We’ve launched our first episode of Avalon 2017 coverage and it contains the following items: Kimberley Turner from Aerosafe Patrick Coleman from Garmin Associate Professor Andrew Kornberg and the Fly for the Kids charity Matt Hall on the F-35A and also on his new aircraft for the Red Bull Air Race Kurt Lyall from RocketRoute […]
The team at the Cast Away Podcast Awards have recognised that there’s a lot of great content being produced in Australia so they are holding the first ever Australian podcasting awards event. PCDU has been included in the Industry Focus section and we have a number of other great shows that we’re up against. We’re […]
Our friends at TVSA Pilot Training will be having an open day at the Bacchus Marsh airport near Melbourne on Saturday the 25th of February, starting at 10am and running until 3pm. They will have a Pilot Panel with commercial airline pilots talking about their careers, a BBQ sausage sizzle and Trial Introductory Flights in […]
Grant’s pulled out a big collection of ballooning interviews including discussions with military & commercial fixed wing pilots who enjoy the challenge of flying hot air balloons. We’ve also got a fun chat with Owen Zupp about his new book: Without Precedent, our tribute to Hannes Arch and the Infrequent Flyer finally gets to see […]
As the final hours of 2014 draw to a close, we’re getting our last episode for 2014 out the door. The boys have been kept pretty busy with their day jobs lately but, despite this, they’ve managed to do some flying:
Grant’s been taking friends on their first balloon flights including Evan Schoo and Darren Craven
Fred Samson took Steve for a fly over San Francisco while he was there a back in October
The PCDU aeroplane fleet has expanded thanks to Jonesy picking up a 1974 model Cessna 172
After the hangar talk settles down, we get into the episode itself which includes the recent Avalon Airshow Media Launch, Steve’s time at the Red Bull Air Race in Las Vegas and Grant’s trip to Auckland in New Zealand for the Wings Over New Zealand Forum meet up. The episode stacks up in the following list:Steve with the AirWork Cessna 172 he flew over Las Vegas
Grant attended the media launch for the Avalon Airshow which was held in the old Qantas hangar where they used to park a 747 while doing heavy maintenance on it. There was wind on the hangar walls, doors opening, vehicles moving and people talking which all made it a rather “interesting†place to record the following chats:
0:16:29 – Jeff “Trappo†Trappett finally gets a chance to appear on PCDU (that or he couldn’t run away fast enough :) ) and talks to Grant about his P51, his C47 & his Sabre
0:22:34 – Paul Bennet talks about his new Wolf Pitts aircraft, the manoeuvres it’s letting him do and where things are at with Paul Bennet Airshows (sounds like he’s got a bit of an airforce happening :) )
0:26:36 – Darren Craven talks about owning & flying a Winjeel
0:33:30 – Gordon Robinson talks about flying Australia’s only Fokker Dr.1 triplane replica all the way down to Melbourne from Brisbane
0:39:38 – Andrew Carter owns & flies the Dr.1 replica that Gordon flew down. He talks to us about setting up the Australian Vintage Aviation Society to commemorate WW1 & bring to life aircraft of the era.
