Sahara Sweatin'

The harsh sound of idle and cold rubber forced to immediately spin up to over 200km/ph and absorb  hundreds of tons impacting smoothest, sweet tarmac announced my arrival into the military state of Algeria. Endless views of blue Mediterranean bliss mixed with the invasive Pacific ocean, kept me glued to my window seat out of the B777-300. As always , this LET pilot was too excited for words and incredibly grateful to experience another new theatre of operation. A country troubled by a colonial past and exploited for seemingly endless riches awaited me on the other side of Immigration and a short hop in a local B737-8 to my destination.

The town of Hassi is truly in the middle of nowhere and exist's almost entirely due to the rich Oil and Gas fields that surround it. Flying in you are greeted by an almost surreal experience. The Desert is a beautiful mix of contrasting colors of sand and snaking shadows of the mighty Sahara. Flare towers burning off excess gas during 24hr drilling operations, project flames in excess of 10 meters up into the sky giving the effect of candles dotted periodically, over an endless Arabian carpet. I felt like an adventurer of old as the floppy winged sev-3 positioned itself for landing into so remote a town. It is no secret among my close family that this fly-boy, has always loved the desert. My Dad gifted my brothers and I the unforgettable privilege of 2 trips to the Namib in our youth and from those days of gazing out on a border-less ocean of unforgiving dunescape(I don't care if that is not a word, it is now! ) I quickly realized the attraction of the desert.



These wild place's where very few of our kind can survive or at-least thrive, are truly special because they cut us right back down to size. It is an immediate dose of humility when you find yourself in the center of a vast featureless desert or on a near vertical and jagged mountain pass. You gaze around wide eyed, realizing how futile and pathetic your day to day concerns are when right here in this moment, mother nature could conjure up a heat wave or mountain storm and whip you off this mortal roller coaster in one flick of her fingers. This brings an immediate sense of calm and clarity to your moment, helping you to realize who you really are. That remind's me, I need to get back into my hiking boots and get climbing up some beautiful mountains.



During my time here I have been fortunate enough to fly across majority of the country or at least most of the Western side. I have seen every hue of sand one could hope to see,beautiful desert escarpments with rock riverbeds scything through the sand land's. I also had the notable privilege of a beautiful visual approach through the lower end of the climate altering Atlas mountains into the fiercely military, airport of Bechar. Beware in Bechar ,my crew mates warned me. Don't even lift your cellphone in the direction of those MIG24'S on the ramp or the Suhkoi SU30MKA hiding in the desert bunker across the runway. Military prison awaits those who dare a photo of military hardware in this country. Luckily, the Atlas range and impressive flying weaponry are etched into my memory for all time and no photo was necessary.



Thank you Algeria. It was an incredible opportunity and I have no doubt that I will be back.



Au' Revoir!

The Democratic Republic of Chaos

My First tour for the ICRC(2nd tour for Airtec) started smoothly with an easy transition via Kigali on Rwandair through the border by vehicle to the unusual little town of Bukavu on the Southern shores of Lake Kivu. I arrived at my accommodation to a surprisingly comfortable crew house on a finger like peninsula that pushes out into the menacing looking, grey-blue of this enormous lake. Crew handover was a pleasure with the customary braai and too many beer's on the evening of my arrival with me ending up on the couch and as one can imagine, wearing those beer's the next day. It was an off weekend and a nice welcome to an otherwise chaotic country.

The flying began with me shitting myself for the first 6 sector's, figuratively due to the immense challenge of navigating an un-pressurised aircraft between colossal and awe-inspiring mountains and active volcano's. To add to the mix for my first day, some fierce equatorial storms which left me a white knuckled mess and contemplating what the hell I was doing in this god forsaken shithole in the middle of Africa. After my first week, I calmed down and began to enjoy myself and realised that this is definitely the most incredible flying that I will probably ever do. Everything became that little bit more beautiful and I began to notice all the mind blowing scenery out of my office window which I had failed to notice during the blur of my first week. The never ending blue abyss of Lake Edward and Kivu to the all commanding, jagged peaks of Mount Rwenzori. Rwenzori looks down on you with disdain and malice like the great Africa goddess that she is, snow capped and wind beaten. Flying along at 12000ft you look up at this immense feature of the great African rift in fear and feel as though this Mountain is pulling you closer, to smite you like the irritating foreign, buzzing creature that we most certainly were.

