14 FlightCom Magazine
Bush Pilot
and the engine began to spool up. At around
18% on the gas generator, I pushed the fuel
lever forward and she caught. A nice cool
start. Once the engine was comfy, I shoved
the prop lever forward to join its neighbour
and when the prop had snuffled out of
feather, I turned on the generator so that I
could get all the electrics and avionics on
line.
The older versions of the Porter have
manual flaps which are activated by the
‘Sorry Lever’. This is a substantial-looking
winding handle in the roof of the cockpit.
The reason for its name is that when you
wind it, you tend to punch the head of the
person sitting next to you with each turn
of the handle. So flap selection is normally
accompanied by an audio warning which
goes: “Click, bang, sorry! Bang, sorry!
Bang, sorry! ...” Followed by, “No, it’s me
that should be saying sorry!” from the guy
in the right seat, to indicate that the flaps are
now in the correct position.
On this flight, the three passengers were
in seat rows one, two and three, beside the
sliding door, so there was no risk of head-
banging. The Executive sat right down aft,
with his back against the rear bulkhead,
and, judging by the expression on his face,
he was one of the ones who hadn’t done
much of this sort of thing before.
We roared into the air, leaving a thick
white cloud of dust hanging behind us, as
evidence of our departure and, after getting
the old girl cleaned up, we veered off
towards the Central Processing Facility to
find the pipeline.
We were low level – ten, maybe 20 ft
above the ‘right-of-way’, a dirt road which
escorts the pipeline all the way down to the
coast.
A tap on the shoulder. They wanted the
door open.
“Go for it!” I nodded against the rushing
of the engine and the wind.
They slid the door back a couple of
inches and the noise changed from what we
could hear inside the cabin, to include what
everybody else could hear outside it.
“Push it right open,” I indicated with my
arm. “No, right back!”
Suddenly my passengers were
experiencing what I love about flying. I can
vividly remember, as a kid, standing on the
seaward summit of Golden Cap Hill, in
Lyme Bay, on the south coast of England. I
yearned for the ability just to launch off into
the air and fly past the cliff-clinging shrubs,
low along the beach, then climb up past the
scabius flowers and hairbells which fringedthe cliffs at West Bay, and then tumble down
again to follow the surf line out to Portland
Bill.
That would give you the kind of freedom
that only birds could experience ... unless, of
course you had an aeroplane like the Pilatus
Porter to play with.
I looked round to see how the three
passengers were enjoying themselves, and
was greeted by a scene of total childlike
absorption. Strangely enough, the wind
does not blow into the cabin too hard when
you slide the door back, even though the
whole side of the plane is open to the outside
world. The passengers, more exposed than
they would have been, had they been sitting
in a First World War fighter, experience
an intimacy with the local landscape
which would horrify an airline passenger.
However, the fact that you can almost count
each stone and blade of grass as you go
along, inspires a kind of confidence in the
aircraft (and its pilot?) and a feeling that if
things were to go wrong, then you are so
close to the ground that a little drop like
that’s not going to hurt anyone.
... Until you flash over the wall of the
first escarpment. But even then, as your
world drops away beneath you, the sheer
exhilaration of three-dimensional travel
grips you.
Cameras began to appear.
We landed briefly on the ‘right-of-
way’, at Kilometre 70, to check the cathode
protection station. I closed the aircraft down
and invited my guests to stretch their legs
for a while, unless they were in a hurry.
They cautiously dropped to the ground and
looked around them as though they had
suddenly been rematerialised on the surface
of some unknown planet. The Executive’s
truculent urgency had evaporated. He
had discovered a new adventure which
surely none of his peers at home had ever
experienced. His return to the office, not to
mention to his local pub, would now border
on the triumphant.
And yes, of course I would take a photo
of them standing by the plane ... but why
don’t you guys come around this side? Then
you will be in the sunshine, and we can get
the cliff face behind you with the pipeline
coming down it.
Playtime continued a while until
curiosity about the Great Canyon drove the
young back to their seats.
The Great Canyon is the place where the
pipeline drops nearly vertically for 3,000 ft,
over the lip of a hanging valley, down to the
scrub-speckled floor of the canyon below.When you are sitting half out of the side of
an aeroplane, the drop, as you suddenly go
over the edge, from being ten feet off the
ground, to 3,000 ft, is very exciting indeed.
But it is the spiral down, within feet of the
rock face, which really grabs the punters. It
has become well-known amongst the upper
echelons, and ‘urgent’ trips to the coast from
Base Camp are often coincidentally laid on
when camera-toting VIPs are in evidence.
Bursting out of the enclosed
claustrophobic confines of the canyon, at the
bottom, past the ancient ruined fort which
has guarded the secret valley for centuries,
possibly millennia, was an experience in
itself. The thinly cultivated coastal plains
with their 3,000 year-old underground
irrigation systems, marked by lines of
closely spaced wells which gave access to
the tunnels beneath, provided a fascinating
contrast to the suppressed violence of the
mountains. Peaceful villages dotted the arid
landscape, guarded not by fortifications, but
by thick plantations of date palms.
Finally, the tank farms of the oil terminal
reared themselves above the barren outcrops
as we approached the coast. Soon the neat
ranks of air-conditioned accommodation
trailers and other accoutrements associated
with big industrial complexes in the desert
came into view and it was time to swing
out over the sea so that our friends in the
back could assess the progress of the work
on the ‘Off Shore Tanker Loading Facility’.
We followed the pipelines out to the large
buoy which lay permanently anchored about
two kilometres offshore. I lowered some
flap and reduced speed to around 60 kt to
give the cameras in the back a chance of
snapping the best angles as we swooped past
the buoy. The crew of the attendant tug boat
waved enthusiastically and we returned the
compliment before tearing ourselves away.
Our return to Base Camp was made
all the more memorable by the misty
mauves and purples of the shadows as we
slid smoothly through the evening air to,
although I say it myself, a ‘kiss’ landing at
the little strip by the camp. No, come on! It
really was one of my better ones!
The fact that the VIPs had enjoyed their
day was confirmed when they deemed it
acceptable for them to descend from the
pampered palaces of the ‘Senior Compound’
to visit us ‘other ranks’ in our old trailers. If
the three VIPs had been puppies, their tails
would have knocked all the glasses off the
table that evening.