FlightGlobal.com
Home
Premium
Archive
Video
Images
Forum
Atlas
Blogs
Jobs
Shop
RSS
Email Newsletters
You are in:
Home
Aviation History
1985
1985 - 0097.PDF
Top White glare from Victoria Land, some 28,000ft beneath the Hercules, throws the cockpit into silhouette. Efficient ground-handling is essential at McMurdo, above, where so far this year every one has avoided getting their skin cold-welded to a Hercules. Note the ill-defined horizon rummaging for goggles and gloves. Is it anticipation or simply another diversionary activity to fend off the tedium? One of the pilots walks through the cabin, dipping his head to avoid my boots which are dangling over the side of the cable drum. On his return, I collar him in an attempt to dispel the final vestiges of doubt about grid navigation. Questions are written down. It is too noisy to talk: "We will be landing on a runway grid ' heading of 250, yes?" • "Yes." "But the runway is pointing towards the bottom right-hand corner on the naviga- • tor's map. Can that be correct?" (I was L never any good at school geometry, let alone the upside-down spherical variety at • 330kt). , "Yes, it is correct". Finally, I manage to turn my brain inside out, and the concept "clicks". The descent begins with chaotic shuf fling in the back as 50 people simulta neously attempt to don their entire , FLIGHT International, 12 January 1985 survival kit, expanding to twice their natural girth in the process. Ankles are twisted on the rollers; the seat belts are tangled; but tempers are not frayed. There are no clues about what is happening outside. The engine note is almost constant. We wait, and we wait. I visualise the scene in the cockpit as we aim for touchdown on the 8,000ft by 280ft ice runway. Beneath the 7ft thickness of ice will be 1,000ft of extremely cold water. Flights will have to stop within a week because summer currents are melting the ice from beneath. The Hercules, weighing more than 50 tons, begins its approach to the fragile surface. Up front the crew is relying on an unlikely combination of professional teamwork, nose radar, and a motley collection of oil drums. These are strung out along the sides of the runway, and in a "V" shape one mile from the threshold. They are the targets for an airborne radar approach at 125kt. The Hercules comes in from the real north (grid south) and turns left on to the runway grid heading of 250, some 13 miles from touchdown. The navigator talks the pilot into position by reference to the oil- barrel returns on his radar scope. By ten miles out we are at 1,000ft altitude and descending at a constant 200ft/min. The pilot is "heads down" on instruments to avoid being disorientated by the lack of a clear horizon and the all-pervading reflec ted glare of the 24hr summer sun. The navigator calls out heading changes and threshold distances. The pilot keeps her coming down at only 100ft per mile to what will be, in effect, a manual autoland. It will get the Hercules on to the ice even in a total white-out. Seven hours after take-off we drone down the final approach and rumble on to the runway with reassuring precision. Have we stopped? It is difficult to tell, with no windows where I am sitting. But then the engines run down, the doors open and a massive yellow fork-lift pokes its tines through the gaping hole at the back. A cool draught brushes against my face as I stumble over the roller tracks to collect my green canvas kit bag from amid a pile of a dozen identical green canvas kit bags. Doing anything in this clothing is like walking through porridge. I tumble out of the Hercules on to "The Ice". For several seconds I am bewildered—disorientated by the glare. I try to drink it in. I have arrived in a glori ous, expansive wasteland. I want to wait and collect my thoughts, but I am driven to fumble for my camera. "Over expose", they said. I fight the temptation to believe my light meter. I find that goggles and viewfinders do not mix. Gloves and shut ter buttons are incompatible. I throw off the gloves and aim my zoom lens at the Hercules. "Don't breathe", they said. "It will ice up the camera". "Don't touch the metal, it will freeze to your skin and tear it off. But it doesn't. I have arrived on a beautiful summer's day. The temperature is only down to about -5°C, and it is almost fit for sunbathing. I feel a fraud. Colleague Julian Moxon is probably colder in Beijing and I remember how Mike Gaines received no sympathy from a blaze office when he came back from the -50°C of a survival course. He had "only been in Canada". A stone's throw across the ice-field is a snowy hillock. My hosts tell me that it is a 10,000ft mountain some 50 miles away. The clarity of Antarctic air and the scale of its geography can be both deceptive and dangerous. The continent covers an area as big as the United States and Mexico combined, and the only way around it is by air. Providing that service is the world's most southerly airline. The crews come from the US Navy; they call themselves "Antarctic Development Squadron Six"; and they fly Hercules on skis. I would meet them later, but first a shower and a decent hot meal. Then I would attempt some skiing myself—late into the brilliant white night, as the Royal New Zealand Air Force Hercules headed home into dark ness and the early hours of the following day. D 25
Sign up to
Flight Digital Magazine
Flight Print Magazine
Airline Business Magazine
E-newsletters
RSS
Events
