Following a somewhat short but very rewarding career as a military and civilian helicopter pilot, at the age of 41 I experienced a debilitating depression which resulted in my medical grounding. I was subsequently diagnosed manic-depressive, medically discharged from the army, and forced to face a future without something which had been a major part of my life since the age of 13.
Whilst contemplating my seemingly non-existent options for a return to a workforce without flying, I began a project which had been in the back of my mind for some years and undertook the writing and publication of Rotor in the Green. Rotor... is an autobiography covering my life and flying career up to the time of my grounding.
I found the writing of my life experiences most therapeutic, as I was forced to address areas of my life which had hitherto been ignored as unimportant. Also, during the research phase of Rotor... two very important events happened in my life.
First I became a born-again Christian, and since this time I have never been more aware of the Lord working in my daily life, as He had always been. Even through my depressions, when life became seemingly too much to bear, He was there with me knowing that I had greater things to achieve in His name.
It was around this same time that I became aware of an organisation called Helimission, a non-denominational, Christian faith-missionary society which used helicopters in support of missionary work in third-world countries. While Helimission was based in Switzerland, much of its work was done in Africa.
Helimission's missionary pilots flew evangelistic and medical teams, along with supplies and equipment, into remote areas; transported construction materials for mission stations, hospitals, churches and schools; assisted in medical clinics and relief work; built landing strips for missionary aeroplanes; responded to emergencies, and ministered the Lord's Gospel at every opportunity.
I knew of aeroplane organisations which provided this kind of support worldwide, but I was totally unaware of the existence of similar work for helicopter pilots. Interestingly enough, among other things Helimission pilots were required to have a born-again experience. So with my newfound faith, I made a promise to the Lord that should I ever return to flying one day that I would devote part of my life to serving Him in the mission field.
The second important event which happened occurred six months after the Lord entered my life, when I was told there was no medical reason why a return to flying was not possible at some time in the future. Three years later I received a medical certificate allowing this goal to be realised.
In Rotor... the chapter on my spirituality is titled Soaring On Broken Wings. This was inspired by a book of the same name, and to me embraced both the earthly concept of having my wings broken through my medical grounding, and the spiritual of being able to soar once again, but this time with my Lord through my newfound faith.
I guess With Wings as Eagles had its beginnings long before Rotor... even went to print. For while I had still not been cleared to return to flying, I was confident that if this was what the Lord wanted for me then I knew that it would only be a matter of time. This sequel to Rotor... tells the story of how I did return to flying, but I was soon to learn that personal, selfish ambitions, count for nothing if the Lord has other plans for you.
The title came to me from a bookmark I have and it seemed so appropriate. For it speaks to me of the great strength and promise which awaits those who are prepared to place God first in their life.
"And the God of all grace… after you have suffered a little while, will himself restore you and make you strong, firm and steadfast."
1 Peter 5:10
I guess many people can identify a defining moment in their life, and I am no exception. Mine undoubtedly occurred following the death of a helicopter pilot colleague in the foothills of Mt Gilawe in the Western Highlands of Papua New Guinea in May 1999. In the wake of his demise, I took a stand in support of his grieving widow against an unscrupulous manager who tried to cheat her out of her full insurance entitlement.
In so doing I put my career on the line, and as a result my flying came to an abrupt end. I believe at that point, in standing up for what was right regardless of the consequences, I gave my life fully to God. I have never regretted that decision one bit, and have been rewarded abundantly ever since.
Some years ago I heard a visiting American evangelist say that many people wish they were anyone but themselves at times, especially when they are feeling low. They may wish they had someone elses good looks or someone elses personality, popularity, wealth or fame. I had often experienced many of these thoughts myself when I was in the depths of depression.
I have since come to the realisation that it is only through our weaknesses that we can become open to the experience of Christ working within us. The truth of the matter is that if each of us could wish we were perfect in every way, then there would be no need for God in our lives.
