The Home of Photos in Dunnunda! Mk I
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the prize
Chuck......yeh, but yeh, but no Twotters or Islanders have ever been within 300nml of this place ....forkie's mates [ you should distance yourself ,here] aren't fit to mix with polite society.......so the local possibilities have only ever been B55, B58,P68C ,C310 all of which I have operated in the vicinty ,or the local flying surgeon's C421....and it kept blowing turbos.......and crashed and burned on T/O at Roma..inthe next paddock.
And maximum applause would only be available if the pilot had a large personal financial interest in the aircraft himself.
Financial ruin and personal injury attract equal kudos!...and may exclude his forkyness, he's so cunning.
Flopt...........good photos,by the way..........got some more?
And maximum applause would only be available if the pilot had a large personal financial interest in the aircraft himself.
Financial ruin and personal injury attract equal kudos!...and may exclude his forkyness, he's so cunning.
Flopt...........good photos,by the way..........got some more?
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Okay, XXX. Point taken & well rebutted. I shall keep my trap shut until I have something useful to add other than being critical. Like I said, I have never been there, so it is not my place to offer an opinon.
I should get 10 pionts for finding it though!
I should get 10 pionts for finding it though!
Grandpa Aerotart
Got any more?
Yep, one of my all time favorite strips, Kamalai.
I am standing on the threshold looking up the strip...behind is a near sheer drop probably over 2000'.
View from where the Twotter is parked.
Yep, one of my all time favorite strips, Kamalai.
I am standing on the threshold looking up the strip...behind is a near sheer drop probably over 2000'.
View from where the Twotter is parked.
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Yeh...seen the downhill photo before (maybe in this thread), but the uphill one really puts it into perspective! It looks more like a sheep track than an airstrip, and the down lill looks like a base jumpers launch pad! Very specky!
Grandpa Aerotart
Good question, never occurred to me to ask. I presume its an ICAO requirement applied with out further thought...like that never happens
Further to your question, am I remembering this right, is it not the case that if your wheels are inside the cone markers (as in they define the 'useable' strip dimensions) the rest of the aircraft should be ok?
Like 98% of PNG airstrips if you didn't stay exactly in the middle of the strip you were potentially in deep doo doo. At Kamalai, as you can see, even in the middle you didn't have much wingtip clearance in a Twotter as you went around the bend...at other strips the area within the cone markers but outside the central strip (often reinforced with crush coral/rocks or some such and about the width of a Twotter/Islander main wheel track) was often too soft and people have come undone. More than 1 206 has ripped the nose wheel out or even flipped when the pilot wasn't careful in this respect. Bush flying, or at least the extreme variety in PNG, is an extremely precise discipline.
Further to your question, am I remembering this right, is it not the case that if your wheels are inside the cone markers (as in they define the 'useable' strip dimensions) the rest of the aircraft should be ok?
Like 98% of PNG airstrips if you didn't stay exactly in the middle of the strip you were potentially in deep doo doo. At Kamalai, as you can see, even in the middle you didn't have much wingtip clearance in a Twotter as you went around the bend...at other strips the area within the cone markers but outside the central strip (often reinforced with crush coral/rocks or some such and about the width of a Twotter/Islander main wheel track) was often too soft and people have come undone. More than 1 206 has ripped the nose wheel out or even flipped when the pilot wasn't careful in this respect. Bush flying, or at least the extreme variety in PNG, is an extremely precise discipline.
I presume its an ICAO requirement
Like that strip clearly meets all other ICAO requirements - it would be a shame to not have cone markers!
Dr
Last edited by ForkTailedDrKiller; 13th Aug 2008 at 08:53.
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Jeez Chimbu . . . that's incredible!
Can you kindly 'talk' us through how you land and take-off from a strip like that. Clearly keeping it EXACTLY in the middle is vital, but where do you plan to touch down and (given the bend in the strip) where is the nose pointing?
And how do you take-off? Full power with brakes and then 'release'? Is there a 'rejected take-off' decision point? What are the considerations before operating from strips like that.
Any insights would be interesting as I just cannot imagine operating out of strips like that.
Many thanks
Can you kindly 'talk' us through how you land and take-off from a strip like that. Clearly keeping it EXACTLY in the middle is vital, but where do you plan to touch down and (given the bend in the strip) where is the nose pointing?
And how do you take-off? Full power with brakes and then 'release'? Is there a 'rejected take-off' decision point? What are the considerations before operating from strips like that.
Any insights would be interesting as I just cannot imagine operating out of strips like that.
Many thanks
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Is there a 'rejected take-off' decision?
