Fun Stuff: July 2020 Archives

747s are the most beautiful aircraft in the skies.  Concordes were too but they don't fly anymore.  A380s are just big and fat.  No the 747 was just beautiful.  And I am going to sorely miss them. 

My first flight on a 747 was on VH-ECB in 1983 when we went to America for the first time. This was taken at our stopover in Honolulu.  

On the next leg of the flight, from Honolulu to LA, David and I were allowed to go up to the cockpit before we arrived into LA.  I remember seeing LA from the cockpit of that 747.

My last ever flight on a 747 was from Hong Kong to Sydney coming home from our East Asia cruise.  In fact the flight over and the flight back were both on 747s.  I was hoping to go up to the flight deck on one of those flights.  Unfortunately we very late getting into Hong Kong on the way over and didn't want to hassle them, and I was far too tired on the way back.  So that was the end of that.  Here is VH-OJS in Hong Kong, the last 747 I ever flew on.

The week before last, Qantas flew its last 747 around Sydney, Brisbane and Canberra for a series of farewell flights.

And as it turns out, I'd been on that particular 747 before - when she was painted bright red Wunala Dreaming in 2004.

Here she is at Sydney Airport next to VH-EBU (Nalanji Dreaming).

And here she is at LA as we left for Denver.

Since I couldn't get a ticket for the joy flight out of Canberra because Qantas' website sux donkey balls, I did the next best thing and headed out with a bunch of planespotters to see a 747 in flight for likely the very last time (it got a lot more crowded than this later on).

I actually took this on my phone looking through binoculars.

There was a pretty strong southerly wind, and most flights were taking off to the south.  The tower asked which way they wanted to go, and they said they wanted to take off to the north, with the tail wind.  

They turned quite quickly round to the south - a lot more tightly than any of the commercial flights.  She passed round the back of Mt Ainslie behind the trees.

And then headed down to the Snowy Mountains, so we all stood around waiting for three quarters of an hour.  We were all watching the radar for the return, and I spotted her first through the binoculars.

And then the flybys of Canberra.

First from the south up and over Mt Ainslie where we all were.

Going pretty slowly too - flaps were partly extended

Coming back over the airport

Did a loop, then came back the other way

Then another loop and straight into land.

Water cannon salute (C-130 taking off in the background)

Last week VH-OEJ left for the Mojave Desert to the aircraft graveyard :(  But on the way she left this goodbye..

Goodbye Queen of the Skies

I download photos from my Canon today.  For the first time since April.  And processed the photos.  For the first time since January.

In six months I've taken all of 155 photos on that camera.  Hrmmm.

I keep telling myself it would be different if I had a new camera.. that was still better in low light.. that could deal with difficult lighting as well as my phone.. 

The Canon 600D Dad got in about Feburary or March 2012.  I inherited it when he carked it.  So it's over eight years old now.  Still works fine, is just aging... 

I'd like to go back to mirrorless.. better idea of what you're going to get once you take the picture, and a lot quieter...  

I took this one morning at the end of January. 

Got to see the DC-10 Air Tanker at the airport when I flew up for Ryan's birthday.

Stikeez!!  This is all but two of the specials.  Kaibrya has a bagfull she'll send me if we ever go back to work, I might get lucky and get one of them in that.  I took this just before lockdown in March.

Rainbow in April

Happy tree in April

Black cockatoos in April.  Look at what the vandals are doing to this tree!!

These were taken on a walk in late April

This first one took months.  3000 pieces and seemingly all browns.  I knew it wasn't going to be much fun when I got it.  I wouldn't have ever chosen this for myself, but a guy at work challenged me, so what can you do!?  I think I started it in January.  Once we'd slogged our way through enough of it, it was possible to do the Ravensburger trick of flipping half of it round 180 degrees and doing the top half on top of the bottom.  So it took months for the first half, and just a few days for the second.  We finished it over the Easter long weekend.

This is at the beginning of the weekend.

This shows how the pieces would line up flipped to the other side.  I did use this technique a little bit in some of the sky, but even know exactly what shaped piece you need, there'd still be a couple of hundred pieces that all looked the same to choose from.

I did all the sails on the ship on the left in a morning.

Filling in the left

All the sky (well, the standard shaped pieces anyway)

Once all the dark stuff was done, all that was left was plain sky.  So I cut it in half - see the line - to flip the top around onto the bottom.

Like so

Closer view

Even closer

And the next day it was done!

To have a fun break, I got out the cupcakes jigsaw.  I've done this before so let David do most of it.  I'm debating whether I should give it away or not - it's so fun.

Then we started another section of the Disney behemoth.

Annoyingly, the colour on the left matched the colour on the right so closely I kept putting in the wrong pieces.  

Just look at this crap!

This is actually wrong!!

Did a lot of this by sitting one half atop the other.

Had a break in between and did a jigsaw of Alpensee.  It didn't have the exact lake name on the box, but figured it out from Google Earth and found where the photo was taken from.

As a glutton for punishment, almost immediately after I finished that, I started The Little Mermaid section.  In some ways it was even tougher than Peter Pan.  There seemed to be unending blues.  It also suffered from colour being so similar on either side you could get things wrong.  I think the stars at the top were the worst for that on this one.

We started another one after that, but it got put downstairs when we had some people over, and hasn't been brought back since.  

Finally we have one I picked up at the Green Shed the other week.  This was on the stand to be distributed to the shelves, so had only just been dropped off.  Grabbed it as I was queuing to pay.  This was fun because you couldn't put it together until you'd completed each little section of nine pieces, and had to assemble them to allow a maze to be solved.  Quite fun.  I did it by myself, then showed David the finished puzzle, then pulled it apart for him to do.

So last Sunday I added another Sydney Dam to my list and dropped in to see Nepean Dam.  Just a few minutes off the Hume Highway it's very easy to get to.  And *crowded* on a Sunday!