In Melbourne in 1994, around the time of my born-again experience, I attended a Healing Mass. At the end of the Mass I, like many others, went up to be prayed over. There were around six or seven lay people plus the priest praying over people as they queued before them. Simply by chance I was prayed over by a lady whose name I later learned was Kath, and who just happened to be the leader of the lay group. I was a total stranger to this woman; she only knew me by my first name and as the friend of one of the parishioners.
I had my eyes closed while Kath prayed over me, and when I opened them I saw her face streaming with tears and she said, “I can sense a great power in you, Ray. I feel the Lord is going to use you in some way. I can see that God will use everything you have been through, all the suffering and heartache will be used for His glory and you will show many the way to the Father.”
At the time I was overawed by the whole experience, that this well respected church leader should sense such big plans for me in the Lord's name. It is only now, with the benefit of hindsight, that I can see all she had said coming to fruition. Previously I was able to use my God-given skills as a rescue and medical pilot to save physical lives and help relieve suffering. But now I was being called upon to work at saving spiritual lives and to assist in the evangelisation of the unreached peoples of the world.
Following a broken marriage in 1999 I suffered much pain and guilt. As a result I initially experienced some difficulty in taking this “leap of faith” and daring to evangelise to others about what the Lord had to offer them in their own lives. I soon realised that God would prefer us to evangelise in our own brokenness, than for us not to evangelise at all.
Seeking the Lord at a time of trouble or sorrow is one thing, but praising His name and allowing Him to work through us for the good of others in the good times is quite another. In 1996 I took part in a Cursillo weekend in the ranges to the northwest of Townsville. The goal of the Cursillo Movement is to remake the world in Christ. At the end of the weekend we were asked to sum up our feelings and, while I am not one to whom these things come easily, I felt truly inspired as I wrote:
God likens us to eagles, indeed God likens Himself to one. The Bible is filled with references to eagles, and mention is made of them some thirty-three times. What manner of bird, therefore, can this eagle be that the King of Kings and Lord of Lords would liken Himself to one?
The eagle threads the path of the upper air in a manner eclipsed by no other bird. No other bird so perfectly combines grandeur and power with surpassing grace of flight. Like the Lord the eagle's virtues include strength, power, majesty, boldness, dependability, courage, tenderness and faithfulness. The eagle fears neither man, beast or the elements, neither does he beg for bread. God created this magnificent bird as King of the sky.
A baby eagle is born with all the latent potential to make it king of the sky - to soar and glide through life with power, strength and majesty. There is just one problem... the eagle doesn't know it! The baby eagle has to be taught to be an eagle, it has to be taught who it is, what it possesses, and it even has to be taught how to fly.
We too are born into the kingdom of God with all the power and authority given to us in Jesus' name, but many perish because they have never been taught who they are or what they possess, and to have faith enough to leave the safety and security of the nest. Before attempting flight the eagle bounds around the nest, jumping and flapping vigorously and hopping to nearby ledges and branches. They are at first ungainly and clumsy in their early attempts to stand. Their huge wingspan is designed for flight and requires considerable effort to master and control while earth bound.
The Bible has a lot to say about standing; we, like the eagle, need to learn to stand before we can turn our attention to soaring. God works through people, people like you and me. God wants us to learn to fly, He wants us to spread our wings of faith and learn to step out on His Word.
Can you imagine full-grown eagles, with all the potential to soar and wheel through the sky, but yet never leaving the nest? Spending all their days confined to that little patch of twigs and leaves, never using those magnificent and powerful wings. Why? Because they were never taught to fly!
Many Christians have known and loved the Lord all their lives, yet have never stepped out of the nest and learned to fly in the spiritual realm. They have never learned to soar aloft on the Word of God, never wheeled into the world of the spiritual to merge and entwine themselves with their Heavenly Father.
Many are content with the knowledge that they have eternal life and never go on with God. Some churches have been so bound in tradition and sheer "religiosity” that the Holy Spirit is stifled. What the world desperately needs are people (Eagle Christians) who will take God at His Word and “soar to new heights”, borne aloft by the very Spirit of God.
Oh Lord lift us up With Wings as Eagles to where we truly belong - where the eagle's fly.
