Chapter 41 - Santa Maria, California to Hilo, Hawaii

16/3/2010

The afternoon and evening at Santa Maria before our departure we unpacked the aircraft and checked the position and the security of the fuel bladders in the rear of the aircraft. For the Saratoga, we needed to ensure that the bladder was as far forward as possible to keep the centre of gravity within the aircraft's aft weight and balance envelope. Obviously we were way outside the envelope in terms of excess weight. Additionally we needed to ensure that as we burned fuel out of the bladders, we would not exceed the forward centre of gravity limit. A requirement of the permit was that the fuel from the bladder was to be used before fuel from the wing tanks. Although we had two transfer fuel pumps, it was also our priority to use the bladder fuel first, as in the event of transfer pump failure we could be left with fuel in the bladder and insufficient in the wing tanks.

Our limit variety but ample quantity of food rations consisted of muesli bars, biscuits, tasty sweets, chocolate (which quickly melted on the ground in Hilo), water, salted potato chips, tomato juice, some preserved breakfast fruit and Red Bull for when we got tired, was placed immediately behind the other person's seat, in easy reach. The food was on top of our individual life raft, strobe light, ELB, torch and survival blanket. It would have taken less than 10 seconds to have that gear with us in the front seats.

It was early to bed and early to rise. Unfortunately so, because the room was one of the best for the whole trip.

17/3/2010

Our plan was to leave the hotel at 5:00 am, get to the aircraft, check them out by torchlight and be taxiing just before dawn, so that we could take off as soon as we had beginning of daylight.

Ray seemed to have delegated the flight organisation to Lyn who was calling the shots and decided that Ray Clamback in the Bonanza would go first; Dan McGowan in the Mooney would start rolling as soon as the Bonanza left the runway; we would go last in the Saratoga, as soon as Dan's wheels were off the ground. The plan was to fly at different altitudes so that from the Saratoga, we could keep the two aircraft ahead of us and in line of sight. The best laid plans don't always eventuate, but we went close for most of the way.

Not having been the pilot of an aircraft taking off at least 1000 lb over maximum allowable weight was not daunting, as Lyn had run through the take off with me. "Just let it fly when it wants to leave the ground. Fly in ground effect until you have the speed to climb. Don't pull up too early or sharply or the aircraft will settle back onto the runway". The most comforting was that Lyn would have her hands close to the control yoke.

It all went smoothly with a little bit of forward pressure assistance from Lyn just after the wheels left the runway.

Wheels up and we started to climb at 500' per minute up to 6000'.

Surprisingly, I felt no sense of anxiety or concern. We just climbed out over the water, past a few lazy clouds and we were on our way. After all of the planning and emphasis on safety and provision for emergency situations and comforted by the calm and experience of Lyn, it was almost as if we were going on a 50 NM local flight.

Lyn later obtained a block clearance to operate between 6000' and 8000'. Clear skys. No turbulence. Winds OK. And that was to be the basic weather for most of the trip home to Australia, with the added benefit that we had favourable tailwinds on most of the legs.

The first couple of hours pass quickly - setting the aircraft up; chatting back and forth on 123.45; checking on each of the aircraft and adjusting the speeds so that we could stay close and preferably in sight of each other.

In the Saratoga, we quickly encountered problems. The magnetic compass was not out of calibration, it was the HSI which was 25 degrees out. This meant that we would not be able to use the auto-pilot in NAV mode and would have hand fly or use the heading bug manually with reference to the GPS data. Still this was a long way better than for thousands of aircraft ferried before the advent of GPS.

Prior to take off we found that the trim needle had again disconnected. As a precaution, at Torrance I had counted the number of wheel sections required to position the trim in neutral. Then when I tried to set the rudder trim, the trim knob screwed off the spindle. The slight out of trim was costing us 1 knot so it was not a concern.

Soon we had the pilots from the 'heavies' - the airliners - on our chat channel. They had picked us up either during our HF transmissions or on the 'chat channel' and called us on 123.45. The pilots wanting to know who we were, where we were going, how many of us, how long would the flight take, how much fuel we carried, how much overweight etc etc. From the "wows" and "awesomes" and "that's incredibles", they were more in awe of us and our flight than we were of them.

About 7 hours out from Santa Maria, the nose took a 5 degree swing to the right. This was followed by slight but steady vibration.

'Oh no' I thought. 'Not 7 hours from land in both directions. We haven't even reached the warm currents'. Those thoughts took about 1/1000th of a second, before I started looking at the instruments. I looked at Lyn and although I could see her scanning the instruments, I still had to ask 'Can you feel that'? I looked at her and the answer was obvious.

She said she could and we both kept scanning the intruments. I asked if she had seen the nose swing to the right, but she hadn't. Lyn said it took one and a half minutes, but for me everything happened so quickly it was just a blur. She reached in front of me and pushed the speed brake button which projects from the top of the right hand section of my control yoke (much too far and required much too light a touch).

In her scan she had noticed that the speed had dropped by 25 knots. She looked at undercarriage and magnetos unable to find the cause until she remembered that the aircraft had speed brakes in the wings. She looked and saw that they had been activated. Best guess is that I had touched the button with the flight plans and had and inadvertently activated the speed brakes. This happened again on another leg (when I didn't have anything in my hand) and three times while on the ground, so modifications are required to the switching mechanism. I don't want that to happen on take off on a short runway.


Lyn commented that she doesn't often get palpitation of the heart, but that she certainly had it for a few moments.

About 11 hours into the flight, Dan asked Ray for details of work done on the oil system of the Mooney. He then advised that the oil pressure had been largely on the white line separating the green normal operation range from the yellow caution range for much of the flight, but had now moved lower into the yellow.

After some discussion Ray said "That's not good. What about the oil temperature"? That was OK. "What about the rpm and the constant speed propellor"? That was OK. We dropped back behind Dan to keep him in sight. The Bonanza and the Saratoga both have Traffic Collision Avoidance Systems, so we were also able to remain in contact on the screen.

About the same time I noticed some tiny deposits, like specks, on Lyn's front window. They were in a column, mostly on Lyn's side with just a few splattered on my side of centre. We tried to work out what it was. It looked greasy but Lyn said it wasn't oil.

With three hours to Hilo, the fuel bladder in the back had deflated enough and the human bladder in the front had inflated enough for Lyn to decide that a 'rest stop' could be undertaken and she climb into the back of the aircraft.

 Click on images to enlarge