alius locus, alius mihi

QotD: Oh Sorry, Did I Offend You?

nobody@vox.com(NDC) — Fri, 16 May 2008 21:53:22 +1000

Who was the last person you offended?
Submitted by May.

My wife. I'm always offending my wife. That's just me, I guess, and she is who she is, which is easily offended. I speak plainly, and more so the older I get. She doesn't like to hurt feelings, so she doesn't. It's said that opposites attract.

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On Our Way

nobody@vox.com(NDC) — Tue, 13 May 2008 21:24:22 +1000

Just in case you're wondering what's happening in my "Running Away" fantasy flight from Australia, to my $3m island in the Caribbean, here's the latest.

As you might recall, at last mention we were stranded on Frigate Shoals, awaiting a couple of drums of AvGas. Well, it arrived and we left Frigate Shoals just prior to midnight and landed at Lihue, Kauai around 80 minutes later. After a check over and refuel, it was off to the 'Big Island', Hilo International and a week's downtime where VH-NDC - now named 'DunnaRunna' - would undergo a major engine overhaul, removal of passenger seats and installation of two 160 gallon Turtle Pac collapsible fuel tanks, giving 'DunnaRunna' an endurance in excess of 14 hours, worst case. The tanks are rentable and given that FAA regulations require removal of ferry tanks immediately upon arrival at first port of call inside continental USA, why buy them outright? FAA approval for fitment of these tanks is required, obviously, especially given that the aircraft will be some 434 kilograms over maximum gross weight at takeoff.

pearl.jpg

leavinghilo.jpg

onourway.jpg

The flight plan from Hilo depends upon weather and given last weekend's aviation weather and satellite scans of the western Pacific Ocean, the optimum time for departure was Sunday, 11 May. We left just after 6:00am local time. The trip is a tad over 12 hours, but we did pick up a 17 knot tail wind about two hours out at 12,000'.

Back in the real world, my weekend was a busy one. I had to abandon and save the flight four hours out of Hilo, to be picked up again this coming weekend. The plan takes us into Carlsbad, McClellan-Palomar Airport, California. Were I actually piloting 'DunnaRunna', I'd be taking a few days break in Carlsbad before heading off on the next leg. I wonder what there is to do in Carlsbad?

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Mad Brewers Raspberry Wheat Beer

nobody@vox.com(NDC) — Wed, 07 May 2008 19:20:34 +1000

Mad Brewers Raspberry Wheat Beer

http://www.maltshovel.com.au/

As I may have mentioned in this tome, I'm a home brewer who just loves to tinker with standard worts and additives. I've used honey, plum jam and raspberry jam, as well as flat lemonade, epsom salts and finishing hops. Not all in the one brew, naturally. This evening, my other half splurged on my behalf and bought a bottle of Malt Shovel Breweries Raspberry Wheat Beer. It's an absolute winner for those beer drinkers who appreciate something different and special. Like a good wine, a glass of this ale has a heady bouquet redolent of crushed, fresh raspberries, a colour which is almost reddish, not quite brown and a fantastic, sustained head. It's flavour defys accurate description, but suffice to say, it's fruity, spicy and very, very refreshing after a stressful day grinding one's nose. I highly recommend this drop to anyone with a wont to taste and appreciate a really good brew.

Mad Brewers Raspberry Wheat Beer

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French Frigate Shoals or 'How I fucked up another flight plan'

nobody@vox.com(NDC) — Mon, 05 May 2008 18:01:57 +1000

The Vocal Version

Yes indeed, Vox'ers. A t least those of you following my fantasy journey from my hum-drum existence to one I'd much rather be enjoying. Money not withstanding. Last post, as you'll recall (Ye Gods....I sound like an episode of 'Lost In Space') I'd landed with fumes in the tanks on Green Island, sixty nautical miles short of my destination of Henderson Field, Midway Island.

Leaving Green Island

After over-nighting in the back of the Rockwell Aero Commander, I presumed that a radio call to Hawaii for fuel might result in a shipment of AvGas sufficient to get me to Lihue airport on the Hawaiian island of Kauai. I also estimated - in my early morning funk - that three 44 gallon drums would do the trick. Bugger that early morning funk. I underestimated by about an hour's worth of fuel, which resulted in my landing at French Frigate Shoals, 1 hour and a few minutes from Kauai. It's a crushed coral strip used by tourist carriers to view the atoll & out lying reefs. 3000' long it's easily within the sphere of the Shrike, but as you can tell from the photo, there's nothing on it.

