Even Han Solo and Chewie ...

I'm watching the Daily Show with Jon Stewart and his guest is Atul Gawande, author of The Checklist Manifesto. I've blogged about him before, and I use checklists for everything but getting out of bed, but I'm still amazed by three things.

One is the difference that checklists make. The hospital that first implemented a checklist system just to stop infections estimated that checklists saved 1500 lives a year. That's staggering. I wonder how many aircraft accidents checklists avert.

Another is the amount of time it has taken this simple safety device to move from one industry to another. Boeing introduced checklists in 1935 after their test pilots forgot to remove a gust lock and crashed a prototype B-17. It makes me wonder what safety or efficiency techniques I could find in other industries and steal to improve mine.

And finally I am surprised by the reticence of people to adopt the system. I shouldn't be, because I've seen myself the machismo that denies the benefits of acknowledging anyone else's expertise. But as Mr. Gawande pointed out, most people have seen their entire lives that people in high profile macho jobs like astronaut work from checklists. Even Han Solo and Chewie used checklists on the Millennium Falcon.

LOST

That's me: lost in watching TV and not blogging. Aren't television series box sets awesome? I started with Firefly, and that was so much fun I picked up the next box.

A few years ago I bought a boxed set of the first season of Lost in preparation for an assignment where there would be no TV or Internet and the possibility of significant waiting. At the time I played a few episodes, but once the fun of mocking the disconnected running engine had passed, I never really got into it. I was playing the show on the little screen on my computer, and trying to do paperwork, on the same computer at the same time. So I'd have people screaming and running in one quarter of a tiny screen, and an Excel spreadsheet over half, and then suddenly there's a polar bear and I'm left going "What?" I've since learned that the polar bear imparts a serious case of "What?" regardless of how closely you were watching. And now I'm hooked.

My theories so far are:
1. The island has some weird reanimation property (c.f. the doctor's father) and for some reason someone was shipping polar bear hides from Australia to the United States. Polar bears have only Appendix II protection under CITES, so could have been transported with more legality than, say, the bottle rockets that our survivors improbably possess. That would explain the polar bears looking like really bad taxidermy on worn pelts. The director seemed really pleased with the result, so I can only guess that he hadn't seen a real polar bear, ever. The others would be a horde of zombies reanimated from those who haven't survived passage to the island.
2. There's a portal on the island that allows people and things to pass through, but be forever stranded. This explains how we get from Nigeria to the South Pacific in a light twin, and get a pirate ship on top of a hill. The island should have a lot more rats and alien weeds though.
3. It's like the planet in the Star Trek episode Shore Leave where things people think about become manifest. Walt was reading Hurley's comic book, with the ferocious polar bear, so the polar bear arrived. But in that case, where are all of Sawyer's bunnies from Watership Down?

Anyway, you're unlikely to get much blogging out of me until I've found out what happens in the next seven(?) seasons. And no spoilers!. Fingers in ears chanting "La la la la la!"

My Flight Sim Setup

Some of you asked about my flight simulator set up, so here's a geek post on the details. The computer is a Toshiba laptop with dual Pentiums at 2.16 GHz and 2 GB of RAM running Vista. I only have the one computer, with my data back ups being a stack of CD-ROMs and my access back up an iPod touch.

When I'm at home I have a CH Pro yoke and pedals which plug into the computer USB ports. I fasten the yoke to the keyboard drawer on the desk, and then jam cardboard into the tracks of the keyboard drawer, so it doesn't roll in and out when I try to make pitch changes. It still does a bit, so I try to control pitch more with trim and power, which doesn't work to well either, so then I use the autopilot. When I start up the simulator I sometimes find that the controls are unresponsive, but I've learned to unplug and replug the USB connectors and that usually fixes the problem.

When I'm on the road, I just have a little butterfly-shaped controller. It's made by Logitech; I think it might be called Wingman. It's about the same size as my hand, including fingers. I have to replace it fairly often, as the action gets damaged in my luggage, even though I pad it with clothes. It has two thumb yokes and lots of buttons and is covered all over with DYMO labels because I never remember what I've assigned to what. When I use my road controller I mostly just fly the autopilot. It's an exercise in sussing out the plates and planning descents and turns to be efficient and legal.

