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Posts Tagged ‘MAF pilot’

When Popping Off is Necessary

Posted on: May 10th, 2012 by Gene Jordan | Leave a comment

When I joined MAF in 1977, the training department was teaching pilots how to execute a “flap pop-off.” This technique allowed the airplane to “unstick” itself and get flying at a very slow speed when trying to take-off from an extremely muddy airstrip…a trick that became quite useful when I flew in Ecuador.

The Amazon jungle in eastern Ecuador gets between 24 and 28 FEET of rain a year, and the rain-soaked grass and dirt airstrips often hampered the ability to gain much speed on the ground in order to take off. A flap pop-off was occasionally just the right trick that helped lift the plane into the air when mud didn’t want to let go.

Most airplanes have flaps, small airfoils that increase the lift of the wings at slow speeds. Normally flaps are extended appropriately for take-off, before the take-off run is started. With a flap “pop-off,” the flaps are extended abruptly, immediately increasing the lift of the wing,

(a) and in conjunction with ground effect lift, the airplane was popped right into the air. Hence the name of the “flap pop-off.”

(b) with the airplane popping right into the air. Hence the name of the “flap pop-off.”

One afternoon I was flying family physician Dr. Jack Olinger out of a water-saturated, muddy air strip in Ecuador – and taking off here wasn’t going to be easy. If ever the flap pop-off technique was necessary, this situation was it.

Piloting a Cessna 180, with large, lift-enhancing and manually-controlled flaps, I rolled down the airstrip once to determine just how much speed I might be able to gain on the ground. Once I was satisfied that I could employ the flap pop-off technique safely to get us into the air, we began splashing down the airstrip again.

At just the right moment, I jerked the flap lever up and we jumped into the air. The nose of the airplane had to be carefully lowered to gain speed, without touching down again. I think that this maneuver surprised Dr. Olinger, as it was a non-standard maneuver. As we established a solid climb rate and rose over the jungle trees, Dr. Jack said that “this was so much fun,” and “could we land and do it again?” – a request I politely declined.

In most newer planes, electronically-powered flaps render flap pop-offs useless, but in the Cessna 180 and 185 they sure came in handy at the right time and in the right place!

Starving for Fuel, Saving a Life

Posted on: May 2nd, 2012 by Justin Honaker | Leave a comment

“The weather is still quite good here and I’d like to pick up the patient,” I relay my intensions to home base, nearly 60 miles away in much poorer weather. “Send fuel when the weather clears,” I add, not being thrilled at the thought of spending the night away from home, but willing if it means getting a critically ill patient to a hospital.

Lord, give me wisdom, I pray, advancing the throttle and heaving the Cessna 206 into the cool mountain air. I was making a difficult decision: conserve fuel and head home in the deteriorating weather, or press on to complete a critical medical emergency flight that would probably leave me stranded in the mountains with a fuel supply at a minimum.

We call them “Code 1” patients. They have extremely high priority and, if possible, must be attended to that day. Almost 90% of our flying is medically related and these flights are not uncommon.

On the ground near the patient’s home, a nurse fills me in on Palesa, 25. “She is in need of an urgent blood transfusion. Her hemoglobin has dropped critically low.” Palesa makes a quiet groan as she lifts herself into the middle passenger seat; her abnormally light color and silent determination both catch my attention. We are on our way in minutes, not wasting any precious time.

The hospital lies just 12 miles away and Palesa is scarcely in my care more than 15 minutes. Once on the ground again, she quietly slips out of the airplane and into the waiting ambulance and is gone, on her way to get the urgent care that she needs.

I turn and walk back to my fuel-starved 206, now with only 20 minutes above reserves––not near enough to return home. For the moment, I’m stranded. Powering up the aircraft radios, I hear a colleague has just broken through the weather and is on his way to meet me with some extra fuel. I breathe a sigh of relief. I’ll be home tonight after all.

Can’t Stop This Flight!

Posted on: April 18th, 2012 by Tripp Flythe | 2 Comments

About 45 minutes into a 70 minute flight, cruising along at 10,000 feet, I looked over to see my engine monitor gauge flashing “25.0 VOLTS” at me (it’s a 28 volt system). I cross checked with the ammeter above it, which was showing a discharge. Then, a few seconds later, my low voltage light began glowing bright red. It appeared I was having an alternator failure. I followed the “LOW VOLTAGE” emergency checklist, and found the voltage regulator circuit breaker had popped out. I reset it, and the system began charging for about 20 seconds, but then it popped out again. I tried calling our base in Tarakan on the HF radio, about 100 miles away, but apparently the gremlins that took away my voltage regulator also got into the HF radio, because they couldn’t hear anything I was saying. I was now only about 20 minutes to my destination of Long Metun, well over halfway there, and the weather was nice, so I wrote down my position, time, and ETA, and turned off the master switch to the electrical system in order to preserve my battery power. Thankfully, unlike a car, an airplane’s engine is not dependent on the battery (at least after starting), for situations such as this.

