展翅亚洲飞行员聚会 2009
by Diong Bee Chu, WOA editorial writer

[View full event photos HERE!]

In the first week of March, WingsOverAsia achieved a new milestone with its first ever event held outside Singapore and Malaysia.  This time, our wings had spread northwards to Hua Hin, Thailand’s oldest beach resort situated approximately 200 km from the Thai capital, Bangkok.  Hua Hin enjoys a prestigious status amongst the numerous resort towns in Thailand simply because it houses the holiday home of the Thai royal family.  In fact, we found out that when the King is in residence, there are always 3 battleships anchored off the coast of Hua Hin for his royal protection.  And this was exactly the sight that greeted the WOA crew when we traipsed down to the beach on our first day in Hua Hin.

Aircrafts from Singapore & Thailand at Hua Hin Airport

Day 1 – Arriving in the Beach Paradise

The Getaway began in earnest on Friday morning with the first participants landing in Hua Hin Airport.  A number of private aircraft flew in from Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand while several participants from as far away as Taiwan and Japan came via commercial flights. 

 

We welcomed our first guests – a trio of pilots from Singapore, Taiwan and Switzerland, as they stepped off a domestic flight from Bangkok at around noontime.  The next few hours saw a flurry of private aircraft landings.  Due to the proximity of the airport to the Royal Palace and the accompanying airspace restrictions, our crew remained on the tenterhooks until all our participants had landed safely.  Recurring nightmares of our guest aircraft being escorted in to land by fighter jets due to accidental violation of royal airspace was an unavoidable side effect of organizing this event!  The last domestic flight from Bangkok landed with our 2 Japanese guests who had undoubtedly travelled the furthest to join us at our event.  Despite their long and arduous journey, they seemed unfazed and happily trundled along to their hotel to chill out for the rest of the night.  The last aircraft, a Robinson R22 helicopter, landed just before sunset, having had delays with refuelling at the previous stop.  The seasoned pilot, the good doctor Matthew, and his smiley wife, Sarah, took it in their strides and were soon bundled off by their Thai friends to their house in Hua Hin.

Meanwhile, the rest of the participants had been streaming in through the day overland from Bangkok and beyond.  At 7.30pm, we arranged transport into town for everyone to do a spot of shopping and sample the local delights.  The night market stretched over miles and was absolutely packed with just about everything from street food to sumptuous seafood and souvenirs to jewellery to clothing. There was more than enough to keep everyone occupied until they called it a day several hours later.

Day 2 – Pilots of Asia United

Saturday morning dawned upon us as a fabulous blue skies day.  While many of the participants’ wives, girlfriends and mothers had gone shopping, for massages or just lazing on the beach, they themselves had diligently forgone all that to join us at our seminar.  We kicked off the day with a round of introductions which ended up taking far longer than we expected.  However, everyone’s attention was fully engaged as the roomful of pilots of varying ages, experiences, nationalities and backgrounds went about introducing themselves.  The youngest was a student pilot in her late 20s and the oldest was a veteran GA pilot in his 80s.  Indeed, this (still) humorous old pilot started flying in 1963, way before our young student pilot had even materialised into solid form!  Represented in this room were at least 9 different nationalities who had by planning or by chance landed in this corner of Asia to participate in our humble gathering of aviation enthusiasts.

 
Above left: paper helicopter competition, Right: view when stepping out of the workshop conference room

Following the stimulating glass cockpit discussion, there was a group discussion on Cross Border Flying in Asia.  The objective was to pool the collective knowledge of general aviators in the group with regards to flying in Asia. Little encouragement was needed for all to start spilling out their grievances and comments on airports in various parts in Asia, from the hugely expensive Changi Airport in Singapore to remote small town airports in Thailand where language barriers and bureaucracy often conspire to drive pilots crazy.

