Page 120 - Demo

118IT WENT STRAIGHT DOWN THE MIDDLEMy first squadron posting was as a co-pilot on the Victor SR2 which, at the time, fell somewhat short of my personal ambition as far as aviation was concerned, although not necessarily my capability. In the event, I quickly learned that the aeroplane was challenging to fly accurately, and capable of quite extraordinary performance at light weight. Equally importantly, it promised to regularly take me to interesting and faraway places! So, I soon settled into the multi-engine environment, and learned to appreciate the importance of teamwork and the roles that the other crew members played. Fast forward a year, and I was anticipating the Intermediate Co-pilot%u2019s Course, which would allow me to fly in the left-hand seat and effectively run the sortie, although I would always have the guiding hand of an experienced captain available in the other seat. Just before my course started, I had the prospect of a %u2018Far-East Ranger%u2019 to look forward to, eastbound to Hong Kong and returning westbound.Everything went smoothly on the way out, as we staged through Cyprus, Masirah (in the Arabian Gulf), Gan (a small island base in the middle of the Indian Ocean) and Changi (Singapore), before finally reaching Hong Kong. A Ranger exercise was all about achieving rapid, unsupported deployment to anywhere in the World, so what might appear to be a bit of a %u2018jolly%u2019 was, in fact, quite hard work. We only had room for one technician flying with us (on the optional sixth seat in the cabin), so most of the support work, such as re-fuelling and post/pre-flight servicing, was carried out by the aircrew. Adding this requirement onto two hours planning, and five or six hours of flying, made for very long days, so we welcomed the opportunity to relax for a while before starting back home.Five days later, and with personal batteries recharged, we set off westwards, and all went fine until we were at top of climb out of Gan,