This last Post is a final, personal reflection on the voyage. The toughest decision we all face once we've got our PPL is: What next?
BIRDS
When you learn to fly you see things differently. A bird is no longer a feathered creature. It is a miraculous flying machine. It possesses pitch-perfect flying skills honed by evolution and guided by insinct. When it it flies it is "in the zone", like a world-class tennis player whose racket becomes an extension of his hand and his subconcious mind. Watch a Red Kite wheeling at 3000 feet over a field in the Chilterns looking for carrion then swooping to the ground at dizzying speed. He's not thinking " I must watch my speed or my angle of attack or I'll fall out of the sky". Or a gannet dive-bombing for fish. Or an Ibis coming in to land, pull up in the flare vertically, and plop effortlessly onto the ground. They just do it, guided by millennia of evolution.
In Mozambique I watched in open-mouthed admiration as Darius Briers swooped down to 50 feet and played with his Cessna 210 over picture-perfect beaches. Setting aside my low-hours caution I followed. A sense of release, of freedom washed over me.
Trust your aircraft and learn to fly by feel. Listen to the pitch of the engine. Trim, fly straight and level, bank, turn, climb. Forget the little dials, just for a while. Have fun in uncluttered skies. Away from the UK and Europe with their tight corset of restricted airspace, endless ATCs and a web of suffocating regulation. That was my most valuable lesson, the one they don't teach you at flying school. A precious gift from Africa.
COLLECTIVE NOUNS: AN EGO OF PILOTS
Flying with other pilots can be rewarding but is not always easy. This is true of co-pilots and, as in the case of the Foxes, of aircraft flying in loose formation. It requires clarity, absolute honesty, tolerance and empathy. No.pilots - well General Aviation pilots- perform the same task in the same way. Especially if one is more experienced than the other. Pilots can be terrible know-alls. I suppose it's a way of boosting your confidence in difficult situations. The trick is to distinguish between small errors and life-threatening mistakes. And calibrate your response to your partner accordingly. Be firm but calm. Stress, exhaustion, fear (often bottled up) and the need to keep going, day in day out for weeks at a time under difficult circumstances take their toll on the very best. Africa is a liberating place to fly. But it can be dangerously unpreditable. Equally, saying nothing is not helpful, whether you're sitting in the left or the right hand seat. Some fascinating studies have been done of how co-pilots in big jets, overawed by their skippers, have said nothing and small errors have led to catastrophic failures. So it's not easy. It is binary teamwork at its most complex. It requires maturity. And there is no room for pride. If you make a mistake admit it. Or you won't learn and will repeat the same mistake with possible fatal consequences. Things left unsaid are like icebergs, a hidden menace waiting to rip your heart out. There are no stupid questions. If you don't understand something: ask. If you're unsure of your position: ask. If you can't see the runway (even if it's staring you in the face) because you're looking in the wrong place: ask. If you've forgotten: ask. And don't stop asking until you're sure you've understood.
Unsurprisingly the very best and most experienced pilots in Fox Formation were also endowed with a genuine humility. Bernard Maeterlinck who flew the Turbo Mooney stood out for me. If you're thinking of going on a 2-day fly-out with a co-pilot and with others - let alone a trip as long and challenging as the TransAfria- talk things through, try it out and if you're not connecting and you're not comfortable, don't do it. Plan, prepare, plan. Your life depends on it. It's been a privilege to fly with the Foxes, sharing a beer at the end of long, exhausting days, shooting the breeze, telling tall tales. Exceptional people: fun, sometimes brittle, opinionated, courageous. An experience I shall never forget.
LOOK AFTER YOUR AIRCRAFT AND SHE WILL LOOK AFTER YOU
Make sure your aircraft or the one you share or hire is the best it can be. It's not about money. It's about diligence. Look after your aircraft and it will look after you. I was faced with the choice of putting Mogas (ordinary unleaded fuel) on a couple of occasions to get me out of a fix when the organiser failed to deliver Avgas in Mozambique. I refused. For two reasons: first because I had no idea what the quality of the Mogas fuel would be. As it turned out FP-SCB " aka the Bumblebee", which has a Rotax engine and will run on vin de table if need be, discovered at one point that the Mogas it got somewhere in darkest Africa was rubbish. It was so contaminated Charly and Alistair had to drain the valve nearly 50 times to clear it. Second, I had no idea what effect the Mogas would have on my engine. And my engine was my life. People do it. (In fact the future of General Aviation depends on finding a cheaper and more available alternative to Avgas). But, for now, we're stuck with Avgas. Had my life depended on it I would have done. But it didn't. So I waited it out till I was rescued.
