Adventures of an Aviatrix, in which a pilot travels the skies and the treacherous career path of Canadian commercial aviation, gaining knowledge and experience without losing her step, her licence, or her sense of humour.
I've discovered a fantastic interview question. "Tell me about a time you had to use all your piloting skill to succeed." The answers show me how a pilot thinks about their own limits, what they consider piloting skills to be, what they understand about their aircraft, weather, or whatever the situation was, and a surprising number of times it results in the pilot telling on themselves about how they violated the regulations, and how they feel about that. They just hop into hangar flying mode and pull out a favourite "there I was" story.
There are two things a pilot can learn from making dumb decisions and getting into trouble. Some of them learn that the regulations are there for a reason, and it's better to follow them. And some of them learn that they didn't die the first time, so it's a viable choice. Their stories tell me about that.
And one I interviewed told a marvellous story, that right up until almost the end was almost the same as this joke. (The joke is older than the Internet, but I took this retelling from here).
A bush-pilot drops Bob and Ted, two moose hunters, at a remote lake in Northern Ontario.
He tells them that he’ll be back in a week, and warns them that his plane won’t be able to take off with more than one moose.
The next week he returns, and sure enough, the hunters have bagged two moose.
The pilot tells them there’s no way they can take off with the two moose.
Ted says, “I don’t know, the pilot last year took off with two moose.”
To which Bob adds, “Yeah, but maybe he wasn’t a total coward!”
Not wanting to be outdone, the pilot loads up everything and they start to move down the lake.
The plane is gathering speed, but the pines on the shore are rapidly approaching.
Finally, the plane gets airborne, but one wing clips the top of a tree.
The plane spins, crashes into the trees, and breaks apart.
Sometime later Ted regains consciousness and begins searching for his buddy.
He finds him, and when he wakes him up Bob asks, “Do you have any idea where we are?”
Ted replies, “I think about 200 yards further than last year."
The candidate talked about how insistent the customers were, about how out at the lake there is no actual scale to weigh the cargo. You just have to go by look and feel. He talked about the wind, and the conditions and the geography. I was in suspense. Was he really going to tell me how hard it was to pull that Beaver off the water and then get enough speed in ground effect to clear the trees? Was he going to tell me how many Gs he pulled to avoid the hills, and how he recovered from the ensuing stall?
And then he demonstrated a vastly underrated piloting skill, but one that has kept me alive all these years and that I insist on in my pilots. He said no. The hunting bounty would have to come out in multiple loads. A pilot has to be able to do that.
Pilots have sort of a love-hate relationship with birds. Some learned to fly out of a desire to be like the birds. I came grudgingly to appreciate avian skills while I was a student pilot learning to judge winds and momentum in the flare. I still derive schadenfreude from watching a bird misjudge a crosswind landing, because they usually get it so perfect, angling their wings and tail and settling on a single branch just as groundspeed and vertical speed reach zero. I knew an ultralight pilot whose pinnacle of life experience occurred the day an eagle flew along wingtip-to-wingtip with his tiny craft, checking him out and then seeming to just share the joy of being aloft on a beautiful day. If you've got through any part of a career in aviation without having to reject a take-off, perform a go-around, declare an emergency, or visit maintenance because of birds, then I can't imagine which part of the planet you fly over.
The airplane I flew yesterday bears a scar that we think is a rat strike. I know that a rat is not a bird, but I still blame a bird. See, one day an eagle crossed our path while we were on the take-off roll. There was no thump and no exploding cloud of feathers, so we were pretty sure we hadn't struck the eagle, but after the flight there was nevertheless a small dent, mostly just stretching of the aluminum skin between two ribs on the wing, and some blood spatters. The airport crew reported finding no carcass, and certainly an eagle would have made a bigger dent. Our theory is that the eagle dropped its payload in order to more easily dodge us. I should have gone full CSI on the remains. I'll bet I could have found some fibres and checked them out at the MicrolabNW Photomicrograph Gallery. As it is I just nag maintenance to put the dent repair on their spare time list, because tiny as the dent is, it is a roughness in the wing, and that spot is always the first one to ice up in flight.
The video below (preceded by an ad, you don't lose anything if you just mute the whole video) is from an incident a year ago when a bird strike smashed the spinner on a Dash-8 on take-off. I don't see any damage to the propeller itself, but the damage to the spinner must have caused an imbalance, because the pilots elected to shut the engine down. You can see the blades feathered (aligned with the direction of flight for minimum air resistance). And I have to laugh at the fact that the very terminology "feathered" is bird-related.
They inspired us to fly in the first place. They interfere every day with our ability to do so safely. We can't stop admiring them and we can't stop resenting them. This whole post has just been an excuse to show you this gif. Does anyone not love this crow? It's just a looped gif, but the full YouTube clip shows that it wasn't an accident. That crow was hanging in there for the ride. I suppose it wasn't all that different to clinging to a branch on a windy day, but it's having fun, isn't it?
A friend wrote today to congratulate me and my countrymen on the 106th anniversary of powered flight in Canada, and then he followed up to ask "is the best part taking off? I always imagine that the best part must always be taking off." And he's right.
You get in and put on your seatbelt and make sure everyone's settled and nothing is in the way, just like heading out for a car trip if you have multiple children inside and pets possibly running around outside. (Don't forget to preflight your car by banging on the hood to evict cats or squirrels that might be snuggling up to your engine block for warmth). You start the engines, and while each one springing into life and turning around is a little victory, especially when it's cold, that's only a little more triumphant than getting the car started. It's nice to see the oil pressure come up, the vacuum pumps show that they are online and sucking, and the alternators come on line and flip the polarity of the charge rate shown on the ammeter, but those are just steps in the preamble. Taxiing to the runway is a bit of a warm up for the pilot, just as the run-up is a warm up for the engines, but finally you're cleared into position on the runway. It's big, like a wide open stretch of three-lane highway with no traffic ahead of you and you know for sure no speed traps. Cleared for take off, you put in the power and feel acceleration, and the rumbling of the tires against the pavement. You keep the airplane aligned with the centreline with your feet. At the correct speed you pull back on the yoke and lift the nosewheel off just a little bit. You wait, and in a few seconds there is no more rumbling. You are in exactly the same attitude, slightly nose up, but now YOU ARE SUSPENDED IN AIR! That's the best part.
Take off is also the part where the most spectacular things can go wrong, so it’s very alert and exciting, as you have to watch all the indications to ensure that none of those things are going wrong, and mostly they don’t go wrong, so that’s a good part too. Imagine that every time before you merged onto the highway you were legally required to recite what you would do if a bad thing happened, so you were all psyched to do whatever one would do if a semi crossed two lanes and tried to take you out. And then you merged and nothing bad happened at all. It’s a mini celebration every time.
I can't imagine the multiplication factor for the thrill of taking off in the Silver Dart in 1909. The aircraft took off from an ice surface, but was on wheels, not skis.Tricycle gear with fairly large, spoked wheels. (On later flights the rear wheels were replaced with skids). The vibration on the take off roll must have been quite juddering. Sea ice is not smooth like a hockey rink and those wheels are not mounted on piston-like oleos the way mine are. The account says that the craft was airborne in about a hundred feet. It would have been very obvious to the pilot the instant the wheels left the ice. People were throwing their hats and mittens in the air. The pilot flew for about half a mile and landed back on the ice, quite gently by his own account.
While a smooth landing is satisfying, and harder to achieve in an airworthy craft than a smooth take off, anything can land. For millennia we could only dream of taking off.
