Taking Nellie home for the first time - Leg 2

During the refueling at Chumphorn we'd dropped a 12-inch plastic tube into the fuel tank. The tube had been fixed (badly by me) to a Mr Funnel and simply dropped in. We'd never get it out in Chumphon so Alasdair reckoned it'd be OK to fly our second leg with the tube dancing around. I felt differently since I thought the tube was made of polythene and knew that petrol/polythene was a corrosive combination. We got it out the next day in Phuket and no damage had been done to the pipe!

Anyway, after staring gloomily at the horizontal and buffeting wind sock, going to the toilet fifteen times and having visions of plasticky silt moving up my fuel lines and into the jets, we dressed for leg 2. This time we wore no gloves and I got rid of my fleece as I planned to fly a little lower (warmer) and the day was heating up. I taxied for an intersection departure - in this wind we'd only need a few metres and I reckoned that the nearer to the sea we got airborne, the less rotor we'd get from ground obstacles and that had been an issue on our approach. All that stuff about "the runway behind you is no use...blah...blah...blah" is total crap - Nellie does not need 1,000 metres in a 12 knot head-wind (or in a 12 knot tail-wind for that matter) and I believe that if I'd taken-off from the end of the runway I'd have encountered very nasty rotor turbs.

Wheels lifted-off runway 60 at 13.31 hrs and we were on our way. Good rate-of-climb courtesy of the wind and I made a turn to 190 at about 400 feet. As soon as we crossed the coast (after about a minute) all the turbs stopped and the air was smooth again; I began my climb to 4,500 feet and watched the oil temperature with interest - I made a slightly shallow/fast climb to keep the airflow working the oil cooler. We set Surat Thani on the GPS and relaxed into the cruise - the viz was a bit better and the beach was interesting to watch on our journey South - many things going on like fishing, construction, forrestry, etc.

We had a rather inaudible conversation with Surat Thani ATC and headed South-West to cross the isthmus South of the Burmese border - we were now getting pretty close to Phuket and I had no strong desire for a slash. Things were looking good.

We were now heading sort-of up-sun with a fair amount of moisture in the air and this amounted to fairly poor visibility which is a pity since the run down the valley towards Phang Nga with it's spectacular limestone "cathedrals" is spectacular from the road, let alone from the sky. Ah well, there'll be plenty of other opportunities since this is now in my "back yard" - in flying terms. We did see a rather nice Budhist temple ("Wat" in Thai) near Phang Nga with a wonderful golden Buddha perched atop a hill:

This isn't the best picture but it gives an idea of the haze - I'll go back and photograph all these sights when the conditions are better.

Heading SW gave us a real kick up the backside in the form of a 12 mph tailwind. This was very welcome as the fuel was starting to become a very minor issue if we'd needed to divert for any reason or, if we'd needed to circumnavigate a few of the larger cumuliform clouds that were now starting to pop up. With the tailwind and the mountains came the rotor turbulence and we picked up some extra bumps from the clouds - nothing was alarming, after all we had dropped to about 2,000 ft on the QNH to get under the clouds and so, you can't reasonably expect it to be too smooth at this height in the mid-afternoon.

After a couple of failed line-of-sight attempts, we managed to contact Phuket Control and our lady was a most capable controller. She asked us to drop to 1,500 feet and report Koh Yao Noi (a small island/reporting point to the East of Phuket) - we could now see the islands of Phang Nga Bay and James Bond Island where Roger Moore despatched the three-nippled "Scaramanga" in The Man with the Golden Gun - just about the nadir of Bond films but great shots of Phang Nga Bay.

Now we were on the home straight and we were feeling good; it was soon after 4 pm and I was in very familiar territory. Whilst I had never flown in or around Phuket, I did know the islands fairly well from boat trips I'd made to Phang Nga Bay - the 4-peaked Koh Phanak stood-out very clearly to me. We flew to the reporting point of Koh Yao Noi and were told to report finals at Phuket Airpark - this was great news as we weren't going to get vectored around the houses - remember, Phuket International is a very busy airport! There's something really special about flying over familiar ground/water for the first time - you know what it looks like from your car but can only imagine what it's like from the air then, when you see it from the air, it's nothing like you'd imagined it to be! Therefore, it was after a little debate that we located the Airpark and I flew over the runway for the first of many times to check the wind sock - it indicated about 5 kts across the runway but slightly favoured 13 over 31.

I flew a pretty tight circuit with only minor bumps and lined her up for the better patch of grass which was half-way down 13 and on the left side. The landing was pretty good (even if I say so myself) and I considered it important to set a precedent for me and Nellie's new "home" field. Robert Suchart (the owner of Phuket Airpark) was waiting for us with 3 cold beers apiece and we opened these without delay.

I looked at my Enigma timer and saw the trip had taken me 2 hrs and 52 mins - EXACTLY the same time as the first leg! Alasdair and I had enjoyed the trip but, we were also glad to get out and take another slash.