Aeroplane September 2017

(Brent) #1
LEFT:
In the cruise, bound
for Keflavík.
THE FRIEDKIN GROUP

BELOW LEFT:
A walk-round of
Berlin Express prior
to embarking on the
first leg of the trans-
Atlantic voyage.
THE FRIEDKIN GROUP

BELOW RIGHT:
Kitted out in
‘poopy suit’ and
survival gear for
the long over-water
stretches.
THE FRIEDKIN GROUP

AEROPLANE SEPTEMBER 2017 http://www.aeroplanemonthly.com 69

military operation versus, ‘Oh, let’s go
and see how it works’.
“There were several options for the
next leg to Wick, Scotland. It was the
third and last over-water leg, about
650nm. I felt a bit better because we
had some better diversions, better
air-sea rescue spots. The mindset
was to get to Wick, and assess the
weather. We called the weather guy
in Narsarsuaq, who did a spectacular
job. It was a very good leg. By now we
were doing section take-offs; as the
King Air rolled, I’d be right beside
him, so I wouldn’t have to do any sort
of rejoin.
“In addition to swapping fuel every
30 minutes, we did what we termed a
leak check. I would fly a ‘high stacked
formation’ over the King Air, and the
two maintenance guys would snap a
picture and look underneath the belly
of the airplane to make sure I wasn’t
leaking something — not that they
would have told me if I was! We were
always working. There was very little

monotony. You concentrate on the
mission, which makes the time go
quickly.
“We ended up at Wick, flying by
some scenic castles. That was leg
seven of the eight-leg mission. We’d
got it down to a science. At Wick
we got a weather brief, because we
were considering going from Wick
to Cambridge, where we could do an
instrument approach. The weather
wasn’t great, but it wasn’t bad. The
weather guys were telling us that
tomorrow would be better; the whole
mission was aiming for 4 July, so we
had the ability to spend the night in
Wick and go down to Duxford on 4
July. We knew how to do this, right?
As we all talked about, ‘Let’s not
mess this up now’.

“Out of all those legs, the eighth
should have been the easiest. Well,
not true! The forecast that we got
saying tomorrow would be better
was totally incorrect. All my gut
instincts were to go ahead and get
down that way, but you base it on the
professionals. We’d done the mission
completely in the VFR sense even
though we were on IFR flightplans.
That worked very well, and the
weather guys had been spot on, but
this time they missed it. The weather
brief we got at Wick was still very
optimistic that we should be between
layers and that we would be able to
do it VFR. Calling down to Dan
and Ed [at Duxford], they said the
weather was looking pretty good. I
got out of the ‘poopy suit’ — wow,

The scenery was breathtaking — in some ways scary,


because of the scope of it, but breathtaking. We were


constantly learning lessons of how to do this mission better


62-70_AM_AEROMEETS_Sept17_cc C.indd 69 31/07/2017 11:04

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