Some people want to hear more about my flights and less about the hotels or the keys or the fuellers or the taxicabs, but my flights are a long sequence of lines with dots on them. Have you ever sat down to play a simple videogame, not a fancy one with a plot and cut sequences and realistic graphics, but the sort you get for your phone that mostly just have dots or blobs you have to shoot or catch, like Bejeweled Blitz or Pac-Man or Space Invaders or Stack the Cats and then looked up four hours later with sore fingers and almost no perception of the time passing? That's whatit's like flying photo survey, except that instead of being filled with guilty self-loathing over having wasted so much time, you have a great feeling of accomplishment of having taken seven hundred twenty three photographs without missing a dot.
Sometimes the lines are parallel with the endpoints lined up, so I can just turn around, and attack the next line, but sometimes the next line is longer or shorter or we skip one, so I need to be directed to the next one before it comes on screen. The scale jumps to zoom in as I approach the lines until it switches to what I call the "jumpscreen." (Yah, because it jumps. My creativity wanes when I'm totally focused on dots.) It depicts the track I have to cruise right down the middle of. The main dots appear on the screen green, then turn yellow and blue and sometimes red. Red is bad, and I should tell the operator if I see a red dot, but he has the same screen and has usually seen it before me, in that he isn't flying an airplane at the same time.
So there are two sorts of dots, the sometimes red one that I have to chase to make it stay in the middle and greem, and the ones on the line that I have to gobble up like Pac-Man. It makes me crave Skittles and Smarties (the Canadian kind: the American kind, which we call Rockets, aren't brightly enough coloured, enough).
I can do engine management, look up new frequencies, and all the other things you do while flying in the few seconds between dots, or in turns. And I listen to my MP3 player through the headset, on a setting that mutes the tunes as soon as there is any activity on the intercom or radio. This also has the effect of shutting the music off right away if I start to sing along, a blessing for the camera operator.
My camera still isn't ready. This is like airplane maintenance: they have to wait for the parts to arrive, and can't say when that will be. The DG works, though. They tell us that it was installed incorrectly to begin with, with not enough screws, and there wasn't even a hole for the missing screw. Odd that it worked for so long.
We're going to Vancouver again, but the GFA shows IFR conditions en route with mixed moderate icing to 16,000'. I look at the shape of the forecast areas in space and time, and judge that by my route and at the time I will pass through the area, I will be safe to file at 16,000'. On V304, that one-way airway I was told I couldn't use earlier. At most I expect a few tendrils of ice-bearing cloud above that altitude and I should be able to get a deviation around them.
The actual weather observed for the first part of the route shows the GFA to be startlingly accurate. The brown scalloped line dividing two types of weather went right through the dots representing the three Edmonton area airports that report weather, and overhead Edmonton there's a cloud shield with its edge running so precisely along that line I wonder if I'm in a simulator. I can see the International, half of City Centre and none of Namao. At sixteen thousand I'm also comfortably above the clouds, for now. And the new heater is still working. Groundspeed is low, though. The operator can see the ETA on the GPS and asks about it, because it's a good bit later than I suggested at the departure briefing. "Will we have to stop for fuel?"
"I'm not planning a fuel stop. This should switch to a tailwind as soon as we get into BC."
The clouds rise ahead of us, some convective shapes, which is why the forecast calls for icing even though it's well below freezing. A pilot expects ice in visible moisture (i.e. cloud, mist or rain) when the temperature is close to freezing, because more than a few degrees above zero, water droplets don't freeze and more than ten degrees below freezing and most of the water is already frozen, thus is unavailable to freeze onto your airplane. In convective cloud there is a lot of rapid vertical motion, so liquid water can be churned up from below into the cold levels above. The GFA is again amazingly accurate at forecasting these clouds sitting just at 16,000'. It is a tremendous economic and safety benefit to have such good forecasts. Anyone who works in Edmonton or Montréal putting out these charts, be proud.
A little further on there are a few tendrils of that cloud poking above 16,000'. I flip on the pitot and prop heat before passing through cloud tops, emerging with just a skim of ice on the windscreen and wing leading edges. It's useful to me to note where I see ice first on this airplane. Out in the sunshine again the ice sublimates. I dodge a few tops and then I'm into another cloud for a bit longer. Yeah, I guess now that I know (I believe I have Sarah to thank for the link) that there's ice in there it's time to enact my avoidance plan. I call ATC to climb a couple of hundred feet. They give me a just a moment, then call back with "flight level 200 approved." Uh, that's a bit more than I need. As I apply power to go up I realize what they heard. I explain that I need "two hundred feet" not "FL200" and they assign me 16,000' blocking 17,000'. Perfect. I'm out of all ice and have a nice view and clean wings. There's an overcast in the vicinity of Vancouver that could be interesting, depending on where they hold me. The freezing level is right around the forecast cloud tops. If necessary I can ask for an expedited descent though the region of icing, but I don't expect much, just light rime for a few hundred feet. It will be warm enough below to melt any accumulation off before final.
The headwind switches to a tailwind, an even better one than I had planned on. We'll be a little bit early. The clouds are thinning a little and I can see mountain tops poking through. It's hard to believe that we're over 2000' above the minimum obstacle clearance altitude. The rocks look to be right there. They always do, whenever you fly an IFR procedure in visual conditions, too. The controller asks me if I'm done with the altitude block and I am. The clouds are lower and this type of cloud shouldn't have ice at this altitude, either.
I've put the en route frequency up on COM1, my listening radio and am looking for a good FSS frequency to call to find out what to expect at Vancouver when the operator starts reading me METARs off his iPhone. Is this the way of the future? The FSS won't have anything more current than the METARs, so I try Vancouver's ATIS. I'm still too far out, but at least I have it tuned and ready.
I review the published arrivals for Vancouver and after the next frequency change tell the controller I'm ready for a descent. I'm not pressurized, so it would be nice not to have to dive for the airport at the end. He gives me a couple of descents, first down to fourteen thousand then ending at ten thousand feet, which is just above the cloud deck, and just at freezing. I'm laughing. Everything below me is above freezing, so I don't need to worry about ice on the descent. The controller tells me information charlie is current, and to expect a runway eight.
I'm still unable the ATIS, and I already have a post-it flagging the non-RNAV arrival for the 08s at YVR. I flag and review the ILS for 08R, the runway that goes to the non-secure side of Vancouver airport. I'm coming down V304 towards the airport, but so is everybody and I'm slow. They vector me off the airway, to the north which is a little unnerving, because I'm in IMC and that's where the mountains are, but then they vector me south, to the other side, and then east, away from the airport, descending me to 5000', then 3000', then another vector then another. I hear them advice an American Airlines that they are doing a runway change, so I pull up the approach plates and find the pages for the other end of the runways. The controller tells me to expect 26R, that's the big girls' runway. I tune and identify the ILS and accept another vector, and a descent clearance to 2000', which I'm told to expedite, then another runway change to 26L. I intercept the localizer and am immediately visual and cleared to land. You know, I'm glad I have the autopilot. That was a crazy disorienting set of vectors.
It's actually quite nice at the airport. The weather is all to the east. That's good, because we have work out to the west. Tomorrow.
There's a Comfort Inn right near the airport, but like most of the places I stay, I don't have a chance to enjoy more amenities than the bed and the internet, which tells me the weather will be good again tomorrow, so I should be prepared for an early start.
I've questioned before the exact meaning of the rule restricting flight time when single pilot IFR is conducted. Amongst a long list of how many hours a pilot can fly in a year, 18 days, 90 days, month, week and day, there is this:
720.15(1)(a) where the flight crew member conducts single-pilot IFR operations, 8 hours in any 24 consecutive hours
Does that mean that if I ever fly IFR I may never log more than eight in twenty-four? No. Now I have an official interpretation. It only matters what you have done in the last 24 hours, so you can log twelve hours on Monday, have Tuesday off, and then fly eight hours of SPIFR on Wednesday. But you can't depart IFR on Monday, cancel fifteen seconds after departure, and then fly eight hours and one minute VFR. This could be a legitimate problem, considering all the times that the controllers get confused and give us IFR departures in VFR flight.
