Orion rising The first thing you notice is its size. In fact, the most common reaction is ‘Oh. Wow!’ Although it’s hardly enormous by modern standards, the Lockheed Orion’s ancestry in the Electra turboprop is a vivid reminder that even small airliners are not small aeroplanes. To walk from SAAM’s darkened restoration workshop into a display hangar that is dominated by a retired RAAF AP-3C … Continue reading Home for a hunter
Messing about in planes This won’t be news to TAVAS members any more, but a couple of weekends back I had the enormous pleasure of hanging out with my mate Andrew at the TAVAS Museum at Caboolture, north of Brisbane. (Plus other shenanigans, which we needn’t go into here.) TAVAS Museum I’d like to stop here, in case your boss comes in and you have … Continue reading (G)olden days
Vale, General Yeager Sometime today, you will find yourself processing the news that the famous twinkle has forever left the clear eyes of Brigadier-General Charles E. Yeager. I heard the news from my friend Ronald, who heard it on the radio. Then I checked and found I’d not known for around five hours. Part of me regretted that. Another part was glad I hadn’t found … Continue reading Missing Man
Marie Marvingt In March 1915, an injured pilot of the French Aéronautique Militaire was transported to a field hospital behind Verdun, 200km east of Paris. There, one of his nurses learned he had been the only pilot available to fly an important bombing mission. Within days, that nurse would become history’s first female combat pilot. No ordinary nurse This was still the early days of … Continue reading Eagle & dove
Point of view Apparently, we’re not quite ready to move on just yet – and my last post on the Early Days At O’Hare brought in at least one response that’s worth a share. (By the way, I’ve fixed the image links in that piece now, so you can actually read the magazine article.) Phil Thompson is an artist and self-confessed travel geek living in … Continue reading O’Hare City
The next 10 years Despite the large amount of historical content on ‘airscape’, there’s also an abiding interest in what’s coming next… If you want to see the future, hold a mirror up to the past. So when I was recently asked what I thought would be aviation’s biggest influencer in the coming decade, I was happy to do a little crystal ball gazing. Prepare … Continue reading Future flight
Duty Cycle I spent the other Sunday fulfilling my quarterly obligation to perform a day’s desk duty at the South Australian Aviation Museum. Actually, ‘obligation’ is hardly fair. As the only thing expected of SAAM volunteers apart from a modest annual membership fee, I see my quarterly desk duty as excellent value for money. A Sunday spent greeting visitors and chatting with a couple of … Continue reading Aviation Museum
Next step “Look at that!” ‘That’ was a Diamond DA-40 making a sharpish climbing turn about 50 metres in front of our windshield. It’s as close as I want to be to an oncoming aircraft in mid-air. I know the local Diamond fleet has TCAS (Traffic Collision Avoidance System) installed and we had our transponder on, so I imagine one future ATPL just got an … Continue reading Back in the saddle
Flying with Dale Klapmeier I’m sure Dale Klapmeier needs no introduction here. However (or perhaps ‘And so’) the chance to spend 40 minutes with the co-founder and now ex-CEO of Cirrus Design Corporation is not to be missed. The treat comes to us courtesy of London-based management consultancy ELIXIRR Consulting Limited, whose own founder and CEO, Stephen Newton, is an enthusiastic pilot himself. That, by … Continue reading Airtime
RAF Photographic Competition Somewhat atypically, I’m rather confined to an official press release for this post. But the annual Royal Air Force Photographic Competition can be counted on for such glorious images that it’s well worth the constraint. So here goes… People’s choice Voting is now open in the crowning People’s Choice category of the Royal Air Force Photographic Competition 2019. Organised by the Royal … Continue reading Hot shots
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