Shark Watch, New Plane & New Pilot

It’s been a pretty busy week or so at East Coast Autogyro with plenty happening up and down the coast. This is a quick update on the latest news

Congratulations…Rudy Van Drie goes solo

New Pilot Rudy Van Drie

Having been a student for a while now, recent months had seen him a bit short on time and unable to get those crucial last few hours of training completed.

Rudy finally found some time in his schedule over the past fortnight to hit the training hard and this eventually paid off for him as he was cleared to take his first ever solo flight, out of Kempsey airport.

He immediately put his new license into action flying our training Autogyro solo from Manilla, across The Great Dividing Range to Kempsey, before heading north to Yamba.

He was joined on the journey by our Instructor, Mick Riddle who was delivering a brand new MTO Sport to Peter Coulter.

Which brings me to the second part of the update…

Congratulations…Peter Coulter’s New MTO Sport

Handing Over The Keys

Operating out of Palmers Island near Yamba, Peter Coulter has been offering instruction in his MT ’03 for the past year or so and felt it was time to upgrade to the newer version, the MTO Sport.

He took delivery of his new aircraft on Thursday, and the big grin on his face at the end of his first flight was all the proof needed that he was more than happy with his purchase.

Peter will be flying the northern leg of the Shark Watch which will begin operations on the first weekend in October

Mock Run Of The Northern Shark Watch

The Shark Watch Aircraft!

While Mick was in Yamba with Peter, they felt it was the perfect opportunity for them to do a trial run of the northern section of the patrol to get an idea of the best way to go about it.

Willi Ewig, our importer from Manilla (NSW, not the Phillipines) was in the area as well, so beachgoers from Yamba to Kingscliffe were greeted with the impressive sight of three Autogyro’s flying along the coastline on a sunny Thursday morning.

The boys timed out the run and were happy with how it all went. Visibility in the water at the moment isn’t great, with an unusual amount of fine sand clouding up the surf – but the guys still managed to spot a number of sharks in the hour and a half they were in the air.