Nigel
In those days Porgera was owned by the Canadian mining corporation Placer. A couple of their senior execs had ventued out from 'Placer Towers' to see the Papuan operation for themselves and were due to return (a process involving a transfer to Hagen, then Moresby, then Sydney and onwards). A King Air had been dispatched the previous afternoon and failed to access the strip and so later the same day I was sent to retrieve them. As with most afternoons in PNG the weather with sh*te and I only just managed to creep in to Porgera inches before last light.
Over dinner the North Americans conveyed with sincerity that their impending departure from the mine was an urgency of the utmost priority (I think they had had enough) and that they 'must' depart the following morning by any means.
The next day Porgera was socked-in with all the gaps and saddles closed but .. there was clear sky in an oval above the mine and, reading the desperate expressions on the faces of the Canadians I promised to 'give it a go'. On the way up (spiraling in a corkscrew) I raised the office on the HF who confirmed that Hagen was open. A Specific (Pacific Helicopters) Puma had just crossed East to West around Wabag and confirmed that the WX south of Porgera was okay so, it was just a matter of overcoming the impressive layer of altostratus and which was eventually achieved at around 15,500ft but I needed a little more altitude in case I needed to 'run' (or even glide) back to the hole over Porgera while making the short crossing atop the muck!
Another PNG story was that of a young newbie with some fixed-wing experience who managed to get himself inadvertently into IMC. He was driving a
Specific 'D' model and decided that 'out the top' was the best solution and which (I think) was achieved at around 25k. When eventually the ship came back to Goroka (via a number of other places) maintenance had to replace the strap pack!
Lord Louis Mountbatten (centre) and Gen. William 'Bill' Slim (right)
My godfather flew both Lord Louis and Bill Slim on numerous occassions and has several hand written notes from the two of them and which I hope to retrieve on my next visit to the UK.
Spinwing: Servicing the mountaintop repeaters was always interesting - trying to aim the craft so as to arrive over the 'pad' at the same time that everything ran out!