Sounds Like It's Raining

The CFS says I need to call for a transponder code at least 30 minutes before entering the control zone for this airport, and that includes entering it by taking off at this airport. I call and tell the flight services specialist who answers my details, including that this will be a local flight, returning to the same airport. He says that flow times are required for all aircraft arriving here from, and then he lists off every airport within a 50 nm radius. Except this one. Heh, loophole. The rule is supposed to give them greater control over local flights, but they weren't expecting me to attack from within. I get my code, and no flow time.

Trim is set for take-off, doors secure and circuit breakers are set. Engine start goes well, each engine catching right away as I motor the starter, with the propeller spinning up perfectly to 1000 rpm. I turn on the avionics master, reset the Shadin fuel flow meter to show full fuel, and power through OK-ing the prompts on the Garmin while I listen to the ATIS. I get my clearance, set up the avionics and when I finish my run up, it's time to call ground for taxi. I see three airplanes all painted with the same airline colours taxiing out from a side apron onto the taxiway I need to follow, so I note with my call, "check the parade." The controller ignores my comment and just gives me clearance. Well I though it was cute. I guess he sees them every day.

When the three airliners have been cleared for take-off I'm next. I roll, ailerons compensating for the crosswind and then rolling to turn into it as soon as I'm airborne, in order to maintain runway heading on climb out. I adjust the power, sync up the props and tweak the mixture to compensate for the engine that otherwise has a higher fuel flow and lower EGT than the other. There's a sound from somewhere in the aircraft like rain on the roof. It's not raining. It's a vibration from somewhere. It's not the props, but I re-synchronize them anyway. The glareshield isn't loose. Maybe there's a screw somewhere rattling around inside the dashboard. The sound goes away before I can troubleshoot it.

Later in the hotel the air conditioner makes the exact same sound. At least, it sounds like rain on the roof. Is rain on the roof my default answer to unidentified sounds? Nothing wrong with rain on the roof, so long as the roof doesn't leak.

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.

Trial By Wind

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

He Bought Charts

Another day, another meal at Boston Pizza. I sleep in, then have microwave oatmeal and an apple for breakfast. We take off but don't get much done because we soon run into rain and cloud at our altitude and that interferes with the work we have to do today. Back at the airport the wind is reported to be 270 at fifteen knots gusting to something. I land on the most into-wind runway, which still gives me a crosswind but it's not a problem for this airplane.

I go back to my room and write postcards before yet another meal at Boston Pizza. My coworker is going home in a couple of days, so he keeps telling me things he might have forgotten to mention when I first came on shift. Today is around the third time that he tells me that he bought current IFR charts I finally tell him, "It's okay, you told me about the charts. I remember."

I go and do some grocery shopping, then on the way back I meet him again. "Oh Aviatrix, I just wanted to make sure you knew I bought charts..." He's joking this time, and I swat at him after he laughs at the "oh my god, my coworker is losing it!" look on my face.

Déjà Flew

For the first part of my flight there is very poor visibility in smoke. At Ottawa (because that's where it was, and I have no doubt you've guessed it correctly by now) the ATIS called it four miles visibility, and that's about right. It very slowly opens up. I mentally note how far ahead I can see until finally around Petawawa it opens right up and I have normal visibility. I call flight services with a PIREP to that effect, and get the latest weather from them. I'm flying towards a front that has some low ceilings and thunderstorms associated with it. When I checked the weather before take-off, I was expecting to meet the front over Lake Superior, but it's moving faster than anticipated and now it looks like I'll hit it just past Sudbury.

Sudbury lies exactly on a straight line between Ottawa and Thunder Bay. Considering how few big centres there are in Canada, and that most of them were founded before air travel, it always seems to me that a disproportionate number of them lie on a direct line between others. The highways aren't straight enough to explain the phenomenon. I imagine there is some kind of computational analysis that could be done to determine if this is true, or if it's just selection and memory bias, but it's nice how often it works, especially when the town in the middle is just right for a fuel stop.

I'm approaching the Sudbury area, and tune their FSS frequency just in time to catch part of a long PIREP about the thunderstorms. I didn't hear the type, but background noise suggests its a helicopter, and he's encountering numerous cells and poor visibility in moderate rain. I position report, get a new altimeter setting, and prepare for the onslaught.

Just past Sudbury the scattered cloud above me solidifies into a broken ceiling, and I deviate slightly to the north around an obvious cell with rain associated. As I get far enough around it to see past, there's nothing more. A bit of mist, maybe some scud, but not even enough rain to wash the giant northern Ontario bugs off my windshield. Different cruising speed and altitude, and twenty minutes time can all make a big difference to the weather experience. Or the thunderstorms have spent their thunder on Chapleau or thereabouts, with nothing left to rain on me. Once I circumnavigate the dark area I encounter clearing skies and good visibility before the lake comes into view.

So here I am again, only a week later, over the northern reaches of Lake Superior. This time I'm going about three times as fast, and I can cut the corner over the water so long as I remain within 50 miles of shore and within 60 minutes (at one engine failed speed) of a suitable emergency landing site. But there's something about northern Ontario that makes time pass slowly. I think I'll start a tradition of donating to the Terry Fox fund every time I pass this way. I think this is a long trip? Terry ran it. Why do you think he maintains his status as a Canadian hero a generation after he died? He travelled across northern Ontario when he didn't have to. Canadians respect that, regardless of how many legs a person has.

Weather across the lake past the front is fine and I'm soon descending into Thunder Bay. Back to the same FBO as last week, and the C150 is still parked there safely. I order fuel then update my weather and call company while the fuel is being pumped. The boss wants me in Regina tonight. I'm not sure that will work with my duty day: I legally started my duty day a few hours before take off from Ottawa and I'm keeping it properly in zulu time, so I know I won't go over. I initially say that I will overnight in Thunder Bay, but then decide to continue, because the weather between Thunder Bay and Winnipeg can be an obstacle--as we so recently discussed. I promise up and down that I will be there at seven a.m. tomorrow, an hour before the eight a.m. time at which the airplane is supposed to be available. This will be fine with tomorrow's duty day, too.

For my route to Manitoba, the current forecast period, the GFA shows scattered thunderstorms coming from the south. I would be able to make Regina within my current duty day, if it weren't for the headwinds. I decide to make it as far as I can legally make it and then land for the night. I plan to Winnipeg. Right after takeoff I remember one more thing that I should have done on the ground in Thunder Bay: clean the bugs of the windshield. A clean windshield is not just so I can take good photos for you, but it is important for a good lookout for traffic. And it was right around here where a well-known failure of the Big Sky principle of traffic separation occurred. It's very difficult to see an airplane on a collision course until right before it hits you, so you have to keep looking for it, all the time.

