Avalon 2015

[oz rb fan]

no corsair.....and not in the program either.......infact nothing from tyabb from what i can see...........but the ww1 stuff is awesome!!!!!!

[Adam the Akrodude]

Agree with Paul. The WW1 stuff is great. They has some kind of machine gun noise generator - maybe firing blanks, not sure, which adds to the overall effect. I had a quick chat to one of the NZ drivers about how these machines fly - all quite different apparently. The Fokker Dr.1 is for example very twitchy - very sensitive on all axis. Apparently the SE.5 is a delight to fly. Rudder if often pretty powerful in these machines which is evident in watching them fly - often pretty flat turns (lots of rudder). I do think the NZ WW1 flying display a very welcome addition to Avalon. I know that rigging biplanes can be an absolute nightmare and I asked how they coped with this as the aeroplanes were obviously disassembled for transport via ship. They simply countered the number of turns undoing the nuts on the flying wires and then did them up doing the same number of turns when the wings were put on - so simple and it worked fine. A hearty well done bro's from over the "dutch"!!!!

Not that I am interested in Army aviation, but it was good to see our taxes at work and seeing the ARH and MRH flying. Fairly tame display, but at least they were off the ground doing their thing this time at Avalon.

Great seeing the Black Knights display team from the RSAF. Only a two aeroplane display, but great to see this very professional regional air force show off it's talent here. Always good seeing fast jets in something other than the standard shades of grey (not 50 shades - ouch!)

Avalon was so crap (NOT!), I'm heading down again on Sunday. May see you down there Damo and here you light up those twin Tumansky R-15B turbojets - opp's, hang on, wrong Foxbat, silly me! I mean twin Rotax's (in different aeroplanes of course! Talking of MiG's, for a gold coin donation, you can sit in a MiG-21 cockpit (ex-Polish AF MiG), which I could not resist! Nightmare cockpit by todays standards of course - very interesting though.

The Raptors are static as previously mentioned. The world's only Raptor display pilot was unavailable, so no display this year A BUFF from Guam did a flyby - a 16 hour trip in total. That is global reach - not bad for a 50+ y.o aeroplane! I bet the average age of the crew is something like half the age of the aeroplane. It's quite possible in the future that some crews may fly in the same aeroplane as their grandfathers and even great grandfathers!

Stood drooling in front of two smashing looking Extra 330's for way too long. Chatted to the owner (friend of a friend) and he made me feel a lot better in saying that he stopped flying and competing in aerobatics for 17 years whilst his kids were young. Made me feel a little better whilst it's "my turn in the barrel"!

I'll post some photos soon.

[B_finch]

Hiya Adam

Sorry sir I only just look at the posts. The stand out for me out for me on Wednesday was the extra display and the blackknights display but I had only seen the last of the flying displays as I was networking with suppliers , I'm here now just seen the Neptune do a rejected takeoff, the USAF f-16 display is ordinary against the RSAF.

[Tony P]

Tyabb is having new taxiway installed maybe they couldn't get out onto the runway to participate.

[Tony P]

Boooooo. The a400m left today.

Looked really impressive rolling out too Tony......

Like I said. ....Boooooooopoooooo! I really wanted to see it. Oh well.

[Cap'n Wannabe]

Up at 3:15am, leave for Tyabb at 4:30am, arrive Tyabb at 6:00am, get driven to Avalon, arrive Avalon at 8:00am, hang about, walk around, take 974 photos, nearly faint at the price of an Italieri 1/48 A4 Skyhawk, look at planes, look at more planes, catch up with Adam, watch some cool aeros, look at still more planes, get a little sunburnt, jump in a Foxbat, formation departure with two others at around 5:15pm, back to Tyabb at 6:00pm, stuff around getting the bloody thing tied down, and home again at 7:45pm.


Long day.

[DesTROYer]

Saturday at Avalon was awesome. Got there just after 7:00 for the gates opening at 8:00 rushed around and saw all the static displays then headed up to the eastern end of the runway and just sat and watched the display for the rest of the day. Highlight was finally getting onboard the HARS Caribou. LOVED it. I can see a new Bou being added to the 2015 Build list.

