Planes

Plane Spotting

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Monday’s arrived once again. It comes around far too fast. How was your weekend?

Our weekend was pretty busy as we celebrated having a 12 year old at our place. James had a birthday on Saturday so the whole weekend seemed to be spent partying.

One of the great things we did yesterday was to picnic at Jandakot Airport.

Opened in 1963, Jandakot Airport is the major General Aviation Airport in Western Australia, and is the busiest airfield and largest aviation training base in Australia. Three runways, associated taxiways, tenant leased property and natural bush land constitutes an area of 622 hectares, 18 kilometres south of the city of Perth.

The airport provides access for essential service organisations such as the Royal Flying Doctor Service, CALM Forest and Bushfire Patrol and the WA Police Air Support. Jandakot is also an important training base for international airline pilots, with Singapore and China Southern operating flying colleges and student accommodation facilities at the Airport.

There’s a public viewing area with a few benches and shelters. We found a large shaded area under a big tree to throw down the picnic blanket. James and some of his cousins had Star Wars light sabre battles while others of us spent the time plane spotting.

I’m scared of heights but I’ll fly in just about anything. If I had the money I’d look into flying lessons but that’s never likely to happen so it was just wonderful to sit and watch other people taking off and landing. There was quite a range of small to medium sized planes, including a vintage Tiger Moth, using the airport as well as a few helicopters coming and going.

I don’t know how much the kids enjoyed the location but I can’t wait to go back there for another picnic.

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Got the time?

May 1st, 2008

by Rodney Olsen.

12 comments

I see that Perth Airport is going to get a pretty big make over. Eventually the domestic and international airports will be merged so that people won’t have to make a panicked dash from one terminal to the other to make their connecting flight.

It’d be nice if they did something similar in Sydney so that you didn’t have to pay five dollars for a bumpy bus trip from one to the other.

I’ve spent a bit of time in airports recently and I can suggest a couple of things they might want to keep in mind.

The first thing is clocks. I’m amazed at the lack of clocks in most airports. You’re there to catch a flight which leaves at a pre-determined time, yet there are hardly any clocks to tell you if you’re running on time or not.

Even if you’ve got a watch you’re very likely to have just flown in from a different time zone rendering your watch fairly useless. I was impressed at Miami Airport. They gave regular P.A. announcements to remind travellers of the local time. A great idea but a few extra clocks would make things even better.

My watch battery died on the trip from Miami to Los Angeles a couple of weeks ago so it wasn’t a lot of fun trying to work out if I was running early, late, or on time.

I guess one other thing they might like to look at is making the air-conditioning constant throughout the terminal. I’ve been to airports where you can go from stuffy and warm to icy cold within metres.

I’ve got a few other ideas but I’d like to hear your thoughts. What would you suggest to a company about to build a brand new airport? What have you found lacking at airports? What do you like about airports?

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Come fly with me

Apr 4th, 2008

by Rodney Olsen.

12 comments

I’m getting ready for some very long flights over the next day or so.

As I mentioned before I’m heading to Haiti with Compassion Australia to see their work amongst people living in desperate poverty.

I love flying but sometimes being in the air for fourteen or so hours at a time can be a little tiring. It all begins tomorrow morning with a flight to Sydney, then on Sunday it’s a fourteen hour flight followed by a five hour flight.

Of course I’ll make the correct preparations tonight. I’ll choose a couple of good books and make sure that my iPod’s fully charged.

Do you enjoy flying? What do you do to keep yourself entertained on a plane? Are you able to sleep well on planes?

I’m hoping that I’ll have internet access at some of the places I visit so that I can keep you up to date with my travels.

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