I climb into the somewhat darkened sky and level off a bit lower than I'd planned on account of a cloud ceiling. It's raining to the southwest. I slalom around a few cells, getting a few raindrops on the windscreen. I snap on the pitot heat switches. No need for windshield wipers: I'm above the placarded speed and the rain all slides off the window anyway. It's funny how instantly cold the airplane gets as you fly into rain. I guess it's partly psychological and partly evaporative cooling. It's as if I can feel the rain actually falling on me. Hey! I can feel the rain falling on me. There's a leak somewhere. I don't see it coming in anywhere, but I'm not breaking out in a cold sweat. I knew I wasn't flying a pressurized airplane, but I thought I could at least expect it to be waterproof.

I call up flight services and file a PIREP. It's not necessary, as the weather is exactly as depicted on the GFA, but I might as well let them know they are absolutely right, and other pilots know that it isn't any worse. The briefer has access to weather radar and based on my position advises me to deviate north as far as Dryden for the next one, because it's a really big one. I do, amusing myself by taking pictures of tranquil weather out the right side of the airplane and foreboding thunderheads out of the left.

This dodging has used up some more of the time I was going to use to get to Regina tonight. The GPS predicts my arrival time at about five minutes late, and that would be ten or fifteen minutes late when I add in time for slowing down to land, then taxiing in and shutting down. I oscillate between pushing it and being legal. I could pretend I wasn't smart enough to get the winds before the flight or to use the GPS and that the fifteen minutes was due to unforeseen circumstances. But headwinds on the prairies are foreseen circumstances and who wants to draw attention to yourself and company by filing the paperwork required to make up for an duty day overrun? I could lie in the journey log or my duty record, but I don't do that. It makes me look lazy to break off for the sake of fifteen minutes, but in truth it's more work to do it this way, because it will be another airport, another landing and another takeoff. But I can do that in the morning. I land in Winnipeg.

There's some confusion at the FBO because it used to be a Shell but is now Kelly something, and there is a new Shell in a different place. They haven't quite sorted everything out with the new name and billing procedures. They sold the Shell franchise and kept the business, I think. They're very friendly and helpful and I think to myself that Canadian FBOs are finally catching up to US ones in terms of service. It's no longer "you have to buy fuel from us anyway, so shut up and deal with whatever kind of service we give you."

The hotel they recommend is not expensive and has a shuttle. When I get there I grab a reasonable approximation of supper, log on to the company website to send my daily flight report, and open the windows for tomorrow's weather.

FIRETRUCK! Tomorrow morning Regina is calling for 1/4 mile visibility in fog. Nothing I can do about it now. I make a short but heartfelt plea for the weather gods to be merciful to me, and then go right to sleep.

Oh and here's the El Al, probably on a diplomatic mission. I believe there were RCMP officers in dress uniform and Israeli and Canadian flags hoisted.

A First Time for Everything

Next morning the weather looks passable on my iPod Touch, but there is such a paucity of reporting stations, or civilization of any description, around the north shore of Lake Superior that we can't be certain. And I know the GFA is based on the same kind of interpolation I have to do. I know what the weather was like half an hour ago at three five mile circles scattered around the north of the lake, so from that I try to interpolate the suitability for flight between them. While the PIC is in the shower, I pick up the phone and call an expert for a briefing. He starts describing the moisture content, stability and direction of travel of air masses, then interrupts himself. "Did you say Brampton?"

"Yes. I'm in Brampton now; it's clear skies."

"Someone just yelled a NOTAM for Brampton across the room, 'All runways closed."

He isn't able to elucidate the reason for a sudden airport closure, or suggest when they may reopen. In my experience, airports have closed for resurfacing, drag racing, severe weather, special security events, or major accidents. I'm guessing the last, and we decide to drive out to the airport anyway, hoping that everyone is okay and the wreckage is cleared before we want to depart.

As we pull into the parking lot we can see police cars and police officers on the airfield. This is weird, but hey, they are allowed to be there, and the NOTAM says the runways are closed, not the apron. My new guess is that there is some kind of drug bust going on. I live in a country where one is not obliged to cower in terror at the mere presence of law enforcement officials, so while the other pilot makes a few last minute decisions about what to take and what to lock in the trunk, I walk through the unlocked front gate from the car parking lot and into the aircraft parking area.

I'm immediately approached by a young man in a reflective vest. "Where are you going?" he asks.

"Thunder Bay," I reply.

I love to watch the moment of adjustment a person goes through when you give a valid answer to a question, but it is not the same order of magnitude as they were expecting. He asks if I am renting a flying school plane and I tell him, no, a private aircraft, and give the call sign.

Then it's his turn to watch someone react to the unexpected, "Make sure you do a very thorough preflight." He doesn't know if our little one-fifty was one of the victims, but there was extensive vandalism on the field last night, and a number of aircraft were damaged. As I walk further I can see a flying school light twin with all the windows bashed in and a fire extinguisher lying beside it on the apron. Detritus such as engine plugs, aircraft covers and seat cushions are strewn on the grass. A Katana has been pushed up against a hangar. There are footprints on the horizontal stabilizer of an older Skyhawk. The perpetrators have also left broken beer bottles and what looks like a corsage. Evidence suggests that some high school students have chosen to celebrate their putative entry into adulthood by getting drunk and committing a federal crime against thousands of dollars worth of other people's property.

The airplane tied tail-to-tail with ours has been hit, but ours looks good. It's tied down, the doors are still locked, and the only exterior damage is what looks like a long-ago mend to a rear window, probably broken by an unsecured object in turbulence. Not the first one I've seen like that. There are tiedown rings inside and I secure all our cargo as I calculated it should go, with the light objects like our jackets and the engine cover at the back and the snacks and water on top right behind the seats.

I've never seen this kind of vandalism at an airfield before. I call back flight services to update them on the situation. The briefer says he's never seen it before either. I ask if they have an UNTIL time on that NOTAM. It's midnight zulu, which is eight pm here, but "midnight zulu" is a default kind of time, not something with a real reason behind it. The weather forecast suggests we can get at least to Thunder Bay today, so only this NOTAM is stopping us. After a bit of waiting around I decide I don't like this NOTAM.

A police officer in blue latex gloves is dusting the rear window of the airplane behind us for fingerprints. I ask whether it is the police or airport management who has imposed or has power to change the NOTAM. Reflective-vest guy is there, and says that it's his responsibility, and that he will change it right now. He picks up his phone and does so. In the time it takes me to call Flight Services to file our flight plan, they have received and propagated the cancelling NOTAM. Excellent. This, right here, is an example of why pilots are so infuriated by incompetent security. Aviation has a lot of rules, a lot of procedures, a lot of things forbidden from time to time. But they are for a reason and in the vast majority of cases when you have a reason that is more reasonable than their reason, you find the right person, you explain your reason, and you go do what you have to do. You may have to prove it is safe, and it may cost money, but it's easier than getting thirty millilitres of shampoo through security in a 110 mL bottle.

