The team at Aeromotores Guatemala (foto: )
3rd and 4th July : Guatemala City
Great strides were made at the workshop of Aeromotores to repair a leaking fuel line and making a few more general checks. The engine is running beautifully. Claudio Senior and Claudio Junior took great care and offered their work free of charge. I had already worked with them before on the flight round the Americas with the Saratoga, so we are old friends. The Guatemalans find my aircraft registration, PT-ZAM, hilarious. Patzam is a common indigenous family name!
In the evening, I made a brief presentation of the Ximango and the project at the Aeroclub de Guatemala, where Victorinox had organized a well-attended reception. Eugenio and Carmen Schwendener had given me a tremendous welcome and chaperoned me for my entire stay in this captivating country.
Fourth of July dawned a stunning day. A strong north wind produced incredible conditions for soaring over the volcanoes. This wind was unusual, caused by a depression just east of Guatemala. It was the best flying I have ever done. It was turbulent climbing in the valley, after taking off from the airport, which, incidentally, lies at 5000 ft. A Cessna 180 accompanied me to take pictures of the Ximango with the volcanoes in the background. Afterwards, I returned to Fogo and Acatenango volcanoes. As I leveled off at about 9,000 ft, I encountered fantastic thermals and immediately switched off the engine. I climbed like I have never done before, registering 1500 ft per minute and soon finding myself at 16000 ft. Tremendous! But I was too high to take photos of the volcanoes and came back down. The whole scene was so stunning that I stayed filming and circling the volcanoes for two hours, and could happily have stayed all day.
On one passage over the top of Fogo volcano, I got one hell of a fright when sucked towards the crater by a sudden downdraught. I immediately turned towards the valley, switched the engine on in a flash (I had it prepared for start up, with magnetos on, so all I had to do was to change the pitch on the prop from feathered to climb, and press the start button). At that altitude, the engine cannot beat the downdraught, but it surely slows the fall. Soon enough, I found some more up-draughts and was able to cut engine again. To return to base, I just pointed the nose at it. From 12,000 ft, it was no problem to cover the 35 nm to reach La Aurora airport at 5000 ft, and I only switched the engine back on again on approach.
Este texto foi escrito por: Margi Moss
Last modified: julho 3, 2001
