alf jessup

All good plans can turn to Sh!t just as ours have, but we are making the most of what we have.

6 months back the planning started for an outback adventure with some friends who haven’t really been too far from home in their planes.

Planned to fly from West Sale to SwanHill- Broken Hill - Coober Pedy - Innamincka - Thargomindah - Longreach - Charleville- Dubbo - Temora - Echuca - Stawell then back home over 14 days so booked accommodation and car hire.

Then!!!!! 3 weeks before departure good old Vic goes in to 1 week lockdown so SA & Qld close the borders to us Mexicans, hmmm wait a week then call a meeting and decide to cancel all SA & Qld booking I made.

Hmm NSW still open so book SwanHill,  BH, White Cliffs, Comeroo Camel station, Dubbo, Temora and Stawell including car hire at BH & Dubbo.

All going well day of departure other than the crappy weather up until lunchtime of Saturday 26th of June.

Finally get away at midday and make SwanHill for the night and get offered  a car from a great bloke by the name of Cliff Banks who runs the Sunraysia flying school for us to get around during our over night stay. (What a champion you are Cliff).

Morning of departure to Broken Hill greets us with the news of regional NSW declared an orange zone (what the F**k!!!!).

Hmmm, can still go in but need to get tested when we get back but if it goes to red we have to isolate for 14 days (not happening Jan)

Right, on the phone cancelling all accommodation and car bookings in NSW and nutting out where we can go in Vic and once again booking accommodation and car hire, so come up with SwanHill 3 nights now (thanks again Cliff for the car for the last 3 days) - Porepunkah 2 nights, Yarrawonga 1 night, Echuca 2 nights, SwanHill again for a night then on to Stawell via the painted silo route for 4 nights  then back home.

Currently in Porepunkah now after flying in today, the group are loving it and it’s now 4 planes 7 people after a mate few up yesterday to meet us with his son at SwanHill after just finishing his Nav training.

Planes are 2 Tecnam Sierra’s, Tecnam Golf and a iS Foxbat A22LS

Video of the landing at beautiful Porepunkah this afternoon.

Cheers Alf

Well I guess he could say the child is a newborn and his wife went in to expedited labour when the engine failed, was born on descent to the forced landing cleaned up and dressed before touchdown.

Oh and the child aged a year through the experience of it all.

That should work?

Never need to ever buy a lotto ticket those guys in the Metro, amazing it held together.

Well, guess he won’t be flying like a knob again, hey train driver how cool do I look, yeah mate you looked cool right up until you messed up, toot toot.

winner

Very fortunate to get out of that and going to make full recovery.

Guess it is a game of seconds and mm as a degree here and there at impact could have had a totally different outcome.

12 hours ago, old man emu said:

It's a simple thing to forget to secure your helmet's chin strap if you are thinking about other things. I caught myself in that position recently on my motorbike. 

OME, 

Motorbike does have a written checklist, when I had my Microlight it was part of the pre takeoff/pre landing checklist. (Helmet/harness secure)

one cannot rush the art of flying.

Condolences to the families of the lost aviators, blue sky’s and tailwind to you both.

Only one will win and that’s the lawyer as the win whether you win lose or draw, just need to take a cup of concrete and harden up, get over it move on as you will be better for it not going through that school.

1 hour ago, KRviator said:

Replace those two victims with you and your missus then. Or me and the KRviatrix. Yes, he was uncurrent, and "legally" should not have been there. But it wasn't his technical skills as a pilot that brought him undone. This could have happened to any VFR pilot - and to be honest, I'm surprised it hasn't more often given the airspace layout & lack of clearances available from some agencies.

 

0717 & 45NM north CFS - Request clearance from Controller A.

Refused, directed to  contact Controller B. (Now I'd be thinking 'there goes Plan A')

Request clearance from Controller B.

Advised "I don't control that airspace, contact Controller A" (Now I'd be thinking 'Well, phuck, there goes Plan B')

Contact Controller A again. Directed to contact Controller B again (Thinking 'WTF is that going to achieve?!?')

