om: Dominic V. Crain <domcrain@tpg.com.au>
To: lml@lancaironline.net
Sent: Thursday, May 28, 2009 8:42:35 PM
Subject: [LML] Some Photos.
Some photos of my solo circumnavigation of continental Australia.
The trip data is included in Excel format.
After leaving Jandakot the weather at Mandurah was heavy precipitation with
next to zero visibility and the GPS track shows how far inland I was forced
because of low cloud before being able to turn South to Albany (not far
from Fred Moreno's joint).
However the GPS tracks (both Garmin and AvMap) show
I followed the coastline
closely over the 8015.2 nautical miles in 42 hours 3 minutes and 14 seconds
on the Avmap trip computer. That included a local flight in Perth which I
extracted from the Garmin data to put into the trip data in Excel.
From Williamtown RAAF Base, where I was given permission to land for fuel,
the weather on the coast to Horn Island at the top of Cape York Peninsula
was generally pretty bad in passing showers and low cloud, so much of that
sector was flown between 500 to 1500 feet and over water.
I wore a life jacket at all times.
ATC was generally a pain in the neck and left the impression that little
interest was taken in VFR operations at all.
This is unwise in my view.
The camera was unfortunately inadvertently left in my wife's hands when I
departed Moorabbin and I did not retrieve it until she arrived to meet me in
Darwin, which accounts for the lack of Photos prior to there.
One
of the great sights was flying up Victor 1 outside Sydney beaches and
heads at 500 feet. A Virgin B737 passed overhead as I passed Botany Bay, and
the city with the Centrepoint Tower was quite a sight even though the
visibility was hazy. I once flew a B727 around the Centrepoint Tower at 1200
feet ( it's 1000 feet) giving the tourists a great view of a great machine.
But that was a past life.
At Williamtown my departure instructions were to turn downwind and track to
the beach at 2000 feet then up the beach to the exit point of the CTR.
As I did so four F/A18 Hornets returned from a training sortie and circled
around in front of me at 2500 feet about one mile laterally. It was quite a
sight and the camera was IN MELBOURNE!!!!@#$%!
Cheers for now.
Dom Crain
VH-CZJ
In for annual tomorrow.