Back from holidays a day early due to operational reasons. Although a not very exciting holiday I feel extremely rested and ready for another tour.
First day out Maseru, Syed and I set off to Gayo Lues for a check out flight for Syed and myself.
Gayo is a 750m runway located in a valley in the mountains on the SW coast of Sumatra. Elevation is 3500 ft with a 3% up-slope and one way in one way out. We did a few approaches, go-arounds and a landing each before heading off the Banda Aceh. It is always nice having a bit of a new challenge to keep your interest alive:)
Gayo Lues Runway
Once we had our fair share of fun we set off for Banda Aceh with Syed and Maseru up front while I sat just behind them. We had a great chat along the way with pretty good weather for the day.
C208 Gayo
We landed in Aceh where we were met by Will and Andrea, who had been doing the schedule from there. Syed was swapping with Will who would just be paxing back to Medan with Mas and I. A quick Black Pepper Beef for lunch, some fuel and we loaded the pax for the return legs for the day. I flew the last 2 which was nice. The weather started getting a little worse as the afternoon build-ups appeared. Our descent into Gayo, which we need to maintain visual, became a little tricky with a wall of rain sitting right in between us and the runway. We managed to sneak around the storm through another valley just off to the North and were able to do a dog-leg approach into Gayo, my first with pax.
Mas and Syed
After landing we quickly offloaded and then loaded our next pax for the final quick hop to Medan. This time we had the storm on our departure path although luckily for us far away enough to make a orbit over the field to gain height before setting course for Medan.
All in all a great day out.
Route: WIMM to WIMG to WITT to WIMG to WIMM
Hours: 3.8 hrs
