The Honeymoon Flights - Part 1

This will be a rather long post, so I will split it up into at least 2 posts, maybe 3.. After 2 months of planning, the time was finally here to take off on my honeymoon flights. The original plan was to be around 25 hours of flight time, as part of my hour building for my CPL. My wife also enjoys flying and we wanted an adventure for our honeymoon rather than just plonking ourselves at a resort somewhere.

I had booked an Archer for the trip and but the week before we were due to leave I was running through some planning with the maintenance guy at my school and he said the Archers would both come due for their 100 hourly during the trip! Damn! The Arrows were out of commission, and I wasn't checked out to fly the Cherokee 6, so they kindly offered me one of the newest Warrior's they have, which are very nice, glass cockpit and quite new.
I really wanted the extra 10hp and the weight allowance, as well as the auto pilot. I wasn't planning on doing too much with the auto pilot as I am honing my skills for my CPL but it would have been nice on some rather long legs.

The plan was Bankstown- Dubbo- Broken Hill - Coober Pedy - Kingscote- Mildur - Canberra.
The day we were due to leave there was a blanket of low cloud covering the entire NSW coast, so we waited it out for the day to see if it was likely to move. As it turns out it was holding for at least 2 more days, so we looked at our options. We were locked into a rather expensive house on Kangaroo Island in 3 days time but the other bookings were movable.
I rang a few flying schools in Melb to see if any would have an aircraft at the last minute for our trip. I had 2 schools agree pending a flight review, one in Bendigo and one in Moorabbin. We decided to go to Moorabbin (MMB). So we booked some RPT flights to Melb and that night stayed in a hotel before getting an early train out to MMB in the morning for an 8am review.

The review flight was pretty straight forward, negotiating the class D around MMB and then a few circuits. The aircraft was quite new and had just been reassembled after being purchased from the states. Talk about spoilt!

I then needed to replan, re do my weight and balance and performance calcs before we could hit the sky. This took some time as things kept being added to the W & B, like a box full of food, and a mallet for banging in the tie down pegs!

As we took off, the wind was picking up and I knew it would be hot and bumpy. MMB lies near the dandenong ranges and with the overlying Class C you actually fly beneath the height of the hills, add to this a descent wind and convective air and you get, well, a roller coaster!

At one stage I had full aileron deflection just to maintain straight and level! I rode that part of the trip with one hand on the dash holding on for dear life and the other on the controls.

First stop over the hills was Bendigo, finally I had time to eat and drink, as the OAT was 36degC we found shelter under the wing of the plane in the shade.

Next we continued on to Swan Hill where we decided to call it a day, by this stage it was around 6pm and I'd had enough for one day, and I still needed time to plan the following day.

There was a trough covering the whole continent from North to South and was just west of Adelaide and so I thought we should make a run for the island. The next morning we got up early, photographed some Kangaroos and headed to the aircraft. This flight was thankfully much smoother than the previous day although there were still lots of thermals and it was still crazy hot!

First stop was a little town called Nhill, near the border of South Australia, and it turns out that is an apt name for the town! Not a lot to do there! After a quick look at an old bomb and cheesy photo, apparently it used to be a RAAF base for a brief period, we were off again.
Once we hit the coast we tracked along the water to Goolwa, beautiful coastline with crystal clear water and white sand, this part was definitely a highlight of the flight. After a brief chat with the locals and a top up of the fuel as there is no AVGAS on the island, we were off before the build up closed off my minima.
The crossing is 18nm, which for me is the longest water crossing I've done in a single engine aircraft and I felt like I didn't breathe for the 4.5 minutes! It was a surreal experience, but a everyone says, the plane doesn't know it's over water!
We did a short tour of the island before landing and Kingscote to more 36deg temps.
Here are some shots from this part of the trip.