November 28, 2018, continued
With clearance in-hand and topped-off with fuel at Robinson Crusoe Island/SCIR, we were ready to depart for Easter Island around 0900 local. We taxied to the end of runway 14 and blasted off the mesa. I wasn't watching the radar altimeter, but Josh said it was pretty impressive to see it jump from about 100 FT to 500 FT in an instant as were cleared the cliff at the end of the runway.
Thanks to Josh and Becky for putting together this video...the first 1:30 is the departure from Robinson Crusoe Island.
Youtube: https://youtu.be/Damdx0z3bYE
Some photos of the departure...dramatic scenery as we departed to the southeast and made the full turn around to our west/northwest on course heading...
We had brief VHF contact with Santiago Oceanic (they have a remote VHF outlet on Robinson Crusoe) and then changed to HF and were able to maintain contact. But there was not much to say. "Maintain flight level 300 and report the next fix."
We were quickly on top of all the clouds and the air was completely smooth. For about 1,000 NM this was all we saw...
And occasionally this...
And occasionally big excitement with this view....
Our dear friend and co-captain on prior RTW flights, Giuseppe (aka, G-man), generously agreed to act as our dispatcher for this flight sending us regular updates on forecasted winds (very important to determine fuel reserves upon arrival at Easter Island) an weather updates. He had a small command center set-up at his office in Montana and communicated with us using the satellite text messaging feature of our Garmin InReach device (a very useful tool)...
We also asked G-man to use a ship tracking service (www.marinetraffic.com) to locate ships along our route in the very unlikely event that we would need to conduct a water landing, aka "ditching." After some time he send us this message back...
Not many! We entered the coordinates of the ones he found (none very close to our route) anyway...
About an hour into the flight into the flight we saw a plane! The plane, the plane! It was the first LATAM (#841) flight of the day from Santiago to Easter Island (normally there are 2-3 flights a day)...
We tried to call them just for fun on "five fingers" (123.45 Mhz) the air-to-air frequency most planes monitor when oceanic, but evidently they were not listening as we did not get a response. I wonder if they thought there was no way there would be another plane out in this part of the world and thus dispensed with the normal procedure of monitoring five fingers.
About six hours later, we saw the same plane coming the other way on the return flight!
OK, so our bird isn't the fastest in the sky, but she gets the job done!
Our communications with Santiago Oceanic had been fairly good on HF. We had to revert to sat phone a few times, but not too often. Without much else to do, making position reports was at least a little distraction.
On a long flight like this one, it is important that the crew stretch regularly, stay well hydrated, and eat normally. Josh and I regularly take turns leaving the cockpit and going to the back to flirt with our two very attractive female passengers and stretch out. Since we only have four people on this trip, we removed three of the six passenger compartment which leaves lots of room to stretch out. Here is a typical scene in the back...
It can't be seen very well in the photo above, but behind the seats the ladies are using is one crew rest seat with about four feet of leg room and next to it an area of flat floor of about 3x6 feet. I think Josh tended to recline in the crew rest seat for his "off" periods while I usually stretched out on the floor with pillows and a blanket and took a "power nap." While too much detail is probably not needed, suffice it to say we all stayed well hydrated and used the potty as needed to compensate.
I will finish this story in Auckland.
I will finish this story in Auckland.
