Cargo Jet makes a 360 at 100’
I found the Garmin on the top of the glare shield interesting, but probably a really smart idea.
I'm also impressed on the 360 and staying at a hundred. Good skills that are going lost.
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So is there anyone out here who has actually BEEN to Moghadishu, who can explain why he could not have made a right hand climbing turn to say 500’ ? Which sounds more sensible to me, sitting at the kitchen table north of 51 north.
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Welcome to Africa! That South African pilot did not have pax to worry about and got the job done. Not to mention that the 72 has all the grunt needed to do something unusual. They do things differently in Africa because they have to.
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So is there anyone out here who has actually BEEN to Moghadishu, who can explain why he could not have made a right hand climbing turn to say 500’ ? Which sounds more sensible to me, sitting at the kitchen table north of 51 north.
I believe that he believed what he was saying. I don't know if the SA-7 firing inclination is actually true or not.
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Hand flying a 360 holding the altitude ? Potential disaster , send the guy to jail..errr wait been there already .
Where aviation is going ? We deserve pilotless aircraft ..
Where aviation is going ? We deserve pilotless aircraft ..
Avoid imitations
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As any navy pilot would tell you, it is very very easy to accidentally fly into the sea, even in perfect visual conditions. 360 at 100' in a 727, no HUD - one moments inattention or look inside and it's over.
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Considering the reasons given by those who know the area and its potential dangers, I don't understand why negative comments continue. I (now) understand the need to stay low and can only admire that guy's excellent flying skills.
I think the surprise and alarm expresed here is simply an example of how the magenta line mentality has taken over so many of us and anything remotely 'operational' is regarded as cowboy because it dosn't fit our idea of SOPs. That is perhaps not surprising, though somewhat unimaginative even in people who have only seen commercial training and airline work.
Reality, especially in Africa, is somewhat different.
I was a rehgular in and around Mog in '93 when Operation Restore Hope was launched and the Blackhawk incident happened (when I was on leave, dammit!).
The yellow plates are an accurate depiction of the situation then, and it would not be any different anytime a small-arms/MANPADS threat exisits. We don't know the date of the OP's video, but it is far from new.
Mog was populated at the time with a number of heavily armed factions all fighting in/with/against ever changing internal alliances and mostly anti the UN forces present. Small-arms and mg fire was heard throughout the night and often in daytime. Every now and again a firefight would break out and it would get quite noisy for a while. Mortars were used and all the factions had 'technicals', pickup trucks with anything from a small machine gun to canon mounted on them. There were believed to be ZSU23/4s in the region too which are really nasty. A stoned somali with a 12.5 on a pickup truck isn't something you want to encounter or overfly if you can help it. Stoned 14yr olds in flip-flops and shorts with Kalashnikovs are bad enough! Rumour had it they had SAM7 too but afaik no evidence for this was ever found.
Believe me you are very aware of your mortality in a place like that.
Thus the thinking pilot flew tactically and never draged his arse over land below 5000ft is he could help it. (btw, not all pilots flying into Mog at the time fell nto that category, some seemed to like being sitting ducks - probably some SOP thing). Our 727 Captain made a sensible decision whan baulked by a Cessna on the runway and did a 360. A standard go-around at that point would have unnecessarily exposed him to small-arms as he climbed over the southern part of the city and been an expensive and extensive precedure both in time and fuel. What's the point? He'd know what and where the other traffic was and transmit hs intentions on the common (tower) frequency - I'm assuming there was no control there, maybe not even a radio service.
What is the problem with a 200ft circuit? Can pilots not fly at 200ft without hitting the sea? Strewth! Why climb? That involves retracting gear and flap and running a whole gamut of checks - and for what? What use is that extra few/several hundred feet? Even if you just keep the config and drift up to 500ft in the turn you're making unnecessary work for yourself by having to judge/calculate an ad-hoc downwind leg to get you back onto the 3 degree slope twice as far out rather than flying a dead simple 360 knowing you'll come back to exactly back where you started.
