6 Attachment(s)
Did a Strange Job Last Week
A client of mine called me 2 weeks ago with a rather different type of job to undertake, well sort of. It was just the logistics getting there. After a few details over the phone to see if I was interested which was an instant yes it was into there office the next morning planning the attack. They wanted an "Expert" in my field of work to accompany them on an urgent trip to a small atoll in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. So last Tuesday it was a Taxi ride out to Whenuapai Airbase to catch a Hercules, but first up we had to fly down to Ohakea to meet some of the top brass in the NZ Army & US Army Engineers who were coming with us. Nothing I'm writing here is classified but will skip names and places I visited.
The trip from NZ took 7 hours, earplugs & earmuffs the whole way, onboard there were a few Majors/Colonels/Captains & Lt's and 3 civvies, 11 of us altogether, overnighted in the tropics somewhere nice, enough time to sink a few cold beers. Then next morning at a very relaxed pace it was back to the airport for our next leg. This was 3.5 hrs long & involved a semi touch & go landing with the aircraft & flying bloody low over the Atoll. After the all clear we landed on quite a long coral runway which had been built by the US Army in WW11 & hadn't seen much action since.
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Basically the whole village population was there waiting for us, greeting us with lei's etc, after unloading our gear it was into town for an official welcome, speeche's, singing & into a big lunch. There are no formed roads on this Atoll, just dirt tracks. The Herc flew back to civilisation after dropping us off & was coming back in 3 days to pick us up.
The Atoll we were on had no shops, no hotels, no motels, no veges and no fresh water so we were supplied with Army ration packs with local cooked meals in the evening, I must say the ration packs were pretty good & had a heap of stuff I never got around to eating. We must have flown in with case's of bottled water so were never going to run out. We stayed in a type of fisheries lodge.
This was the best looking building on the Atoll, the 2nd best was the tin lean too at the airfield when we departed.
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The Atoll wouldn't have been more than 200m wide at it's widest, the highest elevation was 4m, nowhere to hide if the wind got up. There were some good swimming spots but with heaps of sharks & I mean heaps. I heat my pool at home to 29c & swimming at one beach here was like swimming in the hot pools in Taupo.
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After getting sorted with the accommodation we had a quick meeting to discuss the next days work, small groups of us were set tasks to complete, my sole purpose was to come up with fuel storage design that the US/NZ Army engineers could build later this year on a joint exercise. Easy if it was done here but not at this location.
Logistics will be a nightmare, everything flown in with heavy material coming by tug & barge, bloody expensive.
We were there 3 days & left after having another lunch & local council meeting. By the time we got to the airstrip the Hercules was waiting for us, quickly loaded and they wound the rubber band & we were gone. We flew 2 hours to another atoll, the pilot doing his standard flying low sussing out things before landing. This time landing on a bloody short airstrip, better than any Disneyland ride I've been on. The Army guys had to stay a night here to look at some other projects but I had the option of either staying or heading back to civilisation, I opted for the later. So after the Atolls school kids were shown thru the cockpit the rubber band was wound up again & we took off. Short runway, loaded up with 2 spare generators so it was pedal to the metal on takeoff:D:D
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Standing behind the Captain on take off.
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3 hour flight back to town for a few well earned beers & a decent feed, caught up with the rest of them when they flew in the following night, they flew back to NZ the next day but I stayed on for a few more days to meet with people & go over plans, flew back to NZ by normal means on Monday. Now the real work begins.
Must say it was good to see the NZ & US Army working together, all good guys, I have invites overseas and one of them lives in Alaska, that's my Grizzly sorted.:D He came from -40 to +40
Cheers,
300winmag
