Page 31 - Volume 13 Number 8

forcing you to spend four extra days enjoying the sun and sand on Waikiki!” If that were only true! Instead, with no King Air maintenance at the airport and under the guidance of the pros at Beechcraft West, I spent most of that time stretched out in the narrow King Air aisle, wedged between the ferry tanks, rolling back the carpet and removing the access panel to reach the side­by­side GCUs, swapping them to see if the problem followed – which it did – ordering a rush delivery of a replacement, then installing it when it arrived. (OK, I admit that there was one day at the beach while waiting for the unit to arrive!) Can you guess how hot and stuffy it gets while working for hours in a parked 200 in the heat of Honolulu? I was very happy when that repair was finished!
The next two legs – Honolulu to Majuro in the Marshall Islands, then Majuro to Port Moresby, New Guinea – were respectively about 2,100 and 1,800 nm. The wind was very light so we calculated the total flight time would be about 17 hours. Nick wanted to do this in one day, using Majuro as a lunch and fuel stop, then continuing to New Guinea for the night. With that in mind, we filed for a 4 a.m. local time departure. He showed me an amazing thing after we started up on the ramp at Honolulu. He tuned the ADF receiver to the AM radio station at Majuro and I’ll be darned if the needle didn’t immediately come alive and point right to our destination! We could even hear a bit of the radio show. Nick said that this tremendously long AM range was very common to experience at night but never in daylight. He was certainly correct about that on this leg. The ADF needle lost its hold as soon as the sun came up and did not start pointing correctly again until about 100 miles out.
We landed on the one runway at Majuro, on the atoll with ocean water on both sides. Fueling went quickly and we had a tasty lunch in the small terminal building. We were off again within an hour and enjoyed another uneventful flight to New Guinea.
Ah, New Guinea. Nick had a contact person there who promised that our overflight permit for crossing Indonesia – which we had not yet received – would be “no problem!” with his help. Two days later we were becoming quite certain that there was indeed a problem and that this handling agent was not being very helpful at all in resolving the issue. Finally, we all drove to the Indonesian consulate, our agent told us to wait outside while he entered, and within a few minutes he returned with a big smile and saying “It’s all OK! You are good to go!” He never gave us any paperwork at all, not an overflight permit number. To this day, I don’t know if he really arranged the permit for us or if he just knew we probably would not be asked about it anyway!
We departed early on the following morning for the 1,800 nm leg to our final destination, Kota Kinabalu, the capital of the Malaysian state of Sabah. Weather was fine and, for a change, we had lots of islands to view as
AUGUST 2019
we crossed a lot of Indonesia instead of just miles and miles of ocean.
We taxied to the Sabah flight department’s hangar to shut down and were met by an enthusiastic crowd of pilots and maintenance personnel. At long last – nearly a month behind schedule – their new BE200 had arrived! The next day Nick got on an airliner to start his return to the states. I, on the other hand, began a four­month stay as I flew the airplane for the State while providing additional flight training and line experience for the two Malaysian pilots who had previously attended King Air 200 Initial Training at the Beechcraft Training Center in Wichita. What an interesting four months it would be! Maybe I should tell you more of those tales sometime. Would you like that? KA
King Air expert Tom Clements has been flying and instructing in King Airs for over 46 years, and is the author of “The King Air Book.” He is a Gold Seal CFI and has over 23,000 total hours with more than 15,000 in King Airs. For information on ordering his book, contact Tom direct at twcaz@msn.com. Tom is actively mentoring the instructors at King Air Academy in Phoenix.
If you have a question you’d like Tom to answer, please send it to Editor Kim Blonigen at editor@blonigen.net.
KING AIR MAGAZINE • 29