PODCAST · leisure
Plane Crazy Down Under
by Southern Skies Media
An aviation based podcast with an Australian/Pacific perspective This podcast uses the following third-party services for analysis: Blubrry - https://create.blubrry.com/resources/about-blubrry/privacy-policy
Episodes
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From Drone Racing to Military Operations
Did you hear a *THUD* when this episode arrived in your player? Weighing in at two hours and fourty one minutes, this episode is packed with content recorded at the Military International Drone Racing Tournament in Sydney back in March 2026, along with a great chat with WGCDR Keirin Joyce, one of...
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Australian Beechcraft Society's Pilot Proficiency Program 2026
The Australian Beechcraft Society is holding their Pilot Proficiency Program for 2026 at Cowra from the 19th to 22nd of March, so if you own, fly or maintain Bonanzas and/or Barons, you're going to want to be there. There will be a comprehensive flying program, detailed maintenance reviews, and…
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Talking E2 with Embraer & Virgin Australia
Many in Australia will have flown the Embraer E190 as there are a few flying here with Airnorth, Alliance Airlines (as QantasLink) and National Jet, plus the ones Virgin Australia used to operate back prior to COVID. The E190 and E195 include such wonderful features as large, well positioned...
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Staying Cool at AusFly 2025
It was a baking hot 42 Celsius (108 Fahrenheit) under the scorching Australian sun when the Sport Aircraft Association of Australia held its AusFly 2025 event at Wentworth, New South Wales, during the middle of March. Grant was on the commentary team but Steve couldn't make it due to a scheduling...
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To the Stratosphere & Beyond
It's our first episode for 2025 so we're allowed to say Happy New Year, right? Even though it's February, right? We may be Australia's longest running aviation podcast but we're taking a very long time to get to episode 200 :) This episode we follow our dreams into the stratosphere and beyond,...
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Pacific Airshow Gold Coast 2024
We've been a little busy lately and it's been a while since our last episode, so to make up for it we've released this rather chunky episode of aviation goodness covering the Pacific Airshow Gold Coast 2024 event. It's just like the old days when our episodes were long and the pause button was…
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Getting Wired with the Ace Maker
We're on the Gold Coast and getting ready for the Pacific Airshow once again. This year's line-up is bigger and even more packed with amazing aircraft, including a T-33 Shooting Star which is the first of it's kind to ever fly in Australia. Its pilot is Greg "Wired" Colyer from Ace Maker Airshows...
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Aerobatics & Goal Setting with Aarron Deliu
With the Pacific Airshow returning to the Gold Coast in August, Steve and Grant caught up with Aarron Deliu, an Australian aerobatics pilot who is now based in Florida and performing at airshows and events in the USA, Europe and South Africa. Aarron put on a spectacular display at last year's…
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Tyabb Airshow 2024
The Peninsula Aero Club at Tyabb Airport near Melbourne puts on an epic air show every two years, although everyone's really been looking forward to this year's event as the last one was in 2020 thanks to COVID. The waiting was certainly worth it, as the Tyabb Airshow 2024 was another cracker…
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Tibbsy the Aussie Airboss and a Day Trip to Tocumwal
Setting up and running the air display component of an airshow takes a lot of effort, awareness of pilot and aircraft capabilities, an understanding of what makes a display interesting to the public, and the ability to deal with variables such as weather and aircraft availability. To find out…
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Exclusive: OzRunways Acquired by Boeing
It's big news down under as Bas Scheffers, CEO of OzRunways, joins us to announce that Boeing have purchased the company. It's a massive validation of the efforts put in by the OzRunways team over the past 10+ years and provides the opportunity for the OzRunways, ForeFlight and Jeppesen teams to...
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Bush Flying 737s in Alaska, a long-haul Gipsy Moth, & more of the Steve Padgett Story
Welcome to our first episode for 2024 with this episode featuring a great set of interviews to kick off the new year. From Grant recording chats with Jerry & Jan Chisum in their incredible hangar home over in New Zealand to the next part in the Steve Padgett story, this episode covers flying from...
