Royal Flight - Cameroon 1990
 

In March 1990 Del Tarn and I took a couple of Port Harcourt 212's to Douala to fly Chas & Di around the place. Some pilot chappies came with us.

'JW awaiting fuel at Douala
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Motley crew ready to depart for the hotel.
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Enroute to some monkey farm in the boonies.
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Motley crew with Royal Personage. Unfortunately, Diana had flown back to the UK for the birth of Eugenie (the well known fashion icon) so we only got to fly Chas.
L-R Can't remember, Pat Morar, George Cunningham, Don't know, Del Tarn, HRH, Can't remember (sorry) and Tony Ferris.
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AB

Port Harcourt red fins, Warri lightening flashes on the nose! Wouldn't it have been easier to remember which registrations were who's?:ok:

That was pretty straightforward; Warri had 'Lima s' S, T & U while PH had 'Juliets' T, U, V & W. We also had a 'QW for a while. Sad or what. PH also had the SFENA-equipped aircraft. Deep joy!

I believe that was Richard Nicklau next to Tony Ferris in the photo of Jug Ears and the crew.


Warri also had QV....all Sperry equipped aircraft until some of the PHC aircraft showed up. Thne Sfena purely sucked!

Yes, that's Richard - now in Malaysia with Westar, I believe.

Nothing wrong with SFENA.......:ok:

As long as it was working! I remember being introduced to SFENA in the Duri IFR 212 PK-HCK. Training Captain explained its function and we engaged Altitude Hold. After we decended through some 300' he agreed that perhaps it was not working properly today.

However when it worked and with some good guidance from the Trainers it made Single Pilot IFR a lot easier.

And of course there was the one-off SFENA fitted in G-AVII for all those CAA single engine IRTs over the years.

All of the original Eket 212's had SFENA and what a jolly fine system it was (NOT) piece of junk that never really worked :ugh:, certainly never in duplex mode. Best thing that ever happend was going over to helipilot.

ns

Seem to remember it was okay as long as the pilot was prepared to release his vice-like grip on the cyclic!

Eket Bell 212s
 

Interesting because it worked in the 5 x Eket Bell 212s that I flew when the Greenies from Hell were on the case (my logbook went for a swim but I recall 5N-AJS, 5N-ALQ & 5N-AOE as 3 of them). I was there when the contract changed to 5 'younger' Bell 212s, including 5N-BHM (ex G-BJJO) & 5N-BHN (ex G-BJJP). Both of these had Sperry Helipilot but the Flight Directors were removed before they arrived in Nigeria - so no Altitude Hold facility as required for Single Pilot IFR.
Exactly that was part of the problem, a lack of understanding leading to the pilot using the system incorrectly.

...they also worked very well in Trinidad when a certain gifted Greenie understood how to pair up the computers, matching their outputs so hard duplex faults would not occur.

It was amazing what a bit of cyclic friction did to the SFENA - just as it said in the manual.

I personally preferred the SFENA to the cheapskate basterdised (by BHL chief accountant) Sperry. If the Sperry had all the stuff it was supposed to have, then I would agree, SFENA was not as good. If BHL had refrained from their "It's not in the contract, they haven't paid for it, take it out attitude" maybe things would have been different.

SFENA managed to get Concorde to fly pretty well....

Sperry worked brilliantly when we used to fly the 212s BJJO and BJJP Single pilot IFR on the North Denes Amoco contract. I never realised they removed bits before the aircraft went to Nigeria, I managed To avoid Nigeria for the most part.

Oh so true!

Recall the Bristow attitude towards installing GPS in the Nigeria based aircraft?

Comments like...."Oh...that Yank DOD thing?" "Too expensive!" "Its not in the contract....who is going to pay for it?

Then....along comes the Nigerian CAA and mandates GPS!

Then...."Well...when it goes U/S we aren't going to repair it!"

Once the crews got used to having GPS...being able to find their way around in the Fog, Mist, Cloud, Rain, and Dust....."that Yank DOD thing" became a necessity!

When Bristow packed up their USA operations their S76s were shipped to the UK. I would pick them up from some Ro Ro in the UK or Europe and ferry them to Redhill to be 'Anglicised'. This involved replacing the Omega AND the DME with Decca. The DME was, apparently, a bind to remove but it was neccessary to avoid have to fix it if it went wrong.

Six months later Norway stipulated that DME had to be carried by aircraft nominating a Norwegian diversion.

EKET 212's
 

The original 3 212's arrived piecemeal fitted with SFENA, we never had the spares, people who understood it including the aircrew. The solution was to fly in Simplex. By the early to mid 80's we spent most of our time replacing looms, connecters etc, and flying a lot of the time without SFENA at all(Fixed Rods) until the helipilot conversions of the Warri aircraft released another pool of spares into the system which certainly helped with serviceability. And all Greenies are " Greenies from hell":ok:

PH 212s
 

"Ober Greenie from Hell" Al Cox kept the SFENAs at PH working very well during all my time there.

One of their problems was the sensitivity in the YAW channel pickup, which worked to our advantage once. During a mission to retrieve remains of people and parts of a crashed BO-105 of the Police I was circling overhead after having winched Al Biles down into the swamp. (Hero of th day) Every few seconds we would get a small kick in yaw, which disappeared when disengaged. After returning Al could find no fault with the SFENA, so a bit more looking and our engineering team found a cracked longeron in the tailboom. Repaired, no more kick.

Ainippe...check your pm's

"During a mission to retrieve remains of people and parts of a crashed BO-105 of the Police I was circling overhead after having winched Al Biles down into the swamp."

I remember it well. That was not a fun afternoon.

http://http://dubaiasitusedtobe.com/...ze/TN29_fs.jpg

Hi I am struggling to upload photos of my Dad's time ( Bill Nicholls) in Bristows during the early sixties until the 90's. He worked in Nigeria during the sixties, Dubai, Das island, Paull in east yorkshire, Aberdeen and on the rigs, Eket in Nigeria, Borneo late Fifties. I have a lot of photos to share with you but am having problems loading them. I have posted a few on Dubaiasitusedtobe.com which can be viewed there but I have more on my hard drive at home....any suggestions would be welcome!:ok:

ZEPHER62
This might help:

http://www.pprune.org/aviation-histo...-tips-you.html