Drone vs Helicopter

This wasn't put together as a PSA on drones, but it's being passed around the aviation community as one. I haven't figured out how to embed it as a video, so let me know if the link doesn't open a video for you.

video

Having the audio on is not strictly necessary, but after the main sequence there's an explanation that you may find interesting if you like that sort of thing.

Drones are scary little things. You'd think the danger a small thing like a bird or a drone can pose to a large aircraft would be impressed on the minds of the public after things like US Airways Flight 1549. (I'm not going to call it by its nickname because that undermines the training and expertise of the aircraft designers, SOP writers, pilots, flight attendants and rescue personnel). But people go on thinking that anything in the sky above them is as impervious to as the moon to their interference, and they try to check us out. Transport Canada has a renewed campaign trying to protect us from them. The roads around my airport are marked out with bilingual and graphic "no drones" signs. I was going to say that people wouldn't throw rocks at passing cars, so why do they launch these things at airplanes, but then I remember a relative of mine getting picked up by the police for dropping rocks off a pedestrian overpass, so yeah, people would do these things. I can almost imagine this Casualty One episode inspiring people to attack helicopters.

I've reported drones twice in flight, both times while in the immediate vicinity of an airport, and both times taken very seriously by ATC. Just like playing with fireworks, lasers, or things that look like grenade launchers, even if you think you're not causing any harm, you do that in the vicinity of people operating aircraft and we're going to launch law enforcement (or more) right back at you.

Why Helicopters Work That Way

I've never studied helicopter aerodynamics, but I witnessed a helicopter crash once, and the event was consistent with the theory that it's principally the integrity of the tail rotor that prevents the helicopter from behaving the way the bluebird expects, but the chicken has an excellent point.

2 Cows and a Chicken Comic Strip on GoComics.com

Also as the days get darker and the weather outside arbitrary northern hotels gets bleaker, I'm tending to agree with these chickens.

Currently binging on House, Grey's Anatomy, Community, and Fringe.

Celebritails

My thanks go to regular reader Sarah for linking me to this article on the Canadian Forces Celebritail programme. I haven't managed to get a blogworthy picture of one in the field, must be the subtle colours, and I don't see most of these types at all at the airports I frequent. If you know the history behind all the people honoured on the tails, then you are a connoisseur of Canadian history and culture. The funniest one is the Bieber Bomber, and its mysterious poor dispatch record. I'll bet they're extra glad they took that picture off now!

My Job is Almost This Cool

Here's a quick look at how beautiful my country is in the winter, and at how obsessed we are with hockey. I get to fly over these same panoramas, and while we don't get to organize alpine lake hockey games, we do choose our restaurants on playoff nights to ensure we can see the games. We can also get the scores from air traffic control if we have to fly during a game. I know of at least one tower that used their local hockey team's name instead of a letter of the phonetic alphabet to designate the ATIS, just to oblige the pilot of the visiting team's jet to say it.

Yes, my job is nearly this cool, and often a lot colder. See them wearing toques in the helicopters? The other day I was wearing a full-on men's parka, complete with the stereotypical fur around the edge of the hood. The fur is removable, but when it's really cold, they haven't made an artificial material that stays soft and doesn't chafe your skin. (Ever notice how much of the really premium stuff is made by animals? Leather, fur, wool, silk, cream, steak, caviar ... I'm surprised there isn't a chocolate beetle).

That lake in the shot is amazing, before there are any skate marks or ice-testing holes on it. Often as we fly over lakes in late fall we're trying to gauge whether they are frozen or not. You see a little bit of white at the edge of the lake and it's difficult to tell if it's ice just beginning to form, or if it's a little bit of snow on the edge of a completely frozen lake. I'm glad it's never been my job to determine if one is safe to land on. Speaking of safety, before you criticize the flight safety involved in a helicopter playing hockey, see the behind-the-scenes planning from this blog entry.

Alcohol-Based Oxygen Generation

As I descend into the aerodrome environment I position report on the general traffic frequency of 126.7 and then switch to the mandatory frequency for the airfield and make another call. I'm thirty miles out, descending through, I don't know, nine thousand or something. A helicopter pilot calls short final. Not for the runway. Not even for the aerodrome. He's on final for Bear Mountain. Can you be on left base for Bear Mountain? I never know what helicopters are doing, but the pilots tend to be professional and know what they are doing, and they also grasp that we dimwitted fixed wing folk are bedazzled by their whirling wing.

We land, on a runway, not a mountain. We persuade the people there to put fuel in our airplane in exchange for their being able to take an imprint of a piece of plastic our employer gave us. Seems fair. We also need oxygen, but that is not a service the FBO offers. A local operator has oxygen though, and the fueller knows one of the maintenance guys there, so he makes an introduction. They have the oxygen. They have the time. We have the fittings for our non-standard tank. But they aren't set up for selling oxygen. Eventually the service is negotiated in exchange for the northern currency: a case of beer. Honestly if the stuff wasn't so heavy and perishable we'd just carry a couple of cases around at all times. Any favour can be had for beer in the north.

We leave, with our oxygen, and hear that helicopter on final for a different mountain.

Windex

I'm at an airport. I've been here before. Some of you have too, no doubt, and will recognize it from the following I know the essential things a transient pilot needs to know. I know the gate code to return to airside. It's a truncation of a famous mathematical constant. I know how to find the fueller. He often monitors the traffic frequency so if I announce my need for fuel exiting the runway, he'll probably park the fuel truck in front of the airplane as I shut down, but if that doesn't work, there's no specific FBO frequency. He has an office with an entrance inside the airline office, so I can ask the customer service agents at the airline counter to alert him for me. I know where the women's washroom is. It's downstairs past the stuffed bear. The men's is probably there too, but a sign implies there's a unisex accessible washroom on the main floor, for those who can't navigate stairs. I've filled my water bottle in the women's washroom before, but the water from there tastes terrible. Much better-tasting water, and baked snacks are available at the café.

On this particular occasion all my knowledge of this airport does not help us have a quicker turn because we are waiting here for something. I don't remember what we're waiting for. It' snot my job to decide when it's time to leave. It's my job to be ready to leave when I'm told it's time to leave, or to explain succinctly why we can't. On this occasion I am waiting in the café for whatever configuration of factors is required for it to be time to leave. I have eaten all the baked snacks that I require and am now entertaining myself by reading a book that someone has left at the café. I don't have a really discriminating taste in literature. I'm reading Maximum Boy starring in Attack of the Soggy Underwater People by Dan Greenburg. Its eleven year old male protagonist obtains superpowers from moon rocks. He also has to get his homework done. The story climax is predicated on an immediate need for ammonia at the north pole. Mr. Greenburg nursed my willing suspension of disbelief all the way through the scenes of conflict with the protagonist's sister, negotiations with the titular soggy underwear people and meetings with the president and then broke the whole concept by having Maximum Boy identify the the helicopter pilots (they were also at the north pole, but I won't spoil the whole story) as a potential source of ammonia. They use Windex to clean their helicopter windshields. Noooooo! It spoiled the story for me. It wasn't a detail. It was the pivotal moment in the story, and it was supposed to be a science teaching moment too. There's no way the helicopter pilots were using ammonia-based Windex to clean their acrylic windshields.

