Monday, June 7, 2010

Cape York here we come! 1 week till take off!

Welcome to our first adventure posting!

For the past 6 months we have been planning to fly our Airborne Microlight (trike) to Cape York and the very tip of Australia! Our plan is to depart on Sunday the 13th June (weather dependent of course!) from Atherton Aerodrome. From Atherton to the Tip is 600 nautical miles (or about 1200 kms for those non fliers!) Then we have to fly back! The flight plan includes 18 night stops along the way. We want to do some terrestrial exploring as well!
We have a ground crew consisting of two vehicles. Fellow flier Teddy and fellow photographers Steve and Tania. We don't want their trip to be all about driving to Cape York with their eyes skyward missing out on the rugged and remote beauty that is the Northern part of this amazing country of ours. Steve is a talented, multi award winning landscape photographer and will take the opportunity to capture some stunning images of Cape York Peninsula along the way.
It's about 2 trips that will cross paths along the way. There will be parts of the East coast where we will fly over beaches that are inaccessible by vehicle. We will meet up with the ground crew where we can and take them flying too.
Preparations
Last weekend was spent doing the 100 hour service on the trike. All went well, with a test flight on Saturday afternoon and several others since.
We had a lovely flight out to the windmills at Ravenshoe this morning. The first time in 6 years of flying that I have actually flown over the windmills! Every other time I have even thought about it they have been covered in cloud! (as is the norm for the southern end of the Tablelands.)
Today we weighed (29kgs) and packed all the gear we need to take into every nook and cranny on the aircraft we could find! We bought a belly bag and tucker bag from Diane at Punkin Head Airsports to pack everything in and they worked really well! We have the worlds smallest tent donated by Dee and Kev, the worlds tinniest and warmest sleeping bags donated by Jack and Jen, the worlds most efficient cooking stove donated by Lou and the worlds most accurate GPS donated by Teddy. Thanks everyone!

THE MACHINE!

THE PILOTS!


THE CREW!

We hope to be able to update this BLOG regularly along the way but we fully expect not to have mobile service for at least parts of the trip. So, be patient and check back soon!

Trike Girl 



1 comment:

  1. Have you also lined up the world's most experienced house and dog sitters? :-) Great idea to set up this blog. Have a great trip! We won't be coming up to the Tour now so I'll make sure to check in here to read about your adventures!

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