Chuck
Another brilliant piece ! You really get to fly some lovely machinery! The Catalina is Gorgeous too look at ! Sandstorms
I was ferrying a beat up old wreck of a Citation 2 from New Delhi to the Uk!
Hopefully it was to be bought but ended up in the USA when the UK buyers failed to proceed!
There were loads of problems with this jet and non RVSM so I had to stick at FL280 which wasn't a bad thing as the pressurisation was exciting to say the least!
My FO was very low time but was Arabic and his ability to communicate with the Saudis through a military relative brilliant!
Our route went New Delhi to Karachi to Dubai and we could not make it across Saudi to Alexandria in one!
We had permission to land at a military base in Saudi!
On the approach the crosswind was some 25 kts 50 degrees off the runway!
ATC were giving 2000 metres in dust down the approach!
As I started the flare at 50 odd feet literally the winds shot to 50 kts!
The palm trees bent over double and as the tyres touched the visibility dropped to 100 metres in seconds !
The sky and sand turned a weird unreal colour and sadly under breaking I could see sand streaming through the engines!
We stopped on the runway as you could not see to taxi and shut down to save further damage!
A ghostly figure wrapped head to toe in White appeared out of the gloom and beckoned us to disembark!
That was a painful experience being sandblasted on every inch of exposed skin!
But sandstorms ; ) a minute later we would not have landed
Pace