I arrived at the Qantas Maintenance base at 9:15am this morning, without much of a clue where to go. :confused: Parking was fine as it said in the email … “There is a white building next to Gate 23 and opposite there is a parking area for the visitors. It will be unlocked and people can just drive in and park.”
I waited around at the front gate for some others arrive, and we then walked over to what looked like a guards/security gate office. When we got there we found other people waiting to go on the same flight. I had to get a security pass and sign a paper in this security office then waited for a little longer just to see if anyone else was coming on the flight.
We now walked over to the front of one of the Maintenance hangers were we saw this nice old bird, the DC-3 “Hawdon” VH-AES. :biggrin: There was also a QF 737-800, 767 and an Australian air Express 737 too.
All us passengers didn’t board the DC-3 right away, we were allowed to walk around and look and also take MANY pictures.
We all boarded the plane at about 10am and found our seats. One of the QF volunteers went thru the safety procedures etc.:rolleyes:
The engines started, the pilots did their usual job doing their checks, then we started to taxi.
We taxied to “Whisky” then “Alpha”, past the main terminal at YMML, then left at “Echo”. We “held short” of RWY16 and waited for a 737 to land then we were given clearance to take off!! :rolleyes:
At 10:23am the engines revved up, and got up to so many knots (I don’t know how many) then we were off, was interesting about the noise, it wasn’t as noisy as what I thought it would be. We climbed up to about 3000 feet until we got to Port Philip Bay, then we descended to about 1500feet. Since we had low cloud cover, we couldn’t see much at 3000ft. Was good the captain had our flight at 1500ft, so we could see more out the windows!
We flew down the bay on the east side, past St Kilda, Moorabbin, Frankston. We circled around Mount Martha Marina a few times then kept doing south down to Rosebud.
We circled again and then headed back towards Melbourne. Still at 1500ft I was allowed to visit the cockpit and see what was happening. I was told that with these sight seeing flights that they are all visual.
We flew over the city on the western side over towards St Kilda then over Williamstown. I then heard that we were in a holding pattern, so we flew around Melbourne, St Kilda and Williamstown loop again.
After the second time we then headed north east, then north. Past YMEN, Broadmeadows, and started turning west at Greenvale Reservoir. By this time we had descended to about 1000ft. We had clearance to land on RWY16. We now were heading 161 and had a nice smooth landing, in fact it seemed very smooth, even better than some Boeing and Airbus flights I’ve been on!
[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BjHedw5a4fs]YouTube - Qantas TAA DC-3 "Hawdon" VH-AES[/ame]
We turned off RWY16 at "Golf", turned right at "Alpha" and headed back to Qantas Maintenance hangar area.
Overall it was a fantastic flight, no problems no hosties, only volunteers looking after us 20 passengers! :biggrin:
Wish to thank Ray and Jean for donating the flight and also David from VicDeaf as well. :biggrin:
Also thankyou to the 2 pilots Ray Baker and Chris Pennycuick. :biggrin:
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