Plane Crazy Down Under

We’re joined by Mark Pracy Sr and Mark Pracy Jr to talk about the many aviation endeavours they’re involved in, including JetRide Australia, Pracy Racing and Aircraft Imports. We also have Bas Scheffers sitting in from Adelaide for the interview as well as a fantastic announcement to make towards the end of the show :)

We start by talking with Mark Sr about his background in aviation including how he grew up in Scone seeing warbirds all the time, was taught aerobatics by Col Pay and then eventually became an aerobatics instructor. He’s also got a low-level aerobatics waiver and is an airshow pilot displaying a number of warbirds at events around the country.

Eventually progressing to jets, the Pracys purchased a Czechoslovakian Aero L-39 Albatros two seat aircraft. We discuss with them it’s handling, speeds and the typical manoeuvres they’ll perform when taking passengers up as part of their JetRide Australia flights. We also discuss some of the more interesting folks they’ve had on board before moving into their other main operation: Aircraft Imports.

Mark Jr is a certified LAME & pilot who runs the Aircraft Imports business, working with his father to scout aircraft, flight test & inspect them and arrange their purchase for clients. With the AUS$ being so high compared to the US$, they’re being kept very busy arranging purchases for Australians at the moment (although we’re not sure using a container to bring a Cirrus into Australia is the best way of doing it :). Mark Jr is able to run the entire operation from the inspections to dismantling & packing then on to reassembly, test flights & certification back here in Australia.

The work Team Pracy do in JetRide Australia and Aircraft Imports all helps support their latest endeavour which is racing their L39 at the Reno Air Races. They’ve recently completed their qualifications and are now certified to race this year in September. We talk to them about the qualification & selection process, dealing with emergencies and the mechanics of reducing weight to help compete. Fascinating stuff.

Team Pracy also note that they’re happy to take on sponsors of their L39 in Reno so if you or an organisation you represent are interested in getting space on a very sexy aircraft, contact Mark Sr via [email protected].

Finally, we have our big announcement for the show:

Thanks to the generous support of Team Pracy, we’re being sent to Oshkosh 2011. That’s right, after 2 years of having to miss Oshkosh because of insufficient funds and looking like we were going to miss this one as well, Mark Sr & Mark Jr have offered to get us over there (mostly, we think, so they can see our heads explode as we’re surrounded by aviation :)

We’d like to thank Team Pracy for their most wonderful offer as it’s thanks to them that we’re going to finally be able to meet up with our online friends and experience the wonder that is AirVenture Oshkosh.

We’re also receiving additional sponsorship funding from other groups including the fine folks at Aviation Advertiser who are helping to chip in some additional funds to cover our camping gear while we’re on site.

Watch this space as we’ll have more news & updates about how our trip to Oshkosh is progressing over the next few weeks :)

As if all this wasn’t enough, we wrap up the episode with a quick chat with Bas about the latest news on the OzRunways application and he points us at a cool video of OzRunways being demonstrated.

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It’s been a while since we got down & dirty with the Australian commercial airline scene so with that in mind, we called up Ben Sandlilands from the PlaneTalking blog on Crikey.com.au for a chat. There’s some amazing developments going on in the “big iron” side of people moving here in Australia and we went through the following subjects:

• The joys of ash clouds (Thanks Chile!)
• Virgin Australia taking on Qantas & Jetstar with their new pricing structures & business class, including just what kind of passenger they were targeting at the front of the cabin
• Qantas & JetStar’s industrial issues with their unions
• Tiger regrouping & focusing on routes where it can do the most damage to the others (watch out Melbourne <-> Sydney and maybe even the Golden Triangle of Melbourne, Sydney & Brisbane)
• Strategic’s foray into the Pacific

In this episode we also include an interview with Kathy Mexted, a freelance writer who we met *way* back at the Centenary of Flight airshow in 2010. Flying is in Kathy’s blood by birth & by marriage and she’s been writing articles for a variety of aviation magazines as well as working on a book about being the spouse of an airline pilot. We’re very happy to announce that Kathy’s also going to be producing some content for us in the near future mostly covering Recreational & General Aviation areas.

Finally, we’re including some new music in our show as Steve’s found out about the royalty free production music by JewelBeat. Watch out for whole new background tracks & cross-over music in this & future episodes :)

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There’s no denying that aviation has been the home of many innovative ideas when it comes to aerodynamics, systems and so on. Sometimes we even get to hear about innovation in many of the business & training aspects of aviation and this episode is bringing us a few of them, from new ways to bring aviation education to kids through to recognising the need to store aircraft in the Asia/Pacific area. We also have a number of other content items including a few more of our Avalon interviews.

