Unknown Intentions

I'm flying into a big airport where I haven't been in a while. I'm given a choice of two arrivals. I don't know which will be quicker, but involves flying direct a VFR waypoint that is over a completely featureless area. The IFR fixes are all part of the database, but the VFR ones aren't, even though I'm VFR as often as not. The chart suggests no way to identify it visually, and I do not have time and head down opportunity to look it up and program into the GPS, so I request the other one.

My descent and approach checklist wants the heater off now, but I have the option of leaving it on until any time up to two minutes before shutdown on the ground. The item will recur on later checklists so I just skip it and move onto the next items. "Seat belt on?" I query, reminding myself to check my shoulder belt. I usually leave the shoulder belt on the whole flight unless it starts interfering with the headset, oxygen mask, guidance screen cable, or any of the other lines that define my Borglike existence in the cockpit.

The controllers are busy getting people in and out of here. There's a transient aircraft that appears to be sightseeing, but the pilot hasn't made his request very clear. The controller points him out to traffic by position and "unknown intentions." The pilot doesn't take the hint and the controller has to ask him specifically what he is doing. There is so much to this game of talking on the radio that is subtle and clever. When a new airplane enters the picture, you'll hear a controller pause just long enough to give an alert pilot time to report traffic in sight, or call looking, and spare the controller the obligation of describing the traffic all over again when the pilot who should be looking for it heard them call in. There are rumours about electronic controllers, but robots simply couldn't do what the humans do. The human element helps with sanity as well as safety.

An Air Canada Jazz jet is given a climb clearance and the pilot refuses it. He's flying on a ferry permit with a damaged windshield and is restricted to a maximum altitude of ten thousand feet. There's a story there. Stories everywhere. I'm cleared to land at the big airport and the controller tells me on final which taxiway to exit at. They aren't lettered neatly in order, so he helpfully adds that it's the second left. I remember to turn the heater off on final. I land full flaps and slow down for the second left, but he wants me to go to the next one. Ohhh, at the big airport the first taxiway doesn't count, because who would exit there? Only someone who is used to runways that only have one exit/entrance. I feel so bush as I add a bit of power to expedite to what I still think is the third left.

Tomorrow is an 8:30 take off, so 8:15 engine start, better make it 8:10 with how busy this place will be. Backing up with cab and flight planning and walkaround that means hotel breakfast at 6:50, so I set my alarm for 6:30. Good night.

Duty Time Math

I've questioned before the exact meaning of the rule restricting flight time when single pilot IFR is conducted. Amongst a long list of how many hours a pilot can fly in a year, 18 days, 90 days, month, week and day, there is this:

720.15(1)(a) where the flight crew member conducts single-pilot IFR operations, 8 hours in any 24 consecutive hours

Does that mean that if I ever fly IFR I may never log more than eight in twenty-four? No. Now I have an official interpretation. It only matters what you have done in the last 24 hours, so you can log twelve hours on Monday, have Tuesday off, and then fly eight hours of SPIFR on Wednesday. But you can't depart IFR on Monday, cancel fifteen seconds after departure, and then fly eight hours and one minute VFR. This could be a legitimate problem, considering all the times that the controllers get confused and give us IFR departures in VFR flight.

GUIDANCE: Where the flight crew member conducts single-pilot IFR flights, the flight crew member's total flight time, in all flights conducted by the flight crew member, will not exceed 8 hours in any 24 consecutive hours. In determining if this limitation applies to a given situation, this question must be asked - did the flight crew member conduct single-pilot IFR flights? Yes or no. If the answer is yes, the flight crewmember is limited to 8 hours of flight time in any 24 consecutive hours. The length of time spent conducting single-pilot IFR flights is irrelevant. If the pilot flew a departure under IFR and then cancelled IFR and flew the rest of the day under VFR - the answer is still yes and the 8-hour flight time limit applies.

The limitation is intended to prevent cockpit fatigue and applies to flight time not duty time. Interestingly, if you departed VFR and got an IFR clearance prior to entering Class A airspace the limitation would start then.

So imagine I flew a five hour IFR mission on Monday, cancelled IFR through 12,500' at 00Z, and landed. If I departed at 1430Z the next morning on an IFR clearance, I'd be illegal after three hours. So imagine I flew a five hour IFR mission on Monday, cancelled IFR through 12,500' at 00Z, and landed. If I departed at 1430Z the next morning, even on a VFR clearance, I'd be illegal after three hours: the regulation says any 24-hour period and during the period 1731Z-1731Z I would have flown eight hours and one minute, including some IFR flying.

But if on Monday the mission was all VFR, from 19-00Z, I could start flying VFR on Tuesday at 1430Z, no problem. Then if I were offered an IFR clearance, as I have been because the controllers like it better, I'd have to decline it at 1730Z, because that would put me IFR with more than eight hours logged in the last 24. If that Tuesday morning flight were only three hours long, I could accept an IFR clearance again at the time I took off on Monday, because then the previous five hour flight would start expiring at the same rate I was logging new time, so I'd be legal until about 00Z, when Tuesday's logged time reached eight hours.

Fortunately, we have an op spec (exception) to this rule for our operation.

I got a hold of the camera place, and they say they can fix the camera for $95. It's a bit of cash, but I really, really like that camera (a Canon PowerShot SD10) and I haven't seen anything that measures down (it's tiny), so I gave them the go ahead. They couldn't tell me when it would be ready, though.

Oil Exploration

I wake up in the middle of night for no particular reason. Probably a noise in the strange hotel room. I take this opportunity to check the GFA. It looks bad, not bad for normal pilots, but bad for high altitude photo flights. I also check NOTAMs for the areas we want to work. There's an easy thirty minutes worth of firefighting areas, temporary military operations areas and airways changes to transcribe. Does anyone amend their charts with all the changeover point amendments and MEA gaps? Gah, why do I set myself up to let company do this to me with so little preparation time before reporting?

One of the issues is a NOTAMed expansion of military airspace. Wait a sec. It's June. It's the time of year for Operation Maple Flag. Why am I always caught operating in northeastern Alberta during Maple Flag? It's an international air force games week hosted by Canada, because we have these vast swathes of airspace hardly anyone is using, and because it's always "mess up Aviatrix with the crazy NOTAMs" week around here. The NOTAMs actually aren't that bad, and then a little Googling reveals why. Maple Flag is cancelled this year because our forces are stretched thin overseas. It's not unprecedented. It was cancelled in 1990 when we were overextended in Bosnia, too. Man, Bosnia was a long time ago. I hope we did some good there and that people's lives are better as a result.

I go back to sleep and then I'm woken at 6 a.m. to be told we're not flying today. Joy. I get up anyway and try to get ahead on the work. My flight planning software is hung again. "Windows is checking for a solution to the problem." Has anyone ever had Windows find a solution to the problem? A guilty note to two different people who have sent me flight planning software to beta test: I really do need better software and I really did intend to use it, but even though the front end load of installing it and learning to use it would probably be amortized by a few sessions of waiting for this one to finish crashing or having to hand code a waypoint for an airport it's never heard of (how can it not know where Moose Jaw is?), I stick with the devil I know. A personality flaw perhaps.

I'm supposed to plan a flight in the "Christian Lake" area, but as far as I can tell, Christian Lake is a moody-looking male model. You can Google him if you like that sort of thing. It must go by a different name locally.

I call back the armed forces unit that controls the airspace I want to go play in. I get transferred and am soon talking to the gentleman who actually wrote the notation I'm reading on the chart, and as he discusses it I realize that I misread it. I'm so used to seeing things that say XXXXZ-YYYYZ MON-SAT that I didn't notice that this one says 1400Z MON-0100Z SAT, O/T by NOTAM. In other words rather than being active days Monday through Saturday, it's active day and night from Monday morning to Friday evening. Friday evening is Saturday morning in UTC. So we're good on Saturday and Sunday. But what about weekdays, if we need it?

During the week, the officer tells me, that airspace is occupied by "25 year olds with fighter jets". He says, "You couldn't pay me to fly there on a weekday." He is kind, friendly and polite, but also forceful, authoritative and knowledgeable. Again I admire the training that puts him there. Apparently it also equips a man to be a sharp dresser, in the absense of a savvy sister or a gay best friend.

I tell him I was told specifically that we had permission to operate in the restricted area, does he have any idea how that might be registered. I can pretty much see him shake his head over the telephone. "I wish I could give you permission to do that, but it's not safe." I convey this back to company, explaining that it's not that I don't trust them or the client to have obtained permission, but clearly this gentleman is the one in charge and he says it's neither safe nor authorized, so I'm not going. Tomorrow is the weekend, however, so we can stand down from that confrontation until the work needs to be done on a weekday. We decide to relocate to the nearest airport to the work, so we can get it done more efficiently tomorrow.

We get a taxi back to the airport and the operator asks about the drunk driver going off the road, just to give another person the opportunity to describe the excitement, and to hear how much the story varies from person to person. The described spot is the same, but this time the marks on the embankment are from hauling the car out, and the car went over into the ditch from the other side, where there is concrete.