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Flying with Angels & the Padgett Story Begins
Steve's back in the studio after his heart attack and subsequent surgery. As you'd expect, it was a major experience for him and he's very appreciative of the support he's received from our audience. He's now a member of the zipper club, has been cleared to drive cars again, and is working…
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Pacific Airshow Vibes
It's been a while between episodes but Steve's been in hospital for a major operation plus Grant's been travelling for airshows and also getting current in hot air balloons once again (yup, there's a new danger area being declared for operations in the vicinity of YBLA, YWGT & YILA :) ). With…
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Test Flying the F-35
Way back in June 2014 we released Series 1 Episode 119 about the RAAF bringing the F-35A into service, including the first two pilots selected to learn how to fly it, discussions with Lockheed Martin representatives (including test pilot Billie Flynn) and an hour long discussion with AVM Kym…
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Gold Coast Dreaming
The team from the Pacific Airshow at Huntington Beach in California have come down under to stage the first Pacific Airshow Gold Coast event at Surfers Paradise in August, right around the corner as we release this episode. Steve and Grant will be attending the event to gather more content from…
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Reaching Skyward
They say that if you can't see it, you can't be it and that certainly seems to be the case with getting more women into aviation. The recently released documentary Touch the Sky seeks to help encourage more women to consider flying for fun and/or employment, particularly looking at the "soft"…
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Traffic Sighted
There are plenty of beaches in Australia and many cities have an "Eye in the Sky" traffic reporter giving commuters updates on where the bottlenecks are, but what if you could provide traffic reports plus beach reports, all while logging hours? Our voice-over guy, Terry Daniel, steps out of the...
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Leaning Into It
We recorded so much content at Avalon 2023 that it's going to take a few more episodes to get it all released. This episode brings us the Scandanavian wing walker team, the return of Timbo's Tarmac and a chat with UK aerobatic pilot Mark Jefferies and Dee Ebeling from Perth, so lets lean into the...
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All Change for the Defence Strategic Review
It's time to dig into the recently released Defence Strategic Review to assess its impacts on the Australian Defence Force from an aviation perspective. For this episode we're joined by award winning defence and aerospace journalist Andrew McLaughlin, who helps assess the changes we can expect to...
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Extended Ranges
With the recent release of the Defence Strategic Review by the Australian Federal Government, a major focus has been put on long range missiles for use by Army, Navy and Air Force to deter a potential adversary from approaching our island continent and/or blockading our ocean supply routes. With...
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The Sound of Freedom
Imagine a hoard of RV-6s & RV-7s flying in close formation and performing solo & pair aerobatics. Sounds intense? Well, wait for the Pacific Airshow at the Gold Coast to find out how it looks & sounds. Meanwhile, Mark Newton is one of the pilots in the Freedom Formation and he talks us through…
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The Commentators
The Australian International Airshow in 2023 (aka Avalon 2023) saw not only huge crowds and amazing displays in the air, but also the end of an era as Peter Meehan performed his last show as "The Voice of Avalon," handing over the reigns to Tony Moclair. It also saw Grant join Angela Stevenson as...
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Owen Zupp on Resilience
We recently caught up with our friend Owen Zupp to talk with him about the many ups and downs he's experienced in his career and, most importantly, his current grounding for medical reasons (starts at 1:20 into the episode). We touch on the importance of resilience and how many of the traits that...
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Pushback & Start
The new series has officially launched with the release of this episode and, what better way to come back to the world than at the Australian International Airshow (aka Avalon 2023) where we caught up with plenty of old friends and made lots of new contacts. It seems only fitting that our first...
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PCDU Episode 131: Reflections
Rumours of our demise have, sadly, been accurate ... well, until now that is! We're back and looking to give PCDU another whirl with a new series coming out shortly, but we thought a good way to get back in the groove would be to do that "Farewell" episode we'd planned to do *way* back in 2018.…
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PCDU Episode 130: Avalon 2017 – Alpha
Steve, Grant and Maikha were on-site at Avalon recording plenty of content and this episode is our first collection of audio content covering some of the companies, people and aircraft we encountered while there. Steve & Grant have already started editing the next batch of content for Episode 131...
