by Ron Kilber (rpknet@aztec.asu.edu)

Wednesday, June 25, 1997

Bangor, Maine (USA)

I got to bed very late last night, in fact it was after midnight, so when the phone rings in my room at 5:30 AM, I am totally unprepared for the unusually loud wake-up call from Bob. He says we are to meet in the lobby coffee shop in a half hour.

By the way, this hotel is computer friendly. Not only do they have an extra phone jack in the room, they also have desk space especially for laptops.

Breakfast is always an interesting time on this trip. That's because we're all together in one place and time without duty or responsibility, and it's a good opportunity to finalize the agenda for the day, which is subject to change at any moment, anyway.

Yesterday Wes found a few intake manifold leaks on the left engine, as well as two to three oil leaks from the right accessory case back. He wants to attend to all of those right after breakfast.

Copilot Steve has already checked the weather, which is deteriorating. However, if we get out of here by 10 AM or sooner, we should be blessed with VFR flight all the way to Goose Bay, Labrador. Steve will also make contact with the Canadian officials to inform them of our arrival. That way, clearing customs should go smoothly, and keep us out of jail. He will also make room reservations for over-night accommodations in Goose Bay.

Bob said he wants to find out what is wrong with the Distance Measuring Equipment (DME). It quit working on the way into Buffalo yesterday, so he will find a technician to check that out.

Don needs to see the people at Telford Aviation and make arrangements to rent some survival wet suits, which we will need to stay alive in case of an over-water emergency, as well as a hand-held ELT. That way, if we happen to end up in the North Atlantic drink, the wet suits will save us from freezing in the near-32-degree water, and hopefully help us all get into one of the two life rafts already on board the C-53. The ELT will insure that any Search and Rescue (SAR) unit in the area will be able to locate us immediately. The risks on this journey are grave, and our opponent plays for keeps, but we're minimizing all of them by preparing for all possibilities.

I'll help out around the airplane until 9 AM. That's when Radio Shack opens. I need to go down there and have a new plug put on the end of the cord that goes from my laptop to the telephone jack in the wall. That's because last night, after updating our Internet site with yesterday's activity, Bob wanted to use the computer to check his e-mail. Only thing was, when I got up to let him sit down in front of the computer, my knee caught on the modem cable and jerked it out of the wall. If I had jerked the little plastic plug out of the wall, too, everything would be just fine. However, when we examined the end of the modem cord, we only found frayed wires. The little plastic plug was still in the wall jack.

So, for the time being, we are out of commission, as far as the Internet is concerned, at least until I make repairs.

After breakfast, we all climb into the hotel courtesy van for the ten-minute ride to the airport. Our driver is friendly and courteous, and he wants to know if we'd like to drive by Stephen King's home -- it's on the way.

The house is on a corner lot, has a wrought-iron fence around the yard, and belies having a celebrity author in residence. In fact, you could easily assume a widow or someone lives here, and without much time to tend to the yard. But it's a nice, charming home. My best friend back home, Genette, would love to be here because she is his "number one fan", although I don't think she'd hobble his ankles as the fan in his book, "Misery", did.

When we arrive at the airport, our driver delivers us right up to the door of the C-53 parked on the ramp, and then, being totally fascinated with vintage airplanes, hangs around for a good, long spell. I'm beginning to wonder how the rest of the hotel guests will get to the airport. His casual, friendly disposition is not unique, as everyone up here seems to be automatically immune from the big-city angst, which is so common today in high-density communities.

Thanks to Keith Bingaman at Radio Shack, my computer once again has on-line capability. So I check my e-mail and notice that I have a message from Carol Lichti of the Salina Journal. She wrote to tell me that her newspaper's Internet address is "www.saljournal.com", and that the C-53 story that she wrote is available to read on line. I'll be sure to retrieve her article later when I have more time.

It's just after high noon when everyone is finally done with their responsibilities and ready for departure from Bangor. Bob starts both engines, which spring to life effortlessly, but nothing ever goes smoothly. When we hear Wes shouting at the top of his lungs, naturally, everyone wants to know what is wrong. Bob shuts down both engines to take a look, and the rest of us follow.