We fuel, taxi out and she starts the take-off roll. My flight instructor instinct kicks in and I advise, "Rotate normally and wait. The airplane will take off slowly." I know she's been bombing around solo in this airplane, but we're now close to max weight, and it's worth being tagged as a back seat driver not to be in the plane during a departure stall. She follows my advice, and the airplane rolls along the runway on its rear wheels for a bit before it lifts off and slowly climbs. If a pilot isn't used to this behaviour in a loaded airplane, she may pull back harder on the control column, trying to get it to fly. It may become airborne in ground effect and then stall, crashing back down on the runway.

I have the local airspace on the VTA and displayed on a handheld GPS receiver so I navigate while she flies. We call Toronto Terminal for flight following and they laugh right on the radio as they radar identify us "grounding fifty knots." A voice in the background of the transmission says "... only has four hours of fuel." I have a picture of a crowd of people gathered around a radar scope laughing at our slow-moving blip. Freaking headwinds.

We gain a little speed as we level out at 4500' so we're mostly keeping ahead of traffic on the highway. Mostly. Metropolitan Toronto thins out behind us and Wiarton, where Canada's most famous groundhog lives, slowly comes up ahead. We pass it and continue up the peninsula and then across the water to Manitoulin Island. It's a short over-water stretch, but the briefer said that many pilots choose to go the long way around to avoid it. We're not even out of gliding distance of land, and the beach that we would end up on in the case of engine failure looks more hospitable to me than something we might find between North Bay and Sudbury. But everyone has different risk tolerances.

Manitoulin Island is pretty, with lots of little inlets. I wonder if someday there will be a bridge, making this shortcut available to car drivers, too. Our first stop will be Gore Bay. It's easy to find, and we land and taxi in, parking next to the fuel pumps. There is a white building on uphill next to the apron and I walk up there in search of a phone and washroom. They have both, and sell us the fuel we need.

I'm writing this blog entry tired, and while that's not dangerous like flying tired, it's in danger of being boring, so I'll leave off here and continue the story after we depart, with full tanks and empty bladders.

The Rules

The next day, no must be the day after that because the Canadiens are playing again tonight, the weather is better. I ask Dennis about the hangar cat, are there different rules for the two cats: one allowed in the lounge and one not? Yes, he says. Margo makes the rules and she doesn't allow the other cat in the lounge. The cat makes the rules. I didn't see that coming.

It turns out that Dennis (or maybe it was Margo) was able to rearrange our the airplanes yesterday such that ours spent last night indoors, too. Dennis tows it out this morning and I take all the tents and cords off and put them away before the flight. We top up fuel from the long ground run yesterday and depart.

There are high winds aloft, which make everything fun. There is only turbulence in a couple of spots, but I need to hold a big crab angle to go in a straight line, and plan my turns to finish where I want to be. And guess what, I have to pee. I wonder what fraction of my working life I spend having to pee? Add in the time I spend actually peeing, talking about peeing and being grateful that I don't have to pee and I think it outranks sleep in the list of things I do and wish to do.

At the end of the flight, winds are sixteen gusting twenty-six knots varying between 80 and 100 degrees off the runway. That's okay, I've done lots of crosswind landings with my legs crossed. The only hitch is that my operational 15 degree maximum bank restriction applies throughout the flare and touchdown. I aim a little upwind of the centreline so I have room to drift if needed, but it wasn't required.

Taxi in. Wait for everything to be done in the back. Shut down. Pee. Hand over airplane to the p.m. crew. Back to hotel.

I'm weirdly tired. The two pilots per airplane thing we have going for most jobs now means that I only only do a half day of work anymore, about eight hours from report to shutdown, and I've hardly been going flat out this week. I was going to go straight to bed, but I just found out it's the other pilot's birthday, so I go out and get him a card and a token Tim Horton's doughnut. I was going to put it in a box and leave a note on his door to pick it up at hotel reception, but he texts that he's landed early because of unsuitable weather. We all go out and have dinner together, and I get to give him his doughnut in person. He's a fantastic co-worker, and I'd write more about him in the blog, but I would be creeped out to find my story told on someone else's blog, so I leave his story to him.

Wind Missing

By next morning conditions have not changed much:

SPECI CYLL 241225Z AUTO /////KT 1 1/4SM -SN SCT006 BKN011 BKN019 OVC028 M00/M01 A2973 RMK SLP095 WND MISG

That means it's just at freezing, still snowing, with lots of clouds, and the wind went missing overnight. I wonder if the anemometer blew down or froze.

If I start to feel too trapped in my hotel room, I can always signal for help, though. This isn't from this hotel, but I forgot to post it then, and it amuses me. You're supposed to stick it under the door to call for help. Good idea, really.

Crossing the Mountains

If a cellphone has an alarm, the concept that the device might sit next to a sleeping person has occurred to its manufacturer. And they have probably grasped the idea that during the day the user would be moving around, not next to an outlet, and thus that nighttime would be a reasonable time to charge it. So why then would they have it beep every hour or so while it is plugged into a charger? With my cellphone fully charged, I check out of the hotel and meet my coworker at seven a.m.

The weather is good, with the exception of very low visibilities in Revelstoke, but I attribute this to valley fog. The river there will be open now, but there will still be snow in the valley, setting up conditions for moist air to be cooled from below. I don't think it represents extensive cloud to altitude. The latest visible satellite photos are still black for BC, and the infrared show clouds but you can't tell the heights. We just have to go on experience. There are still headwinds, but not the crazy turbulence-inducing ones from yesterday, so it's a go.

We load all the gear and secure it, coil our electrical cords, and put away the engine plugs and tents. After warming up the engines while sitting on the grass, I just power off the grass and onto the apron. It's pretty level and not that soft, doesn't even take run up power. We climb out westbound towards the rocks, keeping below ten thousand feet and then climbing again when the looming rocks suggest it's necessary. I note the time as we pass 10,000' so we know how long we can legally stay above it. We have oxygen equipment on board, but we'd rather not breathe with tubes up our noses or bags over our faces if we don't have to. The weather is good, with excellent visibility and we fly right over Golden airport, position reporting with Flight Services on the Golden RCO as we do so. I seem to recall they didn't answer, so I just made the report blind. Perhaps their antenna was damaged in yesterday's windstorm. I don't remember seeing that NOTAM.

I don't know how many times and in how many places I've flown over the spine of the Americas, but I never get tired of admiring the sharpness of the peaks and the tenacity of the snow and ice that highlight them. When you see mountains from the plain or from the coast they look two-dimensional, a jagged line between you and the other side. But every peak you climb over seems to reveal another one behind it, and they stretch on to the north and south all the way to Alaska and Chile. My coworker regretted not having a camera and I pointed out mine for his use, but now that I look at the card I see he didn't take any pictures, so I have none to share.

