Cont' from part 1
Its dark now and without instrument lights on my side, just going to be a "pain in the bu**, to lean over and check things! Oh, well, have run into worst things!
Now let me see how I am doing on my "land as soon as possible checklist of three items", no CHT on right engine, flight director not working, but really non of those are safety of flight items, so press on and lets get this "hog" to the "pen".
The "Twin Beech" as it is commonly called is a good airplane, a stable instrument platform, and handles heavy weather pretty good. The two R-985's are reliable enough, that under normal conditions, you don't have to worry about them.
2 hours into the trip to Mexico City and every thing working smooth for a change, but I can see lightning way in the distance, so I should not have to deal with that because it is to far away and to my left about 11 O'clock!
Time for a 30 min nap, that way I will be fresh if I have to shoot an approach into Mexico City. Set my trusty alarm clock for 35 min, takes me about 5 min to get to sleep, pushed my seat back a little and tucked my head down!
I am dreaming of a far off place, some exotic place, which I will never get to visit and a sound like hail on a tin roof, woke me abruptly and as I looked up, a flash of lightning just off to my left side and raining like a cow peeing on a flat rock! What the heck is going on now. I had set up the flight director with the heading function off so I could snooze a little but for some reason, it wandered off to the left a bit. Lets get some radial fixes, make sure where I am, got a position report to make in 4 minutes anyway! Ah, there is Nautla, 265 radial, and the 140 off of Poza Pica, so, ok, have about 80 miles left, but gotta climb now, MEA's ahead are higher than the 12,000 I am at now.... I climbed on up to 14,000, tuned up Mexico City and wa la, should be about 70 miles by the DME just to the right of our nose.
I must have stumble into a weather disturbance because this should wasn't forecasted! Lightning all around now, no trouble seeing instruments now! A lot of heavy rain now, big jolts of turbulence, one pretty good down draft and then the opposite, a up draft, took me to 16,000 feet, I better think about hooking up that 30 minute "walk-around" bottle that I carry with my personal survival kit I always take with me.
Then just as suddenly, I am in the clear again, can see lights on the ground and the glow of Mexico City up ahead, maybe 40 miles. Call ATC, give current altitude and heading and they give me Mexico City approach radar and I tune them up and from there on was a piece of cake to land, spend the night, refuel in the morning and finish trip tomorrow!
Up at daylight, walk back to fixed base operator, where I tied it down for the night, requested fuel, talked to customs people again, everything seemed ready to go. Taxied into position, locked tailwheel, full throttle and away I went! Funny how you can sense something is not right sometimes, and I had that feeling this morning about something, but didn't know what! I had a uneasy feeling about the weather forecast I received for the Nicaragua, Costa Rica area, thunderstorms thought out the area, so going to have to think my way throught that area. Don't want to overfly those countries, just stay on coast line. I had filed VFR flight plan for rest of trip, so I will have to stay off the coast about 10 miles or so all the way to Cali, then the coast line again down to Lima and its going to be dark big time when I get there. Might just spend the night in Cali, then start in the morning!
Down here, not to many things by which you can positively id where you are and I am getting a little nervious about El Salvador, because they are having some kind of war going on there, so stay, stay away from there.
Flew direct to Escuintla in Guatemala, then turn due south, 180 degress and headed for the coast line. Found the coast line, no problem, turned left and started following it all the way down to the Panama Canal, the direct to Cali.
Everything went fine and smooth until I turned towards Cali, and was about 200 miles on the leg, when "bang" from my left side, holy cow, backfire and backfire, have to shut down my left engine, which I did and then had to make quick decision on continuing to Cali or turn back to Panama! My speed now is going to be roughly 145 instead of 180, so 206 miles left works out to be roughly 1 hour and 40 minutes. "Tater", you've done it again, got your butt in a crack and fate is stepping on the crack! Everything settle down, mainly my nerves, right engine running really well. About 40 minutes out, I begin to notice that the oil temp on right engine creeping up towards the red, so open the cowl flaps, went to full rich on mixture in hopes that would cool the oil tem back down. It pretty much stayed there where it was for a while, but 20 minutes out of Cali, there was no way I could get this thing to climb over those hills on the coast line, so I had to look for some place to put this thing down.
Should I put it in the surf? Should I try to land on the beach, it would nose over in the sand I guess, either way didn't sound good. What the heck, I'll try to restart left engine and see if it will run at all. Sure enough, it fired right up and ran smooth at about 20 inches of manifold, so now, I am going to clear them hills for sure! Yahoooo, I am thinking, I got it made!
Cleared the first row of hills about 200 feet, climbing about 50 feet per minute, holding 110IAS and one more row ahead, but will go around to left and as I pass the last row, I could see the airport. Of course I am on the radio, talking to Cali approach, telling them what is going on and I think that I can land ok, but don't ask me to do anything except straight in approach to landing please.
Touched down and as soon as I touched the brakes, it started for the "toole berries" on the left side of runway, so I let it roll. Big red fire truck saw that and pulled out on runway headed my way, thought I was going to crash I guess, so now I had to dodge him, but he moved to side and I finally got it stopped!
Turns out the right engine was leaking oil through exhust system and was slowing running out of oil..I have often wondered what I would have done if I had to ditch in the open sea on that leg. Might not have written this I guess.
Left engine had a carburetor problem, but I didn't have to hang around while they fixed it and the new owners flew it the rest of the way I was told. They wouldn't pay the full 800, so had to settle for 700, but there was a time on that flight there at the end, where I would have gladly took a quarter, because that was what it looked like my butt was going to worth if I couldn't clear those hills!!!
