Lampposts and Overpasses

Apparently this happened today.

One of the useful things about small planes is that they do land at about the speed of traffic, typically touching down at 75-120 km/h. It is cool that no one saw the airplane and freaked out.  I know someone who was making a similar emergency landing and the driver of the car he was following saw the airplane in the rear view mirror and slammed on the brakes. Fortunately my friend had enough momentum to bobble up and land in front of the car, but better that everyone just keep their chill. I think there's a telescoping effect that makes everything look closer together in this picture.  From the angle we see it, it looks like a Ford Probe could barely merge into that space, but there's no honking or swerving as the Piper slots in.

This may be as much about Québec drivers as this pilot. I suppose every city's drivers look maniacal to every other city's drivers, but this is the only province in Canada with signs advising you to "attendez le feu vert" -- wait for the green light.  Maybe it's to prevent people from making right turns on red, allowed in, I think, all other provinces, but it seems to me that Québec drivers need the reminder that traffic lights aren't optional. If you've been to Toronto and to Paris, you will understand when I tell you that being a pedestrian in Montréal is much more like the Paris than the Toronto experience. In my opinion, the anything-can-happen-next experience of driving in la belle province has prepared these drivers for traffic that casually merges from above and then takes up three lanes.

The thing that freaks me out is the non-motorized obstacles.  Look at all the wires, the signs, the overpass and the lamp standards. If you're in control of your airplane you can put it on a runway point of your choosing, but damn, I like my approach corridors uncluttered.

Q-Tips and Canoes

En route to a busy GA aerodrome, I checked the ATIS and started setting up for the runway in use. I needed one more approach before the end of the month to maintain my IFR currency, and was planning on flying it simulated just to get that box ticked. The time then passed the top of the hour, so I checked again, and discovered that the runway with the approach was now "closed per NOTAM" and the cross runway, with no instrument approach was in use. Unexpected, but perfectly manageable. On final I saw a light twin and a pick up truck on the grass at the side of the runway. Something had not gone well for someone.

I landed without incident and taxied to the FBO, where we learned that the disabled aircraft had had a gear collapse, a term which the FBO staff seemed pretty sure had been applied euphemistically to a situation where the pilot had neglected to extend the landing gear. The poor airplane was lifted back to its wheels and towed past the windows of the FBO, where I pointed out to my non-pilot co-worker the characteristic Q-tipped props of an aircraft that lands gear up with the engines powered. I paused as I wrote that. Of a propeller, Q-tipped refers to the ends being bent over. I've always called them that, and I remember the first time I saw a Q-tipped prop, on a fixed gear single whose pilot had tried to make it stop flying and land on a short runway, rather than going around and trying again with a better short-field approach. I think someone with me must have called them that, and I absorbed the term. Searching for an etymology, I discovered that there is a company that makes Q-tip propellers on purpose (and a funny story about an FAA inspector who didn't know that). Trying to find when they were invented, to help determine whether the company was named after the condition or vice versa, I wandered down a rabbit hole of the history of the tip-fin propeller, invented by J.J. Kappel, initially for marine applications. If anyone knows when they were first put on airplanes, let me know. I had to escape from articles like this one before I got wrapped up in the physics. This was meant to be a quickie blog entry.

So we're watching the remains of this once-airworthy vessel towed past, and the FBO staff are all fixated on it. One of them is scrambling for a ramp pass so he can drive down and check it out. My co-worker is confused about the excitement. "Remember how much we had to spend to get the engines overhauled on [the new plane we just bought for our fleet]?" I asked my co-worker. "The engines on the gear-up plane, no matter how new they are, are done now." The force of the prop strike bends and breaks other components of the engine.

"But what's the spectator value?"

I thought about it a while and finally came up with an analogy he could appreciate. He's an outdoorsman. "You know when someone drives their van into a parking garage or under a bridge with a canoe on top? No one is hurt, but the canoe is destroyed, and the van is damaged, and the person who did it is in emotional pain from how stupid they just were, and how much money they just destroyed. And everyone comes to look, and take pictures. You feel the pain, and you're so glad it wasn't you, because you know it could have been you." He got it.

Antitailgating Access Portal

I'm currently struggling with a security clearance issue. I can't talk about it specifically, because the security training includes my agreement not to disclose details. I'm hoping this issue is a misunderstanding or an incompletely articulated policy, because like many valid security procedures, makes no f[iretr]ucking sense. While researching the issue in search of more definitive information on what I am allowed to do in secure areas with the pass I hold, I was amused by this:

Three airports – Kelowna, Winnipeg and London – have installed an access control system called a “mantrap,” so named by Washington-based Newton Security Inc., the manufacturer of the operative mantrap technology called T-DAR; Canadian airports variously refer to it as a mantrap, persontrap or, in Winnipeg, antitailgating access portal.

Who would have guessed that little Winnipeg was the epicentre of Canadian overnaming conventions? Henceforth I shall call them Stargates, and fully expect that every time I pass through one, there is a good chance I will encounter an alien civilization that curiously speaks English or French almost exactly the way they do in my part of the universe.

Also, here's your daily dose of pilots landing a Cessna on a highway.

Not a lot of detail there. The Mayday call reports engine trouble. The vehicles following seem to have figured out that tailgating is not a good idea.

I See Fourteen Lights

There might be fog or mist present when I depart tomorrow from an uncontrolled aerodrome. The minimum allowable visibility for my departure is half a statute mile, so I need to be able to determine how far I can see along the runway, without a tower, a flight service specialist or an electronic runway visual range (RVR) measurement. I'll have to count runway lights.

I haven't done this in a while--you don't get fog much in the summer--so I had to double check some numbers. I found then in A Quick Reference: Airfield Standards from the US FAA. (Nice little reference. I intend to read it through in its entirety sometime, maybe while waiting for fog). It confirms for me that the lights along the runway edge are spaced 200' apart. There are six thousand feet in a nautical mile, but for some reason ground visibility is measured in statute miles, which contain only 5280 feet apiece. (I had to look that number up, too). That means that I need to be able to see half of that, or 2640' feet along the runway to meet the half-mile minimum visibility. And at this point I realize "well duh: if there is an RVR then a half mile is RVR 2600." So I'm on track. This means that if I pull onto the runway even with one set of runway lights (they are aligned with each other on each edge of the runway) I need to be able to count 2600 divided by 200, or thirteen more pairs of them, stretching away into the foggy gloom, in order to be legal. I'm happy to ignore the extra 40' because RVR values do, and because I'm looking along the hypotenuse of the triangle whose base is on the runway edge, and surely I'll pick up another forty feet there.

Whom am I kidding? This is Cockpit Conversation. We don't make assumptions about trigonometry here, we do trigonometry. The base of the triangle runs from my position at the first runway edge light, to the fourteenth runway light, and is 2600' long. Assume I'm in the middle of a runway, standard width 200', making the height of the triangle 100'. The measurement of the hypotenuse is therefore sqrt((2600 x 2600)+(100 x 100)) = 2602. So no, actually, there is almost no difference between the distance from the first runway light to the fourteenth, and the distance from my eye to the fourteenth light. That's a very skinny triangle. My assumption is wrong. So if I wanted to be a nerd, I could park thirty-eight feet back from the first pair of runway lights. But generally I want to go flying.

In order to save Americans time telling me that the RVR for half a mile is 2400, I'll confirm that in Canada and the other countries I checked researching this post, the RVR for half a mile is 2600. I don't know why Americans use 2400, and neither do the people in this thread on the subject. I especially like the way that the person who initially answers the question there doesn't notice that RVR 2400 for a half mile doesn't add up, until the student points it out. Another thing I expect American commenters to want to tell me today is that "if you have to count runway lights on short final, you should go missed." That's becase their landings are legally restricted by visibility. But Canadian landings are governed only by decision height or MDA. If the runway is visible at DH/MDA, a landing is authorized for us. Our plates have an "advisory visibility" which we can use to calculate whether we expect to be visual at minimums, but its value does not affect our legality to put the airplane on the runway. Once we are past the FAF, the RVR does not restrict us. We do have something called an approach ban which can stop us from legally attempting an approach in terrible visibility, but that's a whole 'nother topic.

Drawing From Both Bags

When I get to the airport company sent me to in the previous post, there is a NOTAM on the ATIS  for fire fighting operations on the edge of the control zone. There's a forest fire. I should have checked NOTAMs during the diversion. I did tell Centre were were headed here, and I hope they would have mentioned it had the airport been actually closed. When told to divert, I had just enough fuel to get here with thirty minute reserve, and I accepted the mission.  There were other airports available en route if I had had an emergency, but I'm almost here now.

Some people are going to think that it is irresponsible to plan to land with only 30 minutes reserve. Most private pilots plan a healthier margin.  But there's a business margin to be considered too, and if I waste an hour of the day descending, fulling and climbing back up again, will there be money in the bank account to pay for tires, alternators and other parts I need to be safe? Part of being a commercial pilot is knowing your aircraft well enough that you can plan to get the optimum usage out of it in a day.  Legally I need to plan the flight such that I can arrive at my destination with thirty minutes reserve fuel. After I take off that rule is no longer in effect. it would not be illegal for me to land with two minutes of fuel left in the tanks. If I ever did, it would suggest that I had been stupid, or had had a very serious unforeseen situation. If I were to run out of fuel I would probably be charged with something.Something with "endangering" and or "failure" in it, I suppose.

It definitely would have been smart to check NOTAMs. I don't remember now whether I tried to call an FSS or just didn't think of it, or had looked them up hours ago, before the first flight of the day. As we hold clear of the airport for the fire fighting aircraft, we have a great view of the orange fire suppressant streaming out of the bomber onto the blaze.  White smoke, green trees, yellow water bomber, orange fire suppressant, red fuel gauge.

