Beechcraft Musketeer Sport III 19A VH-SQB
Leg 3: Adelaide (Parafield) to Port Augusta
Front ~ Next - Leg 4: Port Augusta to Ceduna
We decided to get a reasonably early start, and did pretty well at getting away this morning. I was up at about 6am preparing maps. Then I spent a while working out how my avfax account worked, so I could get a weather report faxed to the hotel. It took a number of attempts to find out my password. There were no problems indicated with the weather.
I was showered and breakfasting with Simon by 7:30am.
We got a taxi by just after 8. When we arrived at Parafield, we paid for the fuel and some oil. We needed to put some oil in the aircraft - since that was down to about 4 quarts.
Unfortunately our refuelers had filled the tanks to the top, when we had wanted an inch below the top. This gave us far more fuel than we needed, with the corresponding unnecessary weight.
| Saddling up at Parafield - looks like a beautiful day. |
I was doing the flying this morning - departure out of Parafield was not too difficult. We got the ground controller to guide us to the run-up bay and the runway. There was a very light wind favouring the shorter runway, 26, instead of the longer 21 that we landed on yesterday. We took off on 26R. Because of the parallel runway, we were taking off just beside a trainer. I noticed that it had a much faster climb rate than us. In fact, we were quite low when we went over the houses at the end of the strip, and we climbed slowly. So a lot of people might have had a rude awakening - I'm not sure.
We needed to be careful with our departure, to remain out of controlled airspace and military airspace. Fortunately, runway 26 pointed us in the right direction, which made things pretty easy. We just needed to track west, and turn north before hitting the coast. As we tracked to the north, there were quite a few restricted zones to avoid out to our left. But it turned out quite easy - it was really easy to spot the route, and the air was dead still, so we had an idyllic flight up the gulf.
| Passing over the evaporation ponds kept us out of controlled airspace. |
| Flying up the gulf, over flat, golden country. The cool morning air was so still, the aircraft flew itself - not a single bump in the air. |
| Looking north to Snowtown, famous for more grisly reasons. The countryside might look flat and featureless - but I grew up in country like this and I found it beautiful to fly over. |
At one point, Simon was gazing out the window when I leaned the mixture. As the engine revs unexpectedly dropped away, Simon nearly had a heart-attack. After that, we developed a new practice of telling the other person when we're about to lean the mixture.
We passed near Snowtown - a town I'd only heard of for other reasons. It actually looks in a nice little place, near some beautiful grassy hills, and a lake. I found this countryside very picturesque. It was an absolutely beautiful morning to fly. Historically, a lot of my flying has been in the afternoon, when it is generally bumpy. Morning flying is great, I've decided. The earlier, the better.
We passed over Port Pirie, then tracked North to Port Augusta. We had discussed crossing over to Whyalla, rather than continuing all the way to Port Augusta. We could see it out to our west, and I'm sure we could have cut across to it, but we didn't have life jackets, so weren't interested in heading out over water. So we went to the very top of the gulf.
| Approaching the town of Port Pirie. The airstrip is just off the left-hand-side of our nose. |
| Looking out to our west, across the gulf to Whyalla. We could have cut across here - there's a nice sand-bank across the middle - but without life-jackets we preferred not to. |
| Port Augusta |
Port Augusta had a good strip. We landed facing South, having had a tailwind the whole way up. I bounced the landing a bit, and had to apply power to settle it down. Simon said I'm rounding off too high at the moment. We actually had to wait before we could refuel, since there was a bigger plane refuelling. It was going to take workers up to a uranium mine. The refueller said it's pretty unusual to have to wait. It must have been rush hour.
Despite being a bit desolate, I found this airstrip to be a beautiful place. We had left farmland behind, and were now in station country. There were some nice hills in the distance, there were no clouds in the sky, it was not too hot, and it was a typically remote but beautiful outback scene.
| Waiting to refuel at Port Augusta |
| Refuelling at Port Augusta |
| The view out past the Royal Flying Doctor hangar. Definitely getting into the outback here. |