Rainy days and Mondays

 

Typical towering cumulus cloud with rain shower

 

Last Monday was a particularly busy day in terms of medevacs - 5.5 hours in total, 7 patients, spread across four flights (Same, Los Palos, Oecusse and Atauro).

The flights to Same, Oecusse and Atauro were all pretty standard, but the one to Los Palos is worth sharing in a bit more detail. Feel free to make yourself a cuppa, and join me for the ride...


I departed from Dili for the Los Palos medevac at about 11:00. The weather forecast for Dili was predicting thunderstorms for the afternoon, but when I took off it was fine - blue sky above, 32 degrees, a little bit of cloud starting to form over the ranges. The flight time to Los Palos is slightly under an hour. As I got closer to my destination, there were more and more clouds and rain showers that I had to fly around. One particularly large shower was sitting right on the direct track, about 5 nautical miles away from the airstrip. I flew around it towards the south, where I could see the weather was clearer, and the airstrip came into view. It didn’t appear to be wet, although there was another rain shower on the other side. I checked out the windsock and judged that I could fly a circuit between the two showers and land towards the south - which I did without any trouble.

After I landed I taxied back to the parking area at the northern end of the strip, where the ambulance was already waiting. As I shut down the engine I noticed a few spits of rain on the windscreen - nothing to worry about. The nurse who would be accompanying the patients came over to the aircraft and told me there were three patients to be flown to Dili - two women and a baby. The baby was being held by a man and there was another woman who was a family member accompanying one of the women, so I knew that every seat would be occupied.

As I finished recording the passengers’ weights, the wind suddenly picked up and the rain started bucketing down. When I say down, I should say, it was coming at us sideways. The man holding the baby was already inside the plane; everyone else jumped in the back. I was distracted with the paperwork and didn’t immediately realise quite how heavy the rain was. After about 4 or 5 seconds I was completely soaked, as was my paperwork. Normally the wings of the aeroplane do quite a good job of providing shelter, but not when the rain comes in sideways. I gave up trying to find anywhere outside the plane to keep from getting soaked, and jumped into the back with all of my passengers. I was still getting wet - that ‘sideways rain’ thing again - so I slid the cabin door shut and finally exhaled.

I looked around me at five perturbed Timorese faces. Rain like this was not unusual for them - it was the monsoon season, after all - but being in an aeroplane was, especially with the pilot sitting next to them in the main cabin. I looked down at my clothes, which were dripping water onto the floor. I could feel the water squelching around inside my boots. I checked the paperwork - the boxes I would need to fill out on the daily flight record were still dry, and although the passenger loading manifest I had been writing on was completely wet, the blank ones underneath were dry enough to use. I looked up at the nurse, and told her in English that we would need to wait for the rain to stop before we could take off. She passed the message on to the others. I knew that the downpour wouldn’t last for long, and even in the confines of the cabin there were still some things I could do, so that when we did get a break in the weather, we could depart straight away. The first thing was arranging the seating, which was relatively easy. The man with the baby in row 2 could stay there. I directed the woman family member to climb into the front passenger seat and helped her put the seatbelt on. I retrieved an infant seatbelt from the seat pocket of the rear seat and helped the man to secure the baby. Then I told the nurse that one of the two patients would need to lie on the stretcher (which she and I were currently crouching on), with herself and the other patient sitting in the two remaining seats. She indicated to the two women where they would be moving to. It would require a bit of seat-juggling after I got out of the plane, but it was straightforward enough.

Now that I knew who was sitting where, I could complete the manifest and do the weight and balance calculations. Timorese people are generally pretty slight, with an average weight of around 50 kg, so our total weight was well within the aircraft limitations, and with every seat full the centre of gravity was just aft of the centre of the range. I filled out a new (dry) manifest sheet, signed it, and gave everyone a reassuring smile. Don’t worry folks, everything’s under control. Even though I’ve never been in this situation before. 

I pulled out my phone and sent a message to base saying I would be delayed. A couple of minutes later, the sound of the rain on the roof stopped. I looked outside. Down the strip, in the direction we would be taking off, it was still raining. Visibility was hopeless. We weren’t going anywhere just yet. I looked to the left, where a small group of people were still standing next to the ambulance, completely drenched, waiting to farewell the aeroplane. The rain started again, but thankfully the wind had stopped. I gave a sympathetic smile and told them we still had to wait for the rain to pass. I gestured for them to stand underneath the wing, which they gratefully accepted. Then I jumped back inside and closed the door again.

