Written In the Sky

Mark Carr

Description

Since childhood, Mark Carr wanted to fly, and fly he did ... firstly as a naval aviator, a jet instructor and later, pilot with Cathay Pacific Airways.

This ‘techno-biography’ is written for those who, like him, seemingly have hydraulic oil flowing through their veins. The book also gives readers of a non-flying background an insight into military and civil aviation.

Sit in the cockpit with Mark and gain a rare insight into how these amazing machines work, and how the men and women in the cockpits and flight decks operate them safely and efficiently.

His story is also entwined with historical context including his first-hand account of the infamous Australian Pilots’ Dispute of 1989 and life as an expatriate in Hong Kong.

Sujets

• Flight Instruction
• Piloting
• Transportation
• Aviation

Informations

• Publié par: Melbourne Books
• Date de parution: 01 juillet 2020
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781925556780
• Langue: English

Extrait

For I dipt into the future, far as human eye could see, Saw the Vision of the world, and all the wonder that would be;
Saw the heavens fill with commerce, argosies of magic sails, Pilots of the purple twilight dropping down with costly bales;
Heard the heavens fill with shouting, and there rain’d a ghastly dew From the nations’ airy navies grappling in the central blue;
Far along the world-wide whisper of the south-wind rushing warm, With the standards of the peoples plunging thro’ the thunder-storm;
Till the war-drum throbb’d no longer, and the battle-flags were furl’d In the Parliament of man, the Federation of the world.
— From ‘Locksley Hall’ by Alfred, Lord Tennyson. He presciently penned these words in 1835, when the only means of human flight was the balloon. The Wright brothers would not fly for another sixty-eight years.
The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.
— L.P. Hartley
PROLOGUE
M uch of this book really was written in the sky. I had been in military and airline flying for over forty years, and on commencing the book, I was an airline captain: I flew Airbus A330 and A350 airliners with Hong Kong’s Cathay Pacific Airways Limited. The long flights between my home base of Melbourne, Australia, and the airline’s Hong Kong hub, by law, required a third pilot to allow each pilot to take a break for a little over two hours in a discrete seat in the passenger cabin. While the captain rested, a specially qualified and experienced first officer was in charge of the flight deck: they would call the captain in the event of a major problem, after carrying out initial emergency actions. Many of these flights droned through the night and, of course, sleep was desirable during a pilot’s break. However, during one long daylight flight I fidgeted, wide-awake in the passenger cabin that was darkened to allow people to sleep or watch the in-flight entertainment. I was bored and restless. I could only read or watch movies so much. An idea germinated. I rummaged through my flight bag for my computer and began to type.
I had flown a wide variety of civil and military aircraft, more than many other pilots, and enthusiasts of various backgrounds could find their stories interesting. In parallel, I had travelled a long and tortuous road from relatively humble beginnings to the command of an international airliner. I also desired to give readers of a non-flying background an insight into various aspects of military and civil aviation. I needed to do justice to the wonderful aircraft that I have flown – each a credit to the designer, manufacturer and the people who maintained it. So, at suitable times in an airliner’s passenger seat, in hotel rooms ‘down route’ or at home between flights, I wrote this book.
It can be difficult for pilots to write about their experience. Do they direct their work towards enthusiasts who have knowledge of the technical aspects of aviation, or do they simplify it, translating the language of the air so that a casual reader can appreciate and understand the story? I went ‘all in’ and included technical descriptions in varying depths of the aircraft that I have flown, aiming to make these intelligible to the non-pilot, but also informative to the enthusiast. Those who, like me, seemingly have hydraulic oil flowing through their veins instead of blood, should find them interesting. However, I have graduated the depth of description so that the non-pilot can sit in the cockpit with me from my early struggles with immaturity and lack of ability through to the twilight of a long and varied flying career. Through this book I hope that any reader can gain an insight into how these amazing machines that we take for granted function, and how the men and women in the cockpits and flight decks operate them safely and efficiently.
I was never formally at war, however, the Cold War between the ‘East’ and ‘West’ features prominently in my early life and my years as a military pilot, and naval flying was not without its hazards. The concept of mutual deterrence between NATO and the Eastern Bloc worked because, thankfully, nuclear war did not eventuate. By being in readiness with highly trained and motivated personnel, I like to think that the Royal Australian Navy and the Royal Australian Air Force played a small part in that deterrence, particularly of the submarine threat.
