Spokey

Some airport shots. Approaching Entebbe in Uganda. This from my old DC8......back in the day as they say!

Here is Nice. Airborne off 04R, right hand turn after take off and passing 10 000 ft on the crosswind. Global Express to Seattle......not shabby performance!

Hey Swiss, the old DC4’s are not operating. As for the rest of that company I do not have any idea. I have also been working out of SA for many years, I just live here! (Currently home)

With all the speculation around the software and fly by wire of the modern 737 Max, here is another of my rides from earlier in my career. We used to joke that it too was fly by wire.......just many wires wound up into a cable!

I believe it. I get Aeroplane magazine each month and recently in one of those they had a ad for a bunch of new merlins that had been found. These ones had been built to power tanks in WW2 but are convertable to the aviation spec. I imagine quite a lot of dollars/pounds would be involved in either the purchase or the conversion.

We flew in twice a week from the UK. There was always busy helicopter traffic in and out. Usually when the Chinooks came steaming in it was because of casualties on board. We had instruction to turn immediately after take off at times. Never saw what was cause for the instruction. Likely to be a skirmish on the ground. Iraq was interesting, had incomming motars once as we were leaving. Sounds more dramatic than it was .....for us anyway! We were getting out of dodge back to a nice hotel room in Bahrain.

Time on my hands! Not a huge amount to look at but may be of interest. This is on final approach into Camp Bastion in Helmand, Afghanistan. It was nearly always tricky. There was no approach available to us as the airfield just had a military frequency TACAN. Our old 8’s could not fly the RNAV/GPS type approaches either. All we could do was build an extend centre line out from the touch down zone and try and fly that as acuratelly as possible until the runway would become visible through the dust! Beard went white flying there!! The US had the left side and the Brits the right. There is a C17 visible through the dust at right.

I like this...........a lot! Those big old radials are awesome too.

Ha ha, yeah, very low by pass axial flow jet engine. Was very very loud!

Apologies for the less than great images, taken with an early phone camera some years ago by a mate at Lanseria. This DC8 had been bought by Stars Away and had been in long term maintenance in Cape Town. I was, I believe, the only SA Licensed, type rated and current Captain in SA at the time. Was kind of easy to get the job when they needed crew ha ha. Anyway, we needed to do “recency” landings, so after the positioning flight to Josie we did touch and goes at Lanseria before heading across to OR Tambo. My biggest regret was not doing a missed approach “fly by” for the peeps on the balcony!!

The KSC is one of my bucket list places to visit. The Saturn V is truly spectacular, just reading about the machine. I have admiration for those guys who had such courage to sit in that tiny capsule and be blasted into space. The first Saturn V launch actually carried astronauts. They had no time to test the machine prior to a manned lauch.....Crazy stuff.

Thanks, I will. I must dig up some old photos when I get home to SA. I have been lucky to visit some great museums and climb around some wonderful aircraft.

Yes, true this, it was a GII. They approached with the main gear down as well as the reversers deployed. There is an interesting Wikipedia write up on the STA, Space Shuttle Trainer, giving detail of the flights. Of interest perhaps, we could deploy the inboard thrust reversers on the DC8. We did not have conventional spoilers as speed brakes, just roll augmentation spoilers. The machine would shudder and shake but it worked very well. We did not use it much due to the old airframes, but into Camp Bastion in was beaut. At 200 ft, crack the inboard reversers and it pitched the nose up to the right flare angle and at touch down we were slowing nicely before getting all 4 reversers out.

In 1986 we used to do the breakfast run to Harties from Hillbrow. The Fourways intersection was all that there was in the area. A shop and petrol station. If I recall correctly the road which is now Witkoppen was dirt off to the east and west..........I still have that bike (400f on the motorcycling threads)

In the late 90’s I flew a Kit Fox from Grand Central to Lusaka with a tech stop in Bulawayo. The cars on the motorway north of Pietersburg were passing us due to the head wind.....! Edited due to the vin rouge inhibiting my spelling!

This was at Camp Bastion (Forward Operating Base) in Afghanistan, 2009, view from the tower. My last gig on the old DC8 freighters before joing the Gucci Jet Set! We were a mixed bag crew, SA, UK, French, Zimbo. We flew in from RAF Brize Norton. I arranged with the boss to bring magazines and newspapers from the UK for the Control Tower staff. In addition after our fuel stop in Oman, we would pick up fresh milk for the Poms to enjoy with their tea. Once I started doing the milk thing we got “ Milk run, cleared to land “ on the radio as opposed to the ISAF (International Security Assistance Force) callsign. I think this was perhaps my best job in aviation!

I have been lucky enough to see Enterprise on the USS Intrepid in New York ( a great museum) but seeing Discovery at the Udvar Hazy in Washington was incredible. The burn marks and heat damage to the airframe had me staring in awe at the machine and marvelling at the courage of the people who flew these missions.

Since I am in the hotel lounge in the sandpit, enjoying a nice glass of red and as far removed from MTB as I could be, here are a few pics to share, I shall keep it brief, as when bored in the hotel, I could go on a bit One of my all time favourites. Back in 1986 when the US attacked Benghazi in Libya, I was a young restaurant manager in the UK. On the night the top brass from Lakenheath had dinner in our establishment. It was the F111’s that did the dirty, but these guys did the recon.

It has the same engines as the baby Gucci Jet I am now involved with. Great performance low down, but at 25000 ft and above the engines are very sensitive to higher than normal outside air temperature, the aerie becomes a lazy little tart!!!

One of my favourite aeroplanes. When I was flying into Bagram in Gulf War 2, (the sequel) these guys used to come and sit off our wings, behind and below. Was nice to know they were there if the bollox kicked off from the ground as we came in!

Yup, flown a Super Cub and a Tiger Moth, as well as a few others, perhaps of interest.....two of Douglas’s finest, DC4 and DC8.

Early morning start, Atlanta.

With the hiking, kayaking, bikes etc I need to make some time. The Missus is keen to give the paragliding a go too. I can sense one of those intro/dual flights in my near future! And then there is kite boarding...........

What a crazy story, bizaare that he managed to go so long with a fake ATPL. I wonder how he managed to get it from the CAA when he had just the CPL. I suppose it helped him that the training in an airline is typically inhouse and once he had managed the first renewel with the fake license he was all sorted. Amazing!

I feel a need to do this sport! There are several schools near where I live, I shall give it a go.