Hoppie goes Worldflight Light

[Jeroen Hoppenbrouwers]

I know it may sound like I am bragging but I need to get this off my chest and my immediate environment does not seem to care much   

Tomorrow I will fly out to Honolulu and then take the UAL Island Hopper via Majuro, Kwajalein, Kosrae, Pohnpei, and Truk to Guam. That's a 737 doing major deep water between runways with a coral reef around them. Aviation nuts from all over the world save up airmiles to get this experience off their bucket list (look on the web for "UAL island hopper"). I get to do it professionally -- "somebody has to do it."



The purpose of this trek is to watch "my own" Iridium SATCOM system up close in what is arguably the most demanding operating theatre in the world. The islands do not have VHF ACARS. All communication is via Iridium, and most importantly, all preflight paperwork is beamed up through that soda straw as well. The slightest hiccup means a delay, and with the crew already on special FAA waiver for a 15-hour trip, that can stop the whole operation dead, requiring a standby rescue aircraft to bring in a new crew.

I will be flying in the forward cabin (I cannot do jumpseat after 9/11 even when being the lead design engineer of an important piece of avionics) and communicate with the crew via message passing. We have an inflight mechanic (the islands have no maintenance facilities to speak of) and a second crew which flies the first hop HNL-MAJ. As semi-part of the crew, I will have the opportunity to follow ops as closely as ever, briefings included.

After the hopper, I will be spending a week on Guam, replicating all things learned during the island route in a grounded aircraft and preparing my system as well as I can for the real task of supporting this mission flawlessly three times a week, there and back.

Darn, I am looking forward to this.  Matt down under and John from Coventry have properly prepared me for this kind of madness. It's all their fault.


Hoppie

[cavaricooper]

God Speed Hoppie!  Keep us fed with tidbits as time permits....

Best- C

[torrence]

Neat, Jeroen!

I think I mentioned in another thread that a couple of my old friends used to fly that route for business back in the day it was flown by Air Micronesia - runways all still crushed coral in those days, I think.  If you want some deep background on the current route and cultural context (not all very flattering to the history of US in region), get Simon Winchester's book "Pacific".  The intro chapter describes an island hopper flight the author made in some detail.  Rest of book is also very interesting.  See if you can wrangle the paperwork to get approval to deplane in Kwaj - your crew would know if it's possible probably.

Have fun
Torrence

[Jeroen Hoppenbrouwers]

I need to go under the plane to access the equipment center from below, through the belly hatch. Does that count as "deplane"?   . . .


Hoppie
"sleep is for humans"

[torrence]

Don't know - work on plane probably covered by normal ops stuff.  Won't get you a tour of the missile defense test facilities  but more than normal pax who don't have military paperwork to get on base (I think Simon had arranged an interview for his book with DOD ahead of time).

Cheers
Torrence

[Will]

Those used to be Continental routes, I believe, pre-merger.

I was looking to take an interesting vacation once upon a time, and I saw Kwajalein on a map and decided to try to go there. Seeing that it as in the middle of the Pacific, I thought it would be an "untouched" island similar to Pitcairn or Tokelau or Niue. (Not that those are "untouched.")

Anyway, when I started planning my trip to Kwajalein, that remote spot with the fascinating name, I had no idea it was the target we aimed our ICBMs at and a de facto military base. I ended up going to Chiapas, Mexico instead. Not an island, of course, but still fairly remote in the day. But that's another story.

[John H Watson]

I will be flying in the forward cabin (I cannot do jumpseat after 9/11 even when being the lead design engineer of an important piece of avionics) and communicate with the crew via message passing.

That has nothing to do with 9/11, Hoppie... they just don't want you redesigning the system mid-flight 

[Jeroen Hoppenbrouwers]

There are much better spots than the jump seat to redesign systems in flight.      But on revenue ops, it is a big no-no to even make benign adjustments to anything except with the proper paperwork backup.  You must feed the stack through the whole chimney down to the mechanic who does it for you.  Not that I object, it avoids anybody taking shortcuts and screwing up.

The adjustments must wait until I get a grounded plane in Guam.  And they must all be reverted before preflight checks.


Hoppie

[jtsjc1]

Very nice Hoppie have a good trip. Guam has a little military history there!

[kev32b]

Hoppie,

Any chance of setting up a go pro in the cabin to record the flight ??

Kev

[Jeroen Hoppenbrouwers]

Unfortunately I do not have suitable recording equipment with me. But you really do not see a lot through side windows. Nothing, nothing, ocean, ocean, runway. Repeat.


Hoppie

[martin]

Nothing, nothing, ocean, ocean, runway. Repeat.

...and probably during night.
So you have the right pre-conditioning, from WorldFlights 
Have fun!

Martin

[Phil Bunch]

I hope you have a great trip, with plentiful tropical breezes and magazine cover beaches!

---------------

BTW, beware of the brown snakes on Guam.  It seems they manage to creep into cargo bays and so forth on airliners (grins).  Allegedly this is how they invaded various islands in the Pacific, especially Guam.

http://www.guampdn.com/story/news/2015/08/25/more-funding-eliminate-brown-tree-snakes-0826/32037271/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brown_tree_snake

[John H Watson]

Are brown tree snakes not fussy if their prey is alive or dead? How do they normally detect rodents? If by smell, is it the smell of fur or living rodent breath? If by infra-red, won't they miss them completely?

[Phil Bunch]

Are brown tree snakes not fussy if their prey is alive or dead? How do they normally detect rodents? If by smell, is it the smell of fur or living rodent breath? If by infra-red, won't they miss them completely?

These are all very good questions!

Hopefully, Hoppie will soon investigate these and related questions, and bring us up to date. 

I forgot to ask if Hoppie is afraid of snakes!  I bet they also have a lot of very large, hairy spiders in these tropical areas, too...I'm not sure I would want to crawl around in the maintenance racks of an airliner!  (insert more friendly grins here)

[Jeroen Hoppenbrouwers]

I actually see the street here in Hawaii. Must be daylight?!

Departure 0725AM so all of the Hopper (no pun!) is also in daylight. That's eerie. Never did that before.


H.

[Will]

Have fun and keep the reports coming. Cane hack into your Iridium to give us live updates from your laptop? (Wait, don't answer that.)

[Jeroen Hoppenbrouwers]

https://flightaware.com/live/flight/UAL154

Heading to the crew briefing now.


Hoppie

[torrence]

Departure 0725AM so all of the Hopper (no pun!) is also in daylight. That's eerie. Never did that before.

Remember the Date Line - keeps things interesting.  Was preparing with a colleague for an astronomical observation in Indonesia a long time ago.  We knew exactly when the event should take place - in UTC (Zulu), but were so jet lagged that we weren't sure whether we needed to be at the telescope on Tue or Wed night local!  An hour in the observatory library and a lot of cross checking got us to the right time/place. 

Have fun
Torrence

[CarlBB]

Sounds good Hoppie .... The food and drink can never be as good as World Flight
Carl