Still about yesterday

Those lovely people from Aerodreams, see previous post, were very nice to me and not only showed me their installations but also gave me a full tour to the airfield showing other hangars other airplanes and presenting other aviation pilots and enthusiasts who were enjoying the lovely day to spread their wings.

One quite interesting aircraft was this Citius on the photos below that was for sale. This Citius as built in Portugal in a company called BRM who specialized in ultralight aircraft fabrication and has already a good market share here in Portugal and is also making some sales outside

With a lighter structure than the Cessna 152 but with the same power about 100 bhp the Citius seemed to me being an excellent choice for those ultralight pilots in Europe who want some STOL capacity, space and an easy to fly aircraft. There are some similarities between the Citius and other BRM project the Land Africa but the wing with no Slats and a small structural difference on the tail make this model distinctive from the Land Africa.

About the Cessna 152 the first thing that a C152 will notice is the huge space on the cabin, and I REALLY MEAN HUGE. Side by side two persons normal size won't touch on each other unlike the C152 that when the two on board are the same size it's a struggle to fit their shoulders and move inside.

Testing the BRM Citius comfort - photo: Mário Abreu

Citius Exterior - Photo: BRM

Please visit BRM website to know more about the Citius the Land Africa and their new project the Argos.

http://www.landafrica.com

Planes planes and more planes...

In the morning I went to the Portuguese Air Museum to continue volunteer work on the DC-3 but this time for several reasons there were only two volunteers and the list of "to do" things was considerable.

During all morning and after lunch we tried to manage most of the items on the list but some was a bit complicated to do without more people to help.

Although after lunch I still got time for a small photo shoot outside on the way back.

photo: Filipe Cardoso 

photo: Filipe Cardoso 

photo: Filipe Cardoso

The quality isn't the best as they were taken with my cell phone, not a proper camera.

After all the possible work done my fellow volunteer invited me to go with him to Azambuja to a nearby airfield in a farm called Alqueidão.

Alqueidão Airfield, http://roteiro.apau.org/zp_alqueidao.html, is a well strong community of aviators that today took advantage of the exceptional good weather conditions and sunny day to spread wings and fly. Traffic is majorly composed by microlight and ultralight aircraft, (European categories), and the airfield has even small restaurant witch is quite pleasant and brings more people to the airfield by car of by airplane only to see friends talk a bit about aviation an laugh a lot.

In Alqueidão there is a company called Aerodreams, http://www.aerodreams.pnh.pt, specialized in flight training, maintenance and aircraft sales. This company owns the very first Comp Let Shark an amazing ultralight aircraft with dual seat in tandem configuration and performance capabilities capable of embarrassing some bigger and more powerful aircraft.

 Aerodreams Land Africa - Photo: FIlipe Cardoso 

 Aerodreams Shark - Photo: FIlipe Cardoso

On the other side of the World, the earthround continues

This time From Seletar, Singapore to Bali, Indonesia then Port Hedland, Cunderdin and Ceduna, all in Australia. 

Cunderdin wasn't an original destination of the earthround project of Captain Faria e Mello but the Northam airfield, (ICAO YNTM) seems not to exist in FSX so I looked for the closest airfield and Cunderdin came as an option.

From Colombo, Sri Lanka to Seletar, Singapore

MH370 way off course before contact loss

V1... ROTATE

Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 disappeared

Yesterday somewhere along the Vietnamese waters flight MH370 from Malaysia Airlines connecting Kuala Lumpur to Beijing was reported missing after it disappeared from radars. That alerts were activated and search and rescue started looking for the Boeing 777 after the Fuel Time ended. Aboard the Malaysia Airlines 777 were 239 souls from several nationalities but the large number of the passengers were Chinese, also there were an Italian and an Austrian who were later confirmed to be wrong information as their passports were robbed last year in Thailand and both where in their countries safe.

Searches continue and Vietnamese authorities claim having spot some fuel or oil residues on the water probably from flight MH370.

Virtual earthround continues...

This time from Djibouti to Seychelles and then to Colombo, Sri Lanka.
With real weather this time it wasn't so nice.

Enjoy!