And the beat goes on

[Tailspin45]

I'd almost recovered from the constant beat of Pratts in my ears, but we're in the air again. Finally.

 

You'll recall I was hired by DCA Airways to trundle an oil exploration crew from our home base in Boston to the West Coast. But plans changed after we landed in Oakland, and we headed south to Valparaiso,  Chile (not Brazil) as a jumping off point to the South Pacific on a much longer adventure. Fourteen thousand miles and 111 hours so far, and lots more to go apparently.

The flight to Easter Island, we thought, would be our longest leg, but the "hop" to Tahiti was even longer, in part because I got slightly lost after landfall.

 

 

We sang the praises of Mssrs Pratt and Whitney (after whom Kate and I named our cats--their predecessors were a black cat named Nimbus and white one named Cirrus), but as much as we trusted those engines we discovered when we landed at Fa'a'ā International Airport (NTAA) that our #2 engine  had some serious issues. It had used over 3 gallons per hour toward the end of the flight, and we hoped it was just a bad cylinder. No such luck. There was metal in the sumps with pieces big enough to read part numbers so we knew we'd have to replace the engine.

 

Waiting for it to arrive, literally on a slow boat to China, was no chore, however. We made many new friends of the alcoholic, female, and aviation persuasion and vowed we'd be back.

 

The wait for the engine reminds me of a friend, the mechanic who used to do the annual inspection on our SNJ (AT-6). He was the lead engineer on a very rich guy's Gulfstream based at LAX. He'd been the only mechanic for the SkyTypers T-6 team at the ripe age of 18, back in the day, so he knows a thing or two about round engines and Texans, too. When the boss's jet unexpectedly needed an engine in Paris, they didn't want to send the honcho home in undignified airline First Class. So they put the engine in the hold of a 747 and sent my friend with it, and two days later the G4 was ready to rock and roll. Hey, only cost about a quarter million dollars, what's that compared to a missed business deal? As an aside, most big jets don't come with engines--you lease them separately. For that matter, most don't come with interiors, either. You pay for all that separately, too. Heated gold bath towel-bars in the loo aren't standard equipment, ya know.

 

But I digress. With the engine hung on our Gooney Bird and tested on a couple short local flights we found and fixed a few leaks here and there. Radial engines always drip, it seems—as the saying goes, round engines don't leak, they're just marking their territory. (The other version is if they don't leak they don't have any oil in them.) Oce we got things squared away, we were ready to press on. The Tahiti dalliance suggested to those paying for the gas and my virtual wages, that Pago Pago was a good next stop, with some investigation of the local airports there, and then on to Bali for more of the same. Frankly, I was getting a bit bored with the long overwater legs anyway, DR and celestial navigation having proved remarkably accurate and not too difficult if you pay attention.

 

Being bored with long over-water flights reminds me...here we go again...of two chaps who recognized a business opportunity ferrying eight used Cessna 421s to Australia. They set out from Santa Paula, north of Los Angeles, via Hawaii and the South Sea Islands as a flight of two with big tanks instead of seats in the back. First flight was scary as hell, they said, at one point seven hours from the nearest land. The second delivery flight was a nail-biter, but by the time they'd flown the third pair halfway around the world and down under, they were getting a bit bored with the whole thing. When they flew the last two aircraft over, one pilot told me, he called his buddy in the other aircraft and said, "I'm gonna crawl in the back on top of the tanks and take a snooze. If anything goes wrong or when it's time to switch  tanks, give me a call on the radio."

 

Anyway, we flight planned about nine hours for our flight from Tahiti to Pago Pago and I'd learned our lesson about arrival times on the last leg, so we planned to arrive just after sunup so we could use star shots all night long to keep track of our position.

 

Good plan but it didn't work out that way.

 

Launched at 2110 local, estimating Tahiti at 0600 their time, including an hour time change (GMT-10 to GMT-11). Strong crosswind on departure and overcast skies didn't make for a promising sendoff.

 

We droned along for a while, down low at 3000' below the Westerlies. In fact for the first couple of hours we had a tailwind component.

 

 

 

But we were mostly under a high overcast. There wre a few breaks that allowed the moon to shine through, but they weren't big enough to allow us to get a star shot with the sextant.

 

 

 

There were embedded thunderstorms in the forecast, and we saw lots of lightning, but managed to avoid running into the side of a monster.

 

 

 

Toward morning we did get a long look at the moon, but it was almost dead ahead of us and useless as a source for an LOP. 

 

 

 

Finally, the sky started to lighten up, and we could see a dim horizon ahead.

 

 

 

Before long we had enough light to see the weather we'd been flying through

 

 

 

And right on time, terra firma appeared out of the gloom. Only one problem. Wrong island

 

 

 

Our DR objective was intentionally south of Pago Pago so we'd know we had to turn northeast to make landfall, And we did, alright, but we were farther west than anticipated and made landfall on Upolo the beautiful large island west of Pago Pago. So we turned southeast

 

 

 

and flew another half hour

 

 

 

Before making land fall again, on yet another beautiful island.

 

 

 

Airport in sight, we dropped the gear and knew we had it made.

 

 

 

It had been a rough flight, thanks to the bad weather, but the beautiful islands welcomed us and we knew the next few sightseeing flights around the area would be tremendous fun.


 

[VH-KDK]

Excellent story, enjoyed reading it.

Wonderful images from your flight too with a great narration too.

[BradB]

2 hours ago, VH-KDK said:

Excellent story, enjoyed reading it.

Wonderful images from your flight too with a great narration too.

+1 -

 

John

[Stillwater]

Once again another fascinating tale told here. Great for a Sunday evening. And with fine pictures, too!

[Ken Hall]

marathon flight great adventure, awesome

[Jack Sawyer]

5 hours ago, VH-KDK said:

Excellent story, enjoyed reading it.

Wonderful images from your flight too with a great narration too.

+1000 

[lifejogger]

Great story and screenshots!!!!  Heck of a long flight, glad you made it.