Not really much happened here in the last time but there is still something I wanted to share for a while but somehow never got to it. Australia is a country of huge farms and farmers working on them all around the country. Some have just unbelievable areas of land to harvest in several states. Many are using GA aircraft to commute between their farms and houses. It just takes too long on a road.
Farmer-pilots are very funny and easy going people and we had dinner with one last night. The stories we heard are just unbelievable and way to funny to be true. A famous "flying dog" YouTube film brought us to that subject:
Bruce has a Cessna 182 RG to fly all around his farms. He also had quite a few dogs in his life but all of them were used to flying from their puppy time and therefore he never experienced any problems with them. One day he was about to fly his farmer fellow together with his blue cattle dog. The big old dog has never been up in the air before. Neither the owner nor Bruce were sure how and if the dog is gonna behave once he figures out they are flying. Getting the beast into the plane turned out to be no problem whatsoever. He just jumped in like into any other means of transportation probably thinking this just was a funny looking car. He found his spot on the backseat and fell asleep straight away. They started the engine - nothing happened, taxied out - dog still asleep, took off - dog in the land of dreams. A fair bit into the flight the dog woke up, stood on the backseat, looked at the two guys in the front and started happily waving his tail. Then he decided to have a look out of the window. He moved to the side, look down the right window ... and rapidly stopped waving the tail. "Oooops, there we go" - thought the two guys in the front and started talking the usual stuff to calm down the dog: "Good boy, good dog, lay down" and all the other kinds of crap. The dog apparently wasn't happy at all with what he was seeing through the right window and moved to the left one. Same scenario there: staring out the window with his tail all the way down. Not good at all. Since the dog was already pretty old and experienced he figured he didn't like the height and moved to the floor where he fell asleep again. After a refueling stop on the way, he jumped back in like nothing happened but never used the backseat again. His spot was on the floor. He never dared to look out of the window either.
There is one more thing we learned yesterday. You can get a gun permit in this country if you have a dog you are flying with. Just in case the dog goes nuts during flight. Well, reason enough I guess.
Much worse than a dog can be two of your buddies with a beer slab in the back seat. The same guy, Bruce, and three of his mates decided to go for a longer trip in the 182. The back seat passengers took good care of the fluid supply for the whole flight and placed a slab of beer behind the back seats. They got really thirsty shortly after take off. Couple of bottles later they figured they were getting bored and decided to ask the pilot for some entertainment. "Hey you! Do something!". We all know how it is being the only one sober in a car or plane. The pilot didn't seem interested at all and kept flying straight ... till the passengers forgot what they were asking for. Few more bottles later it started getting hot in the back and the passengers pulled their seat belts loose to take the jumpers off. Bruce and the other guy in the front pulled their belts tight and started the zero G show with the drunk mates screaming their lungs off in the back. They didn't even hear the big bang the beer slab made departing the plane through the back window ... It took everybody a while to notice the unusual windy conditions in the cockpit and the absence of all liquid supplies. Luckily the flight was in the middle of nowhere and nobody got killed by beer falling off the sky. I'm still laughing just imagining somebody working on a farm, in the heat, wiping the sweat off his forehead and saying to himself: "I would die for a cool beer.." ... and there it lands just in front of him :-)
Shortly after landing Bruce called his repair shop and asked if they had a back window for the 182 by chance. "What happend?" ... "You don't really wanna know mate!".
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