Flying into Darwin Australia

[kbr]

Here are a few shots of my flight into YPDN at Darwin. I've been flying along the northern coast of Australia for a while now and have found it to be a bit more sparse than the western coast. It has gotten a lot greener as I've gotten closer to the Darwin area.

Taking of at YPKT after camping the night there. I found the runway to be in rather poor condition and surrounded by forests. ;D


A few shots heading east along the coast.




Though cities have been rather rare lately, I have seen the occasional small community.




Here I am coming in at Darwin. Nice looking little place.






Glancing at my map, this places me about a 3rd across the Northern Territory. I haven't decided on my next stop yet, but am hoping to find a spot about halfway to Borroloola for my next flight plan.

[bhk]

Nice to see that the chocolates are keeping you going, Kevin.

In real life the northen part of Oz is tropical and therefore subject to monsoonal conditions. So summer is wet, hot and humid and winter is dry, very warm and slightly less humid!

Bruce

[kbr]

bhk said:

Nice to see that the chocolates are keeping you going, Kevin.

In real life the northern part of Oz is tropical and therefore subject to monsoonal conditions. So summer is wet, hot and humid and winter is dry, very warm and slightly less humid!

Bruce

I love tropical areas so I have really been looking forward to reaching this part of Australia. I have to say that the designers of Voz did a wonderful job with the autogen in this areas as can be seen in the fourth picture down. The placement of the buildings and trees are some of the best I have seen in a landclass.

Speaking of the monsoon, we're just getting ready for it here. I just spent much of last week installing two new air conditioners in my house, bringing the total of ACs to 5. ;D The idea being not to have to use the swamp cooler to help lower the humidity in the house. With the temperatures being around a 100F, the job turned out to be more difficult than we were expecting. But now that, that's out of the way I plan to catch up on my flying. ;D

[bhk]

kbr said:

..... The idea being not to have to use the swamp cooler to help lower the humidity in the house. ...

What's a "swamp cooler", Kevin?
(I may know it by some other name.)

We've just ended 12 days without central heating.
A component on our system failed and that brought everything to a halt as it is a "fail-safe" thing: checks and balances during the operation and if one stuffs-up then the chain says "Sorry.....unsafe situation. I'm closing down".

So here we were, experiencing sub-zero temps overnight and no heating.
Ever seen people wearing as much clothing as possible whilst sitting watching TV in their living room, or operating a PC?

Today it was repaired and I'm now typing this in a balmy 22 degrees C whilst the outside temp has dropped to 3 degrees.

Bruce

[kbr]

bhk said:

kbr said:

..... The idea being not to have to use the swamp cooler to help lower the humidity in the house. ...

What's a "swamp cooler", Kevin?
(I may know it by some other name.)

We've just ended 12 days without central heating.
A component on our system failed and that brought everything to a halt as it is a "fail-safe" thing: checks and balances during the operation and if one stuffs-up then the chain says "Sorry.....unsafe situation. I'm closing down".

So here we were, experiencing sub-zero temps overnight and no heating.
Ever seen people wearing as much clothing as possible whilst sitting watching TV in their living room, or operating a PC?

Today it was repaired and I'm now typing this in a balmy 22 degrees C whilst the outside temp has dropped to 3 degrees.

Bruce

Sorry about that, I forgot that Swamp Coolers are kind of unique to southern North America. Though there maybe something similar in Australia. Basically it is a metal box with vents on the sides that contain padding over them with a fan and pump in the center. Water is held in the bottom and pumped to fall through the padding while the fan in the center pulls air in through the padding and into a air duct. A lot of people around here like them as they're the cheapest way to cool a building here. But they put a lot of moister in the air and pull in a lot of histamines. They're murder for someone like me who has arthritis and allergies. Going fully to air conditioners is a real God send.

Glad you got your heating fixed. Here it gets cold so little that we don't even have a central heater in our house (I tour it out a few years ago and turned the space into a little pantry, it was an old propane furnace which I always felt was too dangerous to use anyway.), just a few small plug in heaters to use on the days when it does get cold. ;D

[bhk]

kbr said:

..... Basically it is a metal box with vents on the sides that contain padding over them with a fan and pump in the center. Water is held in the bottom and pumped to fall through the padding while the fan in the center pulls air in through the padding and into a air duct. ...D

Aaah! Immediately recognised it from that description, Kevin.

Down here they are called an "evaporative cooler" and may be bought in either portable units.....on a mobile stand with castors so it can be moved to a convenient open doorway or window, etc.
Or they can also come in much larger, fixed installations and can be seen jutting from rooftops.

Very rarely seen on the coast because, as you say, they pump humidity into the air so they aren't going to cool very much in an already-humid atmosphere. Certainly never seen in the tropics, so don't look for any across the north of Oz!

But they are common here, for instance, as Canberra, being inland, has a very low humidity in summer.

Regards,
Bruce

[kbr]

bhk said:

But they are common here, for instance, as Canberra, being inland, has a very low humidity in summer.

I wasn't aware that they were available elsewhere, though I suspected they might be, you learn something new every day. ;D

Here in Arizona it is very dry until the monsoon hits, then they become pretty much useless so I can imagine they wouldn't be any good in a tropical area. ;D