red750

Today (Saturday) is a glorious sunny day (after a week of overcast and rain) in Melbourne, so I took a run out to Lilydale and got some photos of VH-CCE.

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This shot shows the comparative size of the An-2 against the normal GA aircraft at YLIL, and the lush growth after recent rains.

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Here's a couple of photos of exciting departures by Soviet block pilots...

http://www.airliners.net/photo/Atlant-Soyuz-Airlines/Ilyushin-Il-86/0996987/&sid=ff7f20b4c8168e8c91c8d5d5f56e6e49

http://www.airliners.net/photo/Vaso-Airlines/Ilyushin-Il-86/0995911/M/

Peter.

There are 2 An-2's on the Aussie register, VH-CCE and VH-NYT. Cant find a photo of YNT, but here's one of CCE "Big Bird".

http://www.airport-data.com/aircraft/photo/076162.html

Peter

I was flying touch and goes in a V-tail Bonanza at Moorabbin (no pax) when the door popped open. As others have said, cold and noisy. Made that circuit a full stop, taxied to the holding point, relatched the door and continued circuits.

Shortly after getting my licence, I was flying my uncle and brother-in-law at Moorabbin in a Musketeer. At about 300 ft on short final, I got caught in wind shear and dropped suddenly, not sure how far. I hit full throttle, held it level to gain speed, then climbed out. Called "Going around" and settled my nerves to make a fresh approach and safe landing. I had remebered my instructor slamming the back of my hand on the throttle and saying "Don't try and save it, get the hell out of there and set up again". My pax were a bit white faced.

Peter.

Search "Runway markings" in Wikipedia.

Peter.

Hi Ben,

Back to the original topic. There is a parking area on Operations Road, towards the control tower and fire station, but the chainlink fence gets in the way. If rwy 34 is in use, pull off the road by the trees on the golf course. You will get planes landing without the fence in the way (if you are taking photos). This area is best for afternoon viewing.

For rwy 16 operations, go along Sunbury Road past the roundabout and pull into the lane beside the church. Another good afternoon spot. For aicraft taxying to the 16 holding point, you can shoot from near emergency gate A on Sunbury Road. I was along there tonight. They have installed new crash barriers, but you can still pull off the road out of the way.

Peter.

Hi Declan,

If you are contemplating moving to Australia, obviously you would have done research and know a bit about the place. However, just a few statistics. The area of Ireland is 70280 sq km, the Australian mainland is 7.69 million sq km, or about 109 times the size of Ireland. To put this in perspective, Tasmania, the island state below the mainland is 68401 sq m, just a little smaller than Ireland.

Australia is vast enough to accommodate most types of environment, from rain forest to desert, rugged mountains to vast plains as flat as a tabletop. While our mountains are very low by world standards, they are extremely rugged, and many areas are only accessable on foot. I would suggest you check out Youtube or Google videos for Australian landscapes to get some idea. Then you can decide where you want to settle.

Another important decider is what kind of work you do (to pay for your flying) and where you can get this type of work. The major cities are on the east coast, most mining in the northwest and beef cattle around the centre.

I hope this is helpful.

Cheers,

Peter

Hi Will,

Welcome to you and all the other RA guys who have joined in the last couple of weeks or so. Haven't been here all that long myself. Not an RA person myself - there wasn't much around when I last flew - last landing 1986. Now all I fly is a camera - don't think there are many RA aircraft that could get my fat ass in the air. I would probably need a Bonanza or Seneca these days, lol. I feel like an interloper sometimes, but the team here make you welcome. Boy, has forum activity gone through the roof.

Peter.

In a similar vein to Paul's TIF thread, I would like to recount a couple of interesting incidents from my training days, while training for my unrestricted private licence.

The first took place on a dual low level nav exercise. We took off from Moorabbin, and flew to Ballarat where we turned without landing, dropped to 500 ft agl and flew to Derby, which is nothing more than a level crossing where the Calder Highway crosses the railway line, between Bendigo and Ingleburn. Our return leg was via the Kilmore gap and Lilydale. As we approached Kilmore gap, the storm clouds were closing in and we managed to scrape through just before the gap was closed in. There was a very heavy thunderstorm over the metropolitan area, so we made an unscheduled landing at Lilydale. We stood in the clubrooms and watched the numerous lightning bolts hitting the ground all around the south and west.