This book is more about the aircraft than it is about me. It could be regarded as an educational ‘techno-biography’. I sincerely hope that the reader, of whatever age or background, finds the work informative, entertaining and, possibly, inspiring.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
T o avoid embarrassment to others I have generally used first names or nicknames, and some names have been changed completely. I have given measurements and altitudes in both feet and metres, and aircraft speeds have been presented in both knots (nautical miles per hour) and kilometres per hour (km/hr). I have presented distances in nautical miles (nm) and kilometres.
I have generally avoided making references through the narrative to later events, so that the reader can ride with me to experience the surprises and uncertainties of a journey in aviation. After forty-four years of flight my recall of some facts and events may have gone a little astray, however, I have done my utmost to make this story as accurate as possible.
I have not included photographs or illustrations. This book is thick enough! Imagery that will do justice to the aircraft described in this book can be found on the internet. I have endeavoured to use just words to paint pictures of the aircraft, and the skies in which they flew.
1
DUCK AND COVER
1957 – 1966
O ne of my earliest memories is the Cuban Missile Crisis. It was 1962 and I vaguely remember my father trying to explain something about President Kennedy and Cuba to me, a five-year-old boy. My parents had been listening to the ‘wireless’ a great deal (as radios were called). I only had a vague idea who President Kennedy was and that missiles were involved.
Kooringal was a dusty new suburb of what was an equally dusty town, Wagga Wagga, in Australia’s New South Wales Riverina region. Grove Street, where we lived, edged with growing plane trees, was initially just a gravel road to be later surfaced with sharp brown stones embedded in tar that would cause many a graze after falling off bicycles, scooters or billy-carts (soap box racers). The street was almost without exception populated with young couples producing and bringing up ‘baby boom’ children.
The houses were recently built, wooden-floored, wooden-framed, clad with fibro (a form of asbestos-cement sheeting) and topped with uninsulated corrugated iron roofs. They were frigid in winter, and stifling in summer under blazing blue skies. However, most of the houses were owned, or at least being paid off, by those who lived in them. A lean-to carport, occasionally a garage, would be adjacent, but the backyards were generous in area.
Our house was painted pale blue and faced west toward Wagga’s Willan’s Hill. It had a carport to one side, three small bedrooms, a lounge room, kitchen and bathroom; but for many years, there was no inside toilet. Before ‘the sewerage’ came to Kooringal, the toilets were small fibro-clad backyard sheds with a commode inside that enclosed a can which was changed weekly by the ‘sanitary man’. A child’s night visit to the unlit toilet in the middle of winter was a dark, freezing experience, and the smell of it during the hot inland summers was powerful.
To the west, Willan’s Hill was prominent from the lounge room windows, and at dusk I often gazed out at it and the glowing western sky that beckoned beyond. A few years later, I would tear down its red, stony tracks on a bicycle or billy cart. Oceans of long grass rippled in the vacant lots a few streets away, in the paddocks beyond and out the back of our school, and, according to the season, they were filled with locusts, paddy-melon or yellow daisies. There was also the occasional snake. On hushed windless winter days, crows cawed mournfully from the gum trees under grey skies while the family huddled around the simple gas fire in the lounge. During the ferocious summers, a single electric fan constituted the family’s cooling appliances for many years. I would not live in a house that had an air conditioner until 1983.
My parents were hard working and ‘correct’, as most people were in the 1960s. My father was secretary of the local horse racing club and my mother was house-bound, bringing up my two younger sisters and me. With no television, much less internet, toys and playmates were important, but to me, books were equally as important and reasonably available. I was a voracious reader, and I read, or tried to read, anything I could get my hands on, including my parents’ novels that lay around the house, some subsequently confiscated with little explanation as to why. Early evening’s entertainment was sitting near the ‘wireless’ listening to children’s ‘serials’, stories and cartoon soundtracks that had been adapted for radio.
I attended Kooringal Public, a government school. It had the usual standards of the day: a good grounding in spelling, grammar and maths, strait-laced teachers, and lots of reading. There was corporal punishment – ‘the cane’ – but I recall being taught binary notation, set theory and other concepts, which seemed quite advanced for primary school. I was not good at, or interested in, sport. Clumsy and lacking stamina, I found it boring and pointless, and I attended school and extra-curricular sports training and games under sufferance.
I had experienced television during yearly visits to grandparents’ homes in Melbourne. In the evenings, especially at my paternal grandparents’ home in West Footscray, the lounge rooms would be darkened and the hushed extended family would gaze at the flickering black and white images. Soon came the long drive b