Bush Pilot highs and lows

Well the last week has been incredibly interesting for me....back flying the Cessna 206 again, sailing around Dar es Salaam's tropical reefs and the biggest surprise of all, a engine failure in a Cessna Caravan (Yes I had a PT6 die on me) will elaborate more on this towards the end of the post.
The above shot is of myself strapped into a little old Cessna 206...about to go bush. I'm sure you can all see my disgusting moustache that I have been cultivating for Movember(All in the name of men's health)

This is Kiba airstrip in the Selous game reserve with the new runway being built straight through the middle, notice the Rufiji river in the background.

Just airborne out of Stieglers gorge airstrip in the Selous, looking down at the Rufiji river winding through Stieglers gorge...of course.

With a large storm minutes away from breaking over Msembe airstrip in the Ruaha National park, I am correcting for the cross wind.... Still correcting for the cross wind....it looks like I am heading straight for the camera man(Aaron Cawsey)

Thanks to my instructors 6 years ago in New Zealand who taught me how to carry out a crosswind landing...I managed to straighten up and line myself with the runway/dirt strip.

Yesterday, My Aussie lady, a few other friends and myself went out on a rather large yacht for the day. Sailing and snorkeling around the islands and reefs that lye just off Dar es Salaam. Basically we living a day like millionaires with a crew to look after us and do all the hard bits...like sailing. In the picture above a local fisherman is using a surf board as his commercial fishing vessel....He is at least 3 miles offshore and I don't think his vessel has an engine.

Enjoying a beer after lunch in the shade on the trampoline in the bow of this large Catamaran.

The Snorkeling and diving around Dar es Salaam is amazing with the huge abundance of fish on the coral reefs. But the fish stocks in these waters are being destroyed by illegal fishing methods like the use of explosives. I found this video on You tube of fisherman using dynamite off Dar es Salaam. Only 20% of the fish killed by explosive are fit for human consumption.The Fiffa world cup has it's own airliner as the cup travels around Africa visiting every country (I doubt they will visit Somalia). Here the Trophy was in Zanzibar.Okay, Here is a Cessna Caravan that fell short of Jongomero airstrip. Everybody was unhurt. The exact reason why this Caravan crashed has not yet been fully established....all I can say is it won't be flying anywhere in a hurry. Here is the Zan Air Caravan taking off out of Mtmere airstrip in the Selous Game reserve. The pilot is a good friend of mine from Scotland. The two of us trained together in Christchurch, New Zealand, then we flew in Maun Botswana at the same time and now we have both ended up flying in Tanzania. I wonder where on Earth we will end up flying next.

ENGINE FAILURE

I don't know about you, but I always thought IF I was going to have a engine failure whilst flying it would have been in a piston engined aircraft not a turbo prop!

As it turned out my first engine failure happened just the other day and just shy of my 2000 hours total time as pilot flying. On Thursday afternoon I took off from Dar es Salaam with 10 passengers on board a Cessna Caravan for the 39 nautical mile flight to Zanzibar(around about 20 miles being over the ocean).

The 20 minute flight was the same as the 100+ other Zanzibar flights I have done...I positioned for the right downwind runway 18 as Zanzibar tower told me to do....Base leg was normal too....Just as I turned onto final approach the beautiful reliable whine of the turbo prop PT6 engine turned into 100 screaming banshees!!

1-2 seconds panic!

What is making this ear splitting noise?

Oil temp and pressure ok.

ITT(Inner turbine temperature) was ok.

Hmmm the propeller only 400 rpm...hmmm?

For some reason the Propeller was back against the stop! I pushed it forward to where it was supposed to be. Still don't know why this was so.

I looked at the Torque gauge it was fluctuating all over the place!

Another second of panic

Thank Goodness(or some other really descriptive words) I'm going to make the runway.

I wasn't even able to hear the control tower over the ear splitting noise coming from the engine.

The Caravan touched down right on the piano keys (white lines that mark the beginning of a good place to land).

Once I slowed down the dying turbine was still screaming away...The token amount of thrust still being delivered to the propeller allowed me to taxi into the terminal where I promptly shut the screaming engine down (no cooling down today) in front a curious crowd that had assembled to see what was screaming out on the apron.

I turned and said 'welcome to Zanzibar' to my passengers before vacating the aircraft.

Once my hands slowed their shaking to less than 1000 rpm I phoned my office to announce I was no longer flying today.

The next day after the engineers had put a Bore scope (a small camera on the end of wire) into the turbine they discovered a blade had come off in the power turbine and damaged another. The damaged blade was the one making all the noise as it was touching the engine casing...so as it spun around at whatever ridiculous RPM it was scraping against steel...hence the ear splitting screaming.

Now after talking to pilots who know other pilots around the world who know other pilots I have so far gathered that this was the 5th failure of this kind to happen with the PT6 power plant...but I'm sure after a proper google search the figure maybe a little different.

All I can say is I was bloody lucky that it happened so close to a runway!

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