FERRY FLIGHT
REDHILL-KUANTAN, MALAYA, SEPT 1970.

The following ferry flight was extracted from an article by Ken Rowe which can be found at "Anecdotes" (Kermit's Kids).

Ferry Flight Redhill to Kuantan (Malaya) Sept '70 ( Wessex G-AVNE)

I arrived back at Redhill to be told that there had been a hang up in visas and the aircraft was not ready and there was still discussion as to who the pilot would be. There was only one thing for it another quiet fortnight lounging around in "The Mill House Hotel" (Thank you Alan)

Eventually everything was sorted in true Bristow fashion and I was re-united with Wessex G-AVNE and introduced to the pilot Bob Balls M.B.E. and we set course for Gatwick for customs clearance. The aircraft had been fitted with overload tanks both internal and external and had no amount of "junk" in the back. In truth it was "slightly" over weight if fully fuelled so we took off from Gatwick with only half fuel. The idea was to head for Kuantan Malaya with a "few" stops in between.

Just as we were about to take off from Gatwick the aviation press, "Flight" and "Helicopter World" who had missed us at Redhill, collared us. Bob Balls wasn't keen to talk to them and passed me off as the captain as we were both dressed in "civvies" I was left to do the talking with the result was that I am credited with flying the journey by the press. We lifted off for Tousous-le-Noble in France and Bob asked over the intercom whether I was one of Bristow's flying fitters and I had to admit that I was not. I had only recently left the Air force and I didn't have any chance to get any stick time in. Little did I realise what I was about to encounter.

In reply to my negative reply Bob said if you think that I am going to fly this bloody thing all the way to Malaya you're wrong. There were no flight stabilisation systems in Bristow's Wessex at that time and they took a bit of handling when heavy and at altitude. We landed in France with an escort of light aircraft who were very inquisitive and you would have thought that they had never seen a helicopter. We took of from Tousous-le Noble with a full fuel load and the only way we could get off was to taxi out to the runway and do a rolling take off (you can't do that on skids, thank god for wheels). After about an hour of flying, with Bob scribbling on his kneepad, he announced that we would miss out the stop at Lyons and go straight to Nice. I asked him how we were going to do that and he explained that if we flew single engine all the way we would have enough fuel. We had a dispensation to fly single engine on one of the legs in Iran from the A.R.B. (yes it wasn't the C.A.A. then) but not elsewhere but Bob's theory was it was better to try it out over a relatively populated area than over a mountainous desert area so he shut one engine down instructing me in the art of relighting it should he be involved with any emergency. His next communication was "Come on then it's your turn to fly" so I had my first flying lesson in an overweight Wessex, flying on one engine, and with no stabilisation system, a very reasonable introduction I thought.

We entered the Rhone valley at the top of the mountains with the intention of following it down to the sea and on to Nice and just as the mountains started to loom higher and higher on each side the fog and mist rolled down on top of us. There was no option but to set the aircraft down on the side of the mountain. Before doing this, Bob who by now had contact with Nice, sent a radio message to say we were landing at 3000 ft and wound the trailing aerial in and set the aircraft down with me hanging out of one window and him out the other. It was a textbook landing on sloping ground, amongst the pine trees very nearly requiring a change of underwear.

The mist lifted and we shot up and away extended the trailing aerial only to find the HF saying that Nice was about to launch a search for a lost aircraft. Nice hadn't realised that we were a helicopter and thought we had crashed at 3000ft. As we arrived towards the bottom of the valley the mist came down again and obscured everything but by this time Bob had ADF contact with Nice. He decided to head out towards the sea until the ADF needle indicated we were not over land and then proceeded to descend with me hanging out the window to look for the sea and, once seen, we headed for the beach and as soon as we saw it, landed. It turned out to be Marseille beach and as soon as the mist cleared we lifted off for Nice and a well-earned beer in a top class hotel (thanks again Alan) and thought about the days exploits. As I went to sleep I thought well if that is the first day what was the rest of the journey going to be like.

Next day we took of for Italy followed by Greece and Turkey and it was not until we arrived at our departure point in Turkey to leave for Iran that the trouble started. We had inadvertently landed in a military airfield whose name I forget when we should have landed at the civilian airfield running parallel in the next valley 2 miles away. This caused such a commotion as they were just about to start an air show for a visiting general and we were immediately suspected as being spies and were summoned to the control tower. At the control tower Bob managed to half talk his way out of it and the authorities said that they would refuel us if Istanbul gave permission but due to the communications problems in Turkey it would take until next day to get it. So we were driven to a hotel, had our passports removed, and we were virtually put under house arrest until next day so there was nothing else to do but spend some more of Alan's money sampling the local brew. We were picked up by the police next morning and driven to the airport refuelled and departed for Tehran. After an overnight stop in Tehran and a few more stops in Iran we headed for Pakistan doing the longest leg of the trip.

Our destination was a place in Pakistan called Pasni which is the most isolated place in the world being in the middle of the largest salt flats in the world and by the time we landed Bob leapt out of the aircraft jumping for joy shouting that he was the first person in the world to keep a Wessex in the air for almost FOUR HOURS, a feat not beaten until this day. All I can say is the fuel gauge was not indicating when he shut down. We would have celebrated with a beer but Pakistan being strictly Muslim there was no chance. That night we made Karachi and as Pakistan, at that time, had limited entry to foreigners we had to stay in designated hotels and could only spend "Tourist Rupees" which you could not change back when you left. The upside was that the Hotel sold beer as there were only foreigners staying in the hotel so once again we had to spend some of "Alan's" money.

It was all pretty mundane across northern India until we went to start up at Luknow when the No1 engine started but would not lift off. Hmmmm!!!! It was obviously a computer failure and we didn't have a spare so the old Ken Rowe logic cut in. I wound the ground idle up as high as I dare and bypassed the lift off sequence of the computer, something that Rolls Royce says is impossible to do but they weren't stuck in the middle of India with a sick engine, anyway it continued to work all the way through Burma, Thailand, through Malaya to Kuantan where upon arrival the computer was changed.

The total time travelling was 14 days with a flight time of about 75 hrs.