The airplane needs some more oil. I'm down to my last couple of quarts, and I will need more before the weekend. I looked for a case to put on board before we left home, but we were out, and it was too early in the morning to buy one. The CFS says "All" grades of aviation oil are available here, but the fueller says they don't sell oil. There are a couple of airports along our route of flight that also list oil, so I ask the operator--he's a licenced pilot and has a company cellphone--to call and confirm. I don't know why I didn't just borrow his phone. It's almost comical watching him learn what I know about the telephone numbers listed for "airport operator" in the CFS: many of them connect to city hall, leaving you talking to a receptionist who has no idea about the airport. You have to ask for a number for an airport manager, and often there isn't really one. City mowing crews go out there once a week and mow the grass; city paving crews go out there in the spring and seal the pavement cracks in the apron; someone in purchasing goes out to check the levels in the fuel tanks and order more fuel when required and no one knows what to do about the smashed taxiway lights. We must have called five airports, many of which required two or three calls to get someone who could give a definitive answer and none of them could supply us with the oil. Finally I picked one with flight training and lots of general aviation. A detour, but I was sure we could get oil there. "Do you want me to call?" I offer belatedly. He prefers to do it, to finally get some closure on this asking for oil thing. And he gets a definite and friendly yes.

I file a quick flight plan, because the stopover airport is in Edmonton's terminal area and I don't want to have to go through the trouble of figuring out how to get a VFR code another way. I pull numbers out of my hat for how long it will take, and blast off for oil. I get excellent service from Edmonton terminal as always. They are busy and have to cope with traffic ranging from gliders to students to international flights, but they rarely play the "too busy" card and generally help with efficient flights. Terminal competently gives me altitudes I need for a comfortable descent and then hands me off to tower. Tower has a slower airplane in the circuit, but they just move him over to right hand circuits and clear me to a left downwind. I land and then ground asks me what I'm looking for. I name the FBO and indicate unfamiliarity and they give me perfect directions.

There's a taxiway leading into their apron area so I clear the main taxiway, enter and turn around. I must emphasize do this when operating in congested areas: don't go in without a plan to get out, and execute your plan before the environment changes or you can get stuck. We jump out and explain we're the ones looking for oil, only to find that the guy who could sell us the oil has just left. "Left as in left for lunch or as in left for the weekend?" I ask. The fellow isn't sure, but he has the grade of oil we want and he'll hapily sell it to us. We don't have cash, so he takes an IOU. Yeah, aviation is great. People are really like that. Company would have sent him a cheque the same day, except that when the camera operator goes to give the details to the person who writes the cheque, he discovers that the guy with the oil didn't put his name or company on it, just the address. We call back on Monday and get the name, so don't worry, he didn't get stiffed.

We call back ground ready to go, and they give us a different runway, just to keep us out of the way of the students in the circuit. They don't even give us a transponder code, just a take off clearance, so I guess it's not mandatory here anyway, so away we go. Once we're airborne and tower is just about to hand us off to terminal they remember the code. Punch it in (I love love love digital transponders, they save only a few seconds each time, but they are heads down seconds in busy airspace that I can really use for something else), radar identified and over to terminal who give me everything I ask for, even though I change my mind after discovering the first requested altitude is hella bumpy. The operator says he doesn't mind, but let him have one non-miserable flight.

We touch down at destination three minutes after the filed time. Why do I bother doing flight planning properly when I can make up numbers this good without? It's because I've done so much flight planning that I know what the numbers should be, somehow without even knowing how I'm doing it. I love this. I suppose whatever your job is you know things that you can't see a way you could have known, but you know it because you're experienced.

I have been to this airport before, but when I land I feel disoriented, like the apron is on the wrong side. I have no memory of this fuel pump. I look at the CFS and the apron is on the wrong side. Oh crap. Are there two airports at this town and I'm at the wrong one? Exact right time to exact wrong place? No, the larger forestry apron is just more prominent on the CFS diagram and I can hardly see it from here. I didn't fuel last time I was at this airport. And look, there's a familiar terminal behind that jet. It just looks different because there was snow on the ground last time I was here. We call the number in the CFS and the fueller comes out of a building and sells us gas, giving us a heads up that there's no fuel available tomorrow. Good To Know.

I park and then go inside the terminal, grinning as I wait for the operator's reaction. It's ordinary on the outside, but gorgeous on the inside, with comfy chairs, a big screen TV, decorations, like a fancy clubhouse. There are also two other pilots inside, also appreciating his reaction. They are on a hold, having flown some people up for the day to play golf. Round of golf, dinner and drinks and back home. How the other half, or rather other one percent, lives, eh?

Meanwhile we may be joyriding. The forecast is significantly different that when we left, and tomorrow may not be good here either. The operator texts company to see if they want us to go home instead of staying here, so we sit and talk to the pilots D. and C. while we wait for a response. They also didn't know about the one-way airway by Vancouver. D. says he knows of one one-way route, but only because it's where he trained. IFR routing should not be a code based on local knowledge. There should be a definitive list of these things somewhere. We all watch a vampire movie, or maybe a vampire subplot on a daytime TV show, we're not paying too much attention, and then share a cab into town.

The plan was to drop our bags off at a hotel then continue to a restaurant, but our hotel is very slow. One of them is dealing with other customers and the other on the phone. We wait. There's one more person ahead of us, who is slowly dealt with. They have free cookies, so I grab a couple and run them out to our buddies in the cab, telling them it's okay to bail on us if they want, but they aren't in a hurry. We wait. The clerk then comes to us but can't deal with two rooms on one credit card. She turns out to be new and in training, and the trainer goes over what she should do, ever-so-slowly. They will not cut us a break. "Can we just leave our bags here, and pick them up later when the room is ready?" Can they give us the keys and finish the paperwork while we run our bags upstairs? No. No keys until paperwork complete. When I get my room card I bolt upstairs only to discover when I get there that the key doesn't work. Bet she did it on purpose to punish me for being an impatient bitch. Oh well.

The restaurant is okay and we all have a good chat and dinner. They leave first and then when we're done we can't get a cab. Not a single one answers. So we walk about four kilometres back to the hotel. Whatever. Maybe we'll get to take some pictures tomorrow.

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Many of you will enjoy following this blog, written by a pilot training under the British system, and shortly to be a Dash-8 FO. He blogs about the kind of day-by-day detail that I do, and gives you a good idea what it's like learning to fly and progressing onward from there. He'll be flying bigger airplanes than I've ever flown by the time he has less time than I had before I was paid to fly anything bigger than a C172. I explained to him that I hate him, but it's not his fault.

Can You Hear Me Now?

Morning comes early. I have no recollection of what that hotel room looked like. I was in it an conscious for maybe eight minutes total. I drag my bag down the corridor to the breakfast room with two minutes to spare before the agreed-upon departure time. The cab is already here. I shove a couple of apples and a bagel in my flight bag along with whatever I ordered last night to go, some kind of wrap, I think, and get in the cab.

I check oil and move the airplane from parking back to the pumps and do the run up there, while waiting for the fueller to arrive. He does, and I then finish my preflight inspection and set up charts for the trip and file a flight plan while it's being fuelled. Full all around and caps checked, we take off only a little behind schedule. The wind is calm, so I take off from the apron end of the runway, straight off and then a turn to the northeast as I climb enroute.

I bid adieu to the circuit traffic at Salmon Arm on the ATF and then make a general call on 126.7 to let folks know where I am. The radio doesn't sound quite right. I'm not hearing myself in my own headset the way I should be. The camera operator says he can't hear me. Oh oh. I check the plugs on my headset jack. They're fine. Just my luck to get a headset with a problem. I grab a spare headset. Oh my God it's been a long time since I wore a cheap headset. It's uncomfortable from the earseals, to the weight, to the way it fits on my head, to the amount of noise it lets in. How do people stand these things? I guess I've become a headset snob. From that point of view it's fortunate that the headset swap doesn't fix the problem, because I couldn't work in one anymore, and I'm glad my new headset isn't defective. So is the jack defective? Maybe there's nothing wrong with my old headset. I put my own headset back on and try plugging it in the jack for the other side, trying that intercom jack. No joy. The operator tries the same headset and jack swap in the back.

I can hear the operator, but he can't hear me at all. I'm literally writing notes on my little notepad, then tearing off the sheets and tossing them in the back. He suggests that the intercom may be set incorrectly. It has an electronic control panel that cycles between PILOT, CREW and ALL. I assume that those put the left seat, both front seats or all seats into the intercom circuit, but we test all positions anyway. I'm pretty much in despair about fixing it until I realize that there is a master volume knob for the whole stack and it is in two parts, concentric rings. The inner ring is set to a reasonable volume, but the outer ring, intercom volume, is somehow turned right down. I dial it up and all is well. I still have no idea how it got turned down in the first place. I haven't adjusted anything in that vicinity. I must have hit it with something. How can I have flown so many airplanes and take so long to sort that out. At least I'm in the middle of the mountains in the early morning and not in terminal airspace in a busy time.

