Flight Across Africa with No Nav Aids! Kerry McCauley - Pilot Stories

boom it's a thousand feet up and it's a thousand feet down and it's heavy rain rains just pounded on me i was hired to deliver a 210 from the united states to dodoma tanzania and on one of the legs i was in libreville gaboon and i scheduled a briefing for a weather briefing for the morning and i show up and i go there and the guy tears this piece of memory graph paper off and he hands it to me and i'm like what's this and it said it's a infrared satellite shot of the continent of your of africa and like this is all i got he goes that's it and he should he points and on the western on the eastern edge of africa by tanzania which is where i was going there's two big white blobs he goes you see this very very bad you see this very very bad have a nice flight and that's it that was my entire weather briefing for flying across the entire continent of africa so i took off and immediately it's marginal vfr probably not even that you've probably got about a mile and a half visibility just haze just jungle haze it's so humid down there my first challenge was leaving gaboon i get to fly over the congo and the night before i'd met a couple of local british pilots who were flying dc3 around bush pilots and i'd asked them said hey our company's been trying to get permission to overflight permission for the congo for like two months and we can't get any response what's the deal he goes oh yeah they don't give you permission if you try to fly over the congo once you check in with atc they'll make you land at the capitol then they'll throw you in jail impound your airplane and hold you for ransom for your company for whatever they can get then when you finally get enough money that what they think you can get as much they can get out of you they'll let you go your plane won't have any radios left in it they'll take all your stuff and you'll just have just enough fuel to get to the next airport and then you'll be done so what should i do they go our advice is turn your radio off and your transponder off and fly low and just do it like all right cool so that's what i did got to the congo kaboon atc hands me after the congo off transplant off tree top level and about that point i i reached my last navaid that i was going to get there was a vor and kaboon then there's an ndb um in the congo and then there's going to be about a nine hour gap when i didn't have anything now of course this is back before gps so literally dead reckoning in about you know nine hours i was going to pick up a vor and then there's two vors and then the destination has an ndb so i wasn't really that all that worried kind of par for the course back then so i'm flying along and it's just it's you know hours of tarzan jungle and board have been just nothing um get to the point where i'm gonna pick up supposed to pick up the first vor and nothing not a big deal maybe off a little bit okay and nothing well i guess i'm just gonna wait to pick up the next vor i mean maybe this one's on me and i'm turning both radios they're just picking up nothing on it so keep going sun goes down there's a there's a line of mountains in central africa kind of east central africa they're not super super high they're not the himalayas but they're substantial and i get to those mountains and there's a line again a line of thunderstorms there's always a line of thunderstorms so there's a line of thunderstorms over these mountains and i don't have the fuel to go around them i and there's nowhere else to go i don't i can't turn around i have to go through this line of thunderstorms there's no air parts on either side of me um it's literally like i come over a jungle ocean so i'm looking at you know they're huge you know flashing lights in this embedded line of thunderstorms and i pick the area with the least amount of flashes and dive into there and i slow down to you know minimum minimum speed boom it's a thousand feet up and it's a thousand feet down and it's heavy rain rain just pounded on me um lights are flat lightning flashing everywhere nothing hit me uh it was it was pretty bumpy there for a bit and then again i also just shoot out of it and again you know this bright bart starlight moonlight and his towering thunderstorms around and it was such a crazy contrast from getting your butt kicked in that plane to perfectly calm and it was surreal it's like wow it was really cool so made it through there get going for i got dismayed next vor should be coming up any minute nothing nothing nothing nothing nothing nothing great now i'm pretty convinced i am lost over africa awesome super so now i gotta decide what to do so i i literally don't know where i am i haven't i've had zero navigates for nine hours i don't know what the winds loft are what where am i so two things to think about number one if i keep going the way i'm going once i hit if i don't see anything i could literally fly out over the indian ocean without seeing the edge because in the united states the shoreline is dot is like a string of pearls because everybody lives on the ocean you know everybody likes waterfront property so you know you can see where the line is africa there's no electricity there at least back then this was back in the early 90s and so i literally could fly out over the indian ocean and never know it just fly till i ran out of fuel so i didn't really want to do that so i had my other option is i could nairobi was about 200 miles north of me and i had the gas to get there and figure well i i could kind of take a northwest heading and fly that way maybe you know a huge city like nairobi should you can see it from 100 miles away so i figured i could probably see that but you know something told me just now let's just hold this heading let's see what happens slowed way down to you know max range speed and kept going and a couple hours later literally right on time the adf needle started going and it stopped and pointed straight ahead i picked up the ndb at dodoma like no way i'm on course like this is so cool followed that all the way in landed it was kind of scary because i not too many runway lights there but you know land you know i was delivered delivering the airport to the missionaries mission aviation fellowship they'd provide aircraft to all the missionaries in africa and around the world and they're all happy to see get their new plane they took me to dinner it was a great dinner i'm minus the beer which is kind of a bummer because i really could have used a beer at that point and we're talking talking it over and i'm telling the story because like you guys check this out this is what happened to me today and i get to the part of the story where i'm talking about the vors and they stop eating and they'll look to each other like didn't anybody tell you i'm like no tell me what like all those vors never work they're run by generators and every time they deliver the get the government delivers the gas to run the generators the local war loads go immediately go and steal the fuel so yeah we we don't kind of was ever working like that's a little bit of information that you could have used about 12 hours ago that would maybe night a whole lot easier

Channel: Taking Off

Views: 11,197

Keywords: kerry mccauley, ferry pilot, cessna 210, cessna, flying in africa, ferry flying, ferry flight, dangerous flight, flying into storm, flying over congo, pilot stories, flytingeyes, flying eyes

Id: 7teCgZhz-gI

Length: 7min 32sec (452 seconds)

Published: Mon May 16 2022