"Caravan" to Africa

Home again..

.. in time for Christmas eve!



-the end.

Medevac flight.

I need to catch my flight home this evening, but I wanted to visit Masai territory (in western Kenya) today, to see how mission work is going there. I had an invitation from the Russell and Johnson families of Master's Mission, and an offer from Matt Olson to fly me out there in a 210, and was really looking forward to it. But events intervened to change plans.

Late Saturday night, in a village near Aru in northeast Congo, a man was shot by soldiers. He did not die, but was seriously injured. There are no mission or relief flights into Congo from Uganda now because they have been forbidden by the Ugandans (that's too long a story to address here). Friends of the wounded man sought to send out an appeal for help. By Monday evening they had reached Arua, Uganda, having crossed the Congo/Uganda border by road, and gained access to a two-way radio. They sent an appeal for help to AIM-AIR, which was immediately received in Nairobi.

The man's name was Obtwega. He was a nurse at a small church-run clinic. He had been hit three times, once in each leg, and once in the left forearm. The arm injury, in particular, involved shattered bones, and had no hope of recovery without attention from an orthopedic surgeon. In Obtwega's area, he himself was the only available medically-trained person.

His church was appealing to AIM-AIR to airlift him to the Kijabe Medical Center in Kenya for the necessary orthopedic surgery, and treatment of his other wounds. Neither he nor they had any money to offer for re-imbursement of expenses.

The central theme of life in sub-Saharan Africa is, abundance of need and scarcity of resources. It's no different for AIM-AIR than for anyone else. They could not possibly hope to save every life in East and Central Africa that needs saving in ways like this, so the stewards of the scarce resources are routinely faced with agonizing triage decisions about when to say "no", in order to be able to continue to say "yes" as often as possible.

I listened to Andy Keller and Matt Olson discussing this one, late Monday night upon receiving the appeal. Matt decided he was willing to commit AIM-AIR resources to responding positively to this request, without knowing whether or when any money would become available to pay for the costs. It would require cancelling our planned flight to Masai territory today. Matt asked if that was alright with me. I said, of course, and offered to help with the rescue flight in any way possible. A plan was made in which Ron Pontier, who lives at Entebbe, Uganda, and has an AIM-AIR 206 there, would pick up the patient in Arua and bring him to Entebbe, while Matt and I would fly to Entebbe from Nairobi, in order to pick him up and bring him the rest of the way to Kenya.

Many flight requests, like this one, are requests for service of a "one-way" nature: someone needs either to be picked up, or dropped off. Such a request by itself creates an empty leg, but at AIM-AIR such legs rarely stay empty. There is almost always something or someone ready to take advantage of any flight to or from anywhere. This case was no different.

Yesterday, the DC-3..



..flown by Brian Stoltzfus, made an extensive tour with multiple stops in Sudan and Uganda (including Entebbe) before returning to Nairobi. It carried a lot of stuff, but would probably have had room for more, and it turned out that there were things here that Ron needed in Entebbe, which were left off the DC-3 by an oversight. This kind of thing used to happen to Jennilu and I all the time while we were living in the C.A.R., entirely dependent on Nairobi for logistical support. Space on a flight to CAR was one of the most precious of all our scarce resources, and to see it wasted was agonizing. This apparently happens much less frequently now, but of course there will always be some mistakes. And there will often be opportunities to make up for them, as in this case where we suddenly and unexpectedly had an airplane about to fly from Nairobi to Entebbe empty. Checking for anything that might need to go, we found all this:



It includes aircraft engine oil, oil filters, a spare tire, empty jerry cans, aircraft parts, and about a cubic yard of mail. This mail is not all for Ron and Donna, it's for missionaries and church workers throughout Uganda, eastern Congo, and C.A.R., for which the best chance or the only chance of delivery might be for it to be carried on one of Ron's flights. So we stuffed it all into the 210, strapped it down, and took off. Departing Wilson Airport on runway 14, we passed over herds of zebra and gazelle grazing just on the other side of the airport perimeter fence.

Flying over the northeast corner of Lake Victoria we saw dozens of small or medium sized islands in the lake inhabited by fishermen living in small villages.



This is a really big lake. Flying several miles away from any shoreline looks like flying over the ocean: there is sometimes no land visible in any direction out there. All these islands are destinations that are now within AIM-AIR's reach thanks to the availability since last winter of the floatplane.

We used runway 35 at Entebbe. The approach is over the water, and the runway threshold, right on the shoreline, is a long way away from the tower. This was the approach used by the Israelis, at night and without lights, for their 1976 rescue of hostages held in the terminal building. Today there was a cloud of lake flies also using that approach, but we were faster than them, and they splattered all over the wings and the windshield.

