Hi Gus
On the way over I put 40L of fuel in the outboard tanks at Nullabor which allowed us to fly direct to Esperance but we had a tail wind so made it easily anyway. We left Ceduna with three other 7's. They had to divert out to Forrest and top up with Fuel. This saved us about an hour of flying which was great. We had a cruisy trip over. Day 1 was Little River (Melbourne) to Ceduna with a quick fuel stop at Port Pirie. Day 2 was Ceduna to Esperance with a fuel stop at Nullabor. Day 3 was Esperance to Serpentine (Perth).
On the return trip I had a meeting Monday morning in Perth. We departed Jandakot at lunchtime and had a great trip out to Forrest with a fuel stop at Caiguna. The fuel stop at Caiguna gave me my first chance to try autogas and we filled up at the road house next to the Nullabor highway:
[IMG]
[IMG]
Too much fun. Should have seen the look on the faces of the grey nomads!
Autogas seems to cause vapour lock more easily than Avgas (or thats my theory). It was nearly 40 degrees C in the sun at Ceduna and she ran pretty rough at idle. Anyway powered up and off we blasted to Forrest and she smoothed out in the cooler air up high.
Forest for the night and then the next day made Little River (Melbourne) in one day with an early departure. We had one stop at Port Pirie and made the whole trip from Perth back to Melbourne in 10 hours flat with average tailwinds of about 10kts. Perth to Forrest 3 hours. Forrest to Melbourne 7 hrs. Sweet.
Best thing about the trip was catching up with so many RV enthusiasts - particularly a solid turnout of East coast crew from the northern states (even northern Victoria for that matter) that I previously only identified as characters hiding behind email addresses on the RV's in Aus Yahoo Group (you know who you are)!
I always wanted to fly across Australia and never imagined how good the RV-7 could be as a long distance travelling machine. I'll be doing it again.
In the mean time enjoy a shot of some of Perth's finest....
[IMG]
Cheers
Jon
Linear Mode
