Fly Me Friendly

The other morning I was crewing hot air balloons out in the Yarra Valley. It was very foggy so the drive out was “interesting” and we spent a couple of hours waiting for it to lift. While it was very thick horizontally, it was only about 150′ high so Ronnie (the pilot) thought it would burn off after sunrise.

We gave the passengers their breakfast while we waited (usually they eat after the flight) and it paid off as by 8am the fog was breaking up and sinking further into the valley. By 8:30 it was sufficiently dispersed to make for a great flight so we piled the passengers into the vehicles and went to the launch site. Today was very close – actually just across the road from the winery restaurant in a clear patch near some vines. Throw in a bunch of kangaroos coming over to investigate and the passengers were ecstatic.

 

As usual we were too busy getting the balloon inflated & launched then packing up and starting the chase for me to get any pictures, which was a shame as there were some spots I would have loved to have been able to pull over and take a few. We stopped in Yarra Glen to get a drink and I managed to get a couple of shots there.

The rest of the flight went well and we retrieved them from a dairy farm’s field. Fortunately no cows had been in the field for a while so there wasn’t much need to “mind where you step” :)

 

On the way home after cleaning, refueling and packing up, I noticed a small aircraft with an interesting colour scheme doing circuits at Lilydale airport (YLIL). Given the road I use goes right past the threshold of RWY36, I decided to stop and get some photos. So, do you think it was worth it? :)

[caption id="" align="alignright" width="150" caption="Jump aircraft about to land"][/caption]I’d seen “Grumpy” once before at the Lilydale Airport Airshow late last year so it was great to get a flying photo (especially one like this :).

While I was waiting for another circuit and photo opportunity, a Piper Warrior taxied out, did a run up and then entered the runway & took off. Not long after I watched a pair of parachutes land (looked like two tandem jumps) and, of course, a few minutes later their jump plane landed. By then “Grumpy” had finished flying and things were quiet, so I got in the car and headed home.

So, is Lilydale airport always this good around 1pm on a beautiful Friday afternoon or did I just pick the right 10 minutes to take a few photos? The sun wasn’t in a perfect spot for some of the photos, but it certainly seemed to be the right place, right time and right incentive to stop and watch a great aircraft – gotta love it!

I’ve uploaded the photos I took while crewing and the photos from Lilydale in my photo gallery.

As some of you may know, I’ve been pretty busy over the past couple of weeks working on a new hush-hush project. Well, the wraps finally came off the other night at a soft-launch so now I can tell you all about it.

For those of you who’ve just joined the blog, I get to spend a bit of time flying a 737-800 simulator and writing stories about it. The simulator is run by Flight Experience Melbourne and is well worth the visit if you’ve never been. Simply put, it’s one of the coolest ways the general public can experience being a commercial airliner pilot.

The owners of Flight Experience wanted to create a commercial blog to help spread the word about what they’re getting up to with the simulator, their merchandise and lots more. They were looking for someone who could set up a blog and run it for them. Someone who understood the aviation world, knew the simulator and could string together some acceptable prose.

Lucky me, eh? :)

So we sorted out the agreement, set up a space and got to work. I loaded the blog engine (WordPress, of course), hunted down a good theme (Atahualpa), came up with the design, built the header image and started loading content based on the information Carlo, Deb and the Flight Experience team provided.

The result can be found at Experience This! and it’s well worth checking out.

Certainly it’s early days but we’ve got some great plans for new content, including biographies of the Flight Experience instructors, merchandise reviews (I get to watch lots of aviation DVDs – neat! :) and lots lots more.

So head on over and check out the blog, sign up to the RSS feed and keep up with what’s new.

It has been a very long time since I last saw this set of “Views of the Captain” images. My thanks to Bryan over at Passion Aviator for pointing me at it again.