Finally the rain stopped and the weather along the strip cleared. The nurse and I jumped into action, finding some clothes and sheets amongst the patients’ belongings which we used to mop up as much of the water on the stretcher as we could. We laid one patient down and got the other into her seat. I checked everyone’s seatbelts, closed the doors and did the usual final walkaround to check everything was ok with the critical parts of the aeroplane (propeller, wings, etc.) and went through my take-off brief for a short field take-off. Wind - now light, but favouring this runway. Length - 645 m of ground roll and then open fields. Altitude - 1300 ft. Surface - gravel and grass, now with puddles. Slope - nil. Obstructions - none significant. With the airstrip being gravel, I decided that I would use a rolling start to avoid picking up any stones that might damage the propeller. I had parked the aeroplane over a patch of grass, so after starting the engine I did my run-up checks there. After that I taxied to the end of the runway and lined up on the centreline, which for this airstrip is often used as a road by the locals. Boy, there were a lot of puddles. Safe abort point - the point after which if I was to abort the take-off I would not have sufficient margin to stop safely - the windsock, half-way down. With my feet off the brakes, I smoothly opened the throttle, the engine began its familiar roar, and the aeroplane started to accelerate. Rolling over the gravel and dirt patches was fine, but every time the tyres hit a puddle the drag was very noticeable. As I got close to the windsock I glanced at the airspeed indicator - low 40s. I wasn’t convinced that we would get airborne in the distance remaining, so I instantly closed the throttle, and between me applying brakes and the aircraft hitting more puddles, we soon came to a stop. I knew the passengers would probably not be relishing the thought of me trying again, but I had another trick up my sleeve - a soft field take-off. This technique uses less ground roll but more length getting to obstacle clearance height (50 ft above the ground). Since all that lay beyond the usable part of the airstrip was open fields, I wasn’t concerned. My issue was getting airborne. In simple terms, the soft field take-off technique involves coaxing the aircraft off the ground as soon as possible. Then you are no longer affected by the drag of the wheels on the ground (or in my case, the puddles). Although the airspeed is very low at this point, thanks to something called ‘ground effect’, the aeroplane can fly. Ground effect essentially provides you with extra lift (or if you want to be precise, a reduction in induced drag), but as the name suggests, it’s only significant when you are close to the ground. So for a soft field take-off, you apply power and start the take-off roll, periodically applying back pressure on the control column to see if the aeroplane has enough speed to get airborne. When it does, you allow it to just come off the ground, then fly level with the ground to build up enough airspeed to then climb away as normal.

I turned the aeroplane around and started taxiing back to my starting point. Since the central part of the airstrip - the part that’s used as a road - was full of puddles (and also a few decent sized rocks), I used the grassy bit just to the side of it. As I was talking myself through the soft field take-off procedure, I realised that the grass was short and although it was wet, the ground was fairly firm underneath. Since it was still well within the airstrip boundary, I quickly made the decision, rather than using the true centreline with its many puddles, to use the grass on the side, as it should have a lot less drag. I also decided to start opening the throttle during my taxiing turn as a way to save a few more metres. 

Reaching the end of the airstrip and ignoring what my passengers must have been fearing, I turned the aircraft around, opened the throttle, aimed down the grass I had just taxiied over and started trying to coax the aeroplane into the air. Without the puddles slowing us down, the aircraft left the ground about halfway to the windsock. As I felt the wheels lose contact with the ground I lowered the nose and flew along, just a few inches off the ground. Reaching the normal climb speed I raised the nose and we climbed away.

The rain shower that had drenched us earlier had moved to the northwest, so I skirted around it and flew towards the sunlit coast. From that point the flight back to Dili was uneventful, but it did feel very strange being warmed by the sun streaming in through the aircraft windows, looking down at the beautiful coral reefs that encircle the island, sitting there in my sopping wet uniform. When I got out of the cockpit after landing at Dili, the base staff took one look at me and laughed. While they were helping the passengers disembark, I managed to find a spare uniform shirt and trousers that were both a couple of sizes too big, got changed and jumped back in for the next medevac flight. All in a day’s work...