Kit your aircraft out with what's necessary. Of all the bits I fitted easily the most useful was my JPI FS-450 Fuel Scan Fuel Instrument. On legs of up 5 hours over desert, mountains and jungle I knew exactly what I had left until I would be flying on fumes so decisions to turn back or divert or turn back were simplified. Steve, my co-pilot south, used it skillfully to manage our fuel consumption. In the InterTropical Convergence Zone where storms and towering aircraft-devouring CBs are a fact of life, my little StrikeFinder weather alert system was a life saver. If there's something wrong with Alpha Charlie I'll fix it. If can't or if I can't afford to right away I won't fly - unless it's a scuff on the carpet. Piper Archers are terrific little planes. Reliable, forgiving, fun to fly. She carried Steve and Jo and I 18,000 nautical miles. The distance around the earth at the Equator is 21,000 nautical miles. And she did not miss a beat.
MAKE FIRM DECISIONS BUT DON'T RUSH THEM
As a low hours pilot my mantra is " If there's any doubt, there's no doubt". That's a sound basis for making decisions. But it can lead you into the trap of making decisions too early, by the book, which become costly. They prolong your flight unnecessarily or lead you to,say, divert too early. You can plan till the cows come home. But you'll inevitably face the unforeseen and the unforeseeable. A simple example is: you're flying at FL80 (8000ft). You see big clouds ahead. You decide to alter course or divert. But by the time you get to where they were when you first spotted them, the wind has moved them on. Know your winds. Stay the course until you have to make the decision - unless it's staringly obvious and you have the information to hand. Another example is the one John and I faced when we flew from Perpignan, in southern France, to Tours on the last but one leg to Alpha Charlie's home airfield, Cranfield. When we got to Tours the tower said they were closed the following morning because of military games. It was Sunday. I wanted to land and wait it out. John firmly said we should wait till found what our alternates were. It turned out that Le Mans was open, 48 nautical miles ahead and closer to home. He was right. So flying is a bit like driving. You only really start learning AFTER you've got your license and take to the skies.
THE KINDNESS OF STRANGERS, THE FLYING COMMUNITY WORLDWIDE AND THE EYE WATERING AIRCRAFT YOU RUB SHOULDERS WITH
Fernandez in Angola who guided us through weather and mountainous terrain unbidden. The guys at Pointe Noire Aero Club in Congo Brazzaville. The Air Traffic Controller at Bejaie south of Algiers and Mustapha Merabet President of the Algerian Light Aircraft Association.
And of course Laurie Kay, my pal in Johannesburg, a man who embodied all the qualities of a great pilot and mentor. He and Chris Briers and his family got me out of Mozambique. Laurie was on my shoulder all the way north. Thank you to all of them and all the others who helped along the way.
IS THIS TRIP FOR YOU?
I did this trip because I wanted to become a better and more experienced pilot. I didn't do it for the "adventure" or to see the countries we flew to. I'm fortunate. I spent much of my life as a Foreign Correspondent so negotiating my way through difficult and dangerous territory is what I used to do. And I've seen the world. Every pilot has to make their own decision about whether a trip of this magnitude is for them. If you're a hardcore, highly experienced pilot who's been around the block a few times then all you need to decide is: do I have the time, the money and is this where I want to go?
If, on the other hand, you're fairly inexperienced you need to ask yourself some hard questions. The most obvious is " What do I want to get out of it? Only you can decide. Other key questions are:
1) Do I understand the conditions I'm likely to face: hot and high airfields, thunderstorms, sandstorms, long legs, unreliability of fuel supplies, countries with scant air traffic control facilities, dodgy runways, very few if any engineering facilities, complex and shifting political conditions, unfamiliar cultures, intense heat, flying with pilots you've never met before. To name but a few. The trip is advertised as VFR. Mostly it is. But it is, literally, impossible to guarantee VFR conditions over 18000 nautical miles through Africa. And certainly not on a tight schedule which does not allow you to wait it out. If you don't tick all these boxes make sure you do before you go.
