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Thread: [Acro] Australia trip
Message: [Acro] Australia trip
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From: "Dr. Guenther Eichhorn" <gei at head-cfa.harvard.edu>
Date: Tue, 05 Aug 2003 23:26:45 UTC
Hi, Earlier this year I asked for help with renting a plane in Australia. I just came back from this trip and I had a blast. Many of you from the list responded with helpful suggestions. One of them was about an outfit in Parkes who is getting into organizing such rentals, as well as rentals with a pilot, etc. I contacted them and decided that is the way to do it for me. They said they would help me with getting my license validated, have all the maps, etc, etc. They offered to have a pilot go with me if I paid for the hotel on the way, since this was new for them too and they wanted to make sure everything worked out OK. I declined the pilot, since I wanted to do the whole thing myself. Everything worked out very well. There were a couple of glitches: CASA (the Australian FAA) required to have a check flight with a level 2 instructor. The Parkes people sent me up first with a level 3 instructor. Then they noticed that was wrong, and I had to do that again with another instructor. Another little problem was that one of the fuel cards had expired, so I had to put some of the fuel on my credit card, for which they reimbursed me. Last, the GPS conked out towards the end of the trip, probably because it wasn't hooked up to the aircraft power, but ran only on batteries. Getting my license validated worked out fine, one of the people from Parkes came with me to CASA and helped getting everything sorted out. I had planned to get checked out the first weekend I was in Australia, and then get the airplane and fly north starting the second weekend. I rented a car on the first weekend to drive to Parkes for the checkout. That is when I realized that Parkes is quite a ways from Sydney (5 hours drive). This is a bit of an inconvenience when using them for plane rental. They were very helpful in solving the problem of me getting to Parkes to pick up the plane and then back to Sydney after my flight. I had to take the train halfway to Parkes and they picked me up there and drove me 2 1/2 hours to Parkes, the same on the way back. I looked into renting a car one-way, but they wanted to charge US$300 for a one-way rental. You can fly to Parkes commercially for US$130, which would have been fine, but the flights that I would have needed were already booked. This is something to keep in mind if you ever want to do something like that. Altogether the people in Parkes were very helpful. The plane was a C-172, in good shape. The engine of the C-172 ran as smooth as silk throughout the whole trip (except for a couple of episodes of carburetor ice). I picked up the plane on Saturday, 26 July and headed north. During the first part of the trip the weather was kind of low, but flyable. That is when I had one of the carburetor ice episodes. Once I got to the coast, the weather cleared up, and stayed clear for the remainder of the trip. The first day got me to Gladstone, Queensland. On Sunday I reached my goal, Airlie Beach, near the Whitsunday Islands. I stayed there for 4 nights. On Monday and Tuesday I went Scuba diving on the Great Barrier Reef, which was fantastic. On Wednesday I went on a whale watching tour, which was maybe even better. On Thursday I headed back south to Hervey Bay. This is supposed to be the whale watching Capital of the world. On Friday I went on a whale watching tour. In Airlie Beach I thought I had seen really great whales, but it got a lot better in Hervey Bay. At one time, one of the whales stuck his head vertically out of the water just about 3 meters from the boat we were on. It was amazing. And it wasn't even full season yet, in a few weeks it should get even better. On Saturday I flew back to Parkes, dropped off the airplane and headed back to Sydney. Altogether it was a great trip. It was a bit expensive, but worth it. The outfit in Parkes is just starting to provide such services, so I assume that the few rough edges will smooth out quickly, and they should be a nice place to get a plane, if necessary with pilot, for trips like this. Guenther ---------------------------------------------------- Guenther Eichhorn | gei at cfa.harvard.edu Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, Cambridge, MA CPL,ASMELS,Glider,LBH,IA,CFI | Pitts S-2A: N1GE DC-3 type rating | Flying is the Pitts See: http://acro.harvard.edu/ACRO and: http://acro.harvard.edu/SOARING
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