FlightGlobal.com
Home
Premium
Archive
Video
Images
Forum
Atlas
Blogs
Jobs
Shop
RSS
Email Newsletters
You are in:
Home
Aviation History
1985
1985 - 0099.PDF
pressure ridges pushed up by ice move ments hundreds of miles away. Only skis can ride the bumps; it is too rough to land with wheels. The ski-Hercules of VXE6 use a permanent 10,000ft by 280ft skiway on this ice sheet as their home airfield throughout the Antarctic summer, flying a shuttle service all over the continent to wherever the scientists need a seis mograph or a sandwich. A new skiway is being scraped out of the ice because the present one is being pushed rapidly towards the sea as the entire continental ice sheet migrates radi ally outwards from the Pole. It will be the second ice airfield to disappear into the sea since VXE6 made its first landing at McMurdo in 1955. The strip is known as Williams Field, in memory of a bulldozer driver who came upon a patch of thin ice and went through it. If VXE6's Hercules do not get airborne after the 10,000ft skiway runs out, they can just keep going for another 20 or 30 miles, but it can be a tiresome business taxiing back to base if the Hercules still fails to leave the ice. For about six weeks each year—starting in October, when the winter night recedes and the weather improves with spring— the non-permanent section of the Ross Ice Shelf is strong enough to support US Air Force C-141s carrying 50,0001b loads. After that, only Royal New Zealand Air Force Hercules, carrying 28,0001b cargoes, can land during a critical few weeks while the onset of summer is steadily under mining the 7ft thick crust of ice, which finally breaks up. In one season this temporary ice surface does not get a chance to become wrinkled and ridged, so the standard wheeled C-141s and RNZAF Hercules can touch down. This is fortuitous because strategic resupply from Christchurch—some 2,000 miles away—is a painfully slow process with the high-drag ski-Hercules. They can carry 16,0001b payloads southbound off Christchurch's concrete runway, but are limited to only 6,0001b when flying north bound off the ice with full fuel because ski drag prevents them from reaching take off speed at higher weights. Where the ski-Hercules really come into their own is in another form of "drag". Pilots of VXE6 regularly land their aircraft out in the middle of the crevasse-ridden continent. It behoves them to avoid falling down a hole, so they "drag" the virgin territory—nose high, 90kt, main skis in the snow. It is a matter of professional pride among crews that the drag shall be straight as a die. If it isn't they might within a few minutes. The drag goes on for miles. Then they pull up, fly a circuit and A ski-Hercules of Antarctic Development Squad ron Six comes in to land, left. Getting off again, below, can require rocket boost peer over the side, looking for crevasse holes in the drag. Then they attempt to land in their own tracks. Jokes about "banana skiways" are not appreciated in the crew room. Operations Officer, Commander Joe Mazza, sums up the problems faced by VXE6 as high winds (100kt is nothing), low ceilings, and "whiteouts"—when even the sky turns white as sunlight is dif fracted through ice crystal clouds. "Surface definition can be so bad that people fall over when walking", says Mazza. "They literally do not know which way is up". Astride the McMurdo skiway there are black panels set in the ice every 1,000ft. Mazza explains that in a whiteout all you can see from the cockpit on the approach is black panels floating as if in space or on a video game. Sky, cloud, skiway and surrounding ice do not exist. The handling pilot stays on instru ments. The copilot helps to guide him or her to touch down. (Yes, "her"—there are women ski-Hercules pilots, including Lt Paula Bond, a fully fledged polar tactical aircraft commander). In a whiteout the copilot monitors the airspeed and descent rate and the flight engineer calls the radar altitude, while the navigator shouts distance and drift angle. They use the same trick as the New Zealanders— aiming for 1,000ft altitude ten miles out, then establishing a 200ft/min descent rate down to a "manual autoland". The US Navy does not have many Hercules on strength, so the crews tend to come from anti-submarine backgrounds on P-3s. "We grow polar commanders here", says Joe Mazza. The "old man" of the squadron has only three years' experi ence on Hercules. It causes some prob lems, but they learn to do things for which the Hercules was never designed; and they learn quickly. Hercules navigation in Antarctica is by single Litton inertial reference unit, gyro compasses, and "grid" maps, plus star shots to keep gyro precession under super vision. On-board radar is used a lot. They FLIGHT International, 12 January 1985 27
Sign up to
Flight Digital Magazine
Flight Print Magazine
Airline Business Magazine
E-newsletters
RSS
Events
