The mission description from Angel Flight was:
This is an adult cancer patient who will undergo another round of chemotherapy. Other details are withheld at the request of the referrer.
SUBSEQUENT TRIP REQUEST: (17th & 18th Angel Flights)
The passenger had been flown by Tervor Steel to Brisbane the previsous day for the chemotherapy treatment and rested up a bit overnight. This made
the departure time was quite flexible. Seeing that the weather is starting to get rather hot and very muggy I decided to depart as early as my
circadian rhythm would allow.
Accordingly I arranged with Earth Angel Steve Hudson, on his maiden trip, to pick up the passenger at 7:00am, with us aiming for an 8:00 departure.
Steve, who ordinarily sits in air conditioned comfort at Air Services Australia's facility at Brisbane airport, suffering amateurish pilots like myself attempting to communicate with him on HF radio, asked whether he could come along to see what an aircraft looks like.
Steve (pictured at left) and passenger turned up promptly at 7:30. After a brief safety briefing, I fired up the engine and contacted Steve's colleagues at Brisbane Radar for our
transponder code. We were airborne at 7:50 for our 40 odd minute flight.
Instead of tracking as planned via Amberly and then Kingaroy on the published airways, we were soon given clearance to track direct to Kingaroy.
With the conditions being very smooth as we passed 6,000' climbing to our flight planned 10,000' I requested an amended cruise at this lower level. The weather outside was clear with just about unlimited visibility, until we heard a pilot report from the Kingaroy area about broken layers of cloud. These soon crept up under the nose of the aircraft and I commenced our descend, fully expecting to have to conduct and NDB instrument approach. However, luck was with us and a sufficiently large hole in the clouds allowed me to descend visually.
We were on the ground at 8:35, taxied to the terminal and disgorged our passenger, who was being met by family.
We only spent a few minutes on the ground admiring the local airport sign and then climbed back onboard for the flight back home. This time, we entered some cloud
for a brief 2 minute period as we climbed out to the south.
Tracking on the airways this time, we travelled through the Amberly control zone, via Goodna reporting point to land at 9:20 on runway 28L.
It was great start to the day; Before half past nine we already had completed both legs of an Angel Flight, taking a seriously ill person home, saving a traumatic trip of several hours in the car.