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Showing results for tags 'PIREP'.
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Leg 56 – GVAC Amilcar Cabral Airport to DIBK Bouake Airport. I had had a couple of months off, away from the ATWC. Having completed leg 43 and finding myself in Houston Texas in the good old USA, I spent a week there, wondering about the challenge and how it would fit in with Christmas. Houston is a town built on industry, the energy industry, and specifically the oil and gas industry. It is not really known for its tourism and so I was hard put to know what sights to see. Eventually I gave up and took United Airlines Flight 97 back to Heathrow and home for an early start to the Christ
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Unusually for me, I was not feeling my habitually amiable self. The reason for this (the wounds were self-inflicted, as you’ll see — which only made things worse) was that I had given both Ken and Geoff, my F/Os, leave for the whole of the Christmas and (beyond) New Year period, assisted by the fact that as it happened there was no demand for our specialised services during that time anyway. I had been warned to have one of them on standby by Julie (my FD, Company Secretary, and obsessive bean-counter) — but in my usual generous fashion, and wanting to give the guys a decent amount of time wit
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There's no escaping the fact that when is comes to drinking, Mutley is in a class of his own. Having met up with him on arrival at SBJC, all I remember is a bottle of Bacardi and then nothing. Right now all I have to show for myself is a splitting headache. The headache though is the least of my problems. I have absolutely no idea of where I am. There's no city and me, and instead I seem to be out in the countryside. What the hell do Joe do this time. I do a quick check to confirm I still have all my kidneys, liver (whose going to steal that though?) and I'm relieved to find I'm in one piece.
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Thanks of course to Pete for getting the baton safely to Porto De Moz. Another day, another featureless airfield, but wait, I am sure we have seen this place before? Ah yes! Loic's excellent Amazonia 2015 tour! Ladies and gentleman, I give you the magnificent Porto De Moz So another fun filled flight across South American jungle and as Pete said "Brown water. Clouds. Jungle. Not a lot of variation in the scenery". and he's not kidding and what's with this river lapping over the numbers on the runway!? In order to make my flight really fun I decided to drop into Breves (SNVS
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Whew! Those caipirinhas really pack a wallop. Who knew you could have a party in the middle of a jungle? The mosquitoes around there must be constantly buzzed. Anyway, Manaus is one rockin' town for the middle of nowhere. I know we just had a leg with a Kodiak, but seeing as this was going to be a river run all the way, and I had quite a load of party cargo to drop off, the Kodiak made sense. That and the G1000. Need to get more practice with glass cockpits. It's hard to see in this picture, but there's a buzzard at about 5 o'clock to the sun. I think it's over where t
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My tent was by now thuroghly soaked from the down pour that had been present for the duration of my stay. Luckily the temepratures had been far from cold, and the rain had kept the mosquitos from getting to friendly. That flight school where I borrowed the Corvalis to get me here had turned up merely 4-5 hours after my arrival to reclaim their airplane, apperently they needed it for their business. The upside was that they had brought with them enough supplies for me to last the stay, and among the crates were a healthy supply of Cachaça, the local sugar cane based spirit.. Whilst trying t
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It was time to close up Section 5, and with Brian and Joe waiting for me in Obando I made my way there with Haste.. can't keep those two waiting, the have even less patience than my 5 year old son With the Baton in hand we downed a few drinks (Brian left before it was time to settle the bill) and had a great evening. The next morning I headed back to the airport (my two elders still in bed recovering for the night before) and started to prepare for my flight. I had managed to pick up some passengers to raise some funds for our continued adventures. They were heading to Tapuruquara so
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When I arrived in Orocue I knew that I didn't want to hang around too long. The place was a depressing site. Abject poverty does not begin to describe what my keen senses were being bombarded with. The smells in the air wreaked of motorbike fuel and exhaust fumes, animal butchery etc etc, you get the idea. But when I arrived at the erm hotel, that Mutley's had afforded me for the night well, take a look. I was not alone though. Joe had booked himself in also. Did you care to even check what Trip Advisor said? I didn't think so.......cheapskate. The Mutley's credit card had been ta
