Fly Me Friendly

On a cold & windy morning at at the end of May, we had cancelled the day’s scheduled balloon flight in the Yarra Valley so on the way home, I figured I’d drop by Moorabbin Airport to pick up a few items from the pilot shop. I arrived about 45 minutes before the shop opened but fortunately there was some activity over at the Australian National Aviation Museum (aka Moorabbin Air Museum) where I’m a member, so I drove back over to check it out.

It turned out to be the Volkswagon Car Club who had come to set up a concourse amongst the aircraft on static display outside the museum hangars. The museum staff had opened the fence to allow them to squeeze in and get positioned. Excellent!

There were VW beetles everywhere so I started grabbing some photos which have now been loaded into an album on my gallery. They were still bringing in vehicles as I was leaving to go back to the shop, including a great collection of Kombi vans and more modern vehicles as well.

Unfortunately I was pressed for time as I left so I wasn’t able to get photos of the rest of the cars that arrived. The main length of fence along Second Ave was packed with vehicles squeezed in around the aircraft. Most amusing to see :)

For those of you who don’t know it, I’m co-host of the Plane Crazy Down Under podcast, currently Australia’s only aviation podcast although we know of a new one that’s about to start up soon. It’s been going for almost a year and, thanks in no small amount to the efforts of my co-host Steve Visscher, it’s growing steadily and our production quality is light years ahead of where we first started.

We’ve interviewed Red Bull Air Race pilots like Matt Hall, Nigel Lamb and Hannes Arch. We’ve been to airshows & aviation events, hanging out on the flight line in the “no public areas” (wooo :) We’ve chatted with RA/GA pilots, airline pilots, analysts, air traffic controllers and enthusiasts. We’ve even scored media passes and are starting to have all sorts of opportunities open up that, with a bit of effort & luck, could turn into a great future merging aviation & technology.

It’s been a great first year (we launched our first episode in mid-July, 2009) and there’s still so much that we can be doing. I’ve got more than I can manage given I’m also trying to earn a living, but to say I’m excited about all this is an understatement. Who knows, maybe one day I’ll get that media ride in a combat jet… (ya gotta have dreams :)

While returning from Nykolai’s scout camp I dropped into Avalon airport (YMAV) to check out Tanker 10, a converted DC10 that’s now used as a super-heavy water bomber. It’s parked in the keyhole and not easily viewed without a huge zoom lens, something I don’t have.

On the day I was there, a QANTAS 747-400 was also in the keyhole, possibly getting ready to depart after maintenance.

Over at Plane Crazy Down Under, we’re trying to get up closer to Tanker 10. If we do, I’ll be sure to get better images loaded here.

 

 

 

 

While I was there, I also grabbed a few photos of Canberra A84-232, now parked as a gate guardian near the entrance. I also grabbed a photo of QANTAS’ last 747-300, ex VH-EBU. Once painted in the Aboriginal “Nalanji Dreaming” scheme, it is currently stripped of engines and remains as just a fuselage & wings painted a base blue colour with a red tail. It was being used to provide spares and keep the other 747-300′s running. Now that they’re gone, it is probably going to get parted out into scrap.

We’ve been getting through some rather crappy weather for the past two months. Lots of wind and rain with the occasional good weather day sneaking in here and there.

I crewed the hot air balloons again last weekend and could see on the account sheet at the fuelling station that we’d only had about 10 flying days in the past month or more. Ouch!

It’s AFL grand final this weekend and about 100,000 people are expected to squeeze into the Melbourne Cricket Grounds for the game, despite the predicted crappy weather on the way. I’m supposed to be crewing both days this weekend but it’s not looking great.

To give you an example, check out this TAF for Melbourne Airport over the next 30 hours:

TAF AMD YMML 240409Z 2406/2512 29015G28KT 9999 LIGHT SHOWERS OF RAIN SCT035 SCT045
FM240900 35013KT 9999 LIGHT SHOWERS OF RAIN SCT030 SCT040
FM241200 36020G32KT 9999 SCT040
FM241800 36028G42KT 9999 LIGHT SHOWERS OF RAIN SCT030 BKN040 OVC080
FM250000 34020G34KT 9999 LIGHT SHOWERS OF RAIN SCT020 BKN035
FM250600 29015G25KT 9999 LIGHT SHOWERS OF RAIN SCT025 SCT040
INTER 2406/2412 4000 SHOWERS OF RAIN BKN020
INTER 2500/2510 2000 SHOWERS OF RAIN AND SMALL HAIL PELLETS BKN015
RMK FM240600 MOD TURB BLW 5000FT
FM241200 MOD/SEV TURB BLW 5000FT TILL 250800
T 17 14 12 11 Q 1009 1009 1009 1007


This would have to be the longest TAF I’ve ever seen. Plus the weather is continued crappy with increased patches of crappy likely.

