On The Airbands

A letter from Hong Kong readers of Australian Aviation, Bill and Pat Anderson was much appreciated. They live in Clearwater Bay Road, Kowloon. Bill is a former Licensed Radio Aircraft Mechanical Engineer, or ‘radio technician’. Drawing from his years of servicing and checking aircraft radios, he can recount enough amusing anecdotes to fill up 12 months of ‘On the Airbands’.

Bill tells me he once spoke to Sydney while on the ground in Singapore on 8845. 5KHz (HF) and then later reversed this and spoke from Sydney to Singapore on the same frequency. Also, he recollects a three way conversation between himself on the ground in Singapore, a US Navy C-118 en route Wake to Guam and Honolulu Radio. This chat was on 13324 and he found it hard to believe, as it was dawn in Singapore and early afternoon in Honolulu and as Bill puts it. . . “was one of nature’s quirks”. Just as a matter of interest Bill and Pat, nature has been rather forceful of late on VHF! Several New Zealand amateur radio operators located near New Plymouth, between Auckland and Wellington, spoke to Sydney Australia amateurs on VHF frequency 146. 8 MHz on the evening of 5 November 1986, in a classic piece of temperature inversion heat ducting. The signals travelled about 1240 miles to achieve this and the best of the signals sounded like they were local! The signals were going through a repeater at Heathcote, near Sydney. Later, simple tests were conducted by these chaps on 146. 5 MHz, with the same exciting results.

Bill tells in his letter of a PanAm 707 en route from Nadi to Sydney being passed over from Approach Control to Tower. On reporting to Sydney Tower, the Clipper was given the usual greetings and requested to provide position and altitude. They replied that their position was five miles from the threshold of runway 25, established on centreline ILS and at flight level two zero zero! The Tower acknowledged: “Continue approach, report at outer marker, at fifteen hundred feet. ” The PanAm Clipper crew, now less than amused came back and repeated their level, FL 200, or twenty thousand feet! After a stunned silence followed, the Sydney Tower controller with a beautifully controlled voice replied and began a series of vectors to reduce the 707’s altitude to the correct approach limits!

Tony Collis of Kippa-Ring in Qld. requests information on frequencies for Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne airports. The information is on its way. Any other readers who require this data, continue reading Australian Aviation and look for our ‘Let your Ears have Wings’ update, in the not-too-distant future.

Peter Woods of Queanbeyan shares with us the time he was a passenger in a hot air balloon over Canberra, one of eight flying that day from Balloon Aloft. Takeoff from the National Library lawns at dawn was lead by ex-world champion Peter Vizzard. One of the balloons, a large ten-passenger unit known as the ‘cattle truck’ was piloted by a Frenchman, who’d only been in Australia three weeks. Peter Woods’ pilot explained to his passengers that the Frenchie had been warned many times about carefully choosing zones for landing sites clear of trees, because of the ‘current plague of drop bears’. The flight over Lake Burley Griffin included some very low level manoeuvres, with the fun including allowing the basket to skim the waters of the lake. Large carp were subsequently seen near the murky water’s surface. One of those to observe these giants going about their business was ‘le pilot’ who quickly came up on his radio transceiver from the ‘cattle truck’ balloon. At the time he was skimming the water. “Zar are very large vish in zee vater, could be sharks?” There was no reply, with seven other pilots and some passengers holding back huge smiles. Moments later, the serenity of the scene was blasted to bits with the roar of propane burners rocketing the ‘cattle truck’ skywards! Thanks for this aviation ‘jaws’ epic to Peter Woods, who by the way is a private pilot in his own right.

Any contributions to ‘On the Airbands’ can be made direct to myself, Robert Bell, 68 Ashby Ave, Yagoona 2199. Indicate if you desire to be credited or otherwise. Airline names are in most instances changed to ensure no embarrassment is suffered. Good monitoring!