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Welcome to my flight in section 5 of the ATWC SiX! So Matt had flown a pretty impressive leg, I watched him land, it was one of those moments you wish you had a movie camera so you could post it on YouTube. I put that down to certain medication issues We swapped a few stories along with the baton in the bar. Matt was downing those beers and tequilas faster than I could pay for them! I had planned an early start in the morning so filed my plans with the tower before retiring: Phew it was muggy, temperature 26C, dew point 26, and talking of mugg-ing, being Colombia everyone looked
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PIREP Leg 47 MKJP-Norman Manley Intl > SKBQ-Ernesto Cortissoz
Captain Coffee posted a topic in PIREPS
Well... Substitute a word here and there from a famous Flower Era Song, and hum this precautionary tale to yourself should the need arise: If you go to Old Jamaica Be sure they don't put flowers in your beer... Sorry about the Jamaica Delay...but between waiting myself down here for over a week for the baton, then my Birthday ariving just as the baton did...caused a Well Intention-ed Pre-Birthday party to go awry when someone slipped a "Flower Extract" into my beer...it must have been some powerful stuff, or a generous birthday dose, but I found myself the next morning with a head full of s -
Someone must have slipped me a mickey at the club the other night. I don't remember anything after the last bar and woke up in my hotel room 36 hours later. My hotel room had been tossed, but nothing was missing. My initial sense of panic subsided when I called the front desk and verified that the baton was still in the hotel safe. The adventure in Macao left its mark and I gave the hotel explicit instructions to keep it in the safe until I checked out. During my reverie I had this vivid dream that the Caribbean had turned into grassy plains and scattered forests. No more blue water,
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Apologies for the slight delay! I can't say I really liked Cancun. Sure it's nice enough, but for me heat doesn't go down well. I was certaintly glad when Kasper landed in the dark - at least it's a few degrees cooler then! So, what aircraft to use on the flight? It's not that long, but mainly over water. So that means twin engine minimum. Speed is required, so that makes it a jet or fast turbopop. Looking at the options, there was a few commerical flights, but they were very expensive for some reason. They weren't until I said it was for the ATWC, then the price rocketed. Must have se
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After hearing JG's story and getting a hold of the baton I had a stroll to the Anson. Russian spies did not have to hijack a plane to get anywhere, Russian mobsters did... So I went in and looked for whatever the Ruskie and the Brit who was going to dismantle the plane were hiding. To me it was obviously a deal gone bad. Not having found anything uin the plane I then went to the Madisonville airstrip. Unfortunately I was not the only one and I spend the next couple of days explaining to some suits that I was not Ennemy of the State no.1. Eventually they believed me, sort of... They brought me
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Leg 43 - KACT Waco Regional Airport to KIAH George Bush International Airport. After the end of Leg in Beatty Nevada, and having used a well-endowed barmaids …erm, well-endowed bits to break my fall, I found myself in the clink again. On my second day, in the middle of my morning shave, one of my minders turned up and told me that the charges against me had been dropped. I hadn’t been expected that. Perhaps the barmaid fancied me. I glanced into the mirror to check my shave and then dismissed that notion immediately, I guess I owed Jas another one. I left the nick and saw Jas wait -
I’d been out in Texas for a few days helping out a friend with some crop dusting so Kieran’s arrival with the baton was perfect timing… I was beginning to get a bit tired of the same set of corn fields.. Pecos has a colourful Army Air Force history being one of 5 major training fields which was set up after the Pearl Harbour attack I stopped into Alfredo’s Mexican for some takeaway vegetarian enchiladas before heading over to Pecos airport to meet Kieran. I’d been commissioned to fly an old Beech C-45 Expeditor to Waco (home of the legendary Dr Pepper drink), for a WW2 veterans reunion. M
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OK - let's get this section underway! Just before Continental Airlines merged into United to create the super United airline, they quitely restored a series 800 Viscount. This particular Viscount, N247V, was the 389th Viscount to be built. It first flew on Wednesday, 23 July 1958 at the Vickers plant at Weybridge, Surrey, England powered by Rolls-Royce Dart 525 engines, as a V812 series Viscount. Delivered on 20th August of that year, it served Continental until 9th April 1967 when it was sold to Channel Airways in the UK. Re-registered as G-AVJL, it eventually ended up in Indonesia and to
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Cheers fellow adventurers. I've hit a slight snag in posting my PIREP for Leg 40. Anticipating that the time for this flight could come at a time where my possibilities for flying the leg were few and far apart (preparing for the Cosford trip while managing to finish our financial statement for Q3 at work ) I flew the leg well in advance. Most likely even before I posted my last PIREP. But when I sat down last night to assemble my PIREP and post it for your reading pleasure(?) I was sadly met by a completely empty folder where the screenshots should have been I can only assu -
