Bush pilot yarns

Over the weekend I had a good mate from Arusha who is also a pilot (what a surprise) come around for dinner. As what usually happens when you get a group of people from the same profession together they start talking shop.
He told me about the interesting time he had at lake Manyara that morning and I told him about my afternoon at the Spice Island of Pemba.

His story was one I have heard before from older pilots, but luckily I have never had the pleasure of the experience. The Airstrip is located about 700 feet above the Lake perched right on the edge of the escarpment. This morning the cloud base was down to the edge of the escarpment(the same level as the airstrip). After having to fly along below the top of the escarpment hoping for a break in the weather he could just make out the base of radio antenna's which are located on the edge of the cliff. These Antenna's are about 50 meters to left of the airstrip when approaching to land from the South east. Now he knew where abouts the airstrip was he positioned for the approach to land.....the only thing was he was still 200 feet LOWER than the airfield. It doesn't take a scientist to work out that climbing and landing are usually opposites but in this case he had to climb up 200 feet to land! He climbed on his approach slightly right of the antenna, just as he reached the lip of the escaprment only feet away from being swallowed by cloud he saw the threshold 50 metres ahead.
This sounds like something a Helicopter would do, but no he was in a fixed wing Cessna Caravan. It's the kind of story to make the average pilot cringe....including me.

That same afternoon I was fumbling my way into Pemba from Zanzibar. Their was mountains of towering cumulus obscuring the island with the thunder heads reaching to what looked like at the time the edge of space. But the sea East and West of the Island was clear blue skies. I had overheard a beneficial conversation only days before. The pilot was talking to another about flying into Pemba in bad weather. He said "when there is heavy rain engulfing the island the sea is usually clear, so one can descend over the ocean and try get in low level'. I took a mental note for future use. The airport on the island is only about a mile from the west coast.
On this day I did exactly this hoping that I could slip in underneath the cloud from west coast, I wasn't going through the cloud because the weather radar was painting red on the screen everywhere ahead. I descended down to 500 feet above the ocean with the airport 3 miles off my port(left) wingtip then turned directly towards it and pushed on through the rain. It was one of the times when you are on the point of turning back when straight ahead half a mile off is the runway. I was almost perfectly positioned for a left base to land towards the South West. On the ground their was a lot of water and if I had been only minutes earlier I would not of found the airport as it would have been in the middle of a tropical downpour.

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