Not great for ballooning :(

For those of you who may like Japanese manga/anime and flying, I definitely recommend checking out Area 88, an anime equivalent to Top Gun. I had been reading comics for some time and stumbled over the Area 88 manga in the 1980′s. Amazed by the attention to detail in the drawings, I was hooked. When I found the Original Video Animation (OAV) and 12 episode series on DVD, I had to pick them up as well.

An excellent summary of the plot and various differences beween the manga, OAV and the series can be found at the Area 88 article on Wikipedia . As mentioned, the attention to detail is excellent, the story is entertaining and the music in the 12 episode series really helps bring it together. There is enough difference between plot lines & scenes in the manga (comic), the OVA and the series to make it worth collecting all three.

If I let my “picky aviation geek” side come out (the same “picky aviation geek” that gets me in trouble when I watch Die Hard 2 with friends :), I can find any number of issues that I can point out within Area 88:

• There are a number of different aircraft types at the base so maintenance & spares must be a nightmare
• The series introduces a “poor kid” pilot who flies a Harrier but he flies it like any other aircraft and doesn’t make effective use of it’s ability to VIFF. This is slightly balanced in the OAV because the Harriers are on the enemy side and the mercenaries have to adjust their tactics to deal with their viffing.
• The base’s airstrip has “A 88″ at each end where usually there would be the runway number (eg: 03, 31, 27, etc). Sure, it’s the base’s code (Area 88) and it could be there, but really, no.

There are a number of other issues that lead to a slight cringe factor at times, but on the whole there are none that make me give up in disgust. Fortunately the story, music and well drawn aircraft keep me hooked and make it easier to ignore the niggling bits.

It’s definitely worth reading/watching just for the pure enjoyment factor. Not perfect, but good enough to own and watch/read every now and then.

Once again crewing balloons in the Yarra Valley produced some amazing “Kodak Moments” today. Given the weather this morning, I was pretty sure we wouldn’t get to fly.

On my way out to the shed at o-dark-hundred I was driving through patches of thick fog around Lilydale airport. At the shed near Balgownie Estate, the winds were blowing around me as I waited for Davin to arrive so we could start preparing the balloon & vehicles for the day. After meeting the passengers, we tried a few different launch sites but all were too high winds to stand a balloon up.

At 7:30am we were on a field that’s usually sheltered from northerlies as one of QANTAS’ A380s did its usual morning arrival into Melbourne Airport (YMMB). We were about to cancel the flight when the winds dropped and we realised there was a chance to go. We quickly set up, inflated and got the flight underway. While the passengers enjoyed a near perfect day for a flight, Davin & I played chase on the ground, trying to get ahead and be ready to help out when they landed.

While chasing balloons as ground crew, occasionally you get the chance to grab a great photo (like the one here). Usually, you see what could be a great photo but are too busy clearing the launch field or giving chase (or there’s no where to pull over and stop).

Today was one of those days where it sometimes just all comes together and you get a chance to take a good photo. Gotta love it.

Each day I crew in the Valley or in the city, I try to get a few good photos if time & effort permit. Today’s photos were few but, generally, good. Any good photos I manage to take while crewing wind up in my Best Of collection.

After crewing I dropped by Lilydale Airport to see if Dominique was flying at SkyDive Melbourne but not today. I then went over to the aeroclub to see if someone knew the pilot of “Grumpy” (a beautiful old Stinson L5B). Sure enough, they did – in fact, I got to meet Jeremy who was probably flying when I was out there the other day and got a great photo of “Grumpy” on short final.

Another great day in the valley. Blue skies, warm sun and lots of aviation related activities. Not bad for winter, eh? :)

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’s been over a week since I was at Avalon Airshow and I’m only getting around to posting about it now. Sure, I ran up a few Twitter entries about it but I’ve not had a chance to really blog it. This time it’s thanks to lots of work to do since the show finished, plus spending some good time with my son before he visits Argentina with his mom for a month.

I’ve also been editing photos before I can upload them. I’m not someone who can just slam the raw pix up online. I like to weed out a few first, plus edit those that need lighting towers removed (the bane of any airport photographer’s existance :) or any other gear like mobile lighting rigs, etc.

I’m getting there and the first few have been uploaded into the Avalon Airshow 2009 album on my flying gallery. I’ll upload more as time permits and post on the blog when it happens. I’ll also get around to posting what I got up to on the two days I was onsite along with other thoughts about the airshow.

You know, a rose by any other name would still have thorns. For those of you who may be wondering why I’m using the handle “Falcon 124″, this quick note explains all.

It would seem that my blog is getting noticed out there as according to Google Analytics, my traffic is up (yay). Even if I never went to check out the analytics information though, I’d still know that awareness was building, just by the volume of spam being automatically captured by the Akismet plug-in on the blog. There’s also the GMail spam filters on my email address – they’ve been trapping lots more too.

My thanks to those other blogs out there who have cross linked to me – that’s very much appreciated and I’m in the process of updating my Blogroll down the side of the page.

Meanwhile, at least I know that the spammers have noticed me :)