| ||||||||||||||||
     | ||||||||||||||||
With Avalon Airshow about to present us with a broad range of aviation this March,we thought it would be a great idea to give you a history of the show. Who better to provide this than the man who’s been with the show since before it even began? Check out Episode 52:The Misty Dawn of Avalon for a great interview with Ian Honnery,CEO of Airshows Down Under on the history of the Avalon Airshow plus much more.
 Steve &Grant standing behind F111C,A8-134 (Click on the image to view a larger copy) Thanks to the folks at Flight City Simulation Centre in Perth,we have been able to give away a one hour flight session in their Boeing 777 simulator to give away,valued at $275. Of the many people who correctly recognised that the airline jingle belonged to “Australian Airlines,”Graham Neal was the lucky winner. Congratulations to Graham and also to David Mitchell &Greg Spencer who were our “runners up”winning a PCDU T-Shirt each. Thanks to all of you who entered,even those of you who had incorrect answers. We’re working to bring in more prizes for future episodes so watch this space:) Thanks to the folks at Flight City Simulation Centre in Perth,we have a one hour flight session in their Boeing 777 simulator to give away,valued at $275. All you have to do to win is listen to PCDU Episode 45 where we play a jingle that belonged to an Airline over here. Have a listen to the jingle and then email us with your answer (even if it may be wrong:). We’ll draw the winner live on uStream and also announce them in a future episode. Some of you may be aware that the Plane Crazy Down Under team can be found beyond the bounds of the PCDU podcast. In addition to venturing out of the studio to attend events and record interviews,we’re also occasionally appearing in print (yes,print!) and other forms of recorded history. Most of you may know of the Australia Desk segment segment we produce for the Airplane Geeks podcast. In fact,that’s where our show started when we found that we had too much to talk about than would fit in the time allocated for the Australia Desk. We’re also producing the Flying Down Under segment for the FlightTime Radio Show that Milford &Charlie have been broadcasting every Saturday morning on radio W-BOB in Florida. Our segment plays every fortnight and is sponsored by Planehook Aviation Services. We’re also starting to appear in print media too,including an article by Kathy Mexted on the Centenary Airshow at Melton and a write-up about PCDU in the Australian Pilot magazine. You can find links to these two articles in our new PCDU in the News page under the “About Us”menu entry on our site. We’ll update that page as we appear in print,on radio shows or maybe even on TV. Slowly but surely,we’re spreading the word about aviation down under to the rest of the world. Don’t forget that you can help to spread the word which will,in turn,help us to keep promoting the fun &benefits to be found in aviation. We never made it to the Podapalooza event at Oshkosh 2010 although we did try and a recording of our attempt was played for everyone there. As many of you may know,a recording of the entire event was capture and has been circulated on a few of the podcasts that were there. In each case the podcast adding the podapalooza entry to their feed has made their own intro to it covering their own perspectives on the event. We thought about doing the same but figured that most of you have probably already heard it from the other feeds. Rather than add yet another download of the same content to your already overloaded stash of podcasts,we’re going to follow the Airplane Geeks’lead and point you at places to get it if you haven’t already heard it:
So go &check it out if you haven’t already heard it and by the way,be sure and listen to all those podcasts we’ve listed there if you’re not already (as well as all the others we list in our podcasts we like section:). We’ve revamped the site layout yet again with the aim of making it easier to find information and important stuff. Mostly this is handled via the menu bar across the upper part of the page (About Us,You can Help Us,etc) but also by putting some more white space in the design to make it a bit easier on the eye. Another key part of the redesign is the list of episodes are now highlighted down the left hand side of the page,rather than buried in the stream of messages like this. Hopefully that makes it easier for you to find them if you’re playing them from the site rather than getting them through the feed. There’s also the large space at the top for big announcements and such,like the one there now telling you that yes,we’ve been picked up by another group of aviation podcasters. Milford &Charlie at the Flight Time Radio show in Florida have graciously offered us a space to run a “Flying Down Under”segment. The Flight Time Radio show is broadcast every Saturday on radio W-BOB in Jacksonville,Florida so we’re tailoring this segment to recreational flyers and the general public. Stay tuned for more about “Flying Down Under.” Meanwhile,feel free to let us know what you think of the new layout,either by leaving comment here or using our forum. 