Category: Blip on the Radar

A Blip on the Radar Part 33: Fly quietly, for our Friends lie there Truth, many say, is stranger than fiction. For sure. I wholly concur. As an obsessive scribbler, I seldom worry about inventing a plot. I just try and describe what I see and feel. But I would add this: Looking back on…

A Blip on the Radar Part 32: An Unusual Passenger I am indebted for a description of what happened on this particular night, to a friend of mine, a long time Hansen Pilot. It is through his patient description, the next day (when I had sobered up a bit) that most of my memory exists.…

Photo: K.Mark Demon A Blip on the Radar Part 31: A Strange Premonition Let’s be honest: we tend to refrain from writing about fellow pilots who… die. It makes us uncomfortable. There is also the fear that we may come across as judgmental, or unkind, insensitive, arrogantly superior, gushingly sentimental or downright maudlin. It’s easier…

A Blip on the Radar Part 30: The Grease Monkey A tale of a Grease Monkey, a drive shaft, and a gibbering idiot For most of my aviation career, I have been a dual rated fixed wing and helicopter commercial pilot. But I do hold an A+P license, obtained via a tortuous thirteen month full…

A Blip on the Radar Part 28: The Immarsat Problem I worked on different fishing boats, for varying periods of time. The longest straight run was one year, the shortest was a holiday relief for two. Some Fish Masters I really liked, one or two were hard to get along with. The odd one was…

  A Blip on the Radar Part 29(C) “Hotel Excelsior ” Hotel Excelsior, Manilla, Philippines June 1997 For once I was a passenger. Flying back to the Tuna Fields, via scheduled airline to Fiji and Papua New Guinea. With a layover for one night at Manilla. On the approach, gazing down from my comfortable seat…

Photo: Advocates for Human Rights A Blip on the Radar Part 29B: An Old Sailor’s Poem I remember reading a poem, written by an old seaman. An old tuna fishing captain. In it, he reminisced. About the old days, when Yellow Fin tuna were so large, that the sailors working the nets below the nets…

Photo: Jorge A Blip on the Radar Part 29(A) “The Hookers are coming “ I remember one night, in port, in Guam. I was standing quietly alone, away up on the helideck, above it all, just taking in Nature. The dark sky, the lights of Guam, the hustle and bustle on the working decks below,…

A Blip on the Radar Blip# 35 “Die with the Dolphins (2) ” Surrounded and blinded by bubbles, he thought only of his mouthpiece. Experimentally, he sucked air, and relief flooded through him as his lungs expanded normally. The bubbles occasioned by his mighty splash entry abated a little, and now he could see that…

A Blip on the Radar (Blip# 34) Note: although this is part of my draft for a novel, it actually truthfully describes an experience I went through. Everything is factual, including the outcome… DIE WITH THE DOLPHINS (novel excerpt) He had heard the Fishmaster’s shouted ‘Let Go!’ in the distance, through a haze of sleep,…