Australia Archives - Golf Hotel Whiskey

Mid-air bat strike leaves a pilot bleeding (and getting rabies shots)

A North Queensland crop dusting pilot named Josh Liddle has recounted a bizarre incident where a bat smashed through his aircraft windshield, leaving lots of “blood and guts” all over the place that he thought may have belonged to him:

Apparently, Josh was coming back from a spray run over sugar cane crops and he made the mistake of flying through the middle of a colony of bats as it was just after dark when they head out to hunt.

As bad as having a bat smash through a windshield and hit you in the face can be, it could be worst as bats can carry rabies and Josh was covered in bat blood and guts (it looked like a “homicide scene…”). In fact and since its discover in 1994, lyssavirus, a close relative of the rabies virus, has killed the only two Queenslanders who became infected with it as both suffered influenza-like symptoms before slipping into a coma from which they did not awake from. So it was six needles in the face and the chest, one in the arm and two in the bum for Josh as a precaution.

Josh also told the Brisbane Times that the bat colony is massive and it blackens the sky out when they depart. Moreover:

‘‘Their flight path is straight over the local airport. We can’t have this happening too often. We’ve got limited hours [in which] we can do our jobs and they’re during the early morning and late afternoon and that’s when the bats do their thing.’’

For that reason, he would like to see the bats moved on though methods previously endorsed by Premier Campbell Newman that include smoke bombs, noise and helicopters rather than a culling efforts. However, the Queensland Conservation Council has warned that bats are likely to have higher virus loads when stressed by harassment or destruction of their feeding and roost sites. Not to mention, they might take up residence some place else where they aren’t going to be any more welcomed.

The Taylorcraft Auster: Britain’s forgotten wartime aircraft

When you think of British aviation during World War II, Spitfires are probably the fist aircraft that come to mind but the Gympie Times in Queensland has recently brought our attention to a nearly as important but forgotten British aircraft from the war: The Taylorcraft Auster. Unlike the famous Spitfire, Taylorcraft Austers weren’t used as fighters but they played just as important of a role as British military liaison and observation aircraft as they would routinely brave both enemy and friendly fire to help lay battlefront phone lines, map and plot the allied advance, evacuate wounded soldiers and photograph enemy troop movements. Moreover, the aircraft saw extensive action in Normandy during D-Day.

Gympie aviation buff Chris de Vere happens to own one registered as VH-ABA – a registration that was previously held by a huge Sunderland flying boat that was sold to Qantas in 1938 and later scrapped (Hence, the aircraft is painted in Quantas colours). However, the article is a bit confusing as it calls his aircraft an Auster Autocar which (according to Wikipedia) was actually built after the war ended as a touring aircraft but a quick look up of the registration ID VH-ABA reveals that the aircraft in Gympie is an Auster AOP.V built in 1943.

However, owning an old aircraft is both a love hate relationship as de Vere says:

A problem is that getting parts has become damned near impossible.
It is love at first sight, but hate when you realise all the blokes who know how to work on it are retired or dead.
The last person to work on it was in his 80s.

He also commented that there are less than a dozen still flying.

Auster Aircraft Limited itself only existed in Leicestershire from 1938 to 1961 when it merged with Beagle Aircraft Limited which in turn was put into receivership in 1969 after it had become government controlled and needed more financial assistance. Auster models would also be extensively used after the war in the UK and British colonies for a variety of purposes with the name finally being dropped in 1968.

GA flight from Sydney to London on a fuel made from plastics

Few pilots are probably also readers of Plastics & Rubber Weekly or BusinessGreen but both publications have articles about Pilot Jeremy Rowsell who intends to fly from Sydney to London in a Cessna 182 powered from a fuel made out of plastic waste. Specifically, Jeremy’s “On Wings of Waste” project will attempt to break two records:

To be the first to fly via plastic waste fuel at 100% treatment.
To break a flight time from Sydney to London for a single engine piston plane.

To break those records, Jeremy will use a fuel produced by Ireland based Cynar PLC – company that is developing and has a patent applied for a technology to convert a wide range of end of life plastics (ELP) into liquid fuels. The plastic-derived fuel has already been tested in cars but Jeremy’s flight will be the first real-life trial in an aircraft.

However, Cynar chief executive Michael Murray has stated that the fuel needs more testing and trials but it should be just fine in a diesel engine not going beyond 8,000 feet. Jeremy will also be needing 400 litres to complete the London to Sydney flight with that amount of fuel requiring around five tonnes of plastic waste to produce. Hence and if large quantities of plastic waste can be secured, plastic based fuel could become a green fuel alterative for small general aviation aircraft but there is no mention of costs in either article and whether plastic based fuel will be competitive with more traditional fuels.

As for the flight itself which is scheduled for autumn (and more likily for November), Jeremy plans to stop along the 10,000-mile route at Darwin, Christmas Island, Sri Lanka, Oman, Jordan and Malta. He will also be cruising at 5,000 feet for stretches of up to 13 hours before reaching London six days later.

Aussie pilot has a close encounter with an Emu

Sylvia, the blogger behind the Fear of Landing blog had recently posted an interesting video of a near-miss involving an aircraft landing in Australia and an Emu. However, she went a step further and contacted the pilot in the incident to find out his side of the story about what happened.

According to the pilot, he takes a yearly trip up to a 200,000 acre farm (that’s right – the farm is 809 square kilometers and takes 2.5 hours to drive across) that raises cattle and has a landing trip. Normally he calls ahead to have someone shoo away the wildlife (e.g. wild pigs, cattle etc.) and this time around someone came out to shoot a wild pig on the runway.

However, and as he landed, an emu that was:

…was sitting on the side unseen in the bushes and we obviously startled it, and it bolted from cover in front. One of my passengers yelled out, and I jumped on the brakes, hard, and washed off about 40 knots in about 3 seconds! The emu went in front of us and lost his footing on the loose dust, just as the wing passed harmlessly over him! Cue much celebration!

That’s one lucky bird and one lucky pilot and aircraft as we can only imagine what kind of damage a giant flightless bird could have done to a small aircraft!

Australia’s helicopter cowboys

Hat tip to Sulako, the blogger behind Sulako’s Blog, who has recently posted this amazing video of Australia’s helicopter cowboys. Apparently, they lose an average of TEN helicopters per year to crashes from which not all pilots walk away from. However, commenter Steve at the Pub added that:

The nature of that documentary, & the terminology used is of a "Gee Whiz" nature, designed to impress & wow an audience of urban foreigners.
Ten crashes a year? Never counted, could be right. Crashes are not unavoidable, & most pilots never have one.
The height is actually one of the nastier things about crashes. Tree/animal strike DOES occur, as does losing track of wind direction. An engine failure at that height & attitude means the pilot has no options for safe landing.
They are operating in a high density altitude, in hot conditions. Dusty too, which can hamper visibility.
ALL those machines are insured. Insurance for them is expensive.

He also noted that the white helicopter in that clip has recently crashed and the pilot did not survive.

Nevertheless, I guess this is best and the most effective way to do a roundup in remoter parts of the outback.