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Tahiti to Hawaii, NTAA - PLCH
- PHKO - PHNY
Why is it daylight so early?
This was the thought Pam and I shared as the morning light
started sneaking around the curtains of room 734 at the Sofitel
Maeva Beach Hotel on Tahiti. Because we have such a lot of
flying to do today, we had wanted to takeoff at 6:00 a.m.,
Pat had voted for 8:00 a.m., and we had settled on 7:00 for
a takeoff time. Now, however, we see that we could easily
have departed at 5:00 and had daylight, and we know that the
earlier we leave the less flying at night we will have at
the other end of this marathon day. We are angry with ourselves
for (1) not checking the GPS database more thoroughly to know
exactly when sunup would be, and (2) once we had done that,
for not insisting on the earliest possible departure. Oh well.
What's done is done. We are targeting 7:00 a.m. for takeoff.
Knowing this would be just a
brief overnight, Pam and I had packed our toiletries and a
few clothes in my flight case and her briefcase, and had left
our big, heavy, suitcases onboard for once. Gosh! It is nice
not having to unpack, repack, and lug those monsters to and
from the airport this one time. We call for a taxi to pick
up all four of us at 6:00 a.m., and when we go down to the
lobby to checkout at about 5:45, Pat and Ashley are already
waiting there. That's a switch! Their excitement level, like
ours, is running high today and they are anxious to get started.
(That 5:00 a.m. departure desire would have been a snap!)
The taxi van had been standing by for a few minutes. Just
as I finish the checkout process, the taxi drives off! Even
though we were not late, apparently another fare showed up
and the driver decided to wait no longer. By the time another
taxi is called and arrives, we are now about ten minutes late
in leaving the hotel.
The process, however, of getting
through the departure procedures at the airport goes rapidly,
thanks to our Air Tahiti handling agents, and the ice and
catering arrive fairly close to schedule. We taxi out at 1703Z,
7:03 a.m. local, so we are right on time. Going almost due
north today, we will be in the same time zone when we arrive
in Hawaii. Strangely, Christmas Island, where we will refuel,
has the same time but it is a day later. Today we will cross
the equator once and the International Date Line twice. Fun
stuff!
We are cleared for FL260 via
the Arona Departure and then via waypoints that I asked Universal
to file for us on a direct line. Universal's preliminary routing
had us going most of the way via an airway that heads straight
to Kona in Hawaii, then a dog leg left turn from an intersection
on that airway, straight to Christmas. Even though it added
less than 30 miles to our flight, on a leg this long I want
to have as short a flight as possible…and I think that means
a straight line. So Pam and I had drawn the line on the chart
and had picked latitude/longitude coordinates every 5 degrees
of latitude, about 300 miles apart. These waypoints made up
the route that ATC cleared us to fly and we provided our ETA
for the first one, 15S 150 45W.
About forty minutes after takeoff
we switch to HF from VHF and have good contact with Tahiti
Control. We always monitor two VHF frequencies as we fly over
the expansive ocean when we aren't using VHF for ATC purposes:
121.5 MHz, the international emergency frequency, and 123.45
MHz, the oceanic air-to-air frequency. Before we have left
Tahiti Departure's VHF frequency, I hear a loud and clear
Australian voice say, "Tom, come up on 123.45."
I switch to that air-to-air frequency
right away and talk with Peter Frazier, of Southern Cross
Aviation in Camarillo, California. Peter has been a telephone
acquaintance of mine for many years. He runs a business that
ferries all types of airplanes all over the world, and we
have spoken about various King Air training and flying needs
that have arisen in association with his work. In fact, his
company was the one that used me as one of three pilots who
took three Super King Air 350s to Japan from Wichita a couple
of years ago. I had called Peter about doing both the ferry
tank and HF radio installations in 982GA when this trip was
in its formative stages, but he was too busy to get directly
involved. However, he did graciously consent to our using
a couple of his tanks that were already in Hawaii.
So here we are, leaving Tahiti,
and Peter's on the radio! He had taken off just behind us
in a Citation V Ultra that he, and his colleague Peter Dickens,
were ferrying from Tahiti to New York. He had seen the N-registered
King Air, ours, taxi out, had put two and two together, and
realized that this was us on World Flight 2001. Amazing! To
be in the middle of nowhere, and then have an acquaintance
be nearby in the sky, wow! It is indeed a small world.
Or is it? There is an awful lot
of Pacific Ocean to fly over today and it is just a part of
this big world we live in.
Peter and we chat off and on
over the next few hours and he graciously relays for us a
couple of times, since his HF installation is a lot stronger
than ours. He will land at Christmas Island about an hour
and a half ahead of us, so he says that he will tell the fuel
truck to stand by for our arrival.
Because it is such a long day,
I leave the right seat and go to the cabin, have a little
breakfast food - half of my lunch sandwich - and cup of tea
and take a nap in the stretched-out club seats on the cabin's
right side. Pat joins Pam in the cockpit, Ashley works at
the laptop, I nap. I want to be as rested as possible for
my leg today into Kona.
