7 minute read
Bush Pilot - Hugh Pryor
Smelly
MAKES SENSE
Yes, I know... I am an old bush-bum-pilot, surviving on copious quantities of nostalgic ‘seat-of-thepants’ flying stories of pilots who either had ‘the right stuff’ or who had to find a job in an office, swearing at a computer.
WELL, you may be right, but I would like to point out to you that we have experienced at least four major air disasters in recent years caused by computer malfunctions, compounded by the fact that the modern generation of pilots does not instinctively know what it is like to fly a real aeroplane, as opposed to a simulator or a computer game. In fact, it could be argued that these disasters would never have happened if the computers had not been there at all and the flying had been left up to a couple of competent, old-fashioned ‘hands-on’ pilots.
Traditionally we have been given five ‘senses’ to help us get through the day without falling over or bumping into things...’sight’, ‘hearing’, ‘touch’, ‘taste’ and ‘smell’ and us old fogies use every single one of them when we fly aeroplanes, so let’s have a look and see how they help.
1: SIGHT
Nowadays, of course, we rely to an ever increasing extent on computers, but even in these modern times, we still depend on our eyes to look out for other traffic, and even if we are not looking out of the window, it’s nice to be able to watch the instruments, in case you don’t have a good book to read and just occasionally the crew might actually have to land the thing!
2: HEARING
Ears are useful tools to have in an aeroplane, not simply for the Co-pilot to hear the Captain’s only joke for the umpteenth time and therefore to know when to burst into caterwauls of laughter, but also to pick up that weird distant hissing noise, which might indicate that somebody didn’t shut the door properly or that nobody spotted the snake which had chosen that shady nook behind the rudder pedals to settle down for a postprandial siesta.
Of course, there are various bells and whistles which are specifically designed to attract the attention of the crew via their ears and in fact this was once used for a rather amusing ‘pay-back’.
There was a certain Captain who will remain anonymous, (although his name did start with an ‘A’, in case he denies this story) who had the infuriating habit of stealing slot times. He would sit glued to the ‘Delivery’ frequency until you only had a couple of minutes until your slot time was due and then he would sneak in and inform the Controller that he was ready for departure clearance and push-back.
Having heard nothing from you, they would clear Captain ‘A’ to push back and taxi, leaving you to get another slot time, which might involve a delay of anything up to an hour for the next available slot.
One of our Captains had the answer:- Having lost his slot time to Captain ‘A’ for the second time in a week, he waited until the ‘slot burglar’ was half way down the runway, on take-off, before reaching up to the cockpit loud speaker with his microphone and pressing the ‘Test’ button on the ‘Master Warning Claxon’.
The resulting panic alert screamed out over the airwaves and into the ear phones of Captain ‘A’, who, upon hearing the urgent scream of the claxon, instinctively aborted his take-off and spent the next hour trying to find out what had set it off! It never occurred to him that anybody could have been playing a little jape on him even though he had to wait for nearly two hours for his next slot time.
3: TOUCH
I was flying for the Red Cross during the war in Angola and as a result of the war, Angolan airspace was not exactly friendly, in fact we lost three of our six Twin Otters almost incredibly without incurring any injuries, and our C-130 Hercules, sadly with no survivors.
Our last landing of that week was at a place called Ganda. Ganda airstrip is not paved, but it is long enough and smooth enough to handle a Hercules.
There is a large bald dome of rock which sticks up out of the ground on the northwest corner of the runway. We got airborne and as we approached the dome. I noticed that there was someone sitting right on top of it and I waved politely until I realised that the stick which he was holding was
actually spitting smoke in our direction and his stick was actually a Kalashnikov assault rifle.
This led me desperately to head for the clouds, which were mercifully low and offered us somewhere to hide from our poacher down below.
Then smoke began to infiltrate the flight deck...not thick black smoke...more of a mist which smelled strongly of hydraulic fluid, so I quickly checked the flaps, the brakes and the nose-wheel steering to see if anything was obviously leaking, and then I presented the back of my hand to the floor, as recommended by HSE and thank goodness I did, because the floor was hot enough to fry the hairs on my arm and I got to the hydraulic pump circuit breaker before it cooked the whole aeroplane.
After landing at our home base of Huambo, engineers had to disconnect the nose-wheel steering before towing us into the hangar, where I told our heroic story of being shot at by that little guy on the dome at Ganda.
As it turned out, the reason why the pump had failed was because I had not checked the fluid level for over a week and it had run out, causing the pump to seize...so guess who now religiously checks his fluid levels before each flight...just to save embarrassment, you understand!
4: SMELL
Well that’s fairly obvious...if it is ‘avgas, it will smell of petrol. if it is ‘avtur’ then it will smell like a paraffin stove and if it is ‘diesel’ it will smell like an old London Bus.
After ten years of flying for the Red Cross in some of the less well known corners of Africa I became familiar with one of the most sickening aromas known to man and that is rotting human flesh, otherwise known as ‘gas gangrene’.
One Christmas the Red Cross bosses came out from Geneva to congratulate us for a job well done, to wish us a Merry Christmas and to raise morale with some nice little freebies from the civilised part of the World , that is Geneva. There was a case of really delicious Swiss ‘bubbly’ and another one of a rich and fruity red wine from the southern valleys of the Alps. This was followed by an exotic thermo-nuclear liqueur which was obviously designed to bring blessed release from the relentless snow drifts which clog the high mountain retreats during the winter, but their ‘piece de resistance’ was a priceless Swiss cheese from the remote alms, hidden from view by the jagged peaks of the frozen mountains.
The cheese had the exact consistency and odour of gas gangrene and when I mentioned this it was probably the reason why it was left completely untouched during their visit.
5: TASTE
Believe it or not, yes, taste also has its place in the pre-flight checklist, rather like ‘smell’. Petrol, kerosene and hydraulic fluid all taste very different to each other, to experienced taste buds. Obviously, you don’t need to gobble down pints of the stuff...as it was explained to me, you simply take a finger-tip-full of the liquid and ‘sniff’ it with your tongue. In fact a certain Captain ‘Knowall’ once proudly pointed out to me, as he licked his fingers, that the liquid which was leaking out of the nose gear strut of our aircraft was definitely not hydraulic fluid and I didn’t have the heart to tell him that it had actually been left there by the engineer’s dog.
So, all you young aces, us Oldies treat the modern automatic flight and navigation gismos as tools to help us to fly the aeroplane, in other words, we actually fly the computers, if they are working and if they are not, then we just revert to flying the real thing...simple really.
Global 6500 Smooth ride into service
