Jerry Burley, Biglorryblog's new-found mate in
Jerry starts off: "It's funny how countries sometimes develop specific 'cultures' with equipment, the same as with food, drink, dress style etc. In East Africa, and most particularly Uganda, we really only have two sizes of tipper truck in use; little four-tonne, single axle Toyota Dyna-sized vehicles and the bigger, 10 metre cubed, double diff format. Virtually no 8-tonners (such as Bedford's MK/ML or equivalent) and no 30-tonne six or eight wheel variants in private hands (some big roads projects occasionally use 8x4's or double diff horse and tipping trailer 40/60 tonne units). There is no shortage though of the 20-tonners, mostly second hand Isuzu's (although there is a FUSO or two lurking around in there somewhere and Tata are making inroads with budget priced, brand new 14 tonne units), in 330 or V10 (Japanese-spec) designation. We use a lot of hired Jap double diff tippers in our business, including some a few months back on the little job featured in these photos."
We received a call from a major client that they wanted a bush airfield building in Butiaba in the remote north-west of the country, able to cope with anything up to a C130 Hercules (if necessary), and anyway a Cessna 208 Caravan as a minimum, so it had to be 1300 metres long and with a surface 150mm deep of properly-compacted gravel.
So, first you grub the whole area of bush and shrubs, level/compact the existing sub-base (a terrible material when wet, known as black cotton soil), install an all-weather, compacted gravel murram (laterite to the geologists out there), 20 metres wide surface with an additional 50 metres cleared full length each side, 200 metres of additional safety clearance each end, 5000m of mitre drainage all round."
"Next we've got to fence it fully to keep kids, cattle, antelope, and the odd hippo out, include plane and car parking areas, cement stabilise the gravel where the plane lands and turns on the strip, plus build an additional 1km of surfaced access road from the 'main' road. Etc. You get the not very thrilling picture. ..." Well it sounds anything but mundane to Biglorryblog Jerry!"
Jerry adds: "Oh yes, there was a small caveat thrown in---'Oh, and by the way, you have 4 weeks to complete all works and hand over, before our project needs to use it...............'---there's always a catch!"
And here are the graders in action smoothing out the runway surface...mind you this lone figure in a high-vis vest loks a bit out of place Jerry!
Now click through here to see how it all ended up.... 
And here it is all rolled and smooth and ready for the great silver birds...meanwhile Jerry continues: "I think the pictures are self-explanatory, and with ten big tippers running 12 hours a day throughout keeping the yellow kit busy, we made our deadline. Just. And, pleasingly, totally accident free over a 20km round trip of several thousand loads of gravel hauled on narrow dirt roads through the bush, though the same claim can't be made for mechanical incidents!"
And here it is from 800ft up the strip through the top of the picture is the runway. And here's what it looks like from the pilot's viewpoint....
And here's the plane down safely....
"A satisfying, simple-enough job in principle, but still challenging in practice for a turn-key job. Probably why the idiot leaning on the propeller in front of the completed job at handover after the first trial landing is finally smiling, even if he can't spare the time to shave."
And that's Jerry actually, and no wonder he's smiling he's got the job done!Great story JB--BLB.
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