sixtiesrelic

Thought of you as I wandered past this funny little aeroplane.

It was parked beside a little friend. I think I got them on Video as we passed by it in the Beech-18 yesterday.

Aviation adiction

A couple of more I drooled over yesterday.

Next one I've been promised a ride in! It should be back in the air soon.

AND the next... although I'll be working in thissy

I was thinkin' about you yesterday Chainsaw.... check out the "13th June " elsewhere in Aussie Aviator

Tue 13th

Should have stopped at Redcliffe on your way home.

We were in the right place at the right time, talking to the right person.

He asked us if we'd like to go for a ride in this at 4 PM.

Not as pretty as a DC-3 but biggish round engines... thought of you Chain saw as we grumbled along.

It needed a bit of a clearance of the cobwebs... hasn't flown for a while due to the high auto fuel prices making passengers not spend on treats like going for a joy flight.

Shot over Moreton Bay at 500 feet and climbed all the way to a thousand to fly over Moreton Island.

I grabbed the back seat to video the proceedings from as it had the clearest window. They are all being replaced soon.

Those windows were a good experience for us. Classic Wings will definitely replace crazed windows as they appear in the DC-3.

Yeah Hammer... Was going to fix that!

Old photos

Couple more... These are probably the first colour photos shown from these years as there wasn't colour film only movies back then.

It seems that there was a fad for home movie taking in 1940 to 1942.

hopefully they weren't lost and people are going to digitise them and find each other on the net to make a collection.

This is a composite of a panned shot of the Cadet flying the Junkers G31. Note NO roof and not easily seen here is the fact he has no shoulder harness.

Obviously they're fairly high and he's put his coat on. Another shot of him has him flying in a singlet.

The tennis shades they wore seems to be a New Guinea fashion... most photos of pilots up there have them on.

A Junkers F13 passenger aircraft. They had many of the cargo version which was the same plane but was designated a W34.

Two pilots for four passengers.

I'd say someone was going "finish" or maybe just home on leave from Bulolo and the population came out to see them off.

This is a W34. Not sure where.

Note the bit of a palm roofing to shade the native fire boi who'd wait for the plane to arrive and light a smoky fire for the wind indicator.The "Goal post" the bike is leaning against would be to hang a "Sail" over to provide cover for cargo.

My uncle and father took photos from 1035 to 1942 as well as 16mm colour movies 1940 to 1942.

Here's a couple of cut and pasted frames from panned shots.

Quality is BAD because I started off from a video ... resolution is lousy in video form and was further degraded converting it to digital.

I'll drive the six hour journey to my cousin's to get the original reels and bring 'em back to Brissy to have converted direct to DVD and start again when I've completed an imminent DC-3 project.

This one is a Junkers G31. (The later JU-52 was larger) It was modified for Guinea Airways by cutting an eleven foot by six foot hole in the roof to make a loading hatch.

The cover over the hole was slightly domed for strength and held in place by wing nuts. When taken off for loading a native just held it on the wing. It was quite light.

Part of the incredible strength of the Junkers design was demonstrated when Guinea Airways asked about this mod and suggested the sides of the aircraft would need strengthening. Junkers checked and said NO! there was no weakening of the structure requiring any corresponding strengthening.

They also mounted the three engines a foot forward to make the aircraft nose heavy to allow for the stowage of heavy loads directly beneath the hole in the roof.

The loads were lowered by crane and tied down in the place they arrived at rather than try and move them forward... the heaviest single parts loaded being over seven thousand pounds.

When flown empty they required aft ballast which was usually large river rocks.

A Ford 5 AT and the Catholic Church's Klem Swallow at Mt Hagen.

The strip later became part of the town.

The Swallow landed up at Port Macquarie for many years. I saw it there in the late 1970s.

The Ford was a bigger version of the 4 AT.

The skinny bloke in the shorts was a cadet. They got to fly the cruise in the Fords and G31s and were as young as sixteen.

This bloke flew regularly with my uncle... features in the movie clips often.

Some of the Fords also had the hole in the roof... this was one but it can't be seen from this angle. There is a black and white shot demonstrating it... later.

