All photos and text are property of Dave Forney and may not be used without express permission.

Saturday, September 20, 2014

Airplanes

I promised you I wouldn't get so deep this time, so I'll just show you a few simple airplane pictures.  These first two shots capture one of our Cessna Grand Caravans taking off and landing on a village strip.



Wherever the strip is in close proximity to a village, there will almost always be a crowd of people surrounding the aircraft after arrival--especially children.  Airplanes are fascinating!


Here's a shot of Lima Delta Romeo (LDR) touching down on our home field at Kajjansi.  Notice how the the dust curls out and around behind the aircraft.  Cool hugh?


When I flew in East Kal we dealt with very short, slippery, soft, muddy strips.  The challenge there was to fly an extremely precise approach and pinpoint touchdown and at a specific airspeed (translating to a specific ground speed) so that you could land AND stop without running off the end of the little patch of grass they called an airstrip.  Here, the challenges are a bit different.  Most of the strips here are considerably longer, and comprised of nice, hard gravel.  That makes the landing and rollout more comfortable, so the concern isn't as much that you're going to run off the end, but rather that you might bang up the prop and aircraft from all the flying gravel.  And it isn't even dry season yet!


Besides the Caravans and Grand Caravans, we also have two Cessna 206's.  Here's a shot of one of them taking off in Kajjansi.

5 comments:

Just me said...

Love the plane shots! I fly but have never managed even a single good plane shot. Awesome, Dave!!!

Glad you're back in the air!
Ali

Unknown said...

Great site. I am Lourens Laureti and we work in Papua New Guinea, amongst the Mengen people. Check out our blog at, http://blogs.ntm.org/lourens-laureti Our pilots are our heros! Great pics!

Dave said...

Thanks Ali and Lourens! Yes, it is great to be back in the air again! :-)

Lourens, I went on a short term NTM SUMMIT team back in '93 to PNG. It was a work project on the Iteri airstrip. That's when I met the Busers, and consider them great friends! I also have several good friends who fly for NTM Aviation. I'll certainly check out your blog.

Dave said...

Thanks Ali and Lourens! Yes, it is great to be back in the air again! :-)

Lourens, I went on a short term NTM SUMMIT team back in '93 to PNG. It was a work project on the Iteri airstrip. That's when I met the Busers, and consider them great friends! I also have several good friends who fly for NTM Aviation. I'll certainly check out your blog.

Dave said...

Thanks Ali and Lourens! Yes, it is great to be back in the air again! :-)

Lourens, I went on a short term NTM SUMMIT team back in '93 to PNG. It was a work project on the Iteri airstrip. That's when I met the Busers, and consider them great friends! I also have several good friends who fly for NTM Aviation. I'll certainly check out your blog.