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.
W
ELL, 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
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FlightCom Magazine
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