After the bomber run, and a detour I come in to land. It's hot. The blast of heat from the pavement makes the airplane bobble in the flare. I finesse with power. It's like flying a C172 again.

There is about twenty minutes left in my lowest tank. So less than I aim for, but that's sort of what reserve fuel is for.  If I never ever used it, it wouldn't be worth hauling around. I think I've only gone  this far into my reserve three times in my career. Once for strong winds, this time for a forest fire, and the first time for strong headwinds and a forest fire diversion.

I taxi clear of the runway and onto the FBO apron. The guy from the normally very quick Esso FBO walks up and tells me the fuel truck is broken. I have a moment of "oh---FIRETRUCK!" When you don't check NOTAMs, you can get it from both sides. And then he says, "I'll call the Shell for you." Oh right. This airport has more than one FBO. That's one of the reasons we use it.

We fuel, start with the engines facing the wrong way for the wind, but it's not strong, and then take off with a quartering tailwind. Long runway, no obstacles ahead, and it's operationally much more efficient.

Fitting In

I'm working out of an airport where traffic has outstripped construction and the construction that is trying to catch up has made the taxiways and frequencies even more congested. When I get a word in edgewise with ground I'm cleared to taxi, but then have to pull over for a do-si-do at the compass rose so an opposite direction caravan can get by. Wait a few minutes stacked up behind traffic for departure, then cleared for the immediate, with a northbound turn as soon as able so they can keep pumping out faster traffic.

O

On the way home, I'm sequenced, allowed to descend towards the runway, and then told to keep it in close behind the departing jet. The controller's goal and hence mine is to put me on the pavement as soon as the jet is safely out of the way. I don't want to land into jet blast, the disturbance to the air made by the jet engines as the aircraft accelerates along the pavement, but I don't have to worry about his wake turbulence, because the vortices made by the wings of a flying aircraft don't start until rotation, and I will be stopped and turned off the runway before the point at which the jet gets airborne and the vortices start. I hear another aircraft behind being told to bring back the speed, follow the ... ATC gets my type wrong, but he's to be forgiven. I know it's me, and from the point of view of the B737 pilot behind me, we're much the same.

Someone on frequency asks the controller if they have software that advises them of traffic conflicts or just use their own cleverness. The controller assures them it's just cleverness and the next few calls to tower include praise for the controllers' cleverness. They have to undergo some pretty comprehensive aptitude tests for that job, and then a lot of training and supervised practice, so the cleverness is innate and trained.

I keep it close behind the jet, and plan to keep my speed up to the intersection where they usually ask me to exit. The fading jet blast affects the flare giving me a sudden headwind that dies, I bubble up and then touch down harder than I planned to before I can bring up the power to compensate. I've lost all my speed, because of that, but just as well because ATC asks me to exit on a sooner taxiway than I'd planned. I can refuse that if I consider it unsafe, but a bit of braking and I do it. The 737 must have landed behind me, and by the time I get my taxi clearance and turn onto the parallel taxiway there's a CRJ taking off.

Keeping It Between the Lights

About ten years ago a crew landed a Boeing 737 at Edmonton International in the fog and snow, and touched down beside the runway instead of on it. They got the airplane back on the runway after taking out a sign and a bunch of lights, and no one was hurt. The poor pilots had been up for almost twenty-four hours by the time it happened.

I feel so badly for them. I've landed at Edmonton International at night, and there are a lot of lights. When you land on a northern, snow-covered runway you find the rows of lights or reflectors and you land between them. You can't see the runway. It's exactly the same black and then reflective white as the area outside the runway. You just flare and hope the information you got on the depth of the snow and how packed it is was correct.

I think I did a similar thing when I was a commercial student, landing on a grass field. It was an actual field, just your standard chunk of turf in between the farm roads. There was a windbreak of poplar trees planted along one side, and then a line of tires showing the edge of the area they considered the runway. Presumably the "runway" side was more packed down from landing aircraft, more frequently mowed, and checked for rocks, mole hills, and the like. The CFS entry for the airport didn't mention the tires and I think I may have landed on the wrong side of them. I don't even remember--that's how un-serious my incident was. It could have been bad had the ground been soft or the grass really long and hiding obstacles on the "bad" side. I just remember that someone later told me which was the correct side. Obviously it wasn't an international airport, and before someone put the tires there I'm sure folks just landed all over.

Last time I landed at CYEG it was night, and the end of my working day. The controller asked me to turn a five mile final, but not knowing the local night time landmarks well it was difficult for me to choose a bearing that would set me up for that. I could easily turn final five miles from the airport, but I didn't have a waypoint set for the threshold of the runway, and single pilot at night, and tired in descent for a runway is a really bad place to start calculating a lat and long based off runway information, or perhaps there was a waypoint on a GPS plate, and then programming a lat and long out of a book into the GPS. Normally for that sort of thing you can use the runway as a yardstick and just mentally extend it to where you need to join, but the layout of runways at the International there combined with the angle I was approaching from made it tricky. So I did that thing that is free and safe and doesn't require me to take my eyes off the instruments or the scenery: I asked the controller a question similar to, "does this look good for where you want me to intercept final?" I probably threw in the word "unfamiliar," as well. The controller has a radar screen that shows the runways, and my blip, and he has tools that can show my extended track and distance, but he probably doesn't need them as his job is to look at blips and know whether they will conflict. It definitely made me look less cool. I couldn't pretend to be a completely fearless pilot utterly blasé in the face of any danger. But it saved me a couple of minutes in the air, because the controller told me I was free to fly direct to the threshold. And who wants a pilot inured to danger when you can have one who gets you there safely?

This is in no means intended to imply that the 737 crew wouldn't have had their incident had they asked for help. I was only trying to point out that on a beautiful visibility night a pilot who is a lot less tired can get confused. The visibility was terrible for these guys and they must have been exhausted. The upside is that their company changed the procedures after that, so crews no longer risked having to do that night landing after being up for a full day.

Ditching Instructions

I'm delivering recurrent emergency training to pilot and non-pilot crewmembers in a couple of weeks, so I sat down to brainstorm some of the items to cover. Challenge-response checklists, the names of the various levers, the protocol for what to say if the right engine is on fire and the pilot asks you to confirm left as she shuts it down. (Hint, not "right!"). I covered evacuation, including special life-saving tips like "wait until the aircraft has stopped moving" and "be careful not to get run over by a firetruck". It would be depressing that so much of training people consists of telling them what they could figure out for themselves, except that it in comparison to reading reports of accidents caused or exacerbated by people not doing things they could figure out for themselves, it's not depressing at all.

I move onto bullet points for the Off-Airport Landing. We don't fly floats or bushplanes, so this represents a fairly drastic emergency situation. I type in ...

• possible reasons
• pilot briefs situation
• secure cargo, self
• consider needs
• distress call
• landing configuration
• brace position
• evacuate

An extreme form of off-airport landing is ditching, landing on the water. That's obviously going to be the next item. As I'm starting on that, I notice that one of my keycaps is loose, so I wiggle it into place and press down on it to fix it. Then I look back at my document. It says...

Ditching

• aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

Maybe I'll leave it like that.

Landing Advice

I received e-mail from a student pilot today, and it put a big smile on my face. He said:

Wow ! what fantastic advice !!!
You must be one great teacher… !

I didn't even remember giving him advice. Probably a quick e-mail answer dashed off while waiting for a fuel truck. He had asked me in asterisk-studded angst ***Why can't I get the hang of landings?*** What did I tell him?

Don't worry about the landings. Almost everyone feels they aren't getting it at first, but eventually it clicks.

1. Work on the approach just as hard as the landing. Make sure you get to the beginning of the runway at the right speed and altitude, and properly TRIMMED. If you're not trimmed, speed control is difficult, so it is difficult to be consistent, and then the flare becomes more difficult. Remember to use POWER for altitude, PITCH for speed and RUDDER for direction.

2. Pay particular attention to where your flight instructor tells you to LOOK, and look in the same place while your instructor is landing as when you land, so you get the whole picture.

3. When you think the airplane is just about to land, pull back a tiny bit more. Pilots don't land airplanes, airplanes land themselves. Your job is to keep it from crashing until it runs out of speed and has to land. The slower the airplane is going, the more you have to pull to get the same change in pitch.

Remember that you are in slow flight during the flare, and your goal is to stall the airplane right over the runway. That's why your instructor had you practice aircraft control in slow flight and in the stall.

Be patient with yourself and with the airplane. Eventually you will get it.

The student can land now. It seems that trimming properly for the approach did the trick. But I felt that I should warn him that there are ups and downs in landing, so I added.

You will have landing slumps, where all if a sudden although your landings are safe, they just aren't all that great any more. The best solution to that is to buy new socks. It's your socks' fault, I swear.

There is some possibility that the first advice I gave him is more accurate than the second. But it's always nice to have new socks.

Standard Approach Profile

To land a tricycle gear airplane on a runway is not very difficult. You just place it in the correct slightly nose up attitude and keep it straight while the main gear settle onto the runway, and then you gently lower the nose. The difficult part is to arrive at the beginning of the runway at a speed such that when you raise the nose the appropriate amount the airplane neither stalls abruptly nor balloons into the air, and to arrive there at an altitude such that the airplane contacts it at just the same moment the wings stop flying. Also the airplane needs to be configured for landing. At minimum, landing configuration should include wheels.