0721 Contact Controller B, advised "Clearance only available below 1,000"

 

Bear in mind this whole time he's covering over 2.5 miles a minute, is closing on the 5,500' step that he doesn't have clearance to enter, has lost his Plan A & B, and likely didn't have a Plan C such that at that rate & RoD still had a not-insignificant airspace infringement in the 5,500' step.

 

I wonder what the report about the UH-1 crash at Newcastle will have to say on this issue (clearances & airspace layout) as well...

Well for starters you cannot replace them with me or the missus as o would not have been there if I was not current.

His decision making alone brought him and his son undone, as sad as it is it should not really have happened but it did.

At the end of the day he wasn’t current or licensed so he should not of been flying so it shouldn’t have happened.

Can’t blame ATC on this one as he should not of been in the air piloting a plane.

Susan sounds like a bit of a Covid Karen.

Bet you got more chance of getting a 4 lane freeway built from Australia to the USA across the Pacific from the Genie you found in a bottle on the beach than asking him to figure out how her mind works.

29 minutes ago, old man emu said:

Can you fail a BFR?

OME, 

I guess if you crash you could call that a fail.

Depending on who your instructor is is the difference between how you feel about a BFR, me I find them very valuable with the 2 different instructors I have had over the years.

Mercy Mission rescue of flight 771.

Movie based on a true story of an American ferry pilot ferrying an Cessna 188 ag wagon from San Fransisco to Australia in December 1978  who’s navigation equipment malfunctioned and got lost between Pago Pago and Norfolk Island.

A commercial Air New Zealand 767 Jet  without onboard radar eventually found him after many hours searching for him and using many old WW2 pilot tricks to pinpoint his location from the wise old captain and the navigator.

You can watch the full movie off the net.

enjoy, I have many a time.

On 15/10/2020 at 12:12 AM, Steve L said:

My 912 has soft start on it. I believe it retards the timing until a few seconds after start. Surely it could be adapted to most engines.

Steve, the soft start allows the engine to fire 4 degrees after TDC which will save the sprag clutch from any damage, once it reaches 1000 rpm it reverts back to 27 deg BTDC like the standard ignitions.

I have to replace my sprag clutch soon as my battery got a bit tired a while back and it kicked back a few times and damaged it.

you will never have a problem with soft start modules.

1 minute ago, alf jessup said:

The Faeta is very Tecnam Sierra looking in the fuselage but does not look like it has the dihedral in the wings like the Sierra does but it’s wingspan looks bigger than the Sierra, but overall it would be a lovely plane I think and it looks quite good.

On 05/12/2020 at 12:20 PM, SSCBD said:

I rest the case,  looks very slow to me, and yes one up. But I agree that its bloody slow. 

 

 

The Faeta is very Tecnam Sierra looking in the fuselage but does not look like it has the dihedral in the wings like the Sierra does but it’s wingspan looks bigger than the Sierra, but overall it would be a lovely plane I think and it looks quite good.

Guess when you got over 55,000 Rotax engines world wide compared to 6000 Jabiru engines You don’t have to be Einstein to figure out which is the reliable one.

145 in 2018, 72 in 2019 & currently 90 so far this year, pretty happy for a hack RAA pilot who is restrict to flying only weekends as the RAAF curtails weekday flying.

+ I worked away for 6 months of the year on rotation for the last 26 years up until 3 months ago.

1645 hrs in the last 16 years so cannot complain too much.

Wires huh, hope he wasn’t showboating.

Glad the aviator is going to be ok.

 Nothing much other than killing yourself happens when you are stupid.

Ambitions exceeded ability in this case.

I would love to ferry a plane from Australia to the USA & back, something I have always thought about.

Not much just a little hop over a ship load of water.

Speaking of RAA employees absconding to CASA, is Barnfield still on the RAA books?

After his CASA tenure of a few days, I believe he came back into the RAA fold as a "contractor".

I've heard hide nor hair of him since....

He is still there as a assistant tech manager, just sitting in the background waiting to pounce I guess.

Still no Sportpilot.

Me neither, lost about 6 months of subscriptions I paid for when they stopped it also

Isn't Michael Monk the Australian representative for an overseas sourced RAAus aircraft as reported in Australian Flying? How do you spell conflict of interest if this is so?

Mike , apparently so, my bet is it gets a huge advertising plug in the mag if we ever get it.