COASTAL

UNDER AFRICAN SKIES
Air-to-air shoot of a PC12 over Tanzania, 2017

There are some emails that really make your day, for instance; ‘Is it okay if Pilatus sends you to Tanzania for a week to shoot some lovely photos of our PC12 against Mt Kilimanjaro?’ I do like ones like this.

Swiss aircraft manufacturer Pilatus Aircraft has been commissioning me to shoot material for their prestigious annual calendar since 2008. This large wall-hung calendar helps to promote their superb line of training, executive and general aircraft. The Tanzania request was to shoot material for their new 2017 calendar, with a brief to provide images of their PC12 aircraft in action through local operator Coastal Aviation. They fly all over East Africa, including generic locations in Tanzania such as Mt Kilimanjaro, Manyara, Serengeti, Norongoro Crater, Moshi, Kogatende, Mwanza, Zanzibar and many more. Based in Dar-es-Salaam, they have offices in Moshi and Arusha and operate four PC12’s. They pioneered the Scheduled ‘airborne Safari’, where you get the opportunity to fly in a light aircraft on an adventure anywhere in the big game parks. Prior to this, access to the parks was generally by four-wheel drive vehicle, which was very time consuming and costly. After contacting Giles Lauthier at Coastal about the logistics of the assignment, I found that I could fly direct to Dar-es-Salaam, then get a shuttle to meet Gilles at Moshi or Arusha. But after checking his timetable he emailed back saying that he had an empty aircraft stopping over in Kilimanjaro airport and suggested that I fly direct there, then we would both fly in the PC12 to Moshi. So that was settled, I would drive from my home near Toulouse to Barcelona, catch a flight with Ethiopean Airlines and fly via Addis Ababa direct to Kilimanjaro.

Arriving at ‘Kili’ I was met by Mark Mutiso, a Kenyan PC12 pilot from Coastal. We waited at the conveyer belt for my luggage, but it never came. In the meantime I watched my 787 take off, heading to Zanzibar, not knowing that my luggage was still on the flight! Luckily I always carry my camera and laptop with me, but the luggage had all my chargers, plus my all important flight harness. So after Mark made some calls to sort it all out, Ethiopean would courier it back to Moshi tomorrow. Okay all good, so onward to Moshi. As I was the only passenger in the PC12, Mark suggested that I take the right hand seat on the flight deck for the flight. I couldn’t help but notice the black and yellow tell-tale strap of a Nikon DSLR slung over his seat. You guessed it, Mark was a keen photographer, and offered to be my assistant on all the photoshoots. He often flew the routes we would be going on himself, but never from the open door of an aircraft, and never at 10’000 feet over the volcanoes.

At Moshi I meet with the rest of the Coastal crew for the first time. I am always wary of flying with unknown pilots, as they are of having an unknown photographer on board. So our unspoken concerns were whether we could all work together. From my perspective, I need to know if I trust them in the air, can they do tight formation flying, can they fly on a heading and keep it. From their point of view, they need to know that I am not going to jeopardize the flight in any way, throw up or do something stupid once in the air. In an A2A photoshoot there are two pilots, one to fly the subject/target aircraft and one to fly the cameraship. It’s not an easy thing to gain this trust. It’s not much good trying to look at their flying record, you need to look at how their employees act around them, talk to locals, passengers and fellow pilots, anybody to try and gauge reactions. Things can go wrong quickly in the air, I have no control and it can be seconds away from disaster. Since I have been doing this for a while now and encountered situations like this, I have found there is a moment where you know it will work, or a moment when you know it is wrong. So I have learnt to rely on my intuition, it’s not guaranteed, but it seems to work.

So I felt for sure that I was in good hands from the start with Coastal. Some people just ooze confidence and safety, French pilot Gilles Lauthier and his team at Coastal had these attributes. Later, the larger than life Kenyan pilot Joel Fernandes arrived with the Cessna Caravan camera-ship from Dar. From the moment I shook his hand, I knew again I knew that I could fly with these people. The crew at Moshi got to work and removed both cargo hatch panels, so as to give me an uninterrupted angle of view. This meant that facing aft I could shoot into my 7 O’Clock position (I’m on the left hand side of the Caravan) for great head-on shots, then repositioning and facing forward, leaning against the bulkhead I could get a 9 or 10 O’Clock tail end position shot of the subject ship before it got obscured by the Cessna’s large strut. But as an added benefit, they attached the airbrake-like wind baffle to the fuselage at the open door. This meant I could put my head into the slip-stream a bit but as it was, the view was superb so I rarely needed to get into the air stream.

Life always throws you a curved ball just when you think you have it all sorted out. Behind all the preparation, there was a problem, a small one for the pilots, but a huge one for a photographer who has to show his clients aircraft in a good light. The brief was to show the PC12 against the volcanoes, with the Serengeti and animals in shot below. The problem was there was a 3’000 foot cloud ceiling horizon to horizon, topping out at 8’000 feet. You could not see the volcano at all. The other constraint was that we had to go to Norongoro Crater the next day, then on to Lake Natron. So we had to get the shot today. We waited all afternoon to see what the cloud would do, meaning, would there be enough of a break to illuminate the volcano from its base to the peak, all 19’000 feet of it? If this was not possible we could still catch the sunset on the mountain, but it would be above the cloud tops at 8’000 feet. This meant only 11’000 feet of the mountain would be visible, would that be enough? So as the day wore on, we all kept looking at each other and at the clouds. But there was just this blanket of grey everywhere. Patches of blue sky always seems larger when you are desperately seeking them, so when we did see some blue sky everyone got their hopes up, but it turned out to be just a tiny patch and was quickly covered again. Gilles said ‘Well I guess there is only one way to find out, what do you think Jon?’ I figured there must be a sunset up there somewhere, as for sure it’s not down here, maybe it was illuminating the volcano? It had come to that point, there was nothing else we could do, we had to have a look.