*With thanks to Col Stringer, author of On Eagles Wings - a Graphic Account of How God Likens Us to Eagles. Published by Col Stringer Ministries Inc.
A Taste of Things to Come
The fax from Helimission came as a complete surprise that morning in March 1998. While daughters Michelle and Christine were twenty and seventeen respectively, my youngest, Damian, was only thirteen years old at the time and I had not planned to get involved in missionary work until he was at least eighteen. Yet there it was in black and white - “…would you be available to assist our pilot while in transit to Irian Jaya?”
Only a matter of days earlier Helimission had received the official go-ahead to a request from the Vice-Governor of Irian Jaya to make a helicopter and crew available for transportation needs associated with famine relief work in that country. The famine in Irian Jaya, to Australia’s immediate north, was caused by an El Nino induced drought which had spread fires claiming at least 400,000 hectares of forest, and was the worst in Indonesia in fifty years. Helimission’s intention was to airfreight the helicopter, a Bell 206 Longranger, from Switzerland to Sydney. There it would be re-assembled and flown up the east coast of Australia to Horn Island then across Torres Strait to Irian Jaya in Indonesia.
While German Helimission pilot Johannes Rehm, who was also a mechanic, would be responsible for putting the aircraft back together, my job was to assist him with the re-assembly of the aircraft then to help him negotiate the Australian airspace and radio procedures enroute to Irian Jaya. The trip offered me the opportunity to be exposed to new Australian airways procedures, which had changed significantly since I had last flown seven years before.
In July 1991 I was grounded from flying due to a diagnosis of bipolar affective disorder, or manic-depression, and placed on a life-long course of the mood stabilising drug Lithium. Three years later I learned that my condition and consequent medication was no impediment to returning to flying one day. I pursued this with great vigour, and a further three years later, and following six months of physical and psychological testing and evaluation, I finally regained my aircrew medical certificate in November 1997.
I then sent numerous resumes seeking work throughout Australia as well as Papua New Guinea and the oil fields of the Middle East. Over time I began to feel uneasy at not receiving any feedback. While I didn't expect a job to simply fall into my lap, especially without any recent flying experience, what I was really concerned about was any possible negative reaction to my diagnosed condition.
Rotor in the Green had been out for over a year by then and I knew that it had infiltrated the helicopter fraternity in Australia. So to me it seemed that while it was one thing to read about a pilot’s mental condition, it was another to want to employ or fly with him. I resolved this dilemma by acknowledging to myself the fact that I had at least been honest and up front about my condition, and that it was the Civil Aviation Safety Authority which had re-issued my medical certificate, a consideration not to be taken lightly.
There was only one person I did not need to convince that I was at last back on track and ready to fulfil my promise to undertake missionary work. God was right there with me all along, and now He was about to give me a taste of what could be in store for me.
I readily accepted Helimission’s offer to be involved in their project and by virtue of that acceptance I became their Australian “leg on the ground”. Over the next couple of weeks I set about organising the multitude of things which needed to be done, many of which could only be achieved through local knowledge. One of the first things I did was to obtain an Indonesian visa application form and submit it to the consulate in Sydney.
I was able to organise hangar space with a hoist at Sydney's Mascot Airport, and ground handling wheels to move the helicopter once it was assembled. All requests, handled initially by phone, had to be followed up in writing on behalf of Helimission. Initial contact was made with the shipping agent to help co-ordinate the arrival of the helicopter then its customs clearance and subsequent transport to the hangar for re-assembly. Once the ultimate purpose of the helicopter and the trip it was undertaking was explained I found people were more than happy to offer their services or equipment, often free of charge. Where this was not possible a nominal fee normally sufficed. It felt good to be associated with such a worthwhile cause.
From my contacts at the Army's 5th Aviation Regiment in Townsville where I had flown Blackhawk helicopters for two years I managed to get hold of some maps of the area of operations in Irian Jaya. I also purchased goods to make up a survival kit for the aircraft when operating in this remote area. The expense of purchasing a life raft for a “one-off” crossing of the Torres Strait was not justified so I located a four-man life raft in Mackay, Queensland. The operator was prepared to loan us a raft so arrangements were made for us to pick this up on our ferry trip north up the coast.
