The way we were - Ansett, TAA, Qantas
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I was around 5 years old, and went to Sydney from Adelaide and back, on a holiday with my old maid Aunt.
Unfortunately ? It was with Ansett, so I never qualified for the 'Captains' wings as a TAA junior flier
Unfortunately ? It was with Ansett, so I never qualified for the 'Captains' wings as a TAA junior flier
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I was around 5 years old
Have some very pleasant memories of the Viscounts, and some not so pleasant memories too.
My first flight ever was on a Viscount back in 1963 when I was 16.
Bottums Up
I have many fond memories of going to Essendon to deliver or collect dad, who did a lot of travelling in Viscounts, Electras, F27s and later 72s & DC9s. 
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The time I worked in MEL was all at Essendon left there before the move to Tullamarine, lots of great memories.
I only had a Fokker F27 and Viscount Licence at the time so was heavily involved with them.
Still very sad when I remember the day we heard about VH-RMI near Winton, and later the 700 near Port Hedland.
The first aircraft I ever signed out myself, after all those years of studying and training was a Viscount 800 at Essendon.
Made sure everything was perfect, dispatched it, watched it taxi out, scream down the runway, then it aborted.
I had to meet it when it returned to the gate, wondering what on earth was wrong, did I do something wrong, when I received it the Captain would not tell me at first what was wrong.
Turned out a pax had gone crazy during the takeoff, run up and down, through the rear toilet and into the cargo hold, nothing to do with me thankfully.
I only had a Fokker F27 and Viscount Licence at the time so was heavily involved with them.
Still very sad when I remember the day we heard about VH-RMI near Winton, and later the 700 near Port Hedland.
The first aircraft I ever signed out myself, after all those years of studying and training was a Viscount 800 at Essendon.
Made sure everything was perfect, dispatched it, watched it taxi out, scream down the runway, then it aborted.
I had to meet it when it returned to the gate, wondering what on earth was wrong, did I do something wrong, when I received it the Captain would not tell me at first what was wrong.
Turned out a pax had gone crazy during the takeoff, run up and down, through the rear toilet and into the cargo hold, nothing to do with me thankfully.
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Darts
Ah yes, some of my time with TAA, in BNE, involved the RR Dart as installed on the F27. I was licenced on the F27 airframe/engine as well as the PW JT8D installed on the Dc9 and B727, amongst other airframes which were not operated by TAA at the time.
One of my particular duties was as the Dart Type Specialist and this required for certain individuals to be allocated tasks involving engine control intercheck adjustments as and when required. This meant that the less amount of adjustment on 'Rod 13' for example by anyone not authorised lessened the chance of misadjustment. Also had the responsibility of main engine runs which, in turn, meant a bi annual check out in the Dart Simulator at Essendon.
A lot of work was required to ensure that those engines operated as per spec, but it was an achievement that we, as a team, turned out a good product that got passengers and crew safely to destinations.
As an aside my son flies for QLink as a F/O of which I am inadortinately proud.
Cheers
Nkosi.
One of my particular duties was as the Dart Type Specialist and this required for certain individuals to be allocated tasks involving engine control intercheck adjustments as and when required. This meant that the less amount of adjustment on 'Rod 13' for example by anyone not authorised lessened the chance of misadjustment. Also had the responsibility of main engine runs which, in turn, meant a bi annual check out in the Dart Simulator at Essendon.
A lot of work was required to ensure that those engines operated as per spec, but it was an achievement that we, as a team, turned out a good product that got passengers and crew safely to destinations.
As an aside my son flies for QLink as a F/O of which I am inadortinately proud.
Cheers
Nkosi.
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Security 60's style
Adelaide Airport mid 60's. I'm about 14rs old.
"Hey Mr can I go and have a look on the plane"
"Yeh OK" said someone over the other side of the waist high fence.
I left my push bike against the fence, pushed the gate open, and off I trekked by myself towards this amazing machine call a TJet.
My senses were racing. I didn't know what to expect as I had never been on or near a plane.
So for quite awhile a managed to stay out there wondering through the TAA 727 cabin and cockpit and then walking around the aircraft a dozen times.
Climbing down the back stairs was an amazing feeling.
The kero fumes, the noise of the APU all stuck in my head.
A line of people were strolling out to the aircraft so it was time for me to get on my bike.
This event must have influenced me to get into the aviation industry a few years later.
"Hey Mr can I go and have a look on the plane"
"Yeh OK" said someone over the other side of the waist high fence.
