Born To Fly Page 13

  I never did reach the final number of litres listed on my page of calculations; the fuel just wouldn’t fit no matter what I tried. I knew this was the case due to the fuel left behind in the ferry tank from the last leg, but as I could only guess how much had remained, I never had a firm final calculation of the amount of fuel on board. I strapped the tank in. The plane sat low and by only slightly pushing the tail towards the ground I could make the nose rise towards the sky. This was legally the heaviest the Cirrus could possible be.

  The last conversation before departure with flying instructor Alan Lindsay

  Gathering invaluable insight from an Australian aviation legend, Jim Hazelton

  Dick Smith and I, next to his Cessna Caravan. He travelled around the world twice in this plane!

  A postcard view of Christmas Island

  The Christmas Island international terminal

  Volcanic molten lava enters the sea in Hawaii

  Next to the tree planted by Amelia Earhart herself in Hilo, Hawaii

  US Customs and Border Protection — it made all the forms worthwhile

  The plane has its 100 hourly major service with Corporate Flight Management in Smyrna, Tennessee

  I met up with my mentor Ken Evers in Tennessee. He was on holiday with his family and dropped by for a few hours of uplifting conversation.

  Niagara Falls from far above

  The office before departing for Iceland — should have paid for Premium Economy

  Rekyavik Airport, hiding behind the iconic Icelandic architecture

  An Icelandic glacier

  I closed the doors and locked up. I had an organised time of departure and a harsh-sounding 2am start. With Customs sorted, I was ready to go. I returned to the motel via Wal-Mart and bought a few snacks, an ice brick and some cans of Red Bull. I placed them in the motel fridge and laid the lunch box by the door. There was no way I was forgetting those.

  I did final jobs, spoke to a few people on the phone, including various newspapers and radio stations, and settled into my room to prepare myself as well as possible for this challenge. I had paperwork and charts spread from one side of the bed to the other, I studied away and thought of what to expect during the long leg. I had already checked with the guys in the meteorological office and had been told the weather was fine and that I could expect very little if not absolutely no cloud, along with nil winds. Cloud I could handle, but headwinds would slow the aircraft down and create a longer flying time. Because this leg was so long the Cirrus could handle very little in the way of headwinds before running out of fuel.

  I packed as much as I could, stacked the bags by the door and climbed into bed, setting four alarms for 2am. Originally the departure time had been slightly later in the morning, but after finding out the Van Nuys airport in the San Fernando Valley would be closing at 9pm on the night of my arrival, we moved everything forward a few hours to ensure I would make it to California before Van Nuys closed. I tossed and turned, just staring at the roof, I fell asleep around 11pm. But before I did, I found myself thinking: whose bright idea was this again?

  The clock told me it was 2am and the four alarms confirmed it as they sang me the song of their people. I have no idea how far the noise travelled but I decided that from now on I would stagger the alarms just a little. I was a heavy sleeper but four going off at once was maybe a little excessive.

  I showered, checked the weather, packed the bags and kept an eye on the time. This ritual had happened a few times by this point and I began to think, regardless of the unknown adventures the day would bring, it was just a matter of taking one step at a time. Once I was at the airport I would focus on the legalities of Customs, then preparing the aircraft, then actually departing – all the while I would tell myself to stay calm, as everything had been planned so well.

  Shanna picked me up from the motel. The look on her face matched mine: why are we doing this? We drove to the airport and out to the aircraft. It was dark and I began to pre-flight and pack by torchlight, something I was becoming very used to by now. A Customs vehicle pulled up and a guy wandered over in full and very official US Customs uniform. He also looked far from thrilled to be up so early as he pushed a form across for me to sign, and after wishing me good luck he went back home to bed.

