Flight 19 "Gypsies"

[Moses03]

Flight 19 is recreating one of Ernie Gann's ferrying flights from the USA down to Rio de Janeiro.

Here is a portion of the Gypsies chapter from Fate Is The Hunter.


"Doubtful of station and intentions"
-Gann

 

[Willy]

Gann flew Lockheed Lodestars to S. America. We don't have a Lodestar for FS, so we're making do with other period propliners. Such as this brand new Douglas product waiting to head south...

View attachment 94942

 

[Willy]

And We're Off!

Our first leg on this flight took us from Burbank to Tijuana. At the last minute, Lockheed needed a pilot for this L-10 Electra to be delivered LAN-Chile in Santiago. I'll eventually get it there, but first we got to get to Rio....

View attachment 94970

The flightline before take off

 

[Moses03]

MM elected to spend the night in Tijuana, so Taco, Willy and I moved on to San Felipe.

Had a sticky throttle on approach. Ran off the end of the runway and hit a cactus. No noticeable damage to the plane though.

 

[Taco]

Hey There!

Here we set waiting for some passengers to load who needed a lift to San Felipe from Tijuana. Old Dudley and I gave it some thought and, What the heck lets do it. A few extra bucks sure won't hurt the war chest.

 

[Willy]

Due to scenery differences, I ended up just taking off from a nearby field. Nice flight to San Felipe, although there wasn't much there when we got there....

(pics are reversed)

 

[Willy]

Headed on down to San Ignacio. We're about to run out of Baja California..

View attachment 95063

 

[Willy]

We crossed the Sea of Cortez to MMCN. Nice flight although I buggered the landing a bit.

 

[AussieMan]

We crossed the Sea of Cortez to MMCN. Nice flight although I buggered the landing a bit.

Ahhhh ...... the famous Panther landing .

 

[Willy]

On to Los Mochis!

 

[Moses03]

Three of us pressed on down the coast to MMCL. Of Note: Willy was using tequila as a quick octane booster and nearly had to make an emergency landing. I'm sure he will fill everybody in on what happened.

Taco met a lovely senorita at the cantina last night and was a no show on the flight line today...

 

[Willy]

No pictures, but basically I was playing with the Cambridge fuel/air mixture gauge and managed to kill both engines. It was getting pretty exciting trying to restart in mid air and the air/fuel mixture out of whack. Desperate times call for desperate measures and I ended up reselecting the aircraft which didn't work btw. About this time I realised that my left tank was dry and both engines were set up to run on that tank. Oops...........

Then when I got it going again, the autopilot tried to kill me.

 

[Moses03]

We have moved on to Oaxaca since the SOH outage. Some shots from the last couple of flights.

A moody approach to Mexico City, and volcano avoidance (Popocatepetl) the next day.

 

[Taco]

Here are some pictures from an earlier flight

 

[Taco]

Here are a few from last nights flight.

 

[Moses03]

Into Guatemala City today.

Spotted a rather large transport making it's way through the mountains.

 

[Willy]

Yep, fun filled flight through mountains and thunderstorms.

 

[Willy]

We left Guatamala at dusk and flew on to Managua Nicaragua. Nice flight even if there were some tall trees hiding in the dark waiting to mug an unsuspecting airframe on short final.

 

[MM]

A few shots of the leg from Managua to San Jose. Weather was hazy so no dramatic scenic vistas today.

(a) Out of Managua; (b) the Volcano Concepcion which rises out of shark-infested Lake Nicaragua; (c) descent with Willy into the hazy Central Valley of Costa Rica; and (d) taxiing to join Moses at San Jose's MROC.

 

[Willy]

Developed some engine troubles in the L-10 Electra so it's going to stay in Panama for repairs. I guess LAN Chile will send someone up for it sooner or later. But I got lucky and there was this brand new heavy patrol bomber sitting around that needed to go to the Argentinian Navy and I got the job of getting it down there.