Fareastdriver

58 was the magic number because that't when the company pension scheme kicked in. The RAF was 55 as was British Airways. In those days the company, as could the RAF, tell you to shove off if they did not require you any more. Should they require you then you had to be outside the pension scheme so that it would stay afloat as your entitlement with pay and seniority would start to hurt.

Back to Oz.

I wasn’t flying, I was driving. The aircraft had flown there with the pilots and some engineers whilst a couple of engineers had driven a company Ute there to act as transport. They needed some more so I was taking one of the two company cars to ease the transport situation. I was quite a long way; down the Stuart Highway to Katherine and then west to Western Australia. It had to be done in daylight, as is all bush travelling in Australia because of errant kangaroos and feral cattle. Big trucks and buses have Roo Bars on the front which is similar to a cowcatcher on a train.

The first problem was the car. The rear axle was on the bump stops and opening the boot explained why. They had loaded it with a full set of maintenance manuals and the space was solid with paperwork. Loads of moaning from me that Poms don’t drive cars in that state so they removed half of it and got the car back on to even keel. I had a passenger, an engineer who had never driven in the bush before and looked slightly apprehensive. With my years of blundering through the Rhodesian bush I had no fears at all.

We set off down the Stuart Highway; with a 120 kph limit (75 mph) one could get going but you had to be careful of the road trains. These were large trucks with three or four equally large trailers behind them limited to 100 kph. Because they were so long you had to be sure that there was plenty of clear road ahead to get past them safely. Some of them would have what is known as a dog; a trailer that will not follow in a straight line but whips from side to side. They were normally the rear trailer but occasionally one in the middle used to influence the one behind. It just made the whole unit that much wider especially when they were coming the other way. A cup of coffee in Katherine at a café where there was a stick again the wall that showed the height of the water, about 60 cm, the last time the Katherine River flooded.

We then punched off to Western Australia along the A1. The road was practically deserted. It was fully fenced both sides in a futile attempt to keep Coos and Roos off the road. The Roos could jump over it but the Coos couldn’t so the carcasses of the cattle that got onto the wrong side from the water trough were rotting in the sun. Just before we reached the border with Western Australia I saw a geological sight that I have never seen before or since.

It was an escarpment; not very long, about ten miles or so. What was so fascinating was that at the western end it was a pristine cliff. As your eyes travelled eastwards it slowly deteriorated until at the eastern end it had crumbled into a pile of rubble. It was a complete exhibition of natural erosion in one sweep.

We then came to the State border. Those of you that have travelled to Australia will know the arrivals are very fussy about what you can bring into Australia. That traditional black pudding that your relatives yearn for goes straight into the bin; the same with Chinese delicacies. The individual states are the same as I found out when I pulled up at the border office.

“Have you got an esky?” he demanded.
I put on my best Pom accent. “What’s an esky?”
“One of those.” He pointed to a fenced compound about the size of a tennis court that was five feet high with discarded cooler boxes.
I hadn’t, so I wasn’t led away in chains for trying to massacre the entire greenery in WA with traces of lettuce in an esky.

We then arrived in Kununarra. The hotel, at that time run by an international chain was almost the first place we found. We checked in, had dinner plus a few beers with the blokes and I was briefed for the next morning.

We weren’t supposed to be at Kununarra; we should have been at a place called Troughton Island. This was a small island of the coast that hosted a small airfield built during the war. The island had zero inhabitants and was only used for offshore support. A month or so previously a cyclone had come along and had demolished everything in toto so it was now unusable. There was another wartime airfield nearby on the mainland called Truscott but this was already occupied by the other Oz helicopter company for their offshore contract. We then had a different procedure to get out people out to the rig and back.

Our passengers would be loaded into a Beech Kingair at Darwin. When they got airborne we would fire up our 332 at Kununarra and fly to Truscott. We would arrive first and then shut down to await them. The Kingair would arrive in a cloud of dust until it reached the tarmac at the far end which enabled the brakes to work. This was essential because the airfield had been virtually abandoned at the end of the war and there were all sorts of equipment and unexploded ordinance lying around. We would be there and back in an hour and leave them to the mercies of the Kingair whilst we punched off back to Kununarra and the bar. The only drawback in this procedure was that there was a time difference between NT and WA. This meant that we had to launch in the dark.

As with most airfields in Australia the airfield was unmanned. There is a radio procedure that is mandatory in Australia so that pilots know where other pilots are so takeoff including departure heading, joining from which direction, downwind and landing calls are made. At night there is another complication; it is dark but they have an answer for this; an airfield frequency that controls the airfield lighting. By selecting the frequency and in this case keying four long dashes the entire airfield lights up for fifteen minutes. That is plenty of time to taxi to the runway and take off, even for a fully loaded passenger aircraft; who do. It’s fascinating when you first do it but then it is old hat.

Kununarra started of life as a work camp for the Ord River project. This was an irrigation scheme for a massive agricultural project in the Kimberly area. The main dam was constructed in 1962 and Lake Argyle, the result, is the largest inland body of water in Australia. All has not gone as well as expected for various reasons but it has opened up tourism, especially for saltwater crocodile enthusiasts. I had a look at the dam and then I went up a hill to take some pictures of the township. I went down to the main road and whilst walking back I witnessed one of the more unfortunate parts of Australian life.

There was a clearing in the woods near the road and in it was a big circle of local Aboriginals. In the middle was a five foot high pile of VB (Victoria Bitter) cases and it was obvious that they were intent on demolishing the whole lot. The reason was that is was ‘pay day’, the day that they collected their benefits. One could sympathise with them. They had no tradition of the so-called work ethic because it did not exist before Captain Cook arrived. They could get by now as they had done for centuries without money so why start now when the government gives you stacks of beer tickets.

I had only been there about four days and then there was a panic to get me back to Darwin. The aircraft that was coming from Aberdeen in an Antonov was still on the British register and so they needed a CAA licensed pilot, ie me, there to be able to fly the reassembly checks. With my feet hardly touching the ground I was bunged into the back of a F27 and then I was off back to Darwin..

Fareastdriver

There was only the three of us at Darwin. The chief pilot, on his two weeks rotation; the chief engineer, who lived permanently on site; and me. We had two vehicles left. The chief pilot preferred utes, the engineer had his own so I had the brand new Toyota Cecilia with a Shell fuel carnet.

