After a wonderful three week break in New Zealand (with a short side trip to Sydney, Australia), we resumed the flying part of the trip on January 2, 2019. We re-joined with Josh and Becky who had been away to another part of the world on December 31 and spent a good part of New Years Day cleaning-up the plane (which had been sitting lonely on the Skycare ramp at Auckland/NZAA) and generally getting it ready to resume our trip.
The plane on the ramp at Auckland after being pushed back for departure...
The morning of January 2 promised good weather for the relatively short (for this trip) 1,249 NM (1,436 SM) flight to Brisbane, Australia over the Tasman Sea.
The route with satellite images showing essentially clear skies...
Departing the busy Auckland International Airport...
As is our habit on long over water flights (most of the flights on this trip), we had the approximate positions of ships along our route marked in case of an emergency...
We passed east of very interesting Lord Howe Island, but not close enough to get a good photo. We did fly almost directly over a couple of uninhabited atolls (which were not on our charts) just north of Lord Howe...
After a bit of research on the ground, it appears this is Elizabeth Reef which is southernmost coral atoll in the world.
On the arrival to Brisbane in good weather, the value of having two pilots in the cockpit proved itself once again. We were on a "descend via" clearance via the SAVER2 arrival for runway 01R...
Glad we never brief that kind of procedure!
The landing in Brisbane marked a milestone for me and Josh...we have now flown N575PC to all seven continents. This even brought a smile to Josh's normally serious countenance...
A lot of airline pilots get six continents under their belt as we had before this landing, but most pilots are missing Antarctica. We checked-off Antarctica (along with pilot friends Jerry S and Giuseppe C) in January 2017, but were lacking Australia. Done deal.
We are spending three nights in Brisbane and arranged to have a quick maintenance check of the plane done there since a Pilatus service center is located nearby. The plane was performing perfectly, but we want to get an engine desalination wash done and have an experienced PC-12 mechanic just give the plane a good "once over" check.
An engine desalination wash is recommended periodically when operating in salt water environments to rinse out any salt that may have accumulated in the engine which could eventually cause corrosion. They basically run fresh water through the turbine section of the engine while turning the turbine with the starter (but not allowing the engine to start). After the wash, they put everything back together and we ran the engine at high power for eight minutes to dry out any residual water and just generally check that the parts they removed to inject the fresh water all performed properly after re-installation.
At our request, the excellent crew of two mechanics from Premiair Aviation (a Pilatus authorized service center) also did a thorough visual check of the engine and other important parts of the plane. They found no problems and reported that the plane was in excellent condition (thank you Levaero Aviation!). I asked the lead mechanic if he would be comfortable crossing the Indian Ocean in the plane with us and he said absolutely "yes" without any hesitation. This plane has been extraordinarily reliable having never had a significant maintenance problem for the entirety of our two previous round-the-world trips, but it is nice to have "fresh eyes" confirm its condition.
After a nice break in Brisbane (which Carolyn will document separately), we head to the very hot "Red Centre" of Australia on January 5 to visit the famous Uluru (also known as Ayers Rock).