If you are considering doing it and you are a relatively low-hours pilot ( and every pilot needs to decide for themselves what that means) my strong recommendation is take an experienced co-pilot both ways. Richard Clarke, in the Grumman Traveller, was on his own with his remarkably doughty wife Wendy who does not fly. He had, I think, around 500 hours. But he is exceptionally tough and he has an IMC qualification.
2) Is the time allowed for this particular trip enough? Again that depends. If you're just interested in flying from point A to B then I suppose it is. But if you're hoping for a flying holiday where challenging flying is interspersed with some relaxed sightseeing and downtime then the schedule, in my view, is nuts.
3) Do I think Prepare2Go are up to the job of organising such a trip? In a word ( and I speak only for myself ): not yet. Full of enthusiasm, energy and vision. Yes. But their experience so far lies in organising logistics for film and TV companies, single country trips and positioning fuel and getting clearances for record-breaking attempts. Drive and optimism are important. But you also need hard-headed realism, a high degree of careful planning for the imponderables and seemless communication - absolute transparency- between the team and the leader.
Organising a trip of this magnitude (and we were the first, the guinea-pigs) through so many countries, in such a volatile part of the world with so many aircraft of such differing endurance and performance limitations and with pilots who have never met, let alone flown together, is a task of enormous complexity. It is a great responsibility.
It requires enough resources to cope with the unpredictable, proper back-up in case things go wrong, maturity and exceptional leadership qualities to guide the group and hold it together, when the going gets tough. Ensuring the group keeps to a schedule is not enough.You need to build a consensus without losing control. The group did come together at crucial times to do the job: when Bernard's Mooney broke its undercarriage in the Congo. When 3 foxes diverted to Bejaie and needed fuel.
I wish Sam Rutherford and his wife Bea and their team well in the future. The vision is a courageous one. But its objectives need to be clearer if they're going to attempt another trip like this. Is it an endurance test or is it an ambitious fly-out? Pilots, especially less experienced ones, need a clear sense of what they're getting into if they're invited to join in. We were fortunate. We lost one aircraft, thankfully with no injuries. And a couple of aircraft had close calls. They were saved only by the skill and staying power of their pilots. And luck. As a group, our individual and collective determination saw us through. But the future success of exciting projects like this depend very much on learning the right lessons from past experience.
Alpha Charlie signing off. I shall miss the blog. It's been a lifeline, on dark days, a golden thread out of the Minotaur's cave to my friends and family back home. It will be back. So will Alpha Charlie. A la prochaine.
.
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| Effortless flight. It inspired the ancients and it inspires us |
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| Flying. Free. Off Mozambique |
When you learn to fly you see things differently. A bird is no longer a feathered creature. It is a miraculous flying machine. It possesses pitch-perfect flying skills honed by evolution and guided by insinct. When it it flies it is "in the zone", like a world-class tennis player whose racket becomes an extension of his hand and his subconcious mind. Watch a Red Kite wheeling at 3000 feet over a field in the Chilterns looking for carrion then swooping to the ground at dizzying speed. He's not thinking " I must watch my speed or my angle of attack or I'll fall out of the sky". Or a gannet dive-bombing for fish. Or an Ibis coming in to land, pull up in the flare vertically, and plop effortlessly onto the ground. They just do it, guided by millennia of evolution.
 |
| Darius who taught me what free flying is about |
Trust your aircraft and learn to fly by feel. Listen to the pitch of the engine. Trim, fly straight and level, bank, turn, climb. Forget the little dials, just for a while. Have fun in uncluttered skies. Away from the UK and Europe with their tight corset of restricted airspace, endless ATCs and a web of suffocating regulation. That was my most valuable lesson, the one they don't teach you at flying school. A precious gift from Africa.