We continue over the mountains then I start descent towards a small airport where I have been asked to land. The operator is concerned about some aspect of the camera software, so asks me not to land yet while he tests the system. I fly big circuits overflying the runway at circuit altitude while he sorts it out. It gives me a chance to verify the winds. There's no other traffic around, so my presence isn't interfering with anyone. Each time around it's "just a few minutes more" but eventually I'm given the okay to land. Because of the elevation, landing appears very fast, but it's at a normal airspeed.

We taxi in, looking for the fuel pump, which turns out to be about ten metres across gravel from a narrow taxiway, partially blocked by a tied-down Cessna. I inch by, not wanting to snag my wingtip on the tiedown, nor to put my spinning propeller over the gravel to the side of the taxiway. I go well past the parked airplane then over to the far side of the taxiway to turn around and pull up behind it, making the closest approach to the pump we can without blocking myself in behind the Cessna.

The hose isn't quite long enough to reach the furthest tank, so we ground handle the airplane a little to wiggle closer until it is. The pump isn't clearly labelled as avgas, and it's not a standard cardlock pump, so we call the telephone number in the CFS for information on fuel purchase. They confirm the fuel type, take the company name, aircraft ident and credit card information and then tell us the codes to turn on the pump. I also call Edmonton Centre to notify them of the photo blocks we will be flying in. Meanwhile the airplane and camera have become covered in fine yellow pollen. There are no obvious flowers around, it's a bit early for flowers this far north. I speculate that it's tree pollen and then remind myself that trees have cones not pollen. They're all conifers around here that I can see. I add some oil, too, and clean the windshield, then we start up and roll out to take pictures. A pretty quick turn: thirty-one minutes from engine off to restart.

We're working at about 8,000', I think, and it's cold outside, but we don't dare turn on the heater, lest the backfiring soil the camera lens, or even worse cause a fire in the aircraft. We just wear our parkas and tough it out. The outside air temperature is -7C but it's warmer than that in the airplane, with our two bodies and the multiple cameras and the thirteen computers computers that control them all generating heat. Still the low temperatures can't be good for all the electrical equipment. They aren't like us humans who have adapted to living at altitudes higher and temperatures lower than this. I'm not personally so adapted, so I am breathing supplemental oxygen and wearing leather gloves and a stretchy toque I pulled out of my flight bag. I have to admit to not being too disappointed when clouds prevent us from flying out the complete mission. We made a big dent in it, though. We land at a larger airport and then jump out and bask in the warmth of the sun while the airplane is fuelled.

I also manage to make contact with the examiner, who says that she needs seven days notice to do a PPC test, because Transport Canada needs opportunity to demand to do the ride themselves. I know that company has been working on this for at least that long, so I get the name of the person at Transport who can waive the seven day notice, and then toss the ball back into my boss' court. The examiner says that if that is worked out, tomorrow around 2 p.m. will be fine, and she gives me, when I request it, the route to plan for the flight test.

Fuelling complete, I go and park. The operator climbs underneath to check the camera and comes out raving about a fuel leak. He says there's fuel all over the belly. The fuelling was competent, no overflow, and even fuel running aft off the flaps should have reached the camera. The operator says it's staining the camera red. Wait, red?.

"The fuel we use is blue." I say. "Red is hydraulic fluid." I climb underneath to see.

"Yeah, I know," he says. "I thought something might make it look red."

I don't really see anything. There's the soot stain from the heater outlet, more of that yellow pollen, but nothing covering the belly. A thin oily stripe does run from the edge of a belly panel towards the camera array. It's consistent with dirty hydraulic fluid. He's cleaned the camera lens already. I don't know what that panel conceals. I don't see why a hydraulic line would be running that far aft, but perhaps a hydraulic leak further forward has pooled inside the fuselage then run out of this access panel. I grab a screwdriver and start loosening the panel. I rely on hydraulics to get the landing gear up and down, so regardless of what it does to the camera, I want to know what's going on here. The operator takes a turn removing screws. It's actually pretty tiring lying on your back twisting your arms overhead. We remove enough screws to peel back the panel and see what's inside. Nothing. There is no pooled fluid, no leaking line, no stains. It seems to be a coincidence that the dirty stripe starts just aft of this panel. Perhaps it was clean enough or enough in the airstream that the fluid was carried over it without staining, then it picked up some grime at the aft edge of the panel.

There are a few drops of red hydraulic fluid visible in the nosewheel hydraulic breather line. It's probably just a few millilitres, normal seepage, maybe from the altitude changes, the purpose of having a breather line in the first place. Text messages and photos go between us and the maintenance unit and they don't think it's anything serious. Except that for the mission of this aircraft is is serious. If it happened on gear retraction after takeoff, it has ruined our day's work, and it means the loss of more than a day, because the weather may not be right for this work tomorrow. We hope it happened on extension before landing.

I ask if he can check the photos now, but the resolution is so great that on the screen in the airplane they may look fine when they are really ruined. We'll have to see later. We haul our gear to the terminal then after more discussion I'm assigned to take off and cycle the gear several times to see if it happens again.

As I strap into the pilot seat I grin to myself. "Hey, first solo." I haven't flown this airplane by myself before. I taxi out "for a local test flight" and cycle the gear up and down, up and down, making sure it's locked in each position before restarting the cycle. I give myself a couple of simulated engine failures while I'm at it, to practice the procedure: gear down, approach power, engine failure, maintain direction, power to hold on the other engine, gear up, simulate feather, emergency checklist complete, give myself the engine back, start over. Instead of doing touch-and-goes I just overfly the runway. And then I land and taxi in. There's a little bit of fluid, but not much. He sends me up to do the same thing again. Cycle, cycle, cycle, cycle, up, down, up, down, up, down, make sure it's down, land. Now there is no seepage. So maybe we're good. We go shopping for airplane cleaning supplies, and call it a day.

I now have about forty minutes to prepare for tomorrow's flight test and get to bed in order to have the required rest for tomorrow's report time. Forty minutes is probably more time than I pend on preflight paperwork for a normal flight, but for a normal flight I use the standard, precalculated weight and balance, use block fuel, round times roughly and only calculate takeoff and climb performance if it's an issue because of high temperatures or marginal runways. And then I generally round up to the next highest weight, temperature and altitude that has its own line, and just verify that it doesn't ask for more runway or lower obstacles than I have. For a flight test, I want the examiner to walk in and see about six pieces of paper with neat, meticulous calculations for each phase of flight. Yeah, that's not happening, considering it takes me at least fifteen minutes to figure out how to rearrange everything on board to accommodate an examiner in the front seat and stay within the weight and balance envelope. This airplane is nose heavy, and not usually flown with no one in the back. My next problem is that I can't find the airport I was told to plan to. The examiner mentioned that the approach was a VFR-only training approach and that she would give me the approach plate, but I need to at least plan fuel to get there. I find an airport with a similar name in the approximate area, and plan to that, eventually saying "screw it, I use block fuel and average winds every day, I'm not losing sleep to do calculations per segment for this artificial situation." I know, I know, a flight test is an artificial situation, but my need for sleep is real. It's already too late for me to get the required eight hours. Maybe I'll have some time to do more paperwork in the morning.

I suddenly remember as I'm drifting off to sleep that a single pilot PPC includes demonstration of competence with the autopilot. I've not mastered it, though. I've never had a chance to practice intercepting and descending on an ILS with this one, because the only airport I've been to that has one has controllers who prefer to vector me all over the place for a close-in base below the glideslope, or a visual diagonal final. I've done a PPC before where the autopilot went below the glideslope and I simply took control and finished it by hand, with no censure from the examiner. If I or the autopilot don't set this up correctly, I'll do the same. There are a few more "better figure out how to do that" moments before I drift off to sleep. It's really embarrassing but there has simply not been opportunity for a proper practice flight.

You guys have made a few guesses as to the nature of the Aviation-Themed Towel of Questionable Taste, which will be the booby prize in the sunglasses contest. No one has come close to guessing how bad it is. It has four different aspects of badness to it. Perhaps I should rename it, the Aviation-Themed Towel of Definitely Poor Taste. The only questions about it is why did someone send it to me, and why is it suddenly so popular?

Trial by Fire

My telephone rings at 4:20 a.m. It's the camera operator and mission logistician, if that's a word. He's still agonizing over the decision about where to attempt to work today. He wants to make hay while the sun shines, but in the most efficient way. He wishes we could wait until the next GFA comes out. This is where I relay the information I realized last night, "We can. It's an hour earlier in Vancouver. We can go back to sleep for another hour." I did my napkin math in local instead of UTC and totally forgot about the time change. He likes that plan, and I go right back to not being a giraffe. Not being a giraffe means sleeping comfortably.

