2013 APRIL / Vol. 5 / No. 4 /
GA
3
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GLOBAL
by Richard Browne
Flying in Africa
Smoke and
Mirrors
Angola is a different place, at least it was
back when I was flying there. A real mixture
of do-good expats and an opposite but
equal dose of people wanting to exact the
converse. Somewhere in between were
the lads like myself who were there just to
get the hours to get out of there again.
It was, and possibly still is, a dangerous
place. I figured the land-mines were the
real menace. They played havoc with one's
emergency landing ideas and I felt particularly
sympathetic towards the single-engine
operators and even more so, the piston pilots.
The PT6 hadn't shown any signs of failing
on me and I relied on them heavily, although this
wasn't to be the case on a DCA check-flight in
Kinshasa some years later. These engines have
a propensity towards longevity and I believe,
were originally designed as pumps on oil wells.
It had been a long solid day of flying
around this country. I was in Angola helping
out a contract company for three weeks as
they were short of crew and one of their
Kingairs was American registered and
luckily, I held the FAA license as well.
My partner for the day and I had
been around the houses a few times
before setting sail for home, in this case
Luanda. I recall he went by the name of
"Sheep" and that's all I'm giving away.
We had taken off from a small airfield
and were in the cruise. There were a fair
amount of passengers on board and the
sun was low on the horizon. That's pretty
much when we smelt the first smoke.
It was the sharp acrid stench which gives
itself away as an electric fault immediately. What
we didn't know was where it was coming from.
We performed all the necessary checks on things
but couldn't find, nor see the offending area.
After a short while, I noticed some smoke
started to forcibly make its way through a beacon
light switch on the lighting panel. It was white in
colour and becoming thicker with each passing
minute. It was decided to get the passengers
onto the oxygen masks as they were beginning
to smell things and looked a little tense. The
cabin was also starting to cloud up somewhat
as the smoke billowed through the switch.
This confused me somewhat because, as
I recall, certain light switches in the Kingair
are actual circuit breakers, however this wasn't
tripping. I tried to manually turn it off but it
wouldn't toggle, not only was that strange but it
made me start to worry some as we were entering
an area of flight that I don't like. That of fires!
I had not flown the Kingair in a long while
up till that stint in Angola and so relied heavily
on Sheep for his insight. A few minutes later
certain breakers started popping on the co-
pilots side panel, none of them related to the
light switch pouring smoke in front of me.
I asked Sheep if he could find the manuals
and the electrical and wiring diagrams so we
could try to make head or tail of this issue. All the
while ready to fight a fire should one break out.
The options were starting to stack against
us, we were flying at night now with a poor
aircraft, heading for the only airfield in the
country with lights, which was a good hour
away. The thought of making an emergency
landing in a possible minefield didn't hold
too much encouragement nor the fact that if
we survived, who'd walk out to find help?
Sheep arrived back with the books and we
looked up the electrical schematics. We found
that the breakers that were giving up were
actually across all the busses. I'd never seen
that before, most of the simulator work I'd done
was related to a single electrical fault which
was then isolated and the case was closed.
I put a call out on the chat frequency to see
if anyone could hear me. The most comforting
reply came back almost immediately from a
Finnish fellow working for the same company,
also in a Kingair. As luck would have it, he had
been delayed from an airfield in the South and
was also making his way home, behind us.
I relayed my issue to him and we decided
that he would come up behind and follow us in,
all the while we tried to sort out this fault using
both crews and the books. We load shedded to
the best of our ability but nothing seemed to
ease the smoke nor smell. To our relief, nothing
seemed to be getting hot and we constantly
checked the panels with the backs of our hands.
The cabin and cockpit had become
quite dense with smoke by now when the
offending switch suddenly snapped open and
the smoke stopped. I'm not sure why, and
to this day have no explanation for it, but I
believe that stopped a certain cockpit fire.
After landing and subsequent inspection by
the ground engineers. It was found that water
had gotten into the rotating beacon on the belly
of the fuselage. This had created a short in the
electrics which had, again, for some bizarre
reason, arced its way along the entire wiring loom
behind the lighting panel. Every foot or so, there
was a scorch mark across the wiring, hence the
tripping of so many breakers over all the busses.
We had been very lucky indeed, as this aircraft
was now grounded and underwent a rewiring.
Apparently a job that not only takes a while but is
meticulous in its exactness and attention to detail.
I had a good think about it for several weeks
afterwards and tried to find where we could have
been better. I was not happy with myself that I had
allowed my need to earn to come before a lack of
recency. I was not up to the task from a knowledge
point of view. The flying was easy but then if the
aircraft is not control compromised, it normally is.
I suppose the fact that we got the
aircraft and passengers from A to B safely
is the bottom line, and we did that.
However my experience of pilots is that
we always need to do it better and neater each
time, this was one time when the outcome
outweighed the finesse successfully! ·
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