TALES OF A WAYWARD AVIATOR

[wollypilot]

duke i hope you don't get seasick!

Cheers, wp

[Duke Elegant]

Chin thrust high , I took the seas head-on. On the balls of my feet I danced and swayed to her motions .... Aaaah! Admiral Nelson sprung to mind ... and Russell Crowe ... and the Duke.

I crouched over the radar on this fine sunny day but it was devoid of dangerous targets that I would have to demonstrate superior skills in order to avoid them.

I glanced at my shoes , a sporty pair of Polo Sports by Ralph Lauren. The first lady of the Hyperlas had shopped for these , after all , the rest of the crew had them. I had caged my trusty old brothel creepers below.

Skipper Dave efficiently deployed the mainsail in order to steady this galloping maiden.... she moaned and rolled over to a comfortable heel and she plunged on ..............

Morale was high , excitement peaked.

[Duke Elegant]

I gripped the sternrail with clammy paws. I heaved and spewed ... spewed last nights sixty dollar sushi dinner back to the deep. My Polo Sports streaked with viscous slime.

I stared , glassy eyed , into this lumpy green hell.

I growled and retched in despair and I cursed this black hearted , heaving , pox ridden harlot that tried to buck me off with her corkscrewing writhing gyrations.

I was a frothing , bug eyed fool.

Fifty feet away , up in the bow was the chain locker. If I could make my way there , I would wrap myself in chain and step over the side. How do I lift two hundred feet of chain ? Maybe if I unshackle Skipper Dave's six hundred dollar anchor ...

"Them that dies will be the lucky ones" ... that Blackbeard the Pirate phrase meant something to me now.

I looked towards the cockpit where three gallant sailors chatted merrilly. Oh how I despise them.

Then Skipper Dave says , "Hey Duke! The good news about all that vomitting and spewing is that it sure saves wear and tear on yer ars*hole." They laughed heartily ... and I attempted a grin.

[loopy]

No great shame Duke. I've been reading C.S. Forester's Horatio Hornblower novels again. That hero was often sea sick after his first ocean voyage after being ashore a long while. I'm sure you'll feel as hardy as the other ol' salts after a couple of days.

Fair winds for you Duke.

[ahramin]

Ah yes, good old Lord Admiral Hornblower. He was always a bit too wishy washy for me but great books nonetheless.

I can think of few things more miserable than being seasick on a delivery. Oh well, this time last week i was jibing a spinnaker in 15 knot winds and while i am not as fast as i used to be, at least a year in the prairies has not turned me into some nancy who barfs his cookies at the first wave .

At least you are on the water.

All the best Duke.

[Duke Elegant]

This is the big test since I posted some pics on Avcanada's New Aviation Photo Album.

I want to link to a particular picture.

http://www.avcanada.ca/albums/displayim ... t=&pos=-22

[Duke Elegant]

Well anyhow , the rest of the sailing adventure went quite smoothly once my sea-legs returned. We basically motor sailed the whole way and twice had dolphins play in the bow wave and two of us got to see a large whale slapping the ocean with its pectoral fin.

We rounded Cape Flattery into Juan de Fuca Straits over calm seas and blue skies. A classy dinner , served upon the teak table in the cockpit , was enjoyed by all. Five days , it took.

A memorable experience , I must say.

[Duke Elegant]

Before I pay homage to "The Teacher" I would like to share a story that still catches my imagination to this day.

Was it just a coincidence?

The following picture should explain to you true aviators why I stayed on the A26 for twenty years.

I am honoured to have flown this beautiful aircraft in the twilight years of it's service. It is indeed , an end of an era.



Please also note the nose art that was painted on Tanker 26 by Eric Ebert , a very close friend with whom I spent four summers in Alberta and the Yukon. I also had the pleasure of hiring him and training him to captain the Super DC3 (C117). Eric was a very talented person and an exceptional pilot. He was cerebral and had passed second year medical school with hounours , only to . it in and return to do what he had a passion for.