The aircraft we were waiting for was still at Aberdeen. They had fitted long range sponson tanks onto it and they were having trouble getting them to work. I had flown the Puma J, the predecessor to the Super Puma nearly twenty years before and I knew that the tanks would not commence feeding unless there was at least 150 lbs of fuel in them; then they would feed until empty. The CP and the CE had been on Pumas as well. ‘Surely they know that’ ‘everybody know that’ ‘we’ve always had to do that’. And still the telexes came.

I was having a great time. I was living in a two bedroom serviced apartment on a complex with a swimming pool and barbeque area just a stones throw from the city centre. I went to every museum available and saw more kangaroos, wallabies, koalas crocodiles and dingoes than you could shake a stick at. At the end of the day I would grill a thick fillet steak and demolish a bottle of Aussie wine. (or two)

We then got the message that the aircraft had missed the Antonov. That had left the UK with stacks of other peoples stuff and it couldn’t wait. I couldn’t go back to Kununarra because its roster had been written for the Australian staff and that was sacrosanct. They then asked me to stay on until it arrived.

I would have been on contract pay, (£187/day), location allowance of about A$50/day doing nothing for the foreseeable future. It was a benefit scrounger’s dream. There was only one spectre on the horizon; the taxman.

I was on a business visa that entitled me to work in Australia for an overseas company. Even though I worked in Australia I was paid by the UK parent company. I did not know how long this arrangement was supposed to last and not having a tax advisor on the doorstep I did not want to stick out my neck too far. I was also getting bored. I had had a long period of either slack or no flying for the month or so and I was running out of things to do. I had been everywhere, got the T shirts, I knew how fast the Cecelia could go on dirt roads, forwards or backwards. Most importantly it was coming up to the typhoon season in China and I wanted to be there when needed.

I suggested that they get the aircraft registered in Australia during the delay. The light bulbs flashing up were blinding. ‘Why didn’t we think of that’, they chorused. They put it to Perth and the next day I was told that I was no longer needed. I reminded them that I was on a seven day notice period so I put in my invoice including the next week. The next day I was back in China.

The operation in China had a bed for me and as soon as I arrived somebody went sick so I volunteered to fly because I was still being paid by the parent company. The company was very grateful for me helping them out but the impression on the Chinese executives on the operation was life changing.

Fareastdriver

It was then time to go back to the UK for a bit. Not too long as the taxman would beckon. Luckily I was stepping from one year to the other plus a bit of time on the Costa so It wasn’t until the end of April that I started putting my bids in. Total lack of interest from my UK company after all that I had done for them but the Chinese company was very impressed by the fact that I had flown a trip voluntarily when I returned from Australia. With that came the nudge that they may employ me directly.

I had my feet pressed against the seat in front all they way to Hong Kong in the 747 trying to make it go faster. When I arrived it wasn’t a case of signing a form and strapping on an aeroplane; it doesn’t happen like that in China. I didn’t get a pay rise but I got security of employment for six months and they looked after my Chinese income tax. As my old company was not forthcoming then I was fairly fortunate to get that.

I was paid in US$, cash. This meant that I had to open a US$ account in HK and once a month I would have a bag full of money to take over there. The Chinese tax system has several different bands and what happens is the company calculate how much tax you are due for that month. They then take your payslip around to the tax office and pay your tax. The taxmen then stamp it and you will get the net amount. There is no annual tax summary, you are taxed monthly. After that I would end up in the pay office whilst the accountant doled out about two years of his pay. Somewhere along the line I was paying the equivalent of Pension and National Insurance but I don’t think that is now worth claiming.

The routine was exactly the same as before, the only difference was that I had my own apartment. I was hoping, as their employee, to go to some of the more outlandish operations but it was too difficult to do the type conversions as they were all in Chinese. It was also thought that the co-pilots would not be able to survive another company dinner with me around.

At the end of the six months I was approaching my 60th birthday. ICAO rules at that time barred anybody over sixty from flying internationally so my UK licence was no good in China or anywhere else apart from the UK. I then retired for the third time. RAF; Company; Flying; and went back to the UK with a massive tax return that proved to the whole world, if you could understand it, that I had paid my taxes and wasn’t liable for any more. I then settled down for a life of leisure in a new house.

Six months later Aberdeen were waving money in front of my face.

Just a co-pilot. Do the planning, sit there, no responsibility compared with before. Five days a week when I wanted too. Time off when I felt like it. Not only that I was being paid per day more than the captain. You couldn’t make it up. I made hay whilst the sum shone for eighteen months and then I retired again predominately because somebody in authority decided I was earning two much. (Contract pay plus two pensions)

I did Europe, Egypt, Fiji, New Zealand, South Africa and the Victoria Falls. The USA swept beneath my feet again with visits to Florida and California. In all this travelling I had a yearning to go back to see how China was getting on and a year later I did.

“You should have been here last week, you would have got a job.”

This was the cry as I entered the bar. Apparently one of the British captains had clocked a bar owner over the bill and had then done a runner. An elderly member then informed me that as the ICAO age had gone up to 65 the Chinese would endorse a British licence to that age. There was somebody coming out to replace the errant captain so I dismissed the notion. I was also leaving the next day so there was no time to investigate.

I mulled over it on the aircraft coming back and when I got back I sent an email to the chief pilot asking what the chances were in the cold light of dawn. Immediate reply, I was on. There was going to be a problem renewing my medical; both the AMEs that I knew, at that age you always go to a doctor you know, were away on holiday. Then the UK head office came in on the loop and they organised my flight to Hong Kong and China organised the hotel and CAA medical the morning after arrival at our normal AME. This all went to plan and the above phrase now reads.

“You be here next week and you will have a job.”

Fareastdriver

On my previous stint in China I was there in 1997 when Hong Kong was handed back to the Chinese. I was effected by the run-up in both China and Hong Kong and come the final night sat there flicking between Shenzhen and Hong Kong TV getting both sides of the action.

