Friday, April 15, 2011

flying dogs and beer slabs

Not really much happened here in the last time but there is still something I wanted to share for a while but somehow never got to it. Australia is a country of huge farms and farmers working on them all around the country. Some have just unbelievable areas of land to harvest in several states. Many are using GA aircraft to commute between their farms and houses. It just takes too long on a road.
Farmer-pilots are very funny and easy going people and we had dinner with one last night. The stories we heard are just unbelievable and way to funny to be true. A famous "flying dog" YouTube film brought us to that subject:


Bruce has a Cessna 182 RG to fly all around his farms. He also had quite a few dogs in his life but all of them were used to flying from their puppy time and therefore he never experienced any problems with them. One day he was about to fly his farmer fellow together with his blue cattle dog. The big old dog has never been up in the air before. Neither the owner nor Bruce were sure how and if the dog is gonna behave once he figures out they are flying. Getting the beast into the plane turned out to be no problem whatsoever. He just jumped in like into any other means of transportation probably thinking this just was a funny looking car. He found his spot on the backseat and fell asleep straight away. They started the engine - nothing happened, taxied out - dog still asleep, took off - dog in the land of dreams. A fair bit into the flight the dog woke up, stood on the backseat, looked at the two guys in the front and started happily waving his tail. Then he decided to have a look out of the window. He moved to the side, look down the right window ... and rapidly stopped waving the tail. "Oooops, there we go" - thought the two guys in the front and started talking the usual stuff to calm down the dog: "Good boy, good dog, lay down" and all the other kinds of crap. The dog apparently wasn't happy at all with what he was seeing through the right window and moved to the left one. Same scenario there: staring out the window with his tail all the way down. Not good at all. Since the dog was already pretty old and experienced he figured he didn't like the height and moved to the floor where he fell asleep again. After a refueling stop on the way, he jumped back in like nothing happened but never used the backseat again. His spot was on the floor. He never dared to look out of the window either. 
There is one more thing we learned yesterday. You can get a gun permit in this country if you have a dog you are flying with. Just in case the dog goes nuts during flight. Well, reason enough I guess.


Much worse than a dog can be two of your buddies with a beer slab in the back seat. The same guy, Bruce, and three of his mates decided to go for a longer trip in the 182. The back seat passengers took good care of the fluid supply for the whole flight and placed a slab of beer behind the back seats. They got really thirsty shortly after take off. Couple of bottles later they figured they were getting bored and decided to ask the pilot for some entertainment. "Hey you! Do something!". We all know how it is being the only one sober in a car or plane. The pilot didn't seem interested at all and kept flying straight ... till the passengers forgot what they were asking for. Few more bottles later it started getting hot in the back and the passengers pulled their seat belts loose to take the jumpers off. Bruce and the other guy in the front pulled their belts tight and started the zero G show with the drunk mates screaming their lungs off in the back. They didn't even hear the big bang the beer slab made departing the plane through the back window ... It took everybody a while to notice the unusual windy conditions in the cockpit and the absence of all liquid supplies. Luckily the flight was in the middle of nowhere and nobody got killed by beer falling off the sky. I'm still laughing just imagining somebody working on a farm, in the heat, wiping the sweat off his forehead and saying to himself: "I would die for a cool beer.." ... and there it lands just in front of him :-)
Shortly after landing Bruce called his repair shop and asked if they had a back window for the 182 by chance. "What happend?" ... "You don't really wanna know mate!".

Monday, April 11, 2011

Autumn

You can definitely see the Autumn has arrived. The weekend was just freezing cold, with gusty winds and rain showers. This didn't stop all the addicts from heading to the airfield though. The RAA club organized joy flights for everyone who wanted to give it try. They even advertised it in a local radio station. Very many people showed up and both Tecnam's were going up and down all over again. 30 minutes trial including Grampians flight for as low as $50.

Tecnam boarding completed

Watching others flying doesn't do any good to your mental health and the decision was made that Ziggy has to get some practice in this windy conditions. The winds were shifting all over the place with some blue holes, rain showers and low dark clouds switching from one into another with no warning. A good training day where every landing is different from the previous one.

I explained the gate remote programming process the other day. It takes quite a few guys to succeed. So if you have ever wondered how many pilots does it take to check the engine oil in the small Jabiru here it is:

single, double, triple and quadruple check to make sure nothing goes wrong

Yes, it takes 4 pilots to succeed. One to keep the lid open, second one to know which way the dip stick unscrewing goes, third one to check the level and a supervisor to make sure nobody was cheating. 
This reminds me of a situation years and years back in Minden, NV. I was helping out Tom in his glider maintenance shop. One of the customers wanted to also have the tires changed on his trailer. I drove down to the tire shop and picked up the new ones that were already on the rims. All there was left to do was to change the two wheels. Since Tom was pretty busy with some more serious stuff I offered to change the wheels. The trailer was parked outside the shop in front of his office window. Tom couldn't resist secretly supervising my work and I could see his his eyes hiding between the blinds in his office window. He never admitted it though ...
So I guess the same happened yesterday. It's weird enough to let a woman fly but it's probably even worse to let her mess around with the engine unattended ;-)

a bit of blue sky was rare

the Arrow seems to heavy to push it by hand

After a group of highly professional, skilled and experienced oil level checkers cleared the Jabiru for pattern work Ziggy was allowed to jump in and practice his landings. Despite the tricky conditions he did well and Peter said he's getting there. Reason enough for a beer. But before that a progress check on the new runway construction site had to be done.

electrical boxes for lights in the ground

All the electrical boxes for runway and taxiway lights have found their spots in the ground. A pretty deep grooves for all the cables are also ready and the next layer already covers part of the new runway.

Sunday, April 10, 2011

Gliding Coaches meeting

The plan was to take a Jabiru and fly to Bacchus Marsh for the meeting. After a week of beautiful weather though Saturday turned out to be the changing day with a cold front moving through. We could have made it down there by the air but there was no way to get back. Strong gusty winds preceding the actual front, low clouds and constant rainfall with very poor visibility. The decision was made in the morning - we go by car. 
It took us almost 3.5 hours to get there (breakfast stop at Stawell Mcdonald's included). 
The airfield has two crossing runways and is located very close to Melbourne suffering from all kinds of airspace restrictions. It doesn't stop the 3 (three!) gliding clubs from operating at the field. They all share a common very well equipped clubhouse and all the facilities. People keep asking themselves - why don't they join together? Some things would be easier then but there have to be reasons not to do so. It seems to be working well the way it is now.

they all have different names

The meeting we were attending was the Victorian Gliding Coaches meeting. We were the two newcomers to the group and felt very welcome. We discussed the dates for the upcoming season state events and established organizers. There is gonna be very many comps and coaching events next season and everyone can find something for themselves starting from the XC beginner level to an advanced competition training. 
The coaches from different clubs presented the coaching activities they have been performing in the last season as well as plans for the next one. They are all very dedicated and keen to promote cross country flying all around Victoria. Like all over the world clubs are suffering from lack of new young enthusiasts. There is hope and movement in the right direction to see though. 
It looks to me that kids nowadays have way to many options of leisure time activities and soaring is just one of them. A very demanding one too ... and not a "show-off" kind of activity ...

in front of the clubhouse

We had a nice lunch, discussed for couple more hours after that and hit the road with one scheduled stop in Ballarat. There is a big bottle shop that has Zywiec Beer. With two boxes of Zywiec in the trunk we were good to go back and enjoy the chilled out Saturday evening ... Cheers!