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Pilot Error
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This month’s Pilot Error is a true story, written from the author’s own fund of flying experience. Though not so much a “close shave” as previous fiction-based-on-fact in this series, it underlines the sort of errors to which even experienced pilots can be subject when under pressure. It also provides a fascinating glimpse of bush flying at night in the “pre-navaid” era.
The DH-84 Dragon – the “flying butter box” as my very rude DC-3 captain friend who flew the twice-weekly outback service from Adelaide used to call it – was a remarkable device.
On the meagre power and economy of two Gipsy Major is, it comfortably carried six or seven passengers and their luggage with all the aplomb of a Handley Page Hannibal or – as in the case of “my” aeroplane – a doctor, a nurse, two stretcher patients, seats for two other passengers, fuel for almost seven hours, and enough spares and equipment to do a 100-hourly in the field. We needed the spares in those days – we had flying doctor responsibility for nearly 200,000 square miles of South Australia’s hinterland and even our home base at Ceduna was over four hours flying from the nearest workshop facilities at Adelaide’s one and only Parafield Airport.
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