The Final Leg

 

Excerpt from " A Prentice Logbook"

 

By Bill Wilkinson

 

After arriving at Darwin we collapsed into our motel beds, forgetting to turn the air conditioning on. We were really parched and dried the next morning. A litre of orange juice each for breakfast made us feel almost human again.

 

While filing our flight plan at the Flight Clearances office the phone rang. The official picked it up and said, "I can not give you any information on that."

 

There was a security blackout in Darwin and all aircraft movements were not available to the public. The reason being was that there was tension between Australia and Indonesia at that time.

 

What we did not know was that the NZ newspapers had gotten hold of the story of the flight. They assumed that the lack of information of our flight meant that we were down in the Timor Sea. They produced some scary headlines as a result of their mistaken assumption.

 

We were assigned to the short runway for take off from Darwin. By now we were getting used to the lack of performance by the Prentice on hot asphalt runways. More than halfway down the runway the lift was minimal. At the end of the runway some high-tension power lines crossed our flight path. Climbing sluggishly I had to make up my mind whether I flew under or over these lines.

 

I thought it best to fly under them and pushed the control stick forwards. The aircraft came out of its semi stall configuration and started to climb! I rapped my self over the knuckles for overlooking this basic principle of flight. There was no need for the hazardous low flying. Silly me.

 

Navigation was simple. We followed the Stuart Highway to Tennant Creek some five and a half hours flying time away. We booked into a motel and had our usual steak and a beer for dinner. It was best to stick to simple cooked foods to avoid upset stomachs

 

In the morning we took off for Mt Isa. Australia is interlaced with radio beacons and radio navigation was straightforward. A useful back up was the roads between the towns in the Northern Territory. They are very easily seen from the air.

 

Mt. Isa is a town based on mining. The whole countryside is an orange-red colour due to the high copper content. As we refuelled the aircraft a chap holding a camera asked if he could take a photo of us. I said to go ahead. The following day the photo appeared in the NZ Herald. We were blissfully unaware of the publicity being generated by our flight. Some of the stories were great works of fiction.

 

We flew on to Longreach, refuelled and flew a further two hours on to Charleville

 

where we refuelled again. A line of thunderstorms on the Bunya Mountains prevented us from reaching Brisbane that day.

 

Happy that we were making good progress we booked into a local hotel and sat down to our staple diet of steak and beer. We were half way through the meal when the loudspeakers asked for Bill Wilkinson to come to the phone. Extremely surprised, no one could possibly know that I was there, I went to the reception. I picked up the phone to discover that a friend of my fathers wanted us to stay with him in Brisbane. He had worked out where we would be from the publicity that was being generated. There were only two hotels in Charleville.

 

The following morning, refuelled and rested, we took off for the three-hour flight to Brisbane.

 

My father's friend, his wife and two daughters were waiting to meet us. They insisted that we stayed the night with them.

 

We were taken for a tour of Brisbane in our host's new Rolls Royce. That night a sumptuous feast was laid on.

 

In the morning the telephone rang. Local newspapers wanted to get photos of Pete and myself by the plane. We were happy to oblige and returned to the airport later that morning. We went to the Met office afterwards and looked at the Tasman weather map. There was an anticyclone sitting in the middle of the Tasman. This would have given me headwind of about 25 knots. A quick calculation showed that there would be insufficient fuel to make the crossing. It would be better to wait until there was low pressure and to fly into NZ with a tail wind.

 

There was also the small matter of getting an import licence to bring the aircraft in. It had been refused in London before I left. The High Commissioner's office could not give a reason for the refusal. I thought that the whole thing was absurd and felt that a face-to-face discussion would quickly resolve any problems.

 

After our farewells to our Australian hosts, Pete went off to join his ship in Brisbane Harbour and I returned to NZ the next day by commercial airline. My brother-in-law, Merv Ebbett, met me at Auckland Airport. As we motored down to Hamilton we discussed all of the requirements of getting the aircraft into the country. We needed an Import Licence, an additional fuel tank and an HF radio.

 

Merv, a motor dealer, was importing hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of cars into NZ annually. He had made good contacts with the Customs department in Hamilton. I was happy to leave the negotiating to him.

 

I went to a sheet metal factory in Frankton and arranged for an aluminium fuel tank of 20 gallons capacity to be made. This was to be placed on the co-pilots seat and to be fastened with the normal seat belts and would provide that extra bit of range.

 

Through friends of friends I managed to track down an HF radio with a company on Ardmore. They were prepared to lend it to me.

 

Every day I went to the local Met Office and looked at the synoptic charts of the Tasman. It was not until almost a month after returning to NZ that a low-pressure system appeared to be developing in the middle of the Tasman Sea.

 

I packed up my overnight things, my extra spare fuel tank and my borrowed HF radio and caught the next plane to Brisbane. My brother, Barry, was working in Brisbane at the time and came out to meet me.

 

Next morning a local avionics firm installed and tuned the HF radio. I was astonished at how effective it was. It does not use line of sight transmissions as the VHF frequencies do but bounces the waves off the ionised layers in the stratosphere. This gave an enormous range.