This episode contains:

• Tom Vincent from Asia Pacific Aircraft Storage (APAS) talking about the new “boneyard” facility they are creating at Alice Springs in the middle of Australia
• Angelina Morino from Aus Air Services joins us again to review their past year of operation and discuss their involvement with Brentwood College (Steve’s old high school) to provide aviation study to students. They’re also planning to extend this out to other high schools in the area. NOTE: As with Peter Dow at TVSA, it’s great to see local flying schools thinking outside the box to make it easier and/or cheaper to learn to fly)
• Some more content from Avalon, including:
• The crew of a KC135 tanker
• Flying Officer Johnno Pearson on flying the F/A-18 Hornet
• Flight Lt Liam Webler, a techo who helps to keep the F/A-18 Hornet in the air
• Steve & Lisa Ruffles talk about their Eagle School of Microlighting at Porepunkah

We wrap up with the following Listener Mail and Shout Outs:

• Miles Rados wrote in about gliding at Tocumwal
• Toby Robb wrote in about Steve’s recent microphone levels and had some comments on our recent chat with Dick Smith
• The Airplane Geeks podcast reaches episode 150 – well done, guys!
• Kudos to the RAAF social media team for helping to promote our work via the “I love jet noise” Facebook page
• There’s a new aviation podcast – The Stuck Mic AvCast – from the folks at The Pilot Report. They’re two episodes in and have been producing great content so far
• PCDU can now be found on Stitcher & SlapDash Radio
• Thanks to all those who’ve left feedback at the iTunes store – much appreciated and keep it up!
• Don’t forget to check out our website where we’ve made some recent layout changes plus we’ve also been loading more videos on our YouTube channel.

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We are fortunate to have Dick Smith return to PCDU, joining us to discuss his views on Australia’s aviation environment. We talk about his time as chairman of the Civil Aviation Authority and then his return as chairman of the Civil Aviation Safety Authority. He mentions some of the initiatives he started that worked as well as some that didn’t quite work as planned. Dick also gives us a rather candid look at his views on user fees, ministers and what’s going wrong with aviation today.

Once again this discussion with Dick is sure to generate divided commentary from those in aviation, both old & new. If you’ve not already listened to our previous chat with Dick about his early flying adventures, you really should check it out now.

Following our chat with Dick we have a dramatic change of scene as the Infrequent Flyer (aka Anthony Simmons) returns to give us his View From the Lounge angle on the Avalon Airshow. Then, to answer Anthony’s question of “How it all flows together” we have ATC_Ben return to present his latest Controller’s Corner where he explains just what went on at Mercat Manor.

Following that we have a few interviews recorded at Avalon:

• FLT LT Pete Komar, an F-18F Super Hornet pilot with the RAAF
• BAe Hawk Mk127 techo LAC Brian Dick
• Pilot Officer Emmanuel “Muz” Murray talks about flying the BAe Hawk Mk127
• SGT Kerry Dimar who works in logistics with the BAe Hawk Mk127

To keep with the Fast Jets angle, we’ve thrown in some cockpit audio from Steve’s flight with Mark Pracy in JetRide’s L39 Albatros.

For this episode, we’ve dived into the mailbag to bring out:

• Calum Tsang from Toronto lists some of his favourite episodes
• Carl Rossi says PCDU is going to cost him $13,000 … and he doesn’t mind!
• Peter Haans tells us he appreciated our Avalon 2011 coverage
• We remind you to check out our listener survey
• Listener “Raptor” has created a thread about CASA’s “Flight Planning Kit” on our forum at DownWind.com.au

We also give a shout out to:

• The Airplane Geeks podcast for their great episodes with Igor Sikorsky III and Mikey McBryan from Ice Pilots
• The Flaps Podcast from the UK for being nominated for an award in New York and winning an award in the UK – awesome effort from a great podcast (if you’re not listening to these guys, you’re REALLY missing out on an amazing show!)
• Tod McClamroch from My Flight Blog also had a ride in an L39 and scored some stick time (great, another person Grant is jealous of :) )

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Here’s a quick teaser video of Steve’s flight in JetRide’s L39 down at Tooradin airport recently. We’re still working on the full “Adventure Flights” video so this one’s a bit of a teaser and a test of putting videos in our feed.

Let us know how it works for you. Do you want videos in the feed or a separate feed for video entries?

