Steepest, shortest, highest, most bent, overgrown airstrip you’ve ever seen.
Some years back I had the good fortune of visiting Kabwum in the PNG highlands along with Satwag and a few other strips on the mail run.
I was in the hunt for some twin engine flying but decided against taking the job in large part because I didn’t have the Kahoonie’s to do it and also partly because there was bullet holes in the van that picked me up and a constant fear of a machete coming through your room in the wee hours of the morning.
I was nevertheless stunned with the type of flying that was on offer up that way which made Ozzie GA look pretty tame. So I recently got to thinking just how bad were some of those strips, particularly the ones that for example have now been culled from the MAF network due to safety concerns.
Is there, for example, any 15% 300 metre one way dirt strips at 10,000 feet into a gorge on a 15 % side slope or have these all gone the way of the dodo? I’d be keen to hear from those that came via that path rather than my tame excuse for GA.