Less than a week after getting back to the United States, I headed to Spokane, WA to join up with two of our pilots from PNG, David Barton and Christopher Clark. They were finishing two weeks of Kodiak training at the Spokane Turbine Center, and were our first two candidates to send through that course. (See my blog posting
"A Week in August" for a description of our part in developing this course for mission pilots.)
David and Christopher are veteran pilots in PNG, and have prior turbine aircraft experience, so this course was more of a "transition" course than much of an "initial" for them. I showed up on Friday to fly with them in STC's airplane to put the JAARS finishing touches on their skills. Flying in the mountains of the Northwest is a lot like in PNG, except for the traces of snow on the peaks this time of year. And of course, the runways here are a lot more friendly!
Once back home they will begin their flying under supervision of Rick Nachtigal with whom I flew last month (see my preceding posts). In the coming year we hope to send more of our PNG program pilots through STC in their transition to flying the Kodiak. We also plan to have two more of these aircraft in PNG by the middle of next year, and eventually a total of four.
Once again I enjoyed flying in the beautiful Northwest. These pictures are from some of our activities in the Priest Lake and Lake Couer D'Alene, Idaho areas. These two guys soaked up the information on this new airplane, and did a great job learning the Kodiak's particular handling characteristics. Like Rick before them, they will easily adapt it to the context in PNG that they're so familiar with.
