September 2016 will be my last month flying in Indonesia.

I’ll just let that sink in for a moment.

After nearly seven years out in Indonesia I have achieved far more than I ever intended to. I came out here with the intention of staying for a couple of years to build up some hours before heading back home to Europe to go and fly for one of the airlines. However something happened when I got to Indonesia; I fell in love. I fell in love with the people, the flying, the Pilatus Porter, Papua and the madness of living in one of the world’s last frontiers. It has been an absolute blast but if I’m honest I have been yearning for a bit of normality and, more importantly, a new challenge for a while now.

But don’t worry, I have not gone off to an airline but something much more interesting and in keeping with my flying experience. I did flirt with the idea but I have lost count now of the number of seasoned airline folk I have met who have all tried to put me off the idea for one reason or another! The main thing for me however is I will be able to come back home to the UK now. This will allow me to establish that more normal life I have been yearning for whilst still doing some interesting and challenging flying. I will also be able to get back into the UK GA scene and of course do more warbird flying with the Catalina. And as an added bonus, it will be nice to have passengers who wear a few more items of clothing!

The Future

I will be combining this blog with my personal website https://mattdearden.co.uk to continue to keep a diary of my adventures so don’t worry, I’m not going to abandon it. I’ll also continue to write my column for Flyer Magazine for the foreseeable future and I might even get roped into giving a seminar or two on my adventures, so keep an eye out for that(!) In the mean time however, I will stay active on Twitter and Facebook and bring you my last few weeks of flying in the world’s last frontier here in Papua, Indonesia.

Flying Statistics for 2015:

Total hours flown: 453 hours
Number of flights: 935 flights
Total distance flown: 41,137nm
Total take-offs/landings: 938
Total water alightings: 16
Number of unique airstrips visited: 93
Number of new airstrips to me: 50

As you can see from the above Google Earth image of all my flights for 2015, the two places I flew from the most were Timika and Wamena. Sadly we didn’t operate a Porter from my old base of Nabire at all this year however the challenges of flying from Wamena made up for the loss of Nabire. As for what next year will bring, who knows!

Top photos/moments of 2015

January

The year started with me moving from my old base of Nabire up to the highlands of Wamena at 5000ft where I spent a few weeks flying into so many new airstrips I can barely remember them all! A definite highlight was the nearly 30% up-slope of Bangga airstrip.

February

The flying from Wamena continued into February where I started to consolidate my training and fly into the more challenging airstrips. Salema was a regular flight which was great being only 20 minutes from Wamena and offering a short, steep and challenging airstrip to perfect landing on.

March

Some charters out of Nabire took me back there briefly but it wasn’t the flying that was the highlight. That crown was taken by two trips to see the giant whale sharks native to the waters off the coast of Nabire. An experience I’ll never forget!

April

With a brief return to Timika to cover the pilot shortage there, I was back in Wamena and continuing the flying into the more challenging airstrips there. However, it was this month that I bit the bullet and made my biggest purchase to date, a share in a Consolidated PBY-5A Catalina based in the UK.

May

Having made the purchase of the Catalina share and spent the previous month studying all the ground school requirements, it was time to learn to fly Miss Pick Up from the historic Duxford airfield in Cambridge, UK. What an amazing aircraft and no regrets at all with buying a share in her and all the wonderful people involved with keeping her flying.

June

This was to be my first ever airshow and by a large coincidence it was also near my home town in Somerset. The Weston-Super-Mare airshow was amazing fun and it was great to be able to fly my father from Duxford to my old training airfield, Bristol International Airport. As far as I know, I’m still the first ever pilot to land a Catalina there (let me know if you know otherwise?)

July

I have always known that aircraft are a lifeline for the people of Papua but it wasn’t until we started to suffer the affects of the prolonged El Niño phenomenon and the lack of rain it was causing that I realised just how vital aircraft are. The people of the highland villages of Agadugume and Kwijawagi were suffering the most because all their crops had failed causing a severe food shortage leading to diseases and deaths. I was incredibly humbled by the welcome I received by being the first pilot to start flying the aid into their villages. This job is about so much more than simply flying aircraft.

August

This was probably the lowest point of the year for me as things were not going that well aviation wise in Indonesia. The local currency had devalued massively (and continues to do so), especially against the US dollar which was having an affect on all aviation activities that are naturally tied to the US dollar. It forced me to seriously think about my career and what is best for it. And for now, I’m pleased to say it’s bush flying!

September

One of the many reasons for getting involved with the Catalina was because, aside from being a warbird, she’s also a flying boat and operating an aircraft on water was an itch I have been wanting to scratch for a  long time. So off I went to Biscarrosse lake in Bordeaux, France to learn all about operating a WWII flying boat on the water and to gain my commercial seaplane rating for her. It was one of the most fun week’s of flying I’ve had. The trouble now is I want to do more seaplane flying but I’ve not figured out how to convince my boss the Porter needs floats yet..