I too am keen to hear what the Chuckler has to say, the good part is that as unbelievable as the story seems, its the truth, unspoiled by embellishment
.J
Grandpa Aerotart
Its a broad subject so a little background first.
First don't invest it with more difficulty than it deserves. It required precise positioning and speed control but beyond those two requirements it is just a reasonably normal landing.
Speed/flight path control was made more difficult by the mountains. There is no natural horizon when you are flying in mountain valleys (even on CAVOK days) with terrain very close by that might be 5000' higher than you or the elevation of the airstrip. You certainly got good at imagining where the horizon might be if the terrain wasn't in the way but really, in some respects, it is almost VFR instrument flying. It does become second nature pretty quickly.
Most people who pass the CPL flight test have the beginnings of a decent instrument scan which they use to fine tune their visual flying, some dont. Those that dont struggle just flying S&L in the mountains until they do develop a scan.
Certainly newbies didn't go into REALLY challenging strips on day one...or 12 except in the RHS on area famil before starting their route/strip training. Talair would generally start new pilots off based on the coast, say Daru/Wewak/Vanimo (plenty of bad weather/few, if any mountains) where they might spend 6 months, the first 1 under very close supervision which slowly reduced as skills were built. Then that pilot would be transfered somewhere mountainous and given a week or two flying with an experienced type training captain before being signed out to specific (relatively easy) strips - a few weeks later another period of training into harder ones etc - and over specific routes and the alternate routes between those strips. Make no mistake this was intensive training...8,10,12 sectors per day with normal PNG loads - CHOCKERS!!, 6 days/week.
We, usually, didn't fly willy nilly all over the joint for the first couple of years by which time you might be considered experienced enough and competent enough to be given an exemption to CAO 28 which outlined the minimum route/strip ICUS requirements. The CAO 28 exemption garnered a small pay increment and was known as a 'license to be lost and scared'. Certainly you were generally exempt from CAO 28 by the time you flew the Twotter but that wasn't universal. I officially got mine in Talair when one morning the Lae Port Manager said "Chuck you're doing DCA strip inspections this morning to Bawan, etc etc" (about 6 more - I had been checked into 2 by the SBP and when we flew past Bawan one day I asked about it and he said NO FECKING WAY
am I checking you in there!!!)
"But Muddy I haven't been checked into etc" "No worries shags I got a dispo from the CP's office" (I was naive - I didn't find out the CP's secretary was pretty free with 'dispos' until later
) Several days later the CP pulled me aside and quietly asked if it was true that I had checked myself into Bawan. "Yeah and Lowai, etc etc" How? I asked so and so and did what he said. A few more searching questions and I was approved to be lost and scared and earned a small payrise.
Realise too that a topographical chart is of VERY limited use in valley flying where you don't have time, or the terrain clearance, to have your head inside trying to work out where the **** you are...you are INSIDE the chart...2/3rds of the map is above you. As a result your training captain would teach you the routes via landmarks that you just had to learn to recognise. I cannot over emphasize how intimate we became with our 'patch'. Individual trees, rocks etc. The only way we were able to do it in bad weather was that deeply intimate local knowledge.
That is why the CAO 28 exemption was a big deal and, initially, quite scary - for me anyway. You'd pitch up at work to be told "Shags, take that load to XYZ" and XYZ was half way between this patch and your last patch. You'd get to the edge of your intimate local knowledge and gaze out at the ughknown and think '****...ahead there be dragons". There wasn't of course but it took me YEARS to get over that feeling.
The forgoing was the 'ideal' followed strictly by Talair etc. I didn't start at Talair I started at Simbu Aviation. A C185 and an Islander based in the Central Highlands. A CP, me and a handful of local 'cargo bois'. Within 3 months I was CP and training a newbie with 400 hrs...I'd arrived with less
Every time I got a charter somewhere a few provinces outside my patch I'd ring up Al Craigy (boss of DCA in Port Moresby) and say "Al I gotta trip to..." "Yes?" "Well Al I never been to..." "Chuck you're the CP - if you can't find your way to...you don't deserve a licence" "thanks Al"
There is NOT ONE GOOD REASON why I survived that first year...I did some REALLY dumb things...all I can do is prostrate myself and claim 'young, dumb and full of cum'.
But I was having fun!!!!
Talair took me into their system and a year or so later I checked myself into Bawan and I was off lost and scared again every second week.
As to the nuts and bolts of the fun strips..and they are SOOO much fun.