0:48:28 – Of course, there wouldn’t be aircraft at Avalon without a session on Timbo’s Tarmac and Grant made sure to record one at this event
Back in October, Steve went to the USA to experience the Red Bull Air Race in Las Vegas (his family still thinks it was a family trip :) ). While at the event he recorded the following interviews:
Steve chats with Matt Hall at the Red Bull Air Race in Las Vegas0:54:27 – Matt Hall talks about his results in the Fort Worth race & the challenges he’s found this season
0:59:33 – Eric Cieslar & Peter Wezenbeek are Matt Hall’s race technician & race tactician and they talk about their roles in keeping Matt flying in top form during the races
1:05:30 – Hannes Arch talks about standardised engines and how they’ve highlighted the pilot’s skills as opposed to engine power
1:09:06 – Kirby Chambliss talks about the challenges he’s faced this season and the changes he’ll be making for the next season
1:13:42 – Mike Goulian talks about his involvement with Cirrus aircraft and the hassles he’s worked through this season
1:19:48 – Steve catches up with Matt once again just prior to the start of the second day to discuss qualifying
1:21:55 – Steve presents a wrap up of the race after the winds came up and they had to cancel the day’s flying (audio courtesy of the Red Bull Air Race content pool)
As Steve was on a Qantas A380 heading to the USA, Grant was on an Air New Zealand A320 heading to New Zealand to attend the Wings Over New Zealand Forum gathering at Ardmore Airport near Auckland. More than just a gathering, this event included plenty of presentations on great topics, all hosted within the New Zealand Warbirds hangar. While Dave Homewood is releasing much of the content from the event on his Wings Over New Zealand show, Grant recorded a few items of his own:
1:33:54 – Brett Nicholls talks about owning two ex-RNZAF BAC 167 Strikemasters and what it’s taken to get them running for publically available joy flights with Jetfighter Military Adventure Flights
Graham Wood taxies the DH.83 Fox Moth1:42:20 – Grant got the opportunity to take a ride in a DH.83 Fox Moth along with fellow passenger Grant Newman. In addition to recording some of the sounds from the flight, he also chatted with Graham Wood about his career and flying the DH.83
While Grant didn’t get a chance to record with Melanie Salisbury from Aviation Tours NZ, she did pass on some information about their “Planes, Trains & Automobiles†tour of the UK in July 2015 which includes Duxford’s “Flying Legends†airshow. It looks like a great tour with plenty of aviation goodness packed into it :)
Steve & Grant recommend you check out Spotters Mag1:48:38 – Steve & Grant wrap up the year including a couple of items from the mailbag (including Luke Murphy, Andrew Brown & Shaun Dwyer) and a few shout outs for the end of the year:
Steve & Grant have been enjoying the new Spotters Mag, an eMag for aviation spotters with a version just for Australia & New Zealand. Highly recommended!
Carlos Stebbings from the Plane Talking UK show is doing his pilot’s license: onya, mate!
Steve would like to thank Captain Harry Wubbin for his hospitality on board QF93
Steve & Grant thank Paul Burfitt from 64 for his great help this year
Don’t forget that the Avalon Airshow 2015 is coming up in a few months and we’re looking forward to seeing you there
There’s been a few delays in getting our first episode for 2012 out but what can you expect with the Summer heat to enjoy and games of Cricket to watch (or avoid :). It is with Cricket in mind that our very own Infrequent Flyer, Anthony Simmons, took some time out of his European adventures to visit the Imperial War Museum at Duxford (home of the Duxford Aviation Society) at the time of their last flying display for 2011, a day that saw some 16,000 people come to watch the show!
The focus of this flying display was the Korean War and Anthony was able to find out that the “Forgotten War” was about so much more than episodes of M*A*S*H:
Anthony chats with Lt Don Reed (ret), a 90 year old veteran of the conflict who flew with the Fleet Air Arm as an observer on Fireflies and as a Seafire pilot
He then meets Esther Blaine, the PR Manager, for a discussion on:
The history of the Duxford site
The educational programmes the IWM provides
The new “Airspace” display
The IWM’s plans for the future
Anthony is also able to further one-up Steve & Grant by noting that he’s been through a Vickers Viscount, DeHavilland Comet and Aerospatiale-BAC Concorde as well as getting up close with a Lancaster and Tigermoth. What, us, jealous??? :)
Anthony wraps it up by interviewing Mark Linney from the Golden Apple Trust about their flying F86A, the only one of its kind still flying. They chat about:
The history of this particular aircraft
Mark’s career as a pilot in the RAF flying the Tornado GR1, instructing on the Hawk and then winding up on the Harrier. After the RAF he’s now flying 747s, A340-600s and, of course, the F86
They then chat about the F86’s development, handling and history
The episode wraps up with Steve & Anthony having a quick review of the content & Anthony’s experience at Duxford.
