The Windsor's Watering Hole

MM

MM

Charter Member
The Hotel Windsor, Melbourne, Victoria

This thread is dedicated to our London-Melbourne pilots who wish to sit down, have a drink, and spin a few yarns.

The Melbourne Centenary officials have persuaded the managers of the prestigious Hotel Windsor to provide our pilots with carte blanche at the establishment's bar. So tell your tales, post your screenshots, and enjoy.

Providing detailed accounts of your adventures and experiences will be much appreciated by the gang. We have so very many distinctive aircraft—and will fly in different sorts of weather and over different sorts of terrain—that it will be a treat to see how things work out for our fellows.
 
Well goodness.. look at all those planes. The press says that it's just to dangerous to fly in those crowded skies and they may be right!

Godspeed to all and watch out for them hills

Rob
 
It was pretty darn foggy at Hof Germany when I landed there. I was never so glad to see a set of runway lights. The winds over Europe are mostly from the south and yall be carefull up there.
 
We got off on a very early morning start. Nice sunrise on the other side of The Channel and Rotterdam. Made the coast of Europe about where I planned on it.
 
a funny thing happened on the way to Vienna...

I still associate the duenna with the RTW and I guess whenever I see it running in the corner of my eye, it's just ingrained to run a RTW pre-takeoff checklist just prior to pushing the throttle(s) forward to start the takeoff roll .

One of the last things I do (RTW) is to hit the sync time and date button. Well Einstein,,,,guess what all that will do for you on this trip???

0630GMT is just as dark as 2000GMT and I didn't notice the mistake until I was making way across the "Channel", eastbound eagerly awaiting the sunrise over the horizon which of course NEVER showed up and afforded me a night flight on the first leg,,,like it or not.

I normally love to fly at night, especially in the more populated areas of the world and this was no exception after I got over the button-blunder I had made on takeoff.

A couple of times it got just a bit nerve racking when the vis went to absolute zero and I was in a terrain situation and already tuned to the last NAV-AID before having to start descent.

Lucky enough it cleared just before it was time to throttle back. Still it was a good flight, lots of fun with some great company on TS.
 
Completed the first leg. The weather was a lot nicer than I expected the North Atlantic (more or less) to be in October. Perfect visibility. Spotted the airport at Paris, both the one I was supposed to land on, as well as the big giant one a little to the east, from 20 miles out, at 9000 feet. Flew past that tower too. Got some Kodaks.
 
Well, a couple of hectic days as the entrants got off to a flying start. Seems there are a few who are in a huge rush to go hunting 'roo as they have raced off into the Arabian desert ahead of the pack.

A few stragglers are still tinkering with their mounts in the English autumn but out of the 37 possible entrants a large number has already launched. Of those, while not really competing, the Team Melrose group has forged ahead into the rain in Spain.. err France. Hoorah! to those daring young men in their brand new Puss moth! Truly, this is a magnificent test of aeronautical daring, bravery and engineering!

Hopefully we'll soon see more photos and telegrams posted on the Windsor's walls.
 
:running:Here are some more pictures of my flight into LIRA. One thing about the last few flight the weather has been the same, from poor to bad. Hopefullly, it will get better as we continue.
 
Had a good flight into Bucharest Romania yesterday. I was planning on continuing on, but got held up overnight. Good thing that I brought along some garlic, a cross and some silver bullets as I ran into this character.....
 
Had a pleasant flight from Paris to Lyon. The weather was not quite as good as yesterday’s Channel Crossing weather, but I can’t complain. Got my first glimpse of terrain other than flatness as I flew over the low hills of central France. As we got closer to Lyon, there appeared traces of a mighty mountain range far away to the east…

Kodaks: 1) Flying over one of my check points. In this case the airport at Auxeere. 2) Descending decently towards Lyon, and over the Rhone River. 3) Final approach to LFLY.
 
Some more shots

A few more shots as I crossed the Black Sea, all of Turkey, and caught a corner of the Mediterranean (Gulf of Iskenderun to be exact) just before landing in Syria...all in the same flight.

Any past flights through here must have been at night (RTW) and at higher altitudes. Can't say that I remember how nice the landclass is for this area.