I left my push bike against the fence, pushed the gate open, and off I trekked by myself towards this amazing machine call a TJet.
My senses were racing. I didn't know what to expect as I had never been on or near a plane.
So for quite awhile a managed to stay out there wondering through the TAA 727 cabin and cockpit and then walking around the aircraft a dozen times.
Climbing down the back stairs was an amazing feeling.
The kero fumes, the noise of the APU all stuck in my head.
A line of people were strolling out to the aircraft so it was time for me to get on my bike.
This event must have influenced me to get into the aviation industry a few years later.
Join Date: Jul 2002
Location: NSW Australia YSCH
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TAA Viscount HBA/MEB 2 Darts feathered.Early 60s
During the early 60s I was the QF rep in Tas. TAA were our GSA and I used to travel
weekly to MEB. On one trip I was in the jump seat when our flight was diverted to
Burnie as HBA and Launceston had closed down due WX and the crew had to feather 2
Darts due fire warnings and ATC wouldn't let us cross the pond on 2.
Great experience seeing Pros at work.Will always remember that flight and the skippers name .The Darts were a mess and covered in foam when opened. It was a electrical fault
Athol Townley was Minster for Aviation and if he was on board I was down the back.
I was a cockpit junkie and had over the years the privilege of being up front for Takeoffs and Landings with my own company,also TAA and Ansett and they will always remain a treasured memory of the the time when Aust airlines were Airlines .
In those days we all flew FOC on each others flights as needed. Great times.
weekly to MEB. On one trip I was in the jump seat when our flight was diverted to
Burnie as HBA and Launceston had closed down due WX and the crew had to feather 2
Darts due fire warnings and ATC wouldn't let us cross the pond on 2.
Great experience seeing Pros at work.Will always remember that flight and the skippers name .The Darts were a mess and covered in foam when opened. It was a electrical fault
Athol Townley was Minster for Aviation and if he was on board I was down the back.
I was a cockpit junkie and had over the years the privilege of being up front for Takeoffs and Landings with my own company,also TAA and Ansett and they will always remain a treasured memory of the the time when Aust airlines were Airlines .
In those days we all flew FOC on each others flights as needed. Great times.
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People say that when you get older you look back and think things were better back in the olde days, and I think they were too, definitely in the Airline Industry, as the last 2 posts have again pointed out.
As I mentioned early on this thread one of the worst changes is the lack of cockpit visits now, for Kids even like our Kids all did, but even for people in the Industry, I hate to even think what my time in the Industry would have been like if I could not have visited the cockpit particularly on those two Overseas contracts I did.
And someone mentioned security, I remember back in the 1960s when I was working at Essendon, not so much at the pax terminal, but often on the freight line, especially at weekends, the number of times I was working on an aircraft and people, Kids and Adults, would just come out onto the aircraft, NOT doing any harm, just curious about what was going on, some of these Kids probably went on to join the Industry, never going to happen today.
As I mentioned early on this thread one of the worst changes is the lack of cockpit visits now, for Kids even like our Kids all did, but even for people in the Industry, I hate to even think what my time in the Industry would have been like if I could not have visited the cockpit particularly on those two Overseas contracts I did.
And someone mentioned security, I remember back in the 1960s when I was working at Essendon, not so much at the pax terminal, but often on the freight line, especially at weekends, the number of times I was working on an aircraft and people, Kids and Adults, would just come out onto the aircraft, NOT doing any harm, just curious about what was going on, some of these Kids probably went on to join the Industry, never going to happen today.
I flew the Viscounts .
Airsupport.
No mate , you are not the only one to remember the Viscounts.
I flew the horrible things as an F/O in 1964.
What an absolute heap of crap they were. Everything that could go wrong with them seemed to do so.
In the short 7 months I was on them I had :
2 Engine failures
Several air conditioning heating problems resulting in lifting the carpet in the cabin and manually operating the system.
Two diversion due to low fuel in bad WX ( they had bugger all endurance )
Tyre shredded on take off
Starboard undercarriage jammed up ( Townsville Airport ) and only managed to extend it after 5 tries and about 3 minutes before a belly landing was to be carried out.
I must say that the poor old Viscounts were being used in an environment they were not really designed for.
It was designed for short to medium hops in Europe's cold / cooler weather but not the longer sectors and hot/ very hot trips we had them do.
