DAMP & Birdsville

[TSIO540]

What are CASA going to do with 200 or so pilots and many more intoxicated punters camping airside at the Birdsville races this weekend???:ooh:

[PyroTek]

I hear they ordered 300 sets of handcuffs:}
Didn't order keys for them, of course.

We shall see!

[Worrals in the wilds]

Good one Pyro, be a cosy fit in the Birdsville watch house :}

[Stikybeke]

Get a pot of tar and a bag of feathers ready.......

[Pinky the pilot]

Get a pot of tar and a bag of feathers ready.......

And a few rails....

(Tarred, feathered and run out of town on a rail.)

[Howard Hughes]

Keep your licence and ASIC hidden and just say you are with Howard!:E

[sms777]

ASIC at Birdsville??? What has this world come to!!! :eek:

[PyroTek]

So who here is heading over to Birdsville??

:ok:Pyro!

[LeadSled]

sms777,

Mate, the DAMP rules apply at any airfield/aviation activity and it will be no fun for those on the receiving end of a positive test. Hiding ASIC/any sign of pilot identity will not help, if you get sprung.

Read the fine print, the rules don't necessarily only apply "airside", which, let's face it, can be a bit undefined at Birdsville.

Tootle pip!!

[Two_dogs]

What has this world come to!!!
I'm with you sms777, FFS!

[hurlingham]

Lots of people here already - looks like it will be a fantastic weekend.

Airport staff expecting a RAAF Challenger on Fri for the day & F50 on Sat for the day.

[sms777]

Well, excuse me for my ignorence and under informed stupidity but since when was Birdsville an RPT destination requiring ASIC to be displayed by a silly private aviator visiting on a fun weekend?:ugh:

Can anyone fill me in on this because if it is true, i am staying home. :{

[topend3]

The ERSA clearly states it as a security controlled airport, which I think means the ASIC rules apply, but it's not that hard to wear an ASIC now, is it?

[morno]

Birdsville has a 4 times weekly RPT service (2 days a week to Mount Isa, 2 days a week to Brisbane), and has had one for, ohhhh, I don't know. Probably 20 years?

Currently Skytrans, before that Macair, before that Flight West, before that I don't know.

morno

[185skywagon]

Well, excuse me for my ignorence and under informed stupidity but since when was Birdsville an RPT destination requiring ASIC to be displayed by a silly private aviator visiting on a fun weekend?

Can anyone fill me in on this because if it is true, i am staying home.
Just about every airport in Western Qld with the exception of Jundah, gets an RPT service. Therefore requiring an ASIC to be worn.

Morno,
big gap, but before Flight West, TAA in the 70's early 80's I think. Then nothing till Flight West.

cheers,
185.

[YPJT]

Check with the local ARO at the strip. If Birdsville is only serviced by turboprop RPT then the ASIC requirement is usually applied only during "traffic periods". That is 2hrs prior to the arrival until 2hrs after the departure of the scheduled air service.

[tmpffisch]

That is 2hrs prior to the arrival until 2hrs after the departure of the scheduled air service.

...because extensive research on terrorist movement patterns has shown they are not very patient; having to hide for more than 2 hours airside is beyond their tollerance levels. :ugh:

[rioncentu]

And all terrosists are huge big fat bastards. There is a gap under the gate near the bowser that you could roll a 44 gollon drum under !!!

[YPJT]

ttmpifsch,
That is one of many sections of the regs that are applied for no other reason except some numb nut public servant thought it would be a good idea.
Even they themselves are now starting to realise that some idiotic regs were put in place but untortunately it is a lot harder to have them taken out than put in.

[morno]

Bit like public servants then, a lot harder to take out than they are to put into the job, :}

[Flyingblind]

Sometimes you just have to shake your head at the stupidity of our regulators in Australia.