A while later Ron showed up in his 206 with Obtwega.



Matt had asked me to try to find a wheelchair. In the course of this task I noticed that the airport staff seemed reluctant to converse with me in Swahili, even though they clearly understood it, but I did manage to get a wheelchair.

Ron spoke bilingually to Obtwega in Swahili and Lingala (a widely-used intertribal language in Congo). He also gave me an explanation about the non-use of Swahili.
"Swahili is out of fashion here these days."
"Why?"
"For some reason, people associate it with the Idi Amin era."
So by using it at Entebbe I had been demonstrating myself to be a relic of that era - even though I was of course no fan of Mr. Amin's.
"So, what do you use now?"
"I'm learning Luganda."
"Is it like other languages?"
"No, it's completely different. There is no vocabulary overlap at all with anything else I know."
Ron speaks French and Lingala (for Congo), Zande and Sango (for C.A.R.), Arabic (for Sudan), Swahili (for East Africa), and a couple of others.

Obtwega had no objection to Swahili. I asked him how his injuries had happened. He said that, in the middle of the night, soldiers had come banging on the door of his house. He asked what they wanted. They said, money. He said he had none. They broke in anyway, shot him, and took everything from his house, including the furniture and the bed. Apparently the only reason for their attack was that there is now in eastern Congo no governing authority willing or able to prevent them from doing so as they please. This is a consequence of rebellion and counterrebellion continuing and disintegrating into lawless chaos featuring unrestrained rampages by any and all militia groups that can buy or steal guns and ammunition. The same kind of thing has also been happening recently in Somalia.

Facing a need for international travel, Obtwega had no passport. Even if there were a clear answer to the question of which government has authority over him -which there isn't - it would have been logistically impossible for him to get one. Fortunately there are local ways of dealling with situations like this, which come up routinely. Local officials, on their own authority, generate letters that are called, in French-speaking Africa, "laissez-passers" which state that the named bearer is known to the official, and is a resident and citizen of his own country. These are generally accepted in lieu of passports throughout central Africa, and are stamped and signed by receiving authorities in lieu of visas, but are less common in East Africa. Obtwega's wife and child had only a hand-written addendum on his laissez-passer, saying "accompanied by a woman and a child". This seemed a bit thin to us, but it was found acceptable by Ugandan authorities for transit through Uganda, and by Kenya authorities for entry into Kenya. Probably, Obtwega's blood-soaked bandages were more compelling than any paperwork. However that detail introduced questions of its own. The Kenyan immigration officer asked, "Was he a combatant in the Congo conflict?" We assured him that he was not.

The people of Congo seem to me to be incredibly tough and tolerant of suffering. A patient in Obtwega's condition by all rights ought to be transported on a stretcher with his injured limbs supported by splints. But all we could offer was a small, ordinary upright seat in the 210, into which Obtwega had to be lifted. Although his pain while being moved was clearly excruciating, he never uttered a sound or a complaint. Even when seated comfortably, there was pain visible around the edges of his eyes, but no complaints. His wife appeared greatly relieved to be on the way to help and safety, and a friend he had brought along to help him move appeared concerned.



These folks were about to become destitute foreigners in a strange country. Matt asked them whether they had any money at all, even though we really already knew the answer. They had nothing. Matt called Andy in Nairobi on the HF radio and told him to withdraw the equivalent of $150.00 in Kenya shillings from AIM-AIR's account, to be added to the bill which might never be paid, and handed to Obtwega so that he would not arrive at Kijabe totally destitute. Only just now while writing this, have I noticed the various points of analogy between Matt's job today and the parable of the Good Samaritan as told by Jesus. Good job, Matt. I'm confident that under your management, and "in spite of" your generosity, AIM-AIR is not going to go broke.

After persuading Kenya immigration officials at Wilson airport to admit Obtwega into Kenya rather than detain him or send him back, we transfered him to a van for a ride to Kijabe. As Michael Steeves pointed out, the airstrip up there is marginal, really suitable only for a lightly-loaded 206, and even then the landing is a very rough ride. Obtwega needed to go by road from Nairobi to Kijabe. After the transfer to the van our part of the rescue was complete.



I had time left in the day to shower, change, pack, and go out for Chinese food at the Hong Kong with Jim and Bev Streit before catching the evening British Airways 747 to London, on the way to PA, wondering when I'll next have an opportunity to come "home" (according to the sign in the hangar).

Things to do in Nairobi..

