The Apple Isle

[bones]

Righto this one is probably for Mitch, its only a matter of time before the Nats are over on that little island, so how far is it across the water, be interesting to know the distance, and has anyone ever flown it,, be a good test of faith in the motor ayy, i know that will be about the only one Birdy wont be flyin to thou, but if it were possible to get there on a tank of fuel be interesting to say the least :friday:..
im good for about 10 hrs now, so 10 hrs at 80kms(to be safe) thats 800kms got to be gettin close,, no roads or roadhouses along the way though damn it...

[bones]

just googled it and this is what i came up with;
Bass Strait is the 140 nautical miles (252km) of water between Tasmania and mainland Australia.
So that part of it is no problem then, but which way is the winds, tail wind be nice both ways :chuckel:

Hmmm so it is possible

[Birdy2]

pice o cake, just dont look down:)

[bones]

SOOOO you up for it then Birdy????
If you do it i'll be right here beside you, Birdy says "really?"
bones replies" yup really really" Bit more shriek there for you matey.

[Aussie_Paul]

Be like me in NZ, use someone elses gyro!!! :nervious:

Aussie Paul. :wave:

Lloyd, it's all bloody water!!!

[Graeme]

Why the hell not Bones.
Count me in. I flew over water a lot up north in all types of single engined flying machines.
I worked as a rigger in years gone by when we used to walk the steel very high. The trick was don't look past your feet and enjoy the view.
Also did a lot of very fast, very low flying with 5 aviation in Townsville, a hiccup there would put you into the trees real quick.
I wounder if we would be allowed to do something like this?
I'm sure Birdy would be in it, they say the ocean is a desert with it's life under ground.
So who else.
We don't want Bruty, he would take the fun out of it, he would put his foot in the ocean and the waters would part for him.

[BeefBear]

Somehow I think the finger pointers and whip'em if they break the rule people would frown upon this adventure. Elst they'd load you up with so many extras you could possibly take off for all the weight.

[Mitch]

Come On Ted, :friday:

Let the Lads have there fun. :focus: Bones, ole Mate Nigel (trike man/camera man from my pics) dropped in and I put the idea to him, with a question as to what is the longest stretch of water. Turns out about twenty mile or so. Apparently, there's little bits a dirt all the way. Now you cant land on all of them but there is a couple of fuel stops if required. And them bits a dirt you cant land on, you can 'ditch' next to and we can come rescue you..... or not. :wave: :yes: :moon:
Mark Mate, great idea and one well worth exploring. Some of the stuff in the opps manual appear to be the only stumbling blocks. But I, like you Bones am keen to see gyros doing more and more well planned history making flights, such as we have been witness to recently with the likes of journeys made by Birdy, Ross, Rob and others. Gets back to raising the publics awareness, if we are going to grow the sport.

Reminds me I saw a news bite of a fast fix wing racing a super bike and a formula one car round some track, maybe a month or so ago. I've always dreamed a similar scenario for gyros and the bikes at Phillip Island. Every bloke that rides his bike into that race track event would be thinking about trying to get a TIF as he's taking the long ride home.

If you are still interested in taking your dream a little further, look up your members list and give Don Cowling a ring. I believe he is on one of the bigger bits of dirt and will be a very interesting bloke for you to talk to. :peace:

See ya when ya get here.

Mitch

[Mitch]

Dont reckon they'll ever have the Nats down here.
You have to have an enclosed trailer for your gyro and registered as a caravan to get the tourist subsidy, else you'll be paying full tote freight and no one is going to do that. I was talking to someone way back about this, might of been Waddles or Llewella, suggested that we could apply for a general exemption from TT line if we had good numbers. A quick call to TT Lines to gauge their intent wouldn't hurt. Good luck on that score, they are loosing money by the bucket loads. Then you got to find a bunch of hardworking volunteers who could pull such an event together. Whew!!! Not this old fart. Cranbourne has the space and facilities. Portable shower set-up the only thing required. Everything else here is luxury, bloody luxury..big modern club house. GeorgeTown 15 , Launceston 30 minutes from Cranbourne.
Nice and warm :shiver: still at Easter, really.
All things are possible.

[llewella]

I would LOVE the Nationals to be down in the Apple Isle. And have talked to the boys down there about it many times. But the cost of putting your machine on the Spirit of Tasmania would be huge, as Mitch said, unless you built a special van. And even then it is pretty expensive. The guys in Tassie would love it too. So keep dreaming and planning.

[Brian]

To fly across Bass straight requires a bit of thinking about, not so much for a gyros reliability but for the the weather that can come up pretty quickly, the straight can be reputedly, one of the roughest places in the world so it would be a fine weather proposition, life jackets, a ELT beacon in the pocket and away you go, would be good to have an overnight stop at King Island although I reckon, once I started, it would be Tassy ASAP !!


I see prices are back to under $80 to get a car across so you would think they would be prepared to do a deal on a trailer........surely.