Posted Thursday, January 26, 2012 @ 11:36 PM
Hiya Fellow Fournicators,
As most of you know, one of my big annual flying highlights is the solo aerobatic display I fly over the river outside our home on Australia Day (26th January). Yesterday's event was planned for 8:30am, when the temperature was only +35C (it got up to 41C / 110F later). One of the great things about this show is that it is 30 miles north of our Serpentine base, so I get ATC clearance to fly to it in a straight line through all the airspace northwards at 2,000 feet, and then afterwards to follow the Canning and Swan Rivers out to the Indian Ocean at Fremantle 'not above 1,500 feet'.
It was a beautiful blue, cloudless morning, so I fitted the GoPro on top of my fin. Not yet having a remote for it, I couldn't take video footage, so instead I set it to capture a photo every five seconds.
Here is a selection of the images I got.
First the take-off from Serpentine:
Next a bit of practice on the way up. This is the 'impossible' left stall turn:
Passing Jandakot Airport (Perth's equivelent of Biggin Hill, Teterboro or Van Nuys):
Running in to the tiny display site over the Canning River at Shelley:
Smoke on:
Unfortunately only one smoke on each wing-tip burned, so the smoke is not as dense as usual, and
you can barely see it as I come back down from a stall turn (hammerhead). The crowd is assembled on the foreshore on the left:
As I come lower, it's easier to stay within 200 metres of the river banks:
It's hard to tell with such a wide-angle lens, but my final loop bottoms out as planned at my 500-foot base height:
And then I drop down for my fifty-foot waving run. The crowd on the southern river bank is small, only about 400 people, but that makes it more intimate and personal:
[Edit by Bob Grimstead on Friday, January 27, 2012 @ 00:01 AM]
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Flying and displaying Fournier RF4Ds VH-HDO and G-AWGN, building replica RF6B G-RFGB and custodian of RF6B prototype F-BPXV