Posted: Tue Jan 06, 2009 9:49 amThe Baron has been sitting on the tarmac at Norfolk Island enjoying sun and showers for so long that it has grown bigger ! If I'd left it there for much longer I'd have soon been able to harvest some hang gliders but time is calling ... Time to move that Hamilton to Perth trip along a bit.
The newer bigger better Baron leapt up to FL310 like a homesick angel
Sometimes nothing but clouds for scenery is a good thing,
because the alternative is 500 miles of nothing.
Soon after this, one of those 'interesting' things happened. We were droning along, everyone half asleep, otto doing a lovely job driving, when suddenly we all became disabled.
Otto's took the form of sensory deprivation - he didn't know where he was or what he was doing, so he just did something. And he managed to do it hard enough that both the artificial horizons went tits up.
My own disability was more along the lines of Tourettes Syndrome - one minute cruising peacefully along, 10 seconds later the horizon is parallel with the bar up the middle of the windscreen, 8 seconds later the sea has flipped over and is filling the other half of the windscreen, another few seconds and we've plunged into a cloud. That Was Odd I thought, luckily the instruments show we're fairly straight and level again. Seems to be a bit fast, but other than that ...
Then we shot out of a cloud upside down diving almost vertically towards the ocean and on came my attack of Tourettes.
After a fun filled few minutes of hand flying I got a horizon back and tamed the beast into sliding roughly along the magenta line again, then realised that the ETE to the next waypoint was now INcreasing. That wasn't good, left me wondering what else Otto had broken, but eventually the really really obvious explanation finally occured to me and we turned around again and carried on in the right direction ... Carefully. Really really wide awake.
So when North Stradbroke Island finally appeared it was greeted with a cheer.
After that it was beautifully routine, vectors onto finals
Down the glideslope like she was on rails
And an absolute greaser
Would have been nice if they'd let me park by the terminal, but heck, walking back on terra firma after terror flyer was no hardship at all !
I'm off to the bar.
Cheers
Gary
The newer bigger better Baron leapt up to FL310 like a homesick angel
Sometimes nothing but clouds for scenery is a good thing,
because the alternative is 500 miles of nothing.
Soon after this, one of those 'interesting' things happened. We were droning along, everyone half asleep, otto doing a lovely job driving, when suddenly we all became disabled.
Otto's took the form of sensory deprivation - he didn't know where he was or what he was doing, so he just did something. And he managed to do it hard enough that both the artificial horizons went tits up.
My own disability was more along the lines of Tourettes Syndrome - one minute cruising peacefully along, 10 seconds later the horizon is parallel with the bar up the middle of the windscreen, 8 seconds later the sea has flipped over and is filling the other half of the windscreen, another few seconds and we've plunged into a cloud. That Was Odd I thought, luckily the instruments show we're fairly straight and level again. Seems to be a bit fast, but other than that ...
Then we shot out of a cloud upside down diving almost vertically towards the ocean and on came my attack of Tourettes.
After a fun filled few minutes of hand flying I got a horizon back and tamed the beast into sliding roughly along the magenta line again, then realised that the ETE to the next waypoint was now INcreasing. That wasn't good, left me wondering what else Otto had broken, but eventually the really really obvious explanation finally occured to me and we turned around again and carried on in the right direction ... Carefully. Really really wide awake.
So when North Stradbroke Island finally appeared it was greeted with a cheer.
After that it was beautifully routine, vectors onto finals
Down the glideslope like she was on rails
And an absolute greaser
Would have been nice if they'd let me park by the terminal, but heck, walking back on terra firma after terror flyer was no hardship at all !
I'm off to the bar.
Cheers
Gary