Happenings at Sydney Airport
Below is a copy of a post I made in March 2009.
"Weird HF Antenna Kit
In 1965 I managed to have Sydney airport put on a high sense of alert when we were doing a Test flight on Survey equipment, a "Bomb Shaped" device to measure the magnetic field over a particular portion of land.
The extending and winding in of the device was quite similar to your antenna.
After a test we found we could not retract the "bomb" and we could not jettison it, so after much discussion with the Tower in Sydney, which included an option to try and drag it off on the water of Botany Bay, or try and "land" it on the runway at the Airport. The feeling was that the "bomb" may skip off the runway and wrap itself over the Tail Plane, with a resulting big problem. They filmed the landing and there was no drama, the "bomb" flew gently onto the runway, wore off about half an inch of one of the fins, the wheels of the aircraft then touched down and the emergency ended. The Airport then reopened and the engineers got into the system and fixed it .The reel system had broken and jammed between the cockpit floor and the bottom of the aircraft.
The aircraft was a Cessna 310 B model."
Tmb