We are enjoying great weather.
Except for some minor clouds we penetrated while leaving Tahiti,
it is clear sailing today. The ice vanes stay up! Hallelujah!
The winds are mostly crosswinds and it looks like this leg
will be completed with plenty of reserve fuel. Universal's
flight plan had estimated 5:24 enroute, and it took us 5:31.
Pretty darn close!
Pam and Pat share the cockpit
as we make the descent and landing on Christmas Island. She
enters on the crosswind leg and flies left traffic to land
to the east on Runway 08. As we pass over the airport, there
is the Citation V, still on the ramp. Damn! The refueling
process here is going to be slow!
But it's not! It was slow for
"the Peters," but now that the truck is on duty, we are refueled
as soon as they finish with the Citation. This is one of only
two stops during WF2001 at which we must pay in cash, the
UVair card not being accepted, even though Universal has given
us every assurance, more than once, that it would be. Wrong!
Our ground time is an hour and
twenty-six minutes and we are off again, heading to Kona on
the big island of Hawaii, at 2:05 p.m. Typically, we have
some difficulty in talking to San Francisco (Oakland Oceanic
Control) on the HF, but they give us another frequency to
try and it comes in loud and clear. Again, no clouds exist
and the wind, although not favorable, is not strong enough
to ever be of concern. We ask for FL280 and are approved to
climb a couple of thousand feet higher to conserve a little
more fuel.
Remember, all of today's flying
is being accomplished by hand-flying with raw data. Because
of that little @#$% autopilot trim switch on the pedestal
that is stuck in the Up position, the Flight Director's command
bars always pitch up in the Attitude Hold mode and the Altitude
Hold mode always results in the bars commanding a 500 fpm
climb. If the autopilot is engaged, it follows the incorrect
commands. Thus, Pam and I have flown every second of this
long day ourselves. Well, we are pilots, and pilots fly, right?
Although it is not a really big deal, it is surely not the
typical way we pilots fly nowadays. The modern pilot, I have
often joked, has a huge callous on his or her index finger
from pushing the autopilot buttons so much! But today? We
are real pilots. We are flying. And it is much more tiring
than merely monitoring the autopilot as it does its marvelous
thing.
The sun sets off of our left
wing and now I am flying through the pitch black sky totally
on instruments with raw data. The excitement factor is high,
however, and I have no problem staying alert. I also don the
oxygen mask, selected to 100%, and breathe pure oxygen for
five or ten minutes before beginning the descent and landing
phases of this leg. This refills the brain's somewhat impaired
oxygen level, due to so many hours at high cabin altitude,
and sharpens the senses.
We raise Honolulu Control on
VHF, bid farewell to San Francisco on HF, and soon are in
radar contact. This is the first time that we have been monitored
on radar, the first time that we have been given a discrete
transponder code, since leaving New Zealand. That big expanse
of Pacific Ocean we've covered doesn't have radar. It's nice
to be in US airspace again!
We are given radar vectors for
a right downwind to Runway 17 at Kona, PHKO. After five hours
and seventeen minutes, just fourteen minutes shorter than
the first leg today, we are on the ground in the good old
U. S. of A! Pam had called Air Service Hawaii, the FBO that
is providing our handling service both in Kona and later in
Honolulu, and they told us that the Customs officials were
waiting for us at their facility.
As I shutdown on the ramp, the
Customs, Agriculture, and Immigration personnel are all standing
by, and with great courtesy, thoroughness, and speed, we are
soon cleared back into our home country. Nothing has to be
unloaded; all inspection is done onboard. They even have a
dog - a lovely yellow lab - sniff through the interior!
Our day is not quite over. Air
Service has its fuel truck standing by and Jeff, their fueler,
quickly has the main tanks topped up. We can tell we are in
the USA. Jeff drives the truck, pumps the fuel, fills out
the paperwork, runs the credit card…why, we've seen eight
people required to do his job at some foreign stops!
Now Pam is back in the left seat
for the short IFR hop to the neighboring island of Lanai.
It is pleasing to see the familiar Hawaiian islands show up
on the radar screen and the GPS displays. We are in visual
conditions but because it is so dark - another "black hole"
approach - Pam executes the ILS to Runway 3 and we are shutting
down on the small airport's deserted ramp forty minutes after
we had started taxiing out at Kona.
The hotel is called and we unload
and secure the airplane as we wait for our ride. I pop the
cork on a small bottle of champagne that we iced down in the
aft ice chest and we all use the airplane's plastic glasses
to toast our successful return to the United States of America.
We shutdown at 0656Z, 8:56 p.m. Hawaiian time, thirteen hours
and fifty minutes after we left Tahiti. Pam and I have worked
hard today, and we are proud of the flying job we've done.
It is good to be, almost, home.
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