When we used to do a tech stop in Mt Isa in summer we had to put a blanket over the controls as most of the cockpit was roasted in the overhead sun at noon. I reckon the temp in the cockpit was about 50C as there was no A/C and the ground blowers were about as effective as a fairies fart.
The day I left to go on to the B727 in 1965 was a huge relief !!
No mate , you are not the only one to remember the Viscounts.
I flew the horrible things as an F/O in 1964.
What an absolute heap of crap they were. Everything that could go wrong with them seemed to do so.
In the short 7 months I was on them I had :
2 Engine failures
Several air conditioning heating problems resulting in lifting the carpet in the cabin and manually operating the system.
Two diversion due to low fuel in bad WX ( they had bugger all endurance )
Tyre shredded on take off
Starboard undercarriage jammed up ( Townsville Airport ) and only managed to extend it after 5 tries and about 3 minutes before a belly landing was to be carried out.
I must say that the poor old Viscounts were being used in an environment they were not really designed for.
It was designed for short to medium hops in Europe's cold / cooler weather but not the longer sectors and hot/ very hot trips we had them do.
When we used to do a tech stop in Mt Isa in summer we had to put a blanket over the controls as most of the cockpit was roasted in the overhead sun at noon. I reckon the temp in the cockpit was about 50C as there was no A/C and the ground blowers were about as effective as a fairies fart.
The day I left to go on to the B727 in 1965 was a huge relief !!
Moderator
to call the Argosy a "Queen of the Skies" does not really compute with my recollections of the aeroplane.
ah .. guess I left off the smilie ?
However, the old girls made me a few dollars over the years so my bias is understandable. Indeed, I can recall quite fondly running some low level ops around DPO (with young Bazza driving and having a ball) to validate an escape to DCA's satisfaction ....
I flew the horrible things as an F/O in 1964.
Yet another stirling example of the finest of British Engineering Practice !
ah .. guess I left off the smilie ?
However, the old girls made me a few dollars over the years so my bias is understandable. Indeed, I can recall quite fondly running some low level ops around DPO (with young Bazza driving and having a ball) to validate an escape to DCA's satisfaction ....
I flew the horrible things as an F/O in 1964.
Yet another stirling example of the finest of British Engineering Practice !
The Argosy was known in the RAF as 'the flying crisp carrier", i.e. you filled the tanks and could then only carry a packet of crisps.
From frequent experience, it was easily overtaken in a Friendship with only half the number of Darts!
From frequent experience, it was easily overtaken in a Friendship with only half the number of Darts!
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RodH,
I did say on a later post............
I was only Licenced on the engines on the Viscount 800 never the airframe, but I worked on the airframes back then, yes they had some truly horrible faults, and as you alluded to, we had an English Engineer who worked with us back then and he said they were never meant to be in Australian conditions when they were designed, he reckoned they were great in Europe and hardly ever needed a lot of maintenance and just a weekly check. 
It is all relative too in a way, one day back then when I was working at Essendon an RAAF VIP Viscount was there and the Commander (or whatever he was called) was worried about a prop leak, I was sent over to check it. I could not see any problem but the Commander wanted assurance it was safe to fly back to Canberra. I took the spinner off and all I could see was a very small amount of grease, no oil leaks, and he said that was what he was worried about. I took him over to see one of our Viscounts in the hangar undergoing maintenance, he was then confident he would make it back to Canberra.
Also john_tullamarine, back then they used to say the BEST aircraft you can have was an American airframe with British engines.
I did say on a later post............
Have some very pleasant memories of the Viscounts, and some not so pleasant memories too.
It is all relative too in a way, one day back then when I was working at Essendon an RAAF VIP Viscount was there and the Commander (or whatever he was called) was worried about a prop leak, I was sent over to check it. I could not see any problem but the Commander wanted assurance it was safe to fly back to Canberra. I took the spinner off and all I could see was a very small amount of grease, no oil leaks, and he said that was what he was worried about. I took him over to see one of our Viscounts in the hangar undergoing maintenance, he was then confident he would make it back to Canberra.
Also john_tullamarine, back then they used to say the BEST aircraft you can have was an American airframe with British engines.
The Argosy, or the 'Whistling Tit', was also known as the 'crisp carrier' because it was calculated that the densest load it could carry to completely fill its cargo volume ('cubing out'), with full tanks, was...potater chips ('crisps' to the Poms!).
Last edited by Captain Dart; 6th Feb 2014 at 01:44.
