Day Eight - Longreach (Stuck with bad weather)
The plan for Day 8 was to have a look at the QANTAS museum, in particular the 747 now parked there. Then if anyone wanted to revisit the Stockman's Hall of Fame they could and after lunch we would head over to Winton. When we got up the weather was not looking as helpful as it had been for the last few days. Overcast skies, wind picking up and all the gut-feelings pilots have were coming to the fore. A quick phone call to Winton yielded promising results - "only 10 to 15 knots with clear sky here!" We had a tour of the 747 booked so we decided to reassess after that tour.
During the tour - we were up inside the 747 and we could feel the gusts causing the ship to shake. Even the guide said she had never felt the gusts so bad. At some point we noticed the wing tips rising and dropping about 1/2 a metre with the gusts. The thing was trying to fly even though it was now bolted to the ground! Half-way through the tour we looked out over the aircraft parking area to see a bunch of airport security and workers moving our aircraft. Sensing we had better find out what was going on some of the crew left to see what was happening and the rest finished the tour. It turned out that the airport staff were turning the planes into the wind. Kerry's 177 had been pushed forward onto the taxiway by the wind and the others were in danger of the same. They turned them all around into the wind and tied them all down. Other aircraft owners materialised and shifted and tied down their planes.
After the 747 tour we wandered back to the aircraft and using Ackos Long EZE we measured the wind at gusting to 40 knots. The taxiways and runways were mostly cross wind and exceeded the safe crosswind maximums for most of the aircraft so we made a command descision and abandoned the flights for the rest of the day.
The planned event of the day was the QANTAS Founders museum. Most of us had been there before but since our last SMB trip the museum had taken custody of a 747 which was well worth the look. Our guide took us on an informative tour, interupted by having to go and rescue our aircraft from being blown away in the strong winds.