Our operation was in the Shenzhen Special Economic Zone. This area was about the same size as the area between the Thames and the northern half of the M25. It was fenced, as it had always been since shortly after its inception to prevent a tidal wave of peasants trying to get new life. In recent years it had relaxed a bit, there were plenty of other opportunities in China by then, and the checks of the permits allowing people to stay was only random. That changed, totally, about two months before the handover. Shenzhen was now surrounded by steel.

The reason was that the Chinese government was afraid of a host of Chinese nationals demanding entry into what they considered was Chinese. The Special Administrative Region that Hong Kong was going to be meant nothing to them because all their lives Hong Kong was a land of milk and honey. Some, more nationalistic than others, were quite excited about it. They would go on about the return of Hong Kong, Macau and a few continued about Singapore. The latter obviously believed that if the population was predominately Chinese it belonged to China.

Apart from that most people didn’t seem to care.

Hong Kong was having a bad time during the run up. Hotels were virtually empty. Napier road was deserted. The tour boats for the harbour of the tours of Lantau were all tied up. Should you want to hangout there for the weekend you could walk up to the desk of any hotel and demand a 60% discount; and you got it. As one commentator addressed it; ‘You would think that the PLA was going to come along and bayonet everybody in the streets.’

A week before handover the ATC restrictions came in. We had to change our route and describe a wide arc at least ten miles from the border. Then a unit of PLA helicopters arrived. They parked their aircraft well away from us and disappeared into a distant shed. Flying over Shenzhen you could see lorry parks with dozens of PLA trucks parked within; whatever happened in Hong Kong they were not going to be short of firepower.

The ceremony itself was a bit of bore. One advantage of having two diametrically opposed TV stations is that you can flick from one to the other to get the different reactions. The Royal Marines were a bit of a let down. I would have thought that they would have been in full No 1 uniforms but they weren’t; they were dressed in shorts and berets and looked a real shambles compared with the ceremonial guard of the PLA.

After midnight the gates open and convoys of lorries with all the soldiers being told to wave to the locals meandered there way to the Prince of Wales barracks and other places. All the British bigwigs, Prince Charles; Blair, his first jolly since getting elected; Patten and others boarded the Britannia which sailed off on her last long voyage.

The next morning we watched the PLA take off en route to their new base at Sek Kong.

I never saw any evidence of PLA forces in the subsequent years when I visited the SAR. They used to stay in their barracks and from what I heard from HK ATC the helicopters did likewise. The biggest problem was that British, Australian and New Zealand backpackers couldn't get jobs as barmaids any more so you were served by some miserable bloke. It took about three or four months for Hong Kong to get back into its stride, and it did, and it will continue to do so.

Fareastdriver

After 17,500 hrs of flying, of which 16,500hrs were on helicopters, 12,500hrs were on Pumas and Super Pumas. During that time on the latter types I cannot remember a moment of concern.

You don't know what you missed.

Fareastdriver

Only a short distance? For the Marines that was spot on.

Returning to Shekou in China where I lived.

The Navy decided to do an assault on a miltary range in the New Territories in Hong Kong. They launched from their carrier and flew up the Pearl River to their target. Unfortunately they miscounted the islands, missed their LZ and deposited a Marine Commando in the Peoples Republic of China. Luckily in the middle of the Shenzen Bay there was a Hong Kong border boat that witnessed it. He notifyed Hong Kong and they notified the carrier. At that point the lead crew were informed of their error and returned to pick up their charges.

They got away with it apparantly. The Embassy in Beijing was on tenderhooks for weeks but nothing came of it.

Fareastdriver

To stop this thread coming off the front page.

The Saga of the Dodgy Registration.

In 1998 came the Far East crash. Stock prices were collapsing and even major international companies were having financial troubles. Imagine a group of Samsung financial directors shuffling on their knees to tell the president he cannot have his super deluxe helicopter to take him to work every morning. The company is in such dire straights that it can only afford a small one. Not too small, about the size of his limousine, and so an Aerospatiale 332L1 came on the market.

There weren’t a lot of takers for a full VIP executive helicopter for the same reasons that Samsung were selling it. However, our Chinese company bought at an absolutely giveaway, rock bottom bargain price somewhere around 50% of what it cost two years earlier. They flew it to Shenzhen and we had a look at this beautiful jewel, its form only spoiled by the air conditioner mounted on the port side.

One lowered an airstair door to enter the front cabin. Radiant beech panelling lined the walls with four sumptuous swivelling armchairs spaced evenly around. There was a drinks cabinet at hand and a telephone to address the driver with. The rear cabin had airstairs under the boom was merely set out with six club class armchairs but had, as the front did, a carpet you had to wade through. There was also a door so that the president’s needs, during the seven or eight minutes between establishing in the cruise and starting the landing profile, could be attended to.

It all had to come out. Off came the air-conditioner; out came the armchairs and seats. They had to leave the panelling as it hid the frames and stringers but the partition disappeared. Seats? We had some seats in storage there, not a full set, just fourteen, so in they went. Then it went onto the contract it was bought for, an offshore based shuttle. It was seven days out and then the aircraft would come back for maintenance and crew change. The first two weeks were done by Chinese crews but then came the requirement for a British captain. As I was on contract to the Chinese company I was fingered.

There was one problem. It was still on the South Korean register. Not having a Korean validation on my licence I politely declined; or words to that effect. On this I was backed up by the chief pilot and all the other Brits. What arrangements the Chinese crews had for flying it I didn’t know but that was their problem. This impasse lasted about three days and then the Chinese played the master stroke. They got a temporary Chinese registration for the aircraft.

I had flown aircraft with temporary registration before. I had picked up a S76 that had been shipped over from the States to Southampton. It had a temporary registration stuck on the side made up with bodge tape and it was virtually indecipherable at first glance. The weather wasn’t brilliant and I had flown it to the UK base fairly low level across the south of England. I knew the area because of my time at Odiham so as the area being used to military traffic I reasoned that that plus an unrecognisable registration which had probably peeled off would keep me fairly safe from moaners. Thus I flew along blissfully unaware that the previous US registration was emblazoned in big letters and numbers on the underside of the aircraft.

In China the allocation of aircraft identities is on a different logic than the UK. Whilst in the UK they are predominately in alphabetical order in China it is by company further divided into types. What happens is that a company is given a block of numbers which are further broken down into types. Our company had B7951 onwards for its 332s. They bought 7951&2 in the mid eighties and 7953 came along over ten years later. The temporary registration that this aircraft had bore no relation whatsoever to any recognised form of Chinese allocation.