[Paul Alfred]

The Mail Plane is also RPT :ok:

PA

[Desert Flower]

The Mail Plane is also RPT

Hey PA - you can thank your lucky stars that your company switched the mail run schedule from the weekends to the middle of the week. The poor guys from ASA that had the misfortune of doing it on Birdsville weekends years ago used to be in a right old state when they got back on Sunday afternoons after tangling with the race goers!

DF.

[Peter Fanelli]

Airport staff expecting a RAAF Challenger on Fri for the day & F50 on Sat for the day.Birdsville airport has staff?????? :eek:



ASA that had the misfortune of doing it on Birdsville weekends years ago used to be in a right old state when they got back on Sunday afternoons after tangling with the race goers!
Not to mention those who were forced to go there against their will.

Nothing like going to sleep on the floor of a Chieftain alone only to wake up to the sound of someone sitting in the back seat chundering all over the inside of the open door.

Absolute **** of a weekend in my opinion. Only high point was watching idiots get the crap kicked out of them in the boxing tent.

:ok:

[Worrals in the wilds]

Even they themselves are now starting to realise that some idiotic regs were put in place but unfortunately it is a lot harder to have them taken out than put in.

Ooh yeah. Known as Operation Kneejerk in the Organization-Formerly-Known-As-Worrals'-Employer. Implement a cunning plan via legislation and then realize the pitfalls once it's set in stone. Story of government initiatives that Get Tough On Crime/Terrorism/Common sense. :ouch:
Birdsville airport has staff?????? http://images.ibsrv.net/ibsrv/res/src:www.pprune.org/get/images/smilies/eek.gif
Last time I was there they bore a remarkable resemblance to the pub staff. They can probably put their BDV ASIC in the same holder as their shiny new Qld Govt (licensed premises) Approved Manager cards, which take about the same time to get issued from OLGR, ie put the forms in now and you'll get the card in time for your retirement party. They also serve the same purpose, that is to show you never got busted for anything:suspect:.

A mad mate from Cloncurry went to the races and passed out in his swag, woke up the next morning to find a machete thrust into the ground a metre from his head :eek:.
Have fun all you brave souls, Caveat Emptor and remember to call back sometime when it's not Races, Innamincka and Windy-dorah are nice too :)

[multime]

Morno- thought you and your loser team were from Bankstown.?
Or even worse mexicans.
Big ask to comment on a National ICON.
M

[Desert Flower]

Nothing like going to sleep on the floor of a Chieftain alone only to wake up to the sound of someone sitting in the back seat chundering all over the inside of the open door.

Birdsville weekend in the last few years has been relatively tame to what it used to be when I first got involved in it. People wandering around everywhere in various states of inebriation, cans rolling around in the gutter (sometimes people too!) men peeing behind trees - & this was just on the way up! The old Cherokee sixes would be loaded to the gills with fuel, bums in seats, swags, eskies etc. & you would wonder how in hell they were going to get off the ground! Over the course of the weekend at least one idiot would either get lost, run out of fuel or crash. Ahhhh - those were the days! ;)

DF.

[tinpis]

All hat and no cattle.
Bah!

[Peter Fanelli]

men peeing behind trees


That's better than peeing off the veranda of the pub onto the crowd below.

[Worrals in the wilds]

Or on the feet of the crowd members beside you. Happened to me at a Big Day Out :yuk:

[morno]

Multime, I'm confused. What on earth are you talking about? :confused::confused::confused:

[185skywagon]

Multime, I'm confused. What on earth are you talking about?
Yeah, Morno, I was gunna ask the same question. He's got you confused for someone esle I think.

[Pinky the pilot]

The poor guys from ASA that had the misfortune of doing it on Birdsville weekends years ago used to be in a right old state when they got back on Sunday afternoons after tangling with the race goers!


Yeah DF. I only had the (dubious) honour of one run at race time but remember thinking at the time that I could have cheerfully passed that particular weekend up for someone else.:hmm:

Although there were'nt too many people around the pub on the Sunday when we were there, the majority were pissed and/or obnoxious bogons!:mad::ugh:

One was obviously spoiling for a blue with someone but I just ignored the :mad::mad:

[Desert Duck]

The testing team never made it to the Races - they sat in Charleville and tested crews on the way home instead.

