Shove over Neil

This year is the thirtieth anniversary of Neil Armstrong's landing on the moon, an event I remember watching with wide eyed fascination as a struggling first year Uni student those near three decades ago.

To hear him manoeuvre that tiny two man craft over an alien landscape searching with Buzz Aldrin for a safe spot to set them down was to witness, I felt, someone stand on the edge of eternity with a toe dipped in the ocean of the great unknown.

Now I live in Sydney & my folks have retired to Beechworth & occasionally, when I'd fly a plank down to see them, I'd see these snow covered peeks in the distance. Bogong plateau the map said. I always kept well clear as fixed wing jocks are inclined to lump alpine country in with thunder cells, mid air collisions & CASA inspectors as things avoidable where possible. However once I drifted into rotary wing machines, my world view shifted & its fair to say that those white tips began to exert a pull on me akin to the magnetic attraction that water has for toddlers.

Finally, last June the moth like draw prevailed, I flew a helicopter to Mount Bogong in Victoria's high country. To be perfectly honest I'm a bit intimidated by my chopper! With less than 200 hours up as a rotary wing pilot, I figure I still have a lot to learn & a little fear is a good thing in a pilot, it keeps you safe.

When we came over the Bogong plateau I did a power check at 6500' to see if we could sustain a hover at that altitude & then went looking for a landing site. I'd done precautionary approaches & slope landings in my training & read a chapter on snow fields in 'Wagtendonk' (Principles of helicopter flight), but that was the sum total of my experience on anything other than flat grass or concrete. We descended over a ridge looking for melt holes to gauge the snow thickness & I reckoned on about 4" of cover.

Jockeying for a good position between snow drifts at 50' AGL, hesitation & caution over ruled the first three touch down selections. Finally, as I nestled the bird onto a reasonably flat icy patch, my pax yelled "skid contact" while I gingerly lowered the lever, wary of any asymmetric settling. At 12" MP, well out of the green band and way beyond what I regarded as any useful upward thrust, I relaxed & lowered the collective completely. The machine promptly sank into 7" of soft pack snow with an audible crunch that nearly killed me with fright! Grinning sheepishly at my passenger, who had just queried if we would be spending the night now, I replied "No way, I can wiggle her loose" in the most confident sounding voice I could muster.

We stepped out into absolutely awesome scenery up there, desolate, tranquil & silent with an ominous ambience to it, almost like another world. I looked up to see a near full moon, brilliant and white against a cobalt blue sky. "Shove over Neil" I thought out loud!