The mission description from Angel Flight was:
SUBSEQUENT TRIP REQUEST: (15th and 16th Angel Flight)The pilots originally assigned to this mission was only VFR (Visual Flight Rules) qualified, and with a forecast of thunderstorms and all manner of bad weather, pulled the plug on the day before. Being IFR (Instrument Flight Rules) qualified, meaning that I somehow manage to be right side up when emerging from the other side of a cloud, I volunteered my services at short notice.Christopher is a 4 year old boy who has had a liver transplant and regularly needs to attend Royal Children's Hospital Brisbane for on going treatment.
Due to the distances involved and the frequency of treatment, air transport would greatly reduce the travelling time and amount of upheaval experienced by the family.
The weather was indeed foreboding, with limited VFR operations at Archerfield as I got ready. The departure to the south and across the border to New South Wales
and another time zone was uneventful, even if the clouds were quite impressive. Most of the time I was able to manoeuvre around the build ups and landed a little
early at Inverell.
Chris and his mum Julie arrived about five minutes later and I soon had them aboard.We climbed away to the north, entering a leaving clouds along the way, and again steering around most of the build ups. Chris slept most of the way while I had an amiable chat with Julie.
We arrived five minutes early, and, much to the surprise of Earth Angel Liz Julian, I had Chris and Julie at the terminal building right on time. Liz whizzed them off to the hospital, while I refuelled the plane, tied it down, and headed home for lunch, did a few hours of work from home before heading back to the airfield.
Angel Flight Mission co-ordinator Geoff Marsh was acting as Earth Angel for the return leg. I was kept waiting a while for
the arrival of my passengers. The excuse offered was of delayed blood tests or some such technicality (but we all know that good help is hard to come by). Julie and Geoff were in good spirits while young Chris was only
too keen to get back into my plane.
Once we got going, the weather had worsened a bit, near Tenterfield we had no choice but go through some rough clouds. While I was busy handflying the plane through the turbulence (the autopilot does not cope too well with it), slowing the aircraft down lest we loose a wing or two, Julie was whooping in the back and enjoying "The roller coaster ride". Chris was a little harder to impress and kept on asking whether we were going to Brisbane or home, and "Are we there yet?"
Once we were clear of the cloud band the condition improved and we were able to enjoy the afternoon sun giving everything a golden glow.
About 3 minutes after disembarking my happy passengers, I was trundling down the runway again, and had to run the gauntlet of the same rough clouds again. This time it was late dusk and soon I was in total darkness, not able to visually avoid the worst stuff. On one occasion I balooned up 700' in a matter of 5 seconds. But again the worst of the rough stuff only laster a minute or two.
With only one other aircraft in the circuit at Archerfield the arrival was pretty straight forward.