contactflying wrote:Mike,
I haven't talked about the P turn or return to target as it's more complicated. It is actually two energy management turns. Coming out of the spray or gun run, we fall off the target in a slightly downwind energy mandanagement turn for spacing. We pull up again into the slightly more than 180 degree energy management turn upwind and crosswind back to the target. Not quite 270 but more than 180.
The jet boys like Rob race track or use a mild wing over to return to target. They are so fast a Pawnee style P turn would take them completely out of sight.
I feel for the pilots that have to put a pax in a position to see. With oil company men, I put them low and directly over the right of way. The many energy management turns necessary to stay over the line made some sick but they could actually see the line. With just a short lesson, many could handle the controls which helped. It was no more than once yearly with each line.
Jim
Jim,
One of the differences between the type of work you're discussing and the type I'm discussing is the fact that I'd generally have a passenger (aka "observer") in the back. First time you start doing yo-yo's, or climbing and descending turns, you're going to experience puke down the back of your neck. And, in all seriousness, if your observer is filling bags, he or she isn't doing the job that they are in the back seat to do. So, at that point, the mission is compromised.
It's impossible to look at stuff on the ground, regardless of technique, for very long without being assigned a puker for your back seat. I've had some absolutely bullet proof back seaters in my career, and I always valued those folks truly. But, we don't always get to choose our observer. Doing goat and sheep surveys, however, I always drew the line, and chose my observers. In any case, doing that stuff, the pukers generally conceded that the back seat was no place for them during those kinds of flights.
I always remember doing a sheep survey flight one summer. 00:400 departure, in the mountains by 04:40. First unit was done, and started the transit to the next.....smelled coffee and heard crinkling noise from the back.....Jim, my observer, had just poured himself a cup of coffee from his thermos and was reading the morning paper that he'd picked up at the paper office enroute to the airport......THAT guy was bombproof, and a great observer. And, he was my sheep survey observer for fifteen plus years.
Radio telemetry, however, I often did solo. Many times it was easier and safer to just do the mission myself (after several thousand hours of this specific kind of work) than to risk the mission by taking an unproven observer a hundred miles from home, only to find out they were a puker. One such flight, I had a young lady assigned to my back seat who I'd never flown with. Long flight, long day, VERY hot (100 degrees F in northern Alaska), low level and convective all day. She seemed to be doing really well, right up until......she yelled into the microphone "Land this F...ing airplane RIGHT NOW!!!!". Now, that will definitely get your attention.
So, I slid over to the Yukon River and landed on a sandbar. We got out of the plane. She wasn't throwing up.....but she was miserable. After half an hour of walking around, she'd managed to stabilize her gyros, we saddled up and took off. At that point, I bagged the mission and headed home. Fifteen or twenty minutes later, the voice from the back came on the intercom again: "Land this F.....ing airplane, RIGHT NOW!!!". I landed on a gravel bar on Preacher Creek. Another half hour of walking around and stabilization.....and we saddled up once more.
Long story short, two more gravel bar landings and a landing on a mine strip got us back to Fairbanks. That poor soul never threw up, but she was one miserable troop, and I was a total mess of nerves by the time we landed at home.
After that, I tried my best to do all telemetry flights in warm weather either with a known observer, or by myself.
Then, there was the observer who puked on EVERY flight. We'd land, he'd stabilize, we'd take off and he'd be good for the rest of the day.....go figure why you'd want to do that regularly, but he did....for the better part of 12 years, regularly. He was the only known puker I'd regularly fly missions with, because I knew we'd get the mission done in any case.
MTV