If you're cavalier with the integrity of your windshield you might use non-aviation specific products like Pledge furniture polish or acrylic polish marketed for the marine industry, but generally pilots use a product specifically designed and marketed for care of aviation windshields. The windshield allows us to see oncoming aircraft; it keeps the air inside pressurized cockpits and it protects us from the onrush of air and particulate matter we're flying through. If it fails in any one of these endeavours we could die of the results. Windshields and their care are kind of a big deal. I've heard and generally abide by the vertical strokes only rule too. The idea is that if you put a scratch in the window you definitely don't want it to be in a direction that would align with the wings of an oncoming aircraft.

I usually use 210 Polish, but if I run out and I'm in Winnipeg or something, I may have to settle for Prist (not to be confused with the fuel additive). Prist is foamier and doesn't work if you keep it in a cargo compartment where its temperature drops below freezing. And neither of them contains Windex. And that is why I am never supporting the Maximum Boy franchise again. I didn't think much of the new Star Trek either.

Helicopter Charter

I'm not currently working with helicopters, either as a charter customer or with a company that operates rotary ring aircraft, but I had to love this trojan horse spam.

Your order for our air commuter services has been received and processed. The chopper will be at your disposal from 3.30 p.m. wednesday to 5.45 tuesday. Once again, the rates are as follows:

1 hour in the air: 824$
Takeoff / Landing: 229$
1 hour down time on the ground: 163$
Longest fly-time is 5 hours.
When flying for longer distances, a co-pilot is needed, and the cost accordingly grows by 133$ an hour.


Bill.doc 747kb


With Respect To You
Nellie Nickerson

The purpose of the spam is to get me to click on "Bill.doc," which in the original is a link to an executable. I have to commend these spammers for the completely awesome vehicle they have chosen for what I assume is a trojan horse of some sort. I love the imagination they bring to the rates. I have chartered a helicopter before, and like an airplane the rates applied to the flight time, regardless of the number of takeoffs and landings, and in this case there was no charge for the thirty minutes or so we spent on the ground between flights with the engine shut down. Perhaps somewhere in the world there is a charter rate schedule like this, but I find it hard to believe that in an aircraft where it can be hard to distinguish between takeoffs and landings, that someone would charge over one quarter of the hourly rate per one. I like the fee per extra crew member; in my experience crew usually get about half the amount clients are billed for their services, which implies that a co-pilot could be making $66 a flight hour.

Pilots with Ethics

Two Libyan pilots defected to Malta rather than bomb their own countrymen in Libya. Even if your country is a mostly desolate patch of sand that has been brutally mismanaged for decades, your country is your country and your people are your people. These pilots probably are proud of their country and don't think of their fellow citizens in the same harsh terms as their dictator. I like to think they had sufficient strength of character and love of their fellow humans to disobey orders and go elsewhere. It's possible that they are simply smart enough to see the writing on the wall and know that their privileged position in a once rigid society is threatened and that this was as good an opportunity and an excuse to get out as they were going to find. Nevertheless, even if its for a selfish reason, their avoiding doing a bad thing is laudable.

I'm curious about the so-called French passengers, too.

Fake It 'til You Make It

Two of us are at breakfast, with one guy late, but it's his birthday so we cut him a break when he wanders down sleepy just as we're ready to go. Once at the hangar I open all the under-wing panels on the right wing, collecting all the screws in a can, then go back to ask for another task. The AME who doesn't know me tells me to inspect the cabling visible through the ports. I reject that task, "I think you should do the inspection. I don't have any experience inspecting the insides of my airplane." That probably sounds stupidly squeamish. It's a cable. A four-year-old child could probably look at it and determine whether it was frayed, corroded, chafing, jammed or sabotaged, versus intact and functional, but surely they have some grunt work for me.

He shrugs and tells me to replace the pneumatic air filter, telling me it's installed under that panel there on top of the nacelle. The replacement part is on the bench and the only tricky part is that I should note which way the airflow arrow points on the installed one, and put the new one in the same way around. People dumber than me and with far less personal concern about the safety of the aircraft work as apprentices under the supervision of an AME every day. Many of them on my airplane. How much more complicated is this going to be than LEGO? I find the right kind of screwdriver and remove the panel, revealing a part with an arrow marked on it, differing from the replacement part only in colour. This one is kind of silverish, while the replacement is gold-toned. It has a bulge in the middle, about the size of an elongated softball, and then tapers down at each end to a ten-centimetre connecting tube. I can't see how the connector attaches to the line in the airplane, because the connection is covered at each end by a thick but flexible cuff, extending beyond my view through the panel in both directions. It's also held in place with screw clamps and numerous zip-ties. They look like the regular zip-ties that you can get at the hardware store, but I'm told they are special airplane-grade zip-ties.

This may or may not be true. You can never believe anything an AME tells you. It's part of their training, perhaps, that they keep up an incessant stream of bullshit just to see how much they can get a pilot to believe. At first I thought they did this entirely for their own amusement, because how hilarious would it be when one AME fixes a problem then tells a pilot her fuel cap was stuck because the cap had become desynchronized from the propeller governor, and then a month later she walks into another shop and asks for the synchronizing spray, because her fuel cap is stuck? But now I think they do it as protection from pilots who have a little bit of knowledge and try to tell the maintainers what is wrong. Pilots are very good at sounding authoritative and knowledgeable about things we have the faintest clue about, because that's our job: to navigate a complex machine through extremely complex and only partially forecast environmental conditions while assuring everyone involved that we know exactly what we're doing. So the maintainers stack the deck against us, and then they can tell our knowledge from our bluffs. Which is why I report snags by stating exactly what I observed. Not "the bulb is burned out" but "the light is not illuminated when the switch is selected on."

I draw an arrow on the nacelle, under where the panel will cover it, to indicate the direction of the air filter arrow, then I cut all the zipties and try to figure out how to get this part out. Typically the jobs you give unskilled labour are the ones that require very little knowledge, but are uncomfortable, tedious or annoying. So I am expecting this connector to work on the principle of pain and annoyance. I wiggle the whole thing in the direction of the more enveloping flexible cuff, in the hopes that the smaller one will slip back and reveal whatever it is at the end that I have to undo. The edges of the sheet metal around the opening in the nacelle appear to be the most likely source of pain. "So," I ask, "Do they sharpen the edges of the aluminum at the factory, or is that something you have to do yourself?" That gets a laugh and an expression of solidarity. I think I have identified the primary danger here. I keep wiggling the air filter and eventually the rubber cuff just slips off one end and that end is loose. There is no connecting snap. It doesn't screw in. The flexible sleeves themselves form the connection between the filter and the line it is inserted in. It's not high pressure, and it's just air, so that makes sense. I wiggle the other end out and ready the replacement, taking the rubber caps off the end and entering today's date in the space provided on the part. It's not too hard to wiggle it back into the same space, and I get the various clamps and zip-ties into place without too much damage to my forearms. I leave the panel open for inspection and move to the other side.