Well hold your arm out straight angled down like a final approach path and with your hand palm down and flat. That is a normal approach like you're all used to. Now cock you hand up while keeping your arm steady...that is an approach to a steep strip. You MUST look high all the way...you're making a completely normal approach to a runway that is tilted up. The only concession to that slope is you vary your speed to ensure enough energy to round out, flare and land normally. The rule of thumb, if memory serves, was no additive up to about 5% slope, 5kts between 5% and 10%, 10kts above 10%. Of course that is zero wind...which was rare after mid morning when adiabatic tailwinds became the norm. The biggest trap for the inexperienced was a deep seated desire to make the approach look normal...which put them below the strip climbing...with, usually, disastrous results...that happened from time to time.
Tilt your hand down to be more in line with your arm and you see you must look low going into a strip with a downslope..and there were plenty of strips where the first part was downhill and then the last part was up...and the middle was deep slushy mud - OFTEN.
This was what made Bawan infamous. You approached the elevated threshold at probably 2000' agl. The first cone markers were probably 30' in from the cliff and the second set 30m further on where the strip disappeared from view completely before coming back into view with about 7% upslope and maybe 3% side slope. It was about 400m long and 19m wide...miss the flat bit at the beginning and you wouldn't touch down until the uphill bit...and you'd never stop before the end...you could slide off the side turning around at the end to taxi back to the parking bay beside the level first 30m if you turned downhill a bit quick doing your 180 and it was wet...which it was part of every day. Those big tire double wheel boggies on the Bongo van are GREAT at sliding with locked brakes. The terrain around Bawan was such that you couldn't fly much of a circuit and I nearly inhaled the seat when I turned final that first time even though it had all been explained in fine detail. By the time I could put two coherent thoughts together (OH and ****!) I was beyond the point of being able to go around and have a think...or go home and confess my abject uselessness to Muddy.
NOTHING concentrates the mind quite so completely...give me steep any day...steeper the better...you can actually cock up and land long on 17% and get away with it...some guys did so deliberately and would come bounding to the top at silly speed. Perhaps more concerned about stopping before the top than not stopping AT the top - and a few didn't. There is NO way you can taxi up a really steep strip so 99.9% of us would touchdown in the correct spot, between the first and second cone markers, at the right speed, and then apply power before whipping it off again and trickling to the top and turning across the slope if there was no flat parking bay off to the side.
The real skill in sloping strips/mountain flying is being able to recognise instantly what looks 'right' at any given combination of up/down/cross slope and not falling victim to optical illusions caused by terrain, windshear, rain on the windscreen etc. I am unable to explain the process of developing that skill...its a mysterious and wondrous thing beyond my ken.
Turning takeoffs/landings on strips like Kamalai are not that hard...you just make the aeroplane go around the corner by whatever combination of controls is necesary...you still touchdown parallel to the strip at the touchdown zone and then go around the corner...it feels completely normal and unremarkable after doing it a few times.
Takeoffs on steep strips, particularly wet, steep strips generally engender in the participating pilot some deep thoughts about what they would do in the case of an engine failure..and their mortality...because once you have rolled about 60m you are not going to stop the aeroplane no matter how motivated...you just are not. What your next most excellent idea might be was very pilot and airstrip specific. If the threshold was elevated, like Kamalai (very common) I always figured I could reduce power just enough to maintain directional control and dive off the end and regain speed in a dive before feeding the power back in...and then think of something else clever to do next...maybe you could descend down the valley to a lower airstrip, or in some cases (Kamalai) to the coastal plains...a smart pilot had each escape plan tucked away so you were not trying to be spontaneously clever. Trundling off the end of short, flat elevated strips 'a little' below flying speed on two engines was common practice with a big load so we were quite accustomed to the basic concept.
If that was not possible any combination of deliberate ground loop or taking the aeroplane off the side of the strip (or the end) and using the jungle to slow you down relatively gently was quite reasonable.
If some of these sound like fantasies born of desperation they are...but there really were no other options so you either got creative or accept the consequences of a failure of some kind meekly. I never met too many meek bush pilots.
And all the above have been used in anger with varying degrees of success.
At some strips you would just die and there was not a bloody thing you could do about it and people did. Kanobea was like that...everyone's (who ever went there even once) least favorite strip.
Full power against the brakes and a quick check all in the green? Yes if you could...often the aeroplane would be sliding with locked wheels by the time you got significant power on so it wasn't always possible.
Above all it was professionally deeply satisfying flying...much more so than the very proscriptive nature of jet flying...which I enjoy too but for different reasons. Bush flying is two hands, two feet and a brain...very little more than broad policy outlines written in the company ops manual. No rules as such besides those conferred by common sense...and they were inviolate.
First don't invest it with more difficulty than it deserves. It required precise positioning and speed control but beyond those two requirements it is just a reasonably normal landing.