The next valley over is Revelstoke, but we don't see the airport, just a glimpse of the river, as most of the valley is choked with low cloud. After Revelstoke the mountains subside into big hills and we come over one of those hills to descend into the valley where we land. Through the magic of time zones we're there bright and early. We immediately fuel and then take off for another flight over the hills and valleys. It's really beautiful country. We imagine waterskiing down that long lake. It's probably still way too cold for swimming, but the grass is green and the lake is blue. We're looking forward to spending some time in a town that exists because people want to be here as opposed to because the town is where the minerals are.

I notice a column of smoke coming from the ground and we look at it more closely as we go by. It's a house on fire. Firetrucks arrive fairly quickly, and after a while the smoke subsides. I hope everyone is alright down there.

After some hours I'm hungry and cranky. There are granola bars up for grabs (last summer's Alaska food box is reaching its expiry date) but I haven't brought enough water to eat them. I bemoan my plight and am rewarded with someone's spare water. Drink, eat, happy. Life is good. We're almost done the work so we land for more fuel.

The fueller is great, offers to stay late to fuel us again if need be, and offers us premium parking in front of the terminal, within reach of an electrical outlet. This airport is well supported because there are over 200 medevacs a year out of here, and there's also a very active local pilot community. It might have more hangars than Red Deer. There's no airline service because the valley fogs up too easily and is too narrow to design a safe GPS approach that would come low enough to reach the runway in those conditions. There are literally high hills on all sides of the little runway and the CFS warns that only those familiar with the local area should use it during the hours of darkness.

We have a couple hours before dark, and seeing as we started our day at 7 a.m. we are good until 9 p.m. for duty day, so we have time to go up and finish the mission. I offer the flight to my coworker, but he says to go ahead and finish what I started. He's making things efficient by fine tuning the engine so I can concentrate on not flying into the hills. I give him the radios too, so he can watch traffic while I watch rocks. There's a slight tailwind for the more easily accessible runway, and as I didn't take full fuel for this hop and considering the moderate temperature, I elect to take it for flight efficiency. When we call airborne, another pilot calls up with intentions to join downwind for the runway we announced vacating. I know from his callsign that he's flying an ultralight, much more sensitive to a few knots of tailwind than I am. As I draw breath to ask my copilot to warn him, he's already on the radio doing just that. The other pilot thanks us and amends his intentions to land with the headwind.

We're about to set up for the aerial mission when the mission specialist discovers he has an equipment problem and asks us to land. We fly down the valley far enough to turn around and come back onto the same runway as the ultralight used. He's clear now. I pull off the runway into the runup area and wait while the problem is sorted out. It's almost seven o' clock and the mission shouldn't take more than an hour and a half, but I'm looking forward to it being over. After a few minutes on the ground the specialist decides it is over, to be continued tomorrow, and we taxi in and park. There is a chance of frost, and we want an early start tomorrow, so we cover it all up with tents and wing covers and head to the hotel.

As we check in we realize that we changed our watches crossing the provincial and timezone boundary, but not the idea that 7 a.m. to 9 p.m. is fourteen hours. As we turned our watches back we almost scheduled ourselves for a fifteen hour day. Scratching the second mission left us with only thirteen hours worked, so we're legal. But tired. I discover I have left my wallet in the airplane, but I have my passport for ID and the client pays for the rooms anyway. My most excellent coworker lends me supper money. After waiting way to long for supper and the bills, it's back to the hotel where I curse out the finicky hotel Internet as I do my daily report (10.4 hours flight time) to company, and finally I go to sleep.

How To Not Fly in the Mountains

Next morning at breakfast time there are still strong winds. The forecast calls for severe turbulence until noon, and moderate is being reported right now by B737s in Edmonton, plus there's bad weather on the ground at Revelstoke. Golden looks okay. The highest mountain range is between here and Golden, which is only a 45 minute flight, so we plan to make that hop as soon as the turbulence subsides out of the danger zone, and then we'll be right there with one less granite barrier separating us from our destination when the weather clears there.

Out at the airplane, the ramp is a skating rink. We're glad to be parked on the grass, because it makes it easy to walk around the airplane without slipping and falling on the ice. We weren't expecting it to be this cold. We spend the morning cleaning the plane, but it still doesn't look that great because we don't have a power washer and we're getting our hot water one bucket at a time from the terminal. While we are working, we discover that contrary to the forecast, Golden has now gone IFR, so we mooch some power to plug in and tent the engines for another night. The wind makes tenting a two person job, as the covers balloon like parachutes, the usually tightly-fitting fabric still pulling up away from the airplane still finding a way to flap once they are fastened down. Our electricity providers say they get in at seven a.m. tomorrow, so we'll be able to recover our cord (shut under their airside door) for an early departure tomorrow morning. We'll make the trip tomorrow in one shot and save some flight time.

As soon as I make a decision like that I should stop checking the weather, but of course I don't. It starts looking better in the afternoon, and I champ at an imaginary bit, thinking "C'mon c'mon lets go!" Really I have no information on the the weather in the mountains, just at three valley stations along the route. There are also TCUs across the mountains. It's snowing and raining at the destination anyway, and we'll be there early tomorrow, especially considering the time change as we cross the Rockies.

Slowed by Snow

My chauffeur arrives early while I'm still checking out. My ride is reminiscent of a European taxi. It's an old BMW originally sold in Europe and imported to Canada after market. I guess some people get really attached to their cars.

The airplane is ready as promised and passes muster as I walk around. I smile as I see that the sun-ripened nosewheel tire has been replaced with a new one, complete with shiny sidewalls and little rubber whiskers, you know the way new tires have. I mentioned the condition of the old one, but didn't specifically request it be replaced, left it to their discretion. Tires are actually quite cheap as airplane parts go, so it's a small price for peace of mind.

This airplane, parked near mine, gave me a laugh. It's painted in the colours of the Canadian military aerobatic team, the Snowbirds, but if you look closely you'll see this one is a Slowbird. It's a Challenger ultralight. The owner's name was stencilled on the other side, styled as a Lt. Major, but I don't know if he really had military rank or whether the title was as whimsical as the colour scheme. The mechanics say that he treats the little bird as if it were a registered commercial airplane, with fifty hour inspections and all aviation grade parts.

I fly to Regina, where I make a fool of myself, momentarily turning the wrong way on the taxiway, as I come off the runway, but ATC has my back. Later I call for a weather briefing for a longer trip, out to Red Deer and then on to British Columbia. The recorded message that says I'm "first in line for the next available briefer" identifies this as "Winnipeg Flight Information." That's odd. I thought Regina was in the Edmonton FIR.

