Sunday, October 25, 2009

European Tour With a Dahon Folding Bike (Oct 2009)

OK, Before I proceed, please note that it is a European Tour WITH a folding bike and not BY a folding bike. The original plan was to tour the Alps and cycle down to Southern France but due to the HINI scare the trip was delayed and by the time of my journey the area is getting too cold. Nevertheless, I brought along my Dahon Mu 8 bike so that I can tour the cities that I will be visiting. Reasons why I wantd a bike are that I can save quite a bit on transport, the ability to mix and mingle with the local people and it is great fun. With a bicycle one can blend in to the locals and if you travel with a nice looking bike like the Dahon you always get stares and admiration from people around! The sight, sound and smells are much better when one is on a bicycle.

This is what my baggage looks like. The bike is folded and checked in as luggage and I use a haversack instead of a suitcase for my personal luggage. The Dahon weighs about 12 kilos and the haversack another few kilos so I still have a lot of weight to spare. One must learn to travel light.

My first destination is Rome in Italy. It is always a good idea to deflate the tyres about 30 % when air transporting bicycles due to expansion and contraction as we go up and down. Most of the airliners have their cabin and cargo areas pressurised to 8000 ft. Upon arrival at Rome, I have to unfold and inflate the bicycle.This picture will make a good sales promotion for Dahon bikes!Navigation around the foreign cities is primarily by tourist maps (free) and I had brought along my Garmn Nuvi 200 GPS. The wonderful thing about having a GPS is I can wander around where I like enjoying the sights and the ride without having to worry about the way home. At the end of the ride, just turn on the GPS and follow the way home. This is cyber age exploring.

On Sundays in Rome the roads are closed to all private motorised vehicles to the major tourist destinations. The only vehicles on the roads are tour buses and horse carts and of course bicycles! Make sure if you only have one day in Rome it is a Sunday. Because of it's Mediterranean climate influence, Rome is relatively warm compared to the French and English counterparts.
With a bicycle it is easy to know that Rome is built on a hill. Going away from the city centre (Termini Roma Area) is so easy..no need to pedal. Coming home is another story but with my 8 speeds on the Dahon it makes life a little easier.
From Rome I took a night sleeper train to to Aixen Provence in Southern France so in goes the bike to its bag again. Before I forget, I fold up my bicycle after every ride and keep it in my hotel room. A peace of mind and another advantage of a folding bike.See, my bicycle gets to sleep with me. How convenient! And the bike goes along for free too.I met a lady postman (or is it post woman) on this interesting bicycle just outside my hotel at Citardine, Aixen Provence. That place is quite hilly and I wonder where she got the strength to do her rounds. I convinced her to "loan" me the bicycle in exchange for delivering some letters nearby for her. To my suprise, the bicycle can easily be pedalled. It has a small "electric motor assist" which boost the pedal power when speed or uphill power is required. The cost of the bike is about 2000 Euros (RM10,000/). It handles very well even with a load. just like driving a super motor bike!I spent a few days in this part of France. It is beautiful and I like the rural setting. Most days I ride to the Ville Centre and explore the surroundings. I push my bike into shops to do shopping and ride along with the locals. It is so easy to make friends on a bicycle. By the third day I had became a familiar sight to some of the shop keepers ( I always buy fresh fruits to provide fuel for riding bicycles). The temperature is about 12 C most ofthe days and sometimes the "Mistral" blows. Mistrals are strong wind with speed up to about 110 km/hr. Under these conditions it is very difficult to ride.Going to the open air markets (Pasar malam) was no hassle with a bike. No worries about parking. Just push the bike along.I spent the last three nights of my tour in London. London is quite bicycle friendly too. One can bring a folder along in the underground trains FOC provided it can be folded. In London it cost 32 pounds to rent a bike and my Dahon cost almost twice of what I paid in Malaysia (580 pounds). Hmmm ...must start a Dahon bicycle export business to London.!




I am sure all these "tourist" attractions looks very familiar to most of you.



Even in all the parks in London a bicycle is welcomed. If one were to walk it may take hours to explore Hyde Park but with a bike it is just "a walk through the park"!


The real horse staring at my iron horse at Horse park in London. I think my iron horse has got more "horse power" and is more manageable!
See, I told you..my bicycle is light.

This policeman came along after the previous picture was taken. He wanted to know if I was doing a commercial for the bicycle by lifting it up for a photo. Anyway, I politely invited him to be in the picture for a commercial too and that is how this photo was taken with the policeman


After 14 days of good life, it is time to go home again. More adventures coming along...life is an adventure on a journey!

