Lake Evil,
The best advice of this thread comes from Ozexpat and HJ.
PNG has always been what YOU made of it.
While the pay and general conditions are NOT what they were the flying hasn't changed one wit.
IFR sans A/P has always been more the norm than the exception in PNG.
'Personal LSALTs' were something I, and more than a few others I suspect, used when needed. HOWEVER they were calculated properly, using all the approved splays + buffers. I had one from overhead Lake Trist to Lae which required me to be VISUAL over the Lake and above a certain height + Lae NDB working before going IMC...but it was legal and safe...and got me home a few times when the other options were less so or at least very time consuming! I used to fly Islander loads of day old chicks to Madang and had a simple system of DME distances and VOR radials from Madang to keep me in the middle of the Ramu until I picked up the NZB aids which allowed me to fly IFR at a personal LSALT probably 6000' lower than the RNC Charts.
You worked them out YOURSELF and 'test flew' them in nice weather and they then became part of YOUR bag of tricks when the weather was Romeo Sierra.
All this before GPS hit the civil market!
I too have known GT for a LONG time, as well BP, Mike C and RL...none of them are bad guys but they have spent a life time in a system that bares no relation to the one in Australia...or even to the Territory. GT and RL between them probably have 40000 hours in PNG, I think I once heard that RL had 13000 hours just in his own C185...both have seen scores of pilots die and many more than that number of crashes...they don't want that to happen to you anymore than you do!
Go to PNG and spend a few weeks there...stay with the other NCA pilots and do a few flights in the copilots seat. That's the way it has always worked in PNG. You will either love it or hate it. If you love it and they think you are a reasonable dude they will give you a job.
If they give you a job work hard, listen hard and play hard, give your employer good value for the money they spend on you, don't bang up their aircraft, don't whinge about things too much, avoid people who do, DON'T DIE in PNG.
The vast amount of info available on this site, including pictures, should give you a vastly better idea about the place than those of my era...we just got on a QF flight and arrived without the faintest idea of what we were getting into...and the vast majority of us have not one regret.
An interesting thing occurred to me a few years ago. I arrived in Chimbu with a duffle bag over my shoulder, pilot's licence, a virtually empty logbook and about $10. Through the next nearly 13 years I married, had a child, aquired heaps of 'stuff', moved around all over PNG...but in the end thanks to divorce and the Volcanoes in Rabaul when I actually left PNG I didn't have a huge amount more stuff or money than when I arrived...but I had three full logbooks and a fourth on it's way.
And friends/memories that will be for life!
Chuck.
Last edited by Chimbu chuckles; 26th Oct 2002 at 10:39.