It was the northern summer of 1979 that I found myself in San Antonio, Texas, on assignment from Stillwell Aviation of Australia. Stillwell had hired me from New Zealand one week before; gave me a quick tour of the company headquarters at Essendon airport in Melbourne, and an air ticket from Sydney to San Antonio. My first mission was to get checked out on the Swearingen SA226-AT Merlin 4A aircraft by the FlightSafety training facility at San Antonio airport.

Then, on the completion of my training, the next task was to supervise and assist Royal Thai Air Force [RTAF] pilots during their training on the same aircraft at FlightSafety. Stillwell's, as the Australasian distributer for Swearingen Aviation Corporation, had sold three Merlin 4A's to the Thai Air Force that would be delivered to Thailand during the next few months. Those deliveries, from San Antonio to Bangkok, would be my third and last task before settling into my new home, and office, in downtown Singapore.

The Merlin 4A’s ordered by the Royal Thai Air Force were equipped to be photo-recce airplanes that included both conventional cameras and infra-red sensors. In addition to standard avionics, they were fitted with UHF comms, TACAN, military IFF, SSB HF and the Norton Omega ONS VII LRN System. As a Vietnam era military pilot [Lockheed C130's], I felt very much at home in these planes ... which I suspect was one of the reasons Stillwell's hired me. Also, I had the recent track record of delivering a light airplane [Beechcraft Bonanza - single engine!] from North America to New Zealand on an eastbound flight across the Atlantic and beyond. With a few variations of en-route airfields in Europe and Asia, I continued to use the same routes, in particular across the Atlantic: from Newfoundland to Azores to Portugal. The longest over-water sector was from St. Johns to Santa Maria, a distance of just under 1,400 nm, a range that didn't require supplementary fuel tanks for any of the Swearingen airplanes, including the Metro 2. In later years I had the pleasure of delivering two Merlin 3B's, an airplane that possessed a better power-to-weight ratio than a P51D Mustang. Without extra tanking, the 3B had the range to fly direct from Newfoundland to Portugal, or to England.

On completion of the Thai Air Force delivery flights to Bangkok, and a brief layover at my new Singapore home, I was tasked with returning to San Antonio to take delivery of a Metro 2, ultimately destined for an Australian based commuter airline. In addition, this delivery flight was to include sales demonstrations in Guam, Philippines, Singapore, East Malaysia [Borneo] and Indonesia, before finally arriving in Australia. The airplane had been fitted with supplementary fuel tanks in the cabin, giving a safe flight endurance of 10-12 hours, enough range to cover the distance from San Francisco to Honolulu [2,200 nm]. Initially accompanied by another Stillwell pilot, John Flynn, we made it across the Pacific to Guam before a warranty problem [peeling paint], had us returning the airplane to San Antonio. John returned to Australia and I remained at San Antonio for the repaint to be completed, finally airborne again by mid December to complete the mission. And the drama continued: A turn-back to San Francisco en-route to Honolulu [fuselage icing and headwinds]; a diversion to Wake Island for a casevac to Guam on Christmas Day and finally to Singapore to have the extra fuel tanks removed. After that, it was out on the sales demonstration tour which ended with an engine shutdown [precautionary] between Bali and Darwin.

These first three delivery flights, with their associated dramas, set the stage for the next two years I was with Stillwell's. Nothing was easy and every flight was a challenge, in part because I was accepting these airplanes straight off the assembly line. No time for extensive shakedown flights, resulting in minor to major equipment failures en-route from San Antonio to Thailand and Australia.

Fortunately these airplanes were equipped with state of the art communication and navigation avionics. All had VLF/Omega Long Range Navigation units installed, making oceanic crossings easy, and safe. At the end of my tenure with Stillwell's, I'd accumulated 740 hours of flight time on Swearingen airplanes, much of it over-water: Atlantic, Pacific, Mediterranean, Persian Gulf, Indian and South China Sea.

I enjoyed all of the flying, mostly single pilot, with Stillwell's, but more significantly I enjoyed the freedom they allowed me during the delivery and demo flights. They were good years to be a professional pilot who knew what he was doing [just kidding!]

Copyright©2015 Peter Tremayne, Reno NV