Friday Fat Jet (been a while).

OK, I know it's been a while. No excuse.

Again from Alex, C17 on a VERY wet day.

There has been torrential rain, floods in Queensland and elsewhere in Australia of late.

Condolences.

I have received the sad news that the Brother-n-Law of one of the guys - Paul - who haunts one of the forums I do has lost his life in a flying accident. He was an Ag Pilot - a Cropduster.

Some folk inhabit a different, more dangerous and braver world than some of the rest of us.

Here is a youtube tribute to some of those frontier souls.

Friday Fat Jet!!!

Been a while...

Courtesy of Alex's photography.

All-weather Flat Jet

It's been a while - too long a while - since I posted some of Alex's photos.

This is an F-111 displaying her 'all-weather' capabilities. F-111s ('Pigs') are flown by Nos 1 and 6 Sqn RAAF. Two of the oldest squadrons in the world, at 1 Jan 1916 and 15 Jun 1917 they even pre-date the formation of the RAAF, which is itself one of the oldest air forces in the world (1921). How is that possible - because they were part of the AFC - Australian Flying Corps - part of the 1st AIF - Aust Army - (1915).

Time for a Friday Fat Jet :-)

Friday Fat Jet Courtesy of Alex.

Time for a Friday Fat Jet!

Courtesy of Alex's camera. (I've been remiss of late - partly because I didn't want to overdo the genre - but dammit, I like aircraft, and Fat Jets, and Alex does some fine work).

More Hornet pics

Here are a couple more Hornet (F/A-18) pics from Alex's camera.

There was an Airshow a couple of weeks ago at Amberley (RAAF Base - Qld) and Alex got some great pics.

I particularly like this next one;
Sorry about the paucity of posts lately. Work and 'life' just hasn't been conducive to posting - 'Blogger's Block' if you like. Alex's photos deserve some coverage though.
(More of Alex's pics from his own website , and Amberley airshow here).

Pigs and Hornets.

More fine photography from Alex. Pigs (F-111s) and Hornets (F/A-18s).





The vapor is an interesting effect when the wing surfaces are working hard.

Friday Fat Jet

Another great shot from Alex, this one is a little different but very effective; "...shot in the very extreme of dusk twilight, ie. it was almost dark..."

P3s. Courtesy Alex

Some more great aircraft photography from Alex.
In this shot, Alex has captured the final stages of gear retraction.
Another fine shot. Of particular interest for me, because these aircraft, (P3 Orions) are what I worked on while in the RAAF. 11 Squadron (P3Bs) and 492 Squadron - which was the maintenance squadron of 92 Wing - that wing then consisting of 492 Sqn, 10 Sqn (P3Cs), and 11 Sqn (Bs). These days it's all Cs, but when I first joined, 10 Sqn still had Neppys - P2V Neptunes.

An interesting story on Neptunes from Wikipedia on the 'Truculent Turtle';

"...Loaded with fuel in extra tanks fitted in practically every spare space in the aircraft, the Turtle set out from Perth, Australia to the United States. With time, the aircraft has come to be called "Truculent Turtle" but, in fact, its nickname was simply "The Turtle"; which was painted on the aircraft's nose (along with a cartoon of a turtle smoking a pipe pedaling a device attached to a propeller). With a crew of four (and a nine-month-old gray kangaroo, a gift from Australia for the Washington, D.C zoo) the plane set off on September 9, 1946, with a RATO rocket-assisted takeoff. Two and a half days later, the Turtle touched down in Columbus, Ohio, 11,236.6 miles (18,083.6 km) from its starting point. It was the longest unrefuelled flight made to that point—4,000 miles (6,400 km) longer than the USAF's B-29 Superfortress record. This would stand as the absolute unrefueled distance record until 1962 (beaten by a USAF B-52 Stratofortress), and would remain as a piston-engined record until 1986 when Dick Rutan's Voyager would break it in the process of circumnavigating the globe...".

Another Friday Fat Jet (from Alex).

Courtesy of Alex's fine photograhy.

Friday Fat Jet, courtesy Alex.

This Friday's Fat Jet. As always, courtesy of Alex's artful photoworks.

Friday Fat Jet

Again, Thanks to Alex for some great photography.

A face only a mother could.....

A face only a mother could love? Nah - but beauty IS in the eye of the beholder.
And a night shot of an F-111.

Again, thanks to Alex.

Friday Fat (ish) Jet

Another great photo from Alex. This is a BBJ (Boeing Business Jet), of 34 Sqn RAAF. These are VIP transports (eg for senior politicians). (A sort of mini Air Force One).

Friday Fat Jet, Friday Flat Jet

You could just about reach up and tickle her tummy...
...Or look over her shoulder.
(Look at this for a USAF C-17 at Avalon. And here for one at Richmond - look carefully for what I think is a compressor stall on the backup!)
...And a Pig producing about equal amounts of thrust and noise on full AB. (More here).

All photos courtesy of Alex.

Tuesday Thin Jet

Another great pic from Alex's portfolio. RAAF 707 Tanker/Transport.

Not many left. To be replaced by these, A330 based MRTTs - Multi Role Tanker Transport aircraft.

The farewell art work on the tail is impressive. And those turbojets sound pretty impressive on full song too.

Wednesday Bugsmasher. (Isn't she boo'ful?).

Fighters, and newer aircraft like the C-17 get a lot of attention, but these lovely ladies have long been the true workhorses and often unsung heroes for the RAAF. This is an 'H' model, we also have the 'J' variant in service.
(From the camera of Alex).
My time in the RAAF was spent first on these, and later these as well (11 Sqn and later 492 Sqn. - great aircraft for a tech - several tonnes of electronics to keep you interested).

[Update 21May08: Image re-uploaded - link to Alex's album didn't work too well!]

(Good) Friday Fat Jet.

Prep for an early morning run.
From the camera of Alex.

Quite big inside. And I also particularly like this stunning photo. Art.

Update: 22Mar08. Peter (Worldman) left this message;

"Well, I guess that you know by now that I am a "plane" freak. Though the biggest one I ever flew myself (as a pilot) was "only" a Piper Cherokee 180 (a long time ago). But I have given the virus to my son who now (with some 4'200 hours) will leave... "Swiss" to join Emirates on an A330. Which fills me with pride.". [Edited - slightly shortened by Phil].

Congratulations Peter (and to your son as well of course). It is a very fortunate soul that, in this world, gets to follow their dreams and has a profession or job that they love. Some know what they want to do from an early age (good on 'em). Some of us still aren't quite certain what we want to do 'when we grow up' - even at middle age! (Ah well - "Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans" (From a John Lennon song I think).

Friday Flat Jet, Friday Fat Jet (plus vid links).

Some like cars, bikes, or boats. But, IMHO, planes are the ultimate big boy's toy. A Top Fueler pass may be one of life's experiences, and ZZTop nice n loud is pretty good.

But there just isn't anything that can quite compare to a fast jet, low, on full AB.

These photos, again, some of Alex's great work. (Now 4 C-17s on the hardstand as I understand it. Thats 250, 500, 750, 1 billion dollars worth of aluminium lined up in a row!).

As promised, some vid links;

An F-111 doing some party tricks (New Year's eve (I think). And Evans range.

This is a nice little compendium. (Knuckleheads behaving ba... er normally).

And Something for Peter and pumuckl (the Swiss,interestingly, fly much the same aircraft Australia does - F/A-18s, and we used to fly Mirages).

And just to show that other than western air forces fly fast too.