T. I. Thoughts

[Allen Peterson]

I'm setting here on Troughton Island, having a beer and thinking about my flights down.
After taking off from Dili in the Apache and picking my way through the mountains, I set the AP to NAV to fly the GPS direct course to YTTI, and settled back to enjoy the flight.
A couple of Sudoku puzzles later - remember I flew my test flight as slowly as possible - I began to feel a little guilty. Here I am, relaxed, tweaking the power occasionally to keep the desired numbers in the GPS ETA window, while other guys are slaving away over their VORs and ADFs and DMEs and computers and whatever else to keep on course and on time. The flight plan I had was to do a straight in approach to runway 14.
I'm about 20 minuets out of YTTI and I'm thinking that the least I could do was to come in on the downwind leg, turn back and land on runway 32. And maybe the wind would be better that way, too.
I calculated how much time I thought I would need for that,
throttled up and went for it. Piece of cake.
Soon I noticed that I needed more speed but the throttle was against the stop and hitting F4 didn't help. I dawned on me that I just wasn't going to make up enough time.
By this time the old girl had built up quite a head of steam, like a tad over max. cruise, and then it dawned on me that I needed to start my descent and get her slowed down enough to lower the gear. So forget about FltTime, back to a straight in approach and just concentrate on making a good landing. Which I did, the lesson learned is that there are limits to things you can"fix" in the last 10 minutes of the flight. But not to worry, I'll try again in the P-38.

[Allen Peterson]

Taking off in the P-38 from Dili and clearing the mountains was not a problem, the P-38 climbs a little faster than the Apache.
Again I set the AP to NAV to fly the direct GPS course to YTTI, but this time I planned the ETA to give me enough time to land on runway 32.
Every thing went as planned, I was on the down wind leg at pattern height and speed, and about ready to turn 180 to final for runway 32.
Then I saw a 172 rapidly approaching almost head on, also intent on landing on runway 32 (I wasn't using ATC). So I held my course, waited until the 172 flashed by me, waited a little longer and then made my turn to final. As I approached, I saw that the 172 was just turning into the parking area and so it was OK to land.
The interesting thing is, if I had landed straight in as I had originally planned I probably would still have been on the runway when the 172 landed.

[rattler1]

INCIDENT REPORT

Place: Troughton Island
Aircraft: Vickers Varsity C1, regn VW197

The aircraft approached high and fast, resulting in an overrun of some 20m. Since the ground was firm, the aircraft light and the speed low, no damage was sustained.

Following inspection by the engineer on the crew, the aircraft was positioned to dispersal and declared fit for further flights





You can't win them all !!!

[Allen Peterson]

Don't feel bad, Peter.
Since the P-38 is now a lot lighter, I came in a little high and fast too, but managed to stop about 10m short of the end of the runway. Probably heated up the brakes a tad though.