Plane Crazy Down Under

Looking at the world of aviation from an Australia / Pacific point of view

This episode we’re joined by Will Horton from the Wings Down Under blog to chat about recent aviation news items. We also have Anthony Simmons returning for another View from the Lounge segment and a chat with Damien Rose about his flight training up in Toowoomba. The episode wraps up with some listener mail and a . . . → Read More: Episode 42: Wings Down Under
Posted on 3 September 2010 | 2:35 pm

In our third & final Election QuickCast, we take a look at the published transportation policies from the The Greens and the Labor Party’s “Aviation White Paper.” Sadly, Christine Milne from the Greens and Anthony Albanese from Labor were unable to accommodate us in their busy schedules. Both groups have indicated that they’ll be happy to . . . → Read More: Episode 41: Australian Federal Election QuickCast #3: Comments on the Greens & Labor’s White Paper
Posted on 19 August 2010 | 3:46 pm

Australians are about to go to the election booths on Saturday 21st August so we’re working to bring our listeners information about the aviation policies of the various political parties. We’re not trying to tell you how to vote, just doing our bit to raise awareness of the importance of aviation within the political community and . . . → Read More: Episode 40: Australian Federal Election QuickCast #2: Ken Hill & Tim Sheen
Posted on 18 August 2010 | 11:52 pm

Australians are about to go to the election booths on Saturday 21st August so we’re working to bring our listeners information about the aviation policies of the various political parties. We’re not trying to tell you how to vote, just doing our bit to raise awareness of the importance of aviation within the political community and . . . → Read More: Episode 39: Australian Federal Election QuickCast #1: Warren Truss
Posted on 17 August 2010 | 8:59 am

Dick Smith is an entrepreneur well known to most Australians, ranging from the country wide chain of Dick Smith Electronics stores he created to Dick Smith Foods and Australian Geographic.

Another very important aspect of Dick’s life has revolved around aviation. In addition to owning & flying his own aeroplanes & helicopters, he has also flown . . . → Read More: Episode 38: Dick Smith: Around the World in Many Ways
Posted on 9 August 2010 | 3:24 pm

Air Venture: Oshkosh is the place to be if you’re into aviation. There’s something for everyone from home builts to military to warbirds to commercial to seaplanes to antiques to balloons and everything else imaginable. If you love aviation, you have to get to Oshkosh.

For the past four years a group of aviation podcasters have been . . . → Read More: We tried to get to Oshkosh 2010
Posted on 7 August 2010 | 7:37 pm

It seems that Grant has always had troubles with the label “Flight Attendant” ever since his sister joined Australian Airlines and mistakenly told him she would be a “Trolley Dolly.” Ooops :)

In this episode we’re joined by Janene Murdoch, Tania Tracey and Amelia Kelly. Janene used to be a flight attendant with Ansett in the 70′s . . . → Read More: Episode 37: It’s “Flight Attendant,” Grant
Posted on 30 July 2010 | 4:51 am

Most of you will have already seen Matt Hall’s splash on the river at Windsor back in June. Then he was denied a go at racing in New York, to which he responded very diplomatically, which in turn taught some of us how to “take our lumps.”

This episode we have a good chat with Matt Hall . . . → Read More: Episode 36: Incidentally, Matt…
Posted on 14 July 2010 | 12:01 am

These days it’s quite common to find ladies in command of commercial airliners, bizjets and combat aircraft. Thirty years ago, however, this was certainly not the case here in Australia and a female required a stubborn streak & thick skin to push through and gain acceptance in a very male dominated world.

While the situation for ladies . . . → Read More: Episode 35: Perseverance & Persistence
Posted on 3 July 2010 | 12:15 pm

This episode we feature an interview with Hannes Arch, the Austrian Red Bull champion in 2008 who came second in 2009 and is currently second on points for 2010. We have a great chat with Hannes about his involvement in extreme sports, his love of flying and his approach to the Red Bull racing world.