I decided to go along with it for three reasons. The first was that I wanted to fly it. The reports on were superb. The flight from Seoul to Shenzhen was ten per cent of its total hours and it was as smooth as a baby’s bottom in the cruise. The second was covered by Chinese aviation law as I was directly employed by a Chinese company. Most of flying discipline in China is delegated to the company so if you are guilty of an infringement you are fined by the company. As they had told me to fly it it would be difficult to discipline me for flying it illegally. The third was that I had a copy of a policy that said I was worth US$1,000,000 dead.

To be continued………………………..

Fareastdriver

Mrs FED stayed at home in the UK. However, I always shipped her out to have a look at the places where I worked at; ie China three or four times. Whilst I was at Darwin in my last episode she was watching the jumping crocodiles with me.

Leave arrangements were somtimes complicated. We decided to do Central USA to see Las Vegas and some relatives. Mrs FED flew from London to San Francisco and I flew by Grab a Granny Airlines from Hong Kong and we met at the airport to catch the connecting flight to Vegas. (GaG Airlines; our American SLFs will know that one) A few days in Vegas, rented a Buick and drove through the Rockies to Dillon where my niece was. Then through the Eisenhower tunnel almost to Denver; south almost to Albuquerque then along the by the old Route 66. There we saw the Rio Grande, Meteor Crater and the Hoover dam before returnig to Vegas. Mrs FED went back to the UK and I flew back to Hong Kong and China.

More on that later.

Fareastdriver

I arrived at 06.00 hrs for the 07.00 take off. My co-pilot did all the planning and then I went to the line office to sign out the aircraft. B-7955 was emblazoned on the tech log. Over the weekend? I should coco. But you couldn’t argue against it, it was all there in writing. I queried as to why it was suddenly registered. They (the CAAC registration authority) forgot to tell us. They had approved it two weeks ago. What about the temporary registration? Different department, we will tell them later. The aircraft was a honey. Smooth, precise and a joy to fly. When we arrived offshore we found that the deck crews had no trouble with airstair doors and the deck times were the same as normal.

We were based on the Nan Hai Fa Xian, an FPSO; (Floating Production, Storage and Offloading) ship which was a converted tanker. It was registered in Panama and had an Italian officered crew. I had a cabin on B deck just along from the officers lounge.
Meals were cooked separately from the Chinese crew and we could choose virtually what we liked. The schedule was tight. A morning shuttle at 07.00 hrs, that lasted about two hours. A midday change over for about an hour and then the evening shuttle at 19.00 which went on for another two hours. The engineers had it worse then us. The had to strap it down after the last landing, do the post and pre flights and untie it before the next morning’s tasking.

There are two ways off getting oil onshore. Where possible pipelines buried just under the sea bed is preferred and nearly all North Sea products come this way. Where that is not possible then an FPSO is used. Pipeline from any number, in this case six, platforms meet at a subsea loading buoy. The FPSO has a well in the deck just aft of the bow that goes straight through the hull. It positions itself ever the buoy and the buoy is then raised to fit inside the well on the ship. Everything is connected up and all the production from the platforms arrives on the ship. There it is processed to make it transportable by tanker.

About every six or seven days the Fa Xian would offload to a tanker. A specialist marine captain known as the mooring master would be flown out from Shekou. He and his crew would then be winched on to the tanker, supervise the mooring to the Fa Xian and stay on the bridge during the transfer process, sometimes ten or twelve hours. When the tanked had released and was on the way to wherever we would winch him and his team off the tanker and take them home. On this picture the tanker is moored to the Fa Xian. The tug pulling the stern does it all the time to keep the tanker in tension so that they do not drift together. The other tug is taking the export pipe to the tanker.

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There wasn’t a lot to do when not flying. The TVs were all set for the Chinese crew and the Italians seemed to hibernate in their cabins. There was, however, a massive bonus. In the galley them was a soft ice cream machine with an unlimited supply of paper cups and plastic spoons. Every time we landed on to refuel I would leave the co-pilot to it and wizz down to the galley and bring up an armful of ice cream. The Chinese aren’t fond of ice cream so I would have the whole lot to myself. There wasn’t any alcohol but I had a suspicion that the Italians had a hidden supply of wine.

The problem with FPSOs and the Fa Xian in particular is that they are always pointing into the wind as they weathercock around the buoy. In fresh breezes and above this means that you get all the turbulence from the superstructure and in the Fa Xians case the twin funnels. In certain cases you would just drop at the twenty foot level and you would wait until the rotors ground cushion effect stopped you slamming into the deck. You could, as the 332 is stressed for 5m/sec (900ft/min) landings, accept quite a thump and believe me sometimes you did.

The week soon passed and then I was back in Shekou wrapping myself around a pint of draught Tiger.

B-7955 only did a couple of more weeks in the offshore contract. Then it went into the hangar and a team from the factory tore it apart and rebuilt it as an offshore aircraft with plug doors, nineteen seats and soft lining. I don't know what happened to the original kit; probably part exchanged to go in another one.

Fareastdriver

Whilst I had been away those four years there had been some changes. Where previously the aircraft had been predominately British registered with a couple of Chinese ones the position was now reversed. They had bought several aircraft including two brand new ones. We now had variety on the outside and also in the inside. The first two they had bought, 7951 and 2, had metric instruments, so the altimeters were in metres and the airspeed in kilometres/hour. Metric height was easy, the Chinese, as do the Russians and French, use metric flight levels and it was quite pleasant with your ASI reading 250 instead of 135. I had only known system pressures and temperatures in Pumas to be metric but one was in lbs/sqin and horrifically high numbers they were too.

The days of pumping 2,500lbs of fuel in it and going anywhere had gone. There were several new platforms, some extensions of the old fields but others further out. They had already surveyed an area close to the 200 mile territorial limit and the disputes were starting into who owned which island or sandbar in the South China Sea.