[Stikybeke]

They must read Pprune.......

:ok:

[Worrals in the wilds]

Was anyone busted?

[Mainframe]

The Ramp checking crowd have always favoured Charleville, most East bound flights need to get fuel there on the way home.

As for the body count count,

heard a figure of 58 failed in some way or another, overloaded, unrestrained articles, non current charts, all the simple stuff that pilots overlook.

Going to the Birdsville Races (and Brophie's Boxing Tent) is and always will be the blokiest weekend in Oz.

If you fly there dont worry about if you'll get ramped, rather try and gues where!

[Dick Smith]

Did the Telstra Next G satellite based temporary ground station work?

[megle2]

Heard it worked but had problems with demand volumes.

[hurlingham]

Telstra temporary tower worked - not very well though.
Apparently the tech crew did not expect so many devices to register, over 2000 on Fri.
If you could get a line you had to be quick in case it dropped out.

[morno]

Why they don't just put a permanent tower there I don't know. It's not like Birdsville doesn't get enough people through in the year to make it viable.

Telstra, always the followers and not the leaders. Optus had the vision last year and it proved a success.

morno

[Worrals in the wilds]

Third world services for the bush :mad::*:* Furball (to quote Tipsy) etc.

That said, I've been to big events in the city where the mobile network collapsed due to the number of SMS / photos etc. The aforementioned Big Day Out had a total mobile coverage meltdown on all networks because of the sheer number of Gen Ys manically messaging each other.

Birdsville's usual population of 100ish (who get remote area sat phone subsidies if I'm not mistaken) probably doesn't justify the setup cost.

[morno]

Worrals,
The population of Birdsville may only be 100, but the caravan park alone has around 25,000 people through it a year!

morno

[Desert Flower]

Why they don't just put a permanent tower there I don't know

I believe that is the next step. The one on the weekend was a test run of sorts.

DF.

[Worrals in the wilds]

Fair enough morno, forgot about the touristos and didn't realise they'd built up to those sort of numbers. Any rural infrastructure from a telco can only be a good thing.

[Capt Claret]

Birdsville had mobile coverage under the CDMA network but Next G didn't include the 100 permanent residents and thousands of passing tourist as part of the 98% of the country's population!:8

[Wally Mk2]

...........................am so glad I went to BDV when nobody worried about Mob Ph's.'cause there wasn't any, besides those that yuo wanted to talk too on that great W/E where right beside you or at least on the ground beside you:}
Few where concerned about the 'scalies' in those days too as they where rarely about & if they where most flew with pride & airman-ship by the book & we got a real kick out of them not finding a thing
Nobody had to worry about security 'cause there was none & everybody was too p1ssed to care anyway:)
I almost feel sorry for those gen Y kids, they are just a bit too late to have lived life free & easy:-)

Wmk2

[Desert Flower]

From the ABC news website last week:

Mobile phone boost for Birdsville
By Chrissy Arthur

Posted Thu Sep 3, 2009 10:05am AEST


Birdsville, in Queensland's far south-west, will soon have permanent mobile phone coverage for the first time.

Optus says it has built a facility on the Birdsville water tower which will offer GSM - or 2G - mobile coverage to the town, racetrack and roads in the surrounding area in time for this weekend's camel races.

The company says the facility will be upgraded to offer 3G coverage by March next year.

Diamantina Mayor Robbie Dare says the community is still seeking fibre-optic services and other telecommunication improvements but this is a good start.

"A lot of tourists and business people visit our corner of the world and mobile coverage is so important," he said.

"[But] mobile phones is really only one part of our telecommunications systems - we were hoping that we'd get fibre-optic first and then all the services would spin off the fibre-optic because it's the ultimate goal for us."

DF.