DC-3

This's the one Ultralights

Ya can't kill 'em ... there's nothing to replace 'em

Hopefully we might meet some of you soon and we 'll give you one of these stickers.

I agree!

Interesting name you use.

There were a lot of us who used it when referring to the A-320 after Pierre the pilot cut the swathe through the pine forest at that French Airshow in the eighties.

Maps..

Gents... Don't let the little black box lead you up the garden path.

Use it as a back up to YOUR navigation skills. You spent enough time pouring over the books and drawin' lines on maps when you studied Nav.

All experienced blokes have been "following the magenta line" when suddenly something went wrong and they had to fall back on their experience. The most catastrophic being the Air New Zealand DC-10 that flew into Mt Erebus in Antarctica, although there was the added phenomenon of, the eye seeing what the mind expected to see but in miniature and it was all over by the time the engines had spooled up to full power.

Map-read, map read, map read and know that you KNOW where you are.

YOU are an Airman... a manipulator, navigator, radio operator and these days a bush lawyer.

I used to go off on holidays in the Tripacer into the remote area for a week to three weeks... no GPS then and learned that it was pretty easy because the maps are good now.

I sometimes had discussions with small time pilots with big egos on the principle of IFR. (I follow roads)

These puffed up popinjays prided themselves on flying accurately along the straight line they drew on the map... Very commendable, BUT not so practical.

They took themselves over some country I diverted around when I looked at it, because, if my trusted engine failed I didn't want to have to put into practice that old adage, "aim one wing at a tree and it'll absorb some of the impact and then the other'll swing round into another tree and absorb more impact.

Mate I prefer to aim at the white line down the middle of the road or at least the middle of a dirt road. They're a bit more like what I'm used to landing on than a bunch of trees.

Trees hurt!

The other thing is, you go down out in the country and there's a good chance you could finish up upside down in a gully hurt BAD, unable to move. The man who comes to find you will be in a vehicle and may not spot you when he passes by while you BLEED.

Landing on the road is going to get the interest of the first passer by, who'll get an overwhelming desire to stop and have a chat.

There's a pleasure in using "witchcraft" (your knowledge you learned from the books and instructor, experience and experimentation that, that little black box steals from you.

As I said before use it as a back up. Check it as if it is a First Officer that says, "Yeah, I got that too!" .

Landing on a road... I think it's long enough ago now to blab about.

A gent flying back East from Birdsville hadn't given any thought to last light. It's SO bright and a lovely warm colour out west, in the last couple of hours of daylight that you can't envisage darkness.

He was soaring like an Eagle Eastwards to Charleville, happy with the world when the colour outside started rapidly going orange-pink and on to dark grey-orange.

Radio compass wasn't working too well... all over the place. ( They do that at dawn and dusk).

Our airman wasn't sure where he was. The Mulga looks all the same if you haven't been putting little marks on the map every time you recognise where you are.

He realized it was time to get on the ground before it was too dark.

Where?

"Ah! there's a car driving along a road with the headlights on.

I'll land behind HIM!"

Did all the right things and remembered to put the gear down. "Wouldn't do do get caught" ... had camping gear for the night and could nip off in the morning before anyone found them and dobbed them in."

Short final... right on the numbers for the short field landing... feeeling good!

Twenty feet and suddenly he's in the dust cloud behind the vehicle, he'd not thought about.

Grit the teeth, shut the eyes tightly and WAIT.

Bonk he's ON.

Brake and try keeping the road in sight through the dust.

Successful stop... without hitting anything.

Look at each other and then outside.

Oh Sheet!

They were on a bridge. Not far on!

Jumped out and pushed the steed back and a bit down the road to a place where they could get it off the road and set up camp.

NOW! this is the story I was told.

Some doubt it... I have a question... What did he tell Charleville about where he was landing?

But the man who told me this, owned the aeroplane and he wasn't relating it in a funny way. He was MAD and the intrepid one was certainly NEVER flying THAT aircraft again!

GPS and Maps

GPS ... nice to have

Maps NEED to have.

Lookin' up as a plane goes by is the mark of a real pilot according to Ernest Gann.

