Went out to MKT yesterday for my first flight in a while, what with holidays, Christmas and renovations to the laundry. It was good to drag the drifter out and get it ready for a lazy trip out to Adelaide River. This time of the year is fantastic for flying in the morning. Zero wind and thunderstorms normally hold off until the afternoon. As usual, the time from undoing your tie downs to getting in the air takes much longer than the normal preflight time as you have to catch up with folks and yesterday was a little special.

Harvard at MKT

I heard the thundering sound of an approaching Harvard (which I recognise only because it does frequent these parts) - I grabbed the camera and got some very nice shots of Nick conducting a close up inspection of our airfield. When Nick came around again and I saw the landing gear down I wondered why Nick was going to land as he normally does a fly past and heads off South for some fun.

NT Flight Training Jabiru

Bernie, who runs our flight school and has erected some nice new shiny signs which add further to the professional looking environment we are developing her at MKT Airfield hailed me over to take a look in the "Toy Box" -The largest hangar at MKT. Squeezed into the hangar was an Antonov AN-2. Or rather the fuselage of one. The wings were out in the 40 ft container which I had missed on the way in.

Here is an article on wikipedia about the AN-2. What I can't get over is it's stall speed which is less than my drifter, yet it can take twelve passengers!

Antonov AN-2 Arrives at MKT

So that was the reason for Nick, the Harvard owner to drop in - he came for a sticky beak. In previous posts you may have seen photos of the Tiger Moth, the Yak 52 and the Harvard. Now with an AN-2, MKT on an open day will look even more impressive.

One thing we noticed was that the aircraft has a very distinct smell. Not a bad smell, but a distinct one. Maybe it was used to ferry Russian caviar from the remote outreaches into Moscow or maybe the fermented potato mash that is used to make vodka. I am sure that within a very short period of time it will have new smells more aligned with mangoes, crocodiles and half a dozen sweaty parachutists...

Josh's Trike

...and just to highlight that we are not upsizing everything at MKT, here are some shots of Josh heading off in his trike just before I did likewise in my little Drifter.

 

Happy New Year and may 2011 fill your log book with many hours of safe fun.

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