Hope you don't mind me jumping on here, but was trawling some old PNG pics of mine, and then went looking for any news of Ian Leslie, saw the posts on here re his tragic accident, then worked my way through all 10+ years of the posts, what amazing stories and oh boy, have you guys brought back some memories.
I flew many times with Ian, including in IDL more than once when he was looking fro comany abck to lae from Goroka i the afternoons.
I am not a pilot or an ATC, but been associated with aviation most of my life and while living in Lae between 1975-1991 I did many a trip around the New Guinea provinces with Talair, but especially up and back from Lae to Goroka most Mondays, and also onto Hagen and Chimbu many times, often in the right hand front seat. Talair was a major client and I got to know many pilots so they would kindly let me hop in the front.
I have some old photos from those days so shall see if I have anything that might be of interest here. Some at Telefomin in 1976 I think.
But one episode comes back to me in particular - Max Parker in P2-UNE (I think I have that right) outbound from Lae (may have been Nadzab) heading south (may have been Popondetta or POM) but front undercarriage did not retract, so headed for Goroka, landed on the grass beside the main runway, kept the nose wheel up, got the passengers to help balance the aircraft by moving around the cabin as he wanted. Then when at the end of his landing, lowered the Cessna down on the front wheel. A great bit of flying and he even brought it up to the top end of the landing area. I was lucky enough to be in Talair's ops room at Goroka airport at the time to see him bring it in.
Ray Hoffman flew me Popondetta back to Lae the day he sadly did not make it throguh the Tari gap.
Hope not to have bored you but so good to be able to reminisce and thanks heaps for bringing back so many great memories.