July 29th

The weather remained very good all this week, and what a superb week it has been. All bar one day, that is, which I’ll explain later.

I mentioned last week that Volkher Jacobsen has come to PNG in order to help with the Twin Otter programme. Flying with him is a pleasure – he is an excellent pilot in every way. On top of that, both of us have flown a lot in the Eastern Highlands, so while we flew out of Goroka this week, we were warmly greeted at several airstrips by people we’ve known since the late 1990s and early 2000s.

It has been so much fun being out flying and doing what we both originally signed up to do rather than sitting in the office!

We’ve flown teachers to remote communities, a couple of medical evacuations out for treatment, building supplies for schools and health centres, coffee out to market. The slightly smoky haze has given rise to some spectacular views of so many shades of blue and grey as the mountain ridgelines recede into the distance.

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We came back to Hagen from Goroka on Wednesday afternoon. The programme had gone well and we arrived home earlier than expected, which was useful because we had a guest coming for the evening meal.

Kate Forbes is an SNP Member of the Scottish Parliament, the youngest MSP. She grew up in India where her father worked with VP (short for Varghese Philip), one of the MAF team here who is helping MAF PNG develop special focussed projects that have a particularly high impact for our work. Wondering what to do with her holiday, she contacted VP and Nimmi (his wife) and asked if she could come and stay and do something useful while in PNG.
While here she has visited some of the bases around the country, seen a couple of rural hospitals and helped with some of VP’s projects.

We had a really enjoyable evening with Kate.

It was extremely interesting to hear her assessment of British politics at the moment, what the political climate is in Scotland and her take on Brexit and other topical issues. It was also somewhat salutary to hear how the media represents what she says, taking statements and remarks entirely out of context in order to put their own slant or bias on the topic. I guess that we know that happens, but it has more of an impact when the person affected is telling you about what has occurred.

“What is truth?” is both one of the saddest questions ever recorded (by Pontius Pilate), but also one of the most relevant to western societies.

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As I said, one day that didn’t work out so well. Over Monday night my back was so painful that I couldn’t stand up without Nicki supporting me. Quite why the problem I’ve got is worse at night I have no idea. Being in Goroka had the advantage that I was able to get an appointment with the doctor at the New Tribes Mission headquarters. If my back hadn’t improved, let alone got worse, I’d been planning to go to the Nazarene hospital at Kudjip, 45 minutes drive outside Hagen, on Friday when I had an office day.

After a thorough examination he reckoned that it is a strain of the sacroiliac ligament and gave me a local anti-inflammatory injection. It’s improved since then but is still not 100%, so I hope it won’t be too long before it settles down completely.

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Having seen the doctor in Goroka on Tuesday I didn’t need to go to Kudjip, so Volkher and I flew three rounds out of Mount Hagen on Friday, including the one to Kol, about 15 minutes flying time to the north-east, but a good day’s journey by road when the road is open, which it currently isn’t.

The flight was to deliver school supplies, including food, to the rural high school. I doubt that many western children would be so pleased to see bags of rice as the primary diet as the youngsters there were.

We’d departed from Hagen just as morning fog rolled in and closed the airport for a while, so we needed to wait at Kol until the fog lifted and we could return, which gave us a chance to talk with the local people more than we usually have time to do. The community is mostly centred on the Lutheran church, and Volkher comes from the German Lutheran church. What I hadn’t realised was that his brother was a missionary at Kol in the early 1990s, and people there remembered him, so there was an immediate rapport.

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Janine Bland, wife of our Property & Vehicles Maintenance Manager, completes her 6th decade this weekend. While I’m writing this, Nicki has gone out to a surprise celebration for her. A special Indian meal has been organised with the owner of the Sweet Spot, a restaurant in town. Nicki has been supplied with a sari, though I haven’t seen her wearing it yet, only a photo of when it was tried on earlier.

(… Now Sunday morning and I saw her when she arrived home after a really enjoyable evening and she did look really nice in her sari, which had lovely colours. I’m sure she will have sent out some photos by the time you read this!)

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Our rhubarb has been looking very poor for quite a while. I read once that it is a plant that requires several weeks at sub-zero temperatures to do well, and certainly it grew much better after several weeks in our fridge a couple of years ago.

Today I dug it all up, wrapped it in newspaper, then in a rice bag and put it all in a freezer in an unoccupied house on the compound. I’ll leave it for a couple of weeks and then put it in the fridge for another couple of weeks, and then see how it does when I replant it. If it survives maybe it will do better. If it doesn’t, then nothing has been lost.

Another trip to the hardware store was also made today, returning with a couple more sheets of plywood and some battens in order to make the next couple of crates. When they are done I’m hoping I may not need to make any more, depending, of course, on how much stuff we do decide to ship home at the end of the year.

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I ran this morning (Sunday) for the first time in a couple of weeks. My back is a bit niggly, but definitely better than it was. My fitness for running at altitude has taken a serious hit with me being more static and I expect it’ll be another few weeks before I’m able to run any distance. But I’m going again, and that is the most important thing!