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 gathering to produce the “Podapalooza”session. Imagine a room full of people and a table at one end packed with many of the people behind the voices in your head. All hanging out,talking about flying,aviation topics and social media. Pure podcasting fun:) Since we started Plane Crazy Down Under,we’ve tried twice but never been able to make it to Oshkosh. Back in 2009,Stephen Force of the Airspeed podcast took a quick “Hello Oshkosh”piece we produced and had it played at the Podapalooza and on the EAA radio show during the event. This year we couldn’t make it again (DOH!) so we put another promo together. It’s longer but encapsulates what we’ve been up to for the past year. They played part of it at the Podapalooza so we’re adding the original piece to our feed so you can hear how we tried to get there but couldn’t quite make it. Maybe 2011 will be “third time’s the charm”and we’ll get there at last?:) Some time over the past few days,our fledgling episode number 1,“And so it begins”has crossed the 1000 downloads mark! This surely is cause for a small measure of celebration,considering that in it’s first week,we were pretty happy to see it hit 40 downloads. Over the following few weeks,it struggled up to around the 200 mark,and has trickled slowly upwards ever since. Our first few shows,and episode 1 in particular,were basically just the uncut versions of the Airplane Geeks Australia News Desk that we have been producing since March 2009. Listening back to those earlier shows now,made as they were with cheap PC microphones,no mixer,and recorded directly off Skype,it’s almost a little cringe worthy compared to the standard we strive for now. However,if you’re new to our show,and are perhaps reading this page before heading off to iTunes to download our earlier efforts,please do so with the view to coming on a journey with us –not only in terms of content,but with a view to observing the learning curve we’ve been on that’s taken us to the magazine style,radio show format you hear today. Our statistics show us that many first time listeners happen across episode one but don’t continue on with us. Given the lower production standards back then,we understand why this is the case,however we suggest sampling one of our shows from,say,episode 20 onwards. These shows were made using studio quality microphones,mixers and solid state recording devices. And frankly,we feel we’re delivering the shows far more professionally now. As time has gone on,we’ve been privileged to meet and interview a wide range of fascinating people and have introduced a number of segments designed to make the show just a little bit different with each release. For those of you who continue to faithfully download Plane Crazy Down Under each week and participate in our community,we thank you sincerely for your support. We plan to continue delivering quality content to you each fortnight,and we encourage our new listeners to take the step and venture past our initial effort. Come on the journey with us and become another valued member of the PCDU community! The flying school at Tooradin,just south east of Melbourne,is back in action! After a few quiet years,the school has been bought by Aus Air Services who have quickly set about restoring an operational status. Grant &Steve produce a weekly “Australia Desk”segment for the Airplane Geeks podcast that provides some news &information from down under. It’s usually presented with a bit of a cheeky theme and makes use of Steve’s extensive sound effect library. That’s the usual process and we have a blast doing it for the guys over in the USA. Recently,however,we were too tired to make an episode so Max Flight invited us to join the Geeks and record live with them. The results are,suffice to say,hillarious and their guest,Karlene Petitt,demonstrated true mettle by not only sticking around to record with us but joining in the fray. So if you’ve not already heard the episode,go and check out Episode 96:Karlene’s Flight to Success and you’ll hear a great interview with Karlene,Grant &Steve joining in the fun for the news review and a set of out takes at the end of the show that go longer than entire episodes of some podcasts:) Owen Zupp will be arriving at Point Cook on Sunday the 16th by about 12:30 so he can be on the ground before the RAAF Museum’s 1pm flying display starts. We’re going to be on site to meet up with him and watch the display. If any of you are in Melbourne then come on down and say HI. Let us know if you’ll be there and we can have a “Tweet Up”(sorry Turb,let’s take the tech out and call it a “Meet up”eh?:) ) Owen Zupp is half way around his There and Back Australian tour,raising funds for the Royal Flying Doctor Service. Flying a Jabiru J230,Owen’s trying to raise $10,000 in donations to the RFDS so go to his site and “give a dollar to the doctor.” Meanwhile,Ken Evers and Tim Pryse have left Australia and are flying around the world in a Gippsland Aeronautics GA-8 Airvan. Their Millions Against Malaria flight is raising funds towards malaria research so if you can spare a few dollars,go to their site and donate. Check in regularly with both sites as their routes may take them near you. Owen,Ken &Tim welcome the opportunity to meet people at each stop,so feel free to go and say HI as they pass through. |
 Plane Crazy Down Under by Southern Skies Online Media is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.. Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available by contacting the authors by emailing them at planecrazydownunder (at) gmail (dot) com | |||||||||||||||
| Presented by Southern Skies Online Media WordPress SEO fine-tune by Meta SEO Pack from Poradnik Webmastera | ||||||||||||||||
Introducing PCDU Commentary
We’ve set up a blog where Steve &I can post our opinionated observations &commentary on the aviation scene down under. We still have our personal blogs (Grant’s is Fly Me Friendly and Steve’s is AusFlier) but they’re more for our own flying adventures.
So check out PCDU Commentary and add your thoughts &comments to ours.