COLLECTIVE NOUNS: AN EGO OF PILOTS
Flying with other pilots can be rewarding but is not always easy. This is true of co-pilots and, as in the case of the Foxes, of aircraft flying in loose formation. It requires clarity, absolute honesty, tolerance and empathy. No.pilots - well General Aviation pilots- perform the same task in the same way. Especially if one is more experienced than the other. Pilots can be terrible know-alls. I suppose it's a way of boosting your confidence in difficult situations. The trick is to distinguish between small errors and life-threatening mistakes. And calibrate your response to your partner accordingly. Be firm but calm. Stress, exhaustion, fear (often bottled up) and the need to keep going, day in day out for weeks at a time under difficult circumstances take their toll on the very best. Africa is a liberating place to fly. But it can be dangerously unpreditable. Equally, saying nothing is not helpful, whether you're sitting in the left or the right hand seat. Some fascinating studies have been done of how co-pilots in big jets, overawed by their skippers, have said nothing and small errors have led to catastrophic failures. So it's not easy. It is binary teamwork at its most complex. It requires maturity. And there is no room for pride. If you make a mistake admit it. Or you won't learn and will repeat the same mistake with possible fatal consequences. Things left unsaid are like icebergs, a hidden menace waiting to rip your heart out. There are no stupid questions. If you don't understand something: ask. If you're unsure of your position: ask. If you can't see the runway (even if it's staring you in the face) because you're looking in the wrong place: ask. If you've forgotten: ask. And don't stop asking until you're sure you've understood.
 |
| Bernard Maeterlinck: prowess and humility |
LOOK AFTER YOUR AIRCRAFT AND SHE WILL LOOK AFTER YOU
Make sure your aircraft or the one you share or hire is the best it can be. It's not about money. It's about diligence. Look after your aircraft and it will look after you. I was faced with the choice of putting Mogas (ordinary unleaded fuel) on a couple of occasions to get me out of a fix when the organiser failed to deliver Avgas in Mozambique. I refused. For two reasons: first because I had no idea what the quality of the Mogas fuel would be. As it turned out FP-SCB " aka the Bumblebee", which has a Rotax engine and will run on vin de table if need be, discovered at one point that the Mogas it got somewhere in darkest Africa was rubbish. It was so contaminated Charly and Alistair had to drain the valve nearly 50 times to clear it. Second, I had no idea what effect the Mogas would have on my engine. And my engine was my life. People do it. (In fact the future of General Aviation depends on finding a cheaper and more available alternative to Avgas). But, for now, we're stuck with Avgas. Had my life depended on it I would have done. But it didn't. So I waited it out till I was rescued.
 |
| Fuel flow: 4 hours 47 mins left in the tanks Burn rate: 7.7 US galls an hour Indispensable informtion |
MAKE FIRM DECISIONS BUT DON'T RUSH THEM
As a low hours pilot my mantra is " If there's any doubt, there's no doubt". That's a sound basis for making decisions. But it can lead you into the trap of making decisions too early, by the book, which become costly. They prolong your flight unnecessarily or lead you to,say, divert too early. You can plan till the cows come home. But you'll inevitably face the unforeseen and the unforeseeable. A simple example is: you're flying at FL80 (8000ft). You see big clouds ahead. You decide to alter course or divert. But by the time you get to where they were when you first spotted them, the wind has moved them on. Know your winds. Stay the course until you have to make the decision - unless it's staringly obvious and you have the information to hand. Another example is the one John and I faced when we flew from Perpignan, in southern France, to Tours on the last but one leg to Alpha Charlie's home airfield, Cranfield. When we got to Tours the tower said they were closed the following morning because of military games. It was Sunday. I wanted to land and wait it out. John firmly said we should wait till found what our alternates were. It turned out that Le Mans was open, 48 nautical miles ahead and closer to home. He was right. So flying is a bit like driving. You only really start learning AFTER you've got your license and take to the skies.
 |
| A South African Airways weaponised DC3 Dakota fittd with Turbine engines at Quelimane in Mozambique, dwarfing Alpha Charlie. The Dakota has a special place in my heart. It was the first scheduled plane I flew from Alexandria to Cairo over the western desert when I was a kid. We'd get to the airfield two hours early so we would not miss its lone growl as it approached through the withering Hamsin sandstorms. The first to spot it got a mango ice cream |
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| Laurie Kay, who died tragically in April 2013. See my account of his memorial on www.avcom.co.za under RedKite. Laurie is the South African Airways Chief Pilot who flew a Boeing 747 low and slow over Ellis Park stadium before the Springboks beat the All Blacks with a drop-kick in extra time. |
IS THIS TRIP FOR YOU?