My airplane has a maximum speed at which I can extend the landing gear and three different maximum speeds for extension of different amounts of flaps. In a normal landing I should have the gear and all the flaps down, the final stage of flaps coming perhaps a couple of hundred feet above the runway. In order to have the speed required for that, I aim to be at the speed for the second stage of flaps by 1000' above touchdown, and that's also a good point for me to have the gear down. In order to reach gear speed it helps to have the first stage of flaps extended, usually five miles out, or mid downwind. Until then I can fly any speed I want, so long as I stay below 200 kts in the control zone, or slower if the control zone has its own speed limit. Plus I need to be out of the yellow arc if there is a risk of turbulence. Let's call that by 10,000'. And so on, continuing to work backwards until I'm leaving FL190 and deciding whether to push the nose down for a drag-increasing 2000' fpm descent or leave it gently trimmed for a 400 fpm let down. You learn in initial flight training about the relationship between airspeed and drag: the latter increases with the square of the former, so if I want to arrive at a point in space with less energy, both gravitational potential (i.e. altitude) and kinetic (i.e. airspeed) I need to push my nose down and go faster.

I'm landing today at a larger international airport, but they only have one of their runways open: construction, FOD cleanup or something, so everyone including me is heading for the same runway. I'm asked to maintain 160 knots. Not a problem on the descent, but as I get closer I want to bring the power back on my engines to cool them gradually and I ask the controller if he still needs the speed. He most emphatically does. I have to increase power to hold it. And I'm also above my maximum gear and flap extension speeds.

Remember that the aircraft is designed to fly efficiently through the air. Even if I slam the throttles to idle, which I'm not going to do, because I have to depend on these cylinders not cracking from shock cooling, the airplane will take time and space to slow down. Getting flaps and gear down adds drag, but I have to slow down to be allowed to do that. I'm finally permitted to slow down, so I pull the nose up to slow down until I have approach flap speed. This makes me climb, but they don't mind that. As soon as I add approach flaps that increases drag, and increases the amount of nose down that gives me the same speed, so I can put the nose down while still slowing down and as soon as I have gear down goes the gear, still slowing so I can add more flaps, put the props ahead and on the runway nice and slow, so I can exit at the first available taxiway.

Phew, not how the flight instructor taught it, but still using what I learned (and taught) back in flight school.

Double Generator Failure

I found this in my drafts folder, I guess I was saving it for a busy day. I've been punting it a month into the future every month. Obviously I'm busy today, because it published.

I had a double generator failure once. I'll spoil any suspense now by saying it was not a big deal. The designers of this airplane knew that electricity was fickle, newfangled stuff and not to be trusted, so no essential system for VFR flight was electrical. We were VFR and it was a beautiful clear day after the invention of cellphones. The master was on, no visible circuit breakers were popped, and there was no smoke or fire smell. The reset for the generators was under the dashboard. With multiple people on board we could have reset them it in flight, but not knowing why they had popped, we elected to leave them off.
Our destination was a reasonable-sized controlled airport, not at an especially busy time, so we just pulled out a cellphone and called them to tell them we were coming. They cleared us to land, I can't remember whether it was by a steady green light on final or they just gave the clearance over the telephone. Possibly both. They seemed far more stressed about the event than I was. I never consider a communications failure to be a showstopper, especially when I manage to make contact another way. And why on earth had they dispatched firetrucks to follow us down the runway?

It was kind of fun mind you, and the firefighters were friendly. I think they like driving their trucks around, especially when thy don't have to pull anyone's charred remains out of a burning airplane, so they were happy when we thanked them and assured them that there was no problem.

At the time, it was the only twin I knew the systems on, so I didn't realize that some aircraft have electrically activated landing gear. ATC was worried that I might not be able to lower the wheels. The only electrical component of this one is the indication system, and extension can be verified by the thumps from the mains plus visual identification of the nose gear in the mirror on the nacelle. The air traffic controllers knew that in general a systems failure on an airplane could be a bad thing, and must have thought I was being cool and not admitting I could have a gear problem. Communication by cellphone in an operating aircraft is not simple. ATC they have this great button up there in the tower for letting the firetrucks out, so why not? So long as we didn't make the local news.

I can't even remember the reason for the failure. We had it checked out at a local shop and were certified good to go for the next leg of our adventure. I think I was reprimanded by the aircraft owner for saying "electrical failure" instead of just "comm failure." He was a need-to-know kind of guy and I'm more of an anything-that-might-be-relevant gal.

Trial by Ground

We find someone to look at the engine, and he sees nothing visibly wrong with the number two cylinder. They checked the mags, replaced the spark plugs, cleaned the injectors and swapped the #2 and #4 probes. That way they've addressed the most likely issues and if it is the probe or the gauge it will now be a different cylinder complaining. Smart. I'm happy with the work and we fuel and go for the Vancouver mission.

Vancouver International is one of the larger airports I've worked out of for a while, so I have all my charts lines up to find my way around. I listen to the ATIS and call clearance delivery for a departure. He offers me a choice between two departures, They are both in the wrong direction, because the work area is to the east and they are using westbound runways at the moment, so I pick one without much consideration. I'll work out exactly how do get there once they are done vectoring me through the departure. He then asks for more detail on the actual work area and chews me out because I have selected the wrong departure for the most efficient route to that area. He advises me to study a VTA next time. I say "<callsign> checks," contritely. The VTA is an astonishing forest of VFR reporting points, many of which are over the water. Do you get your bearings by identifying particular fish?

Once Clearance is done berating me, I call Ground for taxi. I know I'm on apron two. He asks me pleasantly which pad I will be departing today. Pad? Insert moment of radio silence while Aviatrix processes this question, and then my response, almost student pilotlike in its careful deadpan earnestness. "<callsign> is an aeroplane," pronouncing all three syllables of the last word. "Pad" refers to helipad. This apron is home to some helicopters. There must be a local helicopter with a similar callsign.

"Oh so you'd prefer to depart from a runway today?" he asks. Don't they have a strip on me? Has he been listening to Clearance Delivery telling me where to go and decided to take his turn? Is it a friendly joke like the briefer who pretended he thought I was a B747 on floats for my first student cross-country? I assume it's the last.

"If that would be convenient for you, sir." Sir is routine in the US, but in Canada "sir," like "niner," is often jocular or hypercorrect.

He gives me a taxi clearance I can manage, and I find my way to the correctly lettered piece of pavement and then to the hold short line, monitoring tower. They clear me to position and then for takeoff, and I switch to departure through 1000', as specified on the VFR departure instructions. They quickly vector me around to where I need to go.

It's very beautiful here. The mountains, which still have snow on them, wrap almost all the way around. There are mountains on Vancouver Island to the west, mountains stretching up the coast to the northwest, mountains forming a huge barricade to the north, blocking Vancouver into a valley, and more mountains to the southeast, as the coastal chain continues into Washington state. There's even a ten-thousand foot volcanic peak just south of the US border, with a ski hill on it. I don't get to look at all that much.

I get to look at nearby traffic and a screen with lines and dots on it. Sometimes I talk to the dots. When they talk back, I figure it's time for a snack. I'm improving, but it's easy to lose concentration for a moment, to be distracted by engine management and bank just a little at the wrong moment. "You know," I venture, "This could be made into the world's most boring video came for the iPod." The thing would be, you're not allowed to stop for six hours. So whether you have to make dinner, eat dinner, or attend to other physiological needs, the dots keep coming, and you keep having to follow the line. I also lament that I should get points. The dots should sparkle, like in the game Bejeweled. There should be points for my getting them spot in the middle with the crosshairs centred, and points lost for any red flashes. There should be combos available, and maybe a voiceover telling me to "Get Ready!" for each new line. The game should track high scores, per pilot, and maybe have spaceships. I'm not sure how you'd incorporate spaceships, maybe in the advanced levels I haven't reached yet. If I had an iPod developers' kit, I would try to make this game.

The engines behave perfectly, and lean right back to the fuel flow the operator expects, with normal EGTs. I hypothesize the flaky cylinder had a fuel injector issue or a bad spark plug. Too much fuel or too little ignition might cause combustion to continue too late in the cycle, raising the EGT, and too little of either could cause the intermittent rough running. Whatever it is is fixed now. The video game has to have a screen for fuel management, which you must periodically monitor without losing track of your dots.

Eventually I run out of dots, or spare fuel, I can't remember which, and head back to Vancouver for landing. I've been talking to Vancouver Terminal all this time, so they point me towards a runway and tell me to contact tower. I call them "<callsign>, 3500', with Xray" and tower is already mad at me. They want to know why I'm not with Terminal. I mentally review the last instruction from Terminal. It wasn't "Contact Tower crossing the river," or "Contact Tower through 2500'." It was "Contact Vancouver tower now, <frequency>." Tower has for some reason assumed that I have just appeared in their airspace without deigning to contact the agency that controls ALL the airspace surrounding it. The only way I could reach Vancouver Tower's airspace without passing through Terminal would be to take off from Vancouver. And I've already been through that trial by Ground. Is there such a major problem here with small airplanes bulling their way into class C airspace without a clearance that that is the first assumption on what I must assume is a botched terminal-tower handoff? I'm still cleared straight in, which is a little freaky, because it's a busy time at a busy airport, but I see they are aiming me for the departure runway, so they keep taking off jets in front of me, and landing them on the parallel beside me, and I don't interfere with either set.

I land, can't see a sign on the nearest taxiway, so maybe it's an entry-only taxiway and I roll to the next one, clearing the runway quickly with an Air Canada positioning behind me.

The operator knows I've worked hard today, and asks me if I can do another flight. Yeah, my duty day is good to seven p.m., that's with the time change. And I'm strangely energized after capturing all those dots. The next flight will be just an hour. After fuelling I call clearance again, this time requesting the departure that I think will do me the most good, and he assigns it to me with my squawk code. Ground clears me out and then warns someone else to watch for me. Yeah, watch out for her. He can't see me, but I can see him. He won't run over me. I guess apron II goes all the way to the the east end of the runway, and Ground doesn't know which bit I'm on. Is there a chance I've misnamed my apron location? The chart seems pretty clear.