On screen my default aircraft is some fairly generic twin with a six pack panel. I think it's a Beechcraft. There's a King Air style autosynch display on the panel. NAV1 is the HSI and NAV2 is an integrated receiver with a big fat yellowish needle for the ADF and a double striped green needle for the VOR. Instead of having the usual standard head presentation of zero to ten degrees deflection and a TO/FROM indicator, it acts like an ADF. That means if I'm tracking to a waypoint in order to intercept an ILS, it's like ADF tracking, which is okay, because I like ADF tracking. The engine instruments are mostly hidden by the avionics display. I can see just enough of the left ones to know what power setting I have selected.

The only keyboard controls I use are G for Gear and B for Baro--i.e. to reset the altimeter to the current setting. My kudos to anyone who can actually manage a flight entirely from the keyboard.

My system description makes me laugh, because my first hard drive was 40 MB. I remember a friend who returned to Canada after a few years travelling and used my computer to update his resume and re-enter the job market. He asked, "Do you have the Word disks?" When he left the country, the typical computer only had enough memory for its own operating system, so you ran Word right off the disks, then saved your document to another disk. And by disk I mean a 5 1/4" square of thin flexible plastic inside which was the disc-shaped magnetic media. The disk was sealed inside the sleeve and you put the whole thing into a slot in the computer.

Any questions?

American Hospitality

Here's the loose end I mentioned earlier. As you may recall, I was almost en route to West Virginia last month, but diverted home at the last moment. To facilitate that trip, I had ordered charts from an American distributor and asked them to ship them to the American FBO on the field where I planned to clear customs. I know from the e-mail confirmations that the charts were shipped, but where are they now? Well that's part of the fun of being an itinerant pilot.

I called the FBO to see if they still had the charts. That took two tries, as my first try at the question didn't make sense to the friendly woman who answered the telephone. Perhaps there was an accent issue, too. Once she understood the question she easily found the parcel for me and then I explained that the trip was postponed, was it any trouble for them to continue to hold them. Absolutely none, she managed to convey the impression that my having called her and given her the opportunity to hold onto our property for an unspecified period was the highlight of her day. Americans have the best customer service.

So there the charts wait, until we go to West Virginia or they expire.

Sim of the day: NDB RWY 05 and a missed at CYVV.

Simple is Good

Every once in a while I will describe a system, such as the oil pressure line running directly to a dashboard gauge, and someone will be aghast that "that's all it is?" Yes. And the less 'middle management' that an airplane designer can get away with, the better.

Some of the simplest aircraft systems are more direct than that. I've flown an airplane where the wing tanks drained to a nose tank and the level in the nose tank was indicated by a wire that poked out of the cowling. The wire was on a cork inside the nose tank, so when it started to sink, that meant the wing tanks were empty and only the nose fuel remained. Simple, direct. I suppose the cork could get stuck. That's what your watch is for. Some airplanes run a sight gauge from the wing tanks to the side of the cockpit so you literally see the fuel level. And most ultralights go one simpler and simply use a transparent or translucent fuel tank so the fuel level can be seen directly. You can't do that in an Airbus, but I'll bet Robert Piché would have liked to be able to see the fuel in his tanks rather than having to make decisions based on electronic diagnostic systems and lengthy checklists.

Another example: my engine combustion air intake is just the opening in the front of the cowling, and if that intake becomes blocked, the pressure drop inside will pull open alternate air doors. When closed, those doors are held by magnets. See the picture? Simple, directly reacting to the problem with no need for any intermediary, power source or interpretation. Those doors can also be opened by mechanical cockpit controls. The same system could have been designed with electric sensors, but why bother?

Some parts of my airplane are operated by electric motors. That includes the wing flaps, which change the shape of the wing airfoils for takeoff and landing, the cowl flaps, which control cooling air to the engines, the elevator trim, which allows me to hold an attitude without effort, and the starters, which turn over the engines until combustion in the cylinders is sufficient to sustain rotation as I start each engine. That's about it for electric motors. I've seen all those fail.

I can land or continue flight with inoperative flaps, although I need more runway for the landing and more fuel and time for the same journey. There are a lot of safeguards built into the flap controls to prevent asymmetric flap extension from flipping the airplane over. I would need a huge lever to operate those flaps without a motor. Manual flaps are great. You can move them at any speed you like and get tactile feedback of your airspeed.