You can find photos from the flight on our Flickr Collection, a bit of a write-up in our Talk to Me, Goose post and see lots of comments about the flight on our Facebook Page.

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Every year at Easter, Recreational Aviation Australia holds its National Fly In (NatFly). This is an event where RA-Aus members, vendors & interested folks come to meet, attend workshops, review vendor offerings, undertake test flights and show off their aircraft. Aircraft range from powered parachutes & ultralights through to home builds and the latest sport & recreational aircraft. Importers and manufacturers are present to showcase their equipment, the circuit is filled with aircraft undertaking demo flights and the local hotels & bars are filled at night with tall tales and recollections.

We were fortunate to be invited to attend along with the team from Aviation Advertiser, setting up our mobile recording studio in one of the Temora Aviation Museum’s hangars (along with their Mk VIII Spitfire and Cessna A37). We arrived on the Friday morning and departed on the Saturday evening, experiencing two very busy days packed with interviews, discussions, aircraft & equipment inspections and a couple of demo flights.

Suffice to say there was plenty of material captured and we’ve managed to squeeze the best of it into yet another very large episode. We considered splitting it over two but there’s more great content on the way on other topics so we felt it best to pack it all into one large package.

The content we present in this episode is:

• An introduction with Steve, Grant, Ben & Bas
• Brumby Aircraft with Paul Goward
• Laurie Hines and his Revolution Mini-500 helicopter
• John Garton from Leisure Sport Aircraft talks about the Paradise P1 aircraft from Brazil
• Gyrocopter pilot Sam Polyak talks about the EVA Aviacion ELA 08
• Gary Flood from Bert Flood Imports discusses the latest Rotax engines
• Owen Zupp joins us to chat about how he undertakes an air test
• Paul Chernikeef talks with us about Rotec Engineering’s latest radial engines
• Nick Sharples talks about the AVOCET aircraft his father Mike has created from a Jabiru 230
• Tony Blair talks to us about flying aerobatics and RAAF ab initio training
• Jon Johansen from Flymore steps us through the TruTrak EFIS, EMS & autopilot systems on offer
• John Lindner gives us a visitor’s view of the show
• Bryce Hughes joins us from Cub Crafters
• Matthew Maude from Performance Metals Australia gets detailed on metal
• Some of the cockpit audio from Steve’s test flight of a Brumby R600
• John Conte from Aerochute talks to us about their powered parachutes
• Gary Sargeant discusses the amazing EQ1 Wireless Headset he’s invented

We then wrap up the episode with a review of the show between Steve, Grant, Ben & Bas along with a quick chat about the OzRunways application that Bas has been developing.

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Aviation in Australia is experiencing a difficult time and General Aviation is especially being hit hard. User fees are continuing to increase, rules are being changed and airports are being shutdown or reduced in size due to encroachment by non-aviation construction. We’re joined in this episode by Ben Morgan from Aviation Advertiser to discuss these issues, highlight the need for people to take action and discuss what those actions might be. Ben’s certainly not holding back as the stakes are too high to be diplomatic.

We also have some other great chats in this show, including:

• Steve Ahrens talking about the upcoming Barossa Airshow (May 1st, 2011)
• A chat with the crew of an RAAF Wedgetail AEW&C aircraft that we recorded back at Avalon Airshow
• A collection of quick chats with some RA-Aus pilots at Avalon, including:
• Peter Harlow from Foxbat Australia
• John Callahan with his Typhoon Glider
• Peter Kane with his Kitfox
• Ben Morgan then rejoins us to discuss the state of the second hand aircraft market in Australia and a couple of the aircraft available for sale on Aviation Advertiser

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Most people interested or involved in aviation have a special love for warbirds and antique aircraft and we at PCDU are certainly no exception. This episode features a number of interviews with pilots of Warbirds & antique aircraft that were recorded at Avalon Airshow and at Point Cook when the RAAF Pilgrimage arrived.

The RAAF Pilgrimage was held to celebrate the 90th birthday of the RAAF & comprised a collection of more than 50 aircraft that flew from Temora to Tocumwal to Ballarat and finally to Point Cook. The Pilgrimage aicraft arrived at Point Cook (the birth place of the RAAF) and we were there to greet them.