Most of the time we moved ICRC staff, food and medical supplies to the various base's from the central hubs of Goma and Bukavu to the Northern and Southern hubs of Bunia and Lumbumbashi. When I say hub, in this context, I mean an area of intense human suffering. It is a sad thing to see but a privilege to be able to use your skill set to help people who are really in need. Be it from severe malnutrition, malaria or medical/psychological attention and treatment after a rebel attack. To see what one human with a false agenda can do to a random and innocent inhabitant of a remote village is to me, the most sad and unnecessary act that I have ever come across. These evil rebel groups who are funded by extremist foreign funds and in places, religious or tribal beliefs perform the most brutal act's on their own countrymen . They ride into a village atop a wobbly old Toyota hilux , music blaring out of giant speakers and firing AK47's skyward to make their presence known. With a scene quite like the one  depicted in the movie, Blood Diamond they round up young and old in a random fashion, pull out a large timber axe and start chopping off legs, not arms but legs above or below the knee. The reason for removing a leg or so they believe makes it impossible for that person to become a soldier that might one day fight against them. Short sleeve or long sleeve style, just like the famous film. People don't believe me when they hear this tale. They nod in a false, understanding fashion and then just like the majority of humankind, carry on oblivious to the world around them and the horror being suffered in the darkest hellhole's of the world. Awareness helps all of humankind, ignorance only helps your lonesome self.

My First month in the DRC flew by with around 93hrs in a month and some monumental distances covered. On two or 3 occasions we flew 7.5 hours in a day and one particular flight we managed 430 nautical miles with the nose gear stuck in the down position, no mean feat in the fuel limited LET410 let me tell you. The reason for the nose gear being stuck in the down position was because on landing at this bush strip in the Northern most part of the DRC, wet sand had flung up on landing and wedged itself in the linkage of our mechanical down-lock. For the gear to retract this lock which resembles a hook, simply pivots hydraulically down and to the side allowing extension and retraction or otherwise known as the gear cycle to occur. As one can deduce it is far better to have your landing gear locked down then locked up although the latter situation being almost impossible in the LET due to a myriad of back up and emergency systems. After some furious fuel calculations and the weather god's smiling down upon us we were happy to continue and landed in Bunia with around an hour remaining in the main tanks and alternates near by. I still believe that everything worked out smoothly on this day because we had gone through an immense effort to repatriate a paralysed child soldier to his family on the border with the CAR. The big guy up stairs had parted the cloud's, given us just enough of a very welcome tailwind and guided us safely to our destination. A day that I will never forget and finished off with a well deserved , ice cold beer.

The DRC changed me in many way's, it gave me experiences that I have been dreaming of since I first started flying and challenged me in way's that broke me down and then built me right back up again. It was an incredible opportunity and time of personal growth, I appreciate everything in my life just that little but more each day. I came out of it after all, a better man.

LET410 Rating and a new job !

As you have come to expect, things have been a little slow on the blog and I apologize for that but when life takes over you have to get the priority's out of the way first.

Moving on, I GOT A NEW JOB! I really had got tired of the C208B and the Chieftain/Navajo:) The 208 I had simply flown for ever and the Chieftain was a lot of fun but it was a risky aircraft to fly and I am glad I have around 200 safe hours on it.

After some running around between flights for the previous company to get interviews and sim checks done, Air-Tec Global gave me a shot on the Mighty LET410. An amazing opportunity and after 6 months it has changed my life for the better in a variety of ways.