October

Having purchased a DJI Phantom 3 Advanced drone, I started to put it to good use by capturing some amazing photos of the airstrips in Papua from angles never before seen. I’m sure there’ll be plenty more to come over the next year so watch this space!

November

After a bit of a hiatus from the blog over the previous few months, I began to reflect on things in Papua and whether I really wanted to continue out here. 6 years is a long time to be anywhere but I’ve still not found anything better to do, so figured whilst I’m still enjoying the flying I’ll keep at it for now. And with airstrips like Wipon (pictured below), it’s hard to stop this kind of flying!

December

By far the biggest highlight was being the first ever aircraft to land on the brand new airstrip at Liligan. Whilst I have been to many airstrips new to myself, this was the first time I had been the very first aircraft into somewhere and I was taken back by the celebrations of the local people who were singing and chanting whilst dancing in circles around the aircraft. Such an amazing privilege!

Looking back it has been a pretty amazing year really and despite the lows, there have been some amazing highs and I can’t think of anything else I would rather be doing right now. So with that, may I wish all my readers a very Happy New Year and I can’t wait to see what 2016 brings!

I am slowly getting the hang of it now and I am loving the new angles it is allowing me to get photos from. I am also shooting a fair bit of video too, so expect some of that to feature in my upcoming short film. In the mean time, here’s some photos and a few words to go with some them. Enjoy!

The Phantom 3 climbs at an amazing rate and is able to shoot directly downwards giving some rather unique views of the world below. I reckon this view shows just how simple the Porter’s design is with its tapering nose and tail along with straight, slab wings. Simple but effective.

Now this view gives you an impression of quite how steep some of the airstrips are here in Papua. Whilst the camera has made it look steeper than in reality, the view from the cockpit as you roll over the edge for take-off is pretty similar and certainly gets the old heart pumping!

Mapnduma has never looked that challenging before but hopefully this view shows its 400m of flat, slippery airstrip in a new light. When wet and with a bit of a tailwind this can be quite a tricky airstrip to land on and keep the aircraft in the centre before stopping before the end.

Always a dramatic looking airstrip, perched as it is on a 6500ft high ridge, I love this view of Tsinga. I might try a few more angles next time I am up there and try to get Puncak Jaya mountain in the background too.

Finally a view of Kilmit showing the departure path. As you can see, in order to take-off from here you need to make an immediate left turn and follow the river along the valley floor as you climb out of it. Oh and it’s only 300m long. I’m not sure the passengers enjoy it as much as I do however!

I was expecting the local people of Papua to be rather freaked out by a remote controlled flying machine buzzing about their villages but I guess when you show up in a much larger flying machine, a tiny drone isn’t as freaky as you might expect. Mostly the locals seem to really enjoy it and the kids love chasing it around (until it chases them back!).

The colours of the morning sunshine really show up beautifully on the Phantom’s camera. This is straight from it without any tweaking other than to resize for this blog. Awesome!

Of course it is not all about crazy airstrips. There are plenty of other fun things to take photos of here in Papua. This is the bridge that links the village of Jila with their airstrip. The chap standing next to me said the bridge should only be used one at a time; and then joined me on the bridge..

King of the hill – the Porter sits atop the 18% slope of Doufu airstrip in the northern flat lands of Papua. Taking a photo from below or at the same level as the top of a slope really give you an idea of the steepness.

Ok I’ve already posted this last one on social media to much discussion. Yes the top part of the airstrip at Wipon is steep but perhaps this angle exaggerates it a bit. I have yet to measure it but it is probably around 23% or so whilst the whole length averages around 17-18%. That is still pretty steep however and makes for a pretty short take-off roll, even at 8000ft.

The last five months or so since I stopped updating the blog have been rather testing on the work front, so I am going to come clean and let you in on a bit of a secret. I have been doing a lot of soul searching lately about what I do and where I want to go with my aviation career which has required me to ask some pretty big questions of myself. I suppose I have been suffering with a bit of an aviation mid-life crisis, only I am not about to rush out and buy a Porsche (well not just yet anyway, the Catalina kind of ate into that plan!)

It is no secret that things out in Indonesia are not quite a rosy as they once where. The local currency has been devaluing massively over this year, especially against the US dollar which is having an affect on all aviation activities that are naturally tied to the US dollar. I won’t bore you with the details but basically it has forced me to seriously think about my career and what is best for it. Aviation has never and will never be a stable career to have so you do need to have backup plans in-case things turn pear shaped.

The good news, for now at least, is I plan to stay out here in Papua flying the Pilatus Porter. I have looked at various career options, applied to many and even interviewed for one but at the moment I just can’t walk away from a job, which despite numerous and increasing downsides, is still enjoyable and rewarding. If you have been following my Twitter and Facebook feeds, I’m sure you’ll have seen some of my latest photos which I think speak for themselves as to the pleasures bush flying offers over pretty much any other aviation career:

So there’s no need to panic just yet, I plan to keep bush flying for now! I will continue to post plenty of photos on Instagram and the other social networks, continue with my column for Flyer Magazine, work on another video and of course update the blog more regularly. My final thought for the day is: if you are enjoying what you do, why stop doing it? Keep enjoying it until either it stops being enjoyable or something even more enjoyable comes along.