Speed/flight path control was made more difficult by the mountains. There is no natural horizon when you are flying in mountain valleys (even on CAVOK days) with terrain very close by that might be 5000' higher than you or the elevation of the airstrip. You certainly got good at imagining where the horizon might be if the terrain wasn't in the way but really, in some respects, it is almost VFR instrument flying. It does become second nature pretty quickly.
Most people who pass the CPL flight test have the beginnings of a decent instrument scan which they use to fine tune their visual flying, some dont. Those that dont struggle just flying S&L in the mountains until they do develop a scan.
Certainly newbies didn't go into REALLY challenging strips on day one...or 12 except in the RHS on area famil before starting their route/strip training. Talair would generally start new pilots off based on the coast, say Daru/Wewak/Vanimo (plenty of bad weather/few, if any mountains) where they might spend 6 months, the first 1 under very close supervision which slowly reduced as skills were built. Then that pilot would be transfered somewhere mountainous and given a week or two flying with an experienced type training captain before being signed out to specific (relatively easy) strips - a few weeks later another period of training into harder ones etc - and over specific routes and the alternate routes between those strips. Make no mistake this was intensive training...8,10,12 sectors per day with normal PNG loads - CHOCKERS!!, 6 days/week.
We, usually, didn't fly willy nilly all over the joint for the first couple of years by which time you might be considered experienced enough and competent enough to be given an exemption to CAO 28 which outlined the minimum route/strip ICUS requirements. The CAO 28 exemption garnered a small pay increment and was known as a 'license to be lost and scared'. Certainly you were generally exempt from CAO 28 by the time you flew the Twotter but that wasn't universal. I officially got mine in Talair when one morning the Lae Port Manager said "Chuck you're doing DCA strip inspections this morning to Bawan, etc etc" (about 6 more - I had been checked into 2 by the SBP and when we flew past Bawan one day I asked about it and he said NO FECKING WAY
am I checking you in there!!!) "But Muddy I haven't been checked into etc" "No worries shags I got a dispo from the CP's office" (I was naive - I didn't find out the CP's secretary was pretty free with 'dispos' until later
) Several days later the CP pulled me aside and quietly asked if it was true that I had checked myself into Bawan. "Yeah and Lowai, etc etc" How? I asked so and so and did what he said. A few more searching questions and I was approved to be lost and scared and earned a small payrise. Realise too that a topographical chart is of VERY limited use in valley flying where you don't have time, or the terrain clearance, to have your head inside trying to work out where the **** you are...you are INSIDE the chart...2/3rds of the map is above you. As a result your training captain would teach you the routes via landmarks that you just had to learn to recognise. I cannot over emphasize how intimate we became with our 'patch'. Individual trees, rocks etc. The only way we were able to do it in bad weather was that deeply intimate local knowledge.
That is why the CAO 28 exemption was a big deal and, initially, quite scary - for me anyway. You'd pitch up at work to be told "Shags, take that load to XYZ" and XYZ was half way between this patch and your last patch. You'd get to the edge of your intimate local knowledge and gaze out at the ughknown and think '****...ahead there be dragons".
There wasn't of course but it took me YEARS to get over that feeling.The forgoing was the 'ideal' followed strictly by Talair etc. I didn't start at Talair I started at Simbu Aviation. A C185 and an Islander based in the Central Highlands. A CP, me and a handful of local 'cargo bois'. Within 3 months I was CP and training a newbie with 400 hrs...I'd arrived with less
Every time I got a charter somewhere a few provinces outside my patch I'd ring up Al Craigy (boss of DCA in Port Moresby) and say "Al I gotta trip to..." "Yes?" "Well Al I never been to..." "Chuck you're the CP - if you can't find your way to...you don't deserve a licence" "thanks Al"
There is NOT ONE GOOD REASON why I survived that first year...I did some REALLY dumb things...all I can do is prostrate myself and claim 'young, dumb and full of cum'.
But I was having fun!!!!
Talair took me into their system and a year or so later I checked myself into Bawan and I was off lost and scared again every second week.
As to the nuts and bolts of the fun strips..and they are SOOO much fun.
Well hold your arm out straight angled down like a final approach path and with your hand palm down and flat. That is a normal approach like you're all used to. Now cock you hand up while keeping your arm steady...that is an approach to a steep strip. You MUST look high all the way...you're making a completely normal approach to a runway that is tilted up. The only concession to that slope is you vary your speed to ensure enough energy to round out, flare and land normally. The rule of thumb, if memory serves, was no additive up to about 5% slope, 5kts between 5% and 10%, 10kts above 10%. Of course that is zero wind...which was rare after mid morning when adiabatic tailwinds became the norm. The biggest trap for the inexperienced was a deep seated desire to make the approach look normal...which put them below the strip climbing...with, usually, disastrous results...that happened from time to time.
