Aviation MegaThread!!!!

the picture's not working here

Thanks. Fixed.

Can someone tell me how to post pictures? I've got a few that I could share. In the late 80's I flew a King Air based in Cambridge Bay, NWT....now called Nunavut. Their were endless photo ops and I was too foolish to take advantage of my time up there and didn't take any pictures.

Looking back, the most fun I had was when I was ripping around in a C185 on floats or flying up North.

Sadly, for all of us, that prick Osama and his band of assholes fucked it up for all of us. I can't even take my child in the jumpseat because it's considered a security threat. In the past it was a lot of fun inviting people up front for a chat and a look around.

It's still fun flying airplanes for a living but the regulators have taken a lot of the joy out of it. I'd like to get the wonder back that I had as a young fellow, blasting around and landing in fields and on roads, doing aerobatics. just having some fun. Ya know?

Thats the big attraction to motorcycling for me. No voices in my helmet, I love the backcountry and sailing down the roads with some buddies and exploring the old roads that people don't use any longer.

Keep the pics coming!

Great thread.

Garrett

http://www.advrider.com/forums/showthread.php?t=919

Set up an account at a photo hosting site, upload your pictures, then copy them into your posts here.

Try photodump.org it's free and no accounts required.

I have tried to post in this thread but it gets rejected for being too big at 354000 characters or something like that.
1. I posted the same thing on another site without problem.
2. It is written in MS Word & copied & pasted.
3. I tried copying & pasting it here as i did in the original site but got the overflow error. That was on a different thread some time ago. I also tried breaking the code into just a few lines but still got the overflow message.
4. I suspected it may be the formatting code in a MS Word document. This time I saved it as a DOS Text document then copied & pasted that here but get the same overflow problem. And the picture (image) lines get broken into 2 pieces.

How do you guys make long postings? (Like the first one in this thread which is lots more than mine.)

Flying up in the arctic is sure different. I don't know how they navigated before GPS. I tried following a map track over the tundra and muskeg, but all the ground/water looks the same and could only determine my position near major landmarks.

A few years ago we flew two Cessna floatplanes up to Nunavut and camped on the Thelon River about 100 miles west of Baker Lake. The pic is our campsite. At this site, apparently on two different occassions, seasoned floatplane pilots ran their planes up onto the beach while still on the step. They had no explanation for what happened. It was my first time in the tundra and I think I figured out what happened. Floatplane pilots are so accustomed to judging distances relative to the size of trees that the small brush and no trees made the shore look much farther away than it actually was. I noticed that phenomenon when I went for a walk to check out a feature I spied far away on the open tundra. What I tought would be a half hour walk to see big boulders turned out to be a ten minute walk to see smaller rocks. I left me scratching my head for a while until I made the connection with the planes running up onto the beach. Wierd.

I'm just one little lottery victory away.................

Me too

Any one of these for me.







A boy can dream can't he?

Before I was HappyRiding, I was HappyFlying. He I am with my old 150 doing about the same thing I now do with my WeeStrom. I really don't miss the corporate flying at all but I miss landing at sunset and camping under my wing. A Cessna 150 wing makes an excellent front porch.
Here's to November Eight Papa Whiskey - a good bird.

F-16 vs. C-130


THERE IS A MORAL HERE!

A C-130 was lumbering along when a cocky F-16 flashed by.
The jet jockey decided to show off.



The fighter jock told the C-130 pilot, 'watch this!' and promptly
Went into a barrel roll followed by a steep climb. He then finished
With a sonic boom as he broke the sound barrier. The F-16 pilot
Asked the C-130 pilot what he thought of that?



The C-130 pilot said, 'That was impressive, but watch this!'
The C-130 droned along for about 5 minutes and then the C-130
Pilot came back on and said: 'What did you think of that ?'
Puzzled, the F-16 pilot asked, 'What the heck did you do?'
The C-130 pilot chuckled. 'I stood up, stretched my legs, walked
To the back, went to the bathroom, then got a cup of coffee and a
Cinnamon bun.'

When you are young & foolish - speed & flash may seem a good thing !!!

When you get older & smarter - comfort & dull is not such a bad thing !!!

Yeah, it was a real education for me. I learned from an Arctic Legend, Willy Laserich. When I was up there, there were beacons all over the place, but there wer long streches of simply holding a heading and waiting to pick up the beacon. The compass, as you know is useless, so we lined up on the runway set true heading and blasted off. Willy was a VERY seasoned pilot with 30,000 plus hours (yes you read that right) when I was up there in '89. Sadly, he recently died, he was still an active pilot and regularly flew a Lear 24. Good guy to work for as well.

GPS has really made the industry safer. I got lost on one of my first trips years ago in a float plane by not paying attention. Figured out where I was and got things straightend away, touched down with little fuel and slightly wiser. Now, GPS is integrated into flight management systems and we do approaches with them down to 400-500 feet. Impressive stuff.

I only have about 750 hours on floats so I never got comfortable enough driving something up on the beach. I taxiied into a couple of underwater reefs (with no damage) so I was more carefull about things.

I love your pics of the float flying...damn I miss that. Enjoy it. I'm jealous.

I'll hunt around for some of my pics and try to download them here.

Oh yeah, my dream plane....is a new Twin Otter that I can camp in AND bring my DRZ with me wherever I go....

C'MON LOTTERY.

Garrett

I recently read an article on Willy Laserich. He started flying freight to and from native villages back in the 50's. He didn't have a commercial charter and fought with Transport Canada for a long time. He became quite a legend. Was he wearing his orange toque when you knew him?

Show your arctic flying pics when you find them.

Here's our company's Debonair. Just recently dropped in a new engine. Runs better than ever. I haven't been flying in a while, though. My medical even needs renewed. Hopefully we'll get more chances to fly in '09 than we did last year.

I'd love to pursue the Beach 18 as well. I have flown in one several times.


Re: Stinson
I've flown in this black/gold Stinson Trimotor when I was 11.
I still remember it vividly.
My dad's facility painted it and they took us for a ride when it was done.



My "man toy goal" that is "potentially achievable" is a T28 (unlike a corsair or p51 which have 7 digit price tags... you can pick up one of these for the price of say..a house "We don't need a beach house sweetie! Lets get a warbird instead!").
I flew in formation at the Titusville Airshow with a B25 and with another T28 a couple of years ago.
Somewhere I have a video I shot from the T28 I was in of the T28 beside us doing rolls, etc.


...and a project I'll be definitely pursuing (hopefully sooner than later) will be something I'm sure Nick has drooled over...
Rotorway Exec 162F

I learned to fly on the CH701, if the 801 is anywhere near as good as that, its a great airplane

What was it like?

Yeah, I've heard they're extremely popular outside the US.

My son worked on this development before going to work for Boeing.


Nice looking plane and I hope they sell a bunch, but who knows.