An hour later the weather picture is clearer and he wants to go to the coast. I get a quickie phone briefing that reveals the weather has cleared overnight except for low lying fog, en route. I plan to Abbotsford, a big airport outside of the busy mess of Vancouver airspace. We get the same cab, with a different driver and go back to the airport. There's someone, presumably a pilot, asleep in the terminal. He has a sleeping bag and a pillow and a whole set up going on there. I hope guiltily that the cab driver did come back for my helicopter guy, and wonder who this guy is. Fire suppression pilots are paid well enough that a cab and a hotel shouldn't be an issue, and most of the transient aircraft seemed to be associated with the fire. The sleeping pilot's cellphone is ringing, or maybe it's his alarm, but he doesn't even budge. I'm not going to wake him up. If he needs sleep that badly, whatever it is can wait.

We ready the airplane, including wiping accumulated rain and dew from the outside of the front window, and working out how to turn on the defrost for the inside of the window. More condensation forms on the outside after I start up so I have to taxi cautiously, looking out the side. Another reason to have a windshield wiper. We backtrack to the appropriate end of the runway, turn around and ensure we're lined up and roll. The airspeed soon clears the window and I can climb and turn on course. The provincial boundary is along the great divide, the peaks of the Rocky Mountains and marked on my GPS so I call off the crossing and announce that we're now on BC time. There are several ranges of mountains to cross, so I don't descend yet, in fact climb a little, because there's more cloud and I'd rather not be dodging it when I can't see which clouds are crunchy in the middle. I'm trying to lean the mixture, but I seem to have a one hot cylinder. I'm trying to keep exhaust gas temperatures around 1425 degrees, but while the analogue EGT and CHT gauges show everything normal, the digital gauge shows that #2 on the left engine is spewing out gases at 1900 degrees. I enrich the mixture on that engine to get the temperature down to the range that would be green on the EGT, even though that leaves the other cylinders cold. I explain that the analogue EGT, which is the one that he can see, takes its reading from the outlet of one cylinder, the normally hottest, while the digital one has pickups per cylinder. "What would happen if you didn't have that one?" he asks.

"I wouldn't know about the problem and I'd lean the others to 1425, not knowing that I was cooking the other one to death, until it fried, and we had a rough running engine. The engine would run on the remaining cylinders, it just wouldn't sound pretty. And in fact we're below our single engine service ceiling, so we could fly on one engine right now. But given that we've paid for the extra information about this cylinder, we can use it to avoid destroying it." I'm trying to strike a balance between, "It's important that I not destroy this cylinder" and "We won't die if something happens to it." I'm concerned, but my concern is about loss of production, and my looking bad for taking a perfectly good airplane into the field and destroying it.

"How does it get that way?"

"If it's abused once, it gets pitted walls and that leads to poor combustion. Could be a bad valve ... I don't know. It's kind of freaky how placidly painted-on the the analogue gauges appear compared to the frenetically spiking #2 cylinder. How many times has this drama been played out in my engine without my knowledge?

"Could it be the gauge?"

"Yep. But it not being the gauge would be consistent with the rough running we've been getting when I lean it the same as the right engine." It's been the gauge for me before when there was other corroborating evidence. You can always find evidence.

I'm over the highest of the maintains and can start to descend. My chart tells me that I'm coming up on Vancouver's airspace. (Oh yeah, we're going to Vancouver now, not Abbotsford. It's sort of a rule that the destination has to change midflght here, apparently). I talk flight services out of a code for Vancouver, get the ATIS, and then call Vancouver centre on a gradual descent through 11,300'. She acknowledges, then asks me again for my altitude. "Descending through one one thousand." She calls me again radar identified and asks again for the altitude. "One zero thousand eight hundred."

"What altitude are you descending to?" she asks.

I resist replying, "Sea level," but I don't really know what she is asking. "Descending for landing at YVR." I already told her that. "Do you wish to issue an altitude restriction?" Kind of a non-standard call, but what the heck does she want?

She solves her problem by handing me off to Vancouver terminal, which gets the whole descending for landing thing more clearly, and does give me an altitude restriction of 3500', then 2500'. They fly me over the airport and then out for a right downwind for runway 08R and a 180 to land back on that runway. I exit read back a crossing clearance in the taxi instruction and find my way to parking on the apron. Company has already lined up someone to look at the overtemp indication.

Fortunately, while the EGT got pretty high, there, the fire of this blog entry title was not mine, but Slave Lake's. At the end of the day I learn that much of the town of Slave Lake has been destroyed by fire. In an astonishingly short time it went from no fires nearby, to a few forest fires in the vicinity -- a not uncommon situation anywhere in the north in the summer -- to full on evacuation as subdivisions and main street businesses blazed. Forest fires are burning all summer all over the north, but the area is so sparsely populated that there is not much property damage. In Slave it just so happened that two fires converged on a community. There wasn't even an intermediate step of a voluntary evacuation. Fortunately it has good highways and it's a prosperous and friendly community so pretty much everyone had a truck or a ride from someone. I'm glad in a way that I got to walk its streets one last time, and I'm extremely glad to hear that there were no deaths or injuries. It means that I don't need to worry individually about the fate of the waitress who was going camping, the fueller who happily came out early and stayed late for our crews, the non-smoking hotel receptionist who saved our time by admitting that the smoking rooms (all they had left) definitely smelled like smoke to her, or the non-multitasking hotel receptionist who slowly checked us in at the Super-8. It's bizarre that all those businesses and homes have gone up in smoke. I find later that the crew of the airplane that had been in Edmonton for camera repairs did spend the night there, and had to be evacuated with their hotel staff, because the airport was shut down and the fuel reserved for fire-fighting. I realized that the pictures we had taken that day were the last pictures of Slave Lake as it was; someone else realized that too and allowed our crew back up to take some "after" pictures and then return south and escape the evacuation zone with their airplane.

Here's a video that shows a lot of the destruction: you'll see homes, the city hall, a main street Ford dealership and the new mall completely gutted. A lot of the scenes that show fire behind a screen of trees is not forest fire at all, but the actual town blazing up that brightly, behind a windbreak. There are a lot of videos of the fire, but this one best encapsulates the fire, the aftermath and the feeling of losing ones community that way.

The second video shows just how thoroughly the destroyed houses have been destroyed, and has some information on the cleanup. The RCMP are going through the remains of the homes, looking for objects of value, before people return, to prevent looting and injury, and reunite people with whatever can be saved. It's tragic how little is left, and sweet that the authorities recognize the value the little things may have. I think Slave Lake will rebuild and rebound.

I've noticed some comments about "who started it?" There is no wasn't an arson fire or a cooking accident. It didn't start in town, but in the forest, probably from lightning strikes, the cause of most Alberta forest fires. It was a natural phenomenon that didn't stop just because it wasn't in its natural habitat anymore.

Trial by Rain

Morning comes as early as ever and I'm checked out and ready to go in the breakfast room. We are going back to Slave Lake to try to get that work done today before the clouds roll in. Asked me what I want 'to go' for lunch, I specify a peanut butter and jelly sandwich on whole wheat. I get a funny look for having the dietary preferences of an eight year old, but it won't go bad in the sun, and I can eat it with one hand while flying.

I fax off a request for "photo blocks," clearance into airspace about 12,500' where we must work under IFR or "controlled VFR," and by the time I call to get my transit code for Calgary airspace, they have an approval for me. We launch and soon reach the work area. It takes the controller two tries to get me to do a full readback on the CVFR clearance. Oh, I get it, CVFR is VFR in normally IFR airspace, so I have to do IFR-style readbacks. This can mess a girl up. I'm on oxygen up at 16,000' flying in really straight lines overhead Slave Lake and environs. This s so much easier at altitude. I even get the autopilot to fly one line, to make sure I know how it works, but the operator says he wants it hand-flown. I think the autopilot could be a very good tool to reduce my fatigue and thus increase overall quality, but I've never had one of those jobs where "you push the button and you take the money," as a reader once explained it to me. I get to fly the airplane.

The pattern we are flying is centred on the town of Slave Lake, and I still have the ADF tuned to the Slave Lake NDB -- I haven't used it since I left -- so every time I turn around it points back to town. It's a fine, clear day here and there is no smoke, mist or other obscuring phenomena interfering with good photos. From the air you see the somewhat peanut-shaped body of water that is Lesser Slave Lake, and the town of Slave Lake right at its eastern tip. We're too high to be usefully monitoring the Slave Lake mandatory frequency, but I listen to 126.7 most of the time just to hear who is coming and going across the north. It's a normal day of medevacs, helicopters and other working aviators. We finish all the north-south lines on either side of the Athabaska River and move onto the east-west ones. These were the ones assigned to the other airplane, but they are still in Edmonton getting the camera fixed, so we'll get a head start on their work. We fly until I have fifty minutes of fuel remaining and then head down for landing.

It's funny doing aerial work this high, right above the airport of landing. It's right there but it's going to take me 15-20 minutes to get there, even at a higher rate of descent than I would use for passengers. I check with him that he's used to rapid descents and he is. The wind direction favours runway 10, landing over the lake, so I'm going to make a big descending spiral along the north shore of the lake and back onto final. I start down at about 1500 fpm. I feel my sinuses squeak a little from the air pressure equalization, and there's a little pressure in my temples, but I wiggle my jaw and let the air leak through my head. Pilot Eustachian tubes must be more flexible than the general public's. At the same time I'm trying to reduce power in stages so as not to shock cool them. Passing about 7000' there is a mighty whack of turbulence which I realize is from the southeast winds whipping over the cliffs along the north shore of the lake and being forced up. It was quite a brutal hit. I'm just turning over the shore, but there will be more turbulence everywhere below. And now my camera operator says some terrifying words. "Oh my NECK!"

