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Down to Rhodesia...


petermcleland

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Although 208 Squadron visited Rhodesia with Venoms, I thought I would continue my circumnavigation travelling South...

EchoRTW102.jpg

The outer tanks are back on now as I continue on South to Rhodesia.

EchoRTW103.jpg

Rather sad to leave Nairobi.

EchoRTW104.jpg

In the climb to 40,000 feet...The big mountain on the map to my left is Kilimanjaro.

The rest of the pictures can be see by clicking this address:-

http://forum.mutleyshangar.com/index.php/topic/6501-down-to-rhodesia/

Thanks for looking :)

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Peter, your bum must be sore by now. These kites were not very comfortable and they are about the LEAST suitable aircraft to circumnavigate the world, lol.

Yes Mathijs...The seats were very hard and you sat on a flat canvas covered square water bottle (water being uncompressible, there was no danger of the water bottle pack causing injury on ejection). When we flew them out from UK to Kenya, I devised a way of folding my G-suit into a square cushion with the legs zipped into each other it folded very neatly. So instead of wearing my G-suit for these long flights, I sat on it...I plugged it into the air system as usual but left the cock turned off...Then when my bum was getting sore, I would turn ON the air cock and tickle the "Press to Test" button. This had the effect of inflating and deflating my cushion to relieve the cramp (felt like sitting on a litter of puppies!).

For the first flight from Stradishall to Malta, I was leading a formation...The cushion worked very well as planned...But, unfortunately I forgot to turn off the air cock the last time I used it...I led the formation in to break over the runway for landing...Snapped on about 80 degrees of bank for the break and pulled back on the stick.

Needless to say I promptly got stuffed up against my harness and into the canopy by a rapidly inflating cushion. The other chaps in my formation were not impressed with the ragged pull-push nature of my very untidy break.

So I had second thoughts about that irregular use of my G-suit and flew the rest of the way to Kenya on the hard water bottle pack. :confused_s:

Well I'm now halfway round Mathijs and I'm enjoying it...I fly it all in real time and real weather, but I do have a nice comfortable cushion on my computer seat. :lol:

BTW...It is a fast aeroplane and I cruise at about M0.86

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