The problem is that fuel is profusely dripping and running everywhere when the left engine boost pump is turned on. Wes thinks the mechanically-driven fuel pump has a broken diaphragm. Bob, now certifiably disgusted, says we might as well prepare to stay the night. We are not going anywhere with a serious problem like this, although it is an easy one to fix, if you have a spare fuel pump.

It is fortunate that we caught this problem while still on the ground. With a leak this severe, we could easily lose enough fuel to put our petrol reserve dangerously low on the next leg of our journey. Worse yet, it could cause an airborne fire.

Bob credits our fortune to the good-luck charm that Gene Cavanagh gave him on Sunday. In jest, he also says Wes could have been inside with the rest of us when the engines were being started. Instead he was, as all good crew chiefs are, outside observing while each engine was started.

After a new pump is located in San Antonio, Texas, there's not much else we can do except wait. According to Paul Cote from Telford, our pump will be here in the morning.

Steve cancels our flight plan to Goose Bay, and says it's just as well that we're not going there today anyway. The weather has already deteriorated to marginal VFR flight, and low-pressure systems are moving in.

Also, Queen Elizabeth II is in Goose Bay today, and so the motel situation is tight. In fact, Steve had to scatter our room reservations around town because space is limited. Four of us would have had to stay at two separate Bed and Breakfasts, and one of us at a down-town hotel.

The Queen is in Canada to help celebrate the discovery of Newfoundland by John Cabot 500 years ago in 1497. It was an English-sponsored expedition, but was led by John Cabot, who was Italian. That was only a few years after Columbus discovered America. Imagine traveling across the North Atlantic in a wooden ship, a boat by today's standard, and not knowing for sure exactly where you were going? Never mind that he had no clue about the real geography of the earth in those days. John Cabot's goal was to reach China, so he must have been surprised to find himself on the North American continent. Had they reached China after such a harrowing journey, they might of simply journeyed back home going west over land. Bewildered, they had to sail back across the North Atlantic to England. Fear may explain why the expedition members only stayed a short time in Newfoundland before returning to Europe.

An interesting word used by the navigators of John Cabot's days has found its way into the vocabulary of aviation. That word is knot, which is a measure of speed equal to one nautical mile per hour. Back in the days of John Cabot, mariners had as much interest in knowing how fast they were traveling through the water, just as any skipper today. Without modern technology to measure their speed, though, how did they manage to gauge their velocity? The invention of the speedometer was a long way off, yet in those days they always knew precisely how fast they were moving across the ocean. As with all important inventions, their solution lay in simplicity, though it was amazingly clever. A long line, with evenly spaced knots and a floating anchor attached to one end, was tossed from the stern into the water while the ship was under sail. If one knot passed through the hands of the mariner during a set period of time, then their forward speed was said to be one knot. Two knots meant they were traveling two nautical miles per hour, and so on.

I'm not sure what the spacing of the knots was way back when, but if we were to replicate their ingenious speedometer today, it really wouldn't matter, so long as the knot and time intervals are related. We already know (and they did, too) that one knot per hour equals one nautical mile per hour (about 6,000 feet). In other words, it meant that when their velocity was one nautical mile per hour, it took sixty minutes for 6,000 feet of line to pass through the hand. Agreed, that's too much line to mess with, and when they were moving faster, say 6 knots, it meant 36,000 feet of line was needed. That's about seven miles long. Dragging that much line would impede any ship's forward movement, if the line didn't break. Obviously, they used a much smaller time interval, which demanded a much shorter length of line. The captain would have made any mate walk the plank if he had to wait an hour to learn the ship's speed.

If we were to divide 600 into both one hour and 6,000 feet, our answer would be six seconds for a time unit and 10 feet for a distance unit. Both are exactly proportional to one hour and to one nautical mile, only now the ship's speed can be reported in a fraction of the time, not a plank-walking hour. All that's left is to determine the spacing for the knots in the line. For example, when traveling at a speed of 10 knots, 100 feet of line will pass through the hand in six seconds. Ten-foot intervals might have been a good spacing to tie knots in their inventive speedometer. Therefore, when 10 knots on the line (100 feet) passed through the shipmate's hand in 6 seconds, he reported to the captain that the ship's speed was ten knots. Likewise, if only one knot (10 feet) passed through his hand in six seconds, he reported one knot of speed. In other words, if a ship can travel 10 feet in six seconds, it will travel one nautical mile in one hour. Likewise, if it can travel 100 feet in six seconds, it will travel 10 nautical miles in one hour.

