Confessions of an International Ferry Pilot in the 1980's.
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- Опубликовано: 14 май 2024
- Interview with Greg Cotton, an international ferry pilot for Orient Air with over 90 ocean crossings and a million stories.
If you'd like to read my best selling memoir about my time as an international ferry pilot, check out "Ferry Pilot" and "Dangerous Flights"
Signed copies available at kerrymccauley.com/
Or on Amazon. www.amazon.com/Ferry-Pilot-Li...
Back in the day GPS meant Good Piloting Skills. Hats off to you gentlemen.
Thanks 👍
nice!
I flew for Peter Goldstern in 1978 and he used celestial navigation with a sextant and HP calculator. We flew in loose formation. He later went down in the North Atlantic in a new Mooney 201 in the middle of winter and was in the water 8 hours with only the wet suit, no raft. He was picked up by a Russian weather ship and had to stay on it 3 or 4 months. Great stories, thanks.
Was that HP a Reverse Polish Notation (a real type of calculator) for great circle routes without the actual aircraft instruments?
@@joedemers5480 HP-29C programmable scientific calculator that held the celestial tables for taking sightings with a sextant.
Great podcast PLEASE get your audio under control!
I got my pilot's license in college many years ago. I haven't flown as PIC in decades. Just finished your book "Ferry Pilot" It's fun living vicariously through Kerry's stories. Reading page by page you feel like you're right next to him in the copilot seat. I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book.
Glad you enjoyed it!
So much respect for you guys who really were the Mavericks of the Ferry Pilots.
That Nairobi flight story is absolutely nuts. Respect😮
that was awesome, i could have listened to you guys for hours and hours.
Glad you enjoyed it!
@@KerryDMcCauley Hope that there a more videos like this....very interesting.
Jerry
Greg is my father's cousin; we took a road trip from Minnesota to North Carolina to retrieve a boat and it was like a 40-hour version of this podcast in my truck.
a testimate to the quality of your entertaining skills is that I've finished this episode twice over despite the mildly annoying audio issues. Please keep this going and keep up the quality and KEEP IT CONSISTENT
Sorry about the audio but my old pilot ears didn't pick it up until someone told me about it!
@@KerryDMcCauley No worries my friend, it's the first episode and it was excellent besides that minor gripe. Looking forward to episode two!
More of this! Really great!
Awesome stories! Thank you both.
Excellent work! Looking forward to more of these stories.
Very interesting any time you get to listen to guys that have been around the block in any profession
I can listen to this for hours. Great stories.
Thanks for the interview! It was very interesting
great stories!! Thanks for sharing this conversation with us.
Incredible stories and a lot of knowledge and experience. Thank you for sharing! Excellent and unique content. Love it!
Exciting tales. Retired after 47 years of professional flying and I can relate to the stories. There are some of my own that make me cringe when I recall the scary ones.
Absolutely amazing!
Loved your video! brings back memories: my first one was St John / Santa Maria in a C172, in 1990.
Tampax and double ziplocs for number one, never even though of number two. Keep the stories coming please!
That was a great yarn. Thank you.
wow, more of these stories please!!! Couldn't put your book down when I got it, now can't stop listening to these. If I ever pull out a credit card to scrape something with it (my MacGyver tool), it can now never be the same 🤣
Great stories, thanks!
Love the pod cast !!!!!
well I imagine that I found this channel via my interest in the freight dog channel but boy if that's your first pod cast I can't wait for more.
Great show! Flew cancelled checks in repo airplanes in the 80s so know the feeling.
loved it!
My first comment on RUclips ever: I owned Pete’s Cessna 210 N24K for a time. Just happened to stumble across this video. I see his twin is painted the same way as his 210 was.
I flew 24K a lot!
@@KerryDMcCauley Good airplane except for that damn old cessna hydraulic system. :-)
Read your book Kerry. Amazing read. Glad you’re still with us!
Thanks! super stories!
It’s kind of crazy: you guys became great pilots by being thrown in the deep end, but it was wildly irresponsible of your boss.
Well Pete was in over his head as we were, we just didn't know it at the time. We were all in on that stuff. After that I got a "safe" job and spent 25 years flying night freight in singe engine Caravans. Great times!
got your book from you around a year ago, was an awesome read and really increased my passion for flying
Awesome, thank you!
Having spent time on the ground in Gabon and Ivory Coast ( and Lagos) as a contract engineer for the aircraft companies, your stories ring true !! Loved the tales of deepest darkest Africa!! Jambo … J
Flying those 6 pack days. Never ferried, but certainly can’t wait for more…. Keep the cast going please
This was a great interview to watch. Thank you.
Glad you enjoyed it!
Wild! Fascinating; thank you!
Glad you enjoyed it
Awesome, keep up the great content!
Thanks! Will do!
Thank you gentlemen for a most enjoyable listen!
Thanks for listening
Fantastic Video. Thank you gentleman.
Glad you enjoyed it
Great stories glad to see your still here!!!
stay tuned, I've got a lot more coming!