This one has a different screw-clamp to zip-tie ratio, but is basically the same. The arrow is pointing the same way if you think of it as "to the right" but the opposite way if you think of that as "toward the wingtip." I wasn't expecting that. I mark the arrow direction on the airplane again and then notice that the date marked on the installed air filter is only three months in the past. I ask if I should leave it, and he says yes.

My next task is removal and replacement of the brake pads on the left main. I've done this one before. It's easy to loosen the bolts to release the metal plates with the pads on them, then I have to pry the old brake pads off and get the new ones to jam in properly. I reassemble the brake, but there is now a hydraulic leak evident. They suspect that the o-ring has been cut? I don't get a clear answer from them as to whether this is on account of some error on my part, which means I suspect it is. If something goes wrong completely unrelated to what the pilot is doing, the AMEs typically pretend to give her hell for it. But I suspect they aren't chewing me out for this because it really is something I did, but I did it under their supervision so it's their fault. I know about that. If the FO makes an error, it is the captain who takes the blame.

We go for lunch, and when we return it's still leaking, so they add o-rings to the parts order. I take the other one apart more carefully. The brake pads are held against the plate by friction around tiny posts, and one of the AMEs shows me how to mushroom the posts when the pads fit too loosely. If it wiggles when it's in place, it's too loose. I have to hammer the post with a spike to spread it out a bit. He laughs at me for my tentative hammering. The pad wiggles, still wiggles, I keep hammering on it, and then I manage to spread it too much. I'm honestly not trying to get them to send me away. Now we need another brake rivet. The guys are looking around the hangar for this small, common part and then we all laugh as we remember that this is a helicopter repair hangar. Helicopters don't have brakes. (Cue everyone telling me the exceptions, in the comments). The helicopters that normally inhabit this hangar on don't have retractable landing gear, either, so we're also missing a hydraulic cart. The professional manages to fix the brake plate and we get that reassembled.

My next task--you'd really think they'd find something disgusting and foolproof for me now--is to replace the left side alternate air cable. The cable runs from a push-pull knob on the cockpit control panel out to the door in the engine that I can open up to admit combustion air, should the primary air intake become blocked. I have never had to use this for the safety of the flight, only ever tested it, or opened it when it was on an emergency checklist, but blocked air intake has never given me grief. Nevertheless it has to function for the airplane to be flyable. It works, but there is wear in the cable. Following vague instructions, I go into the cockpit and under the dashboard with a flashlight. I identify the cable that comes out from behind the left alternate air knob and start to follow it. It goes under a panel, so I remove that panel, which requires me to remove the scuff-plate for the pilot's feet, which involves crawling under the dashboard and removing the carpet in the cockpit, which is filthy. I pull out the seats, and get to work. After a geologic era or so or so of cramped awkward frustration with small spaces, cut hands, and stripped screws, I ask, "Don't you guys start to hate airplanes?" They're enjoying my misery, not so much just to see me suffer, but because they're seeing that I'm appreciating the difficulty of the work they do.

This is actually a little bit fun for me because there is pride in accomplishment and the sparkly feeling of new brain connections being formed as I solve a problem I haven't been exposed to before, and learn new things. I realize now that AMEs aren't robots programmed with the instructions on how to fix airplanes. They have the meta-knowledge of how to work out how to fix them. That's why my instructions aren't "open panel X and remove cable Y" but "look around and figure out where cable Y goes, and how to remove it." The experienced guys of course have a better idea than I do of where the cable is going to go and how it will be attached, but they can be just as surprised. I've exposed all of its treacherous path through the airframe and we'll pull it through tomorrow.

We leave the hangar at 7 p.m. and go back to the hotel to shower and have supper, then do a Wal-Mart run for shop towels. I also get a dirt cheap sweatshirt (made in Cambodia!) to get grubby in and an equally disposable t-shirt with a sassy slogan. It's marked as my size so I didn't try it on, but it turns out to be too small, which may be suited to my mission tomorrow morning to persuade someone to lend us a hydraulic cart. Clothing has no influence on aircraft cabling, but is there anything a woman in a tight t-shirt can't borrow from a hangar full of men?

Breakfast will be at seven tomorrow.

Some of My Best Friends Fly Helicopters

But I laughed so hard at this.

Left Out of the Love

In a combined effort with other aviation bloggers, I promised a post that ties in with the holiday some people will be celebrating today. Not the New Year's celebration, but the other holiday. The one with hearts instead of dragons.

There's a wide societal expectation that your romantic life will follow a certain pattern. You'll date a few people who turn out to be inappropriate, or just not long term prospects for you. You then get more serious and fall in love with Mr. or Miss. Right. There's a proposal, an acceptance, engagement, wedding plans and then happily ever after. It's considered polite conversation with near strangers to ask if they are married. And if you don't seem to be on that path, there are confused questions.

Friends try to set you up. And you think you want that, so you accept and thank them, then never call the number, or call but accept flimsy excuses, and fail to follow up if they don't call back. You go through bursts where you rededicate yourself to believing that this really is something you want. You carefully craft a personal ad. You are thrilled but also terrified when you get a response from someone who seems right. You're not sure if you're dreading the date itself--because there have been some terrible ones, and they can be so humiliating--or the inevitable rejection. You gloss over the reason for your previous break ups, trying to make yourself look as good as possible without lying. You try to make the best impression you can, which might mean not presenting your real self. You check your e-mail and your phone for messages, hoping to hear back. Sometimes they schedule another date. You try to be the person they want, and argue to yourself that it is your real self, just the best sides of it, but deep down you wonder if 'maybe there's someone out there who wants me for me, all of me.'

You plan self-improvement of some kind, to make yourself more appealing, but find yourself shirking or dreading sessions because they are a reminder of being unwanted, and is the expense worth the marginal improvement? You catch yourself avoiding friends who are in relationships, because their casual references remind you of what you're supposed to have. You cut yourself off from the people who could help you get what you think you want.

Maybe you're with someone, but it's not very serious. There are no long term prospects and your friends keep asking if you're still with that loser. Maybe you're freelancing, good friends with a enough people whom you can rely on for a booty call or a fling when you're that way inclined. Maybe you've discovered that your life is pretty comfortable with your feet on the ground, avoiding any romantic entanglements. How does one tell whether passing doubts or dissatisfaction is because you aren't with the partner you want, or you aren't with the partner society has taught you and continues to assume is Right? Have you 'settled' or is this what you want? Even when you're totally comfortable right now, external and internal expectations whisper messages of guilt and failure and concern for your future if you haven't succumbed to traditional marriage before you lose your marketability.