Just before landing, I switched on the power briefly to lower the flaps, and tried to contact our base again to tell them I was landing. No answer. After landing, I looked under the panel to see if I could find out what was causing that circuit breaker to pop. I opened the cowl and looked at the alternator and voltage regulator. Everything looked normal. It had now been over 45 minutes since anyone had heard from me, and they would begin looking for me soon if they didn’t hear anything. So, I and the airstrip agents made the 15 minute hike into the village to use their HF radio. After telling them I was OK, I got a waiver from our chief pilot to make the one-and-a-half hour flight back to Tarakan, since I’d be without an alternator and flying “in the dark” most of the way. I was disappointed since I’d specially arranged my schedule that day to do some church flights for several folks out of Long Metun: two pastor’s wives and their children were heading home to two different villages, one pastor was heading to Malinau, and there was a medical patient in another village I was to pick up. They were also pretty disappointed.

I told them I was going to have to head straight to Tarakan without passengers, but if for some reason I started the plane and it began working again, I’d shut down and they could get on board. Well, someone must have been praying hard, because sure enough, when I started it up, everything was working normally! I made it the rest of the day without another problem with the electrical system. (We still haven’t figured out what caused that circuit breaker to pop, and we’ve flown it several days since it happened).

Rainy Day Detour

Posted on: April 11th, 2012 by Sean Cannon | 3 Comments

Of the numerous items that would be considered challenging to an MAF pilot, dealing with weather would probably rank in the Top 3. MAF flies its airplanes in extreme places around the world and those same extreme places can be accompanied by extreme weather. Although numerous options exist nowadays for weather reporting and predicting, most of those are not applicable to the areas we fly in. Many days when the weather is questionable, it comes down to how well you know the local area and its weather patterns that determines how much you fly and where you go. Sometimes though, it doesn’t matter how much you know about the area or how much flight time you have. When big storms occur, the best thing to do is get on the ground and wait; or in my case, that means get on the river and wait.

A few weeks ago while returning to our home base, I made it to within seven miles of home and I could not continue any further. The rain and subsequent turbulence was simply too much for this pilot and I turned around and made a straight line for a clear section of river. Thankfully, I landed on the river just as the deluge hit and I enjoyed an hour in a “new to me” village. I was warmly invited into someone’s home and we talked and enjoyed tea while the heavens cut loose just out the front door. An hour after I landed, the skies cleared up as though nothing had happened and I took off and landed at our home base nine minutes later.

Witnessing a Happy Ending

Posted on: April 5th, 2012 by Justin Honaker |

When MAF pilots make medical evacuation flights they don’t always get to see the happy endings. But when they do, it’s a satisfying flight.

MAF pilot Justin Honaker was closing the rear cargo door before embarking on his first flight of the day to the village of Methaleneng in Lesotho, Africa, when a vaguely familiar face grinned back at him. The man rattled off something in Sesotho and pointed to his 10-year-old son next to him. Justin realized what the man was asking: “Do you remember us?” And then, Justin recognized them…

Five days earlier, I had been to Methaleneng. The father and son, Motlatsi, were on board. Motlatsi was lethargic, incoherent, and barely conscious, after being hit in the head with a stone. He and his father made the 2.5-hour trek to the clinic. I remember buckling Motlatsi’s nearly limp body into the back seat of the Cessna 206 that day, his spastic movements hampering my efforts. I remember his eyes darting aimlessly about the cabin and wondering if he wouldn’t be better off on a stretcher (that I didn’t have with me). I remember feeling that there was little hope for the boy.

On this day, however, Justin hardly recognized Motlatsi, who was now bright-eyed and grinning, happy and coherent. “I couldn’t believe what I was seeing!” Justin said. Now, the only remaining hurdle to getting the father and son home was the gusting wind wreaking havoc on the sky over Lesotho. Methaleneng had been unlandable the day before.

From 9,500 feet, Justin pondered the miracle in the back seat of his airplane and prayed that one day Motlatsi would know his Savior as well. As Justin circled overhead at Methaleneng, he saw a limp windsock and marveled again at God’s protective hand over Motlatsi’s life.