There wasn't much else to say except, FUCK YEAH! - I'm still feeling it too!
The event was called, Thunder in the Valley, as it's held at a modal aircraft club situated on an operational light plane airfield in the world renowned Barossa Valley - Usually associated with some of the best wines around but today it was all about "jet day" at the club and I was there to have a look.
I wrote a post late last week that I was heading there to check it all out and have a few chats with the pilots and club folks with the possibility of me taking this up as a hobby in a little bit. It's bloody awesome, but I want to make sure it's right for me.
It's an expensive hobby, especially if one crashes one's $20,000-$30,000 jet, but I like the look of it and it's something I could see myself doing...all that tinkering and playing around with the aircraft and then flying it at over 200km/h sounds legit! (And is actually fucken legit!)
I'll probably do a proper post about the whole thing but here's a few snaps I took from today...and before you say they're shit photos...I already know that, but they're the best I could manage.
I got pretty lucky with this shot and I think it's cool...sort of shows the speed...hard to photograph it at speed though, these are clearly not full-sized jets.
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Here's another lucky shot I managed which I also like despite it not being all that great like all the rest. I'm happy with it though.
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You'll note the little air compressor to the left of shot; that's how these things are started, just like full-sized jets (although some full-sized use electrical power instead of compressed air). These models use aviation fuel and are the same principle as their lorger brothers...they're just smaller.
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I really liked this jet although there were some other super-cool ones as well of course. The team who owned this one had this little remote control truck to pull it onto the runway area. I know right? Fucken cool!
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Here's the general staging and working area, I was not allowed in, pilots only, but it shows the array of aircraft, all jets of course on this particular day. There were more than I could count and I saw most fly. (Some had some issues though.)
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Anyway, that's it. I may do a post about my discussions and the hobby itself and what's involved to get set up and all (money) and my thoughts on it. In that post I'll probably show some of the other jets...but not the blurry fucken images I took, loads of them!
