C-130 Airlift in Vietnam |
I'm on alert tomorrow. Briefing Monday, off to Indonesia Tuesday.
Received the briefing on our Djakarta mission this morn and did a little flight planning. The mission is no vacation (a ballbuster as they say in the vernacular)--the first day's flying is from 11:30 PM tonight through sundown towmorrow! The flight departs here for Taipei, then on to Clark, then across Borneo and Brunei to Djakarta. The second day's work is shuttling to a place on Borneo called Ulin, then back to Clark, Taipei, and CCK the third day.
Air traffic control procedures down there are really wild--disputed jurisdictional boundaries, quadrantal altitudes, radio aids operated "on request".
After 3 hours sleep I was alerted at 11 PM. All went well until the engine runup, at which time the airplane just fell apart. About 6 AM maintenance gave up on that airplane and decided to use another, but by that time we would have been unable to reach Djakarta in our 16-hour duty day. Soo, the backup crew took over. Sigh.