I shouldn't be starting up if the cowl flaps are stuck closed, but I'm unlikely to notice if they are stuck open. I'll lose a few knots in cruise and see lower engine temperatures, but the indicator is also electric and may not indicate correctly if there is a fault. I've flown airplanes with manual cowl flaps. It's probably easier to route an electric wire than a set of push pull cables from the engine to the cockpit and I know I'd need bulky cowl flap levers rather than little toggle switches in order to open the cowl flaps against the pressure of the airflow. I think it's a shame that the indicators are electric, though.

Electric starters introduce more parts that can break, and weaker starting power in the cold, when you really need more. But I really appreciate having starter motors and not having to hand prop these engines.

The electric trim is conveneient, because the control is right on the yoke, but there is a back up manual elevator trim wheel on the centre console, just as there is on a B737, because that's an important control and designers don't pretend that switches and electric motors don't break. There are a lot more electrical components in my airplane, but I think I've covered the motors here.

Modern airplane design calls on the airplane to have a computer brain that knows and controls everything that is going on. This precludes some of the simplest systems, but also prevents a lot of stupid pilot errors that an airplane with no brain cannot object to. Ideally the pilot is smart enough and the airplane well enough designed that the two can work together to get the job done. Just don't knock simple.

This post brought to you by Gore to Wiarton again, this time with strong winds and weather at minima.

Another Nightmare

When I'm in a hotel I take care to plug any chargers into visible outlets, and put a post-it note on the desk reminding me they are there, so I don't abandon chargers and batteries all over North America. Last night I couldn't find a place to plug in my camera battery, so I plugged it into the power bar under my own desk.

"Now remember!" warned the voice that looks after these things. "It's under the desk don't forget!" But I didn't make a post-it note because it's my own home.

And then in the middle of the night I woke up thinking "Oh, no! I left my charger and my camera battery under the desk!" I'd had a dream that I was checking into another hotel. Gah. Now you know what my life is about: moving from place to place and hoping I haven't lost anything. I've done pretty well. I think I've lost one piece of clothing and a plastic water bottle in three years of hotel-to-hotel operations. Do other pilots dream of hotels this much?

Savage chickens has a strip about waking up from a dream.

Further to things forgotten, I was going to include in this entry a wrapping up of loose ends from my last assignment, but instead I think I'll make it a challenge to see if anyone remembers a loose end that needs wrapping, and answer that one in a few days.

In honour of the date, today's sim was an IFR flight CYZE-R23-W-CYVV : that is, a short flight from Gore Bay to Wiarton, Ontario, home of Canada's most famous groundhog. I did not see my shadow at any point in the flight, so that must mean winter is almost over. Or that I have realistic scenery turned off.

Sim notes: I tried out the Flight Planner in MSFS, but it didn't recognize NDB airways, so routed me via the Sault Se Marie VOR and V300. I "filed" from CYZE to the YZE beacon, but never went there. As CYZE has no published departure, I took off from runway 11 then at 400' turned to 154 and climbed to 2800 on that heading, in accordance with the published missed approach procedure for runway 11. That's a good way to enter the system from such an airport. In this specific case I can see that that heading leads out over the shore. Then at 2800' on that heading I was, as I had briefed myself, within five degrees of track for R23, so I simply intercepted the airway towards Wiarton and continued the climb to 5000'. I descended to cross the W beacon at 3000' for a racetrack procedure turn into runway 05 at Wiarton. The approach has a tiny turn at the beacon: tracking 058 degrees to, and 056 from. I wonder why.

Simulator Oddities

Oops, forgot to mark this ready after my sim yesterday.

First, an apology for all the toy flight simulator entries on here lately, and a warning that they will continue. I don't want to turn this into a video gaming blog, but as some of my former blogging time is now being taken up with practicing my professional skills, we should have predicted that some of my blogging thoughts would be turned in that direction, too. I know there are flight sim enthusiasts who read this blog and they can probably help me through my glitches.

I confess to using MSFS 2002. I own Version X but haven't taken it out of the box because my computer isn't optimized for games, so it might not be able to keep up. Remember that I am not interested in scenery graphics, audio ATC, or custom cockpits, just briefing departures and approaches and flying them to minima. In my experience it's really easy to spend more time trying to get a flight sim game to work properly than actually using it. If it's verified that all my little issues are fixed in X, I might upgrade.