July 22nd

It’s a very special day for Nicki and myself: 40 years of marriage! We’ll go out for a meal together this evening to celebrate. I am grateful for those 4 decades more than words can ever express.

:-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-)

This week I’m writing for Goroka. Nicki and I came here on Friday afternoon and will stay until next Wednesday afternoon so that I can retrain Volkher Jacobsen on the Twin Otter.

Volkher flew in PNG from the late 1990s to the late-2000s and is currently the MAF International Flight Training Manager based in Cairns. We’ve known each other a long time! In order to keep the Twin Otters flying while we’re short of captains, Volkher will come to PNG for three tours, the first of which, this one, is focussed on getting him used to flying the aircraft again.

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It’s been a saga getting him here. For reasons not entirely known to us the application for his PNG visa wasn’t made as promptly as it should have been. The result was that instead of arriving last Monday and starting his training on Tuesday, he finally arrived on Thursday. The flight schedule was pushed around to make things work so, providing the weather cooperates, his training should all work out in the end.

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Since I couldn’t fly with Volkher, on Wednesday and Thursday I did some flying at Mount Hagen. On Wednesday I completed Glenys Watson’s (she’s our newest First Officer) routine base check and then we did some charter flights. It should have been more flights than it was, but the weather didn’t cooperate. All around the mountains there was a lot of cloud and rain, which stopped all bar one flight. Back in Hagen, this is on Wednesday, we prepared the aircraft for an early departure on Thursday morning – a load of building materials for a new teacher’s house for the primary school at Ambuluwa. So far so good; everything was ready.

On Thursday morning, also so far so good. The weather was OK and the report from the community was that it was good there also. We arrived overhead, landed and started to unload. During this time cloud came up over the airstrip and later on it started to rain. Having landed before 8 o’clock in the morning, it was at 4:52 in the afternoon that we were finally able to take off. The rain eased off and the cloud dispersed enough so that we could see the mountain ridge off the end of the airstrip that precludes anything other than a strictly visual take-off.

Nine hours waiting at an airstrip because of weather is a new personal best. I’ve been caught later in the day and stayed overnight before, but never on the first flight of the day and then had to wait nearly until it was too late to leave. If we hadn’t departed when we did, then we only had a maximum of another 40 minutes before it would have been too late and we’d have had to stay overnight.

Glenys and I had made arrangements with the community to have somewhere to stay overnight, and were fully expecting to stay there. Getting back was not only nice since a night in a bush hut isn’t as comfortable as we’re used to, but it did mean I could start Volkher’s training on Friday.

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Yesterday, Saturday, and today has been brilliantly hot and sunny in Goroka, quite a contrast to earlier in the week. I hope that the good weather will continue so that I can complete Volkher’s flying during the next three days while we’re here.

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We’ve let relevant people in MAF PNG and MAF UK know our intention to return to the UK next year, though details still need to be talked through. We don’t know yet whether there’ll be any requirement for short visits back later in 2019 or not. My flight schedule at the moment isn’t giving me enough time on the ground to sit down and discuss any of this with Todd Aebischer, our Country Director. Hopefully that will be possible soon.

Already when I fly over areas I don’t go to that frequently I am very aware that it could easily be the last time I’m there. We are well aware that after 25 years leaving is not going to be easy.

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During the week I had Tuesday off so that I had duty time available to fly with Volkher on Saturday. I completed the second crate for shipping our stuff back home. Probably another two or three to go. We’ve also begun mulling over our trip home via Australia and New Zealand; at only 7 months away it is coming up quickly.

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Looking at the UK news the weather there is as hot, or hotter than here in the tropics. I’m sure that our garden, like everybody else’s, will welcome some rain when the heatwave does eventually break.

July 15th

My schedule is full of flying at the moment, which is much more enjoyable than being in the office, though it does introduce the problem of the management and administrative jobs not getting done. That, I’m afraid, is the price of needing to fly as one of only two Twin Otter captains currently in MAF PNG.

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One of the Otters came out of its long C-check on Tuesday, that’s one of the big maintenance checks lasting several weeks that has to be done every 500 hours of flying. Together with Glenys Watson, one of our First Officers, we conducted a return-to-service flight and found that the magnetic compass wasn’t lining up properly. What’s called a compass swing was then necessary, literally steering the aircraft round in circles to match the aircraft compasses with a master compass on the ground. The compass was then found to be faulty, replaced and the process repeated. Tedious! However, in the end all the cardinal points and 30 lines in between tallied, so we could be confident that we’d head in the correct direction.

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After flying some rounds out of Mount Hagen on Wednesday, we flew to Goroka via Aiyura to drop off some people who were staying at Ukarumpa. I stayed in Goroka for two nights before coming home on Friday.

Thursday ended up being a frustrating day because the weather in nearly all the places we wanted to go to was bad, or there wasn’t any means of communicating with the community. All except one that is.

Taking off from the one flight we were able to do, from a community called Manu, we looked carefully in the direction of our next destination, a place called Negabo which is on the western side of Mount Karimui where Manu is on the northern side. While the weather in Manu was good, towards Negabo was grey and rainy and with low cloud all mixed in – not very inviting.

