Cpt. Hak's PIREP
Surveilance flight
Fellow dESPairados.
After the Troll delivery flight yesterday, I had to perform a few test with the latest FanTrainer prototype. Remember that I had with me the newest HQ situation analysis, and it was my duty to verify some of the traces we found in the wast amount of very valuable data you provided.
I planned to perform some stall tests with the FanTrainer, as well as STOL tests on Hemp Heights. The briefing went smooth, the weather being not bad (broken deep hanging clouds, dry, but quite windy and bumby), the test area cleared from known traffic, and the surveillance instruments all prepared for some action.
Take off was at 06:50 at Hofer Intl. Flaps set, engine running smoothly, nav and comm frequencies set - and up I went. Constantly recording crucial flight data, I gained altitude quite fast. Amazing machine, this FanTrainer...
Then I turned towards St. Tims, where I planned to pick up the 180 radial from St. Tim's VOR and fly along the east coast of Mogador, down to Sixtus B and Hemp Heights.
I worked hard during this flight legs - as the above picture shows. Lots of maneuvres were flown repeatedly, to get more data about the flight envelope of the new prototype. However, the inversed fligths also allowed me to make use of a super wide angle digital camera for low altitude surveillance data...
The naval authorities have been warned about a "mad pilot", and they have spread the news about the test fligths, so no one needed to be scared by me and my aircraft.
For example, this shot was taken at top speed, doing 360° rolls. We used digital photo enhancement procedures to get the contrast enhanced picture of the Espritobal - St. Tim's ferry. No one would expect an aircraft doing such weird things to be a spy plane, right?
The flight went fine, and no technical problems arised. There are some panel glitches, but I am confident the next revision of the FanTrainer will fix that. I flew on the 180 radial outbound of St. Tim's VOR, which leads almost directly over the east cost Mogador lighthouse.
There, I began to perform my low altitude stall tests. I lowered the speed with no flaps set, and watched the alpha rising, until the stall horn went off. The FanTraner behaves nicely in the initial stall phase, butas you can see on the pic below, I lost much altitude, and went into a left hand curve... recovered successfully (thanks to the powerful engine).
Just when I stabilised the aircraft, 500 ft AGL, I saw a little blinking object in front of me. However I was extremely busy checking the flight attitude and getting the aircraft under my full controll, so I didn't pay much attention first.
The plan called for low altitude rolls, and when I gained enough speed, I begann rolling the FanTrainer at the 500 ft agl - which made me loose some few hundred feets, ending at about 200 ft agl, when I passed the object. the automatic object detection camera did snap a picture, but due to the high speed rolls, it is blurred:
As you can see, I was down to about 30 ft agl at the moment of the picture. I must say I don't remember details about the ship. At least I think I can see a ship on the picture, but my memories are even more blurry... BUT! There's more than most of us know about available special equipement by our SOAS section. (And that's good, btw). The FanTrainer has a built in GSTS (Ground surveillance trigger system) - a device that lets the pilot decide exactly where to focus one of our surveillance sattelites. You helped installing the devices high up at the Monte Esperides at Isla Esperanza. Look at the sattelite picture. We have enhanced the interesting section:
We have processed the sattelite image data by our analysis tools, but more about that later. In the meant ime, the winds became a bit stronger and so I decided to call it a day and return to Hemp Heights for debriefingand data transmission to the HQ at Lago Espirito.
The approach was nice and surprisingly calm, despite the winds and turbulences I have experienced throughout the flight. Landed on rw 7 and taxied to the hangar.
One last test was on the programm : a STOL start and landing test. So, I checked the aircraft, fuel and my pulse, and decided to perform that test:
as you can see, the FanTrainer (with three steps flaps set) is really airborne very fast. A simple 180 turn and a slow landing with full flaps, and I was finally safe back and done with my flight work. However, now it was time to open the remote connection to Lago Espirito HQ central systems and start processing the gathered intelligence data. The ship I "saw", is the only object in the hot zone B. That's why I wanted to know more about it. And indeed, here is the maximal zoom of the sattelite picture:
It is clearly a Trawler, but there are irritating structures visible on the deck. We URGENTLY need to verify the identity of this ship and his passengers. Please, anyone who finds some time, get into an airplane and try to get more data about this object.
Here is some more data from the flight recorder:
The ship should still be in the highlighted area. Please, gentlemen, let us know more about the irritating sturctures visible on the sattelite picture.
I am currently being busy analyzing more data and coordinating some flights for the VIP supplies.
Clear sky!
Cpt. Hak
