- NOTAMS are issued 2 days AFTER they became effective about a new temporary prohibited area, part of said (rather enormous) area happens to be within a mile of your base airfield.
- ATC clears you to take off with a 'service vehicle' driving straight towards you on the runway at 100 km/h!
- You arrive overhead your destination airfield and find hundreds of animals on the runway. The drivers of the vehicles that are picking up your passengers are taking photos of you doing repeated clearing runs with their fancy new camera phones whilst you try desperately to chase the content creatures away... what do you mean help clear the animals!?
- ATC holds their ptt down for 10 minutes, Pilot's patience is dwindling at exponential rates!!! When they finally let go of the bloody thing there is a massive race to see who can get their transmission in first... Many many double transmissions!
- Military helicopters happily trundle across active traffic patterns without broadcasting and don't mind flying directly in front of aircraft in said active pattern.
- After trying several times to contact the approach controller, you move over to the centre controller... he tells you that the radar guy is "on his way coming" he should be at work in the next 20 minutes.
- Two aircraft are on a collision course, neither of them know it and neither of them can transmit because ATC is still preoccupied with noting the aircraft types, passengers on board and clearance numbers of other aircraft which are still on the ground!
- Your AVGAS was removed from your fuel tanks, the guilty party were kind enough to replace the removed fuel with an equal quantity of water.
- Bunia... oh don't even get me started on Bunia!!!
Now for all the stuff that makes it a pleasure to be here.
- You land at an airfield in the middle of nowhere, little kids arrive by the dozen, a man with a very old fashioned film camera rocks up. The kids have never seen a plane up close and want their picutre taken next to the aircraft... of course they also want the pilot in the picture too. A few months later you arrive back at the same airfield and the man who owns the camera comes to give you a copy of the picture!
- The scenery is breathtaking, incomparable to anywhere else you have ever been.
- You're flying a plane rather than pushing buttons all day.
- You wear shorts and t-shirt every day and every day starts with great sunrises and ends with equally good sunsets.
What a privilege to be flying here!
Regards,