Tilt your hand down to be more in line with your arm and you see you must look low going into a strip with a downslope..and there were plenty of strips where the first part was downhill and then the last part was up...and the middle was deep slushy mud - OFTEN.
This was what made Bawan infamous. You approached the elevated threshold at probably 2000' agl. The first cone markers were probably 30' in from the cliff and the second set 30m further on where the strip disappeared from view completely before coming back into view with about 7% upslope and maybe 3% side slope. It was about 400m long and 19m wide...miss the flat bit at the beginning and you wouldn't touch down until the uphill bit...and you'd never stop before the end...you could slide off the side turning around at the end to taxi back to the parking bay beside the level first 30m if you turned downhill a bit quick doing your 180 and it was wet...which it was part of every day. Those big tire double wheel boggies on the Bongo van are GREAT at sliding with locked brakes. The terrain around Bawan was such that you couldn't fly much of a circuit and I nearly inhaled the seat when I turned final that first time even though it had all been explained in fine detail. By the time I could put two coherent thoughts together (OH and ****!) I was beyond the point of being able to go around and have a think...or go home and confess my abject uselessness to Muddy.
NOTHING concentrates the mind quite so completely...give me steep any day...steeper the better...you can actually cock up and land long on 17% and get away with it...some guys did so deliberately and would come bounding to the top at silly speed. Perhaps more concerned about stopping before the top than not stopping AT the top - and a few didn't. There is NO way you can taxi up a really steep strip so 99.9% of us would touchdown in the correct spot, between the first and second cone markers, at the right speed, and then apply power before whipping it off again and trickling to the top and turning across the slope if there was no flat parking bay off to the side.
The real skill in sloping strips/mountain flying is being able to recognise instantly what looks 'right' at any given combination of up/down/cross slope and not falling victim to optical illusions caused by terrain, windshear, rain on the windscreen etc. I am unable to explain the process of developing that skill...its a mysterious and wondrous thing beyond my ken.
Turning takeoffs/landings on strips like Kamalai are not that hard...you just make the aeroplane go around the corner by whatever combination of controls is necesary...you still touchdown parallel to the strip at the touchdown zone and then go around the corner...it feels completely normal and unremarkable after doing it a few times.
Takeoffs on steep strips, particularly wet, steep strips generally engender in the participating pilot some deep thoughts about what they would do in the case of an engine failure..and their mortality...because once you have rolled about 60m you are not going to stop the aeroplane no matter how motivated...you just are not. What your next most excellent idea might be was very pilot and airstrip specific. If the threshold was elevated, like Kamalai (very common) I always figured I could reduce power just enough to maintain directional control and dive off the end and regain speed in a dive before feeding the power back in...and then think of something else clever to do next...maybe you could descend down the valley to a lower airstrip, or in some cases (Kamalai) to the coastal plains...a smart pilot had each escape plan tucked away so you were not trying to be spontaneously clever. Trundling off the end of short, flat elevated strips 'a little' below flying speed on two engines was common practice with a big load so we were quite accustomed to the basic concept.
If that was not possible any combination of deliberate ground loop or taking the aeroplane off the side of the strip (or the end) and using the jungle to slow you down relatively gently was quite reasonable.
If some of these sound like fantasies born of desperation they are...but there really were no other options so you either got creative or accept the consequences of a failure of some kind meekly. I never met too many meek bush pilots.
And all the above have been used in anger with varying degrees of success.
At some strips you would just die and there was not a bloody thing you could do about it and people did. Kanobea was like that...everyone's (who ever went there even once) least favorite strip.
Full power against the brakes and a quick check all in the green? Yes if you could...often the aeroplane would be sliding with locked wheels by the time you got significant power on so it wasn't always possible.
Above all it was professionally deeply satisfying flying...much more so than the very proscriptive nature of jet flying...which I enjoy too but for different reasons. Bush flying is two hands, two feet and a brain...very little more than broad policy outlines written in the company ops manual. No rules as such besides those conferred by common sense...and they were inviolate.
Chuck, that was one of the most riveting posts I've read on pprune. Absolutely tops, 
.
I don't think I could ever have the balls to do that sort of flying. But thanks for sharing your experiences.
morno
.I don't think I could ever have the balls to do that sort of flying. But thanks for sharing your experiences.
morno
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Chuckles, thank you for taking the time to post that, I found it fascinating to the point that I have saved it to join other snippets of aviation lore that I have saved over the years.