Arrived in Luxor (Egypt). The crew will be having a little rest before heading off to Bahrain.

At the moment we are in Rhodes Greece, and continue to Luxor tomorrow early morning.
It was a great moment starting up the engines at Seia leaving for Bankstown! N160AT (I prefer VH-CAT) flies smoothly through the air with her new engines.
Saturday 15 of november 2008 14.15 lt. was our departure, several airplanes and spotters from Lisbon and Porto waved us out, the spoters website is www.apeapt.com go to forum, then to movimentos, movimentos Seia
There will be a lot of pictues to see. I will try to send you some more together with Richard's to update the website.

From Seia we flew to Salamanca (LSE) Spain, then to Cannes (CNM) France, Napels (NAP) Italy, Rhodes (RHO) Greece, so 5 days, 5 countries, 5 different languages, a bit confusing but we can talk with our hands.
All the flights we made until now gave us spectaculair views because of the sunny weather, except for yesterday, when it was a little bumpy and raining a bit. We climbed to 7500 ft and it was really cold up there, gloves and warm coats were necessary and Chris and me solved the cold by dancing in the compartment for a while.
The team spirit is very good and we all get along very well.
To pee there is this bottle......who cares....
On every airport we land people are very interested in the Catalina and I try as much as possible to tell them all about it.
It might be an idea......if you could be able to reach some frontpages of the newspaper: 1 DOLLAR FOR A MEMORIAL CATALINA TO BRING HER HOME.....or something like that, if every Australien gives a dollar you will have a million.....

For now, goodbye, keep you informed.....

Warm regards, Bernie

Of course there is much more to tell.

The Cat has now left Nice and is in Naples, then heading for Iraklion. She is flying like a dream.

The Dutch 747 Captain and Catalina instructor Chris Goezinne is on board showing our team how to do it!

Early snows have fallen in the Sierra Mountains. We have been advised that if we did not get the aircraft out of Seia this week we would be weather-bound until the (northern) spring next year. The ferry crew therefore decided to leave immediately. They arrived in Nice, France on 17 November. Tomorrow, they will be heading for Greece, Crete and all points east. The aircraft is performing perfectly and so far there have been no dramas.

The Ferry flight has begun. Arrived today in Salamanca, Spain

Our PBY Catalina flying boat is now about to be test flown in Portugal where we have been fitting two new engines.

Its ferry flight to Sydney should commence in another ten days when we have all the clearances required.

The engines for the Cat have now been delivered to Seia and Geoff Hazelton and the boys are busy changing them as you can see from the photo.  Our pilots Jim Hazelton, Hal Griffiths and Richard Purdy will be leaving this Saturday so that they will be ready to do test fights around the 30 Oct.

Fuel is still an issue or rather the money to purchase it.

Because of the rising price of Avgas (up to $4.00 per litre) in some places we are desperately in need of additional funds for the ferry flight which we now estimate will cost us some $150,000.

We are desperately looking for some Corporate Sponsor who might come to our aid.  For this we would offer special naming rights and privileges which would ensure maximum PR coverage for them.  The Catalina when alighting and taking off from the water is quite spectacular and will attract the attention of press and TV photographers guaranteeing maximum exposure nationally and internationally.  This would provide better promotion than any form of advertising.