This post does not carry the non-aviation tag, because it's really about aviation. The airline job is the mythical Mr. Right for the commercial pilot. Personnel ads and résumés are just like personal ads. Interviews are as awkward and potentially humiliating as first dates. Contract flying is exciting and varied, but does sometimes leave you without a date when there are bills to be paid. You can end up with the wrong one, in a dangerous relationship, but not have the resources to leave, or the self-esteem to know you can do better. The metaphor follows all the way through, including tearful breakups and those confusing relationships where you're not really sure who dumped whom and you're tempted to go over and beg them to take you back. Calling your ex to get your stuff back and talking to your replacement, who has been told lies about you. Yep, it's all there. The only upside is that you probably won't get dumped if your current employer discovers you are actively looking for the next one. You probably won't get promoted either, though. And many who think they have achieved happily ever after discover that the one they have committed thirty years to has gambled away the pension money.

If you're flying helicopters instead of fixed wing, things get more complicated, especially as many people don't become helicopter pilots until years of believing their destiny is in fixed wing. Friends and family who don't know helicopters don't have a clue what they do anyway or what your prospects might be, because there isn't a widely respected stereotype of a successful rotary wing pilot. You might not live in an area where a stable airline job is an option at all on a helicopter. There's a certain freedom there, because expectations are different, but the same angst over career progress. You're forced to define your own success.

Whichever side of the airport you're working, long to be working, or have decided you really don't need the headaches from, I wish you a happy and prosperous Year of the Tiger. Gung Hay Fat Choy.

Rejecting an Inadequate Aerodrome

E-mail forwarded from the client by the boss indicates that a hotel room is booked for me in an Alberta town. I'm to fly there.

I look it up and e-mail the boss back.

"I got your message about the hotel rooms but I refuse to operate into the local aerodrome on account of it being a heliport."

I know the client has done more research than that about our needs. I find a strip at the next town over that can accommodate jets so I indicate that I will be landing there, almost certain that this is what they intended anyway. My boss appreciates the humour though. He acknowledges my e-mail with a one-word reply.

"Chicken."

---

Plus, here's a bonus helicopter link on the topic of a guy giving his kid a ride to school in a helicopter and the school officials freaking out.

She Can Talk, Too!

This is a really old article from 2003, and I started to write it up as "a few years old but sounds like it's from fifty years ago," a commentary on how far ahead women in the west are of their third world counterparts. And then I read on and realized that the Kiowa helicopter pilot Adrineh Shahijanian it describes is in the American military. it was an American soldier who looked at her in uniform, then turned to a man sitting next to her and asked if women flew Kiowas.

When I bookmarked this I honestly thought the story was about some remote country in central Asia where the women are just crawling out from behind their veils. I know there are quite a lot of women in air combat roles in the US. And women were ferrying American combat aircraft before some of today's soldiers' parents were born. I guess some corners of the military are fifty years behind the general population when it comes to women. I'm so lucky to be in an environment where I don't encounter this. Or perhaps simply a mindset where I don't see it.

The "pee in the field" directive is an interesting one, because here is an area where, yeah, men are better equipped than women. But only if they are both wearing flight suits styled for men. If it were me who had to pee in fields on a regular basis, I'd extend the flight suit opening far enough south (with a velcro closure) that I didn't have to do the Kabuki dance to pee. If circumstances require me to participate in literal pissing competitions, I'm up for it.

You've got to love the part where the soldier asks the man who is with the woman about her capabilities, as if following some cultural law where he can't address a woman directly himself. This sort of thing alone would be hilarious, except that you know that for every man who asks if women can fly helicopters, there are a lot who just assume we can't, or can't do it well enough to be worth hiring. I try and think of it as their loss, and the gain of employers who don't think that way.

Also, Canadian Centennial of Flight celebration. John Lovelace is the Wings Over Canada guy, so he knows how to organize air travel, but hee hee, I want to know what happens to sleepy YQR ATC when 123 little airplanes pull into Regina for the night.

''I closed comments not to stifle debate, but because I laughed so hard at "People who suffer that attitude always seem to have lots of spare aggression, so it seems silly to treat women soldiers that way and NOT let them blow things up!" that I wanted it to remain the last word.''

Gone Down

So I'm back overflying the same wilderness I've been looking at all week. Trees. Muskeg. A big round lake. Dirt roads. The area is so crisscrossed with oil and logging roads that I'm not sure how the bears manage to propagate so effectively, but the ground crew assure me that there are plenty of bears. Just black bears seen so far, though, not grizzlies. I haven't seen any, but then I'm smart enough not to walk out of town.

Once again I'm monitoring the nearest FSS frequency on one radio and 126.7 on the other for en route traffic. I'm fifty miles from the aerodrome (their control zone radius is five) and I'm not on the way to anywhere that normal people go at my altitude, so the radios are on in the background just kind of for entertainment. I'm also listening to the Arrogant Worms on the iPod nano. A helicopter calls the aerodrome. There's a helicopter maintenance base there so the darn things are taking off, flying a circuit and landing all the time. It still makes me smile when they call final for something that isn't a runway. Like "the gas pumps" or "apron III". The helicopter asked for something I didn't pay attention to, and then the FSS guy replied.

I hear the words and do and do an aural doubletake. I ask my mission specialist, "Did he just say an aircraft 'has gone down'?"

"That's what I heard."

As explained in an earlier discussion, "down" to a pilot is a neutral term. If I get a text that a flight is down, I expect that the airplane is taxiing up to the fuel pumps. I record my down time each time my wheels touch pavement. "Call me as soon as you're down," my boss might ask before departure. But "gone down," that's not neutral. That's bad. Or, at minimum, very interesting.

For a hundred kilometres around, pilots are turning up their radios and turning off their iPods. What went down? Where? How bad is it? Someone calls inbound for landing and is told that runway 03 is temporarily closed. If the accident occurred on the runway, maybe it's just a gear collapse. But the term for that would be something like "disabled aircraft" not "gone down." An airplane could have taken off and then stalled/crashed back on the remaining runway. I keep listening.

Someone says he can see the aircraft. It's a helicopter pilot. He says there's a passenger on the belly. That means the airplane is inverted. I wonder if it's in the river. He says there's another passenger lying on the ground. So it's not in the river. Also lying on ground is bad, but much better than strapped in burning airplane. Obviously the airplane is not on fire, or the passenger would find a more convenient place to stand. I hear the words "light aircraft" from someone.

Light aircraft contact the ground inverted in two ways that immediately come to mind: stall-spin and landing mishap. The presence of two people who got out of the airplane strongly suggests that it was not a stall-spin. It's more likely to have been an inflight loss of engine power, followed by a forced landing on inappropriate terrain. (That's not a criticism of the pilot: the terrain he or she picked was probably the most appropriate within gliding range, but there is a strong shortage of appropriate places to land around here). A classic forced landing accident in a Cessna trainer involves a correctly executed forced approach, touching down slowly and under control, then a wheel digs in or catches and the airplane flips upside down. Typically belted occupants receive minor or no injuries and the airplane is substantially damaged. I've no idea if that's what happened here. I've gone through a number of hypotheses in a few minutes.

