Flying Boat Exhibition
 

The Museum of Sydney has an exhibition on Flying Boats running until the end of September.
Well worth a visit for those that have an interest in flying boats, bases companies and the characters that operated them.

Thanks for the info Stationair8, you just made my weekend. Always had an interest in flying boats and a beleiver of reincarnation i am sure in my next life i will be a pelican.

I am already starting to look like one :O

Now... I am just wondering...
How are they going to fit the Spruce Goose in to Darling Harbour?

:ok:

Are you saying I am fat?;)

Ends on Sunday so get in quick. Went today and worth a look not a huge room but some good photo's. Pity they didn't have much on whats going on in rose bay now.

Ahh... Nothing personal HH.;)

Just great admiration for your "wingspan" :p:p:p:p

I went and saw this a few weeks ago. I attended a slideshow and talk given by Capt John McCluskey (sp?) - well worth it. There is also a film produced in the 70s about the operations shortly before they ceased - both the lectures and film are highly recommended. The actual exhibit is fairly small, though, and mostly limited to tickets, schedules, publicity material, etc.

Good to see us fellow kultural types on Pprune that go to museums.

Looking at a flight crew members logbook on display it showed a sector Sydney to Hobart of close to 8 hours and the next day the aircraft went to Hobart to New Zealand. The flight crew member did about 340 hurs in three months just by my rough calculations.

The continous video certainly covered some of the more inteseting aspects of Flying Boat opaertions.

Imagine a Flying Boat operating out of Sydney Harbour today, wouldn't the tree huggers, nimby's, government departments, local government, CASA and other associated rockapes have a field day trying to stop it.

Did the Ansett flying boat crews have a seniority number in mainline Ansett mainline? When the flying boat operation stopped did the t move over or get pensioned off?

I went on a joyride in Hawai in a C206 on floats. The operator told me he had 26,000 hours in seaplanes, and was looking for another thousand to beat the record.

He also stated he had spent 9 years trying to get approval from various agencies before he was cleared to start flying in Hawai.

I remember watching the flying boats taking off from mechanics bay in Auckland when I was a kid, and later the military Sunderlands in Suva. It was interesting doing engine runups with no brakes. And mooring them after flight involved shutting down all four engines and drifting, drifting, drifting until the engineer could grab the mooring buoy with a boathook.

Airmanship was needed but so was seamanship.

My father was aircrew with the RNZAF Sunderlands out of Auckland and over at Suva. He has some amazing stories to tell about those days and his time in the USA picking up the first P3 Orion.

And yes, good seamanship was required - most of the crew were mad keen yachties too.

I believe one needs a boat licence as well as a Pilot's Licence to operate a floatplane...

Some of the photos in the Sydney exhibition are from the collection of the Civil Aviation Historical Society. As it happens, the CAHS also has an exhibition on at the moment on Australia's Empire Flying Boats.

The CAHS exhibition closes in November, so get in quick if you want to see it!

Airways Museum / Civil Aviation Historical Society