To increase accuracy, all that was needed was to increase the time and knot intervals proportionally. Of course, that would require a longer line, and a more patient captain. About forty years after John Cabot's voyage to Newfoundland, an English navigator, Richard Norwood, recommended the use of a line knotted at intervals of 47 1/4 feet (14.3 meters) and a 28-second sandglass. That meant that when traveling at 10 knots, more than 470 feet of line was required.

So there you have it. The relationship between "knots" and "nautical" is not one of phonics, but the remarkable ingenuity and resourcefulness of our ancestors. Ask anybody today, never mind that he is a pilot, if he knows the origin of the word knot, and you may never get the correct answer.

Just when I want to find a place to work on the laptop computer, two British chaps drop by to look at the Skytrooper. They are Skipper Graham Russell and Eric Girardey from Monarch Airlines, and they have just completed flying a load of tourists from Gatwick outside London all the way to Puerto Vallarta, Mexico. Now, they are dressed casually and hitching a ride back to London.

Some time later, after we borrowed a courtesy car from Telford Aviation to catch a quick lunch in town, I notice that the C-53 is now sporting a MAINEiac decal. The MAINEiacs are the Maine Air National Guard, and they are a KC-135 refueling tanker group based here in Bangor. They are famous for their world missions, and best know for their unusual ability to party hard; thus the "maniac" moniker. They are also famous for posting decals the world over.

Steve, having logged more than 2,000 hours in a KC-135 himself, is no stranger to the MAINEiacs. Once, while on duty in Saudi Arabia, he spotted two MAINEiac decals pasted on the footprints where you place your feet when you use the outdoor, open-roof toilets. Another time he spotted a decal on an old Japanese gun emplacement on Wake Island.

The one food that Maine is known for the world over is lobster. And the next best thing to Maine lobster at home, is Maine lobster in Maine. It's so popular here, the restaurant near the airport has a second floor to seat all the people waiting to claw into the ugliest creature that you can put on a plate.

Everyone but Don and I are having lobster. Actually, I wanted one, too, but only the tail. In Maine, they don't serve them that way. If you want lobster tail here, you get the claws, eyes, brain, skeleton -- everything, including slimy-looking green stuff that Bob and Wes are sucking from their fingers. It's a delicacy, they argue, but they'd have a better chance at changing the earth's orbit than my attitude about eating anything green and slimy. The antennae from Steve's lobster almost reach to the halibut on my plate. Whenever he uses the claw-breaking tool, splattering juices reach me. They should have brought me a bib, too. The human race really hasn't advanced much beyond the carnivorous wolf or raptor.

Anyway, I'm having deep-fried haddock with french fries. I prefer this method of food preparation when traveling. It's a sure-bet way to prepare food, and a sure-bet way to prevent food-borne illness caused by potential bacterial and viral killers such as cholera, E. coli, botulism, salmonella, cryptosporidium, and hepatitis A, all of which attack unsuspecting diners tens of thousands of times each day in America.

Before retiring to bed for the night, I update today's progress report to the Internet, and I also find that I have e-mail from my best friend, Genette. She says that she loves the reports and the pictures that she's been following, that I should stay away from Dicey's killer cookies, and that she wishes me continued luck and safety on the remainder of the journey.

There's also e-mail from John Breckenridge, who writes from Twin Peaks, California, near Lake Arrowhead in the San Bernardino Mountains to say that he's following our "wonderful" trip with interest and enthusiasm. He says the picture of the bird on the Internet looks great, and he hopes for continued safe passage for each of us. He also says he was in Terrell, Texas (30 miles east of Dallas) most of last week and spent much time at the Silent Wings (WWII Glider) Museum at the Terrell Municipal Airport, where a good high school buddy of his is the museum curator. Also, John says he spent time on a radar site (a small island rock) off the coast of Cartwright, Labrador on the Distant Early Warning (DEW) Line when he was in the US Air Force. He says it's a great time of the year up there. That's a good thing. With luck, we'll be in Labrador tomorrow.

Introduction
Day 1, Mesa, AZ to Salina, Kansas
Day 4, Stuck in Bangor, Maine
Day 7, Greenland to Iceland
Day 11, Iceland to Scotland

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