Reading back over a few pages, I found the picture of VH-RAJ posted by Storchpilot and references to EFO and AMS.
I flew for the Lutheran MIssion for a year before joing TALAIR and flew a lot of hours in all these aircraft, plus ELG which was a Turbo Cessna 206 with a Robertson-STOL conversion - a beautiful aeroplane to fly.
At the opposite end of the scale was VH-RAJ, a Wren460 conversion of a Cessna 182 - not particularly pleasant to fly, although it served its purpose. As noted previously, this aircraft was named after Ray Jaench (can't remember the spelling), who died following an aircraft accident in a Lutheran Mission Dornier after take off from a new strip below Shaggy Ridge near Dumpu. (I forget the name of the strip, although I flew in there a few times - I'll see if I can find it in my log books). As I recall, Ray had landed for the very first time at the strip and then suffered an engine failure after take off. Although the accident had absolutely nothing to do with the strip itself, ATC (which exercised positive control in those days) closed the strip and refused to allow anyone else to land there. A RAAF chopper was sent from Moresby to the crash site in the gorge below the strip, but the pilot got lost on the way and took a while to get there. Meanwhile a DC3 landed at Dumpu to transfer the injured to Madang.
The result of this cock-up was that although the accident happened about 0900, Ray and the injured passengers were not airlifted by the chopper to Dumpu until the afternoon at about 1500. Again, my (admittedly hazy) recollection is that Ray died in the DC3 on the way to Madang.
The Wren460 was purchased to replace the Dornier specifically to operate into a tiny Lutheran Mission strip called Tapen (south east of Lae) which had an Effective Operational Length of just 350 FEET! Somewhere in my junk I have a slide taken on downwind at Tapen, which shows the entire incredibly short strip. Even RAJ had a couple of mishaps there!
VH-RAJ had canards at the front which worked in opposition to the elevators, a full-span flap/aileron system and strakes on the top surface of the wings which moved with the ailerons to redirect the airflow. It was virtually unstallable. The first time I flew it I had to take a body bag (complete with occupant
) and a
small amount of cargo - payload was VERY limited - from Lae to Goroka. Halfway up the Markham Valley I decided to see what it could do and tried some stalls (I didn't think my sole passenger in the body bag would mind). With the airspeed right off the clock, all that happened was that the nose remained high and wandered around in a circle while the altitude only very gradually decreased!
As for AMS and EFO - Terry Z gave me my C206 endorsement and route checks in AMS out of Madang in late 1970. I flew EFO for the Lutherans out of Goroka. Some of you may recall an ATC guy at Goroka (Dave H?) who we used to call "Standby One" (his favourite reply to anything). He often cleared me to land with the phrase "Evangelical Flying Object clear to land!"
Interesting memories that this thread is bringing back.