I've never had someone hurt on board my aircraft. Although I wasn't doing anything unreasonable, and we knew to expect turbulence descending into high winds, was there something I could have done to alleviate this? "Did you hit your head?" I ask. He says, no, it wasn't the turbulence that did it, his neck just started hurting, a spasm like when you wake up and have slept the wrong way. There's nothing I can do but fly well and put the airplane on the ground, so I do, land, short backtrack and roll off at the taxiway. His neck pain has gone away as quickly as it came. As I'm rolling to the pumps I'm mentally running along the streets of Slave Lake looking for a chiropractor or massage clinic. I hope he's not being macho about this, and the feeling of thinking someone has been hurt in the airplane you were flying is like having a pet or child left in your care be sick. Even if it had nothing to do with you, you feel responsible and want to fix it. But he's moving around normally, talking on the telephone, so perhaps it was just a transient ouch, coincident with the turbulence.

Now there's another issue, a perfectly ordinary one, a fuel transfer. There's a big tractor-trailer fuel truck parked in front of the pumps. I narrate what the operator probably already knows, as it's a common enough occurrence. "This can take thirty minutes or more before the pumps are available to us. I'll find out more as soon as I can." I park where I am physically next in line for the pumps, but the truck can still get out, stick chocks around the nosewheel and go do the pee, flight following, close with flight services, file new flight plan routine. They say fifteen minutes for fuel. I eat half of my peanut butter sandwich and then start just the left engine to pull around for the pumps. As soon as I start to apply power to taxi forward I know exactly what I have done. Damnit! Shut down, jump out, remove chocks, restart cranky hot left engine and this time do pull up to the pumps, close enough for the hose to reach but at an angle that will allow me to scootch out without hitting the small helicopter that is also waiting now.

I shut down there and while they are fuelling, chat to the helicopter folks. "You see my stupid?" They didn't, and say they would have come over and pulled the chock for me had they seen. They are doing photo work too. Very low level work with a special camera that hinges down off one of the skids. When my airplane is fuelled I check the caps, and start that left engine again to pull off the pumps, getting a thumbs up from the helicopter guys to indicate that I have correctly judged my wingtip clearance as I pull past. I shut down again and add some oil before the operator comes back aboard and we blast off to do some more work.

There's a split now in the fuel flow. It's a digital fuel flow meter, visible to the operator in the back. I acknowledge that I'm running the left engine richer but while the temperature gauges wouldn't be against it, that engine is noticeably rougher if I lean any more. I feel frustrated that my engine handling, on what is after all a familair engine, is not up to scratch, but I'd rather burn more fuel than an engine. We get a few long east-west lines done, and then a cloud shield that has been slowly moving from the west all day reaches the western end of our lines. We don't do partial lines, so that ends the work here and the operator wants to go land southwest of here, to have the best chance of staging for our next day's work. "Whitecourt," he says. I call the controller and request clearance out of controlled airspace for landing at Whitecourt. She thought we were landing at Slave Lake. So did I. It's a keep you on your toes sort of operation. She gives me a descent and I pick up Whitecourt weather on the way. It's 6000' broken, raining, with 6 sm vis. That's to be expected, given that we're flying towards the system that just put us out of work here.

The operator doesn't like that. Can we go somewhere else? Sure. I suggest Edmonton. We can see from the shape of the cloud that Edmonton doesn't have the rain yet. He wants to go further west than Edmonton, something southwest of Whitecourt? I'm running a map of Alberta in my head and there's not a lot out there. All I can think of is Grande Cache, which I point out that they built because there wasn't anything there , and we don't want to be stuck in the mountains if the weather is bad and they want to go back east tomorrow. Whitecourt it is. I've never been there, but he has.

The controller clears me down to 6000', which seems odd to me, because we should be in uncontrolled airspace out here by now, but whatever, it's nice to have someone looking out for us. Through 7000' it gets ridiculous bumpy again, so we tell her we're staying up until we get closer. She clears me for an approach into Whitecourt, at which point I realize that she thinks we're IFR. I would have liked to accept the IFR approach, into an unfamiliar airport in worsening weather, but I'm not sure that's legal given that we're actually on a CVFR flight plan. I let her know that, having another of what is going to be a very common confused controller conversation on the topic, and then am released VFR into Whitecourt. There's a NOTAM I don't have, rats, I didn't explicitly ask for it with the the weather and should have. There's a forest fire area inside their control zone. I end up having to stay high over the NOTAMed area than doing a left 270 to intercept final, and then I go to turn on the windshield wipers and darnit, this airplane doesn't have any. I bitch about that, as the operator helps me find the airport. He says "We only fly on nice days!" Point taken. This is crummy weather, but it's perfectly safe VFR visibility and this is the worst he normally flies in. I land and taxi to the pumps.

The weather really is miserable here, it actually got colder as we descended westbound into the front, the wind hasn't let up and it's raining big time. I huddle in the airplane and make my postflight calls from the cockpit. The briefer who takes the call is in Edmonton, so as I close my flight plan I add, "The weather is nasty and it's heading your way." She doesn't hear that and asks me to repeat, so I admit it was just irrelevant pilot whining. I whine some more to a helicopter pilot who is part of the forest fire fighting efforts nearby. Once I'm fuelled--gotta love fuel service, it's actually been a while since I fuelled my own airplane in nasty weather--I taxi to parking and put everything away for the night. Walking back across the apron I'm hailed by the pilot, putting blade covers on his helicopter. He asks me if I've called a taxi yet. I haven't. "Call two please, I need one in about half an hour."

In the terminal there are no taxi company numbers or cards by the payphone, but there's a phone book, one of the northern kind that has twenty or so different small communities all in one book. I leaf through the cab section finding "Sparky's" with a Whitecourt phone number. He can be there in ten minutes, and then can go back for the other guy. I don't think it's a two-cab town.

In fact it's not a fully one-cab town. The vehicle arrives has a spiderweb-cracked windshield, no seatbelts and an inoperative right side sliding door. It's the sketchiest cab I've ever been in, and recall that I've been to Cambodia. The driver looks like one of the Yukon prospectors who didn't strike gold. He appears sober, so we ride into town and send him back for helicopter guy, whose name I forgot to ask, so I give the company name from the side of the helicopter.

We're at the Super-8, across the street from Boston Pizza. Ahh good times, old times. You know, you can be nostalgic for anything. I'll bet there are Cambodians my age who manage to have moments of nostalgia for the days that they woke up at five a.m. to try and grow rice under conditions that rice doesn't grow. I alert the operator that I am going to order my "high-maintenance pizza" and he wants to know what that is. "Are you sure you want to hear it twice?" He does. It's a small Rustic Italian, whole wheat crust, double sauce, no cheese, add pineapple, and extra sauce on the side for dipping, please. He rolls his eyes, but the waitress accepts it cheerfully.

It's seven p.m. and we're discussing the next day's plans. He'd like to be over the mountains and working in the Vancouver area at 9:30 a.m. I do napkin math. So take off at nine from an airport near there, maybe Abbotsford, at nine, so have to land Abbotsford at 8:30, assuming unfavourable winds leave here at 5:30, so get to the airport at 5:00 a.m. so allowing for taxi and hotel stupidity, a 4:00 a.m. wake-up call, which means I have to be in bed by eight, the restaurant isn't too busy, so we should be done in time for that. Yup I can do it.

"You can go to bed at eight, just like that?"

"That's my job." I could go to sleep right now, but I'm going to eat my pizza first. You may have noticed that I missed a step in my math. Neither of us did, at that point.

I say I'll have my leftover half peanut butter sandwich for breakfast, and he suggests that I can have leftovers too. That's before he watches me inhale the pizza. I was going to have a dessert too, but have to get to bed for eight.

It's absolutely pouring now. I'm glad I through that big coat in the plane with me. It seemed pretty silly on a 20+ degree day leaving home, but now it's perfect. This is the company coat (logo covered over with a generic patch) that I snared on my first day at Victory Airways, electing to take one size too big rather than wait an uncertain period for someone to get me one the right size. Pilot decision-making at its finest. The hood keeps me dry.

I go straight to bed and encourage sleep by running gently through the alphabet picturing an animal for each letter of the alphabet as it curls up and goes to sleep. Somewhere around giraffe I realize the error in my napkin-based planning, but I will fix it in the morning. I never got past giraffe. Think about it for a while before you scroll down for the horrifying truth. In what position would a giraffe sleep? Standing up? There's no way the head would balance up there. Standing with the head drooping down and lying on the ground? Lying on its side with the head and neck stretched way out where another animal might step on it? Curled up like a cat? I somehow always had sleeping gorillas, gerbils, goats and geckos. This is the first time I've had to contemplate nap time for the poor giraffe.