GUIDANCE: Where the flight crew member conducts single-pilot IFR flights, the flight crew member's total flight time, in all flights conducted by the flight crew member, will not exceed 8 hours in any 24 consecutive hours. In determining if this limitation applies to a given situation, this question must be asked - did the flight crew member conduct single-pilot IFR flights? Yes or no. If the answer is yes, the flight crewmember is limited to 8 hours of flight time in any 24 consecutive hours. The length of time spent conducting single-pilot IFR flights is irrelevant. If the pilot flew a departure under IFR and then cancelled IFR and flew the rest of the day under VFR - the answer is still yes and the 8-hour flight time limit applies.
The limitation is intended to prevent cockpit fatigue and applies to flight time not duty time. Interestingly, if you departed VFR and got an IFR clearance prior to entering Class A airspace the limitation would start then.
So imagine I flew a five hour IFR mission on Monday, cancelled IFR through 12,500' at 00Z, and landed. If I departed at 1430Z the next morning on an IFR clearance, I'd be illegal after three hours. So imagine I flew a five hour IFR mission on Monday, cancelled IFR through 12,500' at 00Z, and landed. If I departed at 1430Z the next morning, even on a VFR clearance, I'd be illegal after three hours: the regulation says any 24-hour period and during the period 1731Z-1731Z I would have flown eight hours and one minute, including some IFR flying.
But if on Monday the mission was all VFR, from 19-00Z, I could start flying VFR on Tuesday at 1430Z, no problem. Then if I were offered an IFR clearance, as I have been because the controllers like it better, I'd have to decline it at 1730Z, because that would put me IFR with more than eight hours logged in the last 24. If that Tuesday morning flight were only three hours long, I could accept an IFR clearance again at the time I took off on Monday, because then the previous five hour flight would start expiring at the same rate I was logging new time, so I'd be legal until about 00Z, when Tuesday's logged time reached eight hours.
Fortunately, we have an op spec (exception) to this rule for our operation.
I got a hold of the camera place, and they say they can fix the camera for $95. It's a bit of cash, but I really, really like that camera (a Canon PowerShot SD10) and I haven't seen anything that measures down (it's tiny), so I gave them the go ahead. They couldn't tell me when it would be ready, though.
Next day report time is not until eight a.m. so I have studied all my departures before I get there. You're supposed to make a phone call to get a VFR transponder code within 30 minutes of your departure. Yesterday when I made that call I asked to confirm if I was supposed to squawk VFR once I left the zone. That's the default rule, but Vancouver seems to be special. The specialist said to keep the code, but that I would need a new code to get back in, but that seeing as I wasn't landing anywhere else I could get it by radio.
It's easier to call flight services on the radio than by phone, so I decide I'll do that. The specialist says sorry, he's not allowed to give out any codes by radio. It's a new rule. So I call the same guy back on the phone and get a code. Not sure what that accomplished. Maybe he gets a cut from my cellphone company.
I listen to the ATIS. It's a long recitation of runways and approaches in use, along with the mandatory cautions about SIRO and SPIA--I may have made up the latter abbreviation, but that's what I write down when I copy the ATIS and they are advertising Simultaneous Intersecting Runway Operations and Simultaneous Parallel Instrument Approaches in use. The former means that you might be asked to land and hold short of a crossing runway, or you might be cleared to use a runway that crosses another runway that someone is landing on. One of the pilots has to acknowledge a "hold short" instruction for each such instance. The latter means that you had better not fly through the localizer because there may be another airplane on approach beside you. It's like turning left at an intersection where there are two left turn lanes: you have to stay in your lane and watch for people who aren't.
I call Clearance Delivery, and he assigns me a Metrotown departure at 2000'. I find that on the chart. It's in the opposite direction as the active runway, so that's kind of confusing, but if the takeoff clearance doesn't assign me a routing to it, then I'll ask. I copy my departure squawk code and switch to Ground.
I tell the ground controller my position on the apron and assigned departure, and request taxi clearance. He says Metrotown is not available and gives me a different departure. Now I'm paranoid. Was the clearance delivery guy messing with me in retaliation for asking for a less efficient departure route yesterday? Then the ground controller says, "I presume you'll be wanting a runway again today?" Hey, it's the same guy who mistook me for a helicopter, and he remembers me. Cool.
But then the paranoia cuts back in. Maybe I'm supposed to specify the runway I want in my taxi request. It's not standard, but this wouldn't be the first (nor second, third or fourth airport) I've encountered with its own unique way of doing things. Or have I been away from flying for long enough to have forgotten how to make simple radio calls? I almost freak myself into believing that until I realize that while I've been on frequency I've heard a lot of calls as simple as "Air Canada, taxi." So that's not it. I read back my taxi clearance and follow it to the runway.
I don't remember what we took pictures of that flight. I think we were finishing up lines from a previous flight. I hope nobody blinked. I think I explained the improvements I wanted to the pilot guidance screen, beginning with colours and numbers I can actually see while working and working all the way to my demands for an opportunity to score points by flying well, and a high score list. And the dots should sparkle more, like in Bejeweled. Yes, I think I already blogged about this, because I remember the internal conflict it sets up for me, having to spell "bejewelled" incorrectly for my country, because it's the name of a product.
Back into Vancouver, this time with a straight in clearance that seems to take forever. I keep feeling as if I'm going to be run over by a landing B747, but then I realize that they do all the heavy landings on the north runway and the takeoffs on the south one, so a light airplane coming in for the south one isn't holding anyone up unless we're slow clearing the runway. I scramble off at the first available taxiway and call ground for taxi in.
The next flight has an interesting complication, because we will be flying above 12,500', in class B airspace. VFR traffic is not permitted in class B airspace in Canada, but there's a loophole where you can file "controlled VFR" to follow IFR rules on what is essentially a VFR flight. The CVFR clearance is further complicated by the fact that we are flying photo blocks. I've heard of "flying photo blocks" lots of times, but always assumed it was just jargon for flying around taking pictures in a grid. No, it turns out that there is a specific thing called a photo block that we photo-taking pilots have to know about. I'll explain it another day. Let it suffice for now to say that I filed an IFR-type flight plan and then started up and called for clearance "for a local Controlled VFR flight." I notice pilots here say "round robin flight" instead of "local flight" to indicate that their destination and departure airport are the same, but I stick to the phraseology I first learned. To me "round robin" implies that you are landing at other airports before returning.
The controller says he only has an IFR strip on me. I've been warned about this: there is no separate procedure at ATC units for CVFR: a strip can be either IFR or VFR and CVFR gets an IFR strip. I try to explain that I'm CVFR, departing VFR and then climbing above 12,500' but he says he doesn't have the capability to accept composite flight plans, and basically puts me on hold while a long line of people with more normal requests get their clearances. I can't even get a word in edgewise to say I can accept an IFR departure. Finally the controller gets back to me and assigns me an IFR departure. I look for it in the CAP, hoping it isn't too complex. It's trivial, easier than the VFR departure routes. It tells me to take off, climb straight ahead, and wait for further instructions. I call ground "for taxi two six left" and take off when cleared to do so. The clearance specified to contact departure airborne, so I do that as soon as my gear is up and climb power set, and they radar identify me and immediately give me another frequency to contact. The next controller is baffled by my strip, because I'm an IFR departure but he can't vector me to an airway and be done with me. He wants to know if I'm cancelling IFR. Uh, sure, I can't be CVFR and IFR both at once. I say it, "Cancelling IFR" because they need me to be clear about it. He transfers me to a different terminal controller and we have to go through this all over again, because I still have an IFR strip. Eventually I'm cleared to the photo area. Oxygen on through ten thousand and then I fly in straight lines while the operator takes pictures. We're over Bowen Island and the Gulf Islands, taking pictures of the shoreline. This job can only be done during the two hours of low tide, so every time I mess up, by not being quite straight enough, or having a wing down what seems like just a tiny bit, were it not for the glaring red dot, it costs more than the fuel to turn around and go get it. In just the couple of hours we've been out here there is a huge difference in how much is rocks and how much is water. There are some clouds over the islands, but they are over the middles of the islands, not the shorelines, so we keep snapping. We don't quite finish the work in the time allotted, but there is another, non-tide-sensitive job we work on to round out our mission.