..if you don't have time for game reserve tours or other tourist attractions:

1. Make Christmas music at the Streit's house:



2. Study the aerial root system of the climbing split-leaf plant:



3. Make sure you have all your stuff out of the plane:



4. Watch John Mosby and Ken Stoltzfus Jr. lay out an AIM-AIR logo on the new plane:



5. Snap another pic of the floatplane because Bruce Wilton asked for it in a comment, and talk to Lydia about the progress of the floatplane inspection.



6. Pose for a pic with Andy, Lydia, and Waldo. No, I haven't shrunk, it's just that Andy is 6' 8".



7. Watch for signs of changing attitudes about HIV/AIDS and government corruption.



8. Snap a pic of Cessna 206 5Y-ALY, because Harold De Souza and I flew it across the ocean in 1974, and it's still flying now (just today.) The paint job is new, with a different design.



9. Snap a pic of the wreckage of Caravan 5Y-BOY, because Michael mentioned it in a comment. Michael, how did you know about that? I thought you were in Canada.



10. In the evening, join an AIM-AIR staff Christmas party. You already know Chad and Mike. The guy in the middle is Dan Spooner, aka "Bwana Kijiko".

Nairobi!

Our neighbor on the Khartoum airport parking ramp was a Red Cross airplane, which (like ours) will be used to bring relief to victims of conflict in Sudan's war zones.



The honest answer to why the Red Cross insignia is so large, is that it's an attempt to make sure that a soldier with a missile launcher or a gun at least knows what kind of airplane it is that he's aiming at. But the sad truth is that the fighting in southern Sudan is so angry and chaotic that the Red Cross, and its Islamic counterpart the Red Crescent, painted on an ambulance or an airplane, are no longer guarantees of immunity against getting shot at. Thinking about that, and noticing during our departure the many anti-aircraft gun installations around the airport perimeter, reminded me that this airplane on some of its missions will be in very dangerous circumstances. AIM-AIR planes are not eligible to display a Red Cross, and must rely on shields of faith and prayer. So I said a prayer for this one, to appeal for angels to fly with it in those moments when it will need protection. That will be more effective than a Red Cross emblem, but it's still no guarantee of safety.

Harold Bowman, my fellow AIM-AIR pilot, and dormitory-room neighbor when we were single guys living in Nairobi, was shot and killed in Juba in Feb. 1977 because he was in a battle zone of the civil war. The Cessna 402 he was flying was seriously damaged. He was at that time doing a flight that was supposed to have been mine. I have been observing and thinking carefully about events in Sudan ever since.

In 1983, AIM-AIR pilot Ron Pontier was held hostage, under threat of death, at Boma. The DC-3 received a bullet hole recently, but was not seriously harmed. Sudan operations remain risky. Many prayers are being offered that the negotiations under way in Kenya will this time bring lasting peace.

Traveling South

Khartoum is on the Nile river. (Actually it's on two Nile rivers, as it is located at the confluence of the Nile and a lesser tributary that flows west from Ethiopia, known as the Blue Nile). Heading south, we followed for a while the main, or "White" Nile river. Here's a photo that clearly shows the "flood-plain" method of agriculture that's used along the edges of the Nile in Egypt and northern Sudan. There's no rain, so the fields must be watered by the seasonal flooding of the river.



Further south, crossing the parts of Sudan where I used to fly, I spent some time remembering Harold, and my brother Virgil, who died in an accident while preparing to move to Kenya in order to fly in Sudan, and my best friend Mike Grennell, whose plane was brought down in the far south either by a missile or a thunderstorm, in the Didinga hills, shown here:



I thought about how much each of them would have loved to see and to fly this airplane.

But enough of sad thoughts. Arriving in Kenya is fun. North of Eldoret, we pass over the western escarpment of the great rift valley, where high ground to the west at 10 to 11 thousand feet elevation drops abruptly to about 5 thousand feet at the valley floor. This photo is taken from 13 thousand.



A little further along, we cross the equator and enter the southern hemisphere. Still further south we see the familiar "tilted crater" profile of Mount Longonot occupying the middle of the valley floor..



..and the Rift Valley Academy on its shelf at Kijabe, at the 8,000 ft. level of the eastern escarpment. I owe Michael Steeves a favor for his donation of this webspace on his kijabe.org server. Michael, here's a contribution to your collection of Kijabe photos: a shot of the airstrip taken during a low pass this afternoon.



To a Nairobi-based pilot, these images mean "almost home". At Wilson airport, all crew members except me had family reunions.





But that's OK, I'll be back in PA on Wed., and meanwhile the folks in the hangar did their part to make me feel "at home" here, which is pretty easy to do in my case.



Recognition and thanks was offered by AIM-AIR manager Matt Olson to Cyndi, Renee, and Jennilu for the loan of their husbands.

