Sunshine Coast
After a rather turbulent arrival into the Sunshine Coast on Monday, I’ve spent the week relaxing and waiting here. The continuation of my flight has been a little delayed due to a few factors including weather and a pending aircraft swap- a story which deserves its own post!
I need to reinstate again how wonderful it was to have a crowd waiting for me upon touching down after 5 hours of high-workload flying. It was great to meet up with Vanessa Whan, the AFT students and aero club members too. On Tuesday, the wind and weather was calmer in the morning, just enough for me to ferry RPL up to the Sunshine Coast with the crosswind being 15 knots. It was certainly better than the day prior, but was still at the demonstrated limit of the aircraft and resulted in a tricky landing. The wind picked up again once I was on the ground, so I was happy to get away early!
Once I arrived, I was again greeted by some wonderful members of the YBSU aviation community and a crew from Channel 7. We had cake for morning tea- an excellent reward after some high-workload flying earlier.
I also had the opportunity to visit the Queensland Air Museum at Caloundra. It’s a wonderful museum with 80 aircraft on display, in several hangars. As a huge history nerd, I was very much in my element and spent an entire day walking around and looking at the different aircraft and displays. They also have a 737 Flight Simulator and I got to try out an approach and landing into Brisbane Airport. It certainly flies a lot faster than the 172s which I’ve learnt on!
Prior to starting the trip, Garry Hills, the President of the museum had reached out to me and invited me to speak on Mach One, the museum’s official podcast. It was such an honour to visit and to share my story.
I think ‘honoured’ is a great way to describe how I’ve been feeling these past few days, and is truly wonderful to experience this much support. I’m struggling to find words to express how grateful I am to the crowd at the Sunshine Coast for welcoming me with open arms- thank you.
To Vanessa of AFT, I appreciate being unofficially adopted by you for the past few days. Thank you for organising my welcome party and driving me, but what I really appreciate most are the chats that we had in the more quiet moments, whilst sitting under the wings of RPL trying to get the most updated forecast.
And the rest of the AFT family, it was great to chat with you all and sit in for a little bit of class. Best of luck with your ATPLs! I have so much admiration for the hard work that you put in. Thank you as well to Cran for your work as a mentor figure and supporting the raffle for a Start In Life.
To Craig and Naomi- thank you for saying hello on frequency, and for all the work you do!
To Garry and everyone at the Queensland Air Museum, it was wonderful to drop in and nerd out over all your aircraft, and I am very thankful for the opportunity to share my story on the podcast.
To Katie + Mckeon Family, thank you for letting me use your spare room and giving me peanut butter toast for breakfast every morning!
And to all those who have reached out to share some kind words, your support means the world to me! I especially love hearing anecdotes from people who have flown RPL before, it’s wonderful to see how connected we are as an industry. Special thanks as well to the Jetstar pilots who came over to say hi when I was refuelling. Talking to you both was SO COOL.
Whilst I’m itching to be back up in the air and on to the next stop, circumstances have kept me grounded, at least for now. Hopefully I’ll be able to spread my wings again soon, and look forward to sharing the rest of the journey.