After all that I'm not sure whether we are on a VFR flight plan or an IFR one, so I call flight services to close it, just in case.
My telephone rings at 4:20 a.m. It's the camera operator and mission logistician, if that's a word. He's still agonizing over the decision about where to attempt to work today. He wants to make hay while the sun shines, but in the most efficient way. He wishes we could wait until the next GFA comes out. This is where I relay the information I realized last night, "We can. It's an hour earlier in Vancouver. We can go back to sleep for another hour." I did my napkin math in local instead of UTC and totally forgot about the time change. He likes that plan, and I go right back to not being a giraffe. Not being a giraffe means sleeping comfortably.
An hour later the weather picture is clearer and he wants to go to the coast. I get a quickie phone briefing that reveals the weather has cleared overnight except for low lying fog, en route. I plan to Abbotsford, a big airport outside of the busy mess of Vancouver airspace. We get the same cab, with a different driver and go back to the airport. There's someone, presumably a pilot, asleep in the terminal. He has a sleeping bag and a pillow and a whole set up going on there. I hope guiltily that the cab driver did come back for my helicopter guy, and wonder who this guy is. Fire suppression pilots are paid well enough that a cab and a hotel shouldn't be an issue, and most of the transient aircraft seemed to be associated with the fire. The sleeping pilot's cellphone is ringing, or maybe it's his alarm, but he doesn't even budge. I'm not going to wake him up. If he needs sleep that badly, whatever it is can wait.
We ready the airplane, including wiping accumulated rain and dew from the outside of the front window, and working out how to turn on the defrost for the inside of the window. More condensation forms on the outside after I start up so I have to taxi cautiously, looking out the side. Another reason to have a windshield wiper. We backtrack to the appropriate end of the runway, turn around and ensure we're lined up and roll. The airspeed soon clears the window and I can climb and turn on course. The provincial boundary is along the great divide, the peaks of the Rocky Mountains and marked on my GPS so I call off the crossing and announce that we're now on BC time. There are several ranges of mountains to cross, so I don't descend yet, in fact climb a little, because there's more cloud and I'd rather not be dodging it when I can't see which clouds are crunchy in the middle. I'm trying to lean the mixture, but I seem to have a one hot cylinder. I'm trying to keep exhaust gas temperatures around 1425 degrees, but while the analogue EGT and CHT gauges show everything normal, the digital gauge shows that #2 on the left engine is spewing out gases at 1900 degrees. I enrich the mixture on that engine to get the temperature down to the range that would be green on the EGT, even though that leaves the other cylinders cold. I explain that the analogue EGT, which is the one that he can see, takes its reading from the outlet of one cylinder, the normally hottest, while the digital one has pickups per cylinder. "What would happen if you didn't have that one?" he asks.
"I wouldn't know about the problem and I'd lean the others to 1425, not knowing that I was cooking the other one to death, until it fried, and we had a rough running engine. The engine would run on the remaining cylinders, it just wouldn't sound pretty. And in fact we're below our single engine service ceiling, so we could fly on one engine right now. But given that we've paid for the extra information about this cylinder, we can use it to avoid destroying it." I'm trying to strike a balance between, "It's important that I not destroy this cylinder" and "We won't die if something happens to it." I'm concerned, but my concern is about loss of production, and my looking bad for taking a perfectly good airplane into the field and destroying it.
"How does it get that way?"
"If it's abused once, it gets pitted walls and that leads to poor combustion. Could be a bad valve ... I don't know. It's kind of freaky how placidly painted-on the the analogue gauges appear compared to the frenetically spiking #2 cylinder. How many times has this drama been played out in my engine without my knowledge?
"Could it be the gauge?"
"Yep. But it not being the gauge would be consistent with the rough running we've been getting when I lean it the same as the right engine." It's been the gauge for me before when there was other corroborating evidence. You can always find evidence.
I'm over the highest of the maintains and can start to descend. My chart tells me that I'm coming up on Vancouver's airspace. (Oh yeah, we're going to Vancouver now, not Abbotsford. It's sort of a rule that the destination has to change midflght here, apparently). I talk flight services out of a code for Vancouver, get the ATIS, and then call Vancouver centre on a gradual descent through 11,300'. She acknowledges, then asks me again for my altitude. "Descending through one one thousand." She calls me again radar identified and asks again for the altitude. "One zero thousand eight hundred."
"What altitude are you descending to?" she asks.
I resist replying, "Sea level," but I don't really know what she is asking. "Descending for landing at YVR." I already told her that. "Do you wish to issue an altitude restriction?" Kind of a non-standard call, but what the heck does she want?
She solves her problem by handing me off to Vancouver terminal, which gets the whole descending for landing thing more clearly, and does give me an altitude restriction of 3500', then 2500'. They fly me over the airport and then out for a right downwind for runway 08R and a 180 to land back on that runway. I exit read back a crossing clearance in the taxi instruction and find my way to parking on the apron. Company has already lined up someone to look at the overtemp indication.
Fortunately, while the EGT got pretty high, there, the fire of this blog entry title was not mine, but Slave Lake's. At the end of the day I learn that much of the town of Slave Lake has been destroyed by fire. In an astonishingly short time it went from no fires nearby, to a few forest fires in the vicinity -- a not uncommon situation anywhere in the north in the summer -- to full on evacuation as subdivisions and main street businesses blazed. Forest fires are burning all summer all over the north, but the area is so sparsely populated that there is not much property damage. In Slave it just so happened that two fires converged on a community. There wasn't even an intermediate step of a voluntary evacuation. Fortunately it has good highways and it's a prosperous and friendly community so pretty much everyone had a truck or a ride from someone. I'm glad in a way that I got to walk its streets one last time, and I'm extremely glad to hear that there were no deaths or injuries. It means that I don't need to worry individually about the fate of the waitress who was going camping, the fueller who happily came out early and stayed late for our crews, the non-smoking hotel receptionist who saved our time by admitting that the smoking rooms (all they had left) definitely smelled like smoke to her, or the non-multitasking hotel receptionist who slowly checked us in at the Super-8. It's bizarre that all those businesses and homes have gone up in smoke. I find later that the crew of the airplane that had been in Edmonton for camera repairs did spend the night there, and had to be evacuated with their hotel staff, because the airport was shut down and the fuel reserved for fire-fighting. I realized that the pictures we had taken that day were the last pictures of Slave Lake as it was; someone else realized that too and allowed our crew back up to take some "after" pictures and then return south and escape the evacuation zone with their airplane.
Here's a video that shows a lot of the destruction: you'll see homes, the city hall, a main street Ford dealership and the new mall completely gutted. A lot of the scenes that show fire behind a screen of trees is not forest fire at all, but the actual town blazing up that brightly, behind a windbreak. There are a lot of videos of the fire, but this one best encapsulates the fire, the aftermath and the feeling of losing ones community that way.