Frigateshoals

So, I figure, another radio call from the idiot Aussie and flight out by a kindly AvGas supplier and I'll have VH-NDC in the air again, bound for Lihue, as originally intended. So here we sit, the Shrike & I, awaiting that kindly flight from Kauai with a couple of drums of AvGas. Good thing it's not an unpleasant place weather-wise at the moment.

Kauai

Anyway, once we fuel up and get underway, it's off to Lihue Airport, and then on to Hilo where VH-NDC will undergo the fitting of a suitably sized ferry tank to enable the journey to San Francisco. Pity about the passenger fittings, but I suppose I can have the seats, etc. forwarded by freight to be re-fitted again in 'Frisco. See you in Hilo.

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Social Networking for Oz

nobody@vox.com(NDC) — Mon, 05 May 2008 11:00:16 +1000

Just a brief note to alert Aussies to something I stumbled on yesterday. A social networking site aimed at Aussies.
buzz.org.au. It's interesting and seems well laid out. Have a gander.

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Sort of Stranded

nobody@vox.com(NDC) — Sun, 04 May 2008 22:23:41 +1000

But at least I'm dry. Actually, both of us are dry. Me and the Aero Commander 500S. Today's leg, from Wake Island to Midway Island, kind of fell victim to a lack of attention which almost resulted in a virtual swim. Autopilots are wonderful things, but the pilot still needs to pay attention to the flight plan. Fuel ran short as a result and I wound up calculating that I'd be 60 nautical miles short of my destination when the engines sucked fumes. Even a long, slow power-reduced glide didn't help all that much.

So, just on sunset, I put the aircraft down on Green Island, with about six minutes of fuel left. It's a tiny spec in the middle of nowhere, but it does have a navigation facility and a crushed coral strip. You can ever see it in exquisite detail on Google Earth. KMZ file here.

The entire Midway group belongs to the US Department of Fish & Wildlife, and up until March this year, had been closed to aerial traffic since 2004. There's an inhabited facility on Midway itself where avgas is undoubtedly available. I suppose the necessary fuel could be shipped to Green Island by boat. A short hop to Midway itself, top up the tanks and then onto Hawaii where the plane will need to undergo the modifications to the passenger cabin to accommodate a long range ferry tank which will get me to the US mainland.

It's good to live an alternate existence. I wonder what a trip like this would cost me in the real world?

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Getting There

nobody@vox.com(NDC) — Thu, 01 May 2008 21:13:39 +1000

A fortnight ago, I wrote a little about my hobby of flightsimming. I was actually writing about my current escapade in fantasy land, whereby I'm flying a Rockwell Aero Commander 500S, or as it's marketed, a Shrike Commander, to a place I'd give anything to call my very own, away from the hassles of the everyday.

My AC500S, which I've 'repainted' and registered VH-NDC, is currently at Amata Kabua International Airport - a rather grandiose title - on Majuro Atoll. The capital of the Marshall Islands group. If indeed the collection of far flung coral atolls has a capital.

Majuro International a la FS2004

It's taken me two weeks to get this far, flying only on weekends, you understand. The Commander has an economical cruise speed of 185 knots at 12,000 feet, which means the various legs of around 400 to 600 nautical miles take around 2 to 3 hours. Trouble is, I'd planned to use Johnson Atoll as a waypoint, but I've recently discovered that Johnson Atoll is closed now to all air traffic. It was an emergency alternate for major airlines crossing the Pacific, but no longer. The island has been abandoned by the US military and has reverted to ownership of the US Fish and Wildlife Service ans a wildlife refuge. Rather incongruous when one considers what the atoll has been used for in the past.

This means, of course, that I have to re-plan my route. Seems that I now have to divert to Wake Island and then to Midway Island and then on to Kauai Island, Hawaii. All legs are within the aircraft's range, albeit extreme range, but it's a hell of a work around. Had I realised sooner, I'd have modified the model to install a ferry tank in place of the passenger cabin, however, in the spirit of realism, that's not the kind of work I could reasonably expect to have done in the Marshall Islands. Hawaii, yes, but Majuro Atoll.....??

