Wednesday, July 21, 2010

Flying to Kununurra at Night

Back again to where i used to live and work for my first job! Kununurra-- is in the north-west area of Australia in the Kimberley region. It was a good flight, and i left late evening, almost at last light. Was nice to fly there in a twin finally and not worry so much about the crocodile infested water below.

At the moment in Darwin, there is a military exercise called pitch black, so getting slot times and taking note of the restricted airspace in the notams is important. My traffic for arrival into Kununurra was a squadron of F-111 jets doing low-level flying. Was also waiting at the holding point in darwin for 20 minutes for a squadron of F-18's to land. Always good (and loud) to see them in action.





Darwin after take-off.. lightish on fuel and empty down meant good performance.

Anyhoo, flight was last minute down to Kununurra (I had just returned from a charter to Elcho Island). The flight to knx from Darwin is 238nm. Got some good photos of the sunset which the photos really didn't do justice. Because it was night when i landed in Kununurra i did the RNAV rwy12 approach. Mainly because i don't like doing visual approaches at night and also to keep my instrument recency.



RNAV approach plate.. The baron doesnt have control column clips so you need to brief and understand the plate before you start the approach as its often hard to read it in the dark while flying.










This was the best photo of the sunset, but still, the photo does it no justice. Cheers for reading..