Beechcraft Musketeer Sport III 19A VH-SQB
Leg 8: Esperance to Narrogin
Front ~ Next - Leg 9: Narrogin to Perth (Jandakot)
| A | After following a visual track towards Ravensthorpe, start tracking for "Ravensthorpe" (Woodstock) via GPS, which takes us to a different airfield. |
| B | Over Ravensthorpe/Woodstock, resume track to Narrogin |
| C | Engine losing oil pressure. Nearest airfield? Start tracking for Lake Grace |
| D | Can't make Lake Grace. Land on Dykes' farm. |
We departed for Narrogin.
This leg was bad from the start. We got some rough running on the right magneto. Simon increased the revs, to burn any build-up off the plug, but it took a surprisingly long time to clear it. During this time, we were getting quite hot and sweaty on the tarmac, and were keen to get airborne. When we eventually got airborne, I was navigating from the map, and gave Simon an initial heading to fly, taking us towards Ravensthorpe. After a few minutes, we also dialled up Ravensthorpe on the GPS.
| Taking off from Esperance. |
Now I started to get confused. The map was not making much sense, and we didn't seem to be heading towards Ravensthorpe, even though the GPS said we were. I was telling Simon that we didn't seem to be heading in the right direction, but he pointed to the GPS, which showed we were bang on target. I wasn't seeing any of the features I was expecting. When Simon saw the strip, he pointed it out to me, and it was in completely the wrong place, according to my map! Clearly, my navigation was not helping us on this leg.
The GPS had got us to the strip, so we set the GPS to Narrogin, and started tracking towards it. I knew this would get us there, but I was not comfortable because Narrogin was hours away, and I always like to know where I am on the map.
Soon afterwards, I saw a town to the North, where no town was indicated on the map. What was going on? After a few minutes of checking, I worked out the problem.
- There were two separate airstrips, shown on our WAC as Ravensthorpe and Woodstock. They are about 15 nm apart.
- It's hard see both of them at the same time, because of an unfortunate WAC boundary which puts them on different maps.
- The Country Airstrip Guide, and the WAC (which I was navigating from), show the Ravensthorpe strip as being west of the town.
- The ERSA, which we used to set up the GPS (which Simon was following), shows the Ravensthorpe strip being southeast of town. On the WAC this is called Woodstock.
Despite now having a good idea of what had happened, I now found it was hard to get our exact position fixed. I had expected that we would be going directly over farmland the whole time, but in fact we were flying over National park - thick trees and salt lakes. I knew we couldn't get lost - just waiting a while, we would reach more populated areas and start getting some good fixes.
About 45 mins out from Ravensthorpe, I didn't know exactly where we were, and Simon noticed the oil pressure guage was at the lower end of the green band. All trip, the oil pressure had been at the high end of the green, so this was not normal. However, we agreed that we would keep an eye on it.
After another 15 minutes, we couldn't help but notice that the needle had fallen into the top of the yellow. This was worrying. I started to pick the nearest airstrips on our WAC. From roughly knowing our position, I decided we were similar distances from Ravensthorpe, Jerramungup, and Lake Grace. Probably Jerramungup was closest, but we were heading towards Lake Grace. We put the Lake Grace coordinates into the GPS. We were more than half-an-hour from the town. Now began a nervous wait - how quickly was that oil pressure dropping? Would we still have oil pressure by the time we reached Lake Grace?
You can tell that it was a nervous period, because we have hardly any photos from this section. Pulling out a camera never crossed my mind, we had so many things to worry about.
All through the trip, despite spending long hours in the cockpit, time had passed very quickly. Even three hour legs went by in good time - fast enough that we were never bored. But now, time began to pass very slowly. By the time the GPS said we had 25 minutes to run, oil pressure was at the lower end of the yellow, and dropping into the red, or rather white, as the gauge was coloured. With still over 20 minutes to run, and pressure starting to reach the bottom of the gauge, Simon said "we have to put her down."
To continue, with fingers crossed, we risked running out of oil completely. Needless to say, this would be very bad. Firstly, with no lubrication, we would probably get a complete engine failure due to an engine seizure. This would wreck an expensive engine. Secondly, the engine would seize at an unknown time, so we would have to glide into a forced landing - obviously riskier than a controlled precautionary landing where we had power.