BTW, for those of you who know about it, that's floatplane N341EA back in the corner of the hangar.

Anyway, this job is done:



I'll be doing some visiting here in Nairobi tomorrow, and possibly in Masai-land on Tuesday, before catching the Tuesday night British Airways flight to Philadelphia via London. I'll add one or two more entries about that, and then consider this weblog complete.

Khartoum, Sudan

I am delighted beyond words to be able to make this post from Khartoum, a stop which we had not originally planned. Relations between the govt. of Sudan and western relief agencys are much improved. For a Christmas gift to the children of Sudan this year, Samaritan's Purse chartered a giant Russian cargo plane (the AN225, currently the largest airplane in the world, of which only a single example exists), and filled it in New York with 80,000 "Operation Christmas Child" gift and relief bundles. With the cooperation of the govt. of Sudan, these were flown into Khartoum by the AN225, and distributed throughout Sudan by the AIM-AIR / Sam's Purse DC-3, which flew from Nairobi to Khartoum for the occasion. All this has been going on during the past couple of weeks.

Sam's Purse director Franklin Graham was received in Khartoum for a personal visit with Sudanese President Al-Bashir. Click here for a story about this remarkable meeting, as published in the local press here in Sudan.

With this recent history of cordial cooperation, AIM-AIR felt that we might be allowed to land in Khartoum for this flight. Permission was requested and granted, so here we are.

Here are some photos of the flight from Crete, a 1500-mile journey that involves such a dramatic change of scenery that it seems like a flight half-way around the world.

Here's what the port city of Iraklion, Crete looked like at the time of our departure this morning.



Northern Egypt had a scattered cloud layer over desert..



Southern Egypt - a portion of it I had not seen before - is mostly empty desert, but there are patterns in the rocks and sand of remarkable beauty and regularity. Many of the patterns are repeated for many miles, some of them from horizon to horizon, with such perfect uniformity that the images of them could almost be used as wallpaper designs. Several photos follow. My apologies to those of you with dial-up internet; these might take a while, but I was really impressed by them.













Mike is in command of this flight, and he has finally put his uniform on, after flying across the Atlantic and the Mediterranean in blue jeans, etc.



We crossed the Nile River, and the Egypt / Sudan border near Abu Simbel and Wadi Halfa. 23 years ago Dale and I passed this area while flying low and following the Nile river in the course of delivering a 206 to Nairobi. There are two large statues at Abu Simbel: images of seated Pharaohs carved into the face of a cliff, and guarding the entrance to a temple. These date back to around the time of Moses. Dale and I had a good look at them then. Today we were obliged to remain at 11,000 ft., and they were too small to photograph.

We have not yet achieved our goal of landing at a daily destination before dark: it was just after sunset when we touched down here in Khartoum. Insh'allah, we will finally achieve that goal by landing in Nairobi tomorrow afternoon.

Iraklion, Crete (Greece)

(Posted Saturday evening from Khartoum because I was unable to find internet access from Iraklion on Fri. evening.)

We arranged refueling in Valencia this morning with relatively few delays. The Caravan's wing was too high for the fuel truck's ladder, so Mike did the wing tank fueling from on top of the wing. The man in this picture is standing on top of his ladder.



Fuel in Europe is expensive (by US standards). Or perhaps I should say, fuel in the US is cheap (by European standards).

We had good weather for our departure from the east coast of Spain...



...and for a while were able to enjoy a view of the sea.



But by the time we were passing Mallorca...



...it was starting to get cloudy. Indeed, most of the western and central Mediterranean today had clouds and rain. Unfortunately for us the freezing level was low - as low as it had been in the middle of the ocean, at 5,000 ft. We could fly below that without difficulty, even through clouds and rain. The problem is that the Mediterranean is full of islands with mountains on them, so flying below 5,000 feet requires finding a route between, but not over, the islands. And today flying above 5,000 required finding a way around, over, or under, clouds containing ice. So Mike and I had puzzles to solve all day, deciding which of these games to play, and then how to play it. The controllers were all very accomodating of our numerous proposals to turn right, or left, or climb, or descend. We were playing with a handicap because one of our best tools (weather radar) quit working. Poor Chad, in the back today, awoke briefly and asked us what in the world we were doing. We told him to go back to sleep and not to worry about it. For a while, it looked like the combination of southern Italy and Sicily, with all their mountains and icy clouds, would prove an insurmountable barrier, and we would end up spending the night in Palermo. But at the last moment we found a layer of clear air at 11,000 ft. that allowed an ice-free and obstacle-free passage to areas of better weather to the east.

Over northeastern Sicily, we shared a clear space between cloud layers with the 11,000 ft. summit of the volcano Etna, its slopes all white with snow, and its crater emitting puffs of smoke.



