I'll throw in a yarn too
Not long after getting my licence I got involved with a bunch of other PPLs with the common purpose of getting together for chopper trips, one of 'em was George....
MY MATE GEORGE
I was surprised, on swinging the Robbie into Lightning Ridge, to find the R44s still there. We'd been on the 200 nm run up from Mudgee for the last two & half hours and their extra 30 knots of ground speed should have had them refuelled & gone by now. As I settled by the bowser it was clear things had gone pear shaped. For one thing the bowser itself was sitting in the back of a truck, instead of bolted to the tarmac where I would have preferred to see it. For another, a small crowd had gathered around George's R22.
George is Polish & lost an eye in a child hood accident. To have earned a helicopter pilot's licence with the twin handicaps of English-as-a-second-language & restricted vision was testimony to his great talent as a human being, resourcefulness. He is also outgoing & gregarious but the crowd surrounding him seemed more entranced with something at the back of his chopper than George himself. I soon learned that the bowser was, in the words of the truck driver who'd come to collect it, "Rooted mate" & that George's tail rotor drive shaft bearing was haemorrhaging grease. The general consensus amongst the throng of pilots was that the grease had fled the bearing to escape the heat!
This was just the first day of our trip and already we had more drama than most excursions manage in a fortnight. I started to feel sorry for George. I shouldn't have. By sundown he had organised a fixed wing to fly a LAME & replacement bearing up from Sydney first thing in the morning. By bedtime he had convinced the rest of us to siphon enough avgas from our machines into his tanks for him to make the 200nm leg to Charleville direct after the bearing swap.
After the plank got in & we checked it was carrying both LAME & bearing the rest of us departed for various other off track destinations to get fuel. Chief topic of conversation on these wayward excursions was wagers on the likelyhood of George making it into Charleville sometime that day to join us for the rest of the trip. I headed north east towards the picturesque little Queensland town of St. George fuelled up there & then tracked into Charleville around lunchtime after the diversion. And there, sipping a Cola, looking relaxed & refreshed, asking "what took you so long" was my mate George!
Last edited by 22clipper; 15th May 2006 at 00:02.