We take off and go take pictures of a movie set. Cool, eh? I'm high-powered paparazzi now. I'll have to find out what movie. I didn't see the set, just the dots.

Landing back afterwards they clear me for a tight downwind and then clear me to land "keep your base in close." I turn base immediately and plummet to the runway with full flaps and gear down, clearing on that first taxiway, which is labelled, just further back than I looked. I may not know all the VFR departures, but I can keep my base in close.

Trial By Wind

Morning dawns in Slave Lake. It's a beautiful day, by most standards, but there are clouds present at an altitude that would prevent our doing the photo job to specifications. The decision is taken to work today on another assignment, in the Calgary area. My job is to get there expeditiously, and negotiate with the Calgary terminal controllers to allow this. The "Calgary job" is one that everyone has been dreading, because it's a low altitude job with unusually demanding tolerances. I was assured that I wouldn't be dropped into Calgary until I had some experience with the system. There's another crew here, working on the Slave Lake job, but they have had some camera problems and are going to Edmonton for consultation with the camera service guy. So I'm going to cut my teeth on the "Calgary Job."

I call Calgary terminal, requesting a VFR entry code for their airspace and describing the work we hope to do in terms of their reporting points. I have the mission map, the CFS and the Calgary VTA chart all spread out, trying to describe what I want to do in the vocabulary of the Calgary controllers. They are not impressed, but grudgingly give us a squawk code and launch clearance for the mission. I call head office to back me up by faxing them maps, because we're checked out and in the airplane, so don't have the ability to do it ourselves.

We make slow progress south, with a strong headwind. Edmonton clears me through their airspace unblinkingly. I can't remember if I used the Calgary code for that transit or was still squawking VFR. As we continue south, the camera operator sets me up with some practice lines. I have to stay right on the line, wings level, pitch level, holding altitude without sudden movements. It's a narrower, more sensitive line than the one I tried in the training session. At first it's really difficult and I talk to myself, calming myself down, "C'mon Aviatrix, you're a pilot, you know how to fly in a straight line." And suddenly I reply to myself, "Yes, I do, and it's not like this!" I adjust the screen, sit up straighter and look out the window more. That's how a pilot flies in a straight line in VMC. It makes an immediate difference, especially as we're flying due south along the section lines. ("Section" is an old-fashioned measurement of land, about 260 hectares, and when Alberta was first homesteaded the farms were carved out in rectangular sections, with roads and irrigation channels and other obvious landmarks running along the boundaries). I can look out the window and align with a visible line that runs right to the horizon. So I can do this. Let's go.

Approaching their airspace, I talk to Calgary, and they clear me for lines one and two. They are east-west lines, but not aligned with section lines, so I visually line up on a mountain peak. It's turbulent and between the little pitching and rolling motions and my over-correcting responses, the line is not skillfully enough flown to be a keeper. So I fly line one again, trying to get it right. I still see the pitch and roll indicator flash red again and again. I fly line two. And I need to fly line two again, but ATC tells me to hold west of the approach. What important installation are we taking pictures of? Can I tell you? Yes. We're taking super-high resolution high tech stereoscopic pictures of golf courses. If you don't think of airports and the space around them three dimensionally, you might not realize where the golf courses fit in relative to the airports in a city. See, the no-trespassing control that an airport has over the area surrounding its runways does not stop at the airport fence. Nothing is permitted to be built protruding into the approach surfaces, invisible ramps leading straight to each runway. Look around the ends of the runways in your city and if it's not water or farmland you'll see parks and golf courses. This means that if you're photographing golf courses, you are by definition in the runway approach or departure path.

They tell us it will be at least fifteen minutes before they can allow me to refly line two. I start asking about other lines, and get clearance to fly some to the east, in the approach to a crossing runway, not currently in use. I have all but one of those lines complete, my skills improving, but still pretty marginal, when they say I need to pull off them. I ask to go back to line two, at which point they decide I can do my one last line here. No pressure or anything. I can't mess this one up. Turn, align, stay straight, stay straight, stay level, correct for turbulence, last photo, breathe. I did it. Back to line two.

Line two is easier. Practice makes ... barely acceptable. But it's done. Now off to the west side. They aren't running approaches or departures through here right now, or my altitude and distance combination makes it easier for them to work around me. I do hear Air Canada being held above and below me, for me to get this work done. We're making things harder for Calgary controllers, no question. Thanks guys.

As well as being flown at lower than usual altitudes for this type of survey, this work must be done at much slower than normal airspeeds. I have the airplane in slow flight with the flaps down, and this complicates control. In normal flight, if the airplane is a little bit low, you can raise the nose slightly and you will lose a little bit of airspeed, and gain a little bit of altitude. You get the airspeed back when you return the nose to the former position. This is the way a pilot usually manages slight deviations from altitude. In slow flight, or the region of reverse control, if you raise the nose you will lose airspeed and altitude, because raising the nose reduces the speed, and it actually requires more power to maintain altitude at a lower airspeed. If I lower the nose, I can both descend and speed up, but I will possibly exit slow flight, meaning that with the same power settings I will be going considerably faster. There are two different speeds I could be going with any given power setting, a slow flight one and a normal flight one. The camera operator is extremely experienced and gives me directives to raise the nose to keep the airplane level and he thinks that if I'm a little bit low I should raise it a little bit more in order to sneak up a few feet. It's complicated trying to explain that today I need to add more power to go slower, and it makes the already backwards display even more confusing.

Additionally, the speed I am assigned to fly is a ground speed, which means that southbound I can fly quite comfortably in range, but northbound I'm whipping over the ground and flirting with Vmc to try and attain the parameters. "Turn harder" he says as I try to pick up the next line. But this is as steep a bank as is safe in this configuration. I'm glad I have the knowledge and experience I have, because it's barely enough here. We whip through the northbound lines, having to refly some of them southbound. The increasing quality of my work from improvement through practice is starting to be affected by fatigue, increased turbulence and a shift change to a more cautious air traffic controller. We have perhaps half an hour work time remaining before we have to land for fuel, but the operator calls it and says we'll land for a break.

"Springbank?" I ask. That's the training airport adjacent to Calgary, we're pretty near it.

"High River," he wants. I tell Calgary where we are going and they give me their local winds at the field, something gusting thirty. Overflying High River we see the sock straight out, straight across the field. "We can go somewhere else," he advises.

"This is okay," I say, bearing in mind that it isn't an aircraft I have a lot of recent experience in. "I'll be able to tell on final if it's too strong." I get blown through final and realign, then enter a slip to show myself that I have sufficient rudder authority to hold a straight line to the runway. The touchdown isn't the prettiest, but I'm not even going to blame it on the wind. I'm still getting in touch with where my wheels are. This is what, the third landing I've made in this airplane. Or the second. I can't remember who landed on the training flight.

We taxi in and the price of avgas is almost as low as car gas. "That's why I like this airport." My fuel consumption has been higher than the previous pilot's. I'm leaning properly, and he can even hear the left engine complain if I lean more aggressively. The first flight it was because I was using a higher power setting, but this flight I used a lower one in cruise at the cost of airspeed. I blame the slow flight configuration for the consumption. You have to run a little richer to compensate for poor cooling at low airspeeds and high nose attitudes.

We refuel, and I borrow a phone to check with Calgary to make sure our code is still valid for the return. We eat some snacks, and go right back at it.

We depart the opposite direction as we landed: I'm not kidding about the wind being straight across the runway, and go back to the lines. The break has made a difference, as do little things like my not having to divide my concentration between fuel remaining and the straight line. I was willing to work right to minimum reserves, but I had to keep in my head what I needed on top of that for the approach and landing. If you turned a pilot's brain into a pie chart, the biggest slice would always be thinking "fuel." It still bashes us around a lot, always seeming to sneak in the big whacks of turbulence just as the camera is about to take a picture.

The southern lines are complete and we now have one more line at a higher altitude, 7,100', right across the middle of the city. I request that one and the controller clears me direct the city. I explain that I need to hold my heading in order to intercept my photo line, and he accepts that and clears me to 7,500'. "Callsign request seven thousand one hundred," I explain, on the way up."

"Seven thousand one hundred will be below you," he quips. "I'm not going to shut down the whole airport for you." I get the okay for that altitude from the camera operator and we fly the line at 7500'. There will be some sort of post processing to compensate.

I offer to ask to fly line two again, because it really wasn't very good, but he says it's fine and we're done. Back to High River, and this time I get a compliment on my crosswind landing. It still wasn't my very best, but at least it was competent. I've been thrown into this without a net and I don't like that that last sentence is starting to feel like my motto.

I call the flight follower to tell her we're down and she promises that this truly difficult job was not given to me as a hazing prank. I laugh and decide to pretend that it was, because it makes it more fun. The locals direct me to park on the oil stain at the back of the apron. I park facing into the wind, borrow bigger chocks, and secure the controls with a seatbelt, before I leave the airplane.

Even though we weren't on a flight plan, I've been briefed to call flight services to close out, because sometimes generating a VFR code for VFR terminal work results in a flight plan being opened. The FBO guy is out securing his own aircraft, so I reach over the counter and borrow the phone again, calling the FSS. I get the FSS in Québec for some reason, and tell the briefer that I'm actually landed in Alberta but I've been connected to him. It turns out that it's a VOIP phone, so it went to Québec, same thing that happens on a satellite phone. We sort that out and I say, "Well in that case, 'Je suis aterrisée à High River, Alberta et je voudrais fermer mon plan de vol, s'il vous plait'." He seems to both understand and appreciate the effort, though in retrospect, aterriser probably isn't an être verb, and I think I spelled it wrong.

