Is GA really as bad as that?
It’s all that and worse.
You wake up at 430 for the 7th day in a row, your head sore, and mouth dry. While standing hunched over, eyes half closed in the shower trying to wake up you find yourself trying to sip the warm shower water in a vein attempt to provide some hydration to your cells which had the water sucked out of them the night before by 30 cans of beer.
Depending on the season there’s either going to be a freezing pre dawn desert chill, or an uncomfortably hot and humid wind to meet you at the airport. Staring at the forecasts between gulps of sweet instant coffee flavoured with powdered milk you try hard to get your brain working out the alternate requirements. Giving up in frustration it seems nowhere has more than a couple of lines to the TAF so it should be all OK.
Out at the aircraft as the beautiful sun rises for another glorious outback day, you find yourself cursing at the dam horrible light that now invades your red bloodshot eyes. The MR is as clean and crisp as it was the last time you flew the heap of ****, so you try and think back to what the verbal MR had on it- that’s what your mates were telling you were wrong with it down the pub last night.
The passengers rock up late, you greet them in the office with your dark sunnies on to cover your red slits of eyes that have by now retreated deep into your skull. The half a packet of PK you started chewing to hide any residual fumes has been masticated into a white dry slop that sticks to the roof of your mouth. As you’re about to board one of the passengers asks if we could go to Outofthefrikkenwayinthemiddleofnowherehole on the way to Evenabigastinkahottahole to pick up a person. You run back into the office and print the lat and long off FP2000 and race back into the aircraft.
After 10 attempts at closing the door, you get two passengers to use all their weight to hold it shut while you kick the handle closed. You remember being told how the door was f@cked the night before at the pub. Taxiing out you enter the lat and long for Outofthefrikkenwayinthemiddleofnowherehole into the trusty garmin and die when you see 440nm staring back.
After take off you select the gear up and the motor keeps winding, pulling the CB you remember that was another thing that was f@cked but was going to be fixed real soon.
After leveling off you flick on the trusty nav o matic and instantly turn it off again as you snap roll to the left.
Two and a half agonizing hours of “Australia All Over with Macca” tuned into the ADF later, you fly a rough circuit and sh$t yourself once again when the gear doesn’t come down- until your remember to reset the CB.
On the ground your passengers take off without a thought of you. Wandering into the community by picking a path through rotting meat, dirty nappies and dog sh$t while breathing through the mouth to avoid the putrid rotting stench and avoiding the mangy camp dogs fighting and rooting in front of you every step of the way, try and find suitable accommodation. Most places this means the nurse’s house. If lucky it might mean a couch and imparja for 10 hours while you wait. If not, it might mean the back seat of the stinking hot plane, your sleep interrupted every now and then by kids shouting “pylet! pylet!”
As the sun is about to set your passengers turn up, a once up and down the strip to clear the camels you blast off for home.
That’s what you have to look forward to before you make it!