I did this trip because I wanted to become a better and more experienced pilot. I didn't do it for the "adventure" or to see the countries we flew to. I'm fortunate. I spent much of my life as a Foreign Correspondent so negotiating my way through difficult and dangerous territory is what I used to do. And I've seen the world. Every pilot has to make their own decision about whether a trip of this magnitude is for them. If you're a hardcore, highly experienced pilot who's been around the block a few times then all you need to decide is: do I have the time, the money and is this where I want to go?
If, on the other hand, you're fairly inexperienced you need to ask yourself some hard questions. The most obvious is " What do I want to get out of it? Only you can decide. Other key questions are:
1) Do I understand the conditions I'm likely to face: hot and high airfields, thunderstorms, sandstorms, long legs, unreliability of fuel supplies, countries with scant air traffic control facilities, dodgy runways, very few if any engineering facilities, complex and shifting political conditions, unfamiliar cultures, intense heat, flying with pilots you've never met before. To name but a few. The trip is advertised as VFR. Mostly it is. But it is, literally, impossible to guarantee VFR conditions over 18000 nautical miles through Africa. And certainly not on a tight schedule which does not allow you to wait it out. If you don't tick all these boxes make sure you do before you go.
If you are considering doing it and you are a relatively low-hours pilot ( and every pilot needs to decide for themselves what that means) my strong recommendation is take an experienced co-pilot both ways. Richard Clarke, in the Grumman Traveller, was on his own with his remarkably doughty wife Wendy who does not fly. He had, I think, around 500 hours. But he is exceptionally tough and he has an IMC qualification.
2) Is the time allowed for this particular trip enough? Again that depends. If you're just interested in flying from point A to B then I suppose it is. But if you're hoping for a flying holiday where challenging flying is interspersed with some relaxed sightseeing and downtime then the schedule, in my view, is nuts.
3) Do I think Prepare2Go are up to the job of organising such a trip? In a word ( and I speak only for myself ): not yet. Full of enthusiasm, energy and vision. Yes. But their experience so far lies in organising logistics for film and TV companies, single country trips and positioning fuel and getting clearances for record-breaking attempts. Drive and optimism are important. But you also need hard-headed realism, a high degree of careful planning for the imponderables and seemless communication - absolute transparency- between the team and the leader.
It requires enough resources to cope with the unpredictable, proper back-up in case things go wrong, maturity and exceptional leadership qualities to guide the group and hold it together, when the going gets tough. Ensuring the group keeps to a schedule is not enough.You need to build a consensus without losing control. The group did come together at crucial times to do the job: when Bernard's Mooney broke its undercarriage in the Congo. When 3 foxes diverted to Bejaie and needed fuel.
I wish Sam Rutherford and his wife Bea and their team well in the future. The vision is a courageous one. But its objectives need to be clearer if they're going to attempt another trip like this. Is it an endurance test or is it an ambitious fly-out? Pilots, especially less experienced ones, need a clear sense of what they're getting into if they're invited to join in. We were fortunate. We lost one aircraft, thankfully with no injuries. And a couple of aircraft had close calls. They were saved only by the skill and staying power of their pilots. And luck. As a group, our individual and collective determination saw us through. But the future success of exciting projects like this depend very much on learning the right lessons from past experience.
Alpha Charlie signing off. I shall miss the blog. It's been a lifeline, on dark days, a golden thread out of the Minotaur's cave to my friends and family back home. It will be back. So will Alpha Charlie. A la prochaine.
.
It was also where The Maestro, Argentinian racing driver Juan Manuel Fangio raced his Maserati 250F, the most beautiful racing car ever built, a hand-built replica of which sits on my mantlepiece at home where I shall be tomorrow.