The second video shows just how thoroughly the destroyed houses have been destroyed, and has some information on the cleanup. The RCMP are going through the remains of the homes, looking for objects of value, before people return, to prevent looting and injury, and reunite people with whatever can be saved. It's tragic how little is left, and sweet that the authorities recognize the value the little things may have. I think Slave Lake will rebuild and rebound.
I've noticed some comments about "who started it?" There is no wasn't an arson fire or a cooking accident. It didn't start in town, but in the forest, probably from lightning strikes, the cause of most Alberta forest fires. It was a natural phenomenon that didn't stop just because it wasn't in its natural habitat anymore.
When I was shown this, and had its function described to me, I thought it was an imperfect design, but usable and logical, but that's because I hadn't been listening closely enough to the explanation. I showed it to a computer programmer and he managed too backfit a sort of logic to it, but I don't think he could have done so had I not told him the rules. So here's your turn.
The question is, given that the display above asks the pilot to make control inputs that will centre the green dot exactly on the crosshairs--I'll give you that much--what control inputs does it ask for as depicted? Give your answer in direction and relative magnitude of pitch, roll, yaw and/or speed. If you're not sure what those terms mean (and those who are not probably have a better chance of getting it right), just describe what you think it might be asking the pilot to do, in whatever terms make sense to you. As usual I ask any of you familiar with this particular instrument of guidance to recuse yourselves, or at least hide your knowledge in polite snickering.
I'll give you one more piece of information, although it would be incorrect to call it a 'hint,' and that is that sometimes the dot turns red.
en français:
le point - dot
la réticule - crosshairs
le lacet - yaw
le tangage - pitch
le roulis - roll
Pour mettre le point vert sur le centre de la réticule on doit ajuster le lacet et le tangage, ou peut être le roulis et la vitesse.
In declining the opportunity with Eagle, I included the offer to help out in the meantime because I have a number of skills that match the needs of the small company and didn't want to leave them in the lurch. My offer was accepted and the day after I returned to my own province, I was out at that airport doing ... can you guess? Company exams, of course. Deicing, aircraft, ground handling, ops, flight following, all very thorough and properly done. I believe it may be the first time I've actually had the prescribed number of hours tracked for each segment of the indoctrination. There was another new employee there, so we went off to the airplane together and inventoried the survival kit and first aid kit for some independent learning. We checked off and initialled all the boxes, got my name on the insurance and went for a training flight.
Thanks to my experience and the nature of the operating certificate, I actually require minimal aircraft training. It turns out I've flown both the airframe type and engine type for an acceptable number of hours, but never both at once--but I need to learn how the practical aspects of the particular operation, so this is a working flight.
I'm in the left seat, at an unfamiliar airport, stumbling my way through clearance delivery, ground, not taxiing anywhere I shouldn't, and then following an unfamiliar departure procedure. Oh whom am I kidding? I love it. The sky is blue, the engines are in limits, and I quickly see what it is that we have to do to fulfil the mission. My situational awareness is still quite narrow, but I'm learning. Doing it all correctly is another matter, though, and I give control to the owner for the more complicated tasks. I fly a few shaky practice lines, and then the weather changes and we head back for landing. I don't think there's a reason I can't tell you a bit more about this operation, so I will do that next day.
en français:
la piste - runway
la vois de circulation - taxiway
le seuil - threshold
le point d'attente - holding point
circuler - to taxi
Je circule lentement parce que je ne suis certain ou se trouve le point d'attente et je ne veux pas être sur la piste sans authorisation.
English is the international language of aviation, and all air traffic controllers are supposed to be able to provide services in English, but some pilots can get away without speaking English. First off, they only need enough English to understand basic ATC transmissions, and as anyone who has ever waited for a controller to get a read back from a Korean crew can tell you, that may not be much. Secondly, if a crew is operating only in a subarea of the world where a non-English language is prevalent, they may be able to operate legally using only that language. For example, you may fly in the province of Québec using French only, or between former Eastern bloc countries with only Russian. Pilots who are not native speakers of English undergo an oral exam to qualify as "English-speaking" on their licence, and anyone can test to have French added, too.
I speak some French. I took five years in school, but it wasn't intensive. It sounds better than Stephen Harper's French, but I don't know aviation vocabulary, and I never learned the subjunctive because we learned new verb tenses year by year, with passé historique in grade eleven and then I didn't take French in grade twelve. I'm going to assume that they taught us things in an order roughly corresponding to its utility, and given that one mostly encounters passé historique on historical markers and in textbooks, I can probably live a long and happy life without ever mastering le subjunctif.
But if I'm going to do work for an operation based in a French-speaking area, I'm going to learn some basic airplane vocabulary and try to increase my command of French enough to get French competency listed on my licence. This is not so much because I want to talk to ATC in French, but so I can talk to mechanics in remote areas of Québec without charades, and simply to socialize with pilots who prefer French.
The vocabulary of today will be basic parts of the airplane, because it's a massive cheat. The French and English were working on airplanes at the same time as the Wright brothers, and innovations and terminology went across the channel and across the Atlantic. Thus we have:
le fuselage - fuselage (main body of the airplane)
l'aileron (m) - aileron (wing trailing edge hinged surface used to control roll)
l'empennage (m) - empennage (tail section of the airplane)
le longeron - longeron (wing spar)
le canard - canard (horizontal stabilizer forward of wing)
l'aile (f) - wing (aileron is a diminutive form of this word)
le train d'atterrissage - landing gear (as in terre, land)
l'hélice (f) - propeller (think 'helix')
le volet - flap (maybe related to voler, to fly?)
le stabilisateur - horizontal stabilizer
la dérive - vertical stabilizer
le gouvernail de direction - rudder
I've taken all these from figure 1 on the first page of Entre Ciel et Terre. Interesting to me is the fact that the gender of the nouns, necessary for using each word correctly in sentences, is not included in the figure. I had to search the text to see which articles were used, or look up the words elsewhere. Obviously a word like aile would be familiar to anyone who spoke French well enough to be using this textbook, and volet is a word with a non-technical meaning that, like English flap, applies to anything that hinges off a main part, but there must be some words on the list that would be new to a new student of aviation. Would they just use their instincts to determine the gender? There are some forms that imply a certain noun gender, but even a native speaker can't predict that with perfect accuracy.
French speaking readers are encouraged to add or correct anything here, and to leave comments on the blog in French, for me to puzzle out, even if you have to use use le subjunctif. And while we're on language, a reader wanted to know how you all pronounce the English words inaugural, jugular, rectangular, and circular. Say where you learned English, and if it's your first language.
There is time for a Seagull flight before I go home, but the chief pilot has been up most of the night at the hospital, and says he is not fit to fly. This scores more points with me, because it indicates the company's safety culture. The boss doesn't press him for a moment, despite the fact that it is pretty inconvenient, and the boss says he'll take me flying, at which point the chief pilot elects to go along as a passenger.
We go out to the flight line, walk around the airplane. It has a pilot relief tube, something I've coveted for a few years of landing cross-legged. The boss hasn't hired a female before, and this is one of those rare cases in employment where having the boss think about your personal anatomy as part of the hiring process actually makes sense. I know I can manage with products like the TravelJohn, but he's come up with a solution that he thinks is better for everyone. The airplane type already has one passenger seat that hides a toilet, so he's going to re-install those. Zipper placement on the flight suits might be more of an issue if the manufacturer hasn't thought of anatomical variations. Mr. Seagull indicates that the flight suit manufacturer has placed safety over anatomical convenience, giving as an example the fact that the forward hip pockets are actual pockets not open at the bottom. "Ah yes," I indicate my understanding, "So you can't get at the things in your regular pockets." That, too, he admits, but the primary inconvenience is that when you're a guy, sitting for any period of time, sometimes things need adjusting, and that's difficult to do in a flight suit. Flying is a full body job. It's a feminist cry that unless a job actually requires a penis or a vagina it should be open to all, and I don't disagree. I'm just amused that I am coming on board in an operation where the equipment I will be operating actually has a penis-to-airframe interface. I think I can improvise a female-to-male adaptor for it, though.