The helicopter pilot says he will remain hovering over the site so they can find it. The tower passes someone else a NOTAM on a closed runway with vehicle traffic. It seems that the airplane has gone down just off the end of a runway. The RCMP are driving out to the end of the runway to start the search. The helicopter pilot is talking to the RCMP on another VHF frequency, so I tune up that one, too. I can't hear the cops on the ground, but I can hear the helicopter pilot telling them which way to go. The person on the ground is sitting up now.

The RCMP reach the site by walking towards the helicopter and listening to the pilot's guidance, then the helicopter goes to land. About half an hour later you can still hear the ELT in the background of every call the FSS makes. One pilot points this out. We're so conditioned to report hearing the "whoop, whoop, whoop" of an emergency locator transmitter if we hear one that the pilot hasn't thought it through. If the ELT is audible only when the FSS transmits, than the ELT signal must be coming over the FSS transmission, and therefore be audible to the FSS. Presumably the radio in the FSS that is tuned to 121.5 is on speaker, so that everyone in the room can hear it. The FSS guy simply says "we're already aware of that."

Hours later when I land one of the taxiways is still NOTAMed closed, but when an ultralight wants to take off the FSS says they are lifting the restriction now, and approves the intersection departure. I don't see anyone around to ask to make sure that everyone was okay.

Unauthorized Landing?

Interesting story. Pilot lands on roof of shopping mall and someone is injured, while regulatory authority says he shouldn't have landed there. But I'm sure it's not the whole story.

Who wouldn't like to have a helicopter and just be able to fly everywhere and land on the roof, avoiding the traffic, the usual parking problems and the hoi polloi? The Jetsons flew everywhere, why shouldn't you?

As this story takes place in Ireland, their air law applies, so I can't comment specifically on the regulations regarding landing on the roofs of shopping malls. If the story took place exactly the way the pilot said it did, then he knew the shopping mall owner, had general permission from him, and called ahead to make sure he still had permission on that particular day. That's a tough call. I know I've landed on private strips. I call the corporation or group that operates the airport and keep asking to be transferred to someone with authority to grant me landing permission until someone steps up. I thank them, write down their name and go land. I have no way of knowing whether the person was on a power trip or really had that authority. I never considered that it could turn into a run in with Transport Canada or the FAA. Perhaps in future I will ask for faxed permission. Even then, what if it's a fax from a bored guy in the mail room? Who does have the authority? Do you have permission to let someone park in the employee parking lot where you work? Does a security guard have authority to overturn your granting of permission? Does he or she run in front of vehicles to wave them off while parking?

The pilot's account has the attendant only coming onto the roof after landing, while the attendant says he was "ignored" when he tried to wave the helicopter away. There's an easy way to rectify the two accounts. On the first pass, while the attendant was inside, the pilot verified that the landing are was clear, and then approached for landing. While the pilot was maneuvering to land, the attendant, inexperienced in the marshalling of aircraft, came onto the roof and waved at the helicopter from a position where he was not visible to the pilot. He fled the roof, and the pilot only saw him after landing. It was still the pilot's responsibility to ensure that the area was clear, but when people you don't know are present run into your blind spot during final approach you have done all you can.

The pilot's story gets a little fishy when he says he lost his logbook. It does happen, but nice coincidence. And what about the 'subsequent accident?' He also should have (assuming Irish law resembles Canadian in this respect) reported an injury caused by rotor downwash, but I can imagine the conversation.

"Hey! You can't land here!"

"I have permission from the owner."

"No, you can't land here, I told you, and you made the door slam and hurt my hand."

I'm thinking that if the attendant was so unlucky as to catch his hand in a slamming door such that fingers were partially severed or skin was cut through to tendons and bone the conversation would have been more along the lines of "Oh my God, call 999!" Without blood and/or severed appendages is "You hurt my hand" along the lines of "ouch that hurt" or "I require medical attention"? From someone who is angry at you in the first place, you wouldn't be out of line to assume that the hurt is more along the lines of aggrieved than medically afflicted.

On the other hand the pilot may be a complete asshole who saw the guy, deliberately angled rotor wash to scare him off and ignored his cries for help as he sashayed off to get his new keys cut. I have no way of knowing which scenario applies. In any event if he has the cash to go to the mall in his own helicopter, he probably bought the appropriate legal counsel to fly out of this situation, licence intact.

Airline Connections

I know I'm on blogcation, but this story will be stale in two weeks, and it's bugging me.

Last week, a pilot flying own airplane for fun with a couple of his friends attempted a touch-and-go landing on a glacier north of Vancouver. As he brought the airplane down to test the landing surface, it caught in the deep snow and flipped over. There were no injuries, the party had plenty of survival equipment, and the pilot and his two passengers were winched off the glacier by a rescue helicopter that same night. This would be a happy little Christmas story, were it not for the name of the pilot's employer.

According to the news report the pilot flies for Pacific Coastal Airlines, the same BC company that has suffered two fatal crashes in four months, attracting continuing media and TSB scrutiny, and turning this from a story about good preparation and competent rescue services to one about PCA screwing up again. My question is, who tipped off the press to the pilot's affiliation?

The media presumably finds out through regular channels that a SAR aircraft has been dispatched and three people rescued. How do you get from there to the fact that the pilot is a PCA pilot? The names of the three have not been released. But say the reporter gets a name, anyway, off the record, or perhaps flies by the site in daylight, reads the registration visible on the wing of the overturned aircraft, and looks up the name of the owner of the airplane. Now he's got a name. Maybe it's identical to the distinctive and unusual name of the man who captained the reporter's last flight. So did the reporter call PCA and ask them to confirm it's him? Did the reporter look the name up in the phone book and get some member of the family to confirm that the man was both the accident pilot and a PCA pilot? This is getting far-fetched. I'm not saying the pilot has an unusual name. It could be Smith -- which happens to be the name of the family that runs PCA.

Pacific Coastal VP Spencer Smith is quoted saying “It’s his airplane and he’s welcome to do whatever the heck he wants to do." That's true in a way. It's not illegal to land on a glacier, and I expect the pilot had flown few enough hours in the month that duty time was not an issue. I'll bet Spencer Smith would like to strangle him. Smith told the media the pilot did not wish to speak to them, so it doesn't appear the media received any information from the pilot. The TSB wouldn't release that sort of information: they just give age and licence type. The fact that the pilot held a commercial licence wouldn't be much of a tip off, because a lot of Canadians who have never worked commercially hold commercial licences.