One of the things I enjoy about flying across the Mediterranean region is listening to the chatter on the air traffic control radio frequencies. From west to east, the controllers are first Spanish, then French, then Italian, and finally Greek, in their respective sectors. All speak English (each with an easily recognizable accent) to the crews of international flights, as required by convention, but speak their own language to local pilots. The degree of formality varies widely. It seems to me that the Italians are the most verbose. They begin every exchange with a greeting, and end it with a farewell. Mike says that he has Italian ancestors, from Sicily, so I invited him to do the radio work as we crossed the Italian sector. He practiced up on his "bongiornos" and his "ciaos" and after an hour or so was as good as the natives (well, maybe).

In the back, Chad woke up and began flight planning for a trip south across Egypt. There are apparently huge areas in southern Egypt where the map has no labeled features other than "Sand Sea" and "Crescent Dunes".

One of the things that helped wake up Chad was a feature of our airplane which I have not yet mentioned, although it has been present ever since Bangor, Maine. Our extra fuel tanks are made of welded sheets of flat aluminum. Whenever they are not entirely full (which is most of the time) they contain a pocket of air which expands when we climb and is compressed when we descend, at rates faster than the small vent lines can accomodate. Like the air inside your eardrum, which exhibits this same behavior. The result is that every climb or descent triggers, at unpredictable moments, loud bangs that sound like explosions, as the sides and tops of the tanks pop inward or outward in response to pressure changes. Pilots are instinctively inclined to be suspicious of loud explosions heard inside airplanes in which they are flying - at least until they get used to it - and with all our climbing and descending today the cockpit sounded like a battle zone.

In spite of our best efforts to speed things up, we are still landing in darkness at the end of each eastbound leg. We have now crossed 7 time zones since leaving the US, so that this evening when we landed in Iraklion at 8:30 PM after about three hours of night flight, my watch read only 1:30 PM, which would be accurate back home in sunny PA. Now, though, we turn south, and hope to land somewhere in Africa in daylight tomorrow, having only one more time zone to cross. Word is that the AIM-AIR folks in Nairobi have had good success in arranging for the necessary flight permissions.

Valencia, Spain

After a short night of sleep in Santa Maria, we took a walk down the street from our hotel to have a look around. House have white stucco walls and red tile roofs in a Mediterranean style. Roads and sidewalks are made of cobblestone, with mosaic designs inlaid in the sidewalks. We visited a small cafe for some expresso, and the public library for internet access, then took a taxi back to the airport. The wind was picking up and it started to rain because of a thunderstorm coming in from the southwest, but the way we were going the weather was fine. This was an easier and more routine flight - we had another 800 nautical miles of ocean to cross, and then 400 of the Iberian peninsula, to reach Valencia. Most of the ocean crossing was in smooth air under clear skies, in daylight, but the sun went down while we were still well out over the sea. The shortness of our winter days is made worse while flying east because each such day of flying crosses several time zones, and each zone crossed subtracts an hour from our available daylight. But we did enjoy the sunset.

Here´s Mike enjoying his turn at riding in the back...



..and here´s a photo he took of the sun setting behind us.



I flight-planned a route across Portugal and Spain, but ATC assigned us an alternative route - from the open ocean straight through the strait of Gibraltar. Here the GPS map shows us headed in that direction.



This gave us our first view of Africa earlier than expected. Passing through the strait we had the city of Tangier, Morocco under our right wing, and Gibraltar with its famous "rock" under the left. The whole area is brightly lit at night, and it was fun to see, but did not photograph well with the digital camera. Chad is still counting ships, but I think he lost count there in the strait: there were lots of them coming and going between the Atlantic and the Mediterranean. East of Gibraltar we turned northeast and crossed the south coast of Spain, finally flying over solid land again, after crossing a lot of water. It was a clear night, offering us views of stars above and city lights and vehicles below. There are some mountains in southeast Spain reaching up to 11,000 ft.. We flew northeast well to the west of those, although we could see them silhouetted against stars. We're now in Valencia on the east (Mediterranean) coast of Spain and hoping to fly to Crete tomorrow. I remembered to bring the camera from the plane today, and added a few pix to yesterday´s entry.