China had the advantage of having 3,000 years of recorded history so some admiral would have landed on some island, slammed the Emperor’s standard in the ground and claimed it for China; at the same time he would have wrote it down. He may well have been chased of by the natives the next day but they didn’t, or couldn’t, write it down so China had the only record as to who possessed it at that time. I know from my contacts there that there are zillions of barrels of oil and cubic feet of gas in that sea. They just need the political settlements to start producing it.

I was only going to be able to work there for six months before the dreaded 65 point came up. The company did not have any spare pilots to send to China, that’s why I was there. They had filled some positions with pilots from their Australian operation. One of these was a training captain and also a Australian CASA (Civil Aviation Safety Authority) examiner. Talking about my impending doom he suggested I get an Australian licence because they did not have an age limit for public transport. He pointed out that Qantas pilots who have to stop flying 747s around the world because of the ICAO limit end up flying 737s between Sydney and Melbourne so that they can pay their alimony and children’s university fees.

I thought that there might be a limit on the age that you could apply for a licence but apparently there wasn’t. Retirees had started flying and progressed up to commercial flying with no problem. The only limit was that after your 80th birthday your medical had to be done in Canberra. I thought about it but it wasn’t highly optimistic.

I had my fourth retirement party in the roof garden of Macawley’s, an Irish bar in Shekou. It was the day before Chinese New Year and already the barrage of enormous fireworks had started. There weren’t any speeches; you couldn’t hear yourself think so it was with a heavy heart that I got on the ferry to Chek Lap Kok and the 747 back to the UK.

I had been back about a month and there was this nagging thought about getting an Australian licence. On an impulse I flew back to China to do a bit of research. We established that there were no bars to getting an Oz ATPL(H) as long as I passed the exams. CPL Law, ATPL Law and IREX, the instrument written test. The other problem was China. Would they accept an over sixty five, remembering ICAO, and endorse his licence. The question was put to CAAC and they came back with an affirmative.

There was a smoking trail of shoe leather to the ferry as I went to Hong Kong International, climbed into a Cathy 747 and punched off to Perth.

Fareastdriver

I was going to Perth because that was where the Company’s Australian arm was. I knew some of them from Darwin and also from Aberdeen. During the 80s Aberdeen had been chronically short of pilots so had recruited a number of Australians. They had no experience of offshore work but were brought to the UK, given the necessary training and licences, and flew as co-pilots. They were quite highly paid, as all people who work the wrong side of our world are. They were one of the reasons why as a contract pilot I was not embarrassed by earning more than the staff. At that time on the North Sea I would have an Australian co-pilot with less than twenty hours twin engine and offshore experience earning more than I was.

The company was physically in an excellent position as they were in the same building and floor as the Western Australia office of CASA. The company could not help me with training as they always recruited licensed pilots. A copy of the Air Law burnt onto a disc was the best they could do. The CASA reps were fantastic; helpful, informative and full of encouragement. There was one ex North Sea pilot who whom I knew that had been through this rigmarole and he imparted some excellent advice; that was to get professional tuition for the IREX exam. This I did, expensive, about A$1,200, but worth every cent. The exams are done in real time so a full set of upper and lower en route charts plus the let-down plates for every Australian airfield cost me another A$400. I sorted had a nice room in a hotel run by Taiwanese and had a rented car outside. Twenty eight days I had planned for, I was hoping it wasn’t going to take any longer.

The IREX lessons took about a week and there were a couple of days mugging up on CPL law which I had to take first. Then came the little problem of the exams.

They were all done on a computer using multiple choice answers. That wasn’t the problem; the problem was finding a computer to sit in front of. There were exam centres in the major cities. Perth’s was near Jandakot, a large flying club type airfield which had multiple flying schools, a lot of them training Chinese airline cadets en masse and that was the problem, they had a large number sitting various exams so it was booked up solid. I desperately searched the country and there were two slots in Adelaide. I flashed up Virgin Blue and booked a return to Adelaide and then booked my CPL Air Law slot in Adelaide.

On arrival I rented another car, I now had two. They gave me a big street map and I went to find the examination location. It was a vacant shop in a new shopping centre in a new housing estate. It took me an hour to find it because the area wasn’t, as yet, mapped properly. Then to find a hotel nearby with broadband so I could get some last minute swotting. I now had two hotel rooms as well.

When I arrived at the centre in the morning it was thick with Chinese airline cadets doing their exams. I didn’t have time to talk to them as I was being briefed by my invigilator. The system was easy if you were familiar with a computer so I went through the questions fairly rapidly. An attractive Chinese girl next to me wasn’t having so much luck. It is difficult enough in the first place if you are new at it but even more when the exam in not in your native language. I had this compelling urge to prompt her but I knew that if I did I would certainly be chucked out. When I was satisfied I called the man over, he ran my answers though the programme and up it came with PASS. I had got over the first hurdle.

In the hotel foyer I got on the internet to search next week for slots; there were none, nowhere. I had to book my IREX and ATPL Air Law a fortnight ahead just to make sure. That being done I returned the car and flew back to Perth.

To be continued.

Fareastdriver

I was not going to have much free time. I was taking the IREX, the difficult one first and the second, the ATPL Air Law was the day before my return flight to Hong Kong so I wanted to make sure I passed. I only took one day free and that was to drive around Freemantle.

The IREX was the bogeyman of all the exams. Apparently the pass mark had been lowered to 70% because so many kept failing it. It was a mixture of everything; technical, meteorological, procedures and aviation law. I was fairly confident owing to my personal training and it was rewarded with an above average pass mark.

Australian air law is full of whys, wherefores and not withstandings. The flight and duty limitations I never understood. One of my questions was on how long three captains could fly a 757 with the availability of a ‘resting chair’. However with a bit of luck and intelligent guessing, I passed. Off to the licensing office and put in my application.

I should have laid one on that night having achieved a fairly difficult operation but I didn’t, I was too relieved.

The next day I was back in China and the day after that I was doing my Australian Proficiency and Instrument Test.

We used B-7958. I don’t think the Chinese company knew what it was actually being used for. They were told it was just a base check. I was just an ordinary private citizen and we were using, for my benefit, a helicopter which would have cost about US3,000/hr. One could ague that I was probably going to work for them so I would have to do it anyway. There was one slight hiccup. When the forms went through CASA queried the fact that we had used a Chinese registered aircraft. They thought, quite reasonably, that it should have been done in an Australian registered example. However, that was glossed over on the basis that there wasn’t one handy at the time.