Oddity #1 is that the game has only a single command for "raise gear" and "lower gear." I can't do the equivalent of reach out and put my hand on the gear lever without retracting it if it's already down. I have to place the avionics box over the on-screen gear lights, so I can't glance at them to confirm gear position. Gear down is such a separate command from gear up, and so crucial. It should never have been a single command toggle and I hope it's fixed by now.

Oddity #2 is the DME function. (For the non-pilots, DME is possibly the lamest three letter abbreviation in aviation: Distance Measuring Equipment. It's a device on the ground that talks to your onboard receiver and then tells it how many miles away from it you are.) Let's say I start up at CYHZ and tune the IHZ localizer (109.1) on NAV1 and the YHZ VOR (115.1) on NAV2. Both nav aids have a DME source, which is automatically tuned when I select the VHF frequency. The little toggle switch to select which one is displayed is not well depicted, so it's difficult to see by looking whether it is set to NAV1 or NAV2. Fortunately I know where I am, on the button of runway 14, so the one that indicates a distance of 5.2 nm is the VOR. I want to prove DUTSA, 5.2 DME straight off the departure end of 14, so I flip the switch and it shows 0.1 nm. That must be the localizer. I don't take this for granted, though, I click the audio panel button to identify it.

Morse code beeps _ . _ _ / .... / _ _.. . Wait that's something H Z but I is two dots. The something didnt' sound like two dots. I check the plate. Yup. Supposed to be two dots. I listen again and now the identifier is clearly IHZ. I must have heard wrong. take off and fly to DUTSA, then hang a left and track to the VOR, already identified before takeoff. I flip the DME source over to NAV2 also, but don't bother identifying it, because it's for information only. I'll prove station passage with the needle flip. I track outbound on the 297 radial to intercept the localizer outbound, and then put the DME source back to the localizer and ident it. The first time the identifier plays, it's clearly YHZ, then it switches to IHZ. Then it switches back. Experimentation shows that regardless of the position of the DME source selection switch, when the audio DME toggle is selected on, the idents of the two DME sources available play in alternation. I haven't confirmed that at any other airport. Maybe it's just a Halifax glitch.

If anyone cares to fire up Version X to check if this is fixed, could you also see if the Split Crow NDB (364) is in the database now? I couldn't receive it at all, removing the possibility of doing the interesting LOC/NDB approach there.

This post brought to you by another simulated ILS/DME into Halifax in the wind and fog, slightly left of the localizer all the way down, with a conservative correction that brought me onto the centreline just as the approach lights became visible.

Responsibility Never Sleeps

As long-time readers know, I have kept my flight instructor rating current so as to have an additional source of income when I'm not off in the wild beyond. So here I am, the week before Christmas, back in a Cessna 150. I'm in the right seat, flying night circuits from a little strip next to a lake. The snow isn't very deep so the ice glistens through in strips where the wind has bared it. There's enough moonlight and other ambient light reflecting off the snow that I can see the shapes of the evergreen trees below us as we climb out from the touch and go. It's odd yet familiar to fly again in the tiny single engine airplane with the toylike controls. I'm not handling the controls, just supervising as the student practises night take-offs and landings.

I experience a moment of "how did I get here?" disconnection. Did I fall asleep? Instructors do a lot, but it's never happened to me. I make sleep a priority, and now more than ever I'm aware of the need to be alert at night with only one engine holding us above the trees. The windshield is fogged up and I reach to wipe it with my coat sleeve--the little Cessna defogger only clears a patch on the left pilot's side--but then I realize that it's not fog obscuring my view, the window has iced over on the outside. A warning flag goes up in my head. Ice? I still can't see forward. As I scan the instruments to ensure the airplane is maintaining altitude on downwind I wonder why the windscreen would ice in cold, clear weather. If there's ice on the window, where else is there ice? "Is the pitot heat on?" I ask.

Or rather start to ask. Before I've finished the question I'm facing a completely different direction and there are branches. Tree branches. The airplane is in a tree. The windshield remains opaque. I still don't have a complete picture of what has happened. Is the engine on? Another blank in memory. We must have secured it. I'm not sure how we got down, have no memory of anything we might have said to one another. There is no fire. I have a mental snapshot image of the end of a building, the peaked eaves of the roof damaged. We must have hit the tree, bent the tree to hit the building and then stayed in the tree as it bounced back. No memory of it. I can see a large clay pot knocked off a ledge of the building and broken in half, but not an image of the airplane.