[tea & bikkies]

The good old days before DAMP

http://i726.photobucket.com/albums/ww269/greg2217/20-09-200951554PM.jpg

[Wally Mk2]

.......................ahhhh that brings back very fond memories there "t&b", tnxs:ok:

Lots of 3 bladed jobs in that pix. I turned up at my very first meeting in a C172, (mid 80's) was almost embarrassed to camp near it:bored: Although I did see a C150 with the owner (can only assume he was a pilot), sheep, cow, bag of chaff, pair gumboots, (must have thought the weather would turn bad:})couple of jerry cans & a few flagons of plonk, & all came in on that poor little C150, no "scalies" around then:} Remember the backed up loos??? Gawd to be a sheila up there in those days meant they played tenis!:}

I have some great old pix from those days shame I can't ad them here, old age means can use only bark & charcoal to communicate with:-)

Progress, not always for the better:-(


Wmk2

[PyroTek]

Wally, saw a pretty nice looking C150 (puts on flame suit etc.) at BDV this year.
Was there for a short time in a C175:}

[RENURPP]

Last time I was at the Birdsville races, must have been 1987 I am guessing and I was there again this year.

When I have a few more minutes I will post some photo's, but it isn't what it used to be.

I hardly saw an aircraft arrive or depart, and at the time I went to the "airport" (Friday and saturday am) to see what was going on I only saw a handfull of aircraft.
Its been a while and my memory is distorted a little, (No DAMPs back then) I can't remember anything like the number of cars and campers as were there this year.

the crowd the first time were "wilder". I remember guys drunk as monkeys sitting on the roof of the pub and a female could not go past without having to bare her tits, no such stuff this time. "bugger". The crowd this time were extremely well behaved. An older crowd.

Still, it was a good weekend.

[Kickatinalong]

Looks like a Schoies A/C. Which one was it?:ok::ok::ok:
Kickatinalong

[Desert Duck]

CC

Birdsville has never had mobile coverage of any sort.

[pcx]

My bet is the races in 1980. Aircraft DJL.

[Capt Claret]

G'day DD,

That's interesting. When I passed through on a camping trip in June 08, some of the locals were lamenting that they had CDMA coverage but missed out on Next G.

Crossed wires perhaps.:confused:

[185skywagon]

Birdsville has never had mobile coverage of any sort.

It now has optus. I believe Telstra customers were given access during the race period due to the fact that Optus was using Telstra infrastructure to get out of Ybdv.

[Deaf]

Drove to BDV and stayed at "Birds", the "ville Hotel" part had fallen down along with that part of the pub a month or so before. Must go through the old man's slides to see if I can find a photo.

That was in 1964. Pretty tame now

[Tinstaafl]

I took some blokes to the races in the early '90s. No DAMP, no insecurity (we all felt quite secure enough to stagger our way to our a/c each evening. Can't see how an ASIC card would have helped unless it had our parking spot printed on it...)

I enjoyed it. We pitched a fly from tail tiedown to wing tiedown, had camping foam mattresses & sleeping bags. Highlights for me were

* The blokes near the threshold sitting on their eskies holding up scorecards for each arrival's landing ( I got a nice, high score),
* Seeing the roads buried in tinnies each morning and being cleared with front end loaders, and
* Finding a broken thong that I was able to repair with some string I found. The thong was important 'cos some bugger trod on my heel on Fri night causing my shoe to come adrift. Never did find the shoe but I did find the thong's mate the next day. Bonus! Matching footwear for the rest of the weekend!

Low points were:

* Slicing my thumb open on a 44gal drum garbage bin. Someone staggered into me, I put my hand out to balance and snagged my thumb on the jagged inside lip.
* Watching someone repeatedly abusing a poor C210's nosewheel during landing while giving joy rides. Seems the person wasn't capable of analysing & learning from his/her errors for the entire weekend to prevent kangarooing & wheelbarrowing. I sometimes wonder if s/he ever got the technique & speed correct?