I take the left seat and we go for a short local flight, where I do some standard manoeuvres and I would discuss the rest of the flight but instead I will report a conversation from the day before.
Me: I guess I have one more question. You know I keep a blog. I don't name companies, coworkers, customers or anything that I think could place the company in a bad light, are there any aspects of your operation that ...
Him: No, you can't blog about this.
That also explains the Xs, Ys and Qs you might have wondered about in the previous post about potential work locations. I'll still tell you stories, I'll let you know what I'm learning, and perhaps the friend of Mr. Seagull who connected me with this company will have a chance to explain that my style reveals nothing, and get my leash loosened, but as a show of good faith I'm cutting off here, even though it was an interesting flight.
I went back to the passenger terminal and flew home, expecting to be called for a contract in a month and a half or so. My houseguest has forgiven me for abandoning her, but hasn't been as successful this week as I have. And there waiting for me at home is a very polite rejection letter from the previous company that interviewed me. That's good in a way. Never being told is like never finding the body.
A few days ago, a reader posted a comment that I was expecting. Truthfully I was expecting more resembling this comment, and sooner.
OK, I think this diversion was fun. I also think it has gone on long enough and we ought to get back to flying or something close. Don't ya 'spoze... If we don't (or won't) want to write about flying anymore, let's reclassify and get off the aviation lists. Frankly, I DO think you still give a twit about flying and you are just hiding it because you are a bit frustrated - and I can appreciate that. Maybe it is time to take a slightly lesser flying job, keep those hours building and do what you are supposed to do. Some folks on their way up the ladder believe that ANY flying is better than no flying. Where do you stand?
I answered briefly (or at least as briefly as I get) in a comment, but decided to take some more room here to answer more thoroughly, point by point. As I learned as an instructor, most of the time when someone asks a question there are others wondering the same thing. I appreciate your attention and your comments, and enjoy hearing from different people as I happen to veer into your areas of expertise. This blog, as it has always said up there at the top, is about the adventures of an aviatrix: me. I am doing my level best to make them once again aviation-related adventures, but I can only write so many posts about PDFs of resumes. I like to be a reliable blogger, but in my case reliability is in the regularity my posts, or at least reliable information on when I'll blog next, as opposed to reliably blogging on a given topic. Despite my diversions, I think I produce as many aviation-themed posts in any given year as any other non-aggregator in the blogosphere. Remember in that vein that a non-aviation post is not depriving you of an aviation one, just giving you something to see before the next time I have an aviation-related one ready.
I'm a little surprised to have given the impression that I was unwilling to write about flying, or that I didn't care about flying. I didn't think much more than a week went by without me saying something about my desire to be flying, my impatience to hear back from a company I had interviewed with, or at least comparing what I was doing to some aspect of flying. I'm definitely not trying to hide it. Getting off aviation lists wouldn't really be something I could do of my own accord. Most blog directories, well the good ones, at least, classify blogs themselves and I wouldn't even know where to look to find what lists I'm on or how to get off them.
The "time to take a slightly lesser flying job" question is an interesting one. I wonder if he has ever tried to take a slightly lesser flying job. What is a "lesser" flying job? For less money? The job for which I attended groundschool would have paid half as much as my previous one, and for close to twice as much work. A slower or smaller airplane? Not out of the question. Every type of commercial operation is different, and the management want pilots who have direct, recent experience in the narrow area they are hiring for, yet who do not have so much experience that they could easily get a different job. I apply for but don't get called to interview for near-entry level jobs, even ones I really want, because my resume is clearly not one of an entry level pilot, and the employers want someone who needs the job as a rung on the ladder, and who will take some time to be eligible for a different one. Cynically, such a pilot is easier for them to abuse, and practically they feel they have a better chance of amortizing their investment. I'm already eligible for almost any job advertised without specific type-rating demands, but as the specific type of time any given employer might be asking for falls further into the past, my competitiveness as a candidate declines. And yes, that's very frustrating, and it's something that sent me to go back to school and prove that I could go and learn things like I was still twenty.
I have absolutely no interest in time-building. It's one of the strengths of my resume, that any employer can look at it and see that I'm not applying because I'm looking to build time. My time is built. I'm not sure what "do what you were supposed to do" means in the question. If I was supposed to fly airplanes and write only about aviation, then you not I are the one doing the supposing. I'm a whole person and I do lots of stuff, little of which I consider to be something I'm not supposed to do.
Any flying is most definitely not better than no flying. If you are flying unsafe aircraft, with undocumented dangerous goods, with abusive management or customers, or otherwise operating in an environment hazardous to the physical or mental health of yourself or others, you're making a poor decision. I will fly for any operation I consider to be safe and respectful. Regular readers have seen me accept a contract to fly an airplane I could lift without starting the engine, and jump in a simulator for an airplane that could probably lift my house. I'll follow any SOPs I consider safe, legal and moral, but I won't stay long where I'm not respected.
It so happens that the school from which I embezzled the most recent phase of my education ended its winter term. The students all applauded the professors on the last day of classes, something that seems superior to what happened when I went to school. I think we all walked out grumbling about the exam schedule. I cancelled the Netflix subscription without watching anything else I deemed worth reporting on. Except that I watched all the Red Dwarf episodes, including a few series that weren't out the first time I watched them. I discovered that you can be inspired and roll your eyes at the same time, with the line, "Even the word "hopeless" has hope in it." Netflix Canada has a very poor selection. I'm holding back on trying another movie delivery option because whether DVDs-by-mail will work depends on whether the job I am destined to get is in Nowhere, Nunavut or Downtown Distribution City.
And all this blogging isn't a complete waste of time, as I now have e-mail from a couple of blog readers with real job tips: jobs that are available to a Canadian, and related to my experience. One of the companies experiences an unfortunate setback actually during our rapid-fire e-mail conversation but the other one seems promising, as the employer e-mailed me back.
Update: I removed the reader's posting name from this blog entry because, while I wasn't intending it as a name and shame, he took some heat from the blogosphere and sent me a sincere apology. So we're good now.
I dreamed last night that I was in a large glass-walled airport terminal. It was a boxy shape, and may have had glass ceilings, too, or at least floor to high ceiling windows, giving an unobstructed view of the tarmac. (One of my colleagues hates that colloquialism. It's almost always concrete. I think heavy airplanes would punch holes into tarmac on a hot day). It's not a hot day in my dream, though. It's snowing, with snowflakes swirling everywhere then heavy rain, visibility not any better. I'm inside, not flying. I see some of my former colleagues, and former students, one I remember in a in a really dirty white shirt, but going flying. I'm not flying. I don't know why I'm there.
I'm starting to feel that I'm never going flying. All I want is an FO job with a good company. A King Air would be great, even a piston twin if you've got good two-crew SOPs and a company culture where your status doesn't depend on how much you can drink or deadlift. I don't want anything I can't do. I don't want a free ride. I just want to fly airplanes in a safe environment where my skills will be appreciated.
I applied to a job like that. I really wanted it. I had ten times the listed experience in each category they asked for, so of course they didn't call me. While sorting out last year's taxes the accountant can't understand why having too much experience is a minus. He knows tax law, though. God knows I don't.
