As Paul Harvey used to say, "now, for the rest of the story"!
Now we have to settle down for the next 1290 miles or so, try to stay awake, keep a wary eye on engine #1 and keep "Knoxie" settled down. No center radars and ATC to keep track of us now, this far south of Texas, so have to do some position reports and I don't speak good Spanish, so after a couple of attempts of my own, I find out "Knoxie" is fluid in Spanish, so now he has something to keep him busy for the balance of the trip.
We now have 3 legs to complete, the one we are on, 1286 miles, the second from Guatemala to the Panama Canal, 1325 miles, the third to Pereira in Columbia, South America, 404 miles from the canal. Today we have to do 2611 miles or there abouts, so a lot of dull, boring holes in the sky, dodging around thunderstorms here and there and arriving in the canal somewhere around 3 in the morning, with a refueling stop in Guatemala.
The first leg out of KBRO roughly parallels the coast line of Mexico, but to be on the safe side, I ask "Knoxie" to keep me posted on the nearest airport on our route, just in case! So when we settled in at 12,000 feet, everything going smooth now, so just a matter of staying awake, looking up the airport at Guatemala City, La Agrora international, but back then, I think it was named after some president or somebody, can't remember, but approach not to bad looking, 7,000 foot runway as I remember.
Now I am checking on weather there and there has been a tropical storm which passed over the area during the night, but was supposed to be gone when we get there. It was and for the most part, ho hum approach, broke out about 1500 feet AGL, landed, refueled, got something to eat real quick and we were supposed to go on our way. Pretty nice little restaurant on the airport, so ordered only thing I knew how to in Spanish, 3 Taco's and beans! "Knoxie" is flirting with one of the waitress and said he would like to stay the night and I said OK, I will go on with out you, so can I have Gina when I get back to Atlanta? Oh no was a quick answer to that. Anyway, off we went again!
Uh, oh, AVQ55 has quit! lining up for takeoff, with a few rain showers around and a couple of fair sized hills somewhere just south of the airport, now is not the time to go rock hunting with a B-26, so off we went, "Knoxie" handling throttles again and this time, no problem with #1, but darn, in the soup at 1500 AGL again, but this time its more broken than solid, so have fair visibility ahead and we could see the two hills I was concerned about and as soon as we climbed through 8,000 MSL, I begin to relax. the airport we departed was 4951 feet above sea level, so we passed the first of the high elevation airports with no problems.
Now we have 1325 miles to Panama Canal and its getting darker by the minute, but with most of the trip now would be keeping awake, position reporting, checking fuel burn and etc and we had picked up a nice tail wind because of the back side of that tropical storm which had passed through last night. At 12,000 feet, we were clicking along at 290 knots ground speed, as best I could figure, but no DME equipment down in that area, so had to do the old E6B thing, but I think it was pretty close, as we were making our estimates pretty close, but as we got further and further away from Guatemala, our speed started slowing down because we were getting away from that nice tail wind we had and about half way down and 2 hours into flight, we now down to 230 knots.
I knew, from having flown in the canal area before that the thunderstorms, if any, would be over land at night in that area, so with out the help of radar, hopefully approach control into Tocumen field and sure enough, there was a few around, although scatted, so really was not a problem. Now for some sleep and rest and then the final 400 miles or so to our destination, Matecana international airport at Percira, Columbia.
Now comes the entertaining part of the trip! The airport elevation above sea level is 4116 feet, with a lot of hills around and nothing but a ADF approach down to 5616MSL, then if no vis on runway, missed approach. There are several mountains around, some as high as 9,456 feet on one of them so I hope it will be VFR when we go into there.
We took off the next morning with 6 hours of fuel on board, nothing in the tips, climbed out and settle down for last little bit of journey. Of course, you have to understand that "Murphy's" law is just not going to allow anything to run smooth, so about an hour out, #1 started acting up again and I tried every trick in the book to try to get it to smooth out, but no luck and I knew inside, but didn't say anything to "Knoxie", but knew it was a matter of time before I would have to shut it down again. The airport was reporting 2,000 broken, 4,000 overcast with a light chop reported by somebody, so I begin to think about what my options were and they weren't many. I wasn't going to come all this way and turn around and sit in Panama for no telling how long to get a fuel pump and get it installed, so someway, I was going to get this thing to the destination airport!
Sure enough, 20 minutes out, it, #1 finally started backfiring again, so we shut it down, retrimed for single engine ops. We were light now, with not much fuel on board, so climb out on single engine would be no problem, if we had to go around. The problem was the ADF, it acted funny as I tuned the station and I just figured it was because we were still a ways out, so didn't think about it much then.
Now, a single engine approach in most twin engine aircraft, if you trim like you should, is not a big problem, as long as you don't have to execute a missed approach, but I had to relie on "Knoxie" for positive station ID from the commercial station which I was going to use as cross reference to airport position. Shooting a NDB approach is no big thing, but do they keep this station calibrated like they do in the U.S.? Good question!
Well, we were committed now as I reduced power on good engine and started down. We are now down to 7,000MSL and something caught my eye off to the right just briefly and I asked "Knoxie", what was that? A mountain top I think, he replied, so I pushed up the good throttle, declared a missed approach to somebody, can't remember who, and said, we going somewhere they got radar!
Nearest big airport was Bogota, Columbia, 127 miles away, which I knew should have radar and an ILS system, so talked to somebody, again, don't remember who, because "Knoxie" was doing the talking in Spanish, to make sure everyone knew what was going on. Slowly we climbed back up to 11,000 feet, as we are now Eastbound and as we got closed to Bogota, the Omani range started coming in and then about 40 out, they even had a DME, which made us feel a lot better.
I said, lets try to restart this engine again. Again, it fired right up, ran smooth as silk, cancel my emergency and flew VFR the rest of the way as we had cleared all clouds but a few high ones. Landed, no problem, except for that jeep full of armed guards who pulled up and then I really started getting nervous.
As soon as we got out the aircraft, ole "Knoxie" earned a bonus, because he was talking and gesturing towards the aircraft and the guy who seemed be in charge, flashed a big toothy grin with a couple of "gold" teeth, waved us into the jeep and left his two guards to guard the aircraft.
He took us to the terminal building, walked us into a room and there was 2 "shady" looking guys in suits and ties, both with a little thin mustache on their upper lip and I thought, "Tater" you might be in a world of you know what now!
After much explaining by "Knoxie" and smiles all around, everything turned out OK, except I don't know to this day who wound up with that B-26. I got the impression later from someone who was supposed to know that the Columbian government confiscated it for their own use. I just know I got my $1200.00 dollars and "Knoxie" got his $600.00 dollars.