Good size set of mountains in Turkey (Taurus Mountains). Didn't notice them in the initial planning.....hehehe....good thing I was in "attendance" when the Vega crept up on them as they were quite a bit higher than I was flying (10000'). They reminded me of the Andes a little,,,,having to hand negotiate some of the gorges. Lucky they crossed my path and weren't a part of it.

At one point I was close enough to the ground to actually reach out of the plane and pick what appeared to be a pomegranate....[True Story]....

[I had second thoughts about eating it and instead wound up tossing it out the window at a chap that was shaking his fist at the plane as I flew over his house,,,,,caught him right in the kisser.]

I'll stop writing now and put up some more shots I took of the landscape, mostly screenies, but will notice a few photos I was able to take by hand of some of the locals and their fascinating surroundings.

Enjoy
 
Some nice shots so far. :applause:

Had a nice and uneventful 900 mile run in "Miss Electra" to Yugoslavia, to kick things off. Lucked out with the weather having a slight tailwind and mostly clear skies. Even the Alps seemed gentle under these conditions. Enjoying the ample NDBs while they last!

Screenies of:
1) Leaving Mildenhall
2) Somewhere over Germany
3) Alps Looming
 
Landed at the Bagdad checkpoint for the night. The CDM needs looked at after over 2000nm and I think my Duenna might be busted.

Did get a good sundown approach shot...
 
LRBS-OSAP, DC3

some turbulence, rode most of it at 10K. interestingly enough, austin (salt_air) mentioned having to jump 12k to get over mountains, I got lucky, i made as straight a run as I could, and apparently just east enough to not have to go over 11k. however, 5 10 10nm to the west and i would have to get up alot more than 12k, and a good thing it was clear. The mountain range extended a good 50 nm and in bad weather would have been a buzz-kill with the accentuation on the word kill...

I got lucky, and need to pay more attention to terrain in the event of the spontaneous 2nm visibility effect or better yet, normal cloud cover...

To top it all off, I was running my mouth on TS and didnt decend fast enough and slightly overshot the airfield needing a teardrop decent to get it down. smooth landing... but long runways lend themselves to good landings...

ss_2_01.jpg
 
Spent a pleasant day over Central Europe enjoying the scenery. The constantly shifting headwinds made for a busy afternoon as the best winds and altitude were difficult to find.

  • Dawn breaks over the Channel as the adventure begins.
  • The Mew over Holland.
  • A bright day over the charming German countryside.
  • Beautiful Nuremburg off to the right. The 1930s? Wonder if the government is putting on an event? Perhaps an inspirational rally?
  • The Danube as it comes coursing out of the mountains.
  • High skies and sun over the plains of Hungary.
  • Bucharest flare.
 
It was still raining last night at LIBR so I decided to stay another night and let the crew try to get my fuel gauge working. I'm wondering if it's time to install that weird 'driftmeter' gauge and wind gauge, Naaa. No pics yet as all I've managed to grab were night flights- for those who haven't guessed yet I'm flying real (local) time as well as live weather, and no desire to island hop in the dark. I'll resume my adventure at dawn tomorrow (local LIBR time) and try to make Baghdad by nightfall.
 
Left Baghdad for Kuwait and just after I landed there, this Kuwaiti sheik came over and was admiring my Skymaster just a bit too much, so I quickly refueled and headed on down the coast to Bahrain while I still had it. The nerve of the guy, telling me I should sell him the Cessna and buy a plane ticket to Australia with the money! I got out of there before he "made me an offer I couldn't refuse".
 
A few screenies from the Yugoslavia to Cyprus segment.

1) Climbing out from Belgrade
2) The bright blue Aegean Seashore
3) Shot of panel. I like how the kneeboard planner compares your flight time with the estimated time for each NDB station.
4) Cyprus coming into view after a long flight fighting the yoke.
 
A fun filled flight from Marseille to Rome. Took off at 09:00ish and headed east, and soon found myself over the great Mediterranean Sea, headed towards the island of Corsica. Flew over the bay south of Bastia, which I used as a navigation checkpoint, then on to Italy and a landing in Rome, but not before buzzing the Pope’s house. I hope he isn’t angry about that. Weather, once again, was perfect, with even a tail wind at times.

Kodaks: 1) The geology of southern France, 2) Goodbye France, 3) Hello Corsica, 4) Calvi Bay, Corsica. 5) Rome!
 
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