  The Hilo International airport was dull and quiet yet a large vintage Convair sat on the tarmac only metres from the Cirrus. It was being loaded with freight for what would be a run around the islands delivering supplies and equipment before Hawaii woke. An elderly pilot in a perfectly ironed uniform and with neatly combed grey hair walked by the Cirrus on his way to the Convair. With a smile from ear to ear he asked whether I was the kid from the newspaper. After I had introduced myself he went on to tell me how amazing and intriguing he found my flight. After I told him how cool the Convair was, he offered to give me a look inside. Hard as it was, I had to decline after I looked at my watch. He asked me dozens more questions, wished me luck and made sure I knew I was absolutely crazy. I found this surprising, considering how much flying experience this guy must have had.

  Just before clambering into the Cirrus I dialled the number for my weather brief. During the planning stage I had been told to call 1800-WX-BRIEF for all my flight planning and weather related needs within the United States. The previous evening I had given them a call and asked to submit a flight plan. I had the form in front of me with all the details laid out, as I wasn’t sure how this system worked. The guy on the other end of the line had been great, he asked for each detail of my plan in a structured order, just as it was on the form. He queried a few things, such as the peculiar Australian registration of the aircraft. When we were finished he asked whether I would like a brief of the weather, and when I said yes he told me to call back at 3am the next morning and it would be ready. So cool. The guy was great, they had a detailed weather report ready to go and as he began to read it to me I realised it was all in layman’s terms, everyday English that was easy to understand and yet so different to the type of weather reports I was used to. Everything seemed similar to the report received from the Met office in Hilo – nil cloud and casual winds.

  I said goodbye to Shanna and hopped into the Cirrus. The weight of the fuel meant that I had to climb up from the front of the wing and into the cockpit; if I had used the normal step the aircraft would have been sitting on its tail very quickly. I left the door open, hoping to have the humid air escape, started the engine and began to program the avionics. With all the waypoints entered into the GPS, I zoomed out with the hope of seeing the flight path extend from a little island to the hard-to-miss west coast of the USA. It didn’t. The avionics were only designed to zoom to a maximum of 1000 nautical miles and my flight was well over twice that distance.

  I taxied behind the Convair as it made its way to the runway, lined up on the centre line and took a good look ahead. It was pitch-black, the runway’s end sat on the coast meaning a departure would take you immediately over water and therefore into the darkness. I was worried about the takeoff; having to taxi so slowly had made me realise yet again how heavy the plane really was.

  With the winds calm I pushed the throttle forward. I had to hold a little forward pressure to keep the nose down and let the plane build speed. With my heart in my mouth and after a big long breath I felt it accelerate well and calmly lift into the sky. Although the climb performance was far from impressive, it was a much more uneventful takeoff then the lighter departure from Pago in gusting strong winds.

  I held runway heading and followed the instructions from Honolulu air traffic control. As I made a call to signify my departure there was a friendly, ‘Goodbye and good luck, young fella,’ from a couple of experienced Convair pilots. I was soon instructed to intercept my planned track to California, and with another goodbye from ATC I programmed the HF radio.

  With very little cloud potential, problems were simply a matter of the winds. With nil winds I was fine, with a tailwind I was better than fine, with a headwind I was not s
o fine. The nature of the flight, from A to B with no options in between, meant that my new best friend was a PNR, or point of no return. This is just as it sounds, the point at which you are committed to continuing with the flight because you do not have enough fuel to return to your departure destination. I had a nautical mile figure, say 1300 nautical miles from Hawaii, which became my decision point. When I reached my PNR I needed to be sure that I would be able to make California. If I had any doubts it was time to turn back to Hawaii.

  It was still dark yet the avionics gave a very accurate indication of the winds, with a little digital figure and an arrow signifying whether I was facing headwinds or tailwinds. As I settled into the climb I noticed a headwind of around fifteen knots, which although not ideal meant very little forty-five minutes into a thirteen-hour flight when I was still creeping slowly towards the cruise altitude of 9000 feet.

  With the very heavy Cirrus chugging away through the morning air I kept the autopilot disconnected and flew by hand. A few people had told me about autopilots doing strange things when the aircraft has a heavy load and I didn’t want any unnecessary stress. After what seemed like forever I levelled off at 9000 feet, and although I kept looking at the winds I told myself to stay calm until the plane had built up some speed and settled into the cruise.

  I began the gymnast-like act of twisting around to encourage fuel to flow from the ferry tank and out to the right-hand wing. There was so much fuel on board that the bladder and equipment on top of the tank actually pressed against the roof and I had only just enough room to slip down into my seat. The fuel began to transfer, I jotted down the times on my trend sheets more eagerly than ever to keep an accurate eye on my fuel burn. With the first transfer complete I called San Francisco on the HF radio, beginning what would be hourly position reports.

  With the first jobs completed I had a little time to breathe. The night sky had gone and a sliver of the sun appeared directly in front of the Cirrus. It couldn’t have been more centred if it tried. I watched the sun rise, so quickly that it grew right before my eyes. Yes the winds were not ideal, yes there was a long flight ahead full of uncertainty and yes I was scared, but maybe that’s why this was the greatest sunrise I had ever seen. Just then I didn’t want to be anywhere else in the world.

  The sky was now light. From time to time I chatted to San Francisco, updating them on my position, altitude and the next waypoint I was tracking towards. I had been completing my ‘aircraft trends’ every hour but with this leg being so long, and the supply of fuel being so critical, I decided to keep myself busy and do this every half an hour. I would jot down all the temperatures and pressures of the engine given by the avionics then work out the fuel burn so far, the fuel remaining, how far that fuel would take me and how much I expected to have when I touched down in California. The fuel remaining on touchdown was most important, a figure that rose and fell depending on the exact groundspeed at the time.

  A casual few hours passed. I was comfortable with the rhythm of jobs that seemed to endlessly circle and that left me to concentrate solely on the wind. During the first few hours I told myself to forget about it. I had a long way to go before the PNR and so much could change within that time. The problem was that it didn’t. The arrow still pointed towards the tail of the aircraft and the winds were constant.

  I decided to think of some other options. I called air traffic control on the HF radio and asked for the ‘winds aloft’, a meteorological report that indicates where the best winds would be for your desired outcome. The problem was that these reports are used mostly by airlines at an altitude of around four times mine. Few aircraft cross the Pacific at 9000 feet and air traffic control soon let me know that they couldn’t provide the information I needed.

  I decided to climb to 11,000 feet. It would use more fuel and upset the aircraft that was now set up in a cruise but there was a chance the winds would be more co-operative a little higher up. I set up the oxygen bottle, turned it on and slid the cannula over my nose. I had never used oxygen before but imagined it to be no different than breathing normally. It wasn’t: the oxygen shot through the cannula at the speed of sound in short and completely sporadic bursts. However, it definitely helped me stay awake. The Cirrus crept to 11,000 feet, I levelled off and let the aircraft settle. I gave it time but twenty minutes later I had gained one less knot of headwind. One measly knot.

  I punched yet more figures into the calculator, deciding whether to try 13,000 feet. If it was no better, there then I should have saved the climb fuel and maintained my original 9000 feet.

  I was getting frustrated and nervous; I was five hours from the coast of Hawaii and at this speed a good ten hours from California. I was in the middle of nowhere and for the first time felt very alone.

  I kept thinking: Why can’t there be tailwinds? Why should this flight depend on such minute figures, requiring risky decisions based on factors I have absolutely no control over? Why on earth would returning to Hawaii take so long?

  I repeated the process and took the aircraft to 13,000 feet, let it settle and hoped for the best. I was rewarded with another knot, one solitary damn knot less headwind. At this rate if I continued my climb into orbit I might just have the groundspeed I was looking for. But clearly the wind speed was not favourable at any level I had tried, so I saw no reason to change altitude again. I maintained my flight path and re-calculated the point of no return.

