Umm, have I missed something?
What's that to do with -OJA?

Read the post by morno written on 9 December and it'll become clear.

HARS will be constructing a hangar to protect OJA from the corrosive effects of damp salt laden air that will be experienced at YWOL. It would be great if the B747 & B707 at Longreach could be protected from the heat/sunlight as well.

That's a bugger Keg. Any idea what damage they did? I was lead to believe (going by their Facebook) that it all went well.

morno

Space at Longreach
 

Pretty close to the fences already at Longreach ....


.https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-7...0/Q1408076.JPG


https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-B...0/Q1408073.JPG


.

Does anyone know what time?

7:47am perhaps.

They are certainly not in a big hurry to get information out about this flight and how best to view it. HARS website only just now saying there will be restrictions and road closures, but doesn't elaborate further.

A call to HARS has gone unanswered (they are probably fielding several hundred enquiries this morning).

A call to the Shellharbour Council was more useful. They have an internal email detailing restrictions - but are yet to bother informing the public by way of their website......

Anyway here's a little info:

(1) Tongarra Rd, Illawarra Hwy and north-bound Princess Hwy will be closed 10 minutes prior to planned landing until after it's landed. That means potentially closed from 0740 until whenever.

(2) No pedestrian access along Tongarra Rd will be allowed. No one allowed along the fence line. "Safety concerns." I can kind of understand that.

(3) No access to the airport.

(4) Unknown at this stage - whether you can fly in or not. I'm hearing there will be NOTAM restricting movements after 7am. Nothing in NAIPS yet. And then whether you are even permitted to be on the ground somewhere inside airport with your aircraft after 7am - council girl didn't know.

All in all, very poor dissemination of information to the public and aviation enthusiasts, IMHO.

Give them time JR. They are not there just to answer you. Also bear in mind that there is a local council involved in this and they are often not the most switched on as far as aviation matters go. Closing a few roads (as you have indicated) is what they know, aviation stuff is a bit of a mystery to them.

You may also find the HARS people are still on their way home from Avalon.

There is still plenty of time to disseminate any relevant operational information.

Tipsy:hmm:

Tipsy2: I would have thought that six days out, someone would have on a website somewhere that minor detail that the airport is closed to the general public.

And within a week people do want to be planning: whether to fly down, drive down or simply not bother because they can't get a decent view. Can we fly down? As of today no one knows.

Not expecting them to drop everything and answer the phone just for me, but I would have though they'd have detailed info out there for EVERYONE, in the public domain in a timely manner. And they don't.

JR, define "timely manner"

Tipsy

You want to have a go at me because I (a) decided there was a complete lack of info about the event with 6 days to go and went seeking it; and (b) shared it with the wider audience here for everyone's benefit (which has the additional benefit of taking some pressure of HARS and the council); and (c) think that such info should be available on websites by now? Well there you go. Very Ppruney, very Aussie. I shouldn't have bothered sharing it, obviously, should have just kept it to myself.

FWIW, "timely" means enough time to rent an aircraft, or maybe book a hotel in local area if the idea of a 3am wakeup Sunday to drive 3.5 hours doesn't appeal and seeing what public transport between local hotels and YWOL is available. I know of three different parties considering flying down, one of whom would be bringing his 4 year old son. If flying is not an option he would like to know now, would get a hotel; doesn't want to wake the 4 yr old at 3am. Etcetera, etcetera. So if we cannot even enter the airport or land at the airport or even stand along Tangarra Rd this would be useful information six days out.

I knew I shouldn't have bothered with PPrune!

www.facebook.com/hars.gen

There are a couple of articles there about the arrival.

Council have indicated that anything N or S of the runway will be closed off to Vehicles and Pedestrians.

Sheesh, someone's got the cranks.

Perhaps everything hasn't been finalised? Perhaps when they thought "Hell I think we should fly OJA to Wollongong" the next thought wasn't "Right, let's sort out some info quick so that all those plane geek's can book their accommodation"? :ugh:

I doubt they're going to let anyone too close and it's landing at around 0750 I believe. There you go, that's all the info you need.

morno

Qantas 747 being delivered to Hars @ Wollongong this weekend
 

I've cut and pasted this from the Hars website:

HARS eagerly awaits the delivery of City of Canberra, a Boeing 747-438 (VH-OJA). She is expected to arrive at Illawarra Regional Airport at 07:50 on Sunday 8 March. VH-OJA is scheduled to takeoff from Sydney at 07:30 for the short flight. We understand that she will fly down the coast at a relatively low altitude, turn right between Wollongong and Port Kembla (probably over the top of the harbour and the steelworks), then turn left at West Dapto to line up on runway 16/34.

If you are planning to view the landing then be aware that a number of restrictions and road closures will be in place for the expected time of landing.

For further details check out the Shellharbour City Council site here.

You're having a go at a bloke that wants to be there for the arrival and wants to plan for it??

How very typical of our precious red taped country, FFS it's an aeroplane flying into an aerodrome and we have to: Close roads, ban fence watching, close the aerodrome. The sad thing is that most of you think that it's justified.

Any council with any brains would be promoting this as an event and getting as many of you as they can drinking beers, staying overnight at the local hotels & buying as much greasy food as you can get into you. Save your money JR for somewhere that wants your coin mate!

Totally agree, Porter.
I, for one, am (what's the polite expression?) a bit miffed.

Not impressed with HARS (and Shellharbour) over this one. Knock, knock... anybody home?

Let's keep things in perspective. Like most of the aviation museums in Australia, HARS is run by volunteers (who probably have quite a bit on their plates at the moment). Accepting responsibility for this aeroplane is a very significant commitment on HARS' part so let's just be thankful that they are prepared to step up, for without HARS it would have been Victorville.

Ahhhh, my post is not knocking HARS

No.
Let's just say that, given the lead time, things could have been done better - considering the import of the event.
I was at Mascot when she arrived way back then (no problem, I was rostered on anyway) but a few of us would have liked to have witnessed her last landing from a decent perspective, that's all.
(We will, anyway, if we can find out where that damn 'sports centre' is supposed to be.)
Good luck, everybody.