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The plan...

Next weekend, we have finally finished planning for the retrieval of my DA 40 XLS, that is currently stranded at Marree, South Australia. We have to replace the prop. The next prop has landed in Australia from Germany.

My mate and I are flying over from Melbourne to Adelaide, we are then driving with the new prop, 600km, half of it on dirt roads, so a 10 hour trip. Its in a container 2m by 1m, by 75 cms.

Its a remote loaction...[album][/album]

The next day we drive 200kms to pick up the LAME - licensed aircraft mechanical engineer from Olympic Dam. The LAME is flying from Sydney to Adelaide, overnights in Adelaide, then flies to Olympic Dam, where we will pick him up.

Hopefully the prop can be replaced in 2 hours, will take lots of photos and post this on DAN.

Once replaced, test flight, then fly to Broken Hill, overnight, then fly back to Melbourne. VH-JRZ then goes in for a 50 hourly!!

I have not flown for a month!!!

That's quite an adventure....glad to see you making the best of bad situation and hope you get your plane flying again soon. And thanks for the map.

Hi Joey

The news just gets better...

The prop has been delivered, but my dad has emailed me...

Your prop has arrived and is now in storage in garage 2.
The parcel is an equilateral triangle with all sides 2 metres long and with a 400mm thickness.
Unless you have a clearance of 2m there is no way you can get it into a people mover. Even unpacked it is still going to be a triangle of 1.8m sides, allowing for 100mm packing protection for tips.

So time to run around and find a larger vehicle.

Moral of the story...when your plane goes U/S do this outside the maintenance facility.

Looking forward to the adventure.

Robin

Always look on the bright side of life !
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x8jlou ... shortfilms

Hi Jean

Always looking on the bright side of life. The weather is now spring, usually very stable weather, in Central Australia usually CAVOK for 6 months. However unseasonal weather. It is going to rain...

I have attached the weather chart. This area is so remote, we do not have TAFs or Metars. So it looks as if the roads will be closed, so I have chartered a plane. Will I be expelled from DAN? the only plane I could get was a Cessna 210!

We are hoping that we can drive up to Marree Sunday, the last 80 kms is dirt road. Usually this is the last road to close, if it does as it was for 3 weeks in August, I will charter a larger plane to fly the prop into Marree from Leigh Creek, 50 NMs away.

On the Monday I was going to drive 200kms over dirt roads to pick up the LAME - aircraft mechanic. As the roads will most likely be closed I have organised the plane charter.

Should be fun...



Cheers

Robin

Dear All

I have attached the map.

The blue line is the last part of the road. Leigh Creek to Marree.

On the Monday we are picking up the LAME from Olympic Dam in the Cessna 210. This airport is owned by BHP Biliton the big mining company. Lots of paper work to get to fly into here.

I will hopefully drop the LAME off on Tuesday in my DA 40 VH-JRZ.

Some pictures of the trip upto Marree. The drive is about 700kms.

Another hazard of the outback...

Finally arriving at Marree...

Our accommodation, the centre of the town, the pub. We had a few beers here