The briefer comes on and gives me the weather. It's fine to Red Deer, but several times as he recites the mountain weather I expect him to just stop and recommend against the trip. It sounds good right now, but very shortly is forecast to have things like visibilities under 2 miles in snow and ceilings down to 1500'. Bear in mind that these ceilings are above the few valley airports through the mountain ranges separating me and destination, not above the ten to twelve thousand foot ridges separating them. The words "just a sec, there's so much written here on the GFA I can't read all of it" almost make me shut the briefing down right there, but his speech rhythm doesn't invite interruption and he's continuing with such a positive attitude I keep expecting him to say, "but after 02 zulu" or "if you go north to Grande Prairie" everything will be fine. Maybe I'm doing the zulu calculations wrong for my time zone. Then he finishes and the peculiarity is explained.

The briefer apologizes and reveals that he is not used to briefing mountain trips, this being his first day on duty since the Winnipeg FIR took over Saskatchewan from the Edmonton FIR. He strongly recommends that I call Edmonton when I get to Red Deer for a more experienced look at the mountain crossing. Suddenly it all makes sense. Two miles in snow with 1500' ceilings is business as usual for aviation all over the prairies. His instincts are strong enough to make him suspect this might not work too well in the mountains, and his CRM skills are good enough that he makes sure I know that he isn't the best person to advise me. I appreciate that. I will be picking up a second company pilot in Red Deer, so I text him on departure and ask him to check the weather himself, as in Red Deer he will automatically be connected to an Edmonton briefer. The decision will still be mine, but he can get a head start on it. I blast out of there and roll out on course for Red Deer, into a pretty strong headwind.

I'm always second-guessing myself on fuel. I know I have the fuel burn for the trip, plus the required half hour reserve, plus some extra, but I always want to have extra extra, and if it looks like I might arrive with just my legal reserve, I fidget. I fidget for a bit watching the groundspeed and the minutes remaining on the GPS until it's obvious that the amount I have allowed for the headwind is fine and I will arrive with almost an hour in the tanks. I land at Red Deer and taxi off at the end towards the terminal, where I know there is short-term parking. After I clear the taxiway I switch the radio to the FBO and call for fuel. There is a response, but I can't understand it. It's barely more than the carrier wave, so I shut down and phone them.

"Sorry," she says, "I tried to tell you on the radio, but I don't think it works very well." The fuel truck is broken and I'll have to taxi to the pumps. No problem. I start up again and pull up to the pumps according to marshalling instructions. While the lineguy fuels I call the other pilot and he is already here in the terminal, but he tells me the Edmonton briefer just laughed at him when he asked about going further west. Also we need to tie down tonight, because they are expecting winds in excess of 100 km/h. The fueller is helpful and offers a tie down spot on the grass and even gets a tractor to push us into place. I check the secured ends of the ropes and they are tied with bowlines, just the way I do them. (Was I here before and tied these ropes?) One of the ropes is frayed, though, so we substitute a tie down strap of our own.

I go to a hotel and watch through the windows as ridiculous amounts of wind blow the snow and rain around the streets. I stay inside and enjoy a workout while watching Law & Order:SVU (the kid's older brother did it). As I leave the exercise room I hear a guest checking in mention that the highway is closed "both ways" I think that means north and south. It's a very good thing we weren't in the mountains.

Local News

Welcome to a Cockpit Conversation recurring feature: "Aviatrix mocks your town by reading your local newspaper." Today we look at the Regina Leader- Post. I'm not actually in Regina, but, as two readers promptly figured out when I asked, in Estevan, Saskatchewan. This is the complimentary newspaper at the hotel.

Front page news here relates the intriguing tale that "Members of several religions took part [...] to celebrate Good Friday and Easter in Regina." Shouldn't that be "to celebrate Passover, Easter, Songkran, the Feast of Ridvan and the coming of spring?" I suspect that the 'multiple religions' involved in this ceremony were all flavours of the same one. The directory of religious services inside the paper supports that theory: there are forty churches listed under fifteen categories, but every one is Christian. But just when I think I have this community pegged, I see the leftover space on the same page is filled by an open-minded article on Buddhism. Perhaps the multifaith celebrations of other spring festivals were held on other days. The other front page story involves one politician giving another the finger.

Inside the paper we focus mainly on arrests, sentencing, and manhunts. One man who received the minimum sentence for possession of child pornography says he downloaded it because he was curious about whether it really existed. Police are looking for someone who cut across a field in the middle of the night, leaving tire ruts, and for a guy with lots of tattoos who has violated his parole curfew. I wonder if the latter has a tractor. A police spokesman said, regarding other incidents, "There's lots of collisions ... and the people who die, we don't really know what's in their heads." The paper also notes that, "Police say Thursday night and Friday morning were extremely busy, with domestic disputes, fights, and alcohol-fulled incidents." There's a photo of a man in a baseball cap riding his bicycle by sitting backwards on the handlebars and pedalling. He says he was hit by a vehicle once and rides this way to keep an eye on oncoming traffic. I suspect his cycling is alcohol- fuelled, and that if he has a domestic partner, they have had disputes about the wisdom of riding this way.

Last week's paper had a surprising number of reports of unidentified dead bodies. I think all the people that get lost or murdered over the winter here turn up in the same week of spring.

The most interesting news is a wire story on a Canadian named Julia Gaffield who found the Haïtian declaration of independence. No it wasn't lost in the earthquake. It seems that when they originally declared it, they printed up a whole bunch of copies and handed them all out, forgetting to keep one in a safe place. Eventually, as with most ephemera, everyone who had had one had moved or spring cleaned enough times that no one was known to have one anymore. They knew what it says, as they had lots of handwritten copies, just not the original item. Julia found it in the British Library because someone had sent a copy to someone important enough to have had his correspondence archived. Nice timing, and I hope it inspires Haïti during its rebuilding.

There's sports (ice skating, curling, bowling, running, baseball. lacrosse, and hockey, of course), movies (3D everything), homes ($250-600k), and classifieds. The announcements sections has four birthdays, a birth, a graduation, an anniversary and a congratulations to the girl who scored the most points in the playoffs, helping her team win the SFMHL hockey championships.

My favourite part was this cartoon, mostly because I looked at the picture, thought "okay, airliner" and then looked for the joke in the caption, before realizing that the picture is the joke, and the name of the airliner just echoes it.

Oh and the AME at the FBO calls to confirm receipt of the airplane and the work order, and to ask if I happened to notice if the NDB antenna was standing when I arrived. Apparently it blew down. So I guess it was windy enough to be worth tying down the plane.

Also, not local, but way too bizarre not to post, is this story of two eagles crashing into a snowbank while engaged in an aerial mating dance. The male was killed and the female may have a head injury and permanent ligament damage. These birds need to practise safer sex.