We welcomed him back.

Over many jugs of frothy intelligence we finally agreed as to the content of the artwork. Eric spent weeks making stencils and doing it right.

And the art that arose from those inspired frothy encounters was a saucy lass sitting on a fire hose (which is not quite finished) and with a come hither look that would stir anybody's loins.

I was between wives at the time and found his artwork so alluring.

Eric was tragically lost in the crash of an Electra L188 fire bomber last summer. He was the First Officer , soon to be made Captain.

[Duke Elegant]

Here is a closeup of Eric's work.

[Duke Elegant]

So anyhow , that winter I hook up with a lady that I had known for twenty years or more and before you could say "pre-nup" she became Mrs Elegant.

Eric Ebert had never met Kathy when he did the art.

Kat came to Alberta for a visit and Eric was in the Yukon so we posed Kat in a motel room in Fort Mac and we intended to send him a picture of my new missus.

He had even got the shoes right !!!

So somehow , I think we're all connected.

What a nice way to remember a friend , eh?

I miss ya buddy.

[Duke Elegant]

I am bumping this forward for a friend.

[Duke Elegant]

There was a time when I was at the top of my game.

From my cheery office at the Chilliwack airport I rode herd over a couple of King Airs , two hard working Navajos , two Cessna C177s that served as ab-initio trainers , rental aircraft and light duty charter aircraft. Our Cessna Caravan on amphibious floats was based up the coast and was the final link into the floating logging camps that we serviced.

Some camps like Kimsquit and Taleomy River had short , challenging gravel strips , into which we flew both King Airs and Navajos. Kimsquit was 2000 feet long acording to the Flight Supplement but it at least had an uphill slope to arrest a charging , fully loaded King Air.

We had high flotation landing gear on the King Airs and this was invaluable on these rough strips.

The technique was that as soon as the wheels touched , full reverse was actioned slowly to affirm directional control then eased out so that at 60 knots flight idle was selected and the props pulled into feather on the run , still going slightly uphill to come to rest at the top of the hump with hardly a touch of the brakes and props slapping around harmlessly. This way we could coast downhill slowly on startup and turn back 180 degrees for take off.

Yep! Crew change day. Logging equipment operators , fallers , drivers , scalers , road builders , cooks , tools , spare parts , chain saws , personal gear, food and so on.....
They'd all spill out of the airplane and amble along the stony road up to the mess where top quality food was scoffed , a sort of bonus to the job.

Sometimes , hard , brutal flying at only hundreds of feet , in the rain was required. Low level in the grey crap , hugging the steep shoreline of the fjords and inlets , flanked by steep , unseen , menacing mountains. They threw down boiling , turbulent winds that scatterd on the rough inlet waters. And wet snow , freezing rain to be thrown into the cauldron.

On other days , direct flights in the clear blue at sixteen thousand descending down over ice fields and glaciers and streaking over mini paradises of azure lakes and down amongst the not so menacing mountains that now shed their obscurity. This was one of those days.

Lunch in the mess on crew change day was always a boisterous affair as incoming crew told tales of their days at home and the weary outgoing crew became bouyed with enthusiam for their coming days off.

Aviators were generally very popular as they made this event happen. Well , most of the time anyhow. Weather delays were commonplace and many a day was spent pacing the Flight Service station with other skunked pilots ... Terry Shields of Kwatna Timber , Paul from Nechance Logging , Pierre from PASCO and Bella Coola pilots from Wilderness.. they were a very capable bunch... we have a common enemy .... summer fog or vicious inlet winds that often blew the wind measureing equipment over.

But not today. The outgoing crew eagerly await us at the airplane , ever so willing to help load so they got home one minute sooner. Now it's time to pay attention.

Headset on ... to muffle the excitied chattering in the cabin. A couple of deep breaths , just to go into aviation mode. Engines start. Take off checks comple even though we are facing away from our intended runway.