Santa Maria, Azores, Portugal

At Halifax this morning we had below-freezing temperatures and low clouds, a combination that mitigated against our departure, even though above the cloud layer there were clear skies and warmer temperatures due to a warm-front inversion. We dared not risk climbing through even a thin layer of icing conditions while carrying the extra weight of our trans-oceanic fuel load. The FAA has authorized us to fly at 30 percent over normal maximum weight for purposes of this flight. Our loaded weight is about 11,000 pounds. The Caravan is capable of flying at this weight, but its climb performance is diminished. So we waited, and by about 10AM the cloud layer had thinned enough to permit departure. We expected the route to be mostly clear of clouds, featuring above-freezing temps at 5000 ft. for the entire route, and at 7000 for most of the route. We would be looking at an arrival in the Azores late at night in clouds and rain, but with solidly positive temperatures. There are three airports with lighting and with approaches to low minimums: Santa Maria, Ponta Delgada, and the military airbase at Lajes. We even have the option of a diversion to the island of Madeira as a last resort. These circumstances provide an acceptable margin of safety. Mike is PIC on this leg: he decided to go, and Chad and I concurred. Further delay would not be helpful, since there was worse weather headed for both Halifax and the Azores tomorrow.

So off we went. Canadian regs require us to wear these heavy survival suits for such a flight.



After a nice loooong takeoff roll on runway 24 at Halifax, the airplane settled into a modest but steady climb. Mike and Chad are used to flying fully loaded Caravans at the high elevations and warm temperatures common in Kenya, and they say that the 30% overloaded Caravan, at sea level in winter, has performance similar to one with a normal full load coming out of Nairobi. There's extra power and lift available due to the lower elevations and cooler temps here. Initially we flew in bright sunshine over thinly scattered clouds, leaving the coast of Nova Scotia behind shortly after departing from Halifaz.



We headed southeast for about 200 miles before turning eastward toward the Azores. In that area the cloud layer became solid and we lost our view of the ocean. Mike said that he preferred seeing the cloud tops because it allowed him not to think about all that water. Darkness came quickly, at about 3 PM on my watch, which is still set to eastern US time. The early hours of darkness allowed us a smooth ride in clear air at 9000 ft., well above a solid cloud layer. The weather maps showed an area in mid-ocean of colder air, with freezing levels down to 5000 ft., and more extensive clouds and rain. This showed up as forecast, and we were forced to descend, in small increments, from 9 to 7 thousand, and then from 7 to 5, by repeatedly encountering the bottom of a downward-sloping freezing level. At each step down the hope was, maybe this will be low enough, but for a while it kept proving not to be so. While flying in cloud, hitting the freezing level immediately resulted in a layer of ice beginning to form on our airplane. It was clearly visible in the beam of a flashlight aimed at the windshield or out onto a wing, and each time it formed we were obliged to descend further to get rid of it. We also lost our smooth ride and had instead moderate turbulence, in addition to the clouds and rain. All of this was exactly as forecast and therefore not unexpected - but it was a bit disconcerting, to be flying in such conditions at night, so low over the sea and so far from land. But it did not provide grounds for turning back, even though at that point we still had the option of returning to Maine (though not to Nova Scotia or Newfoundland, where the weather was colder again). At all times in that period, there was still warmer air below, behind, and to the right, available if we needed it.



The weather forecast continued to prove accurate, and 5000 feet was the lowest we needed to go to keep the ice off the airplane. After a few hours, the freezing level at last began to rise again, the clouds thinned out and the ride became smooth. A few stars appeared above, and below there were glimpses of the sea through breaks in the clouds. Chad did not agree with Mike's preference for having clouds as scenery. He said he would rather be able to see other things. He wanted, he said, to see some ships, and was pleased eventually to be able to spot two of them. I was the non-flying crew member on this leg, and so was free to get some sleep, which I proceeded to do. Only to be awakened, about two-thirds of the way across the ocean, by Mike and Chad briefing each other on the approach they were planning to fly at Santa Maria. I asked whether it was now standard AIM-AIR procedure to begin briefing an approach while still 600 nautical miles away from the destination. They laughed and said, "What else is there for us to do?" Even though we had by then the option of returning to a higher flight level, it turned out that our tailwind was more favorably aligned, and our groundspeed greater, at 5000 than at 9000, so we stayed low. The route across the Azores preferred by Portuguese air traffic control passes over some high terrain on one of the western islands, and has a minimum eastbound altitude of 11,000 ft., which even there would have been above the freezing level again, so we could not use it. Chad planned an alternative route that remained over the sea at all points, and negotiated permission to use it from the Portuguese controller, who was friendly and helpful. Our HF radio communications with both US and Portuguese controllers remained clear all the way across. In the end Mike flew a routine night-time approach to the Santa Maria, with a 1000-ft. ceiling and 6 kilometers visibility. I said that it was not nearly as challenging as the approaches to minimums that Chad flew at Lancaster and Essex County. Mike said that after a such a flight, it was OK with him to have a routine approach. The distance was 1800 nautical miles (about 2000 ordinary miles). It took us 12 hours to fly. Now on to Spain.