Booted Indeed

I successfully fended off the cries of the Easter eggs last night, and am looking at NOTAMs after a healthy breakfast. I hate stuff like this:

100022 CYQR REGINA INTL
OBST STATIONARY VERTICAL GREEN LASER LGT BEAM PROJECTION 0.125 NM RADIUS 501214N 1044247W (APRX 14 NM S AD). LASER LGT BEAM MAY BE INJURIOUS TO EYES WITHIN 5200 FT VERTICALLY OF THE LGT SOURCE. FLASH BLINDNESS OR COCKPIT ILLUMINATION MAY OCCUR BEYOND THESE DIST. LASER BEAM WILL BE ACT PERIODICALLY IN NON PRECIPITATION CONDS ONLY
TIL APRX 1004291800

Not the block of all caps text. I'm not super fond of that, but it's normal for NOTAM. I hate the information about a hazard that I can't do a lot about. Am I just supposed to close my eyes and hope for the best as I go in and out of Regina? (And yes, I phrased like that for all you people who think Saskatchewan's capital city is the funniest thing since Dildo, NL). Also most pilots hate lasers being fired into our workplace, so that's double hate.

The job here is over and I was told at breakfast that I would be released (I'm not actually shackled: that's the word for when they are done with me and I can fly the airplane away) in about an hour. That was two and a half hours ago. So I'm packed, including stuff from the fridge, which I once again forgot to check for proper temperature before putting my snacks in it, so I have a bag of baby carrotsicles. I have instructions from company on where to go next, am flight planned, and ready to go. But I can't go and do a workout, because when the client says "we'll take you to the airport now," that means now, not after I have showered, changed and packed away my workout gear. As it is, all I have to put on my boots, put my computer in my bag, and check out of the hotel.

Just as I wrote that. the phone rang and one of the guys asked "How soon can you leave?" I simply read him the sentence I had just typed, and then met him in the hotel lobby. "Do you have the box of spare parts?" I asked.

"Yes."

Okay, excellent. He helps me with my stuff, and folding the wing covers and things. All very unnecessary, but appreciated. I offer him some carrotsicles, but he declines. I explain that people always turn the fridge up to coldest to chill their beer faster and I forget to turn it down before putting my vegetables in it. He points out that he hears a lot more people complaining about warm beer than frozen carrots, so the temperature is correct.

The fueller happens to be at the field. I guess someone else called him out on Sunday morning. There's a $50 callout fee though, and I think the fueller gets most if not all of that, so he's made some money off us this weekend. He asks me if I need anything, but I'm good on fuel. His daughter is with him so I ask her if the Easter Bunny came to her house. Turns out that that renowned rabbit brought her a bicycle. How awesome is that? The weather is perfect for a new bike, and I think she's the right age to learn.

With my bags all loaded and the preflight inspection complete I fly northwest along a highway. I think every paved road that goes somewhere in this province is designated a highway. The highway parallels a railway and little priarie towns are spaced along it at perfectly regular intervals. Someone told me recently that the spacing of the towns is equivalent to the distance a steam engine could travel before it needed its boiler topped up with water.

I'm ashamed of my reliance on GPS these days. I used to confidently fly all over the continent without one. I never had one during training. Sometimes I'd rent a plane with one in and I'd let the passenger play with it for entertainment. I remember doing time building at night with a student pilot passenger. She had just bought a really fancy tablet GPS; this was years ago, it must have cost a mint. I asked her to keep it hidden from me and periodically quiz me on where I was, how long it would take me to get to the next destination and so on. And I knew. I flew to the southern US in a rented C172 and locals came over to check me out. One guy looked in the airplane and said, "Where's your GPS?" When I told him I didn't have one, he looked at me in awe, "You came all the way from Canada without a GPS?" I remember looking confused, and telling him I had maps. Why would I need a GPS?

Now I'm looking at the GPS all the time, to plan cooling, to stay clear of airspace, to plan my descent. To verify that I have correctly identified the lake on the chart. I try not to look for a while, but I keep slipping up. I can't turn it off, because it's my comm radio now too.

I concentrate on the landmarks. Another highway will intercept the one I'm following and there will be a double set of powerlines five miles back from my destination. I must stay north of the highway to avoid military airspace. I call traffic, slow the airplane gradually as I cool the engine, and find the runway. I add approach flaps, then gear, and on final I double check my GPS groundspeed with the TAS--that's a really useful trick--to make sure I don't have a tailwind. I have four knots of headwind at 1000' agl, but I think none at all at ground level. The windsock is straight across the runway. Windsocks are kind of two-state devices in the prairies. Either the wind is light and variable, or the windsock is straight out. I guess that's because a windsock straight out indicates fifteen knots or more, and fourteen knots of wind is light in the prairies. I touchdown, pull power idle, brake brake brake on the short runway and do a 180 back to the centre taxiway.

I taxi off and look for a place to park. I'm getting an oil change at the FBO here, but they won't be here today because it's Sunday. I would park on the apron in front of their hangar, but a pressurized Skymaster with a November registration has already claimed that spot, and I don't want to park close beside it in case the wind changes and one of the airplanes blows around. All the tiedown spaces that I would fit into on the apron are taken, and I don't want to block anyone in or out of their spot. And I kind of would like to tie down. Maybe it's overkill as this is a pretty heavy airplane and I don't think the wind is too much over 15 kts, but better safe than sorry. There are two spray planes tied one behind the other, and a space with painted tires on either side in sequence behind them. In this context tires like that are usually filled with concrete for tying an airplane to. I know there's not a third spray plane due back any minute, because no one would spray in this wind: the product wouldn't go where you wanted it. I pull into that spot and shut down.

Years ago in another century, the first time there was a big overnight windstorm at the airport where I had my first job, I couldn't sleep after the wind woke me up. I got up and went out to the airport at about five in the morning to check on my airplane. It was fine, but some other airplanes were loose. I called an emergency number posted outside a flying school, because one of the airplanes was theirs and the person on call called a few other people so we became an airplane capturing team. I discovered that it's almost impossible to manhandle an airplane against the wind. They really have been designed to point into the wind. I also saw that the worst damage was from airplanes crashing into one another. And I saw the way the majority of airplanes had come loose from their tie downs. They hadn't broken their ropes. As long as the rope was long enough for a knot to pull tight before it pulled through it wasn't poor knot tying by the pilots that allowed the airplanes to escape. It was almost always the rope coming untied from the tiedown point on the ground. Since then I have disciplined myself when tying down an airplane to always look at what it is tied down to and I have found a surprising number of really solid tie-down points, such as doubled over rebar embedded in a buried concrete anchor, with a rope tied in a thumb knot with only five centimetres of loose end left over. That will pull through quite easily if you wiggle it back and forth.

Like this.