Back in Goroka Ben, the base manager, told us that the agent at Negabo was reporting good weather, no rain and a high overcast. Even if that was the case, we still had to get through the murk first. Ben later said that the agent has a reputation for optimistic weather reports that increase in optimism as the desire for the aircraft to come also increases.

A bit later on another of our aircraft was in the general area and the pilot’s assessment of the weather was the same as mine. Poor. The agent still said the weather where he was looked good.

I spoke to the person in charge of the charter flight we were planning. Yes, he was very keen for us to try to get to Negabo. I explained to him that in view of our weather observations and that of the other pilot MAF couldn’t carry the risk of flying all the way there, not being able to land and then having to come back again. However, I was very happy to do so on the agreement that he took the risk – if we were able to land, all well and good. If we weren’t, the charter cost that he’d paid would have to cover all our flight costs of going out and back with no benefit.

His enthusiasm for us going suddenly diminished. It is always easier to spend somebody else’s money rather than your own!

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Fortunately the weather on Friday was lovely, but we were flying to the north of the central mountains where the weather is much better at this time of year. One load was to a small community called Bank, taking them building supplies for a local school. The principal was there to meet the aircraft and told me that everything has to be carried over to the village where he’s based, a day’s hard trek away. I don’t particularly fancy carrying loads of roofing iron, plywood, house posts, fencing material and a drum of petrol weighing 160kg for a day-long trek.

Unfortunately, this is one of the small number of communities that will be affected by the transition to an entirely Cessna 208 fleet. The C208 requires longer runways than the Otter and so cannot take anything like the same load in or out of Bank. I have no idea what the community will do because the airstrip runs along a ridge line with a drop off at one end and a mountain at the other. I very much hope they’ll find an alternative site to rebuild not far away and that they’ll get some government and other help in constructing it.

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Flying continues to occupy my time this coming week.

Tomorrow, Monday, I have a flight test with a Flying Operations Inspector from CASA PNG (the local equivalent of the CAA). After that, on Tuesday, I was due to retrain a pilot coming from Australia, longstanding friend Volkher Jacobsen, to help fly the Twin Otter programme, but his visa has not been issued yet. This will have a knock-on effect for the rest of the week, but I really hope that he gets here by Tuesday so I can begin flying with him on Wednesday, or it’s going to be hard to fit in all the training we need to do.

Hey-ho, this is PNG, Land of the Expected Unexpected.

Assuming that Volkher does get here, then Nicki and I should be in Goroka from Thursday to Tuesday. Since there are some nice restaurants in Goroka, we will have some good places to choose from to celebrate our significant wedding anniversary on Sunday.

July 8th

Greetings once again from the opposite side of the planet.

Jet lag is being unusually persistent this time. By now both mental and physical adjustment would normally  be nearing completion but I have yet to have a decent night’s sleep. Nicki, by contrast, has got back in zone rather better.

The first week has been inevitably busy catching up and getting an idea of what has been going on. An Operations Team meeting on Tuesday was followed by a Leadership Team meeting on Wednesday, for both of which, I’m glad to say, I didn’t fall asleep. Thursday and Friday were more enjoyable as I went out to Telefomin for a couple of nights so that I could get my flying current again.

Pilot currency means a certain number of take offs and landings and instrument approaches within 90 days. Since we’d been in the UK more than 90 days, I had to meet these requirements before doing any commercial flights.

The plan was for me to return to Hagen yesterday with PNG Airlines from Kiunga, having been flown there from Telefomin first thing. The aircraft arrived very late because, we were told, it hadn’t been able to land at Mount Hagen because of weather, diverted to Nadzab (Lae) to refuel, before returning to Hagen and then heading out to Kiunga. Passengers for both Hagen and Port Moresby had boarded when the ground crew had a message that all Hagen passengers had to be disembarked due to “operational requirements”.

I’d done some sums in my head already and thought that the crew would be close to their duty time limits, and this was apparently the case. As a result I spent Saturday night in the Kiunga Guest House, a vastly over-priced place to sleep in the middle of the town. Kiunga is in the lowlands (though fortunately it was nowhere near as hot and sticky as it sometimes is) at the head of the navigable part of the Fly River. Barges come up the tortuous and meandering river bringing all the supplies for the Ok Tedi mine, as well as for other businesses and including drums of aviation fuel for MAF.

Although I slept well the first part of the night, I woke at about 1:00 a.m., and then slept intermittently until 3 something, after which the noise of an air-conditioning unit in the room above reverberating down the wall of my room prevented any further sleep. I did see Novak Djokovic beat Kyle Edmunds and the highlights of the England-Sweden and Russia-Croatia matches since they were on TV at the time.

I’m back home now and will have to take tomorrow off so that I can fly again on Tuesday. After 3 months away our hedge is in urgent need of a trim.

So there’s a quick catch up on the week. Hopefully by next week my body’s time zone will finally be UTC+10, i.e. 9 hours ahead of British Summer Time.