Thursday, December 01, 2005

Light Aircraft

Travelling around interesting places can be done in so many ways these days. One of my favourites is to take to the air in light aircraft that provide much wider breath-taking vistas or come considerably closer to interesting features than land transport can. Although this post is about some of the light aircraft I've ridden on in recent times, some pictures taken from within them are included to give some perspective of the views, etc.

This picture taken on Martha's Vineyard airport appeared in a previous posting but I put it in because it has a little adventure attached to it that plays out in the next 2 pictures below.










The Cessna took no less than 3 attempts to take off in thick fog. The first 2 were aborted and we had to taxi back to the parking bays each time the fog rolled in just as the lady pilot was about to rev up the power. She was really steady though and eventually brought us down to a fogged up runway on Nantucket.







The misty Nantucket airport building looms ahead in rather low visibility (less than 100m).














The ride in this yellow chopper over the Great Ocean road along the rugged Australian coastline and over the Southern ocean toward the 12 Apostles was brief but spectacular.








A view of the 12 Apostles looking westward with the Great Ocean road on the bottom right of the picture. The road runs through farmland and offers good views of dramatic cliffs and a wild coastline even from ground level.










This is what you look like when you ride in a small helicopter. The noise levels are very high inside so you need the headset.










Flew from Inverness to Stewart Island - the southern most large island in New Zealand in the small twin engine Islander behind me. The little airstrip is surfaced with gravel - just like the ones on Tomanggong and Jeroco in Sabah where I once used to work.









Views of Horseshoe bay from the air as the plane descends toward Stewart island.













This is what it looks like in the cabin of a small plane. There is no in-flight service as the flight is short.











This is the largest of the light aircraft featured here. It is a 12 seat Russian built Antonov 38 which is surprisingly comfortable. There is no in-flight service for the 2 hour flight to our dive destination - an atoll in the Spratly group of islands with pristine underwater marine life.













A snow landing on the neve of the Frans Josef glacier in the Souther Alps. The snow is light and powdery but even ski-planes can land on the wide neve casting a huge spray of white powder into the air as they hit the snow.









This landing is on an isolated peak overlooking the West coast of New Zealand not far from Milford and Doubtful sounds. There are no roads up here and it is a challenging climb even for experienced mountaineers. The cameraman is the pilot.












The beautiful Doubtful sound (it is actually a fiord and not a sound) on a slightly hazy day. The boats and ships that ply the waters of this fiord are seen docked on the edge of the temperate rainforest below.








The longest flight I have ever taken in a small aircraft was in this Bell helicopter on my birthday. It took close to 7 hours (with no refreshments but for a lunchtime landing in Keningau) for the trip to Sook and then back to the plantation office near Sungei Segama. This picture was taken by my colleague Shui-Hing Ho.