Onto the rating then. The Aircraft Industries LET410 is a Czech built commuter category aircraft that has been around for quite some time, originally designed as a replacement for the Russian Airforce Antonov 2/AN2 .

Aircraft Industries was commissioned to replace this indestructible cold war biplane with an aircraft capable of various configurations such as cargo,mail, medivac, paraops, commuter airline and general Air-force requirements. So as you can imagine and quite predictably, they built this aircraft as tough as a Russian tank.

The L410 is a high wing, twin turbo prop, multi-role Aircraft that has been around since 1971 and has evolved into a design synonymous with extreme operations in the most remote area's of the planet. From the highest airport in the world, Lukla in Nepal to the extremely hot and harsh Sahara desert. Equally at home landing on a snow covered Siberian bush strip or touching down on a big tarmac runway in between the Airliners. She really is capable of any and all operations.

The first power plant to be used on the Let and which is still in use today(being phased out) is the Walther M601 turbo prop engine, variants of these seen on the aircraft are the M601E'S and M601F'S with very slight changes between the variants with some capable of water injection. Water injection is quite simply , atomized H2o injected directly into the combustion chamber at a calculated rate, reducing Inter-turbine temperature and improving overall thermo-dynamic efficiency. This was a design addition after a large market for the let opened up in the hot and high environment of Africa, when operators realized that the M601 was not such a performer in these area's.

Airtec Global has been operating in Africa since the early 1990's and within the last decade have upgraded and overhauled their fleet of Let's as their operation expanded dramatically. The main upgrade's which have taken place on 90% of the fleet have been a complete overhaul of exterior,interior,avionics and most importantly the upgrade to new General Electric H75-200 engines.
These engines have made an incredible difference to performance and efficiency. The difference between old and new makes one think how they used to operate on the previous generation of engines. It is a scary difference let me tell you. All new let's are now fitted with the GE engine type which is a vastly improved and new design based on the M601.

On to the rating. The cockpit of the Let is manly to say the least, every item is over designed and strong. The overhead panel and it's array of circuit breakers and switches are wonderful to operate as they have a lovely industrial style action. It makes you feel like you are flying a real aeroplane and much more involved in the process of flying, not pushing a soft , American-friendly button where something is done automatically for you, it is a very manual experience which is rewarding and fun. In the cockpit of the Let it is very rare to find an autopilot. It is a completely hands on and testing experience which makes it even better if you really love to fly, which I do.

I did my rating in Bethlehem,South Africa with the simulator training completed in Johannesburg. It was an incredible learning experience with the ground school/theory and actual flying completed for us by 2 Ex-SAAF instructors with an immense amount of experience. For 2 weeks I became an absolute sponge and just soaked in every bit of information. Flying the aircraft itself was very different to what I am used to, firstly because I have mostly flown from the left my whole life, flying from the right all of sudden took some getting used to. The aircraft is incredibly well balanced, the engines are smooth and quiet . Colossal trailing link gear on the main undercarriage and nose make landing the machine a pleasurable affair. The Let has some nuances that a flight crew member has to be cautious of which is drilled into you from the beginning of training. The main one for the rating was not to flare the aircraft with too high of a nose attitude. The reason for this is because it has a low tail and if your speed gets too low and you try to arrest the hard landing that you are about to have by increasing angle of attack(fairly normal practice on GA aircraft), it is almost guaranteed to strike the tail on touch down. This has happened at Airtec once or twice and involves a substantial amount of paperwork and a tense management team. After a couple landings this becomes a small issue as you learn to land the machine in a certain style and gradually master it over time. After some upper air work with simulated one engine out operations and some stalls which were beautifully docile, we headed back to the field for a couple circuits and then all was signed out.

It was by far the most enjoyable flight training that I have ever completed and it was such a privilege to have a company look after our every need during this process. I came out of it having learnt an incredible amount and really feeling like a new man and new pilot.

Ready for tour!!!