We rest on the hump. Brakes release as the prop levers are moved out of feather to full fine and as the props grab enough air she slowly moves off the hump , slightly downhill now. When ahead of the gravel and rocks the right engine is brought up towards full power , turning the aircraft in as wide an arc as possible , careful to keep it moving , always ahead of the rocks.... now the inner engine is brought up , gathering the right power lever in the process and full power is applied just as the airplane is aligned with the take off run and we accelerate slowly up hill , over the hump and hurtle down the strip towards the inlet with the wing tips only feet away from the willows. Willows from which a bear or a deer could , and often did, amble.

Time to assess all possible emergencies is denied me.

The book does not quite address the required take off speed for these conditions. Lets see ......

I estimate that I am at gross weight ... but then again , those hockey bags look bigger that 60 lbs ... some even smell of huge salmon. Gravel and rocks ... full power is not obtained here until hundreds of yards down the runway... uphill for a ways then downhill ... the wind appears to be blowing above the trees but gusty below..

I feel the familiar tug of the sandy patch on the right main but we are through now ....

She knows when to fly ... I have unlocked that secret through experiment that is now called experience.

She obeys me , like the loyal Beech that she is.

So I reward her by tucking her wheels away as we leave the Kimsquit strip astern with room to spare.

[Duke Elegant]

Sorry for the delay folks. I started this next group of tales with enthusiam as there are three big lessons to be learned therin.



Over the past few days as I have struggled with morphine induced constipation which would result in my sitting on the toilet , white knuckes clenching the sides of the bathtub , teeth clenched down on a rolled up newspaper , eyes bulging from a bloated , straining face as I shoot out a ball bearing sized turd with a resounding "plink" ...and all this after two hours of sitting reading about J Lo , Ben Affleck , Operah's fat problems and the two headed alien pimp.

Today is a good day so I'll get busy.

[Duke Elegant]

No two trips were ever the same. But memory seems to serve up a generic trip somehow. Always busy , always adventurous and exciting one way or another. And we always had an overall plan that could me massaged to suit the mission. No two plans were the same either. We serviced three logging companies and two helicopter logging outfits that kept us busy with crew changes as far away as Alaska.

These were the glory days alright , the early nineties.

I'd flown my hundred or so hours of fire bombing in the Yukon and was in the nine months R and R mode that was required to return me back to normal life..... only to go do it again.

So I get a call from my friend , Sir Cumference (Big Howie), a man of ample girth with opinions to match. He tells me of our two collegues , Loui and Milt , who had returned from an auction in the US having bought an old Navajo that they had convinced themselves that Walter , of Walter's Bulldozing needed. This was a surprise to Walter , especially at three am from two drunken varmints in the centre of the USA. Well , friends are friends , so Walter coughs up the seventy grand and goes back to work in the bush.

So the Navajo sat at the Chilliwack airport until it was revealed that there hatched a plan to do crew changes up North to Bella Coola , for Walter's road building company , about a two hour trip maybe once a week. Well , nobody knew how to go about it. But , Big Howie did ... so he phones me. Yep! I'm interested so Walter's Mrs phones me and told me to go check out the airplane and tell her what I thought of the plan. Howie and I studied the manual , finished our coffee and took her for a burn. I liked it very much and accepted the part time job. I guess I would meet the boss on the first crew change up North. We spent some time together in Bella Coola while the crews were taken in to the floating camp by Beaver and it became quickly evident that once a week wasn't enough , especially when we discussed the possibility of flying spare parts and dynamite too. I immediately found the flying to be fun and very challenging especially since I had no current instrument rating and these wet coastal mountainous conditions were not a place for a tenderfoot. Besides , I sure want to get to know this airplane before I try the deadly concoction of an IFR/VFR mix.

The Bella Coola airport, flanked by rocky , slabbed sided mountains up to ten thousand feet , was Wilderness Airlines territory , always had been. In fact , it was they who flew our crew in on the Beavers and upon whose Navajos and King Airs , our crews used to travel.

