TO SAVE A PRINCE

Flight Journal, Oct 2004 by Gabella, W F "Bill"

Before engine start, I sat in the left (the instructor pilot's) seat and collected my wits as I planned the initial leg of the flight. Woody was guarding the Pepsis. Gosh, I was tired already! I popped a cold Pepsi and a couple of aspirins-a fighter pilot's supper!

Flight planning

Early in my tour, I had discussions with the senior pilot in Riyadh about night navigation in Saudi Arabia. The GCDA helicopters were the only government copters allowed to be flown at night. Military copters were forbidden to be flown past sundown after a string of night crashes that occurred when the Saudis took delivery of their first Bell UH-1-series aircraft. It wasn't only the extreme darkness and omnipresent dust haze that worked against night navigation. It was also the lack of radio navigation aids aboard the aircraft.

On the first six KV-107s, the radio navaids were limited to short-range, low-frequency nav radio. The IFR panel was very basic. As you'll find out, only our 720 channel VHF radio proved a lifeline at night. These shortcomings were corrected with the second batch of KV-107s, which boasted, among other things, the Doppler Inertial Navigation Systems. Later, thanks to the Doppler INS, I fondly recall breaking out of cloud at minimums at 0200 hours on the centerline of the main runway at Jizan, the Red Sea port. INS is a welcome tool when any pilot bears the burden of flying night IFR in a helicopter alone. Long ago, the senior pilot and I (pre-Doppler) agreed that our primary night navigation aid would be the roads! Find a good road into an area and lock on to it. This is exactly what I did after takeoff.

I called Riyadh ATC and got a radar vector to intercept the main North/South Highway that went to the GCDA outpost. I also asked for and got a couple more ATC frequencies to work farther south. We also had an FM radio to work GCDA units on the ground.

Settling on a 1,500-feet AGL (above ground level) cruise, I could see by the last vestiges of daylight that we were making good time with the summer northerlies (winds) on our tail. It always amazed me that such a large, dry landmass as Saudi Arabia (as large as the U.S. east of the Mississippi) was held hostage to the great heat pump of Asia-the Indian subcontinent and its heat low in summer-which largely determined seasonal weather from the Middle East to China and Southeast Asia.

From May through November, the Saudi summer northerlies shape, sculpt and shuffle mysterious 600- to 700-foot-high sand dunes around the Empty Quarter desert. As the winds rise, cool and lose energy, when approaching the mountains of Yemen, the grains of sand are dropped. To the pagan (not Muslim) tribes in the Empty Quarter, the summer winds strike, often with a gale force, and blow away camps and bury livestock and people, especially children.

As we neared the highway intercept, a stunning sight appeared: a huge hardstand that was about 200 by 300 yards and anchored at its four corners by extremely tall sets of brilliant lights. Next to it was a large building that was an electric power station. As we flew on, I circled "Al Hillah" on the chart-a prescient move!