We discover in the evening that the wind was so strong it made the news, which is saying a lot because Calgary gets a lot of high winds. Also the client for the work was in town, so he will see the conditions under which we worked to get the job done.

So I spent five hours today flying a somewhat unfamiliar multi-engine aircraft in slow flight in turbulence, at 10 mph above Vmc, at 2000' agl, in busy terminal airspace. And I loved it. I am back, people. And I am a pilot.

Trans-Atlantic Passenger Aircraft

While I was trying to find out what was included in the interwar aerodynamics term "wing resistance" I found this 1927 Popular Science article which uses the term in passing while stating that the Germans are building passenger transport planes with passenger seating inside the wings, and speculating that by 1950 there will be two tiers of passenger decks inside the wings of trans-Atlantic aircraft. The article added nothing to the discussion of wing drag, but I grew up seeing the artwork on magazine covers like these and expecting to really see the things manifest.

There is an excellent article on page twelve about Lindbergh's airplane, including the instruments, and then more on another trans-Atlantic flight, by Charles Chamberlain. I could write half a dozen blog articles just researching them, and I may just do that later, but at the moment I'm distracted by all the other tidbits in the old magazine. This must have been an aviation special edition, but it's startling how many things I take for granted are discussed there as cutting edge or future possibilities. I think I'm not visionary enough to be an engineer, to conceive of something being possible based on a particular scientific principle and then chase it down until it is a concrete, beneficial technology. That may be the difference between a science and a belief to me: if you're explaining an observable phenomenon by science, you can use that science to build a technology that works for someone who knows nothing of the science.

There are lots of suggested applications of technology that I haven't seen manifested. Page 56 describes a device for testing a pilot's vision, but I've never been subjected to that test, so I guess it didn't catch on. On page 43 there is an artist's conception of a system of giant deck fans on a ship, allowing aircraft to land in a short distance for refuelling or emergencies. The arrestor cable is probably a better technology for that, but it was a cute idea. Page 32 documents the first known glider tow launch, and predicts that this could lead to 'aerotrains.' But the secret to invention may be not to laugh at the ridiculous ideas, but to try them.

Some of the ideas have taken off. Page 47 suggests that apes might be able to use basic sign language, and there has been a lot of research on that since. The newly-invented breathalyser is introduced on page 56. Radio was still a cool new technology, and page 56 also describes the discovery of a "radio roof." I learned about high frequency radio "sky waves" bouncing off the ionosphere during my first aviation class on radio theory, but I'd never before wondered when we started doing that. Wikipedia dates the discovery of long distance HF propagation to 1923, and the confirmation of the existence of the ionosphere (for which Edward V. Appleton was later awarded a Nobel Prize!) to 1927. Which two-column-inch silly idea in this week's news will be standard knowledge in fifty years?

There's a description of Paul Edwards' experiments with a radio guidance system, and while I can't find him named in any history of the ILS, I'm suspect that his was some of the earliest research that led to its development. There's a tiny bit more on page 253 of this Popular Mechanics.

The ads are great too. A Gillette ad says "every face is different" yet is illustrated with three faces that make the Führerbunker look diverse. Correspondence schools urge you to earn more money by taking courses on electrical refrigeration, radios, accounting or plumbing. Or "$39 in one day!" selling can openers. And then there's aviation:

Are you hungry for ...
Adventure ..
Popularity .
Big Pay?

Apparently you have to be "a red-blooded daring he-man" for that kind of career. But "the fortunes that came out of the automobile industry and out of motion pictures will be nothing compared to the fortunes that will come out of Aviation." If they mean "come out of" in the sense that the stuffing comes out of a well-used toy, they might be close.

An enthusiastic editorial on public utilities (this must be before they were hated corporations) extols the virtues of electrical power, and this time they do include the ladies.

"How about an electric vibrator? You can massage with it one hour a day, if it takes that much time, getting the kinks out of your system for 2 cents a week."

An hour a day is pretty kinky, but I guess if you weren't offered the opportunity to participate in the exciting worlds of aviation, refrigeration or plumbing, you might have a lot of spare time for your vibrator.

Getting Things Flowing

I received a phone message regarding another job I applied to. Odd, as I applied maybe two months ago, and it wasn't a large company. Why the long delay? Does the guy plan that far ahead for his employment needs? Did the first two candidates not work out? I'm glad I was out getting plumbing supplies and didn't have to field that one cold. It's a job that could be interesting and right for me, given certain constraints, but it could be a backwards step that would look bad on my resume. I had a list of questions to ask about it by the phone for a while after applying. In fact I just threw my notes on that out the other day.

If the potential employer took two months to think about it, I can take a day. For now the plumbing issue is more pressing. I have already replaced the ball and washers, but the old tap has rotted inside and spews water all over the counter when I turn it on. Under the sink the associated plumbing is crazier than the wiring on a thirty-year-old airplane. It's a mismatched mess of PVC and copper with shutoff valves I run into some difficulty removing the old tap. There should be a nut holding it on underneath the sink, but I can't find it. It's very difficult to see or get any purchase under there because this is a double kitchen sink installed very close to the back wall of the cabinet, so everything is hidden in the sink's cleavage. I do some internet research, trying to figure out if there is an alternate way this might be fastened in, and rein in my urge to just shred it into bits and tear out the bits. There are old copper lines coming directly off the underside of the faucet assembly, and I've already destroyed them looking for what is holding it in place. Besides rust.

Delta, the faucet manufacturer has a toll-free line, so I call for advice. The rep is excellent, listening, understanding, suggesting, then putting me on hold to consult with an expert on older models. He comes back and asks if I have any need to reuse the old faucet. Hell no. He doesn't come right out and tell me to remove the sucker by any means necessary, but I got the idea. The sink is stainless steel and I do need to keep that, preferably untorn, so I destroy the old faucet with tinsnips and a big pair of vice grips so that I can pull its shredded remnants down through the hole in the counter. The new tap goes in easily and the water comes out of it in an attractively coherent stream. When you have done work involving open plumbing lines you need to open the tap up and then turn on the water from below and let it run to flush out any junk from the lines before operating the faucet mechanism. I probably would have run it for a while even if I didn't know that, just to watch the pretty water coming out into the sink and not onto the counter.

And then I signed up with a free trial with Netflix. If I'm going to be off work I might as well get free movies. It's also a way of ensuring I won't get to use it. I should sign up for a gym membership and enroll in a CPR renewal class, too. Every time I do either of those things I have to move halfway across the country for a new job.

And still on the topic of stopped up plumbing, here's a nice job of handling a recalcitrant nosewheel. It looks like a combination of a firm landing on the mains and slowing down enough to reduce airflow pressure was enough to get the nosewheel down and locked.

As Seen on the Internet

Hong Kong International airport is huge and modern, signed in Cantonese first and British English second, with Vietnamese, Japanese, Korean, and what may be Indonesian ("Perhatikan waktu Hong Kong saat mengecek jadwal keberangkatan") or Tagalog ("Mangyari po lamang na alamin ang takdang oras ng pageakay sa 'Hongkong local time'") on some signs. Surrounding the airport we can see two concentric barbed wire topped fences with about a four-metre no-man's-land gap between the two. I've never seen that level of physical security around an airport perimeter. I've seen less at some Canadian prisons. Security screening is simple, quick and polite: shoes on, belongings into little numbered baskets for which you get a laminated claim card in case of disputes about who owns what once it comes out of the scanner. Something on my person triggers the scanner to beep. I stop and hold out my arms and am told to put them down. I'm not sure if I was holding them too high for the little security officer to reach comfortably with the wand, or if assuming the position just isn't required here.

We have a tight connection, so hustle up the elevator, through the mall, down the escalator and out to the terminal transfer bus, backed in by the door. We start to walk down the right side of the bus as we would at home and are stopped with an "excuse me, this way." Oh right Hong Kong. They drive on the left, so we board the bus on the left. Signs like "please press bell before alighting" also demonstrate Hong Kong's heritage as a British possession. The bus takes us out to the airplane, where we alight. Without pressing the bell actually. It must be a repurposed city bus. The air smells like the inside of a poorly ventilated garage. We board a Dragonair A321, and once we're underway they serve us Dim Sum for breakfast. Hey, it's Saturday morning. It is Dim Sum time. eh?

My first hint that I'm actually going to Cambodia is the immigration forms that are handed around, in Khmer and English. I fill those out and then a couple of hours later we're on approach into Phnom Penh. There's no city evident at first, just a wide muddy river --it's the Tonlé Sap--with some small buildings along it, and fields laid out among tropical trees. We then spot the city. From above it looks like a cross between Paris and Spain: Paris for the star-shaped city with broad avenues and boulevards radiating from circular hubs, and Spain for the red tile roofs and tropical trees. The airplane makes an unusual number of turns for an airline approach in visual conditions, and other passengers comment on the steep bank angle. I wonder if we're maneuvering for traffic or if Phnom Penh tower doesn't have radar, and we're joining the circuit with full VFR procedures rather than just being vectored for a visual approach to the straight in. Later fellow passengers will ask my professional opinion about the landing, and I'll tell them that, without knowing the wind, runway and systems conditions that the crew were considering, I can't evaluate the choice or execution of landing technique. And I've never flown an Airbus outside of a simulator. It was a smooth touchdown and we exited the runway via a taxiway, not over the end or side, without painful deceleration, so it seemed fine to me. We're in Cambodia.