Then came the wait for the actual licence; anywhere between a fortnight and a month. I was living in company accommodation so it wasn’t too expensive. After three weeks I had been away from home for two months so I flew back to the UK. The day after I arrived I had a phone to say it had arrived in Shekou. It took a week for CAAC to process the endorsement and then I was airborne again in China.

I was back on contract with the British company. My CAA licence was invalid owing to my age so the G registered aircraft were out of bounds. I was now in a position where I was paid as a pilot by a major British aviation company but I was not allowed to fly their aeroplanes.

Even stranger things were going to happen………………….

RobertP

`Bluey Mavroleon`Greek Shipping Owner!

Fareastdriver

Thing progressed in the normal way. Even as a contract pilot I was rostered on an eight weeks on and four weeks off rota. Come November came another bombshell.

As I had mentioned before, the Chinese Aviation procedures and practices were starting to get in line with Western standards. We had, for decades, flown Chinese registered aircraft on an endorsement to our CAA/CASA licences. CAAC now decided that something else would be brought in line with everywhere else. An endorsement was only valid for six months, after that a pilot had to have a Chinese national licence.

We had six months to get a licence. What about me? On to CAAC again. The answer was simple; pass the exams and the medical and you will get a licence.

It wasn’t only me who had to get a licence, there were five others. None of had a clue what to do and nor did our Chinese pilots because all their exams were in Chinese so they could not help us with the special exams in English for expats. The first thing was the medical. Two parts: The first part in a hospital where they checked the entire body including five blood samples for everything including Aids. A full body Xray and Echograms for all the soft tissue. Resting ECG followed by a stress ECG on a treadmill. The last was easy, the Australians did that too.

We went to Guangzhou for the second part of the medical with the CAAC doctors. Our company doctor came with us and managed to get through a pack of cigarettes on the two hour drive there, a pack whilst we were there and a pack on the way back. There are special CAAC hospitals scattered around China. These are for aviation people and do everything that a normal hospital does purely for aviation employees. We were there on Wannabees Day, gorgeous young u/t hostesses desperately practicing their English on us. One of them had a problem with too low a blood pressure; my suggestion that I should take her into a dark room for fifteen minutes was not taken up.

I went into the eye test. I had never done an eye test IMC in cigarette smoke. Both of the doctors operating the random pointing machine were going full blast. The ENT test room was even worse; they didn’t need to ask you to cough. You have to remember then I was on about 40/day so you can imagine what it was like. However we all passed and on return about two kilometres from the heliport we peeled of to a restaurant for a company funded dinner.

Shortly after this I went back the UK for Christmas. Come January when I expected to return I was advised that I was not needed until the Typhoon Season in April. I was then asked to confirm whether I was still available. When I replied in the affirmative they offered me a slot in the Solomon Islands.

Solomon Islands??????? I thought I knew about the oil industry but Solomon Islands? I was filled in on the details. I was going there on the RAMSI contract so I looked up RAMSI.

In 2003 the Solomon Islands was heading for anarchy so at the request of the Governor General Australian and New Zealand forces effectively invaded the country. They then took over the police and most of the senior civil service. The operation was supported by other countries in the South Pacific and so it was called Regional Assistance Mission to Solomon Islands.

I flew Singapore Airlines to Singapore; night stop, then to Brisbane and Air Vanuatu to Honiara. Another chapter had begun.

Fareastdriver

I had been with the headhunters in Borneo in 1966. The flying to come was similar to flying over the jungle of Borneo.

Fareastdriver

I had seen the film ‘South Pacific’. I had also been to Fiji so I had no illusions about lying under palm trees by a golden beach being fanned by nubile dusky maidens in grass skirts. The road to the hotel was as I expected, lines of shelters with makeshift counters displaying various vegetables for sale being fumigated by the smoke from battered minibuses plying their trade. It got better as we approached the hotel with the residential properties either built on stilts or walls so as to keep the living area at first floor level. The hotel was run by Taiwanese Chinese, as were most of the businesses in Honiara. Fairly basic, the rooms had painted breeze block walls and a small balcony overlooking Ironbottom Sound where fairly large ships of the US and Australian Navy had been sent to the bottom by Japanese warships.

Honiara is in the island of Guadalcanal. The battle of Guadalcanal was where the Japanese were finally stopped and forced back during the Pacific war. It was all about an airfield that got the name Henderson Field, latterly Honiara International. The famous watchtower was still there as were the traces of 16 in. shell holes dug by the Japanese bombardments. Still sitting forlornly in the middle of the Honiara River estuary was a Japanese tank that was stopped half way across.

The operation itself was in support of the Australian and Kiwi police that were running law and order. There were new police stations built in various parts of the islands and they had to be supported much in the way that would be expected in a military operation,; ie, being supplied with food fuel and staff changeovers. The other task was SAR cover for the entire nation that was spread over hundreds of square miles. For this the aircraft had to be able to reach any point and return without refuelling. This was enabled by sponson tanks and a 300 litres crashproof tank in the cabin which gave it a 300 mile radius of action. In addition there was a winch, a night sun searchlight and the ability to carry 4,500 kilos under slung. One of the first things I had to do was précis my considerable winching and load carrying experience and send it off to Canberra so that they could add those qualifications to my licence. There were two other Bell 212s belonging to a different company which used to look after the police stations in Guadalcanal itself. We were tasked by a civilian company that was contracted by the various governments to organise transportation for the whole RAMSI project.

Something new for me was GPS approaches. We had GPS for navigation but with a GPS approach there was slightly different equipment.

When one wished to carry out a GPS approach one would select the approach from the route library. The GPS would then check the there were at least four satellites in view during the whole approach and fifteen minutes after. On the final approach the beam bar sensitivity would be increased by a factor of four so that full scale was down to .25 of a mile. There were advisory heights being given to you but as the aircraft was not fitted with a three axis autopilot the Decision Height was as for a non precision approach. There was on airstrip in Malaita where the pattern was in a lagoon with 4,500 ft. hills on the shore. As you flew the crosswind pattern of the leg the top half of the radar would be red with ground returns until you got the command to turn on to the finals heading,

Honiara itself had one effective shopping street. The clothing stores were just a mass of clothing on hangers arranged in some sort of potential wearer’s sex and age. They were again run by Chinese and had a strange system of stock procurement. They would buy bales of clothing, by weight, from Taiwan. When the bale arrived it would be sorted into different items and then placed on the rails. One of the staff would be in a chair almost at ceiling level to ensure that any items were not nicked. Everything was incredibly cheap; a T shirt was about 10p, so there was this continuous rugby scrum until the stock was exhausted. The next day they would start again. There was one civilised coffee shop which was crammed with expats most of the day.

