Originally Posted by
Maisk Rotum
Flew the Heron in Fiji decades ago. We flew it IFR single pilot with no autopilot. On long range trips to Funafuti we added a copilot and mtow of 13,500 lb. Used Loran C to navigate there. The radio guy there asked us to call ten miles out. They would then sound a siren and the locals would pull all the football goal posts out of the ground and everyone would scatter off the strip. Loved it. They were Riley Herons. Years later got checked on the Gypsy Queen engines but never flew it in service.
At the risk of contradicting you, the Fiji Airways Herons were the Gypsy Queen originals. A couple of them had come from Indian Airlines, so were well worn by the time they ended up in Fiji, but for all that the fleet was well-maintained. There were three Mark 2s with retractable gear and a Mark 1 with fixed gear. The fixed gear machine had been badly bent in a heavy landing at Taveuni but got rebuilt to inaugurate domestic services out of Tarawa. I know they were Gypsy Queens because I still have an Engineering endorsement somewhere that allowed me to change magnetos, spark plugs and starter motors. This was so that I could operate without support out of Tarawa and get it back to the engineer based there if something broke. It was possible to hand swing a Gypsy Queen, but I doubt that would have been possible on a Riley Heron (though never flew these so don't know).
From Fiji we flew as far afield as Tarawa and Majuro, occasionally to Honiara. Navigation by sextant if above cloud, drift sight below cloud and a loop ADF if able to get a signal. When HF radio was too hard to read at least one old skipper I flew with would resort to the Morse key, though I confess my Morse was never quick enough to receive.
My logbook shows 1662 hours command on those old aircraft before upgrading to the HS 748 which we thought was the space shuttle at the time.
If Riley Herons and Loran C ever made it to Fiji it was later, perhaps with one of the smaller operators there?