Dil52's Cape to Cape Flights in the Golden Age Northop Gamma 2A

Dil52 said:
I just managed to get a sun and moon shot at 5:00PM, but while approaching a thunder storm the turbulence is throwing this thing around like it Tom Jefferson’s kite.


Dil52
Click to expand...


Some superb airmanship Fred ... Love these screenies too!

Let's see ... would that be the same kite Tom sold to Ben Franklin?



ME: "Do you remember Cary?"

YOU: "Cary who?"

ME: "Carry your butt to Cape Town" ... :wiggle:






Keep it going ... looking fine buddy !



:ernae:
 
salt_air said:
Some superb airmanship Fred ... Love these screenies too!

Let's see ... would that be the same kite Tom sold to Ben Franklin?



ME: "Do you remember Cary?"

YOU: "Cary who?"

ME: "Carry your butt to Cape Town" ... :wiggle:






Keep it going ... looking fine buddy !



:ernae:
Click to expand...

:wavey:

LOL

I guess I got my history mixed up. Many times I ad-lib and this old brain gets me in trouble. I think it was a kite that Betsy Ross made for Ben which Tom tried it out first. Then Ben flew it one night in a lightening storm with the key to the capital building that he'd tied to the string. When lightning hit the kite it melted the key and zapped two secret service guys that were holding Ben up in the wind with one hand and on to a fence with the other.....Ben was OK though.......it was a mess! :)

Oh well, it's on to Leopoldville and the Congo, then some visual river and jungle flying from there. :running:

See you at the Cape unless you're going to fly the trimotor. I'd advise against flying the coast this time of year. The weather's pretty bad with headwinds the just might push that Ford backward with a negative GS number. I hope you have plenty of lamp oil to burn to get all those flights in. :)

Dil52
 
Leg #15 FOOL-FZAB Complete

I've arrived at the Congo and the city of Léopoldville N'Dolo Belgian

There were thunders storms in the region, but the visibility was great. Just a nice spring rain.
A great flight!

http://fs-duenna.com/flights/ShowFlight.php?detail=flight&value=APaNjKHhme2mmDpDSfMjMtv3X8

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Approaching the Congo river valley
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Good VFR conditions allowed a short final
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By far the shortest runway, so far on this trip, located between high rises on both sides.

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Time to disable the AP and stow away the sextant.

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Dil52
 
Moses03 said:
Looking good Fred. I seem to be following your lead at the moment.
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Thanks Moses

I see you've passed me and have completed the VFR flights as well....nice flying at +11900' without breaking through the Golden Age hard ceiling...

Keep up the good work.

Some parts have come in for the Gamma. A landing gear assembly, a fuel, and an OAT gauge are being installed for the visual flights up the Congo and over the mountians and lakes across central and east Africa. In case we get lost the fuel gauges might come in handy....We were able to locate the guages from some parts that the Amelia Earhart team didn't need for the Electra on her flights across Africa in recent years.

We'll soon be ready to crawl out of this gin mill in Léopoldville and get her airborne once again....this is how I'm walking..... :wiggle: :)

Dil52
 
Leg #17 FZAB-FZGA Complete

What started out to be rough flying, with thunderstorms and heavy winds, ended with to be a nice clear day with unlimited visibility….the first I’ve seen these conditions since we left the coast.

There was no reason to follow the river and it was enjoyable to see all the green, the lakes, and the Congo in the distance.

http://fs-duenna.com/flights/ShowFlight.php?detail=flight&value=kL1j3NTTyEd9ugkZB2WIHXRM4

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1. Rough weather
2. Lac Tumba
3. Time to refuel

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I am really enjoying your narrative Fred. I particularly appreciate the lessons on "old school" navigation techniques. Bravo to you and all of the Golden Age pilots.
 
jt_dub said:
I am really enjoying your narrative Fred. I particularly appreciate the lessons on "old school" navigation techniques. Bravo to you and all of the Golden Age pilots.
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Fred is the best Jeff .... not because he's the oldest .... :wiggle: .... but because he's taken the time to figure out what works and just as important, why.

He has a handle on "Old School" from actually using it .... Quite the mentor for me .... everybody out here could pick up a trick or two from him to make the most of the sim.



Cheers,
 
jt_dub said:
I am really enjoying your narrative Fred. I particularly appreciate the lessons on "old school" navigation techniques. Bravo to you and all of the Golden Age pilots.
Click to expand...

Thanks Jeff,

Edit: Oh yes and Salt Air....You're too modest....I've learned a lot from you as well!
hope to see you soon....things are slowing down here a tad at least.