Lunch of course consisted of delicious spicy Thai food served in an al fresco restaurant overlooking the sea.  After lunch, in a bid to awaken everyone from their post-meal lethargy, we started off with a paper plane building game with a difference – instead of folding paper planes, we asked our participants to fold paper helicopters.  Everyone was given masking tape, paper clips and paper printed with markings that once cut properly could be folded into a simple helicopter rotor.  The objective was to create a heli that would hover the longest when dropped from the ceiling.  This exercise obviously brought out the boy in every man present.  Passer-bys would surely have been quite amazed to see a roomful of pilots with probably more than a hundred years’ of flying experience between them excitedly folding paper helicopters.  In fact, some were standing on chairs, testing out their paper creations eagerly with gleeful expressions plastered on their faces!  Eventually we had a winning team whose creation surely must have been the culmination of engineering expertise and pure pilot instincts?  The ecstatic winning team walked away with WingsOverAsia t-shirts and caps.

Having woken up the group, we continued with a discussion on diesel engines in GA.  Our presenter highlighted the key differences between diesel/jet-fuel engine vs gasoline engine technologies.  There were overviews of the Thielert Centurion C2.0 engine, Austro Engines AE300, SMA SR305-230 Diesel engine and the Wilksch Diesel 2-stroke engine.  This turned out to be a lively discussion especially amongst owners, pilots and engineers who were Asian pioneers who had owned, flown and serviced these controversial diesel/jet-fuel engine planes.

With this last discussion, we concluded our seminar.  Many of the participants were soon off to the beach where an array of water sports such as jet skiing, kite boarding and windsurfing awaited them.  There were also masseuses at the beach and the hotel spa as well as numerous massage parlours all across town providing the best of traditional Thai massage aimed to relax all tired muscles.

Dinner was held at Letsea, a rustic resort with an elegant touch.  Throughout dinner, a series of videos were played featuring WingsOverAsia activities in the last few years, activities of Alpha Aviation in Japan and the famous Van Guys airport story in US.  There was also a lucky draw in which the first prize of a Sennheiser headset was won by our dainty lady aerobatic pilot from Japan.  Most importantly, throughout the night, conversation and laughter flowed easily amongst the pilots and their family members.  There were several pilots’ wives who were deep in conversation, no doubt exchanging their opinions on the madness for flying which had so afflicted their husbands!

The party continued to the rooftop of a nearby condominium owned by our Thai WOA co-ordinators.  Armed with plenty of beer, wine, vodka and chips, we settled down on deckchairs at the poolside to chat and seal the friendships made during this short few days.  Enjoying the sea breeze under the dark starry skies, it didn’t seem like life could get any better than this …

Above: Beautiful night view of the Hua Hin coastline from the after dinner roof-top drinks party

Day 3 – Time to fly home

All good things must come to an end.  Early Sunday morning, the first of the private aircraft took off from Hua Hin Airport to make their way home.  (I swear the pilots were not amongst the ones drinking with us at the rooftop the night before!)  The rest of the folks catching commercial flights out of Bangkok were packed into vans for the land transfer back to town.

As people boarded their planes to return home to various parts of Asia, we do hope that we had achieved our aims for this gathering in the beautiful city Hua Hin.  The aims were really not to impart profound technical knowledge but more to promote friendship and bonding between GA pilots across Asia.  Friendships made will definitely flourish as GA pilots continue to traverse Asia to seek new flying adventures with new friends made during this WingsOverAsia’s Hua Hin Getaway …

Till we meet again...Cheers to more friendship fostered! from Hua Hin event team - Jeff, Teresa, Diong, Siva, Meng, Jules, Belle, Vikram

Note: WOA would like to thank Fortis swiss watches, Sennheiser headsets, Aeroshell, Garmin, Asian Aerospace Services, Karlssons Vodka, Phuket Beer, Cirrus aircraft, SGA Airlines, Airline Pilot Association of Singapore, Jet Asia Pacific magazine, Hua Hin airport management for their kind support to the event. Last but not least, the wonderful Thai hospitality of our passionate Thai GA aviators.