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PCDU Episode 129: Going Back to School
Steve & Grant have both been back to school in the past week with Steve revisiting his old high school (Brentwood Secondary College and yes, it’s still standing) where they have a great aviation curriculum. Meanwhile, Grant’s been out to Bacchus Marsh airport to the TVSA flying school’s open day....
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PCDU Episode 128: Unprecedented
From Grant's collection of ballooning interviews to a chat with Owen Zupp about his latest book and our tribute to Hannes Arch, this episode is our biggest yet (yes, even bigger than Episode 51, our tribute to the RAAF's F-111s!). We've even captured Anthony "The Infrequent Flyer" Simmons' first...
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PCDU Episode 127: From the Vault
We've gone back into our archives to pull out some great content that we never got around to releasing before. We have some more interviews from Avalon 2015 (yes, we recorded lots didn't we? :) ) and we also have WGCDR Tim Alsop (now a GPCAPT :) ) walking us through planning & implementing an…
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PCDU Episode 126: Emirates Wants You!
They say patience is a virtue and hopefully our audience has plenty of it because it's been a while since our last episode was released. Fortunately we've been able to make some time available to record content, edit it and get this episode into the feed. For this one Steve & Grant are joined by...
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PCDU Episode 125: Avalon Charlie (The Avalon Airshow Goodness Continues)
Welcome back to our coverage of the 2015 Australian International Air Show (aka Avalon Airshow) with our third release of content recorded at show. It's been a while since the last episode and we're sorry for that but as with many labours of love & fun, life gets in the way and paying the rent,...
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PCDU Episode 124: Avalon15 Bravo (Yet more Avalon Airshow Goodness)
The Australian International Airshow (aka Avalon Airshow) may well be over for 2015 but our collection of content recorded at the show is still being worked on. Here's another hour of interviews & discussions and we suspect there may be another two episodes before we're through with all of it.…
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PCDU Episode 123: Avalon15 Alpha (It’s Avalon Airshow Time :) )
The Australian International Airshow (aka Avalon Airshow) is held every two years and runs for 6 days with the first 3 being trade-only. The 4th day of the show is always on a Friday and the public start coming in around midday then stay for the night show, a feature of Avalon for well over 15...
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PCDU Episode 122: Farewell 2014
As the final hours of 2014 draw to a close, we're getting our last episode for 2014 out the door. The boys have been kept pretty busy with their day jobs lately but, despite this, they've managed to do some flying: Grant's been taking friends on their first balloon flights including Evan Schoo…
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PCDU Episode 121: Exercise Pitch Black 2014
During August, Grant spent a week in Darwin covering Exercise Pitch Black 2014, a major multinational "war game" exercise hosted by the Royal Australian Air Force. Australia's version of the Red Flag training exercises held in the USA and in 2014 the RAAF was joined by forces from the US,...
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PCDU Episode 120: History & Records
Steve’s very happy to have finally started converting currency into currency as he’s logging hours in a Flysynthesis Texan and progressing towards getting his RA-Aus license. Grant’s been too busy with work to get many hours but did finally get to log some “special shape” time in his balloon...
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PCDU Episode 119: F-35 Joint Strike Fighter: The RAAF Approach
With Australia’s confirmed purchase of a total of 72 F-35 Joint Strike Fighters, Steve & Grant are joined by Andrew McLaughlin from COMINT (Communications Intelligence) to discuss the F-35 and its operation within the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF). We also feature a number of great interviews...
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PCDU Episode 118: Can you fly to NatFly 2014?
Just to be different, this episode Steve joins ATC Ben on a BenAir flight from Essendon (YMEN) to Temora (YTEM) to attend the NatFly 2014 event. With the Cirrus SR20’s autopilot keeping them on track, Captain Ben & FO Steve introduce the show before opening up their packed lunches. Sadly, Sierra...
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PCDU Episode 117: Holler for a Marshall, an AIR Marshal
With the RAAF’s Centenary of Military Aviation air show only a couple of days away, we thought we’d mix up some content that promotes the event as well as some chats Grant recorded with a number of past & present members of the RAAF at the Temora Aviation Museum’s “Warbirds Down Under” event back...