Happy landings!

Sadly not long after my last update from Nabire, the flying dried up and I sat about for a couple of weeks on standby until I could be relieved by another pilot. This at least allowed me to hop over to our Timika base where things are ticking along nicely with two aircraft flying at least four flights into the mountains a day. It was bliss!

I’d almost forgotten what it was like to do a full day’s work with those 5:30am departures as the sun rises up over the mountains. It was last November that I was in Timika enjoying those sun rises, over five months ago! As well as all the usual Government subsidised flying (Perintis routes) we go to from Timika, there’s now a new route to Duma which is a mere 18 minutes flying from Timika. I’ve been there many times from Nabire as we often had charters to fly cargo from the mountain town of Enarotali into the village of Duma.

Duma is one of those fun little airstrips (around 320m long) located in a dead-end valley at around 4400ft elevation with a nice little 10% up-slope. No problem for a Porter although pigs and weather tend to be the main hazards to watch out for. Being in a dramatic valley with towering peaks to the north, the wind does get whipped up the valley bringing with it cloud and rain as the air is pushed up against the mountains. Thus Duma is always scheduled for early morning; although not too early as it’s often foggy first thing.

For the last week or so I’ve been lucky to be back up in Wamena. Whilst there has not been that much flying from here, there’s been just enough to get me out of bed each morning and keep me busy. It’s considerably more rainy compared to last month which has made it a little more tricky negotiating the clouds and mountains to get to where I’m going. It’s also meant the airstrips have been a little more slippery making for some slightly more exciting landings.

Whilst I was away from Wamena, a second BAE ATP managed to land and skid off the runway following a rather unstable approach in crappy weather. There’s a full report on The Aviation Herald here which makes for interesting reading. It certainly makes those commercial flights we have to take to get into and out of Wamena from Sentani that little bit more nerve wracking. As a pilot there’s nothing worse than being a passenger going to somewhere you fly into regularly.

But what am I doing here you might ask? Well, it’s with much sadness I have to announce that our Nabire base (my usual home) has been closed due to a lack of flying from there. It’s a little more complex than I can go into on this blog but suffice to say for the foreseeable future, I won’t be flying from Nabire any more. Hopefully that will change but who knows. In the meantime, I’m now set to fly from our most challenging base, Wamena. But not before I’ve had a bit more training to get familiar with the area. Just look at this shot from the Garmin G950 screen of the area to the south west of Wamena:

As you can see there’s quite a few landing sites out here. And it’s the same to the south-east and to the north. Basically, there are a lot of airstrips within a 50nm radius of Wamena and most of them are only accessible with a STOL (Short Take-Off and Landing) aircraft such as the Porter. As anyone who knows me will know, I love going to new places so the last week has been some of the best flying I’ve ever done, going to over 20 or so new airstrips with my route check pilot, Brandt Gillard (he wanted me to mention him by the way, so there you go chap you’re on my blog now!).

For anyone who follows me on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram (if not why not?), you’ll have already seen some of these photos of the fun looking airstrips I’ve been landing on during my training over the past week. Hopefully I’ll get to take plenty more of these sorts of photos and even get the Garmin VIRB action camera out now that I’ve been released to fly on my own. Sorry about that mum but there’s going to be plenty more photos and videos of scary looking runways – perhaps get dad to vet them before you look…

My training over the last week has mostly been focused on getting familiar with the area. Wamana airport is incredibly busy with flights coming and going every few minutes, so it’s vital to get to grips with the various joining reporting points surrounding the airport to avoid a close call with a another aircraft. And we’re not talking just bush planes either; there’s a number of 737s operating into the 2000m long runway too (imagine that with such a big jet!). You’ve only got to have a look at the accident statistics to see how hazardous Wamena is thanks mostly to the fickle mountain weather (it’s at 5100ft elevation remember).

I’ve really enjoyed flying with Brandt over the last week and it’s been great to get input on my flying from someone more experienced than myself. As someone once said to me, the moment you think you know everything out here in Papua is the moment you kill yourself. So I’m always happy to accept input from anyone with a better idea on how to do something I either thought I knew or was struggling with.

Aside from the flying, Wamena is surrounded by mountains and small Papuan villages, and so there’s lots of walking trails which are perfect for mountain biking and combined with the elevation changes make this a bit of a revelation compared with Timika and Nabire which are relatively flat by comparison. In-fact, after flying I’ve been spending quite a bit of time exploring the surrounding hillsides for fun looking trails. If you’ve on Strava, you can see my explorations here.

As for the future, hopefully I can spend more time up here in Wamana as the flying is incredible and varied but as always in my job, I’m never sure where I’ll be from one week to another. Fingers crossed!