Among the problems which also had to be addressed were anti-malarial medication and customs clearances out of Thursday Island into Indonesia. Another perceived requirement was the possible need for portable oxygen for while the aircraft would be operating from an altitude around 5,000 feet the main mountain range in the area was from 13,000 to over 16,500 feet. For the most part this range was uninhabitable but there was always a possibility of the helicopter transiting the area at greater than 10,000 feet, above which oxygen is a requirement.
In the days prior to my departure for Sydney I became concerned that I had not yet received my passport with the Indonesian visa I had applied for. As the Consulate was only ten minutes drive from Mascot Airport I rang and asked them to hold my passport for me and I would pick it up personally following my arrival in Sydney.
On Monday 30 March 1998 I travelled from Townsville to Sydney, hired a car and drove straight to the Indonesian Consulate to pick up my passport. In spite of indications to the contrary I was dismayed to find that my visa had still not been issued. I couldn't get a satisfactory explanation as to why this was the case and indicated that we would be leaving in about a week and that I would contact them regularly to check on the progress. I then proceeded to our accommodation in South Sydney. This was with the mother of a missionary doctor Johannes had flown with in Ethiopia a couple of times.
The following morning I was up early for the drive to Sydney Airport to meet Johannes who was due in from Germany at 5.30am. I made contact with him in the arrival lounge and I was quite surprised to find how young he was. I'm not sure what I expected but I assumed that missionary pilots would have spent the best part of their flying life earning their bread and butter before devoting their latter years to the Lord. It turned out that Johannes was only in his late twenties, as apparently were many of the other pilots in Helimission's mission fields. Most of the pilots were also mechanics so that they could carry out routine maintenance and repairs which were beyond the expectations of a non mechanic-qualified pilot in the field.
The helicopter arrived on a freighter aircraft around midday and along with the appropriate paperwork was scrutinised by customs and immigration officials before being released. The fuselage of the helicopter was mounted on a purpose built frame while the tail boom, rotor head, two main rotor blades and the vertical stabiliser were in individual boxes. There were a number of other boxes making up the consignment as well as a massive 500 litre plastic ferry tank for the trip. We supervised the unloading of the aircraft in our allocated work area and made preparations for commencing work first thing the next morning.
Over the next five days we worked solidly from around eight in the morning to seven or eight in the evening. While Johannes concentrated full-time on the re-assembly of the helicopter I helped where I could while still trying to organise administrative matters associated with the ferry trip. This included further visits and phone calls regarding my visa to the Indonesian Consulate and phone calls and faxes to the Indonesian Embassy in Canberra where I got no satisfaction either.
We took a break on the Sunday and went to our respective churches for the morning service then I took Johannes for a look at Sydney Harbour and the Opera House. It was an absolutely glorious day, which we finished off with a harbour cruise. We were back into the work the following morning. The Wednesday was an Indonesian public holiday so nothing was going to happen with regards to my visa as the Consulate and Embassy would be closed. By late that afternoon the helicopter was ready for a test flight so Johannes manned the controls while I handled the radios. The aircraft started okay and we breathed a sigh of relief. After the run-up and systems checks and with the instruments indicating everything was behaving as it should we departed for a short test flight out over Sydney’s Botany Bay.
No problems were encountered during the flight so the aircraft was shut down and put to bed for the night. We planned to spend the next day cleaning up, loading the helicopter and tidying up any loose ends including a final effort to secure my visa. If we were able to achieve all this we would get away first thing the following morning, which happened to be Good Friday. This created a further problem in that if I didn't get my visa on the Thursday it wasn't going to happen before we left Sydney. As well as the Indonesian holiday the day before, the Consulate was also closed for our Christian Easter holidays from the Friday through until the following Tuesday. I began to feel disappointed that after all the work and effort I had put into the project I was not going to get to see it through to its culmination - the flight from Australia to Irian Jaya.
