Page 35 - Twin and Turbine September 2017

When so much depends on one, you don’t like to continually be cranking it around the dial. (Herman’s VOR receivers never worked, much to his disgust.)
Once we heard a Seaboard airliner on 121.5 calling Coast Guard Ocean Ship Bravo (which was on station far to the south of our course). Evidently, he wasn’t getting an answer. We broke in and called him, but he came back with the cheerful word that our signal was breaking up so badly he couldn’t read us. Later we heard Bravo calling us on 121.5, but we couldn’t reach him either. Through all this, Miller, whose company manufactured the radios we were using, maintained a rather stoic silence. But from Greenland to Iceland he was all smiles. Since no one seemed to care about the lack of position reporting on that Goose Bay-to-Greenland leg, we didn’t plan to sweat it on the Greenland to Iceland leg. After clearing the east shore of Greenland and establishing a heading that kept the ADF centered on an Iceland NDB, we relaxed.
Suddenly an authoritative voice broke into our reverie. “This is Scandinavian 915. Sondrestrom wants your position.” Uh Oh! What could we say? We hadn’t even been keeping track of time, so consequently, no one got a position report from us between Goose and Greenland. So, when Scandinavian 915 called we didn’t have the foggiest idea what our lat/long might be. Herman half-figured and half-made up an answer and sent it up on 121.5. We settled back down into a semi- awake state, thinking problem solved. Then, suddenly, a few minutes later, a second authoritative voice came on with the announcement, “I’m Big Gun!” He wanted to talk with us on 126.1. We supposed it was a smart aleck, Texas-type airline captain. But, son-of-a-gun, sure enough there is a Big Gun Radio, way up on the east coast of Greenland. We measured the distance. He was 150 nm away! He said he was reading us “four by four.” Herman’s little one-watt Bayside BEI 990 com radios fairly danced in their mounts; Miller nearly choked on his grin.
Big Gun smugly informed us we weren’t even near where we said we were, then gave us a fix. For the next hour or so Big Gun came in occasionally to give us a position report. He never would confirm that he had us on radar (“I’m not saying I haven’t”), but we got with the navigation bit just the same, so we’d know as well as he when the reporting points came up. He smugly corrected each position report we claimed.
Iceland came up faintly visible only an hour or so after losing site of Greenland behind us. At three hours, 30 minutes out of Narsarsuaq we were there. The big airport at Keflavik was clear, while Reykjavik, only 25 nm distant, had a 1,500- foot ceiling. We could have slipped under, but Miller wanted the LF approach practice. We landed at Reykjavik 3:44 after takeoff.
Miller had business on the airport. S. Thorhallsson ran a dandy radio shop there: Flugverk Aero Sales and Service. There was also an excellent fixed base operation, I asked about flying back across to the airport at Angmagssalik, on the eastern coast of Greenland on an east-to-west crossing against headwinds and was assured that there’s nothing to it. A fine airport and fuel is available there. Going to
September 2017
The coastline of Scotland, a welcome sight after an 11-hour ight.
Angmagssalik on a westerly crossing would take the anxiety out of the prevailing headwinds. From there you could go to Sondrestrom ($190 landing fees), or across the cap to Narsarsuaq, thence to the mainland.
Friday morning Flugfelog Islands Airlines filled our oxygen bottle and we got off for Scotland at noon. As we climbed out, the left fuel flow dropped down to zero. We watched the exhaust gas temp rise. Obviously, the engine was running lean, and the higher we went the leaner it got. At 19,000 feet, the engine began surging and the prop governor couldn’t hold it. Back to Reykjavik and the Loftleidir hotel. We called Piper and got some help, but it was Flugthjonustan’s mechanic, Bjorn Ingimarsson (who got his A&P at Spartan in Tulsa, incidentally) who found the problem. A pressure air line, turbocharger to the injection nozzles, had worked loose. Piper had used those cheapie wire clamps rather than quality Adel ones. At slow cruise, it hadn’t been critical; in a high-power climb, it was and it finally let go after six or so climbs from factory new.
Early Saturday we tried again. This time the 750-nm flight to Prestwick was a snap. We flew most of it in high thin ice crystal cloud, with the alternate airs out. TWA 717 relayed one position report for us; we did it ourselves the second time. Then, quite unexpectedly, there was Scotland, a few little blue islands hiding in cloud shadows. We canceled IFR, dropped down for sightseeing, and landed 4:05 out of Reykjavik.
One more little hop that evening across the narrow English Channel and Miller was demonstrating his radios at the Hanover Air Show. For us, flying to Europe, even way back there in 1965, hadbeensimplyalongishbusinesstrip. T&T
We’d been 11:26 Goose to Prestwick, only 7:40 of it out of gliding range to land. And that was broken into 2 parts. Big deal.
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Considered a pioneer in onboard radar and convective weather training, Archie Trammell is a highly respected safety consultant whose lectures, video programs and instruction classes on the proper use of weather radar have been used to train thousands of pilots and more than 4,000 business flight departments.
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