Halifax, Nova Scotia

The weather in Bangor this morning was beautiful - but the ramp on which our plane was parked was buried in snow. It took the plow-trucks most of the morning to dig it out.

From our weather briefing it was evident that the weather system that produced the weekend storm had moved east far enough for us to fly to Halifax, but not far enough for us to fly to St. John's. Forecasts for tomorrow look like it might be suitable for a route direct from Halifax to Santa Maria, especially if we detour slightly to the south in pursuit of clearer skies and more favorable winds. So we decided to head for Halifax.

It took us a while to get all the snow and ice off of the plane, but we eventually got it all (or so we thought). During the taxi out for departure the prop seemed to have an unusual vibration, so we taxiied back in to check it out. It turned out that snow from the weekend storm had accumulated inside the prop spinner, having blown in there through the openings around the bases of the individual blades. There was enough of it in there to cause a noticeable imbalance. We pulled the spinner off in order to clean it out.



Here's the digital camera taking a shot of itself (and me and Chad) as reflected in the mirror-like surface of the prop spinner.



The blanket of clouds moving eastward had a very distinct trailing edge aligned northwest - southeast. Here's a photo of it as it moved east across New Brunswick.



Tomorrow should be a noteworthy day not only for us but for all pilots everywhere. It's the centennial of the Wright brothers' first flight at Kitty Hawk, NC, on December 17, 1903. How time flies, even without an airplane. I myself have been a pilot for a third of that first century of flight, and Mel Glick at Smoketown has been so for more than half of it. Some have been flying even longer than that.

The restaurant here at the Halifax airport hotel is called "Orville and Wilbur's" and has a Wright Brothers theme. On the back of the menu it says that the invention of the airplane changed life for everyone. Including, it says, for missionaries working in remote areas. If the weather cooperates, tomorrow at the moment of the Wright brothers' first flight re-enactment at Kitty Hawk we ourselves will be in flight over the ocean. We'll do this, as the Arabs say, "Insh'allah" (if God wills).

Snow

It's snowing today here in Maine. This is the same storm that folks in PA and NJ had yesterday.



While talking on the cell phone to Jim Streit in Nairobi...



...Chad took a snowball hit in the back.



Jim said that the temperature in Nairobi was 85 degrees.

We have mud flaps on the main landing gear to keep mud off of the wings and tail, but they're not much use for dry snow.



We understand that, as promised, the FAA has granted the approvals for our tanking, but those papers are about 140 miles away at the FAA offices in Portland, ME. Chad and Mike are driving down to Portland on I95 to pick them up. They promised to drive carefully. Even if the paperwork had been here, we would not have been flying today because of the weather.

Spending a Saturday in Maine

This will be just a photo album with a few remarks. We had a free day and a rental car, so we headed for the coast at Bar Harbor (locally known as Bah Hahbah).







The guys from Kenya have noted with interest some features of life in the US:

-At a movie, popcorn and a soft drink can cost $9.00 (!!)
-Some stores now have a self-checkout option, with a barcode reader and credit-card slot.
-In Maine in December, it can get cold (minus 1 F today, with a strong wind).

We plan to sample the local lobster this evening.

Tank installation under way

The crew at Telford made great progress today with the tank installation. They removed the seats and built a plywood foundation on the cabin floor...



...and installed the tanks with strong tiedowns, and with the valves and pumps that we'll need in order to use the fuel from those tanks for the long flights.



The job is mostly complete, but we'll need to wait here until Monday in any case. That's the earliest we'll be able to get the FAA's written approval of the installation. Also, there's a winter storm expected here over the weekend.

I added a couple of photos to the Morristown, NJ post.

Bangor, ME

The departure route from Morristown featured, briefly, a rainbow, and a view of the New York City metropolitan area. For the guys from Kenya, this (the city) was quite a change of scenery.

The weather in the northeast US today featured a very deep low pressure system near New York City. In New Jersey we had strong northwest winds and rapidly dropping barometric pressure.

Through the center of the system we had moderate to severe turbulence. Mike assigned seats and seat belts to the loose flight bags and map cases so that they would stay in place. Our altimeters depend on adjustments of their barometric pressure settings for accuracy, and the pressure in the center of this low was among the lowest I'd ever encountered, at 29.13 in./hg. The Caravan is equipped with metric altimeter setting markings, calibrated in "millibars" for use in Kenya, and we have abbreviated versions of the conversion tables for convenient use - but 29.13" was well off the bottom of the abbreviated scale, so we were compelled for a while to consult the complete and unabridged flight manual tables for the necessary conversions.