On Thursday we packed and fuelled the aircraft and made final preparations for departure. The ferry tank occupied most of the cabin space and potentially gave us an endurance of around seven hours. However our all-up-weight precluded taking on full fuel but our eventual endurance of around four hours allowed us the luxury of covering a good distance between fuel stops instead of landing every couple of hours as would normally have been the case.
I visited the Indonesian Consulate right on closing time in a last ditch effort to secure a visa. I made an impassioned plea on the basis of having devoted the last month to this worthwhile cause in attempting to get the helicopter into an area where the needs of their own people were great as a result of the famine. Unfortunately my protestations fell on deaf ears so I retrieved my passport and resigned myself to the inevitable conclusion.
Good Friday loomed miserable with overcast cloud and rain showers. Conditions up the coast were not good either even for a helicopter. After hanging around the airport for a while, willing conditions to improve we decided to give it a miss and spent the rest of the day catching up with relatives of mine. The following day was much better so after saying our farewells again we strapped in and prepared to depart.
As Johannes pressed the starter button we could hear the familiar “tick-tick-tick” of the igniter plug but there was no ignition when the throttle was opened and fuel was introduced. After several unsuccessful start attempts it became obvious that we weren’t going anywhere in a hurry. We unpacked the toolbox, opened the engine cowls and set about getting to the root of the problem. After three hours Johannes deduced the cause as being the incorrect adjustment of the fuel nozzle. The insertion of a washer solved this and the engine behaved itself on the next start attempt.
We finally became airborne and I took the controls while Johannes got some great video footage as we flew over Sydney Harbour and the northern beaches. We began to make our way up the NSW coast but due to the delay in getting away we only made it to Coffs Harbour by late afternoon, and decided to stay there for the night.
The following morning we departed Coffs Harbour with the intention of getting to Townsville to stay overnight with my family. We landed at Bundaberg for a refuel and on attempting to start the aircraft for our next leg we had a recurrence of the same problem experienced in Sydney. Eventually the helicopter was fixed and it gave us no further hiccups for the remainder of the trip. However due to this latest delay we ended up spending the second night at Mackay instead of Townsville.
Before leaving the next morning we loaded the life raft which had been loaned to us. The flight time to Townsville was less than two hours and we arrived there late on the morning of Monday 13 April. At this stage the aircraft still did not have permission to go into Irian Jaya so we gained approval from Helimission to remain in Townsville with my family until this came through. We treated Johannes to the sights of Townsville and had some friends over one night for a good old Aussie barbeque.
The permission for the aircraft to enter Indonesian Airspace finally came through on the Thursday so we aimed to get away from Townsville first thing the following morning. We refuelled along the way at Coen before arriving at Thursday Island late Friday afternoon. This was as far as I could go without my Indonesian visa so the next morning I filed a flight plan for Johannes and briefed him on the procedures and radio calls required to cross the Torres Strait. I placed the life raft next to him on the now vacant seat and we went through the drill he would need to carry out in the unlikely event of an engine failure over the water, and subsequent ditching. We said a prayer together then our goodbyes. Johannes started the helicopter and disappeared out over the water for Irian Jaya.
I felt great disappointment at the long and frustrating process I had been through trying to get my visa approved. My feelings were of pure selfishness though, for I truly felt that to go on to Irian Jaya would be a just reward for the time and effort I had put into the project. But this wasn't meant to be. I was soon brought down to earth though by the realization that I had actually achieved all that had been asked of me. We had re-assembled the helicopter and flown it from Sydney to the top end of Australia from where Johannes was more than capable of going on alone. So I simply praised the Lord and thanked Him for what would hopefully be the first of many opportunities to be of service to Him, in fulfilling my promise to work for His glory. It also taught me a very humbling lesson:
For everything in the world – the cravings of sinful man,… and the boasting of what he has and does – comes not from the Father but from the world. The world and its desires pass away, but the man who does the will of God lives forever.
1 John 2:16-17