The pilot's friends and co-workers would hear about this pretty quickly, and thus every working pilot on the west coast. But every working pilot on the west coast probably knows who the guy is sleeping with and what bar he was in when he almost got arrested that time in Calgary. But these things don't turn up in the newspapers. The pilot was probably smart enough to tell his employer to give the employer an opportunity to do damage control, but that doesn't add up to the media knowing It seems more likely that someone told the reporter this juicy piece of gossip. I'm sure it was shared at many a table this week, along with the gravy and mashed potatoes, but that's not the same as putting it out where it is going to reflect poorly on the company. It's not like the guy went out and got a DUI. It's more like he tried to turn around in a parking lot and skidded across the ice into a lamppost. Wrong place, wrong time, tough luck.

I know I have reporters reading this blog, and I don't mean to insult them by insinuating that they couldn't find out a thing like where a guy worked. I admit that it does make this story more interesting to know the connection, and the fact that Smith commented on it for the record very legitimately connects the two parts. It just seems that there's an even more interesting part missing if I don't know just how the connection was made.

So New Year's resolutions on the 28th and then I really do take a blogging break.

Our Helicopter

One of my helicopters was parked at the pumps recently when I came in to refuel. I think it's pretty nice. Snappy paint job, good avionics, and I'm sure it does that up and down thing that helicopters do so well. If you're Canadian it's yours, too. We should buy more of these. And lots of spare parts and stuff.

I've never flown a helicopter, and I'm almost daily glad that I don't, because of the really challenging sites they have to take off and land, but I'm always amused by their ability to do things I can't. They call "On final for the pumps," or if one is hovering over the taxiway I have called that I am planning to use, the pilot will cheerfully tell me he's moving sideways over the grass to let me go by. They can take off straight up, taxi backwards, land almost anywhere, even if it's just setting one skid down while the cargo is unloaded.

The closest I can get is when my GPS-indicated altitude bobs up and down, with my wheels firmly planted on the ground. I'm always amused when it does that.

We Love New York

The Maryland flight follower, Washington Center, I think it was, knew that we were just talking to him to stay away from anything related to the supersized restricted airspace. He released us to our own devices when we were clear of the great white blob, and we turned off the radio and returned to squawking VFR.

Lite Flyer spots an approaching aircraft not far above our altitude. I suspect it's descending into an airport on the other side of the river. On that flight path it should cross well in front of us, but I verify that our strobe lights are on and watch it to see if we will have to take evasive maneuvers. This one turns out to be a helicopter, which makes me watch it more closely, because it's now less predictable where it might be going. It crosses in front of us, a big black helicopter with markings I can't read, and it looks like it's going straight for the restricted airspace. Maybe it's a government helicopter on its way back from a 7-11 run to get marshmallows and beer for Camp David.

Lite Flyer is very conscientious about wake turbulence and we never pass near a larger (i.e. any) aircraft without her asking if we should be concerned about its wake turbulence. This one is no exception. Should we be concerned? Not right now. While a helicopter of any size can leave dangerous wake turbulence, the vortices drop below the aircraft and this one is close enough to our altitude that these will have dropped below us by the time we cross its flight path. Heck, at the speed we're going the helicopter will have landed and refuelled by the time we cross its flight path. But I shouldn't disrespect the little airplane. It's getting us there, and I've had an airplane with three times its speed and twice its fuel endurance take longer for a similar trip because of a mechanical delay.

We're over Pennsylvania now, one of the oldest states in the US. It has many historic buildings and bridges but still a surprising abundance of open green space. We're following a river that was probably used to transport goods in this area before there were any roads. It's wide and deep enough to be navigable, but not too fast-flowing or meandering. I can't find the name of the river on the chart, but I see a reporting point with a familiar name. "Look!" I joke, "It's Halifax. We're almost there."

We pass over what looks like a divided highway on the ground that ends abruptly without arriving anywhere. The two ends join up so you could turn around, and there are no construction vehicles or materials around the unfinished end. Curious. I could make up all kinds of stories about that. When I was a child I saw a highway interchange under construction and always hoped we wouldn't ever get onto one of those highway ramps that end in mid-air. Yes, I loved the movie Speed, which features exactly that.

Many old families here made fortunes in shipping and other 18th and 19th century industries. Perhaps some of this undeveloped land is included in their holdings or estates. We don't fly over any really conspicuously wealthy homes, but this isn't LA where the rich have a need to do that.

Pennsylvania gives way to New York. We are still over green rolling hills and fields, but the presence of the East Coast megacity makes itself known through a decrease in visibility. While I'm sure urban New Yorkers escape to this area to breathe easily, they haven't completely escaped the city pollution here. Yes, to those who were asking, we stayed inland to avoid the ridiculous mess of NOTAM-ridden airspace in the Washington. DC area, but avoiding the poor visibility that goes with dense urban areas is a nice bonus. There is a lot of light manufacturing around here, too. I know this not from seeing factories but from recognizing the names on the map from packages. Schenectady and Albany and places I've never been and am not sure where I read the names.

There are a few places in New York that are on our list of Mogas merchants but the only one that was near our route had a telephone number out of service, so we'll fly the most efficient route rather than see if they're still there anyway. I picked an airport about three and a half hours out of Maryland and only realize the problem with my choice as I'm descending for the circuit. I have no idea how to pronounce the airport name. I start with "On-On-Tah Traffic" and give my position, altitude and estimated time of arrival. Turns out there's a helicopter on the way there too, but I didn't listen carefully enough to that pilot's calls to catch the proper pronunciation. I was more interested in his position, altitude and ETA. I think we tried "Wun-On-Tah" and "On-E-On-Ta" and "O-Nah-Tah" and "On-On-Nah-Tah" and possibly "O-Nee-On-Ta." The helicopter was coming from another direction and obviously would be there before us, so we joined a normal circuit and came around to land. Lite Flyer is pretty good at judging the turns to base and final now and set up a nice approach for me to take the landing with a few knots of crosswind. We roll out and turn off at a little apron with the helicopter in front of the pumps at one end and a random jumble of Cessnas and Pipers in front of an FBO at the other. Two different people are giving indistinct marshaling signals in opposite directions, so we shut down haphazardly to go and see what they want. "Do you want fuel?" they ask.

"Yes," we respond, "But we're special needs."

They finish fuelling the helicopter, a black one with a crest on it that I never took the time to read, but the helicopter apparently is registered to the New York state police. The pilots, who were not uniformed police officers, were extremely polite and friendly, and are thoughtful enough to point out to us that the Huey has unusually strong rotor downwash, and to warn us of their impending departure. We pull our airplane back amidst the jumble of parked aircraft and hang on the struts like human tie-downs while someone else holds the rudder for us. The helicopter rotor blades spin up slowly, taking a long time to turn fast enough that I can no longer follow them with my eyes. Then the helicopter lifts and the pilots carefully slide it over to the runway before climbing away. It actually wasn't too bad, but much better than not being warned and having someone blow our tiny airplane into the next state. It was very considerate of them.