I retie the anchor knot into a bowline, which results in my boots becoming filthy with mud. It's some kind of especially sticky unwipeoffable prairie mud. I think it's made out of cow pee and manure or something. You can follow everything I did after that by the footprints, going to the nose locker to get the chocks, placing them, then back to the boarding door, then crawling in on my knees trying not very successfully not to get mud on the floor while I retrieve my bags, then checking the tie downs one more time, then running after my bag which blew over, then writing a note for the maintenance guys. I haul the bags into the lee of the hangar and call a cab. While I wait for the cab (yeah I thought of calling it while I finished up, but you can never predict how long that will take) hangar cats meow soundlessly at me through the window of the FBO.

At the hotel I turn on my computer and it makes all the right noises, but nothing comes on the screen and I realize there is no hard drive activity at all. I turn it on and off forlornly a few times, then flip it over and pull out the battery. There is a tiny bit of water on the bottom of the computer, but it's not inside the battery compartment. It doesn't work without the battery either. I remove and reseat the hard drive. No joy. Damn. It must have hit the ground harder than I thought when everything blew over. I thought the case would protect it. I open some more things that probably contain no user-serviceable parts, but nothing seems to be loose or wet. Still doesn't work. I guess I'll have to fax the paperwork.

And then I go to another compartment in the same bag that has the paperwork and it's sopping wet, as is a brand new book on GPS that someone gave me. A waterbottle with a not-quite-screwed-on lid has flooded the bag. I don't know which aperture the water entered my computer through, but it's not happy about it. I wrap the books in towels and upend some of the hotel furniture on them to keep them flat and squeeze out the water. I prop the opened laptop up on one side and leave it there to dry while I go and do a workout in the gym.

A few hours later I try the computer again. It works. Resurrection! It is Easter Sunday after all.

Time for a Pool

The hotel we stayed in has a really nice pool, so we go for a swim before I volunteer to drive back for the part. My coworker did all the driving for the previous trips, so I figure she should get to sit around a bit today.

I'm not actually picking up the part from the Fed Ex office: I'm picking it up from the part retailer who get it couriered to them, so what I collect is just the paperwork and the part, in its plastic baggie. Today's part is about the size of the last joint of my little finger. It's an electronic component. I don't know if it has a name or just a part number, but apparently it is responsible for the last two day's trouble. I drive back. They install it. They test it. It works.

We load our bags. We run up. We take off. I raise the gear. It starts goes up. The green lights go out and a red light goes on. The gear clunks into the belly and wings. The hydraulic cycle completes and the red light goes off. A glance in the mirror shows that the nosewheel is stowed.

I reduce the power from the take-off setting to the climb setting. I get distracted by a very odd indication on the panel and reduce the power too much. My coworker is reading the paper but this gets her attention and I show her that the flap indicator shows full down. They're not down even a little bit and the indication was correct on the ground. Flap indicators can be wonky. This one always indicates full down when electrical power is removed. Not all of them do that. Often cycling the flaps will fix an indication problem, but when selected down, they don't budge. I inspect the obvious culprit. Yep, the circuit breaker is popped. "I'll reset it once," I say and push on it, but it doesn't go in. She doesn't believe me and reaches over and tries it herself. I forgive her for thinking I'm too stupid to reset a CB, after my power setting stunt. It doesn't reset for her either.

We almost got out of there, too.

I'm in the U-turn, thinking about the short runway. I don't have flapless landing performance charts. There's still some wind, but not a whole lot. I consider going to the larger airport. That would allow a larger margin of safety, but it would introduce a lot of operational difficulties. A lot of people think that being a professional pilot is all about always making the safest decision. It's not. It's about making the decision that will come closest to achieving the operational objective while still remaining safe. Is it safe to land this airplane on this runway, at this weight, in only this much wind? In my judgement yes. And there's nothing to hit at the other end. Not even a fence.

I fly a long final to compensate for the fact that the flapless approach profile is less familiar. I want to land at the very beginning of the runway, and I want to do it with as little speed as is safe, so as to have less speed to kill by braking. Gear down and take a couple of extra inches of power off. Over the threshold, power idle, brakes ... and without jamming them on we almost make the centre taxiway.

My coworker has already texted the engineer about our issue. The popped circuit break is for the starter solenoid, flaps and right emergency fuel pump. Weird combination. Weirder are the combinations required to start it again. With the master off, the CB resets. They have me do various combinations of starting engines, operating the flaps and turning on the fuel pump. Sometimes it pops and sometimes it doesn't. The engineer and one of the apprentices work on the problem. We go inside and chat to the other apprentice, who is also a student pilot. We tell her that if we stay the night again, as it looks like we will, she can come to the excellent hotel pool as our guest. We aviatrices have to stick together.

So what do you think? Are we going to spend another night here? Will we go back to the parts distributor in the morning? Will they fix the airplane and see us on our way tonight? If it's of any help to your guess there is a ridge of high pressure over western Canada leaving it clear all the way to destination.

When Is a Tower Not a Tower?

I've been getting some questions in comments lately about airport control towers. This post is about air traffic services at Canadian airports, from a pilot's perspective. The controllers and specialists themselves might describe it differently.

First off, the ultimate authority regarding runway selection, wake turbulence separation, altitude of flight and everything else about the flight rests with me, the pilot. I am required to follow any air traffic control instructions which I accept, but if an air traffic controller clears me to do something illegal, and I do it, I still get in trouble for it. If a controller instructs me to do something dangerous and I do it, I still die. Next, any pilot is capable of navigating from any airport to any airport without the assistance of air traffic control. Any pilot, from the student pilot on his first solo, right up to crew of an Air Canada jet coming across the Pacific from Japan, knows how to safely finish a flight with no radio at all. Many flights are conducted every day in Canada in aircraft that are not radio-equipped. Air traffic services greatly increase the safety and efficiency of air travel, in much the same way that traffic lights increase the safety and efficiency of the highways.

Look up any Canadian aerodrome in the Canada Flight Supplement (CFS) and you will find at least one of the following. (You could find more than one if for example the control tower closed at night leaving either an FSS or a MF).

• a tower
• a flight services station (FSS)
• a mandatory frequency (MF)
• an aerodrome traffic frequency (ATF)
• the aerodrome is not listed at all

If there is a tower frequency listed in the CFS, there is probably also an ATIS and ground frequency and could be more frequencies for clearance delivery, outer tower, different areas of the ground, and so on. Call any of these frequencies and you are speaking to someone sitting in a physical tower overlooking the airport. They may not have a clear view of the whole thing. They may be 1/8 SM in fog and see nothing out the window. It could be one person operating both the tower and ground frequencies. (I think in that case there would someone else in the break room getting a coffee, and that at a Nav Canada tower no one works a solo shift, but I could be wrong).

If there is a tower, as there are at about forty Canadian airports, then a pilot starting up at that airport will request permission to taxi up to the edge of the runway and then report ready and wait for clearance to enter the runway and take off.

Fort McMurray Ground, GABC on the east apron, request taxi for VFR to Grande Prairie, six thousand five hundred.

