Archive for January, 2010

BizJet central again

Saturday, January 30th, 2010

FOUR bizjets in Wellington on one day, though perhaps not simultaneously.

Rock band AC/DC arrived for their Wellington concert in style in this Airbus Corporate Jet based on the A318 model. It’s similar to Air New Zealand’s and Jetstar’s A320s but over 6 metres shorter. (It’s not just the wide angle – check out some other shots on my photostream.)

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Pacific Jets’ Cessna Citation CJ3 has been around for many years, though I’ve not often seen it in Wellington.

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And once again, the US military are paying a visit (for reasons unknown to me). In this case, on a US Navy C-37 – better known as a Gulfstream 550.

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For the fourth jet, you’re going to have to pop on over to Rodney’s Aviation Ramblings, where he has a nice pic of a British Falcon 2000EX. I know I was only out there for a short time today, but I’m a bit miffed at missing that one. Last time there was a large Falcon model at Wellington, I arrived just as it was taking off – too late for a photo.

Proceed direct BOLOX

Monday, January 4th, 2010

I’m not kidding. There is an IFR reporting point by that name (in the Marlborough Sounds area). Though I don’t know how it would be pronounced.

I was sitting at the airport today listening to the scanner and hearing aircraft being sent to various reporting points including WETTA and Ohura. When I got home I set about finding out where these points are. The CAA web site provided the answer in purely numeric form, so I took it one step (in fact lots of steps) further and plotted them on Google Earth.

You can take a look for yourself by downloading the KML file and opening it in Google Earth. You can also import directly into “My Maps” on Google Maps, however the display on Google Maps does not automatically show the labels (the reporting point names) and there are a LOT of points.

I noted several interesting layouts of the points. There is a series of points on a 40nm radius circle around Christchurch International Airport. Another circle around Auckland International Airport sits at 200nm. Then there is the ‘Tasman wall’ – a near-vertical line of points in the Tasman sea, and the stepping stone line of points down to Antarctica. There are also many points out in the Pacific Ocean, up to 2390nm away.

Screen capture of data from Google Earth (click picture to download)

Screen capture of data from Google Earth (click picture to download)

Looking back at 2009

Friday, January 1st, 2010

I’ve created a new Set on Flickr called 2009 Aviation Favourites. It contains 20 of my favourite shots from 2009. Below are just 5 of them.

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