Thanks Tinstaafl & Henry:
Yeh we will be flying a Cat, the one in N.Z. used to be CF-JCV I first flew it for an airline in 1968 last time in 1986. It spent some time in Africa then went to N.Z. I know the guys that operate it and will of course contact them when we are in their area.
The machine I will be flying is French owned and I have been flying it for them for the past six years all over Europe, Africa, South and North America.
The routing of course was sent to me in french and I have some difficulty figuring out some of the names in it.
some of the palces in Aus will be Derby, Kununurra, Alice Springs, Ayers Rock, Lake Eyre, Woomera, Adelaide, Melbourne then Ferneaux, Hobart, Christchurch and on and on and on.
When we fly in Countries we are not familiar with we always use local pilots to advise us and it has on many occasions really been of imense help.
The ITCZ is always a problem for us as we do not have radar, although we have a strike finder. . .The PBY has a very long range( we can carry 10,500 pounds of fuel and 900 pounds of oil, gives us approx. 20 hours range. )and just beats the hell out of the crew if we fly very long legs. Sometimes we are so beat when we land we don't even go to a whore house.
Anyhow I have plenty time to get everything together and will contact most of you by e-mail.
Funny but Australia and N.Z are two places I have never flown and look foward to it.
One thing going for us is the machine is supberbly equipped we have an IFR approved GPS plus we run two portables all the time and we even have two sat phones and hardly ever use our HF radio, anyone that wishes to fly our PBY can get it in flight simulator 2002. It is called the princess of the stars.
Anyhow thanks for the quick reply and I am sure we will be bantering back and forth many times arguing about the most inane subjects, but that is fun.
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The hardest thing about flying is knowing when to say no.