GABC, McMurray Ground. Taxi runway 25 via alfa, call tower holding short of 25.

I acknowledge that, trundle up taxiway A to the line marking the edge of the runway and finish my checks before calling...

McMurray Tower, GABC ready 25 on alfa

GABC, cleared takeoff 25

I acknowledge that, and take off, if everything looks safe to me.

I left out some other things we would probably tell each other, but the basics are there. I ask for what I want, they give me instructions and clearances.

About fifty Canadian airports have an FSS but no tower. There may actually exist a raised structure with a good view of the field, and the flight services specialist may indeed sit inside it and look out at the airplanes going by, but when we say there is or is not a tower, we are referring to a tower frequency and the requirement to obtain clearances for movement. The reason I said "about forty" and "about fifty" is that towers and FSSes open and close according to need, so a tower that was occupied by air traffic controllers last year houses an FSS this year. Some FSSes don't have towers, just regular buildings, or even portables. If I want to go somewhere at a field with an FSS but no tower (even if the FSS guys are in a tall skinny building that used to be called a tower) I call the FSS and tell the specialist what I am about to do. An FSS is addressed with the call sign "Radio."

Grande Prairie Radio, GABC on the east apron, taxiing for VFR to Fort McMurray, five thousand five hundred.

GABC, Grande Prairie Radio. Active runway is 12. Traffic is a King Air landing 12 in two minutes.

I see the King Air touch down and go past the intersection. Everything looks safe, so I call..

ABC rolling 25.

Again I left out the FSS giving me the wind and altimeter setting. The difference is that the tower tells me what to do, and I decide if it's safe, while the FSS gives me information and I make a decision based on that. The line blurs of course, because the tower may offer me a choice and the FSS may give me a recommendation, but in the end I ask the tower but I tell the FSS. If I'm departing IFR into controlled airspace, the FSS gives me my IFR clearance.

At all the other airport, some of which may have tower like structures that used to house an FSS or control tower, but are now unoccupied, or used to store paint and frangible taxiway lights, I make calls to traffic. I make calls just like the ones I made to the FSS, but now I talk to "traffic" instead of "radio". There may or may not be anyone else listening to the traffic frequency. If there is, they will tell me if i pose a conflict. If the airport has an MF, then I have to have a radio, listen on the frequency and make appropriate calls. If the published frequency is just an ATF then if I have a radio I should make the MF-style calls, but aircraft using that aerodrome are not obliged to have or use a radio. And if the aerodrome is just a lake somewhere or someone's hayfield then I don't have to make calls, but I can, using the the standard aerodrome frequency of 123.2. In any of these cases there may be someone on the frequency who will give me information. The people who run the fuel truck may reply, e.g. giving me the wind direction and telling me that there's a NORDO ultralight doing left hand circuits on 34.

Whichever kind of airport you depart from, you can enter airspace controlled by terminal or centre controllers. They usually work in darkened rooms, sometimes in the same facility as a tower, so they can share infrastructure like maintenance and backup power. If I have an emergency I can report it to any ATC or FSS I am speaking to, and they will help me coordinate with other facilities to get vectors, firetrucks, whatever I need. Canada has excellent air traffic services, and they are hiring.

And for the pilot geeks: User Friendly. My cockpit overhead light isn't working, but I didn't ground the airplane, because it's light out enough all the time that I dont' need it.

Tanstaafl

There might be what appears to be a free lunch, but something else always gets you in the end.

Hi Ho, Hi Ho. It's off to work I go. With a headset and a map And a suitcase full of crap Hi Ho, Hi Ho, Hi Ho, Hi Ho.

Except in this case, scratch the suitcase.

I checked it in before departure, and dropped it wheels up on the appropriate conveyor belt, but I didn't do what a savvy traveller should really be doing every time. I didn't look at the paper tape that the agent attached to the handle. It's mostly bar codes, but it should also have borne the letters YMM. You know what is coming now, but I was oblivious, just happy that the airline had a complimentary copy of the Globe and Mail for me, and that there was a short line for security. And then I was distracted until just before boarding by difficulties unhibernating my computer.

On the descent into Calgary, I had put away my Globe and Mail, and cinched up my seatbelt for the roller coaster turbulence coming from high winds over the Rocky Mountains on a hot day. I still had my boarding pass on my lap, and something odd caught my eye. The checked baggage sticker on the back started with the code YU. It's common for internal codes to omit the first Y of an airport code, so that VR is Vancouver (YVR) and UL is Montreal (YUL), but YYU is Kapuskasing. I'm going to Fort McMurray, YMM. Does YYU even have airline service? I examine it more closely and realize that YU isn't a partial airport code. It's someone's name. It's followed by a slash and the first name. Is that who checked me in? She didn't look like a Yu. I look over the rest of the claim check. It lists two flight numbers, one to Calgary, but not mine, and one to YXE. That's Saskatoon.

It's possible that I just have the wrong claim check sticker and that everything is fine with my bag. Or it's possible that my bag does not have the same travel plans as I do today. I explain my concerns to the gate staff where I disembark and they recognize the problem. Sure enough, there is no piece of checked baggage associated with my itinerary. I describe the bag and they type at computers and radio the baggage handlers to divert it. The situation appears to be under control, so I continue to my planned lunch meet.

Daniel recognizes me right away -- green hair is easy to spot, especially blowing wildly in the Calgary winds -- and I ask him if he's the man with the falafels. He admits to a change of plans: for various complicated reasons my free lunch is an enormous amount of chicken (or possibly beef: I'm not sure which one I ended up with) shwarma, with lots of spices and lettuce and whatever the Arabic is for tzaziki, all wrapped up in pita bread. Also olives and upscale orangeade.

Security chased us away from the first picnic table we chose. I had to ask, "is this a special secure picnic table?" No, it was the place the truck drivers ate. We went to another, not much further along. There we ate our sandwiches, talked about the same sort of things I talk about on the blog, chased down the bits of our picnic that kept blowing away in the wind, and wished each other well. Altogether preferable to eating at a chain restaurant in the terminal.

At the gate I enquired about my suitcase. They weren't the same people I had spoken to before, but they looked it up and said that it appeared to have been found. Ten minutes later they paged me to assure me it was on the flight. Except it wasn't. Right after I had explained to the person who came to pick me up that my suitcase had almost gone to Saskatoon without me, the baggage carousel stopped moving and there was a "that's it" announcement. I got to explain the saga again to the YMM customer service people, who got to work on tracing it.

I was just ruing my failure to notice the mis-tagging at the origin, but they were amused that I had noticed and interpreted the codes, and further amused that I produced a printed list of everything that had been in the bag when they asked what was in it. This is actually the first time I remember an airline (not counting Victory: they lost everyone's bags all the time) misplace my gear when it wasn't caused by a late flight and a tight connection.

Damnit, I should have double-checked that bag tag!