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Old 19th Jul 2007, 17:46
  #1886 (permalink)  
chuks
 
Join Date: Apr 2003
Location: Germany
Age: 76
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No problems....

You must remember that seeming fixture on the rotary-wing scene, the ex-FAA guy with the white beard and the robust physique that made him look like a perverted, tropicalised Father Christmas.

One afternoon he was flapping along, single-pilot in his 212 on his way to DNPO, when it must have just seemed like too much trouble to call NAF Tower Port Harcourt and clear through their area, since he was talking to Port Harcourt Approach anyway.

We had just departed the NAF Base when my FO (PF) called, "Traffic One O'clock." (Our procedure was to maintain one thousand five hundred feet until cleared to climb by Port Harcourt Approach. A Dornier 328 hits 250 knots "just like that" when it's held down low, so that we were cooking!)

I had already figured out what must have been happening, so that I asked my FO to hold runway heading and pass clear of the traffic below and behind, since the 212 was crossing right-to-left at about two thousand feet. (This was, of course, an FO who was also a sharp pilot. There were some you probably would not want to do this sort of thing with unless you were really big into risk-taking activities such as fishing with dynamite or bungee-jumping. That is not me.)

Our sudden appearance at his five-four-three-two o'clock must have shaken up our 212 jockey's afternoon, to say the least. It would have been one of those classic, "Where the hell did he come from?" moments, with that 500 feet of vertical separation looking like nothing much. My spies at House One reported that he was in a bit of an agitated state that evening but we had a good laugh over it when next we met. Mind you, he left before he could figure out a good pay-back.
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