Route: YLHI NF YSNF, 484nm, 3.3 hours (Total: 18,606nm, 117.4 hours)
From one tiny rock hundreds of miles from anywhere to another tiny rock, hundreds of miles from anywhere!
With only a small apron, we had to tie down the plane on the grass. No matter though, we can still do a thorough preflight of both the plane and our emergency equipment and supplies. Once loaded, the plane is at max weight and we can only partially fill the tip tanks. Oh, and this scenery has very strange cartoon-like trees!
Climbing out
past the mysterious mountain!
Leaving behind our small, fragile, refuge, and looking forward to several hours of nothing but water and some old comedy shows on the ipod.
Cruising at 9,500ft. A solid undercast stops us from even looking out for passing ships. It's almost two hours before we pick up the NF VOR and can start tracking it.
Eventually we're lined up on base for runway 11. Gear down... three greens... Oh. Bu66er!
Cycle the gear again.... Nope. Even the hand crank does nothing. I'd like to declare an emergency, but who to? Norfolk Island is only traffic, and there's no one else on frequency. There's nowhere else in range, and no passing heavies. Guess we're on our own...
Short final. Okay, now here's the plan...
Touch down on the mains, then keep the stick right back, allowing the plane to slow. By the time the nose drops, it'll be going slowly enough and hopefully won't do too much damage. Some people say you should switch off the engine. But why create a second emergency? The prop's a write off regardless and the engine will still need a strip down.
I'm not going to show you the sad result (apart from anything, FS's idea of a nosewheel up landing is to bury the plane nose first in the tarmac to a depth of several feet!). Instead here is some music, and a pleasant map of the route so far.
(oh, and it's a real shame the photo textures run out 2/3 of the way along Kapiti Island)