The Duke was the new kid on the block and about as popular as a pork chop in a synagogue to the Wilderness Airline management. But Hey! A buck is a buck and Walter has his rights.

[Duke Elegant]

There was a rough airstrip , good for Cessna 206's and Islanders , about seventeen kilometers from the inlet where the barge upon which the whole camp including about forty rooms was located. We decided that Walter was not short of D8 Cats , trucks and graders so at his own expense he revived the road and the airstrip to include Navajos. This cut out the costly floatplane charters and now we could go direct from our home base directly into camp.

And poof! There went my nine months off a year. This was now a full time job that I had a passion for , given that I played a huge role in the business planning and execution. I learned a whole new industry in a matter of months and quickly gained an efficient relationship with parts suppliers , logging management and so on.

It quickly became evident to all the other contractors in camp that we were DIRECTLY involved with the industry that was rapidly becoming our specialty. We already flew direct to camp from Vancouver Island too. We were a private operator up until now so in order to legally procure their business , an operating certificate would have to be put in place.

I was so busy flying that Walters Mrs hired an expensive consultant to slog through the paperwork but he was ex government and worked so slowly that rigor mortis set in.... so I punted him and quickly discovered that paperwork was the weakest skill in my otherwise handsome inventory.

Once again , I survived this emergency by dealing the Jack from the back of the pack.

[Mitch Cronin]

Uhhhh... Duke? Yer leavin' us hangin' in the middle of yer story dude...!

Maybe we'll have to get some kind of a system goin' that keeps the morphine away from you until a story is finished? (well, ok, unless you really need it... )

Hope you're not in too much pain....

[Duke Elegant]

And I was falling in love again too. Her smooth , shapely form was the colour of slightly suntanned breasts with tanned nipple coulored trim and polished prop spinners protruding in a saucy manner. Navajos have quite a perky stance and a feline purr with the occasional synchronic buzz akin to that of a sex toy. Aah she was luring me away from my comfortable but nimble old harlot , the A26 Invader.


Or was it the challenge that encompassed more that my flying skills?. This challenge required fiscal sense and discipline comensureate with the banking industry. My resume would have read : Grade 10 Education but schooled by Hector Stone (for whom I worked at the dog track).

I would forgo the priveledges of a privateer for this tempting full time job right out of my home airport. I bargained the freedom of being a contract pilot for a wad of cash. But I made one last bleating request of Walter that I could do six weeks (half a season) of fire bombing , just to wean myself of the addiction to both the A26 and fire bombing itself. He agreed so I quickly checked out Gordon , our very capable contract maintainence engineer and went on a mini adventure.

Upon my return , I would build an airline.

[Duke Elegant]

I'd split my summer contract with an old curmudgeon and fellow contract pilot , Butch Foster , who in his retirement years kept busy by building and flying small airplanes , fire bombing in the summer and sharing his passion with his students at the Springbank Airport.

So instead of paying for an expensive consultant to draw up the application for the Operating Certificate , I cunningly diverted that money towards the hiring of an assistant. So Honest Ken , our local aircraft broker highly reccommended a young local lad who had flawlessly completed some photographic missions out on the praries and sold me a plane while he was at it.

This young chap , also called Ken , was a little shy of the flying hours I was looking for but he possessed two items I could use , an instructor rating and a university degree.

Ah ! It was like Flying Scorcery the way I played my magic..... and a little flying school appeared.... with a Cessna Cardinal as the trainer and future light charter and rental aircraft.

Now with my new access to a university education the slogging paper war was waged to a successful conclusion and Timberline Air Ltd began operations. I was the operations manager , chief pilot , maintainence co-ordinator , dispatcher and pilot. Ken was an instructor , secretary , dispatcher , safety officer , pilot and swamper. The generous owners , Walter and Mrs W were well respected , hard working people.

