The mission description from Angel Flight was:
SUBSEQUENT TRIP REQUEST: (11th and 12th Angel flights)Benjamin and his mum Michelle were flown to up to Brisbane in the morning by Angel Flight pilot Andrew Mladen and had had the misfortune of flying with me before on Mission 614 in November 2005.A six month old baby from St George has been born with Bilateral Talipes ie. club feet.
The boy is required to travel to Brisbane for a post operative review.
The one thousand kilometre trip necessitates a three day excursion. Angel Flight will help alleviate the long road trips for this young family.
As noted in the summary of my
previous mission, my aircraft was sick with a bent flap and not expected to recover fully until the end of February. This meant no
flying for about 2 months. So I was pleased to have Steven White from
Mission 224 ring me to see whether I would like to act as "Pilot in Command"
for him on this mission. He would supply the fuel and his aircraft, VH-TRE, a Cessna 182 (Steven and aircraft are pictured at left)
Because Steven does not yet have the 250 hours command experience required to carry Angel Flight passengers, he needs an Angel Flight pilot who does. He rang several more qualified (and, one suspects, more capable) pilots before he "was desperate and called you".
So faced with the options of either sitting on the ground (No! Worse! Doing work, while sitting on the ground), or flying an aircraft at someone else's expense, I had to think long and hard (about 5 nanoseconds) before agreeing to fly the leg from Archerfield to St George and then putting myself at the mercy of his flying skills on the way back.
Steven first had to fly from his base at Redcliffe to Archerfield, and then, on dropping me off, head back home to Redcliffe.
While Steven had told me he was doing all the flight planning and submission of the flight plan, I also did my homework, got the weather report and prepared my
own flight plan. On meeting up with him we compared notes; I had flight planned the route via Oakey VOR, while he had planned via Toowoomba NDB. He claimed that
this was so, because his route is about four miles shorter. But I could see the real reason: With me 'in charge' he thought it best to use the route with the
aptly named waypoint of WOBBL (pronounced 'wobble').
Earth Angel Alex McCarthy dropped off Michelle and Ben right on time, at about 11:45. They had good news; Ben's treatment has progressed so well that the next visit is not scheduled for another three and a half months.
While Steven did battle with the baby seat, I stowed the stroller and nappy bag in the rear luggage compartment.
Ben, having fallen asleep in the car on the way to the airport, remained so even while Michelle strapped him into the seat.
I occupied the command seat, while Steven watched my every move from the right hand seat. Thus we got airborne at high noon and headed off to the west.
The climb speed was a little slower (only about 80kts to the usual 105kts), but the climb rate matched that of the Bonanza. So we soon found ourselves in the mainly clear weather cruising along at 8,000'.
The only hitches were my Pavlovian reflexes that are wired to "Foxtrot Whiskey Lima" instead of "Tango Romeo Echo", causing me
to miss a few radio calls (and the first three calls started with "Foxtrot Whis ... ah ... eeeehmm ... Tango Romeo Echo ....").
About half way along young Benjamin woke up and suspiciously eyed the two ugly fellas in the front seat.
Steven kept on prompting me to do this and that, and gave me a run down on his sophisticated avionics (coupled GPS and autopilot).
About 2 hours after take-off we spotted (well, Steven spotted) the airstrip. Doing a lazy circle down to lose the 1,000' of excess altitude (the Cessna handles differently to my Bonanza - and I'll stick to that excuse), we soon alighted on the tarmac of St George. Steven rated my landing 8 (I hope it was out of 10 and not 100), which is not too bad, since it was literally more than 2 years since I had flown any aircraft other than FWL.
We helped Michelle with the baby seat and luggage, bade her farewell, knowing that another 3 day odyssey had been reduced to a six and a half hour trip to the doctor.
Finally being back in charge of his aircraft and, more importantly, his destiny, Steven had a huge smile (of relief?) on his face as we headed back east, this time
at 9,000'.
I used the time to play with the GPS and explore its capabilities further.
Steven politely listened to my advice on transiting Amberly and entering the Archerfield airspaces (although he also demonstrated the 'Pilot isolate' feature of his whiz bang intercom panel - this allows him to mute my ramblings from his headsets).
At about 4:30 we landed at Archerfield and I rated his landing "a good six". He gave me a hurt look, until I added "Out of seven!".
I did about 2.1 hours flying and Steven, having encountered slight head winds, did about 2.3 hours, not counting to and from Redcliffe (that's 2.3 hours closer to being able to do Angel Flight by himself - surely the day he reaches that stage will be mourned by many freeloading pilots like myself).
So, thanks Steven, for a wonderful afternoon!