Sleep is very very important to me, and I won't compromise my duty rest for anything. I know how quickly a sleep debt can build up and how severely it can impact my behaviour. I'll forever wonder if the giraffe would like to get much more sleep, but just can't get comfortable. More on sleep postures and sleep behaviour here.

Rivers, Mountains, and Cuuuute Baby Animals

I'm woken up by a text message on my telephone. Of course we don't fly for days and I do it all right, and then the one day I forget to turn off my phone before going to sleep we do fly, so I'm woken up by the message that I should have gotten after I woke up and turned on my phone. No great harm done: it's 8 a.m. already. Yeah, I slept past eight on a working day. It's my job, so I can work late if need be.

Around three p.m. it's my turn to actually do my job. It's so exciting. I get to fly an airplane. Water, headset, snacks, emergency supplies, checklists and jump in the customer's truck to go out to the airport. The other flight has already landed but the engines are still turning as they finish shutting down the computers. The fuellers here are good. They understand our operation and have good communication, so they are right there as soon as the engines stop turning, fill us up and then my coworker pays for both loads of fuel together as I start the engines anew. Everything is warm and we haven't forgotten how to do our jobs so we taxi out. I follow the little wiggle in the taxi way that is designed to take me around the end of the tails of the airliners parked at the terminal, even though there aren't any parked there. I always follow the taxi centrelines.

Silent self brief before take-off, notify the FSS that I'm taking the runway, position, power, airspeed, rotate, liftoff, climb rate, airspeed, brakes, gear up, lights out, climb speed, after takeoff checks, and into the weird ballet that starts one of our missions. Today's mission takes us out over a winding river, up its sloping bank to some jagged hills and then over an almost vertical escarpment into another valley. The escarpment curves towards the valley and its lip slopes down from north to south. It's a challenge to put the airplane just where it needs to be on each pass, while maintaining the assigned speed.

It's a great flight, with clear weather for a change, but I forgot to take any pictures until after landing. After I called for fuel and we drove away I tried to get a shot of the full moon. I forgot to turn off the flash on the first attempt, however, and that one zap of the flash killed the battery. I had a spare in my bag, but I didn't want to ask the driver to wait while I switched batteries and tried again to capture the drama of the evening in a tiny five year old digital camera. I'll have to just tell you about it.

What appeared to be a completely full moon has already risen to at least thirty degrees above the horizon while across the sky the sun was just touching the northwest horizon, sunset still a half hour away. That's not the way they described the relationship between the full moonrise and sunset in science class, but then in kindergarten they taught us that the sun rises and sets daily. I love the north.

I love in general when nature doesn't seem to conform to its stereotypes. Like these marvellous shots of baby cheetahs playing with a baby impala. If the game eventually got rough and they killed it, the photographer either didn't capture that, or chose to leave those shots out of the series. I imagine either mother turning up and giving her offspring hell for hanging with the wrong crowd.

Rivers and Mountains and Chocolate

I sleep for not long enough, but there's too much noise and light to sleep more, so I get up and make a phone call. I sit on hold for half an hour. I ordered The West Wing complete series earlier but the friend who receives mail for me e-mailed to say he already owned it and I could borrow his any time. So I wait on hold until I get a Return Authorization Number to send mine back, then go for breakfast. I take the Do Not Disturb sign off the door for my weekly room cleaning.

I get back from breakfast (a waffle). The room is cleanish, but the TV is still not fixed. So I nap. Then I go to Boston Pizza. May I go home yet?

The a.m. crew got off to a late start again. Fog, of course. I meet them after landing at four and we discuss a brake that was spongy on the taxi out, and the left inboard fuel gauge showing half full between half and quarter tanks. Neither of these is groundable now, so the AME says he will look at them tonight. That discussion over, I say, "Well, I guess it's time to make airplane noises," and both the other pilot and my mission specialist immediately and simultaneousy make propeller noises with their lips. I love my coworkers. We get in and make airplane noises using the actual airplane.

It's a good flight, out over the mountains and rivers, with the sun slowly creeping past the layers of clouds down to the horizon. The clouds serve as a sunshade from the glare of the sunset. I'm grateful when they do that. Finally the sun does go all the way down, and then darkness follows, about the time that we're almost done anyway. We finish up and head back to the airport. It's harder to track a straight line in darkness, especially without an HSI. I scan across to the right side one, and use the GPS. I might be quite literally lost without them. The compass is not that useful here. The wisdom of the rule stating that I need a heading indicator at night is sound.

The airport is invisible on our first pass, because we're not in the direction of a runway and the trees alongside the airport block the edge lights I might have seen. Or maybe they weren't turned up yet. They are bright enough to find the airport, and on final I have red-blue-green and a light in the mirror. (That's the red mixture levers forward, the blue propeller levers forward, three green lights on the dashboard and the light mounted on the nosewheel reflecting off the mirror on the nacelle, confirming that the nosegear is down and the landing light works.

I'm wired after the night flying. I haven't done a night landing in ages, having been the morning pilot or in the north all summer. It's still legal for me to have done one tonight because there are no passengers on board, just crew. It goes well. I guess I haven't forgotten how. The AME meets airplane as I shut down, here to look at the gauge issues reported by the a.m. pilot. I can't confirm the fuel gauge issue because I landed with half tanks on the inboards, and the brakes worked fine for me. He opens an access panel to confirm the type of fuel sender. He'll order a new one.

The FBO charges $50 for a callout between five and nine pm and $100 for one between nine pm and seven a.m. Fog is not forecast tomorrow, and even if they don't get going before seven, they will want fuel first thing, so we decide to pay the $100 callout fee now, and not risk not being able to get a fueller to come on Sunday a.m. Sometimes you can't buy fuel before noon on a Sunday at all. It's not that they are closed, just that you can't get anyone to come out. Just because there's a callout phone doesn't mean the person who took it home is going to answer it. They answer my night call--I did warn him we might call around midnight. It looks like the fueller's friends have decided to keep him callout company. There are about half a dozen people here, one wearing pajama bottoms. I ask if I may just leave now and come back and pay tomorrow. They okay that, so yay, day over.

I've had the same very slight headache for three days. I self-medicate with chocolate.

More Evidence Pilots Can't Count to Three

Exactly eight hours after I put my head down on the pillow, the alarm tells me to wake up and go back to work. I get out of bed, switch on the computer, and put on my clothes while it reloads windows. And I see that the weather gods have rewarded me for my scrupulous adherence to duty time laws, as the fog at Regina has not materialized. Why should weather gods care about duty time? I don't know, but I feel virtuous so I accept the reward.

Breakfast will be a meal replacement bar out of my flight bag. A "company note" (flight itinerary) will stand in lieu of a flight plan. I call down to the front desk to let them know I am looking for an airport shuttle. It's on another mission and won't be back for over half an hour. Aargh. I come down to the desk and check out, asking about taxis. It turns out there's one sitting outside. That will do.

I ask the driver to take me to the airport, but not the passenger terminal, the Kelly FBO, "It used to be the Shell," I explain. He asks me which airport. "The big one, the international, Winnipeg International ..." Damnit, it has another name. Which dead politician or war hero is this one named after? "The one Air Canada flies into." Good thing he asked. I'd have hated to end up at a cropdusting strip or one of the flying school fields around here. I put my head down and start texting my flight follower. Then I look up. We're approaching the passenger terminal. "This is the wrong side," I explain. "I need to be on the other side of the runways, where the Esso is." The Esso hasn't changed names lately, I hope.

"You said the big airport," he counters.

And my realization dawns. To non-pilots the airport is not the place with the runways. It's the terminal. To him this is two separate airports, the one with the big airplanes and the one with the charter planes and scruffy pilots like me. He drives back around the runways and I'm at the FBO only a little later than I had planned. I've yet to find the perfect words to explain to cab drivers where I need to go.

I paid for my fuel last night, so I just go through and preflight the airplane. No water in the fuel, lots of oil in the engines (or maybe not and I added some). All the airplaney bits are still attached in the right order. I load my flight bag and overnight bag into the airplane and secure them in place, then open the CFS to get the clearance delivery frequency and check on any special departure procedures. And there is one I hadn't planned on. Aircraft not on a VFR flight plan must call flight services at least 30 minutes prior to departure, in order to obtain a transponder code. Sigh. I shut down. They're doing this everywhere now. I call clearance delivery and see if I can get away without one, but he is unbending. I call flight services on the radio and ask if I really have to wait half an hour. "Try in five minutes," he recommends. I start up again and then a guy comes by in an Esso truck and signals for me to shut down. I do so and he tells me there's something on the ground by the plane. I open the door and look and it's the little bag in which I keep my wallet, licence and passport. It fell out of my flight bag while I was loading. I thank him profusely and check to make sure my head is screwed on.

