October 5
AirSafety Australia notified the News Desk that Aussie pilot Ray Clamback was in the water about 750 miles south of Honolulu "treading water"
 
After 7 hours a life raft was dropped from a Coast Guard C-130 and the container ship P&O Nedlloyd Los Angeles, on its way from Los Angeles to Melbourne, was able to rescue Ray 9½ hours later

Ray was ferrying a C182 in company with another Cessna that had departed Hilo in Hawaii bound for Pago Pago American Samoa
 
It was Ray's 220^th crossing of the Pacific spanning about 30 years of flying in light aircraft mostly single-engine machines
(That's one crossing every 6 working weeks for 30 years!)

October 4
The 2^nd flight of SpaceShipOne was successful less than one week after the first "into-space" flight and in doing so met all the conditions for the X-Prize, a $10 million cash prize for the first "aircraft" capable of carrying 2 passengers into space and return and repeat the exercise again within two weeks
"Burt Rutan, stood alongside British tycoon Richard Branson and X-Prize chief Peter Diamandis on the tarmac of Mojave airport leaping for joy and cheering the historic feat"

October 4
Pilot for the historic 2^nd flight in the Burt Rutan designed SpaceShipOne was 51-year-old former Navy and now civilian pilot Brian Binnie one of only a few pilots in the dedicated team at Scaled Composites
Dr. Peter Diamandis - the face behind the X-Prize instigated in 1996 - is now $10 million dollars the poorer ...(that's about $14 million in Aussie $'s)

October 3
A Cessna C185 float-plane operated by Air Waves on the Gold Coast's Southport Broadwater 'crash' landed in the Nerang river after an apparent fuel supply problem

The C185 that was used for charter and joy flights suffered expensive rather than extensive damage

October 3
After two previous aborted attempts the Amberley military air base west of Archerfield finally had a successful Air-Show staged over 2 days of the week-end

The military have been tying to have a "show day" for a number years, the first attempt around 8 years ago was washed out due to unseasonable weather conditions at the time and the second preparation for the show in late 2001 was abandoned after the September 11 terrorist attacks in the USA

The $10 a head crowd appeared to enjoy all the noise and action from the current and past military flying machines


 Media:- Captured from Local TV Coverage 

October 3
At an air-show in Santa Fe USA a highly experienced x-military, airline pilot and "Gold Seal" instructor was fatally injured when his SU-29 impacted the ground after he failed to recover from an aerobatic manoeuvre

The pilot - Rick Bobbitt the second performer for the day - had just started his aerobatic sequence when the Russian built Sukhoi he was flying entered an inverted flat spin after completing a hammerhead stall

Indications from TV media suggest that the accident may have been caused by an engine failure at a crucial time in the recovery sequence

There was no display smoke - normally generated by hot engine exhaust - immediately prior to ground impact