Show Notes
I left you last time after we had returned with our Hornets from New Zealand having had a very productive and interesting few weeks working with the Kiwi A4 Skyhawks. We soon settled back into our Squadron HQ at RAAF Williamtown and started to work up some Maritime Strike tactics against the ships of the Australian Navy. These were early days for the Australian Hornets and the anti ship missiles that were to be purchased had yet to be properly integrated into the aircraft’s weapons system… and so continues the Tales from the Old Pilot’s Log Books.
The Hornets mix it with the Navy!
It was the P3 Orion’s job to find the ships and broadcast their positions
The RAAF had yet to equip their F18s with anti ship missiles but that didn’t stop us training
We flew affiliation sorties against the RAAF Caribous so I got the chance to observe from the other side of the engagement
Called in from leave to fly an engine air test I did so with my holiday beard still attached!
The rake of the Hornet seat didn’t suit my back leading to a nagging problem
On our way to Malaysia we staged through Bali
At RMAF Butterworth we stayed in the beautiful old RAF Mess
And could frequently be found in the Hong Kong Bar
Back home in Australia I started to suffer from vertigo and wondered if the dream had come to an end
More from Plane Tales
With the influx of new Airbus airframes, Virgin needed more pilots and not just to occupy the right hand seat… there were opportunities for promotion to Captain much earlier than had been the norm. When I joined the time to command was about 8 years. Looking back I did my first sector with Virgin in July 1994 and it was now November 96, 2 years 4 months later and I was already starting my pre-command training.
We last spoke to Basam when he was doing his Jet Upset Training but now that he has his dream job it was appropriate that we should chat again on one of his London layovers. In particular, he is flying around a war zone which presents additional challenges to a civil airline pilot.
A flock of seagulls had chosen that moment to break ground from the grass beside the runway and fly across our path. They disappeared under the nose as we climbed away and cleaned the aircraft up… no noise of an impact but then we noticed the No 2 engine’s N1 vibration number was pulsing and reading a bit high. So starts another Tale from my flying logbook.
The next tale from my RAF Logbook, albeit now being filled with civilian flights for Virgin Atlantic Airways…