QUESTION:
What has been your most difficult and most enthralling mission as 
pilot of the KAO?

ANSWER from Terry Rager on October 26, 1995:
For the flight crew, the mission on the Kuiper is usually fairly routine. Like
I said on the broadcast many times, the most difficult part is staying awake 
on the long late night flights.

The most demanding flights are "occultations" which require the telescope to
be at a specific spot on the Earth at at a specific time and many times the
scientists are still trying to fine tune the desired location even after
takeoff. The astronomer is looking at an event that may only be lasting 2
minutes, so "timing is everything."

The most difficult was one that Allan McCrary, the other pilot on the
broadcast, flew in 1993. He took off from Punta Arenas, Chile for a 10 hour
flight and still did not know  exactly where the airplane was to go. They flew
for 5 hours over the Atlantic Ocean before they reached the exact spot and
observed the occultation. The problem he now faced was there was not enough
fuel to return to Chile. In the middle of the night he had to find somewhere
to land, refuel the airplane and takeoff again for Chile.  Not all countries
use the same rules for coming and going so he was extremely busy trying to
contact the right people and get the diplomatic clearances to land at Buenos
Aries, Argentina. When all was done the entire flight took nearly 24 hours and
a lot of very tired people.

As you can see, the hardest part of any flight is the planning and the less
planning you can do prior to the flight, it becomes much more difficult to do
in the air.

Thanks for the question!!!

Terry Rager, Project Pilot, KAO