Helly never knew what to make of me ... I know his blood pressure rose every time he saw me.
Probably because he had no control.
And tinpis : I got the name of the Lake wrong. It wasn't Lake Kutubu but the one that was smaller and on the way Karimui to Baimuru. I would like to edit my post if you could look on a map. for me.
Up! Five thousand more feet I needed.
I look at the throttle .. it's in against the panel. Kilo Romeo Bravo , my trusty but hard ridden Cessna 182 , spent most of her life with with the knob all the way in .. nineteen inches.. not a lot to claw one's way up to ten thousand.
I see the pass .. ahead and higher. The dark green bags of thunder are rolling down each side ... maybe I need ten minutes .. will it be to late? What then? The Continental drones on ....
Drat!! I'm overdue on my HF half hourly position report. The HF chatters and screaches with static .. sunspot activity thinks I ..I hear Indonesian voices too. The border is only a hundred miles or so.
I am outside the two minute grace period.
I even think I hear screaming people ... Hell! This is a lonely place.
A break in the screaming and static.. so I blurt out my position with an ETA Goroka .. an hour away yet .. yet the Continental drones on... and on ..
I decide to abandon the pass.. it's choked .. on the bottom jaw .. green jungle .. on the top ... heavy green/black bags of water. I circle up through a hole ..I now need thirteen thousand , my eyes darting always .. to the Horizon Indicator. Back outside the walls of the vortex seem closer now Circling tighter .. Hate that .. rate of climb thereby diminishes.... poof! In and out of cloud now ... at least the screaming stopped .. wierd.
Up to the blue hole.
Conjour up a pleasant thought .. I must. Because I don't like this. I am alone ..the Continental ..
I think of one week ago.
If the Continental had quit anytime over the last year, I would be dead . A forced landing in this enviroment was terminal.
My partner and I owned this small company, Chimbu Traders and we knew it was time to move up to an Aztec. We had found one in Paradise.
There was a Garden of Eden called Aiyura. Neat as a pin , an orderly mission station. It had a perfectly mown grass strip. They had about four planes and their Aztec was too small for them. Forty thousand dollars ... with a spare engine . Turbocharged too!
They were the Sumner Institute of Linguistics and their mission was to translate the seven hundred tribal languages into English and vice versa. Their vegetable gardens were a thing of beauty as was their small coffee plantation.
We had the cash. "Come pick it up Tuesday" smiles the amiable chief pilot, Doug Hunt from Canada.
I had also agreed to give back the regristration to them .. after all it was VH-SIL
I smile as I fantasize ..turbos .. my God!
Two engines .. YEEEEHAAA! The Continental droned upwards. I pop out the top into the blue and cruise to Goroka. Ah! The glory...
Over there.. what's that airplane I see .. an F27 looks like ..it comes closer .. close.. then peels away. He is IFR to Goroka.
I could see faces pressed up against the glass.. could be a friend, Captain Skinny Hawkins .. or Fatty Hawkins .. who knows.. nothing was said. I was at fourteen thousand ....this would come back to haunt me.
I landed uphill at Goroka and quickly got taxi clearance back down to Bena Bena plantation where the cargo would be unloaded and put into our walk in freezer.. Whew! Hot work.
I jumped eagerly into the Toyota four-by and went to hoist a few "Golden Throat Charmers" with my mates ...at the Bird of Paradise Hotel.
They were ashen faced .. all with a hollow look as I burst upon the scene ready to babble out my tales of Daring Doo.
The silence was deafening .........
They were mostly pilots , some coffee buyers, a plantation owner or two. There was a stewardess too... Heidi , my German girlfriend.
She had big tits.
She was here for the special event .. to pick up my Aztec on Tuesday.... We were to go down to Aiyura and complete the deal and fly her back to Goroka.
Nobody moved ... some stared into their drinks.
A plane had gone in. But who? This was happening with monotonous regularity lately.. my mind raced through my mental inventory of pilots ..
The Chief Pilot from Territory Airlines approached .. Brian McCook was uncharacteristically dignified.
"It's bad Duke...." he paused ...".VH-SIL went in today ... all seven onboard ..."
I didn't need to know who the pilot was ...Name Forgotten , the Canadian.
An icy chill shot up my spine.
The boys started to talk softly ...
It was with horror, that I let the story soak in.
"Most of us heard it Duke , on the HF, all over New Guinea."
" SIL was at ten thousand , climbing out over Nadzab , the wing caught fire ... He tried frantically to get to ground before the wing burned off .. His call on HF was backgrounded by the natives screaming in the back .. the wing burned off."
People screaming ... HF .. . back at the pass ... I had heard a nightmare.
Last edited by Duke Elegant; 3rd Mar 2004 at 13:59.