Ocean Flying by Louise Sanchi very good read as well….and a remarkable woman & Pilot. Did a lot of ferry flying for a busy Chicagoland airport. Picked up the last Cessna 210 made as well as flew the last 310 built. Interesting flying for a C-150 instructor which I was at the time.
👍✅ Great stories Kerry and Greg, tks for doing this video and hope there are more to come!
Oh yes, we have lots more!
@@KerryDMcCauley 👍✅👏👏👏 Can't wait!
Very entertaining! I love hearing all your experiences flying all over the world.
Glad you enjoyed it! More to come. I just posted the video about my first solo flight across the North Atlantic.
Just bought your book too.
excellent - thank you - I know a great deal about the early distance record pilots like Alan Cobham, Alex Henshaw and Amy Johnson but your channel has introduced me to a different group of aviation pioneers - thanks.
Thanks for listening
these stories sound very familiar to truck ferrying , from europe to the middle east in the eigties , they gave you a truck or crane etc. pretty overloaded with all kinds of spares and a tight bag of money , and no papers , insurance , carnets (or all fake) ..... always ready to jump and leave the rig . it did make me rich in stories 😂
NGL, I watched your story about the ferry flight with the unpressurized fuel tank and was captivated. Then I see your title and you instantly came to mind so I clicked. So glad to have found this! Thanks for sharing!
Welcome aboard!
Amazing you guys lived through all of this. You should do a video on orient air and Pete.
Great suggestion!
Good stuff. The days before GPS were certainly a shedload more interesting than post GPS. 'Navigation' as an art became non existent. DME homing was a real procedural thing with The Australian DMEAs. Not legal, in terms of an Instrument procedure, with the DMEI version but quite ok practically. Note change of DME distance in 36 seconds x 100. So if you went 1.8nm in 36 seconds that was 180kts. You just bracketed your headings back and forth until you got max closure then held that heading until over the top of the DME (within 2nm) then flew headings and time intervals and a procedure turn in the middle and down to the minima - no azimuth aid required.
The 1 in 60 rule saved my life one night over the Coral Sea, late 80s, en route Port Moresby-Honiara in a Beechcraft Queenair. Flight Service gave me the wrong winds aloft so my heading was wrong. Half way between Gurney and Gizo I was expecting to be able to do a 'running fix' on Minima NDB but we never heard it....we were out of range WAY left of track. That nagging feeling in the back of my neck suddenly materialised into clarity and I snatched up the flight plan and looked at the winds I had applied to my track. Basically NW/15kts - at that time of year it should have been more like SE/15kts. A quick DED reckoning 1 in 60 and with a deep breath I turned about 40 degrees right and tuned in the Gizo NDB. An hour later I'm approaching a line of thunderstorms with my ADF needle just meandering in between pointing at lightening strikes. Punched through the line of cells (no RADAR) and, believe it or not, there is an island laying under a full moon with lights around the coastline and the ADF needle snaps to zero relative bearing and the Gizo ident bursts into my headset. I learned much later Gizo NDB published range and reality were two different things ;-)
A new pilot who joined the company THAT morning and had been sent with me (charter's requirement 2 pilots) - and up to that point had thought he was at the mercy of a raving lunatic - just looked out the windscreen at Gizo in the moonlight, then at me, then out the window.
Ahhh the good old days hahaha
Misima NDB
Great story! The good old days indeed. Love the Queen Air. Mine should be back in the air next week!
This video is a thousand times better than the rich boy videos flying their shiny new SP jet from Orlando to Houston. Or wherever
There 800 mile takes them.
Nice work.
Happy Landings,
Capt. Guido
Thanks Guido! Stay safe out buddy!
You too
A lot of ferry projects already on the list for 2024.
Please check out my RUclips channel, just uploaded another one.
Happy Landings,
Capt. Gudo
Read your book, loved it. One of my all time favourites
Glad you liked it!
What incredible heroes
If i had no clue what this was about, as soon as your guest started to speak I knew he was a pilot.
That was awesome!
Glad you liked it!
Good stuff!
This was fascinating and hilarious! Really enjoyed it, thank you! Would love to hear more! Any additional visuals you can add, the better! Illustrations would be awesome but too expensive. Stories like these don’t exist anymore. It’s valuable and entertaining! It’s a completely different world now, but these stories are not that old!
Glad you enjoyed it! I've got more to come.
good work
Considering getting a PPL and watching a lot of videos on mistakes and such. You guys pushed the edges so hard and came through in one piece. I’ve got to believe mad skills and natural pilots only explanation. I am an aerospace engineer and you guys definitely have the technical understanding that seems to count for a lot. Sad to see TNAFlygirl accident where wonderful gal but simply lacking in real understanding of fight mechanics and technology
I have seen a few ferry videos before, and it always seem to be an adventure in som way.
Thanks for the memories. I was part of that cadre during the 80’s and you’re right. Lots of weird places, lots of adventures, and I got arrested a couple of times. Not to mention the ferry pilot grapevine which were better than NOTAMS.
The kids these days have no idea what we went through!
We bloody well knew how to navigate! I remember when GPS began coming in. You’d time your flight to have the most satellites in view and avoid outages. The first time I flew the Atlantic with GPS it was like a miracle!
