My friend George was the PIC on this Six flying out of Lokichokio, Kenya to the Sudan. We were operating our Hercs out of there concurrently.

George is a truly great pilot. He was an FAA Inspector in Miami and a fellow skydiver who signed off my ATP in 1982. He is now working for ICAO in Jakarta and also flying a DC 7.

The Hercs were performers. The Six is a marvelous airplane, but not really built for dirt bush strips in Africa.

This is a really great video. The tribesmen are Dinka and there was, as you will see, a hot war very close by.

http://vimeo.com/27187572

At the end there where the guy pours the 5 gallons of 60W into the tank I could almost smell it. That sweet aroma!

Oh, yeah...

He says they would almost always come back on three and occasionally even two. The Sudan airlift was a truly remarkable effort that went on for years and cost lives and almost nobody knows about it. But we do, and the Dinka do, and that's all that counts

quote:

Originally posted by jetdrvr:
Oh, yeah...

He says they would almost always come back on three and occasionally even two. The Sudan airlift was a truly remarkable effort that went on for years and cost lives and almost nobody knows about it. But we do, and the Dinka do, and that's all that counts

Frickin round motors. They sound great they smell great but they aren't very reliable.

The majority of the guys I flew with at ATI were ex SAT guys. I heard a lot about it. I'd have like to have done some of it! I heard from those guys though that SAT was really starting to treat their pilots like crap by 1994.

Yeah, management destroyed a great airline. The big question is did they do it intentionally. When Logair and Quicktrans died in the Clinton military cutbacks, they lost a large portion of their cash flow. They simply didn't know how to compete and Atlas was on the rise and the guy who created Atlas made a statement that he was going to run Bill Langton (SAT CEO) off the page. Then management started eating their young. Us. We had been holding some of those offshore contracts together by the skin of our teeth and they didn't have a clue. Too bad. I flew with some of the most talented guys in aviation and we pulled off stuff nobody would believe. It was fun while it lasted.

quote:

Atlas was on the rise and the guy who created Atlas made a statement that he was going to run Bill Langton (SAT CEO) off the page.

Fred,

Isn't that the Atlas guy who killed himself in his L-39 up here in Colorado a couple of years ago?

Yeah, one and the same. He was a rising star. Atlas was on the way to complete domination of the air cargo business. Had a few friends who worked for them. Some still do. It's just another box hauler.

Rich dudes and hot warbirds....Almost always a bad mix!

Yeah...what we used to call the doctor syndrome.