I was home by 7:30 though and tucked up in bed totally exhausted by 10:00 to the soothing sounds of the storm. The next morning I had to get up early however as I'm getting floating floor boards put through the house and model room this week and needed to move all the furniture out. That was a task as my legs were constantly complaining about the previous days use.




I could be convinced to do my first civil Airliner after seeing this beauty.















Some of my Photos. https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=oa.1039782829371791&type=1


The model room cleared and ready for new hard wood flooring.


The rest of the area to be done.

[Adam the Akrodude]

Great pic's Troy - really glad you had a great time at Avalon. I went on Friday and Sunday - both very different weather wise and display wise. Quite some controversy regarding the Aussie & NZ WW1 aeroplane display on Sunday which I will elaborate on soon. Some very very upset people with CASA over this - not including all the very pissed off WW1 aficionado's, some of whom had travelled a great distance to see these wonderful aeroplanes fly. Suffice to say, all the WW1 aeroplanes were being pushed back into hangars around 3:00PM, well before the end of the show - that tells you something. I am so glad I made the decision to go both Friday and Sunday, so I did get to see the WW1 birds in action and it was amazing! More soon!

[Tony P]

The WW1 stuff couldn't land into the wind due to the grass that resembled the Somme ( so they said) and I think the wind was a bit on the string side fir them. Yeah it is annoying but that's flying! Great seeing them Saturday and Friday. No use of the fake guns on Saturday plus the commentator was way over the top as compared with Friday.

[Adam the Akrodude]

The WW1 stuff couldn't land into the wind due to the grass that resembled the Somme ( so they said) and I think the wind was a bit on the string side fir them. Yeah it is annoying but that's flying! Great seeing them Saturday and Friday. No use of the fake guns on Saturday plus the commentator was way over the top as compared with Friday.

Very interesting that the gas guns didn't fire on Saturday - more Aussie nanny state stuff. One of the pilots (owner of the Fokker Dr.1) said they even got a grilling at one time by the police over the wooden mock up guns on their triplane - crazy huh! I of course can't and won't second guess CASA's decision at Avalon to ground these guys on Sunday, but the WW1 guys were supremely disappointed. I think there was a massive mis-communication between these guys and CASA, as this is the first time we've seen this sort of display here - many years in NZ of course where a little more common sense prevails! I was told the CASA big wig came around to ask why they didn't launch and was told that a CASA official shut them down within 5 minutes of launching for their display. His response was that this wasn't his decision! I was told in this regard that one CASA officer gave one of them a grilling on why his engine kept mis-firing. It was of course a rotary engine and this guy knew nothing about how they "blip" these engines - turn the ignition on and off to regulate the RPM.
I at least got to hear those rotaries "blip" and the gas guns fire on Friday and it sure added to the display. I wish I could adequately describe how beautiful is the workmanship of these new build WW1 aeroplanes. My jaw literally dropped seeing the Fokker Eindekker and the Focker D8 in the tent/hangar. Photos soon.....
BTW Tony, the wind from memory on Sunday was a south westerly - may have been south easterly in the morning, can't remember. Anyhoo, they were always operating with a decent amount of cross-wind at Avalon - would have of course to be within limits of the aeroplanes. Some of the aeroplanes operated off the sealed strip as well (perhaps the non-rotary ones? - the red Fokker had a standard Lycoming under the cowl for instance). Some had Gypsy engines as well. It was a strong southerly in the afternoon, so I don't think wind was a major issue here. Be very interesting if there is any fallout in the media over this - hmmm! Anyone read anything anywhere? Anyway, that's the hot goss down at the WW1 flight line - some very sad and upset participants that we may never see on this shore again. I certainly hope this is not the case and heads will cool and better communication is established between this rapidly growing and very interesting aviation community and CASA. Don't get me started about what I heard about Skip Stewart!