From the logbook...first experiences

When you begin to fly on whatever kind of level, personal, military, airline, bush, etc, you begin to hear of certain encounters or experiences that you know some day will be yours as well. These can be good things, and bad things. This week, I have had the "opportunity" to cut out a few more notches on my experience tree.

The first one happened as I was leaving the hangar in Shell. You have all no dought seen the funny looking pod on the belly of our airplanes. We use these to carry a lot of different things. On our pre-engine start checklist, one of the items requires that that the pod door is closed. Well, you guessed it, I begin to taxi away for takeoff with my pod door open. Luckily I was stopped before I did anything real stupid like trying to go flying with it open. Leaving the pod door open is maybe the equivalent to leaving your zipper down. It's not the end of the world, but it sure is embarrassing.

My second experience that I can now "chalk up," has to do with the pictures below. While not a common problem to the ordinary pilot, ALL of our pilots have been stuck at one point or another. This is usually due to mud, lots of grass, whatever. My case was a little different today.

I was turning around preparing for takeoff when all of a sudden my left main landing gear sunk into the dirt big time, and I immediately shut everything down including the engine. After my passengers and I climbed out, we began to dig out my wheel and try and figure out why a seemingly smooth surface would suddenly swallow my wheel. It turns out that the end of the airstrip that I was using for takeoff is new, that's to say less than two years old. When we were digging, we found bits of burned tree stump, indicating the presence of a tree in that exact spot. The stump was covered over, and over time rotted, leaving a void in the earth, which I happened to taxi over today, and sink into. Praise the Lord it wasn't my nose wheel that went into that hole. I still might be in the jungle if that happened. That propeller likely would have contacted the ground, which opens up a whole new can of worms. Needless to say, after a little digging, my passengers helping by pushing the airplane, and myself inside giving it full throttle, we were out of the hole 5 minutes later and shortly thereafter airborne.



This is at another airstrip that I went to to bring out a patient. I was about 5 minute flight from the Peruvian border at this strip called Wachirpas. I just always think it is neat to see what the villagers use as pets.