cylindrical rather than spheroid and considerably larger than those recovered from the Loch. . . ( See picture ) Loch Ness ( another Sea Loch ) is considerably deeper than 50m in places. . . . Good article that. . . . ( I noticed that in the list of divers that there was some bloke from Cannock, where I live. I wonder who that is. . . . )

Divers find Barnes Wallis' famous bouncing bombs which starred in the Dambusters movie at the bottom of a Scottish loch ( The 'Highball' bomb was NOT used on the Dams raid - just correcting the headline a little )

Interesting stuff Kasper - thank you. I didn't make time to check on that before posting but it looked interesting and I admit never having come across the design before. I know what you mean about the sesquiplane idea, I had a discussion with a friend at White Waltham who said that the Antonov AN2 was such, but in reality, as you say, the lower wing has to be half, or slightly less than half the surface area of the upper mainplane . . after our afternoon both flying the AN2, we agreed to disagree on wingerage ( ! ) Interesting that the PV7 was built near to Stoke too. The PV8 in the photograph at York has it's engine run on public 'Thunder Days' around one per month, when several of their exhibits also have static engine runs.

A friend took the photograph at the York Aircraft museum and got some details from a placard. I have not looked into this yet, so have no idea if it went into production. PV-8 a WW1 aircraft designed to be a Zeppelin interceptor. Its only 1.5 M high with a 5.78 M wingspan. Empty weight 155 KG and take off weight 266 KG. no other details atm.

Just a little update, in case anyone is remotely interested. . . The aircraft which over ran the Runway yesterday is a EUROFOX 912 . . .tricycle u/c version.( Really Nice looking aeroplane ) Matey's first jolly after being signed off as capable last weekend. The aircraft landed too fast, and too long, and over ran the end of the strip by around 30 metres. Neither Matey nor Mrs. Matey were injured in any way, but the aircraft needs a replacement plastic nosewheel spat and a careful inspection of the noseleg structure / attachment. He stoppped ( Luckily ) short of the transverse deep ploughed section of the field by around 3 metres. ( I hope he went and bought a lottery ticket on the drive home. . . ) Nil wind situation, incident followed two previous abort / go around. Matey is a really nice bloke, although his PPL training was in a much slower type of machine at an airfield with a 700m runway. I'm sure he will get the hang of our tiny cabbage patch given more time and practice. Lost trike student became disoriented by lowering cloudbase and outlanded in a paddock, some distance from habitation, and with no phone signal. Did the right thing in the circumstances. He was flying a rather 'Nippy' 912S 100 HP trike, so it is easy to become uncertain of position rather quickly in poor viz. Instructor recovered his unamaged machine a couple of hours ago. . . .all's well etc. . .( SAR Yellow alert cancelled in time ) I shall suggest that he purchases and installs a radio setup, as he could have at least alerted another aircraft from the ground to relay a message in the absence of a mobile signal. . . . Trike = £30K+ . . .radio + intercom / antenna = £300 or less with used stuff. . .? 'No Brainer' really ( IMHO )

Had a day off yesterday ( Sunday 16th July ) and from early this morning I've had several phone calls asking whose white high wing aircraft it was it was that ran off the end of Rwy 34L,. . ( we have Four 'White ones' on the site ) was it damaged, and who was the solo student who got lost on a navex. . . . ( as if my being there would have made a jot of difference ? ? ) Sigh. . . I miss all the exciting stuff. . . . .

I remember stripping the silver paint off VH-ARX . . .an Auster, owned by my mate Jerry Denahey at Berwick in the 1970s. . .Jeeze. . .what a horrible job that was. . .I stunk of MEK solvent for weeks. . it got up me nose and in me clothes. . .not a pretty job. . . as it happened, upon inspection, the fabric was fine, no need to take it off and replace it. . . This pleased me greatly, after having helped to repair a DH82A somwhere else in Victoria some months previously. . .these blaggers used to get 'Friends' to help with such jobs, .. no pay of course, but promises of flight time in the subject aircraft which rarely, if ever turned into reality. . .but young suckers like me got sucked in. . . as you do. . . .( when you are a daft youngster. . .) However, I have to admit that when VH-ARX got repainted white,. . .I DID manage to use it for quite a few hours spaced over 2 years and it was a lovely aircraft to fly with sliding side windows ( Think Mini car ) so that me and the co pilot could chuck our fag ends out of the windows easily. . . .and I really likded the Vernier Throttle knob too. . . .enabling minute adjustments to the engine RPM. . .and wondered why this feature didn't appear on Cessna and Piper types. . . . Fast forward 25 years and Imagine my shock, when I was given a copy of an Australian magazine, which showed my favourite Auster. VH-ARX, in some sort of old Airline colours , on the front page of the Auster Club magazine. . . brought back the smell of the MEK did that. . . .I often wondered if they'd kept the sliding ashtray windows. . . . . Edit: It was living in some godforsaken pace called Gippsland according to the magazine. .,. . .which I still have somewhere. . . . .

'Ang on. . . .Just tryin' to find a verse in Al'Quran about recreational flyin'. . . . . . No, sorry,. . .FAILED. As you were.

Some days Mark,. . .you look up there and think. . .THANK GAWD I'M HERE ON THE DECK AND NOT UP THERE AMONGST THAT $HIT. . . . . . .

NOW WHAT has your naughty Aussie Government been up to then ? ? ? ? I dunno. . .first you allow the Brits to test their naughty nuclear bombs at Maralinga, now it's naughty missiles. . .what is it with South Australia then ?. . .is it the wines, ? ? ? ? Hypersonic Missiles ? ? ? ? ? http://ind.pn/2teg3BN

I don't refute the regulations you quote, but I still maintain that this is an accident primed to happen.

Sorry Cobber,. . .I didn't see your post first. . . .Je Agree mon ami.