So we powered up and took off into the grey, the lights of Moshi and Arusha slowly faded as the murk enveloped them. From the open cold cargo door of the Caravan, there was grey everywhere, twenty minutes later, bingo we were above it at 10,000 feet. The sun was a brilliant vivid orange with rays silhouetting the huge bulk of Kilimanjaro. Whew!, now only another 30 minutes to get to there. But wow the cold! it was getting really cold. Down the front I could see Joel staring through the cockpit with the grey circle of the prop in front of him, silhouetted by the sun. Mark was beside me also illuminated by the suns rays, he looked cold, but he was on the port side away from the freezing slipstream. I’ll close the door… oh yeah, there isn’t one! they took it off just for this shoot. So we made up songs about clouds and fiddled with our cameras as freezing photographers are wont to do at times like these. Then Joel asked if I could see the PC12, poking my head into the slipstream; ‘Yep, got it, 7 O’Clock and closing’. It looked so good above the clouds, the setting sun illuminating it from beneath, soon it was along side us.

As in all A2A photo shoots we had to take into account the differing speeds of each aircraft. The Caravan cruises at 213 knots and stalls at a snail-like 70 knots, whilst the sleeker and faster PC12 cruises at 528 knots but stalls earlier at 124 knots. So if I want the PC 12 to look clean at height, that is, no flaps and no undercarriage dangling, and do a few tight banks etc, it would need to be flying in the cruise at least, otherwise it will stall. And if we were not high enough for her to recover if she stalls, then…..

So what do we do? Someone suggested ‘how about we fly past you and you shoot us as we pass’. After having done that once in my early days of A2A, I vowed I would never do that again. It never works. We ALL HAVE to be at the same speed during the shoot. So even if the Caravan goes full blast, the PC12 will still have to use about 15 degrees of flap and a little bit nose-up, but that was okay. I knew that I had the option of removing the flaps in Photoshop, but I always figure that if we can get away without doing that, then all the better. So we had to make sure that the angles showed the PC12 with minimal flap showing, or in a landing or takeoff scenario where it is warranted.

At 10’000 feet beside a snow capped volcano, flying at 200 knots or more, with a wind chill factor far greater, it was bloody freezing. I had two pairs of jeans, two coats, gloves, two t-shirts, three socks, one pair of boots, and I still froze. Considering each sortie was about two hours of shooting time, plus thirty minutes to the site from Moshi and back again, it ended up being three hours in the air. I could hardly think, but we were getting the shots! The view was spell-binding, the volcano was massive, even at the 11,000 feet mark. Kili itself, plus the three peaks of Kibo, Mawenzi and Shira were all very visible and snow capped. The PC12 was so close that I could simply indicate with my hand if I wanted Gilles to bank, climb or lower the undercarriage, which was great as by now I could hardly talk due to the cold.

After we landed, I was constantly shivering for hours, as I had lost my core heat. I had never experienced this before, and I could not control it. I felt a real idiot for not anticipating this. But to be fair, after some research prior to going ‘Summer in Tanzania, it will be warm Jon, no problem’ a few ex pats at home had informed me. Maybe, but I bet they had never flown in an environment like this before! So back to the hotel in Arusha for an early start tomorrow to Manyara and the Serengeti. I edited and uploaded lowres files via DropBox to Pilatus who wanted to see the progress. Gilles had suggested we all meet up for a pizza at a local restaurant, which was great. The local Serengeti beer went down a treat, but I was still shaking inside even after 5 hours.

Early next morning I woke up shaking? It can’t still be the cold I thought? But the shaking got stronger, then the bed and the room started moving! Shit! it was an earthquake. I jumped out of bed, telegraph poles were swaying outside, with dust and smoke everywhere, then the sirens went off, but not much damage. Suddenly it was all over. In the silence afterwards, anticipating the typical second shake, I remember thinking how loud it all was. So an interesting start to the day I thought. Later I found out that there had only been three quakes in the last 30 years or so, and all had been prior to an eruption by the nearby 10,459 ft Ol Doinyo Lengai volcano (Oldonyo), which we would be flying around today. Mmmm! Well lets see.

We left Arusha and headed north to Manyara, by way of Oldonyo and Lake Natron for some low level shots. For most of the journey I was transfixed by the Massai Boma’s that dotted the dusty brown landscape with their distinct circular corrals. For miles beforehand, the horizon was dominated by the picture perfect outline of Oldonyo, there was just something about this volcano, it was a very clean cone rising out of a pitted, yellow and brown volcanic landscape. But thankfully there was no smoke! Maybe the quake was just a teaser, although there was a hint of Sulphur in the air! So maybe it won’t blow today I hope! We spent quite a bit of time circling the cone and the areas around it getting the right angles for the shots. The PC12 looked great at any angle with Oldonyo just behind it, silhouetted, head on, side on, it didn’t matter. So I shot some nice frames here. Mark was firing away as well, and even though it was still bloody cold, we barely noticed it. It’s only when the buzz is over, then you start to feel your environment.

Next it was on to the 57 kilometres long, multi coloured surfaced Lake Natron with its 2.5 million lesser flamingoes. It was mesmerizing to fly over this Salt and Soda based lake at low level. Its multi-coloured surface is the only regular breeding ground for the flamingoes.