For some reason the student is still holding the CFS as we walk, apparently unhurt, to where we know there is a payphone. I'm rehearsing in my head telling the aircraft owner what we've done to the plane. "Everyone's okay, but ..." My career, my confidence, my reputation, my ability to be insured as a pilot, my dreams ...

The student dials the payphone, then I take the handset away. "I'm pilot in command," I say. That's a little rude. A flight instructor did that to me years ago after I eagerly followed protocol on the ground after a radio failure. In my hand the phone is ringing and ringing, no answer. I look at the CFS in the student's hand in order to see the protocol, the correct order of everything to be reported in the event of an aviation accident. For some reason this is important to me at this moment. I want to get the last thing in my career right. Then I see from the page that he has looked up a number for the Transportation Safety Bureau, but it's a daytime number. I hang up in order to redial the Nav Canada twenty-four hour number at 1-888-WX-BRIEF but I never do.

The next thing I know I'm lying down. There's no pain. It's like I'm ... oh ... like I just woke up. I just did. I'm in my own bed. The whole thing was a dream. It probably took three seconds and my subconscious just filled in all the details so it seemed to make sense.

Now I admit that that was a freaking cruel way to tell a story to readers who I know feel for me in my ups and downs, but I hope you gasped in horror. I wanted to tell the story so you would feel what it was like. I didn't even have the dreams tag on the blog entry to tip me off that this wasn't really happening. I guess I should have remembered that I don't have any flight students right now, and don't live near a little airstrip next to a frozen lake, and that real life does not just start into the middle of the story, but I have the excuse that I was not paying really close attention on account of being fast asleep.

As nightmares go, it doesn't rival Kafka. No one was hurt. I'm sitting at my desk now laughing as I realize that I am relating a nightmare that was largely about paperwork. The bad part is that I didn't feel any better about it once I had woken up. As I lay awake in my bed, I knew with one hundred percent certainty that nothing had really happened. No real airplane or building had been damaged. No one was even scratched. There was no paperwork to be done. But it didn't matter. I still felt responsible. I was so overwhelmed with guilt to have been so inattentive as to have had an accident. I was pilot in command. I should have realized that there was a risk of pitot icing, should have known all the obstacle heights, should not have fallen asleep. I'm literally lying awake, unable to sleep, beating myself up for an unforgivable lapse in responsible behaviour which occurred while I was in my own bed asleep. I try to tell myself that it wasn't my fault, but that's no excuse. When you are pilot in command, it is always your fault.

As I lie there thinking it over, I gradually realize where the parts of the dream come from. Sitting in a stationary vehicle with the windshield iced over and the engine running is the story of Canada in the winter. You start the car up, turn on the heater and defroster and then wait a bit to loosen the ice a little before you start scraping. Just as first place someone lived fills the role of "house" in a dream, the first airplane I flew became "airplane." And suddenly I realize that in my life the "responsibility" is represented by airplanes.

What do the top of an evergreen tree and the edge of the roof of a house have in common? It's where you put Christmas lights. This is not a dream about airplanes. It's a plain old holiday stress dream about distributing gifts appropriately, doing my year-end paperwork, filing all those utility bills that I haven't even opened, because they are supposed to autopay through my bank account. So I'm not an irresponsible pilot. I'm someone who can't be bothered to do her Christmas shopping and write cheques to charity. That's much better. The relief is so great it takes away all the Christmas stress too.

I fall back asleep and dream I am staying in a hotel room that has a glass elevator and overlooks a hockey rink in which Steven Spielberg is directing a gangster movie. A gangster movie musical. A huge cast of flapper girls and zoot suited guys toting those old-fashioned guns with magazines the size of a medium pizza are high-stepping in unison towards the blue line while making dramatic arm movements. Life is back to normal.

This blog post brought to you courtesy of the NDB RWY 23T into Alert, NWT. The MSFS flight analysis looks bizarre because it maps it onto a grid with 15" squares and at that latitude the graticules are tall, tall rectangles.