Leaderboard

In a freak accident, an unmanned plane took off from a Sydney airstrip by itself on August 30, 1955. When a pilot in training suffered engine troubles, he landed at Bankstown Airport. After he climbed out, he spun the propeller by hand and the plane unexpectedly started moving on its own. The Auster, like this one below, somehow took off from the runway and began flying in ever wider circles. For hours the unmanned plane flew over the city, its range extending from Mascot to Vaucluse, over Punchbowl, Rockdale, Redfern and the CBD. RAAF planes were dispatched from Richmond and Newcastle to shoot down the plane over the ocean, but they were unsuccessful. Eventually two British pilots JR Bluett and Peter McNay, who had flown up from Nowra, were able to knock the plane out of the sky. The two pilots were celebrated, but the Australian government was grilled on why it took three hours to successfully intercept a light plane with nobody flying it.

Be interesting to know how water got in the hydraulic oil tank, expensive mistake.

WARNING: It seems that I have been connecting with Gates USA web sites. Many/Most of the above details & par numbers do not apply to AU. Gates AU coolant (radiator 25 mm ID /other 17 mm ID) part numbers would seem to start with 02- or 03- My apologies 😈

Turns out the aforementioned list has a lot of discontinued 17mm (.65-.66") ID hoses. For currency you may be better cross checking between: https://www.maxiparts.com.au/Documents/Supplier/Gates/gates-molded-coolant-hose-id-guide_web.pdf?srsltid=AfmBOoqVQCrOxyL-PSBb3p2dyjN8JTcyHwveCFPfpouutmQ076b1I4vA (Gives shape & dimensions in inches) And https://www.gates.com/us/en/fluid-power/engine-hose/heater-hose.p.4257-000000-000001.v.4257-01361.html (Gives currency, shape , dimensions in mm & inches) 😈

In the future Navy scenarios, they'll only need to learn how to land a drone on an aircraft carrier. 🙂

Welcome to Aircraft Pilots .com There are few little things that need tidying up which requires 3rd party updates but these will automatically happen when they update their files

Could be something , ( clothing ) caught in that rope drum . spacesailor

In point of fact, the drones would probably be fully autonomous, so no pilots required at all in the future

Particularly since I think it was water than hydraulic fluid,band also not the first F35 to have had this problem 😧 Maybe they aren't waterproof. VFR only 😄