Therefore, we decided to do a precautionary landing, and Simon instructed me to start looking for airstrips. I thought we'd have to be pretty lucky to find one, and assumed the best we could do is land in a paddock near a homestead, but Simon saw an airstrip in a farmer's paddock. We aimed for that, and came down low enough to establish that it was in fact a strip (the windsock was the give-away), and we could see two other good things about the strip. One, it was right next to a homestead, so there was a good chance of finding someone at home, and two, they seemed to be harvesting in the airstrip paddock, so we would definitely be able to find someone.
Our approach was very low, and it seemed like we brushed over the houses, but we put down on a reasonably smooth strip. It so happened that the strip had a down-slope, so we took a while to actually get down onto the ground. We taxied back up to the homestead end, and parked right next to a shed, which turned out to be a hangar. We had picked a farmer who had his own aircraft - a lucky break.
| Coming in low over the homestead to do a precautionary landing on the private strip. |
We walked up to the homestead, and knocked on the door. A little boy answered, and we asked whether his Mummy was home. I don't know what she thought when she saw us at the door, I suppose we looked quite stressed, we were still sweating and it had been a worrying 45 minute period. Thankfully, Jan offered us a mug of coffee, and called her husband Mark who was in the paddocks. I was able to use their phone, and tried to call my Mum, to let her know I was going to be late. Unfortunately I could get no answer (it turned out later that I was dialling a wrong number - I must have been still feeling the effects of the stress). I also tried phoning the farmhouse, but there was no answer, meaning that my parents had already left to meet us at the airport. This gave me a sinking feeling, because I couldn't think of a way to contact them, and we were now going to be quite late.
Mark came in and helped us in a number of ways. He gave us a box of oil, with the understanding that when we reached Perth, we would leave a replacement box with the people who did his maintenance. He also phoned his LAME, and so we could speak to him. The concensus was that if we filled up to the brim with oil, it wasn't losing oil too quickly, so we should be able to hop to Narrogin. If we couldn't reach Narrogin, there were a couple of airfields on the way.
We couldn't thank Mark and Jan enough. We then decided to press on. I would have liked to finish my coffee with Jan, but I was worried about my waiting parents, so we decided just to get going.
Take off was fine, and we tracked via Lake Grace, Harrismith to Narrogin. I tried borrowing Simon's mobile to ring my folks once we were airborne, but had no luck. In the country, you really need a CDMA phone, and Simon's was a GSM, which is great in cities, but no good out here. For years I had resisted getting a mobile phone, but within days of this trip I got a CDMA phone - I never want to worry anyone like this again.
The plane seemed to be flying fine though, so it took us around an hour to reach Narrogin. About ten minutes out, we finally got mobile coverage, so I got through to Mum's mobile, and left a message, but it was a small consolation because we were already very late.
We expected Narrogin airfield to be dead, given that it was a Tuesday afternoon, but in fact there was a lot of glider activity. Seems there was a course on this week. We learnt of the gliders when we gave our inbound call. When warned of the gliders, I began to scan the skies, and could see the occasional glint of sunlight off their bodies, but gliders are very hard to see. They were operating off the main paved runway, but the tug pilot? told us that the wind favoured the dirt runway, and he was right. We joined downwind for that runway, and Simon did a beautiful landing - I could see my parents' car on the ground.
| An extremely welcome sight - Narrogin airstrip on the nose. |
| Lining up for finals on Narrogin |
As we backtracked on the runway, we needed to cross the paved strip to get to the parking. We could hear a glider was on base for that runway, so we decided to hold and wait for him. I had the best view, and I was scanning but could not see the glider concerned. Then I saw a glider a mile or more out, coming in on a long final. I just about told Simon we could move onto the paved runway, but then I saw an incredibly low glider on base. I really did not appreciate how shallow gliders can glide, and I was looking much higher in the sky for him. It's lucky we didn't enter the runway, because it would have given him quite a shock. We'd already had too much excitement.
| A glider which surprised us with its low base leg. A good learning experience, for me who was not familiar with glider performance. |
My parents were very, very relieved to see us. They took us via Narrogin to the farm. I was exhausted, and I think Simon was too. I was very glad Simon had made the decisions he did make this day. I would not have liked to be on my own with the oil pressure problem. I know I would have been tempted to push on another 15 minutes for Lake Grace, which could have been a bad decision. Plus, the workload of finding the nearest airstrip, and putting it into the GPS, all the decision-making, and uncertainty, it would have been very lonely. It was good to have two heads in that situation instead of one.