Quote:
Originally Posted by Exfso
Could have done with that when I was in Katherine in 1974 when Tracy blew Darwin to bits, I opened up the FSU Xmas morning to absolute chaos. There were aircraft circling the town trying to get communications as we were the international alternate for Darwin. Normally when we shut down at night Darwin took over our responsibilities, but as you know they did not exist any more and there was only Katherine and Gove that opened up on Xmas day. Gove helped a little, but they had less staff than we did and their communications for some reason were very poor. There were only 3 of us on that station and I was on my own for the first couple of hours. Basically we assumed responsibility for all of the Darwin airspace. I know on the 1st day we took from memory 256 flight plans on HF for aircraft departing and going into Darwin, that does not include the ones we took via face to face briefing and over VHF and telephones. Traffic information was a nightmare, we had anything from C172 to B747 screaming for traffic and weather on both VHF and HF, in a helluva lot of cases we had aircraft flying without any details being received at all, they just popped up, you can imagine what that was like. Also all the C130 fleet was deployed to help in the evacuation. I had no sleep for 72 hrs, I dont think any of us did until we got people up from down south to help us out.
Certainly was not helped being in the wet season either as we used to get all our weather information from Darwin Met, they were out of action as well, so we did the best we could by other means, also we had to take half hourly obs as well to add to the workload. I remember our OIC saying to Head office. "we have thrown away the book", that became a famous quote for some time...From memory we regularly had over 50 active aircraft it peaked at close to the 100 mark I think, imagine the radio chaos with that many people trying to talk and get traffic, pass flight plans, traffic and weather information, no to mention Notam information. How no one came together during that period amazes me, brilliant stuff by the pilots for sure, see and be seen was the way to go....  |
You probably spoke to my father that day
My Dad was Northern Territory Aerial Medical Service (TAA), flying the DH Dove ex-Alice. He was apparently the first aircraft into Darwin after Tracy.
Tracy is responsible for me having no birth certificate - gone with the wind, literally. I now have only an NT extract, dated WELL after my actual birth in '73.
When I started flying, still had briefing offices and FTF briefings. My last ever FTF briefing was a simple gallivant from ABRK (now YBRK) to Keppel (GKL) for a weekend of debauchery