Plane Crazy Down Under

We recorded a lecture presented by Lang Kidby at the Australian National Aviation Museum (Moorabbin Air Museum) about flying a Vickers Vimy replica aircraft from England to Australia to re-enact the 1919 flight by Keith & Ross Macpherson Smith and an Avro Avian from England to Australia to re-enact Bert Hinkler's completion of the first solo flight from England to Australia in 1928.

Despite some audio quality issues (lucky 13, right? :) we have a great chat with Owen Zupp covering his early aviation life, how working as an Ambo provided a good foundation for dealing with emergencies, his father's influence and his "There and Back" fund raising flight project.

Despite his better judgement, Bas Scheffers comes back to hang out with us once again as we discuss some of the news items from the past week or so.

This episode we're joined by Bas Scheffers, a Recreational Aviation Australia pilot (our version of the US Sport Pilot rules) who flies out of Parafield airport (YPPF) in Adelaide, South Australia. We have a great chat about flying RA-Aus aircraft, GAAP issues, the benefits of learning to fly under RA-Aus instead of the usual GA, the information available from the recreational flying community and even discuss the new AAAF Forum.

Once again we get to interview Matt Hall, Australia's Top Gun RAAF pilot who's making a big hit in the RedBull AirRace as the first rookie to ever score a podium. We talk with Matt about his performance at Porto, his preparations for Barcelona, how visualisation plays a major role in his flying and flying his P51 Mustang.

This episode we're joined by Dan, David & Rob from the Airplane Geeks podcast to discuss airline news and have a great discussion about air traffic control issues here & in the USA. We also have interviews with Dr Bruce Searle, dean of the Australian Centre for Mission Aviation, and Andrew Temby, aerobatic pilot & owner of a YAK-52TW.

We thought we'd have this episode out within a few days of our previous one, but there was so many news items to review, so much to discuss and so many bits to splice together that it took a whole week to bring it to you. Weighing in at almost 2 hours, this episode has interviews, GA, follow ups and much much more.

This episode detours from our usual opinionated discussion of the news and instead features an interview we were fortunate enough to arrange with Matt Hall, an ex-RAAF F18 pilot who has flown the F15 on exchange with the USAF and is currently flying an MXS aerobatic aircraft in the RedBull AirRace. We were expecting to get a half hour or so to chat with Matt and were thrilled to discover an hour had passed before we all thought to double check the time.

After almost two weeks we finally get another episode out, but this one should be worth the wait. We have our first guest discussion session (@MaxFlight from the Airplane Geeks Podcast and we have our first interview (Carlo Santoro from the "Flight Experience Melbourne" 737 simulator). In addition to all this, we also discuss some current news stories.

Steve's back from his trip to the USA and, despite some jet lag woes, he's in the recording studio and the banter is flowing in our longest episode yet. Sadly, the first 15 minutes sound like Grant's testing NASA's new Interplanetary Internet and experiencing a really crappy connection. Not to worry, it soon clears up and the rest of the episode quite clearly reveals our usual commentary on this week's local aviation news stories.

This week's episode comes out a little late as Steve's still in the USA and Grant was up in Sydney for the PCDU / SimpliFlying TweetUp that happened along side the Asia / Pacific Aviation Outlook Summit 2009. A great time was had by all who attended the event but now it's back to work as there's news to read, interviews to arrange and a podcast to produce. For now, here's a review of the news.

A recent event at Oshkosh has been the Podapalooza “gathering of aviation podcasters” where attendees get to meet some of the voices in their heads. Much as we would have loved to go to Oshkosh this year and attend Podapalooza, it’s a long long way to swim from down here so all we could do […]

We were a little delayed because Grant was trying to do it all this week, but better late than never. With Steve in the USA, Grant was flying solo and discovering that he missed having someone to put the gear up on take off. Despite that, he does manage to review a number of current news items.

Surprisingly less than one week after our first episode was released, we're releasing our second episode. During this one, we again discuss a number of current aviation news items.

Weighing in at a whole 27 minutes and 18 seconds, here's the first episode of the Plane Crazy Down Under podcast. During this episode, we discuss a number of news items.