026/027 Not too bad.
028/29 - Wake up the next mornin' and this is outside my hotel room.
030 – You ain’t at a legit African airport without an old dead L-1011 sitting on flat tires.
031 – Pilot, copilot, one load, and me head in the next day to two engine taxi the airplane to the main terminal to pump a **** ton of gas that they weren’t able to truck out the day before.
032 - Little hoses are my favorite for pumping gas for hours instead of minutes.
033 – West Nile Virus
034 – Ready to launch. These bugs ain’t no joke, we gotta go!
035/41 – We’ve left the bugs behind for dodging some monster African storms. I bless the rains down in Africa.
042/046 - Rollin' into Kenya.
047 - Hey look what's sittin' in the dirt in Kenya. Another dead L-1011.
048 - Friendliest guys I've ever met in Kenya that were around the jet. Prolly had my picture taken with every one of 'em and on all their facebook pages.
049 – Nairobi Kenya, Feb 2014. For the first time on this African safari trip, I had to do a little bit of work. The airport authority wouldn't let us use thrust reversers to back away from the terminal where our parking spot was, and insisted we get a pushback. Not a thing to do with noise, but to snag that $5k pushback fee. Next, the rattiest Uke rolls out without a towbar. Most commercial airports have a 767 or DC-10 bar that works with our nose gear no problems, so I thought for $5k, this was a sham.
“Where is your towbar.”
“Sir it is broken!”
“So can we back out ourselves?”
“Sir, you must have a towbar!”
Not looking to get in an argument, and because we actually did bring a towbar on this mission, let’s just play along. I’ve also found most commercial airports don't like you hanging out on the taxiway while we go through our convoluted engine start checklists compared to civilian world with fast as possible to make money engine start procedures. The A code agreed, and we decided to go with the engine runnin' pushback. I stood ground through the start sequence because it’ll take a minute for the loads to roll the towbar around some rolling stock and down the ramp.
“Is this lugging and chugging crate even going to have the ummph to move us?”
“Sir it will go!”
“Let’s roll!”
To his credit, the driver slowly got us most of the way out of parking, and %100 blocking the taxiway. I brought the show to a stop, had the pilot set brakes, and motion the driver to back up to unload the weight of the jet on the towbar. His frantic pulling on the shifter wasn’t working, so the driver shut down the motor. Finally went to neutral, but then it won't crank. “So there I was,” with an engine running C-17, blocking 2 or 3 other jets now, pinned tight to a dead Uke, with the pilots askin',
“Chief, what’s goin' on down there? We gotta go!"
Yelled at the guy to get on the radio for another tractor so we could pull it back enough to yank the pin, and we’ll back ourselves away from this mess. Minutes later, the littlest 3 cylinder diesel New Holland baggage cart tug makes it's way over. I knew she had no chance of budging a 50 ton Uke, but they tried anyway.
“Screw this.”
Got my toolbox from the jet, and with some resentment they let me pull the two batteries from the New Holland and wire them in series for the 24v Uke. Fired that joker up, backed him a hair, pulled the pin, undid the bar for the loadmasters to winch up the ramp. Came back to the front to reconnect the nose wheel steering, pull the pins, and let’s wrap this checklist up. By that time, I noticed the Uke had driven away before giving the batteries back to the New Holland. Just don’t stall that unit. Ooops, looks like they did. Oh well, had just enough room to steer to the left around 'em. Onward to the next stop!
050 – Embassy rep traded a patch for a coin.