The crew at Oneonta are able to accommodate our need to drive for avgas, taking Lite Flyer down to the gas station and then lending her the truck to make the subsequent trip. I'm busy trying to flight plan but I've hit a snag. Lite Flyer has bought a line of connecting charts for the trip, but the connection between the New York chart (which includes part of Maine) and the Moncton chart (which includes Nova Scotia and New Brunswick) occurs offshore, and there is no way to plan a route that passes over land between one and the other. The Montreal chart, which the diagram of the way charts fit together clearly shows, is missing. I target Lite Flyer with passive aggressive criticism for this lapse, when really it's my own fault for not checking that more thoroughly, perhaps when we were at a larger centre last night. We can fake it on the GPS, but I don't want to trust the GPS for every dot of restricted airspace in the vicinity of an international border. I ask around to see if we can mooch a chart. Someone comes up with an expired IFR chart, for which I thank him gratefully. It's actually great for flight planning, because the scale is smaller, so I can see everything we have left to fly at once. It makes the continent look smaller, too.

I clear the ten-year old magazines off the coffee table and lay out my charts to see what is left. The rest of New York looks pretty good, then Vermont has some mountains with ski hills on them, New Hampshire has some lakes and Maine has more. It looks like we can get into Maine tonight, if all continues well. I choose a pass to take through the ski-hill mountains, and an alternate way if that route doesn't offer good forced landing opportunities. I'm hoping to land in KLEW, Lewiston/Auburn, Maine, and choose a couple of fallback airports in case winds or weather start to close in. They have a phone I can use to call Flight Services, and I note that when I choose New York as my state the automated voice asks me Eastern New York or Western New York? Every other large state I have flown in has been split north/south. The cold front I've been watching has slowed down a little bit. It's made it past Lake Michigan and is still heading for us. Amazingly that damned hurricane hasn't given up yet either. It has chased us all the way from Florida. It's supposed to hit Maine tomorrow night. Hasn't it read the textbook about hurricanes and southern latitudes? But who cares. We're not going to be in Maine tomorrow night according to my plans. There are a bunch of NOTAMs for unlit towers, some of them very tall, in the area of tonight's destination. I point them out to Lite Flyer when she's done fuelling, because I know she isn't keen on my "high altitude" flying, the way I keep insisting she climb to heady altitudes like 3500' or even 5500', and that she will probably favour the low and slow approach in her recreational flying. That's fine, but I just want to cement in her head the hazards of towers and wires, along with the fact that they often aren't lit, or even on the chart or aviation databases.

We thank everyone at the field for their various assistances and they ask where we're going. "We're hoping to make Maine tonight," we reply.

They laugh. "You're not going to be in Maine tonight in that thing! You're going to be in New York tonight."

We'll show them.

Oshkosh Wrap Up

Oshkosh was a lot of different things. For the price of admission you could get your money's worth in many ways, each of which ignored the bulk of the event. And you really have to choose your own Airventure, or you get overwhelmed by all of it and feel frustrated.

Every day included an airshow of a calibre that on its own might elsewhere command the entire daily admission price. There was a helicopter that rolled upside-down and back right side up again: the latter half of the stunt was recently considered impossible. There were modern military aircraft, vintage warbirds (military aircraft over 50 years old become "warbirds" instead of war planes, not sure why), aerobatic stunt planes, trick flying, airborne pyrotechnics and a stunt that had its own t-shirt for sale, the Wall of Fire.

You could spend most of a week just walking the flight lines. Some of the airplanes are there just because that's how the owners got there, and some are also there on display to compete for prizes, or maybe just recognition. You know how at a typical GA airport you can walk down the flight lines and see a lot of Cessnas and Pipers and a handful of RVs, maybe a Sea Bee or a Taylorcraft and a few more, "Hey, do you know what this is?" airplanes. Well at Oshkosh it doesn't seem to matter what you fly in, there's a whole row, or even a whole field of them. I don't think I'd ever seen a C195 before. Here they had their own section. And I'm told that numbers were down, and that many had already left. The only airplane in the parking section I noticed that was the only representative of its type was a South African registered DC-3. Not the same one I saw in the north, but probably owned by the De Beers Company, too.

All the major GA manufacturers were there, showing off their line of aircraft, and I'm sure making serious sales. I walked by a Mooney that I was no way going to buy, but I was curious about a really irritating looking rear cargo hatch. It was located such that you would have to lift bags to chest height to get them over the lip of the cargo hold, and then drop them in. The opening itself wasn't big enough to admit the 50 lb suitcase that I normally carry for work. And I'd rather load cargo at floor level. I asked if it needed to be located there for structural strength or something. The salesman said yes about the need for a small, carefully positioned door for strength, and described the gunmetal--he was not talking about colour--roll cage of the airplane. He told me it smelled like a gun barrel, and emphasized that there has never been an inflight breakup of a Mooney. And then he argued for the top opening so you could stack cases one on top the other without having to "upload." I was skeptical about how high you were going to stack things in a cargo hold that only holds 120 lbs. I pointed out that I weighed more than that, and the top of me would be well below the lip if I curled up in the bottom. He seemed to think that the typical item loaded in a Mooney is less dense than an Aviatrix. I guess Mooney loads are all chips and no pop.

There was a whole section of classrooms for seminars, on topics including building with composites, test flying your ultralight, and aviation in China. At any one time there were perhaps ten or even twenty different seminars to go to. You could easily spend the whole show attending related seminars, and treating the event like a course in building an ultralight.

One thing that was noticeable was that anyone who was anyone was there. For example if I think of US flight instruction products, I think of a series of books and videos from Rod Machado and another from the Kings, a couple who between them hold every possible aviation licence. I'd expect to see their books for sale at the show, and then when I grasped the everyone who is anyone nature of Oshkosh I realized that they were there. You don't send your second string to Oshkosh. The people there were the owners and the CEOs of the companies. I was chatting with someone at an FAA booth about a video they were giving away and he used the first person with respect to the production. He had produced the video. I'll tell you about it when I get a chance to see it.

Over all, there were too many details to take in, too much to see and too much information. Trying to get a handle on it all, I found myself looking at the infrastructure supporting it all. And that was praiseworthy. There were a lot of people there, but there were not waits for washrooms, and they were reasonably clean, considering that they were portables. There were enough and large enough garbage containers with regular pickup. There was free and simple transportation not only between the venues, but from the show to the mall, the museum, the campgrounds and other places people might want to go. The parking was well organized, with armies of people in reflective vests marshalling both the winged and the automotive traffic into wel organized parking areas. You could see features that were probably there to rectify problems from previous years, such as the person with a microphone who perched on the back of each tram to tell the tractr driver at the front when it was safe to pull out. This was the first year they had internet, and I suspect that next yeat they will have servers that can better handle the load.

I have more to write about the show, but I'm now back at work with my brochures and goodies all packed away at home, so I'll get back to them at some theoretical future time when I have nothing else to write about. I hope everyone else who went had a good time and I welcome your comments about what you saw and liked.