Inside the terminal we present our various completed forms, pay $25 for an embossed, shiny tourist visa and collect our bags. Signs in the airport are in Khmer and English, except for the one for the prayer room, which adds Arabic. We present our passports, newly issued visas and other paperwork and exit into Cambodia. It still looks a fair bit like an airport, an appearance that is not changed by our loading our bags and ourselves onto an air conditioned bus. Yeah, a blog entry and a half of this drivel and I still haven't told you anything about Cambodia. Travel has a big downside, doesn't it?

With our noses pressed against the windows, we join the traffic and head into town towards the hotel. Here, through the bus window, are approximately four of our fellow road users. On one small motorbike. The streets teem with vehicles, powered by engines, people or animals, overloaded to an extent I wouldn't have believed possible if I didn't read Failblog, and weaving in and out of one another's path like the RCMP musical ride. There doesn't seem to be any distinction between different sorts of road users. The backdrop is mostly tropical trees, low plastered buildings, many under construction, renovation or maybe just falling apart, and decorated walls.

As we watch the scenery and receive our first impressions of the country, one of the group leaders provides a narration, as if we would not otherwise be able to comprehend what is passing in front of our eyes. After a few minutes I tap him gently on the arm and ask, "Please, can we just experience it for ourselves?" He is a capable and very organized leader who keeps us well-informed. I had the impression that he had just left his mouth engaged after giving us the necessary information about hotel and agenda. I may have been wrong, though. He stops the play-by-play, but later another leader indicated that she thought many people appreciated the commentary. I've never been on a group tour before. Maybe it's only bloggers whose are constantly composing their own commentaries, and other people need it done for them.

After a couple of kilometres the bus turns right though a gate into a field. Just a field, with grass, and some dirt tracks and a bunch of other vehicles parked in it. I don't see a hotel. It turns out that for the Water Festival this week, they have set up traffic barricades, and vehicles over a certain size are not permitted any closer to the centre of town. I don't think it's a security measure, just a way to reduce the crush of traffic on a busy weekend, the way a downtown street in Canada might become a pedestrian mall for special events. The local officers are wearing street clothes, their badge of office is just a baseball cap with official insignia. The bus driver and one of our group participants go to negotiate with the police, and after a fair amount of handwaving a police officer wearing an entire uniform, not just a ball cap, arrives and grants us special permission to go to our hotel. I'm not sure if that included a police escort, or how exactly we got through the successive barricades. Looks like I did need the commentary after all.

What I did see was increasing amounts of traffic, vendors squatting on the sidewalks next to their wares, people smiling and waving to us from cafés and other vehicles. It is not at all intimidating. I've never been to Asia before, and I was prepared to be sickened by overwhelming poverty, frightened by an unidentifiably alien environment, or simply to have no link to the culture. But it's exciting and welcoming. I had an interview once on a Caribbean island and there was the same chaotic disrepair in the streets and buildings, and the same feeling of people everywhere selling things with minimal infrastructure. People seem better off here than in much of Nunavut, and I don't just mean the weather.

We check into the hotel, which is not a hovel. There's a shrine on the floor of the lobby, along with some clocks telling the time in six places: Hong Kong, United States, Australia, England, Australia and France. Yep, I know, but they apparently don't. Check-in is efficient and polite. The staff are amused that I can recite my room number in Khmer. I learned the numbers and some basic expressions from YouTube before I left Canada. My roommate and I go up to the room. There's a TV, a bathroom, two good sized beds with firm mattresses, mirrors, cupboards, a dresser and a fridge. There's a balcony, but when we go out on it, the outside is walled off with plastic sheets, so we can't see anything. I think it faces the back of another building, anyway. It's also clean. I've had worse hotel rooms in Saskatchewan. Also the internet doesn't work and the hotel staff say they're getting it fixed. Some things are universal.

It's only early afternoon, so I go out to stretch my legs and look around. People are friendly, even if they aren't selling anything, but there are lots of people who are selling things, probably more than usual, seeing as there's a festival underway. I still need some clothes appropriate to the climate. I buy a sunhat for a dollar. It's made out of strips of dried leaves which I assume are palm fronds, all stitched together on a sewing machine and decorated with fabric strips.

Another vendor sells me a loose fitting cotton shirt decorated with a picture of a cat and circles of letters from the Latin alphabet, all printed in reverse, and spelling nothing. She states the price as seven, I offer five (yes, I am a sucky bargainer) and she tells me in almost perfectly accented English that it's a fixed price. Turns out it's not seven dollars, but seven thousand riels, which is just under two dollars.

On another street a man asks me "parlez vous français?" I'm not too surprised, as my guidebook said that some older people might speak French, as a remnant of this region's history as "Indochine." I answer in the affirmative and in the ensuing conversation tell him I'm from Canada. He says he lives in Montréal, and I must have given him a look of complete disbelief, because he opens his wallet to produce a Canadian SIN card and a Québec permis de conduire. I sit down at his invitation for a chat. I haven't been here long enough to have many questions ready to ask. I have heard that the water festival marks the reversal of the flow of the Tonlé Sap so I ask him about that. He confuses me by saying that the festival commemorates a thousand-years-ago naval victory over Islamic forces, a victory that was facilitated by the reversal of the waters. This website says it was started by King Preah Bat Jayvarman VII as an opportunity to train and select skilled boatsmen for the navy, and other sources say it dates back to the 7th century as a thanksgiving festival. Given that under three hundred years has produced some drift in the meaning of the American thanksgiving, I'll cut the Cambodians some slack and say, hey, their river starts flowing the other way. Why not have a three day party? At any rate the experience teaches me not to make assumptions about the worldliness of the people here. Except it doesn't. I'll do it again later in the trip.

Dinner that night is all together with the group at a tourist-oriented local restaurant. Appetizers start with salted roasted peanuts with some little tiny chili pepper garnishes. Yes, one guy eats a chili pepper. For the record, the little tiny red ones are much hotter than jalapeños. While he tries to put out the fire in his mouth by guzzling water, I recommend rice, and it arrives just in time for it to make me his hero. Another appetizer plate includes bean sprouts and vegetables in a sauce that has an offensive fish odour. I try it out, and fight the gag reflex to get it down. It tastes worse than it smells. I hope the "fish Khmer style" that I ordered will be better. It is. It's a delicious curry, spiced warm not hot, with all kinds of exciting flavours going on, none of which is gag-inducing fish guts.

After dinner there is a traditional music performance, with instruments including a boatlike wooden xylophone, a long-necked stringed instrument played with a bow, and a drum. The drummer is sitting cross-legged on the floor and I can see the bottom of his foot. Before coming to Cambodia we were lectured sternly about customs, including taking off shoes in people's homes, sitting or squatting on the floor, and not displaying the bottoms of our feet to anyone. I tried to figure out a way to sit cross-legged on the floor without doing so, and couldn't, so I'm kind of pleased to see that the culture doesn't demand the physically impossible. Or for all I know the drummer thinks it's hilarious to moon the stupid tourists.

Cows Get Bigger Too Fast

I arrive early to sign out the airplane and do the walkaround, then Oak comes out to show me the idiosyncrasies of the particular type. Most of it is pretty much what you'd expect of any airplane, but the craziest part is the procedure for checking fuel for contamination. The wingtip tanks are checked in what would I would call the normal way for this type of airplane. You take a fuel tester cup--that's like a drinking tumbler with a spike sticking straight up in the middle and jam the spike into a release valve on the underside of the tank. Fuel spews out into the cup and then you can examine it for impurities. The other tanks work differently. Inside the cabin between and slightly behind the control seats, there are some knobs and if you trace the way the lines go from them you can figure out which connects towards the left and which towards the right. Outside the airplane, on the belly just where your hand right hand would be if you extended it after jamming your left shoulder under the flap are two plastic tubes. (Yeah, surgical tubing sticking out of the belly of the airplane. If it were a dog it would have to wear a plastic cone around its neck so it didn't chew on them). In order to check the fuel in the wing tanks, one person holds a fuel testing cup underneath the tubing while another person inside the airplane selects the tanks and pulls the knobs one at a time to let the fuel drain out. Usually when I test fuel at the bottom of my tanks I drain 25-50 mL. If there's no water or sediment, I move to the next tank. If there is some contamination I take another sample. Here Oak wants me to sample one cup of fuel from each tank, and an additional half cup from the crossfeed line.

I call stop after about 250 mL is in the tester and hold it up. "No, the whole cup," he says. Ah, not "one cup" as in the 250 mL kitchen measure but as in the whole, perhaps 600 mL tester. It has a strainer cap on it, so after examining it I can pour the fuel back into the tanks from the top without risking reintroducing contaminants. This is, don't forget, a little single pilot airplane. And it takes two people to check the fuel. Oh this is done before every flight, too, not just after fuelling or for the first flight of the day.

Our first flight is not IFR, just a flight for me to practice handling engine failures and flying this airplane. Fair enough. He briefs where we will go and what the procedures are, and asks if I have any questions. "Yes, how do we get to and from the runways?" Most of the taxiways seem to be NOTAMed closed. It turns out that everything, from Cessna 152s up to WestJet has to get on and off the runways through taxiway A. That's a lot of backtracking. I don't know how long it's been this way, but the NOTAMs suggest it will continue for at least another month.

I run through all the checks for practice, even though it's a VFR flight. There's no VOT here and I can't ID either of the likely VORs in the area. The CDI comes alive while the NAV flag quivers back and forth but never completely falls out of view, and the Morse code is not audible. The ADF works beautifully, though.