After about an hour, there was a small break towards Moorabbin, and it was getting rather late. My car and my instructors' car were both at Moorabbin, so the instructor said "Lets make a dash for it." We cranked up the Beech A19 Sport and took off. The plane was being tossed around like a bucking bronco, to the extent that the microphone flew off the hook and landed on the floor. We navigated by following the suburban streets, and I can clearly remember looking down on a KFC which was close enough to read the signs. Meanwhile, lightning bolts cracked all around us and the static on the radio was deafening.

As we passed the monastry, now Police Academy, we could see the setting sun shining off runway 22, so called inbound for a straight-in approach. We landed without further incident, and as I crawled out onto the wing I looked up at multiple forks of lightning, which looked like some Hollywood disaster movie. I could hardly believe I had just flown through that.

The second incident was on my final solo cross country to qualify for my unrestricted license. Again flying a Beech Sport, I took off from Moorabbin, flew to Mangalore where I performed a touch and go, then headed for Kerang. It was a warm summer day, with lots of thermals, so again the plane was bouncing around. I was navigating via the directional gyro and trying to locate ground reference points, but one place looked pretty much like the next.

My planned track passed between Pyramid Hill and Kow Swamp, a reasonably large lake which should have provided easy reference points. When I should have been abeam Pyramid Hill off my left wing, there was nothing. After scouring the countryside I located it many miles off my right wingtip. I identified that I was approaching ahighway running roughly parallel to a river, which turned out to be the Loddon Valley Highway and Loddon River which ran up to Kerang. I was around the area of Durham Ox. I estimated a new ETA at Kerang, advised Flight Service and followed the highway to Kerang, where I landed and had lunch.

After contemplating what had happened over my cut lunch, (Kerang airfield was unattended), I took off, heading for my next turning point, Stawell. I had to climb to 3500 ft to get air smooth enough to be able to make any sense of the compass ball dancing around like a cork in a washing machine. I soon found that the problem was a badly precessing DG which had led me on a curved track on my way to Kerang. I completed the rest of the trip using the compass and reference to roads, particularly the Great Western Highway.

All in all, two exciting trips, and all good learning experience.

Peter.

A little off the thread subject, but speaking of old propliners still in service, for those who don't have the Discovery Channel on Foxtel/Austar, the series Ice Pilots portrays Buffalo Airways and their DC3 and Curtis C46 Commando, DC4 and Lockheed Electra delivering supplies to the mining settlements of the North West Territory, landing on ice runways and in snow drifts. See the links below.

http://www.airliners.net/photo/0142023/

http://www.airliners.net/photo/Buffalo-Airways/Douglas-C-47A-Skytrain/1868238/&sid=4b6142bb0bb09a8c094fd90aa5cb4c13

http://www.airliners.net/photo/Buffalo-Airways/Lockheed-L-188A(F)-Electra/1366534/&sid=4b6142bb0bb09a8c094fd90aa5cb4c13

http://www.airliners.net/photo/Buffalo-Airways/Douglas-C-54G-Skymaster/1322644/&sid=4b6142bb0bb09a8c094fd90aa5cb4c13

Peter.

Hi All,

A few more photos of some of the extreme airports in the video referred to below.

Overview of the ski-jump runway with 18.5% slope at Courchevel:

http://www.airliners.net/photo//1661407/&sid=d30287c40120b3c78af980daaa9563da

Short final into Lukla (you can see the wall at the far end of the runway and the cliff at the near end);

http://www.airliners.net/photo/Yeti-Airlines/De-Havilland-Canada/0197484/L/&sid=8374f383b5c502b7627150d3d3a643c8

A couple of more shots from St Barth's

http://www.airliners.net/photo//1860307/&sid=b1040360329371773cabc7e279079e36

http://www.airliners.net/photo/St-Barth-Commuter/Britten-Norman-BN-2-Islander/1662952/&sid=b1040360329371773cabc7e279079e36

http://www.airliners.net/photo/Air-Caraibes/Cessna-208B-Grand/1386367/&sid=b1040360329371773cabc7e279079e36

Peter

Hi All,

A couple of months ago Channel 7 ran a program called Most Extreme Airports, including such airports as Gibraltar, with a road across the runway, St Maartens, St Barths (includes an Aztec running off the end of the runway into sand on the beach), and Lukla in Nepal with a brick wall less than 10 metres from the piano keys at one end and a cliff at the other - truly a one way in/one way out airport, and about a 15 degree slope as well.

