A flight to forget
Oh what a flight
Okuk's Last Flight
B707 Anecdotes
B707 Introduction
A Biblical Story
A Biblical Story 2
A Biblical Story 3
Forbidden Fruits
Joe's Jolly (Poem)
The Golfer
Suitably Restrained
PX Advertisment 1
PX Advertisment 2
PX Advertisment 3
PX Article 1
PX Article 2
PX Article 3
The Check Ride
First and Last Flt.
First Command
DC3 KOK - POM
The Holiday
Friends at Last
History of P2ANQ
Ferry Flight
Crayfish
FO Cassanova
Larry Blackman
Secret Revealed
Airbus A300
Cargo Capers
Doing it Differently
Side Slip
Larry Blackman
4th Floor Memo
International Arsonist
Office Works
Thru Eyes of a Hostie
Airline Anecdotes
DC3 KOKODA TO PORT MORESBY Posted by Ian Fischer
Back in the "good old days" when PX used to basically give you a DC3 for the day and tell you to "go out and do some charter work", I vividly recall doing a command training trip with a TAA Captain following an overnight in Bulolo to Lae - Kokoda - POM.
The cargo out of Kokoda was invariably huge quantities of beef carcasses and as PX were totally committed to scheduling all flights around PNG during the worst possible weather conditions, I was a little twitchy to observe some serious afternoon "cunims" building up over the Kokoda Gap.
The lowest safe was 13,500 feet, being 2,000 above the actual hard stuff, whilst the skim-the-trees- altitude was 7,000 plus or minus your degree of courage on the day!
In the typical Ansett/TAA philosophy of those days with a "she'll be right Mate" we staggered off the old strip at some ridiculous weight and after performing the traditional climbing orbits in the valley to get up to a respectable height of some 8,000 feet, it soon became evident that it was going to be a dreaded and much feared IFR crossing of the Gap into POM.
The TAA DC3's had only one ADF on board and a stupid looking compass that I never really mastered and that was about it for nav guidance. Now in cloud (IFR) and passing 10,000 feet, my pucker factor was rapidly increasing as the TAA Skipper calmly read off headings that he (hoped) would miss the cumulusrockerus. Struggling to 11,000 feet at 100 fpm rate of climb, I was starting to feel a bit short of breath, freezing cold and now being in torrential rain, water was dripping and leaking through the many holes, nooks and crannies in the cockpit - quite normal.
Of course real men didn't use oxygen back then so with blue lips, blue fingernails, blue toenails and I am sure blue nuts, we soldiered on ever upwards and onwards. Reaching our LSA at METO power and about sixty knots, the Skipper finally conceded that a sniff of the old O2 would be a good idea. Brilliant idea except that we didn't have any of those stupid little plastic masks on board and only one O2 bottle was full anyway. I mean we had a piece of plastic tubing sticking out of the regulator and that was it!
We decided on Plan A (there was no Plan B) being that he would suck on the tube until he felt a bit sparkier and then would pass the chewed-upon-and-dribbly wet end to moi! So in cloud and storms, soaking wet, no radio working, and an ADF needle flopping about all over the place, we fell over the Gap, sucking noisily on our life line secured by gritted teeth whilst trying to do a DME let down on a yet to be established track and me with vivid pictures of our becoming mush on some rocky hillside!!
With much cheering - from me anyway - we finally broke out of the weather, being nowhere close to where we should have been, told many lies to the Tower and after many leaps, hops, bounces and swerves that were part of my normal DC3 landing technique, we parked that magnificent old girl at the cargo hanger.
DC3 flying PNG style!!
Back in the "good old days" when PX used to basically give you a DC3 for the day and tell you to "go out and do some charter work", I vividly recall doing a command training trip with a TAA Captain following an overnight in Bulolo to Lae - Kokoda - POM.
The cargo out of Kokoda was invariably huge quantities of beef carcasses and as PX were totally committed to scheduling all flights around PNG during the worst possible weather conditions, I was a little twitchy to observe some serious afternoon "cunims" building up over the Kokoda Gap.
The lowest safe was 13,500 feet, being 2,000 above the actual hard stuff, whilst the skim-the-trees- altitude was 7,000 plus or minus your degree of courage on the day!
In the typical Ansett/TAA philosophy of those days with a "she'll be right Mate" we staggered off the old strip at some ridiculous weight and after performing the traditional climbing orbits in the valley to get up to a respectable height of some 8,000 feet, it soon became evident that it was going to be a dreaded and much feared IFR crossing of the Gap into POM.
The TAA DC3's had only one ADF on board and a stupid looking compass that I never really mastered and that was about it for nav guidance. Now in cloud (IFR) and passing 10,000 feet, my pucker factor was rapidly increasing as the TAA Skipper calmly read off headings that he (hoped) would miss the cumulusrockerus. Struggling to 11,000 feet at 100 fpm rate of climb, I was starting to feel a bit short of breath, freezing cold and now being in torrential rain, water was dripping and leaking through the many holes, nooks and crannies in the cockpit - quite normal.
Of course real men didn't use oxygen back then so with blue lips, blue fingernails, blue toenails and I am sure blue nuts, we soldiered on ever upwards and onwards. Reaching our LSA at METO power and about sixty knots, the Skipper finally conceded that a sniff of the old O2 would be a good idea. Brilliant idea except that we didn't have any of those stupid little plastic masks on board and only one O2 bottle was full anyway. I mean we had a piece of plastic tubing sticking out of the regulator and that was it!
We decided on Plan A (there was no Plan B) being that he would suck on the tube until he felt a bit sparkier and then would pass the chewed-upon-and-dribbly wet end to moi! So in cloud and storms, soaking wet, no radio working, and an ADF needle flopping about all over the place, we fell over the Gap, sucking noisily on our life line secured by gritted teeth whilst trying to do a DME let down on a yet to be established track and me with vivid pictures of our becoming mush on some rocky hillside!!
With much cheering - from me anyway - we finally broke out of the weather, being nowhere close to where we should have been, told many lies to the Tower and after many leaps, hops, bounces and swerves that were part of my normal DC3 landing technique, we parked that magnificent old girl at the cargo hanger.
DC3 flying PNG style!!