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 current again…
Given we couldn’t do a whole episode around the concept of “gas” in different countries, we also discuss recent aviation news items (so many to chose from lately) and have a collection of interviews we recorded at the RAAF’s Air Pageant at Point Cook.
Here’s how the episode hangs together this time:
We have yet another opinionated discussion on recent news items:
QANTAS are very much in the news due to an engineering dispute and maintenance woes
CASA are converting our GAAP airports to Class D in June. Have you booked in to attend one of their workshop seminars on the transition? You’d better. Check out the CASA web page about the transition.
We shamelessly rip off UCAP’s “Off field landing of the week” segment
We recorded a few interviews with pilots at the RAAF’s Air Pageant at Point Cook airbase
Jim & Jenny Wickham (Yak9 & Robinson R22)
Jim Whalley (CA-13 Boomerang)
Murray Colquhoun (chief experimental test pilot with Pilatus & the PC21)
Anthony Simmons returns with his “View from the Lounge” segment
What’s in our mailbag for this episode?
Luke Harris raises the issue of laser pointers being used to tag aircraft
Bob Livingstone makes some comments about the B24
Damien Rose provides some in-cockpit audio (we play his intro but the cockpit audio is at the end of the episode)
We definitely have some shout outs this episode
Marty at Flight.org has been of great assistance to us, helping to promote the podcast & much more
Thanks to those folks mentioning @pcdu in their Follow Friday tweets
Check out errolwi on Twitter for his tweets while at the Warbirds over Wanaka air show in New Zealand (and yes, you’re welcome for the F18s :)
Good luck to Zyola from the Mile High Flyers podcast as she’s going through the “joys” of losing her job recently. We also want to know if our photos on our About us page scared off her friends who thought our accents were cool/hot/sexy :)
Thanks to an opportunity presented by Shashank Nigam, Grant’s just had an article about the ongoing Jetstarisation of QANTAS published on Shashank’s Simpliflying site.
It provides a background on the birth of Jetstar, its growth to date and how it is destined to consume more of QANTAS’ mainline routes & aircraft. Head on over to Simpliflying and check out the article.
Thanks to Shashank for giving us the opportunity to gain further exposure to the global aviation world, it’s very much appreciated :)
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 bit of Christmas cheer, we produce just over two hours of PCDU goodness including an interview with Michael Gilmour from Downwind.com.au, our usual opinionated review of the news and listener mail. We also wrap up the year with a tip of the wing to the podcasts that inspire us and the guests who have helped give us some great content.
As from now, we have a forum. Yes, that’s right, a place where you can come and chat about our episodes and anything else related to PCDU. Thanks to Michael @ Downwind for making a space available to us.
As usual, our theme music track is “YouNameIt5” by Brian Simpson (aka t3cat5) and our sound effects come from SoundSnap.com.
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:
Matt Hall & Nigel Lamb
Carlo Santoro from Flight Experience Melbourne
Nick Brau on flying hot air balloons over Melbourne city
The news items we covered include:
British Airways again discussing a merger with QANTAS
The US FAA wil be conducting an Air Safety examination of Australia’s air operations
30th Anniversary of Air New Zealand’s DC10 crashing on the side of Mt Erebus in Antarctica
Virgin Blue likely to have a profit in FY09/10
QANTAS to purchase additional aircraft and will be assigning more of their 787s to Jetstar
QANTAS introduces the airport of the future concept
Airport capacity in Sydney and the need for a second airport
Australian Transport Safety Bureau provides interim reports on the QANTAS A330 ADIRU issues and QANTAS 747 oxygen bottle incidents
RAAF to purchase 14 F35 fighters even though Lockheed has admitted the project is running late
The first two Wedgetail AEW aircraft have been delivered
Last flight of the Caribou in Australia & it’s potential replacement
We hope you enjoy the show and we will return to our usual levels of interviews, discussions & opinionated news reviews in a week or so.
Despite some audio quality issues (lucky 13, right? :) we have a great chat with Owen Zupp covering his early aviation life, how working as an Ambo provided a good foundation for dealing with emergencies, his father’s influence and his “There and Back” fund raising flight project.
