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.
4 comments:
I love a geeky IFR procedures mystery ... pulling out my LO 6 and CAP4 ...
The Wiarton VOR/DME 05 approach uses an inbound track of 58 (R238), so I'd guess that it's easier for ATC if the two tracks are aligned (as far as the beacon, anyway) - there are probably extra, unpublished waypoints ("gates"? not sure of my terminology) for the entry to the approach that ATC can see on their scopes, and this way, they can use them for both approaches.
The two tracks will be parallel a small fraction of a mile apart, but given that we're talking about low-resolution Centre radar rather than terminal or a tower, the tracks are probably so close that they look the same (if Centre can even see that low).
Savage chicken strip is not suitable for arachnophobes. Not quite as bad as the video of someone in OZ attempting to catch a hand-sized 'hunter' off the ceiling. I have managed to avoid clicking play on that video, it would give me nightmares for sure.
brrrrr.
I meant 'huntsman', not 'hunter'. For your googling pleasure.
Dream of hotels? Never.
Wake up and not know what city I'm in? Constantly.
Leave notes about batteries and chargers? Yes... everywhere. We're like some misguided band of brothers.
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