A brekky of eggs and bacon went down well the next morning in the
accomodation camp at Newman.

(btw if I make typos I have actually pressed the missing key. it seems
at times that the keyboard ignores me. maybe it listens to the wife
:-) )

After Brekky and a top up of the water bottles it was in to the four
wheel drive and out to the telemetry site with my friend 'permit boy'
driving. We opened up the air conditioned luxury of the hut and
plugged the laptop into the PLC. (that's not an aviation term, it
comes from the industrial controls industry, so it can remain secret
:-) )
The little glitch in the ladder logic (another secret term) was soon
located and obliterated. ....but the corrections to the two lines of
code didnt work. hmmmm. think think think. It's gotta be right.
Force the bit on. Logic works as expected. Force the bit off. logic
works as expected. Remove the force and the alarm comes back on.
Look up and verify that the fluoro lights are on. yep we're on 240
volt mains power. Why is the AC fail alarm on? Force it off, Force it
on again and yep the logic works. Take the force off and the alarm
comes back on.
'Permit boy' (I actually used his real name) we might have to call the
engineer in sydney and find out what feeds this input because I'm sure
we have two compensating errors occurring here. I've fixed mine but
the input is still live. (the system has solar battery backup so we
had flipped the ac power of and on twice before this.)

The long and short of it was that the storm that had taken out the
system had actually failed the ac fail detection component and the
circuitry was remaining open circuit. Phone were calls made and then
we set off again to the next two lines of code.

Two lines of code added to the cisco and saved to non volatile RAM.
One parameter added to an initialisation file in the server and it was
all done. Off back to the airport.

My friend had been reading Ian Mackersey's book "Smithy" and he stood
beside the Tailwind tapping his fingers ever so gently on the fabric.
"You dont have to be so gentle, the fabric isnt going to tear"
He looked shocked so I did my "bird" fabric test, whanging my middle
finger for all it was worth along the fabric. Wide eyed he commented
that he thought it was aluminium, thought for a while then remarked
that I wasnt a modern aviator, I was a regular Sir Charles Kingsford
Smith flying something out of world war one. :-) :-) :-)
Offers of a short joyflight elicited comments that it had to be bigger
than a house before he'd fly in it. He asked me to SMS him after each
landing( and I'm sure he didnt expect the SMS message when it came
each time)

With everything stowed and ship shape I lit the fires under the
Continental and taxied out. All of the morning departures had gone
some time before so it was only my friend on Grulak who listened to my
transmissions. At about half runway I did something that Qantas cant.
I turned for an intersection departure, called my friend on Grulak
again and was off and climbing by the time I passed the taxiway.
I think I can call it climbing because of a memory that that's what
occurred each other time. At about 250ft in the 40 something degree
heat I gently started turning south so that the hills to the west and
I didnt meet before I had a chance to set course southward.

At about 400ft the engine started up it's incessant complaining as
well and I was forced to lean to get smooth running. At about 400ft I
became aware of the rapidly shredding bearings and the tear in the
muffler growing past 6 inches in length. I chose to ignore those out
front and pressed each earpiece into better seal.

Brushing thoughts of traversing 200 miles over barren land behind a
rapidly failing continental aside I was taken by the beauty of the
desolation. I reached back for the digital camera (actually on the
sites I'd just been working on cameras are banned totally so I carry a
'digital recording device', oddly, after 6 months, it still has them
bluffed :-) ) As I groped in the bag for the camera I gave the epirb
a reassuring cuddle and told it that regardless of what the detractors
say you wont be needed mate.
Hewie the bloody god of weather ruined another shot, and another and
another. Suffice it to say that I became convinced that all of my
digital shots would be ruined by hewie so it was only when something
really pretty went past that I tried another shot. Hewie, of course,
was unrelenting. Even at 7,500ft over the Collier range was he acting
up to ruin photos.
In the heat I discovered that along with the engine failure and the
exhaust crack the propellor had decided to pack it in as well. Gone
was the spritely 120 knots cruise and it its place we seemed to barely
make 110 knots and for quite long periods the GPS reported ground
speeds of just under 105knots. Bloody conspiracies!
And another thing, why was the blasted altitude all over the place?