The longest regular trip we did was to Rennel Island. This was about 135 nm. south of Honiara. It had a few roads and an airstrip where the police camp was. They had a huge appetite for diesel and we used to take four of five drums there every week. Because there was no aviation fuel there we had to have round trip fuel plus all their rations and suchlike. This made us quite heavy; in fact, heavier than I had ever flown one before. The normal maximum weight in offshore service was 18,960 lbs. (8600 kg). For this trip we would depart at 20,000 lbs (9100 kg) which was still below its maximum USL weight of 9,200 kg but it was +30 degrees outside. Four or five drums would be in a net on the end of an eighty foot strop so that you could lose an engine up to pulling the load off the ground and still recover. After that I can still remember my brief to the co-pilot.

“If we lose a engine before 45 knots we bin the load and land straight ahead. If we lose the load after 45 knots but before 70 we bin it and fly off. If we lose it after 70 knots we fly over the sea and then we bin it.”

We would hover with about 97-98 % input torque which gave little power to go anywhere. However, talking nicely to the aircraft would persuade it to go in the right direction and once you got decent airspeed you were off. You then had to start a climb to 7,000 ft. get over the mountains to the south of the airfield. A clean aircraft would cruise at 125 knots at 7,000; with this lot hanging on underneath it could only manage 70 knots. Nature would sense which valley you were aiming to go through and would immediately block it with a cumulus cloud. There would than follow this game resembling enormous conkers where you were weaving between clouds and the mountain tops finding a way through. This is where my experience in Borneo paid off; in spades.

Once over the top one could descend to 1,000 ft. and get about 90 knots or so, so it was autopilot in, feet up and have a fag…………………………..

Fareastdriver

Again I wasn’t rushed off my feet. With the SAR standbye it meant that you only flew every third day. For the co-pilots it was not a good appointment. They were all self improvers and, as a first officer, hours gained are most important. In normal offshore environment they would expect to have the requisite hours to obtain a command after five or six years. Here they were only getting ten to fifteen hours a month. One of them told me that after three years he might have enough hours to get a job. It was a three week stint and I averaged less than an hour a day.

I still had my Chinese licence to do so after that I went back to China. Two of us went to CAAC at Guangzhou and did the general ATPL exam. They must have put the contract out to CASA because the exam was so similar to the ones I had taken before; a computer with multiple choice answers. The questions were similar but the answers had been translated from Chinese and some answers were all right and some were all wrong. In this case you called the invigilator over and he told you which one to select. Again, like the Australian programme it flagged up a pass when you had finished.

The first hurdle being over then came the flight check. One of out junior captains had been nominated as the company flight checker. He hadn’t any training as a trainer or checker so he sat on the jump seat whilst my Aussie checker ran another test and then he signed me off.

I then had to do an English Comprehension Test. All expat pilots had to do this even if they were English. The reason why the test had to be taken was that English was the only language allowed in a mixed crew cockpit and some of the South American pilots had severe shortcomings in this department. The test was to be held at Xiaoshangou, close to Chengdu, as there was only one person who could mark the test and that was where he was. Everything was arranged and I was at the company awaiting transport to take me to the airport when the message came through that it had been cancelled for that month. The examiner had decided to go on holiday. Nothing could be done about it so a couple of days later I flew to the Solomons disappointed that I had not finally cleared up my Chinese licence.

I had been a away from home for a couple of months now so it was time to bring the wife out. Always, everywhere I worked, I would bring my wife to see how it was where I lived and worked. I arranged her flight out via Brisbane giving her a full briefing of where to go at Brisbane and she arrived in Honiara on time and in the right aeroplane. I had been there for a week and I planned a week in Honiara and then a week for her on the Brisbane Gold coast. I knew a week was enough because I know how she appreciates foreign countries. I was right. She summed up the Solomons on the first night with.
“Thank Christ I’m only here for a week.”

Strangely this time on completion I was routed Honiara-Brisbane-Sydney-HK instead of Brisbane-Singapore-HK and we met in Sydney terminal as she was enroute to the UK.

Back in China the priority was to clear up the Chinese exam. Whilst waiting for the English test I did the Law Exam. This was a farce. The examiner didn’t speak English I didn’t speak Chinese so one of out senior captains acted as interpreter. Basically I was prompted through the exam. Another hurdle crossed.

Then the time came to fly up to do the exam. I was accompanied by one of our Chinese captains who was doing the same exam as he wanted a Chinese ICAO licence and this exam counted as Level 4. We flew to Chengdu and he organised the taxi to Xiaoshangou and the hotel.

Xiaoshangou was a major PLA Air Force transport training base. The days when the Chinese aviations companies could cherry pick their students had gone. The PLA were now getting some seriously advanced equipment and training costs were being budgeted. They too required English in the cockpit because the Air Force was going international so this was where the test was held.

I had been to Sichuan before. I had friends there so I was familiar with Chongqing, Chengdu and Luzhao. When we went out for lunch we came to this small restaurant. The menu was in Chinese, English not spoken so I asked for my favourite Sichuan dish; Sichuan Boiled Beef.

It is easy to do. A handful of bruised chillies, a handful of bruised cloves of garlic, a handful of finely sliced beef plus a leaf or two Chinese cabbage or choy sum all boiled together for about fifteen minutes. It’s quite spicy. Captain Fei was not from Sichuan and he looked at it in horror. Even the kitchen staff came out not believing that this gweilo could manage it; but I did, easily.

The next day I did the exam. It was an ergonomical disaster. During the vocal bit you were supposed to wait until a blip thing counted down before you started speaking. I wasn’t told so half of mine was not recorded. At the end the machine counted down and I had FAILED. Do not worry, said the invigilator, we shall review it. So they did and two days later came the message that I had passed. I had, at sixty six, got a Chinese ATPL(H).

