Microlight Flight Tablelands to Port Douglas

As there is not much hang gliding going on at the moment, thought I might put some trike stuff up. Although, I did hear on the grapevine that Joe and Ron got a fly in at The Rex this week? Can anyone confirm or deny this rumour?

We had quite a bit of rain on the Tablelands in the early hours of Sunday morning. We had arranged to meet up with Kev over Lake Mitchell and fly to Port with him and Steve. Driving to Atherton at 5am it didn’t look very likely to happen!

Arriving at Atherton though it started to clear up quite quickly. So we pulled the trusty Tundra out of the hangar for re-fuel and pre-flight checks.

We taxied out onto a very wet and slippery runway. I have done quite a few take-offs from Atherton and I have never felt the wheels spin and the trike skid from side to side whilst taking off. It was very sticky with a long roll out. Needless to say I wanted to unstick from the water ASAP!

Once up and away, the air was clean and smooth. We decided to land at Mareeba, on the bitumen to avoid the wet grass. There was a great big puddle in the middle of the airstrip, so I landed past that! We swapped seats for Bob to fly to Port. Even the bitumen was slippery with the trike doing the same little dance on take-off. You can actually see it moving from side to side on the video!

We made contact with Kev around Lake Mitchell. He was about 500FT below and 2NM ahead of us. We continued on down to the Coast. An orbit over the Mowbray Falls showed quite a spectacular water flow! It was high tide along 4 mile beach, with not many landing options there we tracked north over the cane fields to land at Kev’s strip. The view north along the Coast to Cape Tribulation was full of clear blue ocean with not a ripple.

A quick hello to Kev and Steve and then back in the air for the trip home. We over stayed last time and had quite an horrendous flight back. Not so this time with a 15KT tail wind and more silky smooth air!

A careful landing back at Atherton with no brakes, taxiing back to the hangar and tuck the Tundra back into bed. She is now almost due for her 25 hour service!

Here are some pics of Port Douglas as we came over the Range from the West. You can check out the video  on vimeo.

Safe Flying

Tracey

Port Douglas

North to Cape Tribulation