Nice job you did in the modern PC-12.
I could take a week in Saint Martin without a complaint. :)

May as we'll head up river to Kisangani since it’s such a nice day.
I think I'm finally getting this Gamma 2A figured out where she responds to my controls or vice versa. When I get to the city I'm going to go over it carefully looking for stress fractures after the first part of that last flight. :)

I'll end the day up there in town and perhaps take in a soccer game.......or go to a pub.....or perhaps to church!

Funny thing, sometimes I say "I" and sometimes "we"...........I miss my copilot.......when I get back to South America I'm definately going to look her up. She's is usually unemployed until the money runs out. After hiring her last year to finish the cargo run I had no more mishaps. :)

This is another visual only with no navigational tools so good weather is a plus/plus win/win scenerio. I hope the air raft doesn't have any holes in it. About the only place for an emergency landing is to ditch it in the river, and from what I understand there are a lot of hungry animals both in the river and along the shore......:eek

Dil52
 
Leg #19 FZIA-HKKI Complete

Another great day for a VFR flight from Stanleyville, over the Ruwenzori Mountains then Lake Victoria, to Kisumu, Kenya! :)
I'm hearing thunder from a distance in Kisumu, but there doesn't seem to be any clouds in the sky?
No problem, we'll have the use of the homer and sextant once again spot, but no time to stop and rest now...

I flew over a 500 acre island by the name of Bulango in Lake Victoria located 1 minute (1 nm) south of the Equator.
You can a rent a nice house there for less than the cost of a hotel. I was thinking that would be a nice vacation.


http://fs-duenna.com/flights/ShowFlight.php?detail=flight&value=2qfohFgR4DL9XON30oED1XRYU

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1 Over the mountains and apporaching Lake George
2 Over Entebbe, Uganda
3 It's time to refuel, reinstall the radios, and get the sextant back out of the flight bag.
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It is only a short hop now over to Nairobi then south to the Cape from there.

Dil52

 
Leg #20 HKKI-HKNW Complete

The weather turned in a hurry today.

You could call Nairobi the mile high city of Kenya with an elevation of 5534' ASL at the city airport.

I spent some pretty tense moments flying over the city looking for the Airport.

http://fs-duenna.com/flights/ShowFlight.php?detail=flight&value=oIYnxL19inOQ7Ol07kBCe9ciwc


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Quiz: What’s wrong with this sun shot with the sextant? I shouldn’t be this far from Nairobi with 30 minutes ETE!
I'll post the answer later if anyone's interested and ventures to guess. :sleep:
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Looking for the city airport.

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Dil52
 
Edit: Fred- I moved your post over here from my thread as I think you had meant to post it in here.
-Moses


Going to try to make it from Nairobi to HTMB Mbeya, Tanganyika afore night falls!

Whether the weather is cloudy or notl :)

View attachment 64743
 
There was a brief thunder shower leaving Nairobi, but 30 minutes into the flight the weather cleared and visibility became unlimited.


I was glad to see that happen since there were some mountain peaks we had to go between and one we actually had to go around.



http://fs-duenna.com/flights/ShowFlight.php?detail=flight&value=roS8HU4kSroWTq8FX8ybXPpT9k
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It was nice to see the Great Rift Valley that Moses spotted on his flight to from Nairobi to Mbeya. That's quite a scar on the earth's surface.
For anyone who's looking for it, the location is somewhere around S6° 34.00' E34° 21.00', as near as I could tell, using the sextant.
The longitude coordinate is probably more acurate than the latitude coordinate.
The latitude was best guess from DR timing.
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Three different sun shots taken about every 15 minutes (blue and green lines) up to the 2 hour flight time reading (red line).
The sextant was accurate this time, which should act as a hint for answering the "Quiz" shot on the previous flight. :)
No problem, the ADF needle was pointing striaght up as well by that time.
The shot was just for fun at this point.
View attachment 64752


Rough descent, approach and landing in the Gamma. The quick descent from the mountain to the north, plus the flaps don't slow her down much.
Add a grass field and the beads started forming on the forehead. I almost dumped the egg beaters into dirt while braking to a stop.
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Another fun day flying this great adventure created by a great team here at the SOH.

Thanks again folks!

Dil52

 
Time to head south again. This will be my flight #23 since I forget mark 22 as complete.

HTMB – Mbeya, Tanganyika [UK] to FLKW – Broken Hill, Northern Rhodesia [UK]




If you see this...........
Sorry Moses, I must have done too much flying yesterday....forgot where I was posting.:sleep:



 
Good stuff, Fred. Amazing navigation there. I did my long DR leg using the SC-3B, but still "cheated" in the sense that I used "SHIFT-Z" to tel me what the wind was. My next challenge is to figure out how to use the sextant.
 