I read the departure briefing as though I am going to depart on an IFR flight and then as I'm taxiing for the runway picturing that in my head, realize that I have read the Abbotsford Seven departure for runway 07 as opposed to the one for runway 19. That's disturbing. I've never done that before. I later figure out what happened. Many airports don't have named departure procedures, and for those that do I've never had them match the runway number. In this case I treated the runway number as redundant information because I already had a seven. When I tell Oak what caused me to do that he says it's common. I caught it because I visualized what I was going to do on departure, and it didn't make sense. It goes to show how important test data is for a program or a technique. I wonder how many departures there are in Canada right now that have the same name as the airport and match a runway number. I wouldn't be surprised if this were the only one.

The rotation speed is given for this airplane as "70-78 kts," with no indication whether this depends on take-off weight, runway surface or what. Turns out that the ideal rotation speed would be 70, but Vmc is 78, and they don't want people flying below Vmc (that's the speed below which the airplane is designated unflyable with an engine failure as maximum power), but they don't want people holding an airplane on the runway when it's ready to fly, because that can also result in loss of control. Sounds like a design problem to me. They should have given the thing a slightly bigger rudder or more rudder travel or whatever it takes to bring Vmc down to match Vr. I'm instructed to make up for this by rotating very slowly beginning at 70 and then keeping the airplane in ground effect until it has passed 78. I try this on my first takeoff and am told to hold it in ground effect a little longer next time.

I have him put me under the hood and we try some simulated engine failures and I do the procedure. I was very slow to simulate feathering on one, not sure why. I'm constantly punching the ceiling or dashboard in the wrong place for controls that aren't where they "should be." The airplane is not too hard to handle on one engine. You can hold altitude with the gear up with the power at 25" x 2500 rpm, but if you let the speed decay below 85 knots you've crawled up the backside of the power curve and it loses altitude rapidly. I should be able to fly this airplane. We go back to the airport to land.

Oak seems surprised that I land it adequately. It's not the greatest: I landed straight and on the mains without undue force, but my nosewheel control should have been better. I felt I set it down too rapidly. It's not brutal though. My mind goes back to the private and commercial flight tests, both of which had poor marks for the final full stop landing. The "oh no, now all I have to do is not screw up the landing" feeling was apparently too much pressure for me back then. Here if I get as far as short final without failing anything, I'll be fine. Oak says the approach was too high. Hmm, I got all the way down to the runway and landed in the designated touchdown zone. I'll try to put it underground next time? (He didn't like my high descent rate).

Canada & Intergalactic Spaceport: Two Places We Didn't Land

Now comes the leap across Canada. I've probably flown point to point in the US before while passing through Canadian airspace but not landing, but this is the first time I will have done it between points that I couldn't drive between without clearing customs.

The airplane is ready to go, as we fuelled last night. I'm on the radio and she's flying today. I call for our clearance and they ask us how soon we will be ready. The engines are almost warm enough for takeoff, just a few checks to do. She holds up three fingers. "Three minutes." There's inbound IFR traffic but apparently that's the right number for them. We're give a clearance that expires three minutes hence, and told to taxi and call when ready. I don't know how long the delay would be if we don't make this time, probably not more than ten minutes. Run up complete, taxiing for the hold short line I call ready. Tower has VFR traffic inbound and tells them they have an IFR waiting to go with a tight departure slot. The pilot understands and agrees without being explicitly asked to slow it up--maybe literally reducing speed, extending a downwind or flying a wider base, I'm not sure where the he was--for us. We're cleared for takeoff before his arrival, to roll with seconds to spare in our clearance valid time. I irritate her by specifying the required heading twice, when she already knows where she's turning to. She points out that we're not under two-crew procedures, so she's not obligated to read back or crosscheck the bearing. I apologize, "It was just that you didn't have the heading bug set." We're not using the autopilot for the departure, so it's not essential, but using a heading bug has long been a habit of mine, across many non-autopilot- equipped aircraft. Two crew SOP approval is on our list of things to do, along with certification of our training program on the GNS 430.

We climb to enroute altitude and join the appropriate airway and in a couple of handoffs we're talking to Canadian ATC It's such a welcoming thing, even though I'm not headed home I can now leave the C out of our callsign and they will say "decimal" and other subtle things that I don't so much notice the absence of, as welcome the return to.

Canadian ATC has a reroute for us, if we're willing to accept transit through uncontrolled airspace. I'm ready to copy. It's pretty simple compared to what it could be, just direct a particular waypoint after passing another one, and they spell each five letter combo slowly so I can copy them down and then find them on the chart.

We amuse ourselves for a while with the GPS, finding the worldwide locations of the five letter identifiers corresponding to parts of our names, friends names, etcetera. I think one of mine was in Hawaii.

As we get further south the weather is improving and we get glimpses of the land and water below. We're over the water between Vancouver Island and mainland BC, so seeing ocean, and shoreline and bits of mountains below. Another frequency change and then they have another reroute for us. We filed via the YVR VOR, but we want to be in descent by then for Bellingham and might be in conflict with Vancouver International traffic, so the reroute takes us out to the west over Nanaimo and Victoria. The weather below continues to improve. We could almost cancel IFR and descend VFR to complete the trip more efficiently, except you never know what the weather will be like the rest of the way. I'm about to ask for a more direct routing so we don't have to go all the way to YYJ, when they give us vectors almost direct. ATC does a fantastic job of keeping traffic separated without impairing efficiency. It would be a much more complex process with a much lower capacity for throughput of traffic without them.

The final VOR in our routing is HUH. Huh? It's close to Bellingham airport, but not actually on the field, so it used to be called BLI. But some years ago, I think it may have been partly triggered by the American Airlines flight that flew direct the wrong NDB in South America, they started renamng all the nav aids that shared names with airports but were not physically at the fields. So the one by Bellingham is now called the Whatcom VOR. I think it's on Whatcom Road or in Whatcom county. We wondered at the rename whether the identifier HUH is a joke, because in Canada "What?" and "Comme?" each mean the same thing as "Huh?"

It may be coincidence, but there are definitely jokes in naming nav aids. The Reno VOR was renamed "Mustang" and now there's a "Ranch departure" out of Reno. (The Mustang Ranch is an infamous brothel there).

Our vector has us approaching the mainland USA, the Whatcom VOR and the Bellingham airport on vectors, above a cloud deck that started just before the shore. Approach is trying to pass us onto tower, who are reporting clear skies and have a visual approach posted on the ATIS. I can sense some frustration on the controller's part that I am insisting I am still above cloud. Sometimes I just want to take pity on the controllers and admit that I know where the airport is, but we're above a solid layer, and if I'm not visual I won't say I am. We come over the edge of the cloud deck just in time to spot the airport and descend to land. As the NOTAM's told us, there are lots of taxiway closures here with construction, but it's well in hand. We taxi in and are marshalled to a stop right away. We get directions to the washroom and quick fuelling. There's no pilot's lounge, but they let me use an office computer and phone. If we can get out of here VFR we can get across the country to our next destination. It has to be VFR because the sum of the flights will exceed her eight hour limit for single pilot IFR, and I neither count as a second pilot nor am allowed to log any IFR until I renew my rating. So now we'll be VFR and flying on my licence, but she will still do the flying. This is fine and legal. I can let my cat fly, or the autopilot, as long as I take responsibility for the flight. I go with company flight following rather than a flight plan.

Weather looks good from here, so we depart VFR to the south and turn west when we have the clearance to and the altitude to go over the mountains. A controller calls us "November Charlie blah blah blah blah" for a while and I accept that because although there's no "N" at the beginning of or callsign it's obviously us, and that's just the way some controllers talk. Eventually she asks us, "Are you November Charlie or just Charlie." I tell her there's no November, without pointing out that it's the designation for American aircraft and Charlie is for Canadian, so it would be hard to be both. Possibly the first controller that checked us in for flight following explicitly entered an N on our electronic flight strip. As soon as we cross the first range of rocks eastbound, the ground gets drier, then it continues to get drier and higher as we go east.

Tailwinds are awesome, better than forecast. I never put too much hope in tailwinds and count headwinds as worse than forecast. But we're smoking. A bit of math reveals that we don't need our planned fuel stop after all. I turn on my phone and enter a text message with our new ETA, then wait until we are going over a town and hit send. It finds a cellphone tower and sends it before we pass it by. We squeeze over some higher terrain, doing a few zigzags here and there to avoid having to climb into oxygen territory. We'll need oxygen tomorrow morning and don't want to use it up now.

I call flight services to update the weather and they tell us sternly that VFR is not recommended in Wyoming or Colorado due to an aggressive line of thunderstorms. We listen to the SIGMET and thank the briefer, then look at each other and smile. We respect thunderstorms, but we're not avoiding two entire states for the presence of one line, even widespread air mass thunderstorms. They are a highly visible weather phenomenon. We discuss it and determine that if we have any doubts about the proximity of a thunderhead, or we encounter an area where storms pose an impassable barrier, we'll just land at one of the hundreds of conveniently located airports. There are so many here. It's not like we're in Northern Ontario and will be SOL if we can't make it from Thunder Bay to either Dryden or Kenora. There's an airport behind every bush out here. People have airports just for fun.

As an example, I notice that we will be passing not far from the Greater Green River Intergalactic Spaceport. That's a real airport, not in the greatest condition, but we could land there safely. I bring it up on the GPS, plus find the official description of the little airport, to amuse my fellow pilot. Shortly afterwards I realize that she has altered our course to fly direct the spaceport, "We can't be this close and not fly by!"

We see some distant and retreating CBs but nothing interferes with our flight, which passes through airspace of both Wyoming and Colorado. We reach our destination without incidents and descend to land, rolling out at a long, high altitude strip across from a golf course, and somewhere that we suspect we can buy excellent Mexican food.

