The mission description from Angel Flight was:
SUBSEQUENT TRIP REQUEST: 5th & 6th Angel Flights:Driving to Sydney would be an 8 to 10 hour trip, while a flight would be about one and half hours.A three year old boy with Cerebral Palsy has an appointment with a doctor at the Sydney Children's Hospital.
William and his mum Donna had been flown from Wee Waa to Bankstown on Tuesday, 1st of November by Angel Flight pilot Garry Eason. So I was taking them back home.
I conducted this mission on the back of Mission 569
Having finished my business in Sydney, I arrived at the terminal building to find William and Donna already waiting for me. They had arrived just a few minutes before me.
Because I had had to park the aircraft some distance from the terminal, we had to trudge across the tarmac in the 30° heat of the early afternoon. I quickly removed the tie down ropes, checked the fuel and bundled the bags into the back, before settling the passengers onboard.
The tower was most obliging, making an effort to expedite our departure out of the heat as quickly as possible. So, right on time, at 3:00pm we lifted off and started tracking toward Richmond air base for our first leg of the flight. We encountered some minor convective turbulence during the climb, but this dissipated as we passed 6,000' on the way to our cruising altitude of 10,000'. Just north of Richmond we were offered a direct routing to Narrabri, shaving a few minutes off the flight time.
Depite Donna's earlier statements that she really did not like flying, she and William soon dropped off, missing the only bumps of the flight that we encountered at about the half way mark. They both only woke up about 7 minutes before touchdown.
Eagerly received by their family members they soon disembarked and headed home.
I quickly re-started and got airborne at 5:00pm for the last flight of the day that would convey me back to my home field of Archerfield.
The climb to altitude, with just yours truly onboard was very quick as I crossed the Great Dividing Range for the fourth time on the day, tracking via Inverell, Laravale and thence to Archerfield.
The only fly in the ointment was that I was held up at altitude by air traffic control for too long. When finally cleared to descend, maintaining a normal descent profile would have resulted in me being some 4,000' too high by Archerfield. I slowed the aircraft sufficiently to lower the undercarriage, this then acting as a speed brake and allowing a steeper descent. This, however was not sufficient. Air traffic was urging me to do some Stuka impressions as I was heading into airspace that that wanted to keep aside for the evening rush hour into Brisbane airport. So they gladly accepted my offer to do an orbit some 20nm from Archerfield, allowing me to descend without upsetting anyone.
I landed at 5:45pm (having wound back the clock 1 hour on crossing the banana curtain into Queensland).