Naha, Okinawa
Wow! We have a long flight today, our longest so far. We fill up,the tanks and set of on time (only a short hold for landing aircraft). Again it is straight out over water. Today we were instructed to make satellite calls ever 15 mins and on the hour to report ops ok. This we did but unfortunately, the other end would never wait for the satellite delay and get on talking over our calls and blocking transmission. It was in any case superfluous since we were in contact with ATC for most of the journey.
At about 150 nvm iles out form Naha, we hit some high clouds and decided to descend over the see. The problem was that we had to pass through the cumulus cloud. This is when the excitement started. We were suddenly in a downdraft descending at 1,800 ft to 1,900 ft per min and hitting speeds of 130 kts. Not great. If this had occurred closer to the sea we would have been swimming to Okinawa. The annoying thing was if we had just remained level for about 5 mins more we would have passed over into clear skies, Monday morning quarterbacking though is a great thing that we did not have to our advantage. At the lower level of 900ft over the sea we could see the white horses on the waves. At this level our ground speed (or is it sea speed) was some 15 kts slower. This was not an problem now as we had made our time up at our previous altitude of 9,300ft.
Landing on 18 we set the helicopter down on the west side. We were asked to make An exit at W2, which meant we had auto effectlynmake a u-turn and have the wind up the chuff! Not very comfortable when the wind is high in a helicopter close to the ground. It would have been better if they had cleared us straight to west apron.
Japan is expensive, $6 for a coke in the Crown Plaza. $50 for a buffet meal, I still,do not like buffet food. $9 for local Orion beer, not even a pint! This part of Japan does not appears to be the tourist trap of Tokyo. Few staff speak any English and there are quite a lot of people in the hotel in traditional dress. Business men are having meetings and have ladies attending (not in a smutty way, so keep your thoughts out of the gutter).
Looking forward to a few more days in Japan. We are here for five nights (I think!).
PS Peter seems to be on the mend😊
At about 150 nvm iles out form Naha, we hit some high clouds and decided to descend over the see. The problem was that we had to pass through the cumulus cloud. This is when the excitement started. We were suddenly in a downdraft descending at 1,800 ft to 1,900 ft per min and hitting speeds of 130 kts. Not great. If this had occurred closer to the sea we would have been swimming to Okinawa. The annoying thing was if we had just remained level for about 5 mins more we would have passed over into clear skies, Monday morning quarterbacking though is a great thing that we did not have to our advantage. At the lower level of 900ft over the sea we could see the white horses on the waves. At this level our ground speed (or is it sea speed) was some 15 kts slower. This was not an problem now as we had made our time up at our previous altitude of 9,300ft.
Landing on 18 we set the helicopter down on the west side. We were asked to make An exit at W2, which meant we had auto effectlynmake a u-turn and have the wind up the chuff! Not very comfortable when the wind is high in a helicopter close to the ground. It would have been better if they had cleared us straight to west apron.
Japan is expensive, $6 for a coke in the Crown Plaza. $50 for a buffet meal, I still,do not like buffet food. $9 for local Orion beer, not even a pint! This part of Japan does not appears to be the tourist trap of Tokyo. Few staff speak any English and there are quite a lot of people in the hotel in traditional dress. Business men are having meetings and have ladies attending (not in a smutty way, so keep your thoughts out of the gutter).
Looking forward to a few more days in Japan. We are here for five nights (I think!).
PS Peter seems to be on the mend😊
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