Leg #22 HKKI-HKNW Complete

PRB said:
Good stuff, Fred. Amazing navigation there. I did my long DR leg using the SC-3B, but still "cheated" in the sense that I used "SHIFT-Z" to tel me what the wind was. My next challenge is to figure out how to use the sextant.
Click to expand...

That would be great if you do Paul!
If you need any help just give Austin or I a nudge. We're always looking for others who are interested in the hand held USSGPS (Universe & Solar System Global Positioning System)......no batteries required. :)
It is really very simple once you get past the mystique of it.
It works exactly the same as the GPS only you use planets and stars instead of satelites.

Arrived in FLKW – Broken Hill, Northern Rhodesia
BTW I believe it's leg 22 not 23.
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http://fs-duenna.com/flights/ShowFlight.php?detail=flight&value=8NbXXK1Zfs4CXJTTAQHGE9DR5gw
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A couple of shots

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Dil52

 
Two legs to the Cape or not?

I’m sitting in a local pub in Broken Hill, Northern Rhodesia(Kabwe, Zambia) having a club soda and a table full of what looked to be tourists were sitting around at, what I’d call,a poker table. One of them tells the bar tender to keep feeding me gin or whatever beverage of choice as long as I want to drink it. My total tab was on them!

So, I wink at the bar tender and he serves me up another Shirley Temple.I have a reputation to maintain here ya know. I have to let them think I’m dinkin some kind of jungle juice…..pun intended. J


Now, I’m thinking, why would they do that? They don’t know me, or anything about me, when this super looking female gets up from that very table and comes over and sits down beside me? “Hey Dil, my name is Josephine. You may have seen me in the movies. How about coming over and joining our group?”

“Ah, gulp, gasp, how did you know my name?” I managed to ask.

She just smiled and explained, “I suppose you have two big white circles around your eyes and the rest of your face is sunburned, because you’re a welder that works only outside in the sun…..no just kiddin, you’re that pilot who’s flying the Gamma Sky Chief and have been sitting inside a glass cockpit for the past month.” “We know that” she chuckled.

Then everyone sitting at the table laughed. There was a guy named Johnny and another lady by the name of Maureen and a few others. They were there after making some move here in Africa?? That was news to this ole Cargo/Bush/CropDuster/Pilot. I don’t go to the movies. I wait until there’re out in AMC or TCM’s. LOL

For a minute I felt like the laughing stock of the continent of Africa. But then I noticed that the laugh wasn’t sarcastic, it was more of a friendly laugh, if you know what I mean?

Then another one of the patrons of the establishment said,“Come on over.” “We’re having a disagreement and we’d like you to help settle it.”


Here’s the dilemma in a nut shell. I come to find out that they were talking about what route I was going to fly from here to the Cape and how many legs I had left. The lovely lady who had sat down beside me said she thinks I can do it in two more legs. In fact there’s a whole pile of money in the center of the table related to the decision that I may make.

Three quarters of the pile represents those who are saying I can only fly it in three legs and one quarter representing those who think I can do it in two legs and the odds on that money is now at 10/1 in Vegas. “So what will it be Dil?” “What are you going to do?” Johnny asked?

For a split second I was thinking about asking him how may vines it would take him to get to the river from here, but after seeing what shape he was in I decided that discretion is the better part of valor and let the thought perish immediately.

Wait, hold it hold it! If you know so much about the race don’t you know I couldn’t make it from Hammerfest to Stockholm and on the fuel allotted the Gamma and that was 695nm. What makes you think I can make it to from here to Johannesburg, which is over 700nm, then from there to the Cape which is another 680nm. Well, not only did they know about the failed attempt, they also knew about the 14nm average head wind in cold air that I’d dealt with on the first leg attempt.

Hmm, now they have me thinking. The over 700nm run to Johannesburg is about as straight true south as you can fly from here. I’ve noticed the prevailing winds are pretty much out of the west southwest and even, at times from the west northwest.

OK, I’m game, let’s go for it! :running:

How could I turn down a couple of Olympic competitors and a beautiful move star who believed in my ability, or perhaps more accurately put, insanity, to give it a try.

But first let’s have a big party, it might be my last.

I was hoping that Icould repair my reputation with this committee after the horrific flights I’d made last summer hauling cargo. But, a friendly wager is a friendly wager. In can’t pass it up!

I’ll probably leave here in a couple of days or whenever the party’s over, whichever comes first……:icon_eek:

Perhaps you've noticed. I'm not a writer, good writers have good editors. :icon_lol:

Dil52
 
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