That's daft! Why waste the fuel or time? What is wrong with stay low, keep the configuration, turn 360' at rate one and and return accurately to finals 2 minutes later?The smart thing he did was not to overcomplicate a simple manoeuvre. Its not as if he's operating at a busy preocedural hub, he's going into a hot coastel bush-strip that happens to be 10,000ft of concrete and only the fish are unarmed. A capable pilot will have no difficulty doing this under the right weather conditions...but in haze, no sharp hoizon - more judgement would be required. It's that vile, unmentionalbe word again. C@*****cy. What we all used to need before stifling SOPs eradicated it. This is Practical flying as much as it is Procedural, whch, sadly, is the only bit most airline pilots know. (For instance, how many airline pilots today know what an 80/280 turn is, and why it's so very useful? Some will no doubt cringe at the appalling possibilities of such a 'non-approved manoeuvre' but if you ever need to accurately reposition on a reciprocal heading and on track it's a pretty handy tool to have in your box.)
This may seem extreme or hazardous to modern airline pilots but it is clear that he was not one of those, but a pilot who knew how to operate his craft without having to stick rigidly to a script written in an office.
Far from obeying Jeppesens' rather naiive magenta line to 600ft before turn on departure (aka the Darwin 1 Departure) he, like the rest of us would have got airborne and turned as steeply as possible without clobbering the sand dunes and got the hell out to sea. Then you'd run out a couple of miles at a couple of hudred feet (eeeuwww!) before climbing SE to a height that would allow you to recross the coast at a sensible level, for most c. Fl100 or so.
Approach in the winter monsoon with 23 in use was somewhat sportier. Staggering over the city below 500ft at approach speed would not be too bright (though some did - USAF especially, the least tactically aware flyers I've ever seen) - I used to (C208) come overhead at FL80 or so, head a mile or two offshore, drop full flap, beta the prop in a left turn to arrive at one mile left base leg for 23 heading for the SW end of the parking ramp, commencing a steep descending turn over the ramp to touch down at half distance. It's simple self preservation. Was it hazardous? Hell no! Safer than stooging around over a free-for-all shooting gallery at approach heights and speeds, and hardly hazardous from an aviation point of view, it just involved actively flying the aeroplane at heights not usually done with airliners. It's only flying the bloody aeroplane after all. Isn't thst what we're supposed to be able to do? Bloody spectacular when Hercs did it though. If they had to the bigger jets would do as tight a turn onto ultra low/short finals as far as their higher speeds allowed but usually preferred a downwnd landing on 05 rather than a near wingtip scraping turn over the threshold as I saw an EVA Air 747 do once.
The people who came unstuck in that part of the world were the ones who forgot/stretched the fundamentals of weight and performance, not those who employed the fundamentals of skilful flying which is all too common in Africa.
I believe Mog operates as a normal airfield these days so all this is history and Mr Jepp is again king, but if you're flying into places where anything moving is a potential target it sharpens one's judgement wonderfully as to where you want to be and for how long rather than how Mr Jeppesen or formal training suggests you might.
Reality, especially in Africa, is somewhat different.
I was a rehgular in and around Mog in '93 when Operation Restore Hope was launched and the Blackhawk incident happened (when I was on leave, dammit!).
The yellow plates are an accurate depiction of the situation then, and it would not be any different anytime a small-arms/MANPADS threat exisits. We don't know the date of the OP's video, but it is far from new.
Mog was populated at the time with a number of heavily armed factions all fighting in/with/against ever changing internal alliances and mostly anti the UN forces present. Small-arms and mg fire was heard throughout the night and often in daytime. Every now and again a firefight would break out and it would get quite noisy for a while. Mortars were used and all the factions had 'technicals', pickup trucks with anything from a small machine gun to canon mounted on them. There were believed to be ZSU23/4s in the region too which are really nasty. A stoned somali with a 12.5 on a pickup truck isn't something you want to encounter or overfly if you can help it. Stoned 14yr olds in flip-flops and shorts with Kalashnikovs are bad enough! Rumour had it they had SAM7 too but afaik no evidence for this was ever found.
Believe me you are very aware of your mortality in a place like that.
