Perspective

[22clipper]

Last December the Doc refused to renew my PPL medical & sent me to see a heart surgeon instead. I’d half expected, I guess, that my last ride in a helicopter would be related to an engine failure at low level or some weather related calamity, when it fact it was down to the pump inside my own chest.

Anyway, I moped around glumly for a few weeks then finally accepted the reality of the situation & sold my beloved little R22. After that the wife & I said goodbye to our grown children & departed for our first holiday without ‘em in twenty years.

Somewhere between snorkeling, fishing, lazing at the beach & hiking on Lord Howe Island I stumbled across Bryan Monkton’s “The Boats I flew”. There was a paragraph in his book describing an encounter with a weather front (see below) that made me realize all pilots see the world in much the same way. Once you’ve flown sumfin, be it chopper or plank, your world view is somehow changed forever. And that, nobody can take from you.

From page 28, “As we approached close to this might wall, all sense of proportion is reduced to the truth. No longer are we in a large flying ship that is accustomed to passing disdainfully over the insignificant features of the earth below, the model like-like rivers, bays & headlands, the toy houses and buildings, but have suddenly become so puny alongside this towering structure of nature that we ourselves seem to belong on glass, beneath a microscope”

[Arm out the window]

Nice sentiment, and no doubt you've got a lot of happy memories stored away from flying days to call on. Maybe draw on them and write a book of your own!

[scooter boy]

22 clipper,
Is there no way of getting the old pump replumbed?
SB

[22clipper]

Yeah, valve repair in the pipeline (pardon the pun) scooter, but I reckon it will be 6 months to a year before some bureaucrat stamps a form & I'm street legal again.

But then I've heard some owner operators complain it can take that long to get a bird in the air again so I shouldn't grumble I guess. Life sure is boring on the ground!

[Graviman]

Once you’ve flown sumfin, be it chopper or plank, your world view is somehow changed forever. And that, nobody can take from you.

Still remember the first time the world unfolded beneath me like a living map. Don't fly much now myself, due to studies. Miss it though...

Mart

[22clipper]

If flying is akin to a drug addiction Mart then helos must be the meth amphetamine of the group? I remember a 500' coatal run, dolphins off the beach, a toy train on model railway tracks, the whole carpet of creation gliding past beneath me. Talk about sensory overload!

[mikelimapapa]

"When once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward, for there you have been, and there you will always long to return."

~Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519)

[NickLappos]

22clipper, get the pump fixed and get back into the air so you can write us about it! You say what we feel!

[22clipper]

Thanks Nick, will try hard as life on the ground isn't doin' much for me. Wrote a yarn re my post bad news holiday (see below). When I get better my mission is to fly a helo to YLHI. Cheers mate.

SHORTER THAN YOU THINK

I went to renew my flying medical the other day & the doctor sent me to see a heart surgeon instead. The shock reminded me that the good things of life, such as exercising the privileges of a pilots licence, can sometimes be shorter than you think. I considered this unexpected development & decided I needed a holiday.

Perched in the middle of the deep blue Tasman Sea about four hundred & fifty nautical miles east of Australia is picturesque Lord Howe Island. About five miles long & a mile wide, this speck of formerly volcanic rock was served for thirty years after WWII by a seaplane service (see Bryan Monkton’s book “The Boats I flew”) from Sydney.

These days the coral quay that once hosted everything from Catalina’s to Sunderlands is strictly for snorkeling & the Dash Eight’s use the two thousand nine hundred foot runway laid over the precious bit of level ground mid island. It’s an interesting little airstrip with a 5m high sand dune at one end and a shallow lagoon at the other, both discouraging impediments to any sort of runway over run. To make life even more interesting there is the impressive Mt. Gower to one side of the strip & an enthusiastic sea breeze that barrels across the airfield most days. Gower, as tall as the runway is long, is high enough to make it’s own weather, so throw in some orthographic cloud & rain some days too. Lastly are the airfields windsocks. Apart from the fact that they indicate differently at opposite ends of the strip, the Lord Howe socks are the only ones I’ve seen rotating rapidly around the pole in either direction followed just as quickly by hanging limp or standing erect (as in vertical).

All these factors combine to make the atmosphere in the little terminal building unlike any other I’ve encountered. Instead of being populated by bored airline users & disinterested staff the joint has an electric kind of excitement too it. “He’s coming”, shouted one of the locals as the Dash8 made his turn onto finals & everyone, intending passengers & terminal staff alike, moved for a look. The inbound turboprop was crabbed about thirty degrees into cross wind and, as it passed over the sand dune just before the threshold, a nasty gust ballooned it about thirty feet straight up. The pilots recovered nicely, kicked their machine straight then flared without bounce around mid field before braking firmly for a stop just before the piano keys at the other end of the strip. After the long backtrack taxi a lady with a bucket & mop boarded the aircraft &, not long after, some pale faced ticket holders emerged to start their holidays. All of which goes to show that runways, like life, are sometimes shorter than you think.