Interesting stories, guys. HangT – one of the problems with aircraft compasses was the noobs who would take off their headsets and place them on top of the instrument panel, next to the compass. It seems some people don’t know that headsets contain magnets.
Cpxxx – I hope the mods will go easy on this: I smiled to myself when I saw your story and that your registration was Charlie Uniform. The plane I was flying in the following incident was November Tango. Seriously! Maybe I’ll post a pic of it later. So, we are a right pair of...
Just before a trip to SW France, I got a call from my club manager (FBO) to say that the ADF had been removed for repair, and the transponder was…. iffy. OK, I could live without the ADF, but I insisted on the transponder being fixed. All was OK. My flying partner and I made use of the two VOR receivers from home base (Enstone, near Oxford), skirting round the SW of London avoiding Heathrow, and then east parallel with the south coast to Lydd passing MIDhurst VOR enroute. In those days (before EU borders were fully opened) you had to clear British customs outbound at a designated airport, then land at a immigration/customs designated airport in the country of destination. (That’s all changed now, but there were still special considerations if carrying foreign (eg. American) passengers at late as 1996) It was a lot of arsing about, and for this reason amongst others, we got only as far as the French town of Poitiers for an overnight stop. Next day was OK – overcast but visibility 10km+. Next port of call was Perigueux – from memory about 120 miles S of Poitiers. There’s an NDB at Perigueux which of course was no use to us without the ADF. No problem – we flew a back bearing off the Poitiers VOR. The VORs in France were usually good for about 100 miles range at VFR alts. (I was not an alt monkey in RL – lol) As expected, the VOR signal began to weaken at about 100 miles, and the needle began to swing a little. The other VOR receiver had however picked up the Limoges signal, and its reading suggested that, assuming we were still on track from Poitiers, we should be close to our destination – just over that next ridge, just west of that town, as my partner concurred. We got over the ridge, there was the town, the hill, but no bloody airfield.
****ing Aida, was my initial response, as we circled around in disbelief. More of an annoyance than anything else. We knew exactly how to get to Limoges if need be. But where was Perigueux airfield? Had we got the right place? Checked the maps, the spellings etc. We were over a remote area of forest. Bordeaux was at least 100 miles away to the SW. I knew I’d be lucky to make radio contact at that range at that alt., so…
…climbed to 4000ft. Called Bordeaux and explained the position. His first question, not surprisingly, concerned fuel endurance – 4 hours. I had to squawk 7003 and then he was able to see me – 25 miles from the destination airfield! With a vector from Bordeaux, I found Perigueux easily. I had already been in radio contact with them earlier. The runway was 12, wind 120/20knots. A different voice from the first one advised me that there were thunderstorms in the area, as suggested by the angry crackling of the radio. Funny how these aviation incidents seem to come back to back, because on final approach to 12, the original voice came back, and sounded as if he’d rushed across the room. The wind was still 20 knots but was from a new direction - now 300 or 320 – can’t remember exactly, but I knew I didn’t want to be landing on 12 with a 20 knot wind from any direction starting with a 3 – lol – so opened up the power to abort the landing and reposition for 30. Other than that, I was never lost, especially when I joined a GPS equipped TB10 syndicate. But… there are traps. If manually entering a waypoint or destination that was not in the GPS database, I learned to check the coords listed against the map. There were quite a few errors in the Bottlang guide at that time.
Just in case you are wondering why I asked for reorientation from Bordeaux and not Perigueux – it’s the language thing. Yes I know that English is supposedly the international language of aviation. The real world is different, and I found that ATC’s command of English was typically in direct proportion to the size of the airfield. I did not want to risk a further balls up by confusing ATC at Periegueux (a small place) with a request for VDF or “QDM” as it was known in Britain back then. I would also avoid using words like “to” and “for” and “right” – except to mean the opposite of left…
…a Garuda Airlines A300 crashed on approach to Medan in Sumatra in 1997. I was in Jakarta, capital of Indonesia, myself shortly afterwards and just by chance met a guy who was part of the investigative team involved. He told me that the dialogue from ATC had included the somewhat Americanised English expression “right now” to mean “immediately”. The instruction from ATC had gone something like ”Turn left, turn right now”. The Garuda pilot was confused by this, and maybe ATC could not understand his confusion. The pilot questioned ATC saying “Turn right now?”, believing the original instruction to have been superseded. ATC apparently gave the go ahead, thinking the pilot meant “immediately”. The plane turned right instead of left, and crached into a mountainside. All 234 aboard were killed.
So if you ever fly anywhere foreign, watch your language!