Apparently with the RAF version, the Argosy CC.1's "beaver tail" (doors capable of being opened in flight) generated a lot of drag, further reducing its performance. IPEC's Argosy didn't have this feature.
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Remember the crew brekkies ex DPO?
When East West took over DPO & WNY from TN I went with the handling agent as Airport Manager NW Tas.
This flash title included duties such as load control, staff training, checkin, loading and unloading during turnaround, delivering freight and deicing!
TN and AN were catered by Coastal Catering who delivered unappetising powdered scrambled egg and bacon that smashed on contact so I chucked them (as AN did a few months later) and got Andrew and Peter Smith on the job.
They would take the crews orders of anything from steak and egg to eggs benedict the previous day (we would call them in) and the next morning Andrew would arrive in his Moke (shots, short sleeved shirt and thongs year round) and load the catering cans with the individual crew requests clearly marked.
The same applied if we groundies were flying. You were lucky to fight your way through the magnificent brekky before the F27 was on descent.
It was my wife's idea to get the Smiths onto it and led to them being multi millionaires with catering ops all over Australia and the world.
Just another thing that has not survived.
Quel domage
Best all
EWL
Modified for spelling faux pas
This flash title included duties such as load control, staff training, checkin, loading and unloading during turnaround, delivering freight and deicing!
TN and AN were catered by Coastal Catering who delivered unappetising powdered scrambled egg and bacon that smashed on contact so I chucked them (as AN did a few months later) and got Andrew and Peter Smith on the job.
They would take the crews orders of anything from steak and egg to eggs benedict the previous day (we would call them in) and the next morning Andrew would arrive in his Moke (shots, short sleeved shirt and thongs year round) and load the catering cans with the individual crew requests clearly marked.
The same applied if we groundies were flying. You were lucky to fight your way through the magnificent brekky before the F27 was on descent.
It was my wife's idea to get the Smiths onto it and led to them being multi millionaires with catering ops all over Australia and the world.
Just another thing that has not survived.
Quel domage
Best all
EWL
Modified for spelling faux pas
Last edited by Eastwest Loco; 10th Feb 2014 at 12:55.
Museum
For those of you not in Australia but who are interested in this entire thread, I have just found the TAA Museum web site TAA MUSEUM
Quite interesting and I for one will certainly pay it a visit if I ever get back down to Melbourne.
Quite interesting and I for one will certainly pay it a visit if I ever get back down to Melbourne.
You were lucky to fight your way through the magnificent brekky before the F27 was on decent.
Access to the cockpit? On the round Australia charters out of Sydney the front door was never shut. Folk were welcome to pop up for a gander and a chat anytime, two at a time. One such was Mr Tom Philp (making the trip with his delightful wife Darcy) . Tom flew Spits with 452 SQN based Darwin . As we passed Port Keats en route Kununurra Tom regaled us with a story of being caught up in a melee at Port Keats during the war. . He had landed there to deliver a parcel to the mission at the same time that the natives were restless. He saw one of the brothers breaking a spear over his knee. (Curiously enough, I was able to tell him first hand a similar story. Only that was at Hooker Creek (Lajamanu) in 1974. Perhaps the biggest difference in our experiences was that he did not have to gently try to get off his plane a couple of distressed old ladies, sitting on the floor keening, rocking back and forth. (This was achieved with the help of the Dutch book-keeper, the only whitey at the settlement that afternoon. The root cause - booze, or access thereto.)
On one of those two week trips, so hard to get a gig on, our landing back at Mascot was memorable. It happened to be a perfect greaser.
Spontaneous applause erupted. That is one of those few times you can pick up the PA and say without a blush -
"Don't clap.. . . . . . throw money."
Pardon wandering off topic. as ever.
Call it tales of the unexpected.
Last edited by Fantome; 8th Feb 2014 at 08:37.
Join Date: May 2002
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Just been trying, without luck so far, to find some more photos from the olde days, came across these hidden away, what better than combining two of the best things Aussie Airlines of days gone by and ..................
Cricket of course.........
They are the cards of the Aussies, and these are some of the also played.
Cricket of course.........
They are the cards of the Aussies, and these are some of the also played.
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Sorry Mods if they are a little larger than normal I spent hours trying to get them ready to post, even then I got two round the wrong way.
Think I will go and have a lie down.
Any New Zealanders or South Africans read this, only joking.
Think I will go and have a lie down.
Any New Zealanders or South Africans read this, only joking.