Take-Off
We taxiied to Essendon’s Runway 17. Sat there for a few minutes while we waited for inbound traffic, then once cleared, lined up, and in all its glory, the R-1830s both went to full power and began a smooth acceleration down Runway 17.
The take-off, of course felt slow, but one could note the gradual rise of the aircraft’s tail as we were rolling down the runway, and seconds later, the smoothness of the take-off gave the sensation of the ground just ‘dropping’ from the bottom of the aircraft, rather than the aircraft getting airborne. It was brilliant! Here I am in 2011, and riding around on a aircraft built in 1945 and the aircraft still flies beautifully and gracefully!
We continued climbing over Melbourne on a South-West track, which took us over Port Phillip Bay, past Point Cook (Home of the RAAF Museum) on the right hand side, and continued on over the bay, past St Leonards, where we left Melbourne’s controlled airspace.
We then exited the Bay over ‘The Rip’, which is between the heads of Point Lonsdale (Bellarine Peninsula) and Point Nepean (Mornington Peninsula) at the entrance to Port Phillp Bay, and continuing southbound, to the Tasmanian Island of King Island.
Cruise
Flight Attendant, Julie, wearing my hat
After passing over the bay entrance, we continued South over Bass Strait, in a very smooth and pleasurable cruise, at about 4500ft, and cruising at 130kts, which seemed very slow considering I’d been flying twin-engine planes that would cruise at the same speed, but I guess back in the day this speed was impressive nonetheless.
What a glorious day! We got above the clouds over Melbourne and pretty much for the rest of the day, was completely clear skies. I could not have picked a better time to do this trip on this aircraft and to this destination.
During the flight, we were given a coconut slice and a juice, and when the aisles weren’t chockers, each of the passengers was given the opportunity to visit the cockpit inflight.
Being at the rear of the aircraft, I was the last to visit upfront before they began their top of descent. Although I was upfront for only a minute, I was amazed at how clean, yet primitive the cockpit was…. aided by a big fat dirty Garmin 430 GPS in the middle! I returned to my seat and enjoyed the rest of the flight as we began our descent towards King Island.