So funny :)

On Easter Monday this year, I was hanging out at home and looking at the beautiful blue skies when the phone rang. It was Nico asking if I wanted to go flying today. HAH! What a crazy question :) I grabbed my gear, picked him up and we headed off to the Royal Victorian Aero Club at Moorabbin Airport (YMMB). We had been contemplating flying their Seminole out over Phillip Island and back, just for some fun. Turns out that was booked out over the weekend for a run up to Queensland. Fortunately, the club’s Alpha was parked on the ramp and just itching to be taken out for some aerobatics. Woo hoo!
The Alpha is a two seat side-by-side fully aerobatic trainer from Alpha Aviation in New Zealand. The aircraft at RVAC (VH-VCF) is an R2160 model with a Lycoming O320D (160Hp) engine, bubble canopy and a sporty look to it. Originally made in France as the Robin 2160, the rights to the design and the construction jigs were purchased by Alpha Aviation when Robin went out of business. Sadly, Alpha went out of business in 2007, which is a shame as these are beautiful aircraft and a lot of fun to fly.
Nico is an aerobatics instructor and certified to fly the Alpha from the right seat, so I got to log the flight as an intro to aeros. W00t! Getting into the aircraft was easy with a step behind the wing then onto the wing itself. It’s then a simple matter to step in, sit down and start adjusting everything. I’m over 187cm tall and there was about 1cm between the top of my headset and the canopy when we closed it. I’d say it was a perfect fit but the stick kept hitting my right thigh on full deflection. With a bit of experimentation we found places I could arrange myself when not flying so Nico was comfortable with the controls. Still, even when I was on the controls I would whack my right thigh when rolling. Oh well…
	The cockpit is well laid out with the standard flight instruments on the left hand side, Garmin gear on the right (including a GPS) and engine temp/pressure gauges (and the G Meter :) along the bottom. The instructor has the joy of looking left to see all the instruments but hey, they’re used to that :)
After a quick preflight we fired up and taxied over to the run up bay to verify that everything was ready to go. There was a lot of movement on the ground and busy circuits aloft, as is typical at Moorabbin when the weather is beautiful and it’s a weekend or public holiday. We taxied out to the hold point for the runway and were cleared to go after a couple of landings and touch-n-go’s went before us. The aircraft was quickly off and into the air, heading out from Moorabbin over Frankston and then to the training area. The Alpha is quite responsive and the view is great everywhere except just below the wing. We reached 5,000′ about the time we arrived at the aerobatics part of the training area. It’s conveniently located above a line of high-tension power lines which help to mark the area AND give you something to align yourself with during manoeuvres.
After doing a few steep clearing turns and waiting for one aircraft to transit the area, we were ready to begin. We cinched down the harnesses, verified everything was stowed and started off with a simple barrel roll. Yeee haah! From there we did a loop and then another barrel roll. After that we progressed to a stall-turn at which point we confirmed that yes, I am much heavier than Nico as the aircraft wanted to break left instead of right as Nico wanted. A bit of effort on the rudder and it did as it was told. I’d been following through on the controls and so after another barrel roll we went through a loop and then it was my go to do it with Nico guiding and following me. Works well when the instructor is guiding you and nudging at the right time :)
We took it pretty easy through all this (+3G to -1G) but it’s been *ages* since I last had a hit of Vitamin G, so by now I had the fresh air vent blowing right on my face and was apparently going a little white. I was smiling and loving it but yeah, time to head for home. Oh well :) We headed back to the reporting point (over the GMH factory) and had just called in when another aircraft called that they too were at GMH and on the same altitude. Yikes! Visions of the recent mid-air collisions at Bankstown and here at Moorabbin flashed through my head as we both looked everywhere for the other aircraft (stupid, I know, but you can’t help it some days). We finally made out the other aircraft a very long way off from GMH so we relaxed a bit. It was annoying that they were calling in at the wrong spot but understandable as, thanks to an increase in houses and factories in the area, the GMH factory is no longer such an easy to spot landmark. After calling in and being acknowledged by the tower, we were cleared to make our way over Sandown race track where the Easter Nats car races were going on. From there, we were lined up on base for 17L and cleared in behind another aircraft that was already on final. The bubble canopy certainly made for a great view as we turned onto final and came in for a beautiful landing (yes, that was Nico – not me – there’s a reason I use the handle Falcon124 :) We taxied back to the RVAC ramp and shut down. A fun flight in a great little aircraft. Good for getting from A to B and also good for throwing around the sky. Ya gotta love that! I’ve loaded all the photos from the flight into a gallery on my site. Now to figure when I can next get chance to go fly with a friend once again as that seems to be the only way I’m getting off the ground lately…