My old man had me identifying aircraft by sound at the age of four, back when they were REAL interesting.

"What's that?"

"DC-3!"

"What kind?"

"ANA!"

Yeap he had me knowning the difference between the Wright Cyclones and Pratts.

From memory I recognised DC-3s, DC4, Lanecastrian,"little plane" and Lockheed although I don't know if I could tell the difference between the 10, 12 14 and 18. I suspect I'd have thought the last two were DC-3s.

I applied the lookin' up principle to my son.

I paid for him to have the maximum number of lessons in an ultra light at the age of fourteen so he got the idea of the lectures as well as the poling a plane around the sky and then sat back and watched.

He doesn't look up! so I didn't shuffle him off to flyin' school at sixteen so he could be a chip off the old block.

I've discussed this with him when he left school and he isn't interested in aviation as a career, so I was right. The Mem Sahib is a bit shitty on me for not giving him the chance, but she was just an air hostess (Flight attendant to you youngies) so doesn't really understand what you guys are talking about.

My old man gave me my private licence then said, "You want a Commercial? ... go off and get it yourself !"

My cousin didn't even get a flying lesson out of his old man. He fought and scratched and got to Ansett. He did the same to his son, who is 10 hours short of a Commercial, but has moved across to operating aircraft rather than being just a pilot.

The old boys like me have seen too many wannabes who are seeing the glory or the money and dad pays. When it's time to do the hard yards they don't have what it takes and move over into I.T. or something else and the old man wasted 50K or so.

Some one, I think it was Toad from "Wind in the Willows" once said, "There's nothing quite like messing around in Boats".

Planes weren't too common when that was written.

There's definitely SOMETHING about planes!

Me I've often lept off the throne to run outside to see what is passing overhead.

PA22, do you have one?

It's an old post... but Yes I did own a share in this one for four years...

Difference of opinion with members caused us to sell it. Majority wanted to make it a tail dragger.

One of the best light planes I've flown for it's fun factor.

The only fixed pitch one I've seen with a manifold pressure gauge fitted.

I flew three fixed pitch ones and one constant speed.

Constant speed 150 HP climbed better but cruised at the same speed as the 160 HP fixed pitch ones.

The third fuel tank was great if we were getting concerned about fuel. You could drain the left tank to empty and transfer the seven gal from the aux to Left in 25 minutes. Got a pretty good idea of consumption and range that way.

I did it for real, en route from Urandangie to Alice Springs when I found the head wind worse than expected and I'd given a very conservative endurance on the plan and needed to update it. Landed on a strip and dipped the tanks and was able to give the accurate revised estimate.

This photo was taken on Lake Frome. It's a scan of a photo album page.

look .......

The one in the Avtar is RVN.

This is RVE's latest colour scheme. I asked Ray about the rego but can't remember his answer.

I think it was a popular British scheme in the thirties.

I would have painted a Moth this way if I'd have ever owned one, although I'd make the perimeter of the tail thicker.

I guess it would depend on the engine, how high they could climb. I see figures for the DH-60G as 14500' and the DH-82 as 17500' the Major is a distinct combination of the two, Engine and cowl same as a Tiger and the unstaggered unswept wings of the Gypsie.

We used to climb all the way out to the aerobatic area at Moorabbin in 1960 and made 7000 feet to do aeros, stalls and spins. I don't remember having to circle or turn back to get the height. From memory the area was under ten miles from the aerodrome.

Wouldn't want to go much higher... too cold.

The interesting thing in the Moth family is the Fox which is a Tiger with a modified body to fit four passengers inside. The change of body shape gave more lift to carry the extra weight and it flew five knots faster than the Tiger.

Can't remember. I'll look in my logbook when I get a chance, it was after I'd done my first solo.

RVE was the best tiger in the RVAC fleet in 1960.

I am buying a new computer in August which will allow me to download from camera to computer then learn how to use it, so it will be a while.

I'll cut the sound out and put in music.

look

No to both questions.

We went up at one PM at Redcliffe. I had shorts and a woolly shirt on, but then we didn't fly long ... about fifteen minutes. I froze often enough in Melbourne in Tigers as a Student Pilot in 1960.