This episode contains the following interviews from the RAAF Pilgrimage:

• Air Commodore Rodney Luke
• Steve Death
• Doug Hamilton
• Egon Mahr from the Russian Roolettes
• Col Griffin & Warren Canning

We also have some other warbird related discussions, including:

• Kenny Love, CEO of the Temora Aviation Museum
• Ben Morgan from Aviation Advertiser and the Macchi 326H restoration project he is a member of
• Darren “Buster” Crabb
• Gus Lerrard

We then round out the episode with:

• Listener Mail from Ed Stubbs
• Shout Outs:
• Ken & Tim get recognition for their Millions Against Malaria flight
• Matt from New St Films for the help with our photo shoots
• Listener Andrew Tsousis for putting us in touch with Ben Merkenhof
• Iat-Fai Leong for his support of the show
• Erk for his support & his new book

We also have some additional content that can be found in our Extras section. This time we have a recording of the post-flight debrief by the Yak Attack formation pilots.

Finally, we would like to offer our condolences to our friend Milford Shirley from the Flight Time Radio Show in Florida, USA, who’s wife Barbara passed away recently.

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The Australian International Airshow (aka Avalon 2011) is over but the show must go on. We have mountains of content from Avalon 2011 in addition to the interviews we released in each of our daily episodes.

Yes, that’s right: If you haven’t downloaded & listened to each of the daily episodes then you should stop right now and go do it. There is some amazing content in those episodes that will NOT be in the post-show Avalon episodes, including F22 Raptor pilots, B1B crew, Dr Brendan Nelson, remote tower systems, Simmo & the CA27 Sabre plus much much more.

This episode we focus on the Trade Show aspect of Avalon 2011, gathering together the interviews we recorded with various corporations during the first few days of the show:

• Dan Schroter, head of strategy & business development at BAe Systems, talks to us about BAe Systems’ work in Australia
• Paul Cooke, director of business development in defense avionics at BAe Systems, talks to us about their amazing Q-Sight system
• Walter Kreitler, direct of BAMS UAS business development at Northrop Grumman talks to us about the Broad Area Maritime Surveillance system
• Mike Fuqua, director of tactical unmanned systems at Northrop Grumman, talks to us about the MQ-8B Fire Scout helicopter UAS
• Paul Levett, CEO of Levett Engineering, talks to us about landing more work with Pratt & Whitney on the F35 JSF’s 135 engine

After some intense trade show coverage, we also step back a bit with the latest ‘View from the Lounge’ update from Anthony Simmons before winding up the episode with some Listener Mail:

• David Thornton says “Hi” from the UK and thinks our Avalon Quick Cast episodes were just like being there.
• Mac Coble from Florida
• Bruce Dickerson from Georgia

We also have a few important shout outs:

• Gary Towart who helped escort us at the KC135 and warbirds tarmac, preventing us from getting hassled :)
• MozzMan from SRS Photography who escorted us during our interviews with Nikolay, Bob, Kent & Chris plus took a few photos of us in action
• Ian Kershaw who’s put together our new audience survey
• We now have a PCDU Flickr stream where our Avalon 2011 photos are being loaded along with others from past events

Thanks once again for downloading & listening to our show. Be sure to catch up with our Avalon Daily episodes as there is lots of great content in those too.

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We’ve made it to the end of day 6 of the Australian International Airshow and Aerospace & Defence Exposition (aka Avalon 2011). It’s the final day of the airshow and once again Team PCDU have been flat out interviewing, editing and generally having fun. We’ve spent some time chatting with the crew of a KC-135 inside their aircraft, interviewed a number of acts, caught up with the Temora Aviation Museum crew and generally had a great time.

We’re also acknowledging that these daily episodes should have been called “Daily Avalon Updates” or anything other than “Quick Casts.” To really confirm that, we’ve put quite a lot of content in this episode, including:

• Grant’s chat with Paul Simmons recorded while sitting on the wing of the CA27 Sabre
• Nikolay Timofeev talks about flying aerobatics in his Sukhoi 26
• Anthony Simmons presents a short View from the B52’s Lounge
• Kent Pietsch talks to us about flying the “Jelly Belly” Cadet & his various routines while Chris Williams from the same team talks about driving the mobile landing-platform vehicle
• Being updated by Colonel Seth Bretscher on the amount of work involved in getting so many USAF & USN aircraft & airmen down to Avalon (and why there was no B2 & the F22s didn’t fly)
• An update from Ian Honnery on how the airshow is going so far
• A quick chat with Ed Stubbs, a listener from Perth who came over to Avalon for the show
• The final tarmac updates from Timbo with the warbirds & Papa Smurf at the Keyhole

These Avalon Quick Cast episodes are being sponsored by Aviation Advertiser and supported by Red Baron and Temby Automotive.

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