We were . . . → Read More: Episode 34: Arching over the Swamp
Posted on 16 June 2010 | 11:32 pm

In this episode we join noted aviation journalist Ben Sandilands from Plane Talking to review the latest news & information. When we called Ben, he was experiencing a heat wave of 11 degrees Celsius at his home in the mountains near Canberra. Meanwhile, here in Melbourne we were thinking winter was upon us as the temperature . . . → Read More: Episode 33: Four Degrees of Separation from Ben Sandilands
Posted on 27 May 2010 | 11:02 pm

This episode features a discussion with Peter Gibson, the manager of corporate communications at CASA. He’s joined us to explain the airspace changes that will come into effect on June 3rd, changes which will impact Class D, see the transition of GAAP to Class D and introduce the mandatory carriage of radios at all certified, registered . . . → Read More: Episode 32: Switch to Plan Delta
Posted on 12 May 2010 | 9:41 pm

The Red Bull Air Race came back to Perth this year and Steve was there, flexing his newly minted press credentials and discovering the amazing world of the Red Bull media centre. Sadly, Grant was working in Indonesia and so couldn’t be there to help hang out, rub shoulders with the stars and quaff a few . . . → Read More: Episode 31: Red Bull all The Way
Posted on 7 May 2010 | 1:01 pm

The first aircraft to be used in Antarctica was Henry Mawson’s Vickers REP monoplane. Sadly, it had been damaged in Australia before arriving in Antarctica and was used as an “air tractor” to pull sleds. Even that didn’t work out and it was dumped, eventually being found again only recently.

Given that inauspicious start, it’s hard . . . → Read More: Episode 30: Antarctica: The Last True Wilderness
Posted on 20 April 2010 | 2:55 am

Some in-cockpit audio provided by a listener triggered a discussion on the differences in pre-landing checklists (GUMPS vs BUMFTH vs BUMFOH vs whatever). All of Grant’s aviation books & manuals are still in boxes after moving house so he had to rely on his memory with predictable results. Talk about incentive to go out and get . . . → Read More: Episode 29: What’s in a Checklist?
Posted on 5 April 2010 | 4:21 pm

The B24 Liberator was the most produced heavy bomber of World War 2 and saw service in all theaters of the war. The Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) flew B24s along side those of the USAAF, based in northern Australia and Papua New Guinea. These aircraft flew long range missions of many hours duration, typically without . . . → Read More: Episode 28: Save the Liberator
Posted on 27 March 2010 | 7:28 am

The common theme in this episode is about going around the world, first by bringing Saj Ahmad (Fleetbuzz Editorial) in the UK and Ben Sandilands (Plane Talking) in Australia together to talk about financial reports from QANTAS, Virgin & Tiger plus general discussions about airlines in Australia, past, present & future.

We then chat with Ken Evers . . . → Read More: Episode 27: Trans World Adventures
Posted on 9 March 2010 | 5:09 am

You can always count on this podcast to have some interesting, opinionated and, occasionally, diverse points of view. This episode really brings them all and (bonus!) includes a whole new view as we introduce Anthony Simmons and the “View from the Lounge” segment for your listening pleasure.

We’ve also got another great discussion with Owen Zupp . . . → Read More: Episode 26: Enjoying the Views
Posted on 24 February 2010 | 1:24 pm

Yes, Steve & Grant are Fan Boys (big Fan Boys, in fact :) and this episode we demonstrate it once again by interviewing Matt Hall and hanging out with some more fans at the Flight Experience Melbourne Facebook fan page open night in their 737 flight simulator. Seems we’re not the only ones who think a . . . → Read More: Episode 25: Fan Boys
Posted on 13 February 2010 | 2:14 am

Despite the annoying habit of our “day jobs” and families encroaching into our PCDU time, we’ve finally managed to get some time to record an episode. Steve even managed a marathon effort of post production to edit a coherent episode from our opinionated news discussion and an interview with Saj Ahmad. Go Steve! :)

Despite my . . . → Read More: Episode 24: Misuse of Accents
Posted on 3 February 2010 | 3:06 pm

Even down here in Australia we’re being impacted by the out-of-control antics of the TSA, so what the heck, we’ll have a bit of a c’est la vent moment about it. We also have our usual opinionated discussion on some other news items and chat with Shashank Nigam from SimpliFlying.

