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There's a point in the Atlantic where the equator meets the prime meridian. No land. No beach. Just one yellow weather buoy named Soul, floating alone in five kilometres of water.

According to the internet, millions of people are there right now.

Every broken photo location, every glitched fitness app, every mistyped address — they all end up at the same spot. Map makers invented an island there to catch the errors. Then they gave it a flag. Then it started showing up on real maps.

Batty on Air. Say hello to Soul.

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Every commercial flight carries two of them. They're orange. They sit in the tail. One records everything the aircraft does — the other records everything anyone says in the cockpit. For the last two hours. Everything.

The man who invented them was supposed to be blowing up fuel tanks. Australia — the country of the inventor — adopted the technology last.

Somewhere right now, one is pinging alone at six kilometres depth. Once per second. For exactly thirty days.

Batty on Air. The one about the thing nobody thinks about until they have to.

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You need a school. Turns out there are two kinds. One has a structured syllabus, professional instructors, and a clear path to every licence you might ever want. The other has a Labrador.

Episode 03 covers the difference between a flying club and an approved training organisation, why the airfield location matters more than most people realise, what to look for in a flight instructor, and the one exam question you will definitely forget before you need it.

Also: Gerald. Gerald is a tree. Gerald is an important part of pilot training.

Learn to Fly — getting your PPL in Austria, one item at a time.

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Before you fly, you need a radio certificate. Before the radio certificate, you need a different alphabet. And different numbers. Three is Tree. Nine is Niner. W is Whiskey — and yes, everyone remembers that one immediately.

This Episode covers the three Austrian radio certificates, why the AFZ is the obvious choice, and why "over and out" is something no pilot should ever say.

Learn to Fly — getting your PPL in Austria, one item at a time.

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Before your first flight lesson. Before you book a trial flight. Before anything starts — a doctor needs to sign off on you.

Turns out there are two kinds of aviation medical. They are not the same. The choice between them is one of the most important decisions you'll make before spending a single hour in an aircraft — and almost nobody knows it exists before someone tells them.

Episode 01 covers what gets checked, how long the certificate lasts (spoiler: it depends on your age, and not in a flattering way), and why the Class 1 medical has a component that absolutely nobody mentions in the brochures.

There's also a psychology test. Nobody expects the psychology test.

The Bat Who Needed a License — a complete guide to getting your PPL in Austria. One item at a time.

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A bat. Fifty million years of flying experience. Zero paperwork.

Until now.

This is the series about everything that happens between "I want to learn to fly" and "I am now legally permitted to fly" — in Austria, in the correct order, with all the parts included that nobody tells you about in advance. There is a checklist. It has six items. Each item is hiding something.

Episode 00 explains what this series is, why it exists, and why a creature that navigates in complete darkness using onboard sensors that modern aviation is still trying to replicate had to demonstrate English language proficiency to pass a written exam.

The irony remains undefeated.

Batty on Air — The Bat Who Needed a License. A complete guide to getting your PPL in Austria. One item at a time.

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You wake up at two in the morning. Wide awake. No reason. And your first thought is: something is wrong with me.

What if nothing is wrong with you?

In this episode, Batty digs into one of the most surprising stories in human history — how people slept for thousands of years before electric light changed everything. The historian who found over 2,000 references to a forgotten sleep pattern. The nine-year-old girl whose 1697 court testimony reveals a world we've completely lost. And why the "mattress company invented 8-hour sleep" story that's everywhere online is itself a myth.

The full article is at battyontour.com. Best read at two in the morning.

Batty on Air — travel, aviation, food, and the occasional fact that everyone believes and nobody has checked.

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Everyone knows "My Way." It's Sinatra. An American classic. A song about a life lived on one's own terms.

It is also, in every meaningful sense, a French song about a failing relationship — rewritten by a Canadian on a transatlantic flight, recorded by a man from Hoboken, and performed most magnificently by an Italian from Modena who sounds like he's winning an argument with the universe.

Also: the composer died trying to fix a lightbulb. In his bathtub.

Music history is considerably more complicated than the karaoke screen suggests.

🦇 battyontour.com