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PCDU Episode 116: High Performances
After a break due to injuries, surgery & a wedding, we’re back on deck and our first episode for 2014 is packed with Down Under aviation goodness :) From Matt Hall and the long awaited return of the Red Bull Air Race to our media flight in a pair of C130Js over Melbourne to promote the RAAF’s...
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PCDU Episode 115: Farewell 2013
It’s been an amazing year but as 2013 draws to a close, we’re squeezing one more episode out for you. We’ve combined some content not yet published from Avalon & AusFly with some great reports supplied by other members of the PCDU team. We’ve also got a competition running to win one of five…
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PCDU Episode 114: AusFly 2013 – Back Together Under One Sky
September 2013 rolled around and it was time for the second AusFly event at Narromine in New South Wales. Team PCDU squeezed into a bus that was loaded with Analog Al’s airshow PA system, our gear and a certain trade stand then drove over 800km in a day to get there. Whew! Once there we cleared…
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PCDU Episode 113: Fleeting Dreams
The past month has included a number of events related to the Royal Australian Navy’s International Fleet Review 2013 as well as the arrival of Jetstar’s new 787-8. Grant’s been visiting a few ships & interviewing their aircrew while Kathy’s had a flight on Australia’s brand new MRH-90 Taipan...
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PCDU Episode 112: Federal Election 2013
It’s time for Australians to vote for their favourite (or least disliked :) ) politicians and, once again, we’ve gone into bat for our audience to present information about the transportation policies of the main parties. Unfortunately, our cunning plan to wait for the parties to have revealed...
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PCDU Episode 111: Radio Killed the Podcast Star (Almost :) )
As the F111 was late & delayed by all sorts of issues, so too has our Episode 111 been late in arriving. Our big excuse has been discovering that the PCDU Radio Show has taken a LOT more effort than we expected. All this plus our day jobs, families AND our PCDU Commentary & Announcing gigs have…
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PCDU Episode 110: A Basket Full of Flight
All good things take time & so do our episodes, with this one taking perhaps the longest to produce of any of them. It’s also packed full of great content covering magazine editors, wing walkers, AOPA, another give-away competition, antique aircraft, solo trips around the world & even hot air...
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TeenWorldFlight: Update #1 with Ryan Campbell
Ryan Campbell is a 19 year old pilot from Australia who’s currently flying solo around the world to grab the record as the youngest pilot yet to make the epic journey. Steve caught up with Ryan just a couple of hours after he had arrived in Hilo, Hawaii to discuss the experience of island-hopped...
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PCDU Episode 109: Dave’s Cambridge Airforce
We’re joined by Dave Homewood from the Wings Over New Zealand forum & podcast to talk about his time with the Royal New Zealand Air Force (RNZAF), the warbird scene over there and the comprehensive forum he established. We also discuss his excellent Wings Over New Zealand podcast which has a…
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PCDU Episode 108: On a Wing & a Chair
Flying solo around Australia is a challenging & amazing experience, even today (just ask Owen Zupp :) ). It’s even more mind-blowing when you’re a quadriplegic! This episode Steve & Grant talk to Dave Jacka who is setting out to be the first quadriplegic person to fly solo around Australia! We…
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Frequently Asked Questions
How many episodes does Plane Crazy Down Under have?
Plane Crazy Down Under currently has 160 episodes available on PodParley. New episodes are automatically indexed when they're published to the podcast feed.
What is Plane Crazy Down Under about?
An aviation based podcast with an Australian/Pacific perspective This podcast uses the following third-party services for analysis: Blubrry - https://create.blubrry.com/resources/about-blubrry/privacy-policy
How often does Plane Crazy Down Under release new episodes?
Plane Crazy Down Under publishes regularly with 160 episodes available. Check the episode list for the typical release schedule.
Where can I listen to Plane Crazy Down Under?
You can listen to Plane Crazy Down Under on PodParley by clicking any episode. We provide an embedded audio player for direct listening, and you can also subscribe via your preferred podcast app using the RSS feed.
Who hosts Plane Crazy Down Under?
Plane Crazy Down Under is created and hosted by Southern Skies Media.
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