Coming out the other side at 7000 ft. across the New England states, we had equally strong winds from the southeast, but much less turbulence, and rapidly rising pressure.

At this time of year it gets dark at about 4PM here in northern ME. When we arrived at Bangor at 5:00, it was pitch black and raining, but no ice. And the runway lights came into view at about 800 ft.. Way better than NJ.

Mike said he did not want to try driving the rental car, because he has not yet re-adjusted to our odd American habit of driving on the right side of our roads.

So Chad drove, and we are now settled at the Bangor Comfort Inn, where Dale Hamilton and I stayed last winter while arguing with the FAA about paperwork for the ferry tanking in the AIM-AIR floatplane. This time we understand that there will be no arguments about the paperwork. We'll let Telford get started on it tomorrow, wish them the best - and keep you posted.

Morristown, NJ

..was not originally on our itinerary.
Out of Lancaster, our flight planned destination was the Essex County airport at Caldwell, NJ, which is convenient to Mike's folks' place. Chad had the left seat, and flew an instrument approach procedure to Essex County down to its minimum altitude, at which point we could see nothing but clouds and rain, and we were obliged to miss that approach.

The alternate was Morristown, which had an approach with lower minimums (200 ft.). Chad shot that approach and we caught sight of the runway at about 250 ft., which was about the same point at which he first saw the runway at Lancaster last night. He remarked that 2 approaches to minimums (and one missed approach) within 24 hrs., was more serious IFR work than he was likely to have in Kenya in a month's flying. That's because, except for arrivals into Nairobi, the necessary facilities and services for that kind of flying are not available in Kenya.

While waiting for Mike to drive from Caldwell to Morristown, the rainstorm moved on to the southeast, and the sky cleared - as it had done earlier at Lancaster while we were there. Both of these occasions produced rainbows for us.



At Essex county, Mike had observed our missed approach and set out for Morristown by car, along with his parents and some others. When they arrived, we all had a bite to eat, and the three of us took off for Bangor, ME.

Send-off

Among those here at the Lancaster Airport this morning to see us off were our pastor, Sam Thomas, my parents, Frank & Lydia King, and my sister Edna and her husband Dwight Hershberger, who was a former AIM-AIR pilot and AIM-AIR manager. We also saw Harold Housman, pictured here with the airplane:


Still interested in East African aviation after 46 years.

Harold was one of a rare breed: as a dually-qualified "flying doctor", he used his skills both as pilot and as physician in East Africa. He and his wife Miriam started working for Eastern Mennonite Missions in Shirati, Tanganyika (now Tanzania), in 1957 - and one of his first tasks was building an airstrip there. In 1959 he earned a pilot's license and began flying a Cessna 182 rented from the Aero Club in Nairobi. Later he flew a Cessna 206 provided by the East Africa Flying Doctor Service.

AIM-AIR US representative Randy Gromlich and missionary Scott Paulsen drove in from about an hour away to see the airplane. After receiving the prayers and best wishes of this group, Chad and I climbed in the plane and took off for NJ.

Lancaster, PA

The airplane is spending the night in the Aerotech hangar at Lancaster (not Smoketown). The weather here this evening is cloudy and rainy, but not too cold. The freezing level was around 9000 feet, so it was safe for Chad to make an IFR flight from Ohio, and to use the instrument approach available at the Lancaster airport. Tomorrow morning it's going to be raining, but our plan is to depart as soon as the weather permits and head for NJ to pick up Mike. Then we'll continue on to Telford Aviation in Bangor, Maine, where we'll have the extra fuel tanks in the cabin installed, which we'll need in order to cross the ocean. Since it's so late in the week now, we will almost certainly be spending the weekend in Maine, and hopefully continuing on our way early next week.

Photos from VA

These two excellent pictures were e-mailed to me by Bill Bangham, IMB photographer. They were taken while Chad had the airplane in VA last weekend for its dedication service.

Over the weekend..

..here in the northeast US, we had snow. Our Caravan is equipped for service in equatorial Africa, with a view to keeping its weight to a minimum (to allow maximum payload). Consequently it has no de-icing or anti-icing equipment. In snowy weather it's out of its element.



Chad was in Virginia for the weekend, and needed to go back to Ohio on Monday for some final maintenance checks - but was unable to fly further west than the Pittsburgh area due to a threat of icy weather. As a result we are now a day behind schedule and are looking for Chad and the airplane to rendezvous with Mike and me in PA on Thursday.

Paint done, cargo pod installed

Our plane is ready to go, in Ken Stoltzfus Jr.'s hangar at Preferred Airparts in Kidron, OH.

Chad is planning to take it to Virginia over the weekend for visits with sponsors, and a dedication service.