Passing Wind

I've taken off from the Canadian prairies and am heading south. My take-off was six minutes after filed, which will affect my arrival time at customs. They told me on the phone, rather fiercely, that I had a fifteen minute window. More than seven minutes early or more than seven minutes late and I'm in trouble. Customs officers have families the man on the phone said, and they want to spend time with them, not waiting for me. I'm not worried about the six minutes though, because, knowing I could always slow down if I needed to, I told them I'd be a little longer than I though I would. I can always slow down a little as I approach, or just taxi really slowly, if there are no delays. And maybe I'll luck out and get a customs officer with a new baby at home, who is glad of the opportunity to escape the associated smells and sounds.

I'm VFR today, flying at only a few thousand feet above flat terrain, and radar coverage is sparse in this part of the world, so ATC decide they don't want to talk to me anymore. Theoretically I'm supposed to have ATC contact during the border crossing, so I call up an American ATC unit. They don't want to talk to me either, but I have at least fulfilled the letter of the law as the brown flat bits beneath switch from Canadian to American.

Once I'm established on the faintly red, white and blue striped side of the border, probably in a red state, I'm navigating to just miss the corner of a Military Operations Area. It's marked on the chart, and outlined on the GPS, but that's not what I'm navigating by. This part of this state is basically flat, but every once in a while there's a mountainous part. And this particular mountain exactly coincides with the MOA, almost as though the mountains themselves were some sort of secret military project. Maybe they aren't mountains at all, but an illusion of mountains, created by the people with the black helicopters to hide their secret base. At my out-of-the-wind altitude, I choose to go around the peaks of the mountains, rather than testing their solidity and defenses.

Other than that slight deviation, my trip is a couple of hours of straight travel. The engines gauges all sit happily at their expected values and the engines sound fine on either side of me. There are a lot of bugs on the windshield, though. I guess it's that time of year on the prairies again.

As I approach my destination, and I pick up the ATIS to find out the current conditions, the GPS says my arrival time will be to-the-minute as planned, I've made up the six minutes. Okay, maybe I cheated a tiny bit with power, not just the winds.

Speaking of winds, there is a bit of a crosswind at destination. I think it was 22 knots about 15 degrees off the runway. This airplane is pretty solid in a crosswind. That's not even enough to be fun. I call the tower and am sequenced for landing, almost straight in from my direction of travel. The aircraft in front of me are being passed the winds. (As I type this, a Beavis and Butthead voice in my head says "passed wind, heh heh," but giving someone information by radio is called "passing" and information about wind strength and direction is "winds" so what else can I say?) The winds are increasing and diverging from the runway by the minute. When I am on two-mile final, the wind is 42 knots, I remember that figure, but not the angle. It was over thirty, so more than twenty knots of direct crosswind. There is another runway I can ask for, which by this time is more aligned with the runway, and I'm thinking I will probably overshoot and land on it, but crosswinds are such fun. It won't take any more time now to try and then turn for another runway than it would be to ask for the other runway right away, so I continue, somewhat sideways, for this one. On short final I start to straighten the airplane out. This is where I could discover I don't have enough rudder to land the airplane in this direction. I have been approaching with the wings level and the nose pointed into the wind to keep my direction of travel aligned with the runway centreline. Now I'm rolling my into wind wing down at the same time as I press down the away-from-wind rudder pedal. I have to decrease my bank momentarily to get the nose aligned with the runway, but then I put the bank back in and everything holds.

I don't really have enough rudder left over to cope with any sudden gusts, but so far the wind has been very steady. I keep asking myself, "Should I reject this?" I need to leave room for something unanticipated to go wrong. I'm also carrying enough power that I can keep the airplane airborne in ground effect, and I'm ready to go around. But the wind is from the right, and I expect it to continue to decrease and also back, become more from the left as I descend the last bit to the runway. I overfly the beginning of the runway. I'm straight and on the centreline. I reduce the power and put the airplane down, first the into wind wheel and then the other. Yah, triumph!

Using power that way isn't really the right way to land. By the textbook I should have done a firm, solid landing with no float, so as to get the airplane firmly on the ground before a gust could carry me sideways. I took advantage of the fact that I had much more runway than I needed, so I didn't have to make my decision right at the runway. There's also no problem making the away-from-wind turn to exit the runway onto the taxiway. I expected it would be harder because the airplane would act as a weather vane and try to point towards the wind. I think the surface wind must be less than they are calling it.

I taxi to customs, right down at the end of the runway. There's a little building behind a black helicopter with "Homeland Security" stencilled along it in serious letters. As I shut down the engines a customs officer comes around the nose towards my boarding door. I set the parking brake and come back to open the door. The wind tears it out of my hands and it slams open. Fortunately the customs officer wasn't standing in a position that made me liable for decapitating a federal officer. I'm sure there's a serious penalty for that. I stick my head outside and wow yes, I believe it's 42 knots now. Easily. The officer yells over the wind for me to bring my passport, licence and aircraft documents inside. He'll meet me there. He flees.

I collect my documents, borrow and set chocks and come inside, probably looking like a troll doll from the wind. The customs clearance is painless. He inspects my licence, my passport, the airplane registration, my proof of purchase of a customs decal and consults the computer a bit then tells me I'm all done. He's much friendlier than the guy on the phone. Maybe he doesn't actually have a family. I ask him if there's one FBO on the field that is more appropriate for my size airplane than another. Sometimes one FBO caters mainly to jets, or one has parking gauged to small singles. He isn't supposed to give recommendations, but manages to let me know which one everyone goes to.

When I get back to the plane I see that the wind has blown the chocks right out from under the wheels! The chocks are two wedge-shaped blocks of wood connected by a rope. That's normal for wheel chocks, so you can pick them up both at once, and hang them on a hook. The wind in this case caught the rope like a flag and that was enough force to pull the chocks out. Fortunately the brakes held. I restart the airplane and get taxi clearance to the FBO, past the Homeland Security helicopter. I don't know helicopters, so I can't tell you what sort it was, but it was big. I wouldn't be surprised if it could seat ten well-armed people. It definitely cost a lot of money. I was going to take a picture of the helicopter for you, but you know, Homeland Security.

I taxi up to the FBO and more troll-haired people marshall me into parking and scurry to tie down the airplane. I laugh, climbing out of the airplane, about how strong the wind is, and how it came up just as I was landing. "We saw you land," they tell me, "you did a good job." I suppose I would sit and watch and laugh pilots trying to land in that, too. Maybe take some video.

I stayed at a hotel the FBO called for me, and ate next door in a truck stop diner. And the food was excellent. I seem to have discovered a pattern lately of unexpectedly good food in diners and airport restaurants in the northern states. Either the baseline standard for restaurant cuisine is higher here, or good restaurants just have lousy decor.

Also there's an e-mail from a company I've applied to, inviting me for an interview for a jet job. I can't come because their week of interviews occurs while I am out of the country, but I tell them to keep me in mind for future opportunities. Perhaps my unwillingness to screw over my current employer will reflect well on me.