I recorded the program and can burn a copy to DVD for anyone interested.

Overshoot - St Barths

Approach to St Barths - note BN Islander level with motor cyclist's helmet.

Brick wall at the upper end of runway at Lukla in Nepal.

Peter.

Hi Student Pilot,

Is this a different site to the one I reported in the thread Website Withdrawn on the Chit Chat forum?

Peter.

Hi guys & gals,

It appears that www.rwy34.com has been deactivated. I haven't been able to open it for a few days, and I've seen a blog elsewhere asking what happened to it. The site stopped accepting photo uploads in 2007 but had remained active online until just recently.

This is a pity, because it had a great registration search which gave more information than the CASA search, such as make and model of engine. It also had the spotting at YMML page, which was of great value, especially to new spotters and visitors to Melbourne. These will be missed.

I have located a rego search which many of you may already be aware of, if not it is:

http://www.16right.com/GetRego.php

This is a Sydney based website. It also includes engine type, plus date of manufacture and date first registered.

Regards,

Peter.

P.S. Spotting map at http://jetspotter.com/mel%20view.htm

G'day Bruce,

Welcome to TAA. I'm sure you will enjoy the ride.

Cheers,

Peter.

This goes back a bit, to 1968, but I was 24 and unmarried when I learnt to fly. I did a 21 day course at Moorabbin during my annual leave. So I guess the demographic hasn't changed much over the years. I allowed my licence to lapse when I was 42, due to financial commitments with kids in secondary college.

Great report Zac. Love the photos. Although I live in the eastern suburbs of Melbourne, I don't get to MEL all that often, and never into the international terminal. Very interesting.

Cheers,

Peter (red750)

Hi

If there are any members who do not have photo editing software, I can recommend a free - yes, free - downloadable program which I use for all my photos. While not as powerful as Photoshop, it is quite powerful never the less. In fact, I can't use Photoshop - can't afford it either. While I may not quite achieve professional results, I have received compliments and requests to use some of my photos.

The product is called XnView and can be downloaded from www.xnview.com

If you would like step by step instructions on using XnView, I have prepared a MSWord document on how I prepare photos for upload. I would be happy to email you a copy - send me your email address via the Private Message faciity in User Controls of this website.

Regards,

Peter.

It was on that show, I forget the name, where Australian descendants of war veterans get taken on a journey to discover their relative's war history.

Peter.

Hi Doug, Welcome aboard! You'll like it here - a great group of guys and gals.

Peter.

Hi Glenn,

As suggested, I list the url of my video for uploading when the new section is introduced:

http://flic.kr/p/9UeXt9

Thanks,

Peter.

Hi guys,

I am trying to upload a video which I have up on Flickr to the TAA video section, but I keep getting the error message "The url is invalid". I have tried both the long and short url from Flickr.:confused:

The short url is http://flic.kr/p/9UeXt9

Should the file be uploaded directly from my hard drive?

Your assistance would be appreciated.

Regards,

Peter.

This incident was covered in an episode of Air Crash Investigation which has played a number of times on the National Geographic channel on Foxtel.

There's no such thing as being anonymous in the crowd any more!

Big brother is watching!

FASCINATING BUT SCARY!!! If you were there, they would know it!!

You used to be able to get lost in the crowd, but not anymore.

You can see IN FOCUS the face of EACH individual in the crowd !!!

The additional undercarriage leg spreads the load and reduces runway loading, particularly as the A340 can operate from smaller airports than some other heavy aircraft. The smaller models have a two-wheel centre-line leg while the 600 model has a four wheel bogie. The 747 has two wing mounted and 2 belly mounted legs.

Regards, Peter.