Restart the engines. Clearance delivery has my transponder code, ground gives me a prompt and easy taxi clearance, and tower clears me for takeoff. Vroom into the sky I go, approved for a left turnout. There's a little bit of mist over the ground, in low spots, but other than that it's a lovely day. I climb out to some bush pilot like low altitude and level off. I hear a call from a flight number "911." I think it may be that company's standard medevac flight number, but they do have a 9-1-1 of sort. They also have just taken off and are requesting a return for landing because of fuel leaking visibly out of the tank caps. Someone else is having one of those mornings. They decline all emergency services, fire trucks and other offers of assistance. I think I would have left off the reason for my return in my request, and just let ATC be curious.

About 50 miles outside of Regina I make a call to traffic on 126.7. It's not strictly necessary, as I'm going to call tower in a few minutes and they will provide traffic information in the vicinity of their control zone, but it's what I'd do in the bush approaching an airport, so I do it here. A voice answers with my real name, recognizing my voice even though it's been a long time. It's a mentor, my very first aviation mentor. The guy who gave me a postcard with an A319 on it on my first cockpit visit. He is so awesome. He gives me his phone number and I promise to call tontight.

I copy the Regina ATIS and call tower. They sequence me and ask me if my destination is apron II. I look at the airport diagram in the CFS and see apron I opposite the terminal, apron IV way down taxiway Charlie, and II and III down that way too. I'm not sure which of II, III or IV is right, but it's down that way, so I answer in the affirmative. I'm cleared to land, do so and then call ground.

Ground gives me taxi instructions that don't gyve with my destination. I look at the CFS diagram now that I'm not flying an airplane, and realize that the area I'm looking at isn't marked II and III, but is marked III in two different places. Apron II is off on the opposite side of the terminal. I call back and admit that I can't count past two and need to taxi the other direction, which he approves. It's twenty to eight as I pull up, but there is no one waiting impatiently for me. I've made it. I shut down and fill out the journey log.

Time Check

I wake at six to the sound of my calypso alarm. It's actually an old cellphone, but I like the distinctive cheery alarm so much that I keep it just to serve as an alarm clock. It's not just the cheerfulness but that nothing else sounds like it, so that no matter what weird shift I am working, I can sleep through all kinds of buzzing and beeping of alarms in other rooms, trucks backing out and other sounds without worrying that I have missed my alarm.

So rise, bathroom, dress, nuke oatmeal in lobby while eating banana, eat oatmeal while checking weather. For some reason slush NOTAMs are persisting in the system even though two days of well above freezing temperatures have made the runways bare and dry. There are still piles of snow on the edges of the aprons, but nothing impeding aircraft movement.

100065 CYLL LLOYDMINSTER
CYLL OBST LGT U/S TOWER 531742N 1094908W (APRX 9 NM E AD) 250 FT AGL 2274 MSL TIL APRX 1004301800

000000 CYLL KILLAM/KILLAM-SEDGEWICK
CEK6 RSC 11/29 100 PERCENT SLUSH 1 INS 1004141650

000000 CYLL LLOYDMINSTER
CYLL RSC 08/26 80 FT CL 100 PERCENT BARE AND DRY REMAINDER 95 PERCENT BARE AND DRY 5 PERCENT 1/4 INS SLUSH BRKG ACTION GOOD 1004182040

I put on my boots and meet the client at his truck at 6:30. We drive to the airport and history repeats. Let the cat in. "Hi Margo!" Unplug the airplane, stow cords, put my gear inside, preflight. There's only one litre of oil left so I split it between the engines.

The airport manager said he'd be here at seven but isn't, so I taxi to the pump and start fuelling. I don't see a light or a switch for one anywhere at the fuelling area. It's light now, so I don't need one. The manager comes out and takes over fuelling when I'm halfway through and confirms that there isn't a light. I guess we're not that far north, so operations can be scheduled to fuel in daylight. There's a little charter company here, but they haven't been too active. During preflight I find a knob on the floor, it's for the pilot-side instrument panel dimmer switch. I put it back on its post and verify that all the swiches and circuit breakers are in their proper positions. And I left the mags on after the taxi. Wake up, girl. I leave them on and start the plane, recording it at 1320, that's 7:20 a.m. local. I taxi out to the main apron and set the brakes for the lengthy warm up and run up and bootup.

When that's done, there's a small airliner coming in to land, calling four minutes out. I quickly backtrack and take off, recorded at 7:36. That was a pretty quick bootup. The mission specialist on board today prides himself on his efficiency. Unfortunately efficiency is hurting today as one of the computers throws a small fit and we have to circle above the airport for thirty minutes while the specialist talks soothingly to it, or whatever he does back there. Our manoevers are confusing the FSS, especially as the airliner is taxiing out for takeoff.

"We're at 6000', two miles west, circling towards the airport, just coming up on the button of 08," I report.

"Are you aware the Beechcraft is departing 26?" asks the FSS.

The pilot of the B1900 settles the matter by stating "We won't be at 6000' for four miles after takeoff." They depart underneath me, no conflict.

I switch from circles to flying in a straight line for ten minutes. Then back to circles for exactly five minutes, then straight lines again. It's good to have variety. I text our flight follower with an updated arrival time while flying in a straight lines. I go eleven metres to one side while texting, but this is an acceptable deviation. Don't try it on the highway.

Normally I just mark operational times like take-off and for fuel management, but today I try to rememebr to mark down everything, for your entertainment.

9:00 Eat apple.

9:30 Tell guy in the back where the pee bags are.

9:31 Add nose down trim.

9:32 Restore nose up trim.

9:56 Turn on the pumps to transfer fuel from the nacelle holding tanks to the main tanks, and switch the tank selector from main tanks to outboards. I also notice that the right engine is running a little too hot, so I crack the cowl flaps and enrich the mixture slightly. The gauges indicate that the engine likes that solution.

10:51 Turn off pumps, switch to inboards until gauges register and confirm that the correct amount was transferred, then switch back to outboard tanks.

11:05 I'm starting to think about needing to pee. Eat arrowroot cookies on the completely unsupported theory that they will soak up liquid in my digestive system.

11:30 Run out of arrowroot cookies.

12:15 Switch tank selectors to inboards.

12:30 Now I'm sure I need to pee.

12:33 Discuss the clouds that are forming

12:34 Conclude that they are above the aircraft altitude and will stay there, plus aren't building rapidly enough to be a threat for rain.

Sometime after one we make our way back towards the airport for landing and circle overhead for a bit. There's a Piper single taking off and the FSS asks me for an estimated time to landing. I say four minutes, and the Piper departs. I was off by two or three minutes, my actual landing time was 13:56.

We idle on apron, at 1200 rpm then taxi to the pumps and shut down at 14:08, turning the mags off this time. My coworker is right there, so I brief him on the temperature/cowl flap issue. and then I get to PEE!

I come back out and get the soapy & water spray bottle and a soft towel out of the nose to clean the bugs off the windows. Yes, that's right, in Canada there is an overlap between bug season and snow season. I guess we have tough bugs. The other pilot is on a stepladder fuelling when I'm done with the nose compartment, so I put the airplane key in his back pocket, explaining what I'm doing so he doesn't think he's getting groped. I also tell him I'm taking the journey log, because it's paperwork day.

14:34 I go inside the FBO and throw out the empty oil bottle from this morning, plus call a number we have for Dennis. He doesn't answer, so I call the other number. I pat Margo, even though she's kind of grimy-looking for a cat. Probably because oily-handed pilots keep patting her.

14:53 I text our PRM to find out where to fly for the scheduled maintenance tomorrow.

14:55 Pay for fuel, ride back to hotel.

15:10 Talk to project manager about our maintenance break. I'll take the plane over alone first thing tomorrow, before the p.m. pilot's duty day starts.

15:15 Eat buffalo sausage on crackers. Check e-mail. Start listening to CBC podcast of Quirks & Quarks.

16:00 Realize I have too much to do to goof off like this. I get the journey log page photocopied at reception then cross check all the numbers on my daily flight tickets with my e-paperwork. Scan receipts and flight tickets for the week. Curse my thrashing computer and multitask by packing while it tries to figure out what it is doing. I should reinstall the operating system. Maybe with a hammer. It's something to do with Firefox I think. Or maybe something to do with me running eleven tabs in Firefox, iTunes, Voyager 4 (my flight planning program), and Neat Receipts all at once.

17:55 Paperwork and flight planning complete, I read webcomics. Fourteen more tabs. Suck it up, Firefox.

18:25-20:00 Mediocre supper with incredibly slow service.

20:00 Blog.

20:30 Work out on a semi-functional exercise bicycle in the hotel weight room.

21:15 Text coworker to come and get journey log when he lands so he can update and sign it before I leave. Also update my duty time sheet, marking days I am "off," not counting the ones where I waited around all day for an airplane that wasn't ready, washed airplanes, or otherwise had duty, even if it wasn't flying. I believe the strict Transport Canada definition of duty days would allow me to mark those as off, too, and certainly Victory Airlines would have expected me to do so, but this company believes in pilots actually getting to relax on their days off.

10:05 Pilot came back from flight and filled out journey log. He saw the same issue on the right engine.

10:30 Bed. The person who will drive me to the airport tomorrow says to meet at 7:30, so I set the calypso alarm for 6:30. That means I get to sleep in for half an hour compared to yesterday.

