Mission 6308 - Emerald to Archerfield

Background

On Wednesday the 20th of April 2011 I flew Mission 6308, making it my 158th Angel Flight.

The mission description from Angel Flight was:

INITIAL TRIP REQUEST:

This elderly lady travels to Brisbane to attend chemotherapy sessions in the Mater Hospital. She is accompanied by her daughter.

She is lives with her husband, and is supported by her daughter and son-in law who are their carers. They have no financial means to travel to Brisbane unassisted.

Archerfield to Emerald

After an initially wet start, the day turned out quite nicely afterall, so I did the pre-flight in leisure without having to dodge any rain drops for a change. I moved the plane to the terminal building in order to make it easier for my passenger.

Waltraut was dropped off by her daughter a little early, so we got going a little early too.

The climb out was nice and smooth and we watched the sun go down as we chatted away in German. Soon we were enveloped in darkness as we headed north at 10,000'. Occasionally we would be in cloud, but this was benign stratus, so no serious bumps were encountered.

Two and a half hours later, by this time clear of all clouds, the welcoming lights of Emerald were sparkling up the nose of the aeroplane, just where we had been expecting them. I had asked Waltraut to help me verify our position by using the torch to illuminate the signs on the railway platform but she declined to become involved in the operation of the flight. So we did a normal circuit to land as normal, hoping that we were indeed over the correct town.

Waltraud's son was waiting behind the fence and soon whisked her away.

Emerald to Archerfield

Having pumped some 143 litres of Avgas aboard, I headed back into the inky night to try to find Archerfield.

The only fly in the ointment was that, three quarters of the way home, flight service informed me that the Archerfield NDB was out of action, necessitating a visual approach. But, given that the scattered cloud cover was at 5,000' this did not pose any serious problems.

On landing I discovered a rogue aeroplane parked in our assigned spot, so I had to find another spot where I tied the old lady down.

Summary

I was back on the ground in Archerfield, after having