My French Connection

About 5 years ago when my company decided to replace the ageing S61N fleet with the modern Super Puma L2 helicopters I had to do a simulator training on the SuperPuma L2 at Helisim in Marseille. France. Helisim is equiped with the state of art simulators and during my training I met a very interesting French gentleman by the name of Michel Zing. He was ex French military and had flown for Bristow Helicopters. We found that we had many common interest ..from sailing, farming, dogs and not afraid of getting our hands dirty to get a job done. I got to know him much better on my second trip two years later. We had been in contact all the while through emails and I had been brain digging him on a lot of flying matters. He had unselfishly been sharing his knowledge with me. I was invited to have dinner and to stay in his house which is in Rognac. Rognac is quite remote..just like our kampong and yes he is staying in a farm surrounded with olive trees and fruit trees and is quite self sufficient with vegetables too.His girl friend Anne Marie cooked us a delicious French dinner..complete with cheese and ice cream at the end of the meal. Now I know why the French people are so healthy. It is the low carbohydrate food and the daily dosage of wine which they consume.
This is the farm house which they are staying..just like in the story books. Most of the things are very well preserved in the house.

There is plenty to do staying there. The heater for winter utilises log and fallen timber from the property. A tractor is always handy.
So last week when I went to France, I was invited to stay in his little guest house. next to his house. I had planned to arrive his place well before I start "work" on the simulators.This time I brought along another of my friend Capt Eric Ng. We were catching up until well into the night. Capt Eric with Michel and Anne Marie
Fruits just outside the little guest house. We helped ourselves to a few fruits each. This time of the year is cold ...about 12 C day time so the fruits are like just out of the fridge. And they are yummy too...











I suggested that the next night we will cook a Malaysian Dinner and have it in his house. We had brought along some special ingredients for this occasion. I will cook the famous pork rib soup..BAK KUT TEH while Eric prepares curry chicken. At the same time we were trying to explain to Anne Marie about our cooking..see it is quite easily done! Unfortunately we were so busy eating and talking that we did not take any photos during our dinner. I think they must have enjoyed the meal because the left over curry was kept for the next day!
I had brought along my Dahon bike and had a lovely ride round the Rognac neighbourhood. The mistral wind (up to 110 km/hr) wind died off in the morning otherwise I will be blown backwards!

These olives are about ready to be harvested in 10 days time. How I wish I could stay back and help. It should be fun.So hope to see Michel and Anne Marie again soon. Next time I will cook satay and maybe some Tim Sum.! Thank you for the hospitality and the good time we have had had. You have been the "perfect host"!

Thursday, October 8, 2009

Tail rotor malfunction on S 61 A 4 Nuri Helicopter

Many of my friend asked if I have ever experienced a real emergency while flying. The asnwer is a YES. I have todate about 18,000 plus hours on helicopters and another thousand on light fixed wing so the law of averages catches up once a while. One very serious emergency happened to me 29 years ago when I was serving in 7 Squadron, RMAF Kuching. The date was 9 Oct 1980 and I was a new "C" category captain on the Sikorsky S 61 A4 (Nuri) helicopter in the Royal Malaysian Air Force. Looking back at my log book I had just accumulated 1000 hrs at that time. On that eventful day, I was tasked to do a training flight with a co pilot. This is the time when we polish up our flying skills and in those days every pilot has to do 3 hours of training flight per month.
The sortie was a running change with my squadron commander. Running change means the aircraft has been started and flown and I just hop in to take the aircraft to continue my flight. When the squadron commander handed me the aircraft he told me the aircraft had some vibrations and I will have to enter the defect in the tech log after my sortie. So away I went to the training area in Santubong , North of Kuching airport. One of the exercises that we practice is an autorotation..you know just in case both the engines flame out together. I selected an area and did a practice autorotation aiming for that cleared patch. By 500 ft above ground level, I initiated power to recover from the autorotation. Suddenly, there was a "cracking" sound and the whole aircraft and the controls vibrated violently. Pedals vibrations were severe and there was limited control and instruments could not be read. I lowered the collective level and re entered into autorotaion and this time to land. Things happened very fast but suddenly everthing seem to come in slow motion. Flashes of family and boyhood seems to come and go. Several MAYDAY calls were made and it was acknowledged by an MAS aircraft.
What seemed like a nice carpet of grass at 1000 ft now looks like a swamp and worst of all there were a lot of abandoned poles sticking upright. These poles were for the pepper farm and it is solid hard wood. Using all the skill that I had been taught in the Air Force, I managed to avoid the poles (otherwise ity will be a satay helecopter!). Of couses, my co pilot Lt M (u) Kamal (at that time) and Sgt Sharom played an important part in the sucessful forced landing.
After securing the helicopter we found the tail rotor blades had self destructed leaving only the spar. In those days, the tail was made of several rib pockets but after my incident (maybe a few more in the world) the blades were changed to honeycomb structures type .
The man in this picture is the first person to come over to the aircraft after I force landed. He gave us some hot Chinese tea which was very much appreciated. I revisited hima few days later and took this photo. Within an hour another Nuri helicopter came to our rescue and we were flown back to the base. In oreder for me to maintain my confidence, they made me do another flight the next day..a good idea.

The department of Flight Safety recognised that I had done a very good job and awarded me the Green Endorsement. This is the highest award for display of airmanship and skill in avoiding major disaster. I had been truely very lucky. However, throughout the later years I had several engine failures (seven in multi engine helicopters) and many more emergencies when I was flying microlights. I will write about it in this blog later. What all these emergencies had done to me is to make me a more matured and conservative pilot and not to take things for granted. In flying, there may be no second chance and as pilots we must take our chosen profession seriously.