AOPA Pilot Magazine - November 2010 - 69

Oil-spill commanders needed a final photo mosaic of the shoreline patrolled by the CAP from Gulfport. That included one-third of the coastline from Louisiana to Florida and required Riddle to take a picture every four seconds, manually overlapping each shot with a tiny portion of the preceding one. That final mission took three flights in one day, totaling 7.5 hours. When it was over, Riddle’s CAP-issued computer at his home (faster than the ones available at the airport) counted 3,272 photos that had to be color-corrected, identified with GPS data, and transmitted.

As usual, this was a rush order, so Riddle began processing at 5 a.m. September 10 before heading to the airport at midmorning for the photos of the crew with this article. Help from Hank Williams Hank Williams set the standard for country and western music before he died in 1953 at age 29, so how could he have aided in the Gulf cleanup? The answer can be found at Airborne Support Inc. (ASI) at Houma-Terrebonne Airport in Houma, Louisiana. To understand, you need to meet the ASI crew. Howard Barker, ASI’s owner, competed in rodeos for 12 years before going into aviation. “There were two things I always wanted to do since I was a little kid,” he said. “One was to be a cowboy, and the other was to be a pilot.” His $6 million Basler Turbo, a BT–67 conversion from a piston-engine Douglas DC–3, sits clean and ready on the spotless gray hangar floor. You saw it in a national BP commercial flying above the water as it prepared to spray dispersant on oil slicks. T.R. Wilson, one of Barker’s pilots, is a rodeo cowboy, too. He reached the national finals at Oklahoma City in

At what cost?
We don’t have total figures from all government agencies for the months spent containing and cleaning up the oil, but the Civil Air Patrol provided numbers for just its portion of the effor t. Numbers here have been updated to reflect all efforts through the final flight on September 10, although there was discussion of new assignments for the CAP from the Houma, Louisiana, command post. BP reimbursed the government for CAP expenses. • 120 days of operation • 150 members supporting the mission • 54 aircraft utilized • 20,000-plus volunteer hours • 1,010 air sorties, 270 ground sorties • 2,387 flight hours • $137,000 of aircraft fuel purchased • Total spending of more than $263,000

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AOPA Pilot Magazine - November 2010

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of AOPA Pilot Magazine - November 2010