Responsibility Never Sleeps

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Being an AME Really Sucks Sometimes

I'm expecting to fly at around noon today, after the magneto has been replaced, but in the morning I get a call from Whitehorse. One of AME's flights was delayed, causing him to miss connections, so now he's arriving in Whitehorse around one p.m., getting him here for six p.m. I book a hotel for him and call hangar guy to see if he wants me to pick up a key in advance so as not to bother him outside business hours. He says we'll work it out when the AME arrives, because, "he'll probably want to wait until the morning." I assure him that the company wanted the work done yesterday, so there's no way this is going to wait until the morning, but he is sure that we can work it out when the time comes. I pass this, hangar guy's home number and the hotel reservation info on to my co-worker in Whitehorse.

I spent the day napping, eating, doing crosswords on my iPod and going for a stroll around the community. The weather is spectacularly perfect for flying. It's a sadly ugly town compared to the beauty of its surroundings. I think there are three scrapyards on the main street, and everything has the look that you'd expect if it was hauled up the Alaska Highway on the back of a truck and then left out in Yukon weather for a few years. Some houses still had wide load signs on the end. But everyone is friendly and the only dogs that ran out of at me were eager to have their ears scratched.

Our AME, as I discovered the next morning, spent the day flying to Whitehorse, being driven to Watson Lake and then changing the magneto. Outside. On the ramp. In the dark. At minus ten celsius. And then he got to check into his hotel and sleep. And they put him in the poorly-rated hotel. Which turned out to be not so bad. So the Internet and the cab driver were wrong in that respect.

Hangar guy answered his phone, but thought the repair could wait until morning. I would have thought there would have been some solidarity among the profession. Hangar guy has been an AME in the Yukon for decades. He must know the pain of working in freezing darkness. Maybe he wants our AME to build character. I think he must have plenty of character already, seeing as he got the job done in those conditions. He even changed a spark plug and mended a gasket while he was in there.

(And to Firefox spellchecker: don't wave your squiggly red line at me; celsius should not be capitalized. It's the name of a metric unit. The abbreviation C is capitalized because it's named after a person, but the full word is not.)

Minimum Rest Period in Suitable Accommodations

I've been out of touch for a while with the blog on automatic, but I've returned just in time to read Syrad's question and it's important enough to merit an entry in reply, rather than an extended comment. There are lots of people who don't read the comments. (They probably think they are like normal blog comments, but Cockpit Conversation readers are brilliant, so those that skip the comments are missing out). To recap for them, after I described my extended duty day, airline pilot Syrad asked:

Rest regulations and their current shortcomings are a big issue for me. I fly under 121 in the States, where the regulations say that we have to have at minimum eight hours of rest. However, that clock starts ticking fifteen minutes after we set the brake regardless of where we are. After deplaning passengers, doing postflight walkarounds, and shutting down the airplane we're rarely out of the airport by then. Our clock goes until our show time, which the company can reduce to thirty minutes before departure.

Essentially, this means that all the time we spend waiting for the hotel van/car service, travelling to and from the hotel, and checking in are part of our eight hours of rest. At my company we rarely only have minimum rest, but when we do it's common to only get five hours of actual sleep. Obviously these all come after long and hard days, because something unusual and annoying is happening at work if we're so delayed we're down to minimum rest. I hate doing min rest overnights, and I am frustrated that they're legal for us to do even though there has been copious research showing the wide-reaching consequences of not getting enough sleep. Research has shown that 97% of the adult population needs somewhere between seven and nine hours of sleep to be fully rested. Current regulations ensure that a US airline crew on a minimum rest overnight is not getting anywhere near the amount of sleep needed to be fully rested.

With your operation, how does rest work? Obviously you have control over many things that airline crews don't have, so do you calculate the start of your rest time as when you walk in the hotel door and the end as when you leave the hotel? Or do you work it some other way? I'm curious because I believe that eight hours "behind the door" (at the hotel) is the absolute minimum that should be allowed. I'm also not a fan of sixteen hour duty days, which are legal for us. Fortunately they don't happen much, either, because I don't know many people who are still completely safe to operate an aircraft after sixteen straight hours of work.

The information in Syrad's question stunned me a little. I well know that the US border separates me from a country with its own laws, culture and tradition, but we use the same species of H. sapiens to operate the same kinds of airplanes on much the same kinds of routes. I know Canadian regulators look at research and changes in regulations in other similar countries, such as the US and Australia, and Transport Canada prides itself on being proactive in improving safety. For many regulations the wording is almost identical in the FARs (US Federal Aviation Regulations) and the CARs (Canadian Aviation Regulations). I'd expect the FAA to do the same thing. They must know about the big ugly loophole that leaves Syrad and her colleagues sleep deprived. Odd that they let it remain.

In Canada the CARs definitions, explain what is meant by "minimum rest period."

"minimum rest period" - means a period during which a flight crew member is free from all duties, is not interrupted by the air operator or private operator, and is provided with an opportunity to obtain not less than eight consecutive hours of sleep in suitable accommodation, time to travel to and from that accommodation and time for personal hygiene and meals.

That is, my duty day clock stops at shut down (it would end fifteen minutes later were I an airline pilot), so if I kill the engines at the last minute of my duty day, but then spend an hour unloading baggage and negotiating with the FBO for a tow into the hangar, I am still legal, but my rest clock doesn't start until I have been fed, transported to the hotel and had a shower, and I must be allowed opportunity to sleep for eight hours before I have to get up and get ready for the next day. My chief pilot says that to accomplish that, it should usually be ten hours between walking away from the parked airplane and being required to get back in.

The start of the next duty day is a little less defined. If you work for an airline it is at report, so the ride in the hotel van is on your own time, but the ride in the hotel van has to start after that opportunity for eight hours sleep. Your employer may define it for you, e.g. if you work for Transport Canada, your duty day starts when you leave your house in the morning. I start mine when I meet the client in the lobby to discuss the day's work.

On the flip side, the law also requires me to use the eight hours to sleep. I would be breaking a federal law if I party, go sightseeing, or otherwise fail to use eight hours of my rest period to sleep.

The law also defines where the company can dump me for my rest period.

"suitable accommodation" - means a single-occupancy bedroom that is subject to a minimal level of noise, is well ventilated and has facilities to control the levels of temperature and light or, where such a bedroom is not available, an accommodation that is suitable for the site and season, is subject to a minimal level of noise and provides adequate comfort and protection from the elements.

I'm thinking that part was written by someone who had lived in northern pilot accommodations. There are lots of ways to abuse a pilot.

Not Just the Bush

A captain and first officer for Pakistan International Airlines have been given notice and face an enquiry for following internatial law and their own airline's regulations regarding duty rest. According to the online version of The Nation linked above, Captain Murad Arbab and First Officer S Jamala operated a ten hour flight from Islambad to Manchester. On arrival, they were told to fly as passengers on a noon British Airways flight to London, and then pilot a flight from London to Karachi.

At that point, their own company's air safety manual mandated a 20 hour rest period before their next duty, and the BA flight was only 16 hours away, plus, if I'm reading the article correctly, reporting in time for the connecting flight and then operating the Karachi flight would put them over their legal duty day, not even counting the insufficient rest. They refused the assignment.

The article says that "management is bent upon making these pilots an example for others so that the safety violations are not pointed out."

While a 20 hour mandated rest seems long to me, that was what was prescribed in the company's safety manual and the pilots must, no matter what their dispatcher says, abide by it. I wish I could say that a company that chastises pilots for following the law and the company's own regulations was unheard of, but I've been there. We landed in the early am, told the dispatcher we were dutied out until ten the next morning and went to bed. There were two calls the next day before ten am. One was from dispatch asking us to do another flight that was not within our duty day and the other was from the chief pilot, giving hell for refusing a revenue flight. Both calls, being an interruption of the mandated rest period effectively reset our duty day start eight hours. I was acting captain on the flight but the other crew member a) was the one in a house that had a phone and b) had seniority, so he got the calls. When I found out about the browbeating, I wanted to call that chief pilot back and let it be known that as pilot-in-command I had logged and signed the duty time on the flight and said when we were again fit for duty, and anyone who had a problem with it should call me. I didn't, because I knew it would just bring more wrath upon the other pilot, for not keeping the new hire in line.

No, I wasn't there long.

That's not the way it's supposed to work. I chatted with an Air Canada captain whose entire flying schedule, of flights he had bid on and wanted to make, was messed up because a few minutes after parking at the gate, he released and reset the parking brake. I can't remember why. The onboard computers automatically recorded him parked the second time he set that brakes, which added those few minutes to his duty day, and set off a chain reaction through his whole schedule. That's how seriously a real national airline takes duty days.

But what do you do when your national airline is acting like a ma and pa bush operation? You complain to your union, like the Pakistani crew did (man, a union would have been nice in the bush), and hope that the airline backs down in the face of international scrutiny. So now the few hundred people that read this blog every day, know that PIA doesn't follow its own rules but that pilots Arbab and Jamala stand up for their own and their passengers' safety.