We check into the hotel and then I make a couple of phone calls to find out where oxygen service is available. There's nothing at the airport where we are parked, but one airport down the highway I find an FBO that says "yes" to providing oxygen and "six am to seven pm" for their hours. Fantastic. We'll probably be in tomorrow. I get driving directions.

And I'm off to bed, because there's more work to do in the morning.

Sweet, We're In Alaska!

In Whitehorse we're cleared to taxi and then take-off, with no restrictions on turns or altitude, so we're quickly on course for the United States. (I keep saying that, because it's so weird). The weather is definitely poor to the south, but along the highway it's excellent. We look from the dotted line on the GPS to the ground, trying to spot some evidence of the actual border. There's not a river for it it follow, just an arbitrary straight line, and they probably don't mow a line in the trees up here like they do along the 49th parallel in western Canada. We see a pull off with a large building on the highway and conclude that that is the border control station. Kind of low-key, but I doubt it's a hotbed of smuggling.

We soar over mighty rivers and past majestic mountains. All that stuff. Looks just like the Yukon, so far. Which is nothing to scoff at. Our flight plan calls for us to hang a left at an airport with customs, I think it was called Tok. The GPS tells us where it is and we can see the pass to enter on the left. As we make the turn the PIC asks, "did you actually see the airport?" I didn't. It's a broad flat, kind of swampy area with a road running through it. The airport should have been pretty obvious. We shrug and continue on, deciding that perhaps it was a waterdrome. I looked it up just now, and it's a 1700' dirt strip, so we can be forgiven for missing it. But it shows how reliant we have become on GPS. I can't imagine ten years ago turning into a mountain pass without ensuring all the landmarks required to identify it were there.

We have two GPSes working on the project right now, the Garmin 496 and the 430. The 496 is a much better tool for this job, because the 430 is designed for IFR and if it had a personality it would be reduced to a quivering wreck by the proximity of rocks in a pass like this. We can't set a comfortable zoom level on it and use it to look around corners for rocks, because it zooms in close and sounds an alarm whenever we snuggle up to the right side of the pass. The 496 just puts up an inset covered in Xs that it thinks we're going to hit. We always turn so we don't.

The weather in the pass is surprisingly poor, dumping rain on us and reducing visibility in mist. It's really nice to have two pilots in here to confirm the navigation without having to look away from the window. It's a bit of a twisty pass. It's in the middle of nowhere, but there's an RCO, a remote communications outlet, right in the pass, so I can file a PIREP while we negotiate it. Pretty cool. We go around another corner and the weather is fine again. Here we are hooking up with the road (which took a different route) as the pass dwindles back to swamp.

Yeah, swamp. By my estimate almost all the bits of Alaska that aren't mountains or rivers are swamps. Do they call it muskeg here? I forgot to ask. There are hectares and hectares of swampland. Must be millions of mosquitoes down there. It's honestly a bit of a letdown. Alaska gets so much press and here it is looking exactly like northern Alberta. Or northern Saskatchewan, Manitoba, or Ontario. It doesn't have the sweeping rocky look of the Northwest Territories. It probably looks awesome all covered with snow, though. Great for snow machines.

The bad weather that was to the south is now to the southeast, we've kind of gone around it. There are mountains over there and as we draw closer their spectacular beauty makes up for the swamp. Between the rocks are huge glaciers. I don't think we appreciated how huge. I know that at first I thought the one in the picture was a road coming out of the mountains, you know how a road that has snow on it stays snow-covered well after the surrounding snow has melted, because traffic has compacted the snow? Then I looked at it longer and realized that it was a giant glacier. The roadlike ribbon of ice continues out of the photo to the right. I just couldn't fit it all in. Glaciers aren't very photogenic. You really have to go and look at them.

There was an RV park at the foot of one glacier, close enough that you could probably smell the ice from there. If I were to come to Alaska as a tourist in a motorhome, I would definitely want to stay at that RV park. While the mountains with their glaciers and bad weather are to the left, the hills to the right have a curious sandy quality to them. Maybe it's different rock, or maybe just the way the weather comes through that have given them different erosion or vegetation. I need a geologist to follow me around and tell me what I see.

The sandstone side approaches the rock side more closely and we go to the right of a hill in between the two. That turns out to be a shame, because as we come out the other side of the hill we realize we missed a close flyby of another glacier. Maybe on the way back. If we were doing this for fun we would definitely have headed over closer to check out the glaciers better, but we have a customs ETA into Anchorage soon, and we're not being paid to sightsee.

Also recall that we have been unable to buy proper Alaska charts. We're working off the GPS database and the information I've researched on the net and printed off. It should be pretty good, but you never know. We should be within radio contact of Anchorage around the next corner. We are, and the Anchorage area is a long, broad inlet. We pick up the ATIS approaching Wasilla--yes the Wasilla of which Sarah Palin was mayor. It appears to be a suburb of Anchorage rather than the isolated Alaskan village I had pictured. There are dozens of airports on the delta. I call Anchorage approach with our position, and intentions, and they assign us a squawk code and ask if we're familiar with the something-or-other VFR route. We're not, so they give us a vector. We rejoice. A vector means we can't screw up too horrifically now. We're under ATC control. As long as we do what we're told and we can't blunder into any airspace we didn't know about. Real professional, I know. I promise I'm embarrassed about this.

The vector takes us downwind along the west shore of the inlet, then they give us a new vector, taking us further west. I think at first that I've misheard the instruction, it's away from the airport and we're already 20 miles away, but that's where they want us to go. We hook up with a base leg, and then final. I have the airport diagram out and verify our assigned runway, 7L. It intersects runway 14 a thousand or so feet in.

A couple miles back on final the controller asks us where we are parking. I'm glad I did my research and can answer with the name of the FBO. I call back on short final to add that we're going to customs first. I don't know whether their question was to determine whom to bill for our landing fee, or what taxi instructions to give us, so now they have both pieces of information.

Flaps are down, gear is down, cleared to land--we were cleared to land ages ago--and then just as we flare they ask us to go around. We don't see the reason, but the controller obviously does so we don't question it. The PIC does a textbook go around, transitioning from going down to going up very smoothly and cleaning up the airplane. We then follow further instructions to turn around and fly a close right downwind for another try. We are rolling out of the 180 when the controller changes his mind again, "Can you accept runway 32 from there?" It's a complete chop and drop, with runway 32 right there off our right wing but my coworker nods and we put it on the runway. This actually puts us closer to customs. It's almost straight in front of us as we turn off at the first convenient taxiway.

The controller thanks us for our cooperation and gives us a long taxi clearance which I copy down and read back. Much of PANC is one huge stretch of pavement with taxiways being defined routes over that slab. I don't get to just beeline across the pavement to the customs hall. I always find it a little harder to find my turns in this scenario. I like it when there's grass or dirt between the taxiways. I study the taxiway diagram then realize that the route we've been given does not go to customs. It's to the FBO. I call ground back and reiterate our need to clear customs, so they give us a new taxi clearance. We successfully find customs and shut down. I pull out the aircraft documents, my licence and passport, and the rest of our paperwork, and then open the rear door for the arrival of the customs agent.

He comes out quite quickly and is friendly. After checking the airplane paperwork against the letters painted on the vertical stabilizer, he asks us to bring our paperwork and come inside. We follow him through a secured door into an enormous customs hall, an area that could accommodate a B747 full of people, but aside from a few other customs officers, no one else is there. He takes us over to the desk labelled "crew line," where someone else checks our paperwork and types things into his computer. They also direct us to a phone where we can close our VFR flight plan. Our customs escort is also a pilot; we soon learn that practically everyone in Alaska is. I think we disappoint him by not remembering the names of the passes and glaciers along our route. I feel a little guilty knowing that this casually executed, spontaneous and underplanned jaunt is the trip of a lifetime that I'm sure many pilots spend years plotting. Sorry.

Back in the airplane we start up and taxi to the south side of the airport. Ground switches us to tower in order to taxi across the parallel runways, one of which temporarily doesn't exist, due to construction. A friendly woman with a stop/slow sign waves as we taxi through the construction zone. I'm guessing that airplanes always have right of way through construction, and her job is to stop any trucks that might be approaching as we move through. The FBO is the first one on the other side and we park and shut down under the direction of a marshaller.

We take our bags and head inside. There is great consternation amongst the staff that they didn't know we were coming. One of them has dialed the manager, who isn't in today, and he gives me the phone. Darn. The guy I spoke to didn't make it clear that I needed an explicit reservation. I guess he thought all airports were like that. The manager, however, apologizes profusely for not being prepared for our arrival. I affirm that I did call ahead, but didn't give a definite arrival time or date because I didn't know for sure at the time. Is this going to be a problem? I tell him that I don't need anything special like ice. As I say that, it occurs to me that ice is amusingly far from "something special" in Alaska, so I amend it to caviar sandwiches. The manager, whose name is Louis, says that he could probably get us caviar sandwiches if we wanted them, and that we are welcome to stay there. I guess we pass the screening.

The one thing we do need is charts. Those turn out to be a bit of a problem. We describe the ones we want, but they only have some expired ones for reference. Louis makes some calls and then tells us where we can get them. They aren't available on the field, but there are two sources, one quite near our hotel and another an FBO at a nearby airport.

Meanwhile our customers have arrived via the airlines so they come and pick us up. We check into the hotel, which has small but nice rooms, and the twenty-four hours of daylight mean that I don't really mind that most of the lightbulbs are missing. There is a comfortable windowseat with a view of the mountains. Just before I go to bed I find out what the job here is. Oh boy. This is going to take some diplomacy.

---

Also, a former senator with the same name as the airport, Ted Stevens, just died in an air crash. I think he may be the airport namesake even though he was still alive when the airport was named. Americans don't always seem to wait until people are dead before naming things after them.