Here’s how the show proceeds:

It’s the Christmas & New Year holiday period, plus down here it’s Summer so we’re totally into listening to long aviation podcasts when we’re not distracted by having fun. So, for all of our listeners who have long drives or lots of chores to do around home, we give you our longest episode yet. With a . . . → Read More: Episode 22: Farewell 2009
Posted on 31 December 2009 | 4:05 am

Regent Street in the snow (by Jon Curnow)

(Image from JustLearn on Flickr)

Steve’s out sick (he must have eaten the fish :) so Grant’s flying solo on this one and cheating madly by assembling a few interviews and a slightly modified version of the Australia Desk segment we recorded for the Airplane Geeks’ Thanksgiving episode. The interviews include:

The Red Baron's Pitts Special

How many of you folks have wanted to be Air Traffic Controllers? Do you dream of Pushing Tin around the skies? Think you can keep The Flick in your head? Want to tell pilots in aircraft of all sizes where to go? (ahem! :) Steve & Grant both applied for ATC and were both knocked back . . . → Read More: Episode 17: The Ipanator says “Rivet Shower? Not on *my* Watch!”
Posted on 19 November 2009 | 11:46 am

Steve & Grant discuss all the latest news items that were of interest over the past couple of weeks. Steve also gets to have a few “c’est la vent” moments on some topics that were annoying him.

As if all that wasn’t enough, we also have a chat with Owen Zupp and reveal the winner of our . . . → Read More: Episode 16: Rant on Steve, Rant on
Posted on 14 November 2009 | 3:08 pm

We’re back to being our opiniated selves with a backlog of news stories to work through and discuss. Once again Bas Scheffers joins us for some of the news and to discuss a number of RA-Aus items. From Beavers to Tigers and even Kiwi Skyhawks doing battle with bureaucracy, we cover a diverse range of topics . . . → Read More: Episode 15: And now for something completely different, here is the news
Posted on 31 October 2009 | 9:37 pm

We were fortunate to attend a lecture recently presented by Lang Kidby at the Australian National Aviation Museum (Moorabbin Air Museum). Lang has flown a Vickers Vimy replica aircraft from England to Australia to re-enact the 1919 flight by Keith & Ross Macpherson Smith. He has also flown an Avro Avian from England to Australia to . . . → Read More: Episode 14: Lang’s Great Journeys
Posted on 29 October 2009 | 4:52 am

Of all the times for the technical gremlins to strike, it had to be for our “Lucky” 13th episode. We recorded a great discussion with Owen Zupp and, despite a fault in the call recorder that made us repeat a part, we thought we had it in the bag. We even feature our first ever give . . . → Read More: Episode 13: The Only Way is Zupp
Posted on 20 October 2009 | 4:15 am

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. Topics of discussion in this episode include:

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 . . . → Read More: Episode 11: Recreationally Yours
Posted on 3 October 2009 | 6:15 am

Matt Hall

Andrew Temby

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, . . . → Read More: Episode 8: Riding Our Segways
Posted on 11 September 2009 | 6:48 am

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 . . . → Read More: Episode 7: Matt Hall, we’re not worthy!
Posted on 4 September 2009 | 8:37 am

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 the following . . . → Read More: Episode 6: Plugcast
Posted on 29 August 2009 | 7:38 am

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 . . . → Read More: Episode 5: Jet Lag Recovery
Posted on 15 August 2009 | 3:41 pm

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 . . . → Read More: Episode 4: Hand Propped
Posted on 6 August 2009 | 1:47 pm

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 was . . . → Read More: Greetings Oshkosh, 2009
Posted on 1 August 2009 | 12:58 am

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.

This week’s episode includes the following topics:

Surprisingly less than one week after our first episode was released, we’re releasing our second episode. During this one, we discuss the following 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 the following news items: