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Keep writing Ken!

On Jan 19, 2006, at 11:01 PM, Ken Gebhart wrote:

> On 1/18/06 2:06 AM, "Gary J. LaPook"  wrote:
>
>> Great post Ken.
>>
>> It brought back memories of my flight across the atlantic in a
>> Cessna 172 in 1978 trying to find Flores in the Azores. I was
>> working for Pete Demis, who you also know. No autopilot, shooting
>> stars with an A-10a I had purchased from you several years
>> earlier. Level the wings, start shooting, straighten out plane
>> back on heading, resume shooting, etc. and then interpolating the
>> altitude from all of the pencil marks covering half of the disk.
>>
>> Have you had any contact with that crazy greek guy recently?
>> Gary LaPook
>>
>>>
> Gary,
>
> No, but the word crazy fits.  He was flying one of the planes on
> the trip I related.  So many stories to tell.  The last of which
> was his repossessing Idi Amin?s private jet (while Idi was still in
> power.)
>
> You mention the Azores.  Some friends of mine took off in several
> C-310s from St. John?s for the Azores.  But instead of allowing for
> variation, they used grid variation (GV), a 35 deg difference!
> Upon expiration of ETA, one fellow wanted to start a square search
> for the islands, but the others talked him out of it, reasoning
> that they were bound to hit Europe if they continued on. As you
> know, prop planes get their best mpg low and slow, so they were
> down on the wave tops when the ETA for Europe arrived.  Still no
> land.  An hour later, with all fuel tanks solidly on E, land and an
> airport appeared, which they used, but no-one there spoke English.
> They had gone into the middle of the Bay of Biscay and landed in
> France!
>
> During the 70s, Cessna, Beech, and Piper supplied 80% of the
> world?s single engine, prop airplanes.  The new owners almost
> always opted to have them ferried instead of waiting for sea
> freight to bring them.  On one of my flights from Gander to
> Shannon, I was informed by the line boy, that I was the 22nd single
> engine airplane to arrive from the US that day.
>
> Most navigation of these planes was by the gun-barrel method.  The
> metal ferry tanks installed for the trip made the magnetic compass
> all but useless.  You tracked outbound on a VOR radial, and set the
> directional gyro (on unslaved mode) to the radial bearing.  Then
> when the radial dropped out at around 100 miles, you held the last
> heading until hitting the destination.  Trouble was that normal
> internal gyro precession, plus earth-transport precession
> guaranteed a large error.  This was not too big a problem over the
> Atlantic, but I personally have know 5 people who did not return
> from Pacific crossings, most probably due to navigational errors.
> Thus, I used a sextant.
>
> Gary, how about your flight?  Did you do many or just once?  Any
> problems or comments?  I only did two, once over each ocean, but
> living in Wichita with Cessna and Beech, I was close to many of
> those who made such flights for a living.
>
> If ever a book SHOULD be written (referring to Bill?s earlier
> comment), it should be written about the unbelievable adventures
> (navigational, political, and physical) of the pilots who flew
> these ferry flights.  I have only scratched the surface with my
> above comments.
>
> Ken

   

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