  I wouldn’t say I was feeling desperate by now, but I was probably at the notch below. I decided to try something else. At the point closest to the PNR, I sent a text message through the sat phone to a guy named Chris whom I had met just before I left Australia. Now an airline pilot, Chris had experience ferrying aircraft all over the world. During the previous week he had helped me with weather and a few questions I had along the way. I sent a short message, one that took a long time to write as I bent around the passenger seat trying to reach the phone: ‘Winds not favourable as forecast, nearing PNR, need tailwinds’.

  Within minutes Chris had messaged back. My heart raced. After a look at the winds aloft and the latest forecast from home, he told me that there should be a change to a tailwind five hours from California. I did another series of calculations based on that. If what Chris told me was correct I wouldn’t have an issue with fuel; if not I would arrive running on fumes, but would make it. There was one other option. If the winds didn’t change I could divert to the San Francisco area, which sat a little closer to my current position than Van Nuys.

  The upshot was that I felt comfortable about flying on. By the time I had finally made the decision I was only miles away from the PNR. As the nautical mile figure ticked by on the avionics, the last chance to head back to Hawaii passed.

  I knew then that I would either be sleeping in California or spending a night bonding with Bob the life raft. Bob seemed like a good guy but I was leaning towards a night in the Howard Johnston motel in Van Nuys.

  I passed the PNR and felt somewhat relieved: the option of turning back was gone, meaning I had one less thing to think about. I continued my rotational duties and decided to have something to eat.

  You don’t need to be a genius in the operation of the human body to understand that spending fourteen hours in a one-metre by one-metre confined space is not ideal. Fourteen hours is a long time, and Ken’s Pancake Parlor in Hilo had not really provided a sustainable source of nutrients. Knowing this, I had altered my meal plan completely; I had breakfast the day before departure, but only a snack for lunch, and dinner was sacrificed completely. Throughout the planning stage everybody’s favourite question had been, ‘How do you go to the toilet?’ My mentor Ken had kindly passed on ‘travel-loos’, which were nothing more than glorified sick bags with some kind of special, fancy ‘granules’ inside them. I don’t know what they did but I do know there was no button with ‘flush’ written on them, and I was determined not to use them if at all possible. Their chief advantage was that the box they were in was a great place to hide anythi
ng I wanted to keep safe.

  The estimated time to destination had whittled away from over seventeen hours in the climb to now only six remaining. I had stressed over the winds for eight hours, I had trend sheets coming out of my ears. I was over it. I was, for the first time in a very long time, legitimately scared.

  As I neared the five-hour mark the little arrow changed direction; with five hours and twenty-six minutes to run the winds turned completely. It was almost as if a switch had been flicked with an instantaneous change to tailwinds of ten to twenty knots. I was excited, so unbelievably excited and relieved. I began to calculate the fuel remaining based on the new speeds. It was all good news.

  The sky began to darken as I counted down the final hours. I wasn’t in the clear yet: although the winds had turned the fuel remaining was nowhere near as much as I had imagined. I spent a long time facing backwards pulling and pushing the ferry tank, ensuring that every drop had been pumped into the wing. The bags and equipment had slumped in a heap as the tank shrunk in size, I moved the bags and found that the tank was bone dry, now a cryovacked bag void of liquid or air.

  Absolutely shattered, I reached for my lunch box. I had already eaten the snacks but decided it was time for the now not so ice-cold Red Bull. But when I pulled the can from the bag it was rock solid. My mind flashed back to the first time I had opened a bottle of ginger beer at 9000 feet. I had bought it from the Merimbula Airport coffee shop along with one of their famous brownies before setting off north in the then newly acquired Cirrus. I pulled off the cap with absolutely no thought of air pressure, and for the rest of the flight I wore the contents of the bottle with only a woollen pilot jumper to mop up the mess. The reduced air pressure had caused the can of Red Bull to expand and I knew that if I opened the can it would explode. I was so sad and even thought of placing it in a ziplock bag and giving it a go but decided that might not be such a good idea either. Instead I put it back in the lunch box.