We got everything ready and took off today, but after flying back and forth for about five minutes, before all the green lights were even lined up on the mission, we were forced to abort for poor environmental conditions. I love this plane, because I can carry full fuel and a mission specialist and still land immediately after take off. All airplanes in the fleet are not the same, and one that is heavier empty may require me to fly for about an hour before I'm down to landing weight. I have no ability to dump fuel. In an emergency I could land overweight, and if it was a high quality landing on a sufficient length runway, there would be no damage at all. But the specifications for the aircraft have to allow for the sloppiest normally acceptable landing--I don't know if that's defined somewhere, it's a corner of the envelope I've never elected nor had the misfortune to push--and still land safely at the max allowable weight. So I must legally burn down to that before landing. This lovely, svelte aircraft would let me do touch and goes with my full mission payload. So when the mission specialist calls it, I'm wheels on the ground as soon as the local FSS confirms the runway is mine. It's always the mission specialist's call to land for any mission-related reasons, of just because he or she feels like it, just as he or she can't overrule my decision to land for any safety reason. I don't get to call flights on whims though.
The AME arrives to meet the flight. It's one of the guys I was working with down south, just not the same one as was up here before. They swapped over and used their overlap days to do the inspection. He's here this afternoon just to make sure there is no aircraft reason for the quick return, and to familiarize himself with the working environment up here. I feel like I'm on the Snowbirds or something with this attentive ground support.
Back at the hotel, I have e-mail with an iTunes recommendation, based on my quoting Robert Service. He's right, I like this. I've heard it many times, but never remembered the title or artist at a moment when I was downloading music.
My country is definitely wild and savage. The song goes into my cross country playlist along with all the songs that contain the names of states and provinces or other places I fly over. Yes, my list is heavy on Stompin' Tom. My correspondent reminds me that Stan Rogers also has an aviation connection, as he was killed in the fire on the Air Canada deathwish plane.
Meanwhile iTunes censors the word "Honky" in Honky Tonk Man and Honky Tonk Blues censored. What the heck? How is this a bad word? I believe it's a really old fashioned derogatory term for caucasians, based I suppose on the fact that white people have the biggest noses of any race, but has anyone ever been actually offended by the word? I love reading stories about ridiculous things done in the name of profanity filtering, but I don't like it so much when they affect things I'm trying to look at.
A victory has been achieved against the forces for terrorist infiltration of hotels, as the card encoder works again, and we can all go in and out of our hotel rooms without an escort.
Back to the hangar, for what should be the last time. We said we'd have the airplane back to the customer today, but this airport is fogged in solid, so we have a little while to work before the pressure is really on. It's cold again today, even colder. I crank the heat on the hangar. We're paying to rent it. I nerd on the iPod for a bit then ask if they are done the cabin inspection so I can close up in there. "Oh, cabin inspection, right." That would be a no. They are done in the nose, so I replace all the gear. It always looks like something is missing when I put it back, because it fits so much better when you have it all out and can play tetris with it to get the best fit, as compared to when you're just digging something out and shoving it back. Then it's like this sort of tetris. My high score there is 100.
I call flight services for an update on weather, seeing as I can't see more than a couple of hundred metres past the door of the hangar. I think I can see further inside than outside. The weather is not good at destination yet, either, but both should improve before long. There's still no NOTAM on the drag racing, so I call the local Flight Services personnel to ask. They tell me the races take place on a disused taxiway on the other side of the airport and have no impact on operations. Ahh. I call back the FSS briefer to pass on this information, so they can mollify any other pilot who is concerned by the signs.
The cabin inspection is complete and one of the AMEs is closing up the panels there. I feel guilty that he is fixing the mess I made in the cabin, pulling everything apart to get to the cables. Those panels come in and out a lot so there were different kinds of holes, different sizes of screws, carpet and other miscellany. As they get ready to tow the aircraft out, I put the seats back in the cockpit. They always go back in easier than out, the opposite of the cabin seats. I see as I secure the locks on the rails that he has done a beautiful job reassembling the floor. It's better than when I started.
I compliment him on that, it's an easy thing to be lazy about, hence the mess it was in when I started. Both guys seem grateful for my help over the last few days, despite my sometimes self-sabotaging assistance. I suppose just having company is good, too. Now it's time for me to go do what I'm good at.
I walkaround and make sure that we haven't left any important bits unattached, then start up and run up the engines. Everything looks fine, sounds fine. They want a fairly long run so call for taxi and, after I let a Cessna 180 go by, go out on the runway to do the break-in for the new brake pads. A couple of accelerate-stops and then I'm back to the ramp. They pull the cowls again and I assume my note "leak check goo" means that it was all good with no leaks, because after that we went back to the hotel to get Internet access for the references needed to finish the last of the paperwork. I load bags my bags into the airplane, thank the guys again for their work and leave while they are still cleaning the hangar.
After take off I keep the speed down so I can cycle the gear a couple of times. Everything works as well as it did on the jacks. Sometimes with the airflow going by the calibration or something isn't quite right, but today it's perfect. I text an "all good" (or possibly "all goo," hope they understood) and steer direct for the waiting customers.
My northbound track takes me right through where the storm was on the way down. I haven't cleared the GPS track, so you can see my route south, my initial 180, slightly kidney shaped as I deked the visible lightning, another foray to the south east, and then a big wide semi-cardiod shape completely avoiding the area of thunderstorms before rejoining the planned track to destination. A little avgas and a little airframe time doesn't compare to the risk of lightning, downdrafts, disorientation and severe turbulence inside those monsters. Now there is nothing but sky and nice little puffy clouds. At destination it's approach, land, rollout, park, text, and get a ride to the hotel. They tell me the sky went black here after I left, too. They saw the same monster that I tickled.
The cardkey encoder still doesn't work at the hotel, so I need to wait in the lobby for an escort to my room. As the encoder is an American-designed security device containing encryption technology it has been held up at customs. At least they ordered two, so they won't be in this bind next time. It could be so miserable for the employees having to deal with customers complaining over this, but my escort has chosen to be unassailably cheerful and friendly about it all. I don't think it would be possible to be miserable to her about the situation. Any negativity you tried to direct at her would bounce right off.
Dinner brings me back to Boston Pizza. No, I didn't miss it. Back in the hotel I watch Casino Royale. I've seen and even "reviewed" it before, but now I'm looking at it in the context of a "reset" in the manner of the new Star Trek movie: take a long-running franchise, retell the beginning of the legend, and then start over in a new time period. I'm sure this has been done again and again, but it's the first time I've noticed it. That's not counting anachronisms like obviously European architecture and principals in biblical artwork, or the stories in Shakespeare being retold in different eras, like Romeo and Juliet becoming West Side Story. It's a good idea, really just an extension of translation to allow people to identify with a work that would otherwise be too far removed from their knowledge. Vesper is still the stupidest password ever, though.
I'm woken up by a text message on my telephone. Of course we don't fly for days and I do it all right, and then the one day I forget to turn off my phone before going to sleep we do fly, so I'm woken up by the message that I should have gotten after I woke up and turned on my phone. No great harm done: it's 8 a.m. already. Yeah, I slept past eight on a working day. It's my job, so I can work late if need be.
Around three p.m. it's my turn to actually do my job. It's so exciting. I get to fly an airplane. Water, headset, snacks, emergency supplies, checklists and jump in the customer's truck to go out to the airport. The other flight has already landed but the engines are still turning as they finish shutting down the computers. The fuellers here are good. They understand our operation and have good communication, so they are right there as soon as the engines stop turning, fill us up and then my coworker pays for both loads of fuel together as I start the engines anew. Everything is warm and we haven't forgotten how to do our jobs so we taxi out. I follow the little wiggle in the taxi way that is designed to take me around the end of the tails of the airliners parked at the terminal, even though there aren't any parked there. I always follow the taxi centrelines.