A note from the boss informs me that the courageous JG is back in the clinky after parading around the bar with the baton in his pocket singing “Ivor Biggun, pleased to meet you!”. So after confirming on the county jail's website, I could free the baton… …it’s time to sort this one out 7755532345.. OP: Hi, Nye County Jail, Sheriff Wehrly speaking. Me: Good Afternoon. I understand you have one of our ATWC pilots John Aloysius Rupert Guest staying with you ..er..as a guest? Sheriff: Ah yes, he’s in cell 11 sleeping off a night of debauchery, he’ll be up in front of the judge tomorrow. Me:
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Leg 38 - NV72 Sweetwater (USMC) to KBTY Beatty. Having successfully completed leg 29 I hung around Scherger for a while, but to be honest there was nothing here to do. Scherger AB is an RAAF ‘bare base’ situated in the far north of Queensland, on the western side of the pointy bit that extends up towards Papua New Guinea. This means that it is in the arse end of nowhere, and only exists to provide the RAAF with the necessary infrastructure to support forward deployed forces during a crisis. While the base has facilities to cater for 400 personnel in fixed accommodation, 1,000 personne
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And now for something completely different. Sorry, couldn't help myself. This leg couldn't be more different from the last unless it were flown in a hang glider. It's quite the short hop through some mountainous terrain. I recently got a new toy, the A2A Piper Cub with Accu-Sim, making it pretty much mandatory to fly it for this leg. While I'm certain that anyone reading this is familiar with the Cub, just to recap: 65 HP engine 12 gallons of gas no electrics no mixture control This was going to be purely VFR with a couple of challenges. Starting at McClellan at 76 fee
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Some days before the flight, I had a chat with Geoff Swanson, my First Officer and world famous wind-up merchant, mainly to give him an outline of our next trip. When I mentioned the word “Hawaii” his face lit up. I made the most of the moment, because I like to wind him up occasionally, just to even the score a little. Then I said “But it’s Hilo”, and his face fell a mile. “You are definitely kidding me, right?”, he begged. But I wasn’t kidding, to his huge disappointment. As you can see from the map, Hilo is about as far east of the island chain as you can possibly get without falling in -
"Never eat the food" is an old adage for travellers, and one I really should have paid attention to. A bout of food poisoning has left me stranded at Cassidy international for days. Unable to fly, and even worse, drink, I've been left to my own devices at the local hotel. Thoughtfully, ATWC head honcho Mikael up had sent me a few 1 player board games to keep me company. Though without a bottle of Lemon Vodka as a companion, by the third day of my captivity, I'm losing patients with a few of the games. Thankfully my breakfast stayed in this morning and I able to resume normal flying. As normal,
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What had I gotten myself into?? A 2000 nm flight over the Pacific, and no clue on how to fly it! My preference of low and slow GA would surely not be an option, it'd take me weeks to get to my destination, if the fuel load would even get me far enough... To make it worse I got a call from J G as I was waiting for Kieran to arrive at the Marchall Islands. His contacts had kept an eye on our progress, and there were reports of Putinfeld activity at Pohnpei just after Kieran took off, so I was in a hurry to get out of Bucholz once the Baton got here. And something fast for the flight was esse
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A nice, quite leg for a change - just transporting 80 tonnes of bulky cargo to the Christmas Islands. This leg carried a Minimum MTOW restriction. This naturally limited the choice of aircraft quite a bit, considering the high MTOW. Having been contacted to transport 80 tonnes of railway equipment (what else?) to the Christmas Islands, the choice narrowed even more. Only one company was willing to work with me Yep - Volga Dneper and one of the An-124's that is in the fleet. By the time I arrive, most of the loading is complete However, the door is still open by the time that I
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Last time you saw me I was escaping, unsucessfully, from J G's unfriendly friends, resulting in a rather unpleasant experience to say the least. After a few weeks of captivity, I awoke one morning to find my door unlocked and no one around. I suspected something, with the following note attached to the door: "We'll meet again sometime" Anyway, Jess had arrived into Pohnepi a few days earlier and the baton (which had been safely deposited in the murky depths of the Avro 730 - nice work Jess ) was once again in my hands. Just to find an aircraft to fly out to, appropriately enough, the M
