Since Tanya is now due to give birth to our son on 17th December, I thought I should bring Little Nellie back to Phuket (from Pattaya - about 400 miles), as soon as I could. Otherwise I wouldn't be able to escape to Pattaya for at least a month or two and that would mean, NO flying :(
I went to EFC (Pattaya) last Friday 29 Nov and sat through a week of very high winds. Dawn and dusk were flyable (and pretty choppy) but one hour either side saw winds gusting 15 or 20; direction varied greatly too. One morning we had calm conditions on the runway and 27 Kts at 500 ft !
I was running out of time and decided to make the trip, virtually whatever the weather, on Sunday 6th December. My friend and ex-instructor Alasdair had agreed to do the trip with me (he's done it before) so, we gave Nellie her 50-hour check and prepared our maps. We decided to make a fuel/rest stop in Chumphon, about the half-way point and, Alasdair would fly the first leg from Pattaya to Chumphon and I'd fly the second to Phuket.
We got up early on the 6th and met at the airfield at 06.45. I signed us out and we then dressed in insulated flying suits and gloves - this is pretty unusual for Thailand where the surface temperature is around 30-33 deg C. We therefore sweated a lot before our wheels lifted at precisely 07.31 and we climbed out to our Gulf-crossing height of 6,500 feet. The heat trapped inside our layers quickly dissipated as we climbed to our cruising height, where the ambient temperature plummeted to an Arctic 13 deg C. I appreciate 13 is a luxury for some European flyers but we're used to shorts/t-shirts/sandals in all our flying below 1,000 feet - OK, so we're softies.
I've never been wild about flying single-engined machines over water and our trip began with 70-or-so miles of sea; across the Gulf of Siam. We made our 6,500 feet, set course for around 260 degrees and immediately found ourselves in an unexpected head-wind of about 12 knots - this gave us about 56 mph on the GPS's groundspeed and we'd expected a small tail-wind ...... bugger.
This setback had two implications: firstly it meant more time over the sea but much more importantly, within 20 mins of departure, despite taking all possible precautions, I was now busting for a piss with at least 2 hours to go. I considered everything from meditation to relieving myself in my seat and couldn't figure how this could have happened. I'd had one cup of tea at 5 a.m. and several visits to the toilet before dressing into my flight gear at about 07.00 - I can only put it down to nerves and/or cold air.
I'd noticed the oil temperature climbing to higher levels than I'd seen before as we maintained our climb; it went to about 120 then stabilized. Alasdair reckoned this was normal and after all, we were two-up, fully-laden with fuel and a few odds-and-sods on board. The Tanarg used to suffer from high oil temps when it first came out until they moved the oil cooler to its current location - obviously this move worked since we were on MAUW and the ground temperature was about 30 deg C ..... she was being flogged!
Fuel was getting burned-up quicker than I'd planned but we did have 65 litres on board for what was planned to be a 2 hrs 30 mins leg - we were burning 14 l.p.h. ish in the cruise. After a while we called "Land-Ho" as the high-rise-hotel-scarred coast of Hua Hin came into view; everything was hazy throughout the trip. The Hua Hin controllers can get a little nervous if you fly too close to their city since it's the residence of His Majesty The King Of Thailand and all that 9-11 stuff has put the world on edge. We therefore swung South and followed the coast (East coast of Thailand) which would be our guide for the next 250 miles or so. We were squawking on the transponder and talking to Hua Hin when they handed us to Prachuap Control - they'd obviously opted for an early lunch and didn't talk to us - it was a Sunday after all.
By now my bladder was causing some major discomfort and when I let it focus my mind (big mistake but hard to avoid) I found myself sweating a little. I then decided that sweat and spitting could serve to dehydrate me and that would have to be a good thing for my bladder - this is probably medical rubbish but it made sense to me at the time and, I reckoned it worked. I remembered reading a philosopher's words: "nothing focusses the mind like a pending execution or a full bladder" - wise words indeed.
We passed down the East of Sahm Roi Yot ("300 peaks") and wondered at how insignificant a "range" it actually is - Alasdair's from the Highlands of Scotland and so is a little biased! After a while we started talking to Chumphon Tower (Approach had a rather unreliable radio) and they vectored us in to "06-left" and warned us to be cautious of strong winds of 12 knots but gusting stronger. Needless to say our cruise so far had been turbulent-free at 6,500 - 4,000 feet but now, down at 1,000 and descending, this picture altered somewhat and the constant jarring made my bladder wince. Alasdair bravely fought the controls whilst I courageously fought the urge to piss myself, he then put her down surprisingly smoothly on the runway and fast-taxied in very gusty winds to the tie-down point. We noticed during the taxi that we needed 3,200 rpm to make the thing move into wind - we were sure we had a puncture and thought it couldn't possibly be the wind. After tie-down we felt the rear wheels and they were very hot - obviously the brakes had heated during the long taxi and had expanded to bind a little; these would need slackening-off before the long taxi back out.
My ground-crew (Khun A) had driven my car down from Pattaya to Chumphon the previous day so he could meet us with food, water and petrol (there aint many facilities at some Thai airports). He greeted me as I got out of the rear seat and I almost knocked him over as I sprinted for the terminal building where I guessed there'd be a toilet. Words cannot describe the euphoric relief of dumping several gallons of urine that had been such an unwelcome passenger for the past 2 hours. The flow continued for several minutes before stopping - within ten minutes I was back for another "DamBuster".
Anyway, leg 1 was over and it had taken 2 hours and 52 minutes. Lessons learned so far?
1. Never drink within several weeks of a long flight!
2. Get some better GPS in my trike. We used Alasdair's Garmin 296 as our main weapon - the Enigma GPS is difficult to use and is generally a pain with gloved hands. In fact I'm generally rather disappointed with the Enigma.
3. I'd wisely programmed all my radio frequencies for the trip into the Becker radio - this was a good move since gloved hands are tricky.
Little Nellie at Chumphon - Khun A (seated with white shirt) centre, Alasdair standing right and airport ground crew on concrete weight.
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