Silent self brief before take-off, notify the FSS that I'm taking the runway, position, power, airspeed, rotate, liftoff, climb rate, airspeed, brakes, gear up, lights out, climb speed, after takeoff checks, and into the weird ballet that starts one of our missions. Today's mission takes us out over a winding river, up its sloping bank to some jagged hills and then over an almost vertical escarpment into another valley. The escarpment curves towards the valley and its lip slopes down from north to south. It's a challenge to put the airplane just where it needs to be on each pass, while maintaining the assigned speed.
It's a great flight, with clear weather for a change, but I forgot to take any pictures until after landing. After I called for fuel and we drove away I tried to get a shot of the full moon. I forgot to turn off the flash on the first attempt, however, and that one zap of the flash killed the battery. I had a spare in my bag, but I didn't want to ask the driver to wait while I switched batteries and tried again to capture the drama of the evening in a tiny five year old digital camera. I'll have to just tell you about it.
What appeared to be a completely full moon has already risen to at least thirty degrees above the horizon while across the sky the sun was just touching the northwest horizon, sunset still a half hour away. That's not the way they described the relationship between the full moonrise and sunset in science class, but then in kindergarten they taught us that the sun rises and sets daily. I love the north.
I love in general when nature doesn't seem to conform to its stereotypes. Like these marvellous shots of baby cheetahs playing with a baby impala. If the game eventually got rough and they killed it, the photographer either didn't capture that, or chose to leave those shots out of the series. I imagine either mother turning up and giving her offspring hell for hanging with the wrong crowd.
I really should spend some of the energy I expend reading webcomics and watching Law & Order reruns on keeping up with the coolness of experimental aviation. Here are a few I've been collecting to share with you, none of which I found out about as soon as I should have, so don't expect any breaking news.
The Goodyear Inflatoplane was built long before I was born, but really that is the sort of thing that legend should keep alive in everyone's hearts, even though the project is long gone. I love inflatable stuff. Inflatable Christmas decorations, punching bags, air mattresses, pool toys, you name it. And "Inflatoplane" is the best name. They really knew how to name things back then. The airplane I learned to fly in was designed in the same age of naming, and its features includes omnivision, paralift and land-o-matic.
Fortunately the fifties named inventions that were yet to be invented, so that this is still called a rocket pack or a jetpack or a rocket belt. It's a bit like the personal videophone though, into the proof of concept phase, but still not really there. Another model leaves the fuel on the ground, and removes dangerous exhaust from the vicinity of the user, allowing for much more flight time, but restricting the flight path to over relatively calm water.
This experimental miniature airplane uses the same flight techniques as the birds I love to watch, controlling their momentum with such precise timing that they come to a full-stall landing on a single point. It's awesome to watch them adjusting everything to make that landing. They mess up sometimes, but because their wingtips and tail sections are made of feathers, they don't need to report for major repairs or inspections when they do. Birds land on power lines because they are available and away from predators, so it's doubly cool that the MAV is using the power line as a food source, actually poaching the current to recharge its batteries.
And finally, last month the Solar Impulse has completed a flight of over twenty-six hours (yes, through the night and into the next day) entirely on solar power. The team is planning to build an even more efficient solar-powered airplane and do a round the world trip. I'm embarrassed that I didn't know about this the same day it happened, because it's the coolest thing ever. I'd love to fly a solar or human-powered aircraft. I should really get my glider licence. Started it once, but then I moved for a job, to somewhere there weren't gliders.
I'm up north, and I have a whack of GPS equipment on board that tells me which way is which, so the lowly whiskey compass at the top of the windshield doesn't get much regard. Not that I disregard it. A compass is a very cool device, incredibly low tech, but working all over the planet without power. I can imagine an advanced technological society that had lost the knowledge of compass navigation. They could have built so many structures, electronic devices and power transmission lines that compasses didn't work most places, and have so much signage and technological assistance that no one used them anyway.
The Earth's magnetic field lines, with which a compass aligns, encircle the planet emerging from and disappearing into the poles. My compass is a hemispheric shell suspended by a point in liquid (the "whiskey") and free to rotate and tilt to align with the local magnetic field. I can't use it to roll out on a heading because the turning errors are enormous at this latitude, and even in level unaccelerated flight the tilt of the bowl is such that it's not easy to read.
The HSI is a kind of stabilized compass, as it gets its information from a magnetic compass, but right now mine isn't working. It hasn't been removed from the aircraft, because we're planning to go south to Edmonton soon. There's an avionics shop with an excellent reputation there, and the AME wants them to examine the HSI in situ. That would allow them to spot if it's something simple and removes the risk and cost associated with removing and shipping it, especially as we're still orbiting the black hole of postal and shipping services. In the absence of an HSI, I'm setting the copilot side directional gyro; habit and original training makes me look at the compass to do this, even though I have far more information available from the GPS and INS.
I'm tracking 270 degrees true, and the compass reads 260 degrees, which is obviously a magnetic reading. The chart says the local magnetic variation is 23 degrees east of true. The compass correction card says for 270 degrees steer 272, and is reasonably consistent from south through west, and it's dated last month. The computer says I'm crabbing four degrees to the north. How do I put that together to make any sense?
270 true minus 23E suggests we're tracking 247 degrees magnetic, but we're crabbing four degrees north, which makes a heading of 251 magnetic, for which I should steer 253 magnetic. So there are seven degrees missing. I'm willing to believe it's the result of all the extra kit that wasn't running when the compass was swung, because we stow some of the valuable non-aviation equipment before giving the airplane over for extended maintenance. Either that or the universe is wrong.
Eastbound on the exact reciprocal track of 090 true, the compass reads about 035, but I didn't write all the associated numbers down, so I can't play with them.
At the beginning of the year, I introduced you to Elizabeth, who spends much of her spare time, energy and money on the Postcard Project, sending postcards to anyone who wants one, especially to those whose lives are improved by the gesture. She's still alive, beating all kinds of odds, and still sending hundreds of personally selected and hand-decorated postcards. I keep telling her not to send them to me because firstly I'm never home to receive them, secondly she really does have limited resources, and thirdly I didn't think she was ever going to beat the very first card she sent me. But just as she defies the expectations of all medical professionals, Elizabeth defies any attempt to get her to stop sending postcards. And I think she may have found a better one.
It's not just a postcard, but an actual card depicting the boarding process on a "Giant 32 Passenger Pan American Flying Clipper Ship." That's a flying boat, a seaplane, with a giant high wing fitted with four Pratt & Whitney engines. I can only see three in the picture, but I assume it's an S-42 and that artistic licence has hidden the edge of the fourth engine in the picture, so they didn't have to depict part of the engine cut off by the frame.
Elizabeth puts a lot of pictures of pictures on her blog, and they don't have big camera flash solarization marks on them. I found out how she does it, too. She waits for a sunny day and photographs them in natural sunlight. Next I'll have to get her to teach me how to make them not be crooked.
I've never flown an airplane of that size, especially not a seaplane. My experience of flying boats is that on account of the hull being down at water level, I don't have a good enough view of the water around me to spot sticks and deadheads and waves. It's nerve-wracking not knowing for sure that your takeoff surface is clear. I see that a number of the clippers were destroyed in take-off accidents so perhaps my caution is justified.
When I told Elizabeth I would be posting this one on my blog she urged me to tell you that she has other classic airplane and car postcards, plus railway, cats, dogs and space. I only ask that if you're going to take advantage of her generosity that you consider getting something for her, from her wishlist.