By ignoring Hewie, not worrying about the crumbling crankshaft
bearings, focussing out the changed engine note from the massively
cracked exhaust pipe and forgetting to change the area frequency I was
finally able to work out why the blasted altitude was going all over
the place. My spring tab adjustment handle had worn a smooth spot in
the asbestos friction lining. It was being vibrated by the crumbling
bearings and slowly releasing the biasing pressure as we flew along.
Of course I being a stickler for stick and rudder precision was
maintaining the precise same stick pressure as the spring pressure
came off and so we'd enter a slow descent as I put the trim on and
then a slow climb as the pressure came off. That solved I invited
Airservices back into the cockpit, but just for peace of mind I
ignored the bearings and the changed engine note.

By the way, one of the things that gave great comforton the return
flight was my fellow aviator. He was flying a cherokee along the exact
same route. They'd ( I thought he was with someone) taken off a good
ten minutes before and was at least a hundred miles ahead of me but
the thought that someone not on grulak would hear an emergency call
was comforting.
...I think.

I took a few more useless photos. I found that by sneaking out the
camera while thinking about weather I was able to fob off hewie until
just before taking the shot. He has quick reflexes though and got me
just at the instant of the shot each time. Oh well, shift delete is
the great unsmudger of digital photos.

I swear that the bloody place is so flat that you can see the
curvature of the earth!

What amazed me is that you can actually navigate by pilotage in the
area. The Collier Range has a distincive profile in the distance from
both directions. Other usable features seem to occur at about horizon
distance. Despite the desolation the pilotage seemed easy.

After the Collier Range there is an area devoid of human presence.
This soon passes and the vegetation again shows the presence of water.
As dry and parched as it is the environment is totally shaped by
water. You can see lines of vegetation in every rivulet and crease in
the land where moisture persists for just long enough to encourage
vegetative life before it vanishes. The environment on the ground is
formed of endless swirls of meagre vegetation.

It always amazes me how the human sight works. You never see features
gradually appearing in the distance, one monent they are no where to
be seen and the next they are so obvious that you wonder how you could
have missed them. My friends at Karralundi Mission popped into view in
that exact same way. One minute the way forward was featureless
nothingness and the next Karralundi was a fully developed cluster of
Classrooms, dormitories and airstrip. ....Which of course meant that
Meekatharra was probably that slight change in tone right on the
horizon. 20 miles out I switched to the CTAF and commenced a gentle
power on descent. 10 miles out I gave an inbound call and was
astonished to have my friend in the Cherokee call 5 miles behind me
and about 2,000ft higher. I thanked him and told him I was chuffed
that my little 74 horses had done me such a good job. "Oh its only a
cherokee warrier mate" was the reply.
I kept the descent speed up to give him an uninterrupted flight in and
was rewarded to see him join circuit just as the refueller had started
the fuel flowing.

The three of us had a good talk over the refuelling. His was an
aircraft ferry for the boss who'd sent his warrior south to have a
crankcase crack welded. My flight was direct to Serpentine, his flight
was via two refuelling stops (mainly to check oil levels) and was an
hour longer than mine.

While prepping the aircraft I noticed a headache which was obviously a
dehydration symptom. I refilled the water bottles in the terminal and
topped myself up as well. I visited the toilet as well and found that
I had to top myself up with water again. I dont quite know where it is
but I have a leak somewhere that pours water straight out into my
shirt in really hot weather.
On the way south I made sure I kept drinking water. I think I'd
polished off nearly two litres by the bottom end of Lake Moore.
Out over the vestiges of the first bits of farmland the plumbing
started playing up. I persisted with the comforting feeling of a full
bladder until past Dalwalinue. Its only 20 minutes to Northam and
we'll stop there I thought. I thought it again many times as I flew
down into the wheat belt area. Then! I spied off to the left what must
have been Ballidue. there to the north of the town was a glorious
little three runway airfield. bugger the fact that it was a dirt
strip, there was bush all around and you could pull up and have a pee
on the side of the runway. I throttled back and made a 15 mile descent
from 7,500 feet to that little piece of heaven. Over the top of the
field and around the side of the perimeter fence abutting the town
wondering what the wind direction and strength was and lo and behold
there was a little yellow windsock. come around a little further and
turn over the truck driving down the side of the abutting property and
just slip in on the main strip. The tailwind rolled to a halt on the
uphill section just beyond the runway intersection.
Fling, whip, fling, undo and finally the feet were on the ground.
off to the scrub on the side of the strip and a moment of sheer
relief.

(I've got to go for a visit with my son. there'll be a part 3a later
tonight)