Fareastdriver

The Romanised form of Chinese writing is called Pinyin. The pronunciation is in general similar to English but some are different; especially 'Q' and 'X'.

A common mistake is with Chongqing, the largest city in China. People try to say it treating the 'Q' as in 'Queen' or QANTAS' but the Q is pronounced 'ch' as in child. The locals cannot understand them when they say Chongkwing instead of Chongching.

The 'X' is pronounce 'sh' as in 'she' so a city like Xiamin is pronounced Shiarmin; Exiamin, doesn't work.

Shiao-shan-gou. Simples

Fareastdriver

The there was nothing for me to do. They didn’t need me in China.

This was the reason that I had gone to the Solomon Islands in there first place so I graciously consented to go out there again for another stint. However things had changed.

There was a small riot outside the Government Offices and because of mishandling this broke out into a BIG riot. The rioters turned on to whom they imagined to be the source of all their troubles; the Chinese. They started burning and looting the shops in the main street with the few national shopkeepers hanging signs outside their shops declaring that the shop was owned by Solomon Islanders. After that they went into the Chinese quarter causing general mayhem with our helicopter circling overhead shining its Nite Sun on them so as to assist the police to restore order. In the space of a few hours half of them destroyed their livelihood and the other half destroyed any chance of a job because most of their employers, the Chinese, went back to Taiwan.

Our hotel had been burned down. This gave rise to a priceless article in my possession.

When I had first arrived in the Solomons I looked a bit out of place. I was dressed in white shirt, long black trousers, black shoes and four rings on my shoulders. The other pilots were in company issue Tshirts, with the company name on the back, and shorts. They ordered some for me but that was going to take a week or so.
I had been allocated the chief pilots bedroom as he was on leave and in the corner was a large box of Tshirts. These were the same colour and style as the company ones except the logo emblazoned on the back had Solomon Islands printed on it. The only other difference was that it had the brand name of the local beer on one sleeve. I already had some suitable shorts so I selected one that fitted, left a note that I would pay and went to work in it.
Shock: Horror!
The company had heard about the shirts and on discovering that they had a beer advert on the sleeve went ballistic. They were immediately banned, recalled and the fear of death instilled to any staff that wore one. I was all right, I wasn’t staff, I was contract. However I only wore it for a couple of days before my official one came through.

When the hotel was burned down most of everybody’s possessions, clothes, computers, etc went up with it because they were at the airport manning the helicopter. With it went all the Tshirts. This meant that mine was the only survivor so mine is now totally unique and priceless.

Our new hotel was the other side of town and hadn’t suffered from the riots. It was a slightly better (the staff were quite tasty) hotel but the biggest advantage was that it was just over a breakwater to the yacht club. Whilst I was there there was a sudden influx of the United States Air Force.

On one of the smaller islands somebody had come across a cache of rusting cylinders. He had heaved one into his boat ad presented it to the scrap merchant in Honiara. This one was used to bombs, shells etc of either Japanese, American or British parentage but he had not seen these before. He notified the relevant authorities and research established that they were chemical or gas munitions. The Solomons government asked for help in disposing of them and the Americans answered the call. A small team arrived at Honiara in the back of a C5 Galaxy.

It was the largest aeroplane ever to arrive in Honiara. In fact it was the largest metal object in the Solomon Islands. They had obviously calculated that the runway and apron could take the wheel loads so they were marshalled into the corner of the apron so as not to interfere with the scheduled traffic. All went well and after two or three days the job had been done and everybody was ready to go back to Hawaii. They all got into their C5 and called for pushback.
Pushback?? The airport didn’t have anything that could push back a C5. In fact they didn’t have anything that could pushback anything.
It is possible for a C5 to taxi backwards using reverse thrust. However, there is a high probability of FOD damage doing this in a small apron as in Honiara so they required permission from the Pentagon. This permission was refused. In the end they launched a C17 Globemaster from Hawaii with a large aircraft tug in the back. This landed at Honiara, unloaded the tug which then repositioned both aircraft so that they faced the right way, reloaded the tug and hurled off to Hawaii.

It was my last three weeks in the Solomons and after a spot of leave in the UK I was back on the line in China. The wheels had turned a circle as far as the British part of the operation was concerned. We were down to one G reg aircraft with all the rest being on the Chinese register. More and more Chinese pilots were getting their command requiring less expat pilots, the typhoon season’s extra requirements being made up of myself and pilots from Australia. The company had changed hands and was effectively taken over by an American company and their wheels came out to have a look see at the operation. We didn’t know it at the time but this was going to be a pivotal point of the China operation.

Come January I was off to Australia again, this time to Karratha, on the coast of Western Australia.

Before I could fly offshore on an Australian licence I had to do the Australian Dangerous Goods course and the Huet (Helicopter Underwater Escape Course). I had done both courses in the UK but not flying on an endorsement that didn’t count. The DGC was easy enough and so was the HUET.

I had done my first underwater escape course at HMS Vernon in 1967 or thereabouts. There they used the submarine escape tower which was a tank of seawater about one hundred feet high. The submariners do their tricks at the bottom, helicopter crews do theirs at the top. This one was done at a facility using a swimming poll in Freemantle.

All HUETS are much the same. A facsimile of a helicopter fuselage complete with doors, windows, seats and belts that is immersed in the water. Easy escapes a first culminating with a steep insert and a full rollover. In Vernon’s tank when you roll over you only see an inky black void. Civvy ones are done in swimming pools so you can see the tiling on the bottom so things are relatively easy. On my last rollover at this one my door wouldn’t release as expected. Using my Vernon, not the local, training, I immediately went for the door on the other side where the other pilot had exited. When I surfaced I was immediately ballocked for using the wrong door. I explained that it had jammed and fortunately it jammed on them too.

Everything signed up I flew to Karratha…………….

Senior Pilot

Fareastdriver has been narrating his fascinating career in another forum and has allowed me to copy his posts (or some of them!) here on our Rotary Nostalgia thread.

There's a lot of reading going back for more than a year, but I hope that you will find them interesting and he will continue to post more of his recollections