I'd planned to modify the model once I'd reached Hawaii anyway. There's no way the aircraft could make the leg from Hawaii to San Francisco without a ferry tank.

Parked for the week. Long weekend coming up

There's nothing wrong with a little fantasy and imagination, I believe, and while I'm a mature adult, I've always harboured a secret desire to fly. I guess flightsimming on the computer is as close as I'll get this time around, so why not do it as real as possible, I say. More on the trip as it unfolds.

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QotD: House Call

nobody@vox.com(NDC) — Thu, 01 May 2008 19:29:30 +1000

Whose house (besides your own) were you in last and why?

I don't go into other people's houses. Why the hell would you want to go into somebody else's house? Weird!

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Beating The Drum

nobody@vox.com(NDC) — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 20:33:57 +1000

To my mind, allocating an excise on candied alcoholic drinks is a logical progression. Sure, it's yet another tax boon to the federal government, ought to be something encompassed by the GST, as should all taxes on consumables. However, this article is nothing more than a baseless opportunistic beat-up.

As anyone who enjoys a glass of wine knows, a bottle of wine is almost always enjoyed in company, which means a supposed 8 standard drinks is halved or divided even further. In company, over dinner or on a sunny afternoon over nibbles, in my experience lasts maybe thirty minutes between three people. That's 2.66 (recurring if you count sniffing the empty) drinks each. During an interview I heard on Radio National last weekend, it's apparent that young female drinkers especially, drink these ready-to-drink 'alcopops', which rate at 5% alcohol by volume in Australia, with the expressed purpose of getting inebriated as quickly as possible for the least cost. That's binge drinking. I'm yet to encounter anyone who drinks wine for pleasure to do so for the same purpose.

That's not to say that bumping up the cost of these lollie drinks is going to deter those who really like them and drink them to excess for the buzz. Of course, there's the other option, as yet to encounter an excise increase to forestall teenage lushes (let's be honest and admit that it's the generation Y types that Nanny is ostensibly out to get), and that's to buy a bottle of the spirit of choice and a few cans of suitable soft drink or fruit juice. There's home brewed beer, which can pack a real punch I can tell you, and home distilleries (that apparently are illegal, but still freely available) which will provide the ardent hobbyist with pure alcohol to be flavoured as they wish. Neither method is taxed in the same manner as the binge drinker's supposedly favoured tipple, and neither they ought to be.

As a 'boomer', I've done my fair share of over-indulging in younger days, and frankly I don't think I've been unduly harmed by doing so. Some of the memories are vague, but I'm still here and quite rational, thanks very much. Drinking alcohol, smoking tobacco, driving fast cars and even eating junk food are all accepted, legal social mores. Parts of life in the modern world, even to the extent of being rights of passage in some cases. Being the grumpy old man that I am today, I have no time for Gen Y'ers who deliberately go out in public to make fools of themselves, however, in earlier life, I've probably done similar. If that's their thing, then I say 'enjoy'. Just don't impinge on my space. There's an old saw which says, "you drink, you get drunk, you fall down". There's another which says, "shit happens".

Raising revenue from a perceived social problem won't resolve that problem. Is binge drinking a problem? Personally, I don't think so. Is taxing a legally available and socially acceptable consumable really going to resolve a social problem? Maybe, but as I've already outlined, there are other avenues for the truly determined. In fact, there are always other avenues. I'm a smoker. Not a heavy smoker, maybe three or four a day, but I continue to smoke because I enjoy the experience, and besides, I'm an adult. If I choose to to smoke, I will and no legislative impost will stop me. I dare say the very same mentality will apply on behalf of those who enjoy 'alcopops'. Problem solved, Nanny?

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QotD: I'm So Excited

nobody@vox.com(NDC) — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 21:34:21 +1000

What most excites you about the way you're living your life right now?

Fuck all, really. If you call work-home-work-home five days a week, flight simming on weekends because I can't afford to do anything else, then I s'pose that's exciting. Frankly, I'd always hoped there'd be more to it.

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