 

After a meticulous pre-flight inspection the fuel tanks were filled. The tyres looked ominously flat with the full load. On the 19th of May 1969 at 7.00 am I took off for NZ. The Prentice climbed slowly over the city and I set course for Norfolk Island. The forecast was for the cloud base to be down to 1,000 feet at Norfolk.

 

Initially, I was flying in perfect weather. As the flight progressed the cloud increased until I was flying between layers at about 3,000 feet. I played with the HF radio and found that I made good contact with Auckland, Sydney, Pago Pago in American Samoa and Suva. After about four hours I had passed the PNR (point of no return) I was doing my usual instrument scan when my eyes locked onto the oil pressure gauge. It was no longer flickering. The needle was perfectly still on zero!

 

Oh Bother, I thought, How much time have I got? I tried to work out a precise May Day call. I felt my Sarbe Beacon in my pocket. I hoped if I did not look at the gauge the zero reading would go away.

 

The propeller continued to rotate. The ADF showed that I was heading straight for the island. I looked back at the oil pressure gauge; it was back on 80lbs/sq in pressure with a flickering needle! Thoroughly mystified I called up Norfolk Island and requested their weather. Their reply was that the cloud base was down to a hundred feet. Not wanting to bump into things I asked for the height of the highest point on the island. The controller was puzzled by my call and answered me with "I dunno."

 

Apparently the weather was so terrible that the controller had assumed that all flying would be cancelled and had opened a bottle of Scotch and was proceeding to demolish it.

 

The ADF needle moved about five degrees. I was getting near the island. Deciding to descend into the cloud I put the nose down and found a space between the clouds at 800 feet. I looked down and suddenly saw a line of breakers. This was Norfolk Island. I levelled out at about twenty feet and could see the coastline. I had to decide whether to turn right or left to follow the coast. I turned right.

 

Out of the mist I suddenly saw two white marker boards. I said to myself, "I don't care whether this is a tennis court, a golf club or a foot ball field, I am going to land between those boards." I throttled back, dropped the flaps and landed between the boards. As I came out of the mist I could see that I had landed on the crosswind runway. A crash wagon was parked a couple of hundred yards down the runway.

 

I heard the wagon call, "He is down." The control Tower was lost in the cloud.

 

The flying time from Brisbane had been exactly seven hours.

 

The cloud base was down to fifty feet. The tops of the distinctive Norfolk pines disappeared into the clouds.

 

I taxied to the apron and leaped out of the plane saying, "Nobody will believe this. I have got to get photographs of the trees in cloud!"

 

As I was taking photos another aircraft landed. It was a Fletcher flown by an old Air Force pal, John Verluen. John was delivering Fletchers to the rest of the world. This one was going to the USA.

 

That night John and I enjoyed dinner and a few beers together.

 

The weather had improved the following day. I tanked up and took off for Auckland.

 

My first sight of New Zealand was the Three Kings Islands. It was an exciting moment.

 

It was raining in Auckland when I landed four and a half hours later. I cleared customs, paid my landing fees and flew down to Hamilton. That evening I dismantled all of the plumbing and additional tankage and stored it in Merv's workshop. I knew that someone could get snitchy if my amateur efforts were spotted.

 

That night was a night of family celebration. I had made it! I was home again with my plane, my wife and my children. I had made a crazy dream come true.

 

The following day I intended to fly to Tauranga to talk to an old friend, Wally Christophersen, about the strange behaviour of the oil pressure gauge. Wally knew everything that was to know about Gipsy engines.

 

I called for taxi clearance. The tower said that I was grounded and forbidden to fly. I asked on whose authority. The controller said on the authority of the director of CAA.

 

I asked on what grounds and was told that I wasn't a NZ registered aircraft and could only fly in NZ skies if I had a NZ registration.

 

The tall poppy syndrome was still alive and well in NZ and had obviously become supreme authority.

 

I was not impressed and went home and telephoned CAA. It was a Saturday and there was no one in the office. I cajoled the operator into giving me the telephone number of the Deputy Director's home.

 

After an "interesting" discussion he finally suggested that I saw the local surveyor on Monday and get him to view my documentation.

 

On the Monday I showed the C of A to the local surveyor. He was British qualified and immediately approved all of my papers and signed my Journey Log Book.

 

I took off for Tauranga and met Wally. I explained the oil gauge symptoms to him and he said, "I know exactly what it is." He lifted the cowl and shook a pipe. It made a clicking noise. The oil pipe was connected to the engine by a male/female fitting. It was slightly off centre and was sucking in air. It did not leak any oil. The bolt had been fastened and lock-wired in the wrong position.

 

Wally undid the bolt and re-seated the connection. After that the oil pressure was steady on 80 lbs. His final piece of advice was to" buy a ticket in Tatts." - the current lottery.

 

I also took my inflatable life raft into Air NZ to be checked. They found twenty holes in it and failed it's C. of A. I remembered back in Karachi the customs officers unrolling the raft. Other officers stood around shielding my view of what was going on. The senior officer had obviously been busy sabotaging my raft. Fortunately it did not spoil the trip.

 

Later in the month I took my wife for a delightful tour of the country with its magnificent scenery. No air officials caused any further difficulties for us.

 

The Percival Prentice can now be seen in the Transport Museum at Wanaka Airfield.