Thus the thinking pilot flew tactically and never draged his arse over land below 5000ft is he could help it. (btw, not all pilots flying into Mog at the time fell nto that category, some seemed to like being sitting ducks - probably some SOP thing). Our 727 Captain made a sensible decision whan baulked by a Cessna on the runway and did a 360. A standard go-around at that point would have unnecessarily exposed him to small-arms as he climbed over the southern part of the city and been an expensive and extensive precedure both in time and fuel. What's the point? He'd know what and where the other traffic was and transmit hs intentions on the common (tower) frequency - I'm assuming there was no control there, maybe not even a radio service.
What is the problem with a 200ft circuit? Can pilots not fly at 200ft without hitting the sea? Strewth! Why climb? That involves retracting gear and flap and running a whole gamut of checks - and for what? What use is that extra few/several hundred feet? Even if you just keep the config and drift up to 500ft in the turn you're making unnecessary work for yourself by having to judge/calculate an ad-hoc downwind leg to get you back onto the 3 degree slope twice as far out rather than flying a dead simple 360 knowing you'll come back to exactly back where you started.
That's daft! Why waste the fuel or time? What is wrong with stay low, keep the configuration, turn 360' at rate one and and return accurately to finals 2 minutes later?The smart thing he did was not to overcomplicate a simple manoeuvre. Its not as if he's operating at a busy preocedural hub, he's going into a hot coastel bush-strip that happens to be 10,000ft of concrete and only the fish are unarmed. A capable pilot will have no difficulty doing this under the right weather conditions...but in haze, no sharp hoizon - more judgement would be required. It's that vile, unmentionalbe word again. C@*****cy. What we all used to need before stifling SOPs eradicated it. This is Practical flying as much as it is Procedural, whch, sadly, is the only bit most airline pilots know. (For instance, how many airline pilots today know what an 80/280 turn is, and why it's so very useful? Some will no doubt cringe at the appalling possibilities of such a 'non-approved manoeuvre' but if you ever need to accurately reposition on a reciprocal heading and on track it's a pretty handy tool to have in your box.)
This may seem extreme or hazardous to modern airline pilots but it is clear that he was not one of those, but a pilot who knew how to operate his craft without having to stick rigidly to a script written in an office.
Far from obeying Jeppesens' rather naiive magenta line to 600ft before turn on departure (aka the Darwin 1 Departure) he, like the rest of us would have got airborne and turned as steeply as possible without clobbering the sand dunes and got the hell out to sea. Then you'd run out a couple of miles at a couple of hudred feet (eeeuwww!) before climbing SE to a height that would allow you to recross the coast at a sensible level, for most c. Fl100 or so.
Approach in the winter monsoon with 23 in use was somewhat sportier. Staggering over the city below 500ft at approach speed would not be too bright (though some did - USAF especially, the least tactically aware flyers I've ever seen) - I used to (C208) come overhead at FL80 or so, head a mile or two offshore, drop full flap, beta the prop in a left turn to arrive at one mile left base leg for 23 heading for the SW end of the parking ramp, commencing a steep descending turn over the ramp to touch down at half distance. It's simple self preservation. Was it hazardous? Hell no! Safer than stooging around over a free-for-all shooting gallery at approach heights and speeds, and hardly hazardous from an aviation point of view, it just involved actively flying the aeroplane at heights not usually done with airliners. It's only flying the bloody aeroplane after all. Isn't thst what we're supposed to be able to do? Bloody spectacular when Hercs did it though. If they had to the bigger jets would do as tight a turn onto ultra low/short finals as far as their higher speeds allowed but usually preferred a downwnd landing on 05 rather than a near wingtip scraping turn over the threshold as I saw an EVA Air 747 do once.
The people who came unstuck in that part of the world were the ones who forgot/stretched the fundamentals of weight and performance, not those who employed the fundamentals of skilful flying which is all too common in Africa.
I believe Mog operates as a normal airfield these days so all this is history and Mr Jepp is again king, but if you're flying into places where anything moving is a potential target it sharpens one's judgement wonderfully as to where you want to be and for how long rather than how Mr Jeppesen or formal training suggests you might.
Last edited by meleagertoo; 5th Dec 2019 at 15:27.
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This was a perfect Cavok day with a clear visible horizon, a fixed horizon angle above the glare-shield will keep you level in any type of aircraft at any altitude ,
Here you go:
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