Strangely I didn't need to wear my goggles. I was madly videoing, often hanging my video camera out the side and as high as I could get it for most of the flight to get as many angles as I could and grabbed a mate from a hangar to video us from the tarmac with my old camera to get a balanced view of the proceedings.

It was slower than a Tiger... didn't get fast enough to completely stow the slats which was a revelation.

It has an ASI out on a wing strut which was remakably accurate.

You don't need the "bat and ball" as yaw is indicated by a warm breeze on your left side from the air coming off the exhaust pipe or a cold right cheek if you are yawing right.

It doesn't have the Tiger's need for working the rudder ALL the time which must come about from the Tiger's swept wings.

It was a real joy to fly.

The pleasure is, I'm the seventh in the family to go in a Gypsie.

My grandfather, uncle and father learned to fly in one and took both my grandmothers and mother up as passengers in the 1930s.

It's nicer and quieter to fly than a Tiger Moth too.

what's better

Fixed it ... more finger trouble

What's better..

Five at the Mt Hagen show in 1973. It was a much larger area of tarmac and most were parked on it in front of and behind the one I took the photo from.

what's better...

The other line on that same day. If you look closely you'll see there are two Ansett "3s" behind the last TAA one.

Try this one Glenn.

What's better....

Sorry about the quality it WAS 1973 in the tropics.

Unfortunately all my negatives were in the only box that got wet while sitting under a tarp on the wharf for six weeks.

When I got them the books, negatives etc were welded into a mass of glug that grew the most incredible collection of mold on and through it.

I don't think of my experiences in PNG as "There we were..." I was flying airliners, so most flying was reasonably mundane.

Of course by to-days standards I guess it was much more exciting.

My cousins are starting out with a DC-3 at the moment and ask questions on the operation of the big round engines and twenty six thousand pounds of tail wheeler and I have to rack my brains because I was at the end of the DC-3 era and things weren't emphasized as critical in their operation, you just did them without realizing their importance because that was how you were taught... eg not letting the prop turn the engine at low power and and put a negative stress on the engine.

I have maintained for years that you "fly" a prop aeroplane and "operate" a jet ... in fact to-day pilots operate an auto pilot.

You don't feel your way with a jet, just point the nose up or down to a defined attitude and set the power to a prescribed setting and the thing flies at the required speed.

Don't be in a hurry to "fly the big jets"; bug smashers are the real fun... proof of that is, the number of jet jockeys including myself who have owned a lightie. ALSO don't get caught up in the ceremonialism of flying right in the middle of the SAFETY envelope like you were taught.

I've seen plenty of that and the guys think they're wonderful pilots where as they've not gone close to the edge and felt what it is like before you get bitten. They aren't real pilots in my view.

I'm not saying break the rules!

I used to get my mates to stall with half flap, power on and in a turn... (Lookin' over your shoulder in a tight spot on base) inexperienced blokes didn't like it and didn't want to do it.

After we'd done it enough times they were comfortable and didn't see it as scary any more and had more faith in the aeroplane and themselves.

If you're frightened of some aspect of flying, tackle it and overcome it because ONE DAY you might inadvertently get yourself into that situation and having always avoided it you'll go to pieces and DIE!

Once you face and overcome a boogieman you wonder how you could have wound yourself up a pretty straight forward maneuver.

Yes! I owned a PA 22-160 ... DEB and the oil temp was always OAT plus some figure I forget now, when cruising. Great aeroplane.

The manual gave around two minutes ground running time while parked.

I'm not sure you are going into aviation with the right attitude.

I've met plenty of people who went for the money or glory. Daddy paid! They didn't have the bottle to do the hard yards mentioned here by others and gave it up.

You've got to be hungry for it.

The quickest way I pick up on who's going to make it and who won't is hearing, "I wouldn't mind being a pilot" and, "I'm going to be a pilot".

The graybeards who do the interviewing can pick the hungry young man and the glory boy in seconds of meeting them.

Pretty boring being a 747 second officer mate! The glory wears off in a short time.