Great episode. I bet Greg has some great Bob Leaders stories.
Hello Kerry. My name is Slavik, I got a book from you, a very nice book easy to read. Too bad we didn't meet each other when we were young, you and I would be all over the world. I'm a pilot(Beginner) I only have an 820TT CPL-SEL-MEL-INST. I do some ferry flights around N.America. I would like to fly over the Atlantic to Europe, but I have no experience yet. Reading your book I thought to email you and give you an idea for making a ferry pilots manual. I'm talking about a book that can guide a low-experience pilot through. If you want we can talk about and I can give you a better picture.
Thank you for an awesome book. Happy New Year.
you guys must have had a CRAZY amount of fun... if your into that type of thing lol... great adventures
Those were the most amazing adventures I've ever had!
check the wires on your mic it sounds like ground static on the audio. love the videos though!!!
Thanks for the tip!
Kerry, you’re a pilot’s pilot, love your content. Please keep sharing your stories and insights.
this is great. love it. write books
I did. Both "Ferry Pilot" and "Dangerous Flights" are best sellers.www.amazon.com/s?k=ferry+pilot&crid=21YJ7EOKUNLB&sprefix=%2Caps%2C494&ref=nb_sb_ss_recent_1_0_recent
Those pilots have big one's that's for sure!
Always wanted to be a ferry pilot, but there is little to no demand in my country for one
I remember this guy from that TV show
Perhaps you've heard of Mark Lear. He was a guy who cut kind of a big brother figure for me in the 80s, and was proud that I joined the Army at 17. Mark waited for his draft notice in the late 60s by going for runs with a 2x4 held at Port Arms. Somehow, despite having the makings of a strac soldier, he ended up being recruited to do "other stuff" for Uncle Sam. He ferried new airplanes to Africa before I met him in the late 70s. He told me he got locked up for a few days somewhere there because he wore jump boots and the customs/MI guy said, "You military! You military!" He was also "acquainted" with a German (Mr Mertens?) former SS guy who owned gold mines in Mexico. Mark hated commies and this definitely made a lasting impression on me, haha! He ended up crashing his early 60s Piper Cherokee and dying (allegedly) in the mid 90s. I'm convinced he did more than ferry airplanes to Africa but whatever. I really miss the guy - he could build and/or fix anything, something that I aspire to do as well to this day.
We're lucky to have known legends like that. Not many left these days.
somebody tell me the editing to do to create that moving line which maps your route, like at the start of this video.
Great stories! How did you guys survive???
Knowledge of systems, never giving up, and a huge amount of luck!
Brilliant 😂😂
Had a ferry pilot for an instructor in the late 1990's and he had 11 engines fail him. He would ferry planes for people who were selling their plane, so the engines could be sketchy.
Yeah, single engine takeoff is not part of the ME curriculum for sure !
So interesting - remember you from Dangerous flights, which was great :) Is your daughter still flying as I seem to remember her bring in Dangerous flights as well? :)
Yes, Claire still flies some but not much lately. She skydives mostly these days.
Nothing wrong with people choosing to accept risk to themselves. Our society is built on taking risk. Theres no such thing as total personal safety. At home sitting on the couch is dangerous to your health.
I 100 percent agree. I and my fellow ferry pilots and skydivers just have a higher level of risk acceptance then most "normal" people.
Ferry pilots typically play by different rules than your airline pilot. Rest requirements etc, but they still want to walk away from each flight to see their family. As with any profession like this, not everyone will understand the risks they take out the ones they won't but will be eager to comment on it.
Great stories guys! I guess there are more, being associated with that Vector sitting on the chair...?
Oh yeah, I've got lots of jump stories too!
Great stories!! How can I get your book?? Thxs!
If you'd like a signed and dedicated copy you can email me at kerrymccauley@hotmail.com or visit kerrymccauley.com. They are also available on Amazon.
great video. btw. I belive you can get rid of that static sounds using some online web AI filter. It helped me in similar matters. Than reaupload clean version. If you like.
Cool, thanks
Maybe explain what a ferry pilot is/does?? I initially thought you captained a large ferry between ocean ports….
We deliver the airplanes to new owners around the world. Watch the video about my first solo North Atlantic crossing.
VMC/IMC. Tada!
you flyboys may call it compass and clock 70's seamen call it dead reckoning x
How many hours did it take in the 206 from Bangor to Ireland?
Never did that. Always stopped in Stt. John's Newfoundland. From there it's about 13 hours.
Whatbis the hiss in the sound
There’s some sort of distracting sound interfering, some sort of electronic interference?
jesus... talk about wild west of aviation
Seems like you would start off with a brief description of exactly what a ferry pilot does because 5 mins in I still have no idea what you guys haul
You're probably right. If you didn't figure it out we deliver new and used aircraft all over the world.
Ferry flying? how does that work? a ferry goes on the water?
👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍
Who is Pete?
Pete Demos was the owner of Orient Air. I have a video that will explain more coming soon.
Readability is 1, guys
Is the earth flat?
Nope, I checked when I flew around the world 8 years ago!
Terrible audio