Whilst awaiting the certificate , we got the nod to install the latest in Navigation technology .... Loran C. We were so excited at the chance to escape reliance on a distant VOR/DME position when trapped on top of cloud pierced by jagged peaks above ten thousand feet. We would search for a hole and auger down VFR, gear and flaps extended so as to keep power on , only to lose the VOR below the peaks and then transition to rainy , foggy map reading and local knowledge to .. run into the narrow valley where your destination tried to deny you access. And Vortex Generators too. We put them on as soon as we heard of the benefits to doing so and thereby saved their cost many times over especially with tires and brakes.

We were swamped with work right out of the gate and thankfully , under the excellent maintainence performed by Firkus Aircraft , the old 'Ho rode some rough and tough ground in bad conditions at full gallop. She carried crews , tools , spares , explosives , large 1000lb hydraulic cylinders , truck radiators saws , beer and so on ....in and out of short gravel strips carved into hillsides and valley bottoms only to be asked to perform the ballet of an IFR approach in rain , fog and ice ... right down to the numbers at home.

And the Christmas bonus ... wow ....

It just doesn't get any better than this.


..............then , one day .....

[Duke Elegant]

Sometimes , just when you think things can't get better , they do.

It was our first winter off as the deep snows had choked the loggers out of the mountains , inlets froze up and road building ceased. There was a slackening of the pace so the old 'Ho was sent to the barn for a makeover and lots of catch-up maintainence , after all she'd been ridden hard all summer and fall. Ken kept our small flyiong school busy producing eager young students that saw a future right here at our home airport.
I had to produce,

We spent enjoyable times shopping for a King Air while at the same time working the financial sorcery required for a million dollar purchase , made simpler with Walter's sound financial history. I , too , had a hand in this magic with promises of contracts to support helicopter logging operations as far away as Alaska. You see I had many friends from the old wild days who were now Operations Managers of these companies and the like.

We found a beautiful King Air 100 in Witchita the colour of which matched our stationery so we bought her.

Since she was now my new steed , I trained Ken on the old 'Ho and it soon became obvious that we required the services of a dispatcher/secretary so Walter's daughter was appointed.

It was time to piss on my own territory.

This did not meet with my approval as more family creeping into the equation meant a danger of loss of automy so I refused. However , I would be delighterd to HIRE her with clear view as to who was the lead dog. Remember , the lead dog has the best view.

So she worked for me , not her parents.

Well she sure was purty and she sure was perky.

As soon as we launched into a very busy season it became evident that Denise was super efficient and a comfortable working bond was formed fuelled by success.

The whole family was hard working , successful , honest and very generous.

In the King Air I soared higher , faster and further but I became a victim of my own success. Stress.
Even though I learned to deal with it , it stalked me nonethe less. The difficult scheduling of numerous logging companies became unwieldy but I soldiered on.

One dictatorial camp superintendant , who far too often indulged in the cups , challenged me. You would have to know how foolish it is to throw down the gauntlet in front of the Duke and he tried to change the way I do things.

So quite late on a Friday night , long after I'd hung up my spurs , I got a call from Walter on the radio phone from Taleomy River. "I want you to get in the Navajo tomorrow early in the morning with Denise , bring the flight schedules , pick me up at Taleomey and we will go to Kimsquit and sort this out."

"Piss off!" says I as I had already coaxed one petite breast from its security and had plans for the second. I had already determined that the post coital rest period extended into my next duty period.

"Tell you what Walter ," says I , "You phone me at 8am tomorrow and I will tell you if this job is worth it or not. Is it really worth the stress ... hell! I've flown my bag off ten days straight. And by the way ..I will not change anything anyhow... no way .!" I hung up.

She squirmed and giggled as the second popped free.

True to form , Walter phones me at 8 am and informs me that he understands how busy I have been but not to worry , he will have Ken fly the Navajo up with Walter, his wife , Denise and her husband and they will make a day of it since the weather was perfect.

WOW! You gotta love this company.

The phone call that jangled into my life at 3 PM that day was chilling .... chilling indeed....

[Duke Elegant]

There is a lesson here ... so pay attention.