Flipping Out Over Flight Planning

You know what's kind of annoying during flight planning? When you are working with both VFR and IFR charts and you have to remember to flip the VFR chart vertically and the IFR chart horizontally. Or is the other way around? If you always work with one or the other, it's no problem, it becomes instinctive. But when your job requires you to go IFR to work somewhere VFR or vice versa, you have to work with both. Flip. Damn. Flip. Flip. Damnit. Flip.

You know what's really annoying during flight planning? When the pilot forgets her copy of the job folder at the home base and doesn't have the paperwork she needs. Stupid. We've forgotten something almost every trip. The key. The GPU. That folder. In it is has a map of the lines and a list of the lines with their altitudes and photo blocks for each job, plus photo flight forms for each area control centre that we work with. I borrow the operator's map sheets, although they don't have the pilot-related mark up information I researched, and then I call Edmonton to fax me another copy of the missing form. They are happy to do so.

I think it's sweet that Edmonton Area Control Centre, which I frequently have cause to praise, has its own logo, and adorable that that logo looks like an old CP Air 737, but if the Nova Hotel is trying to impress me by putting hotel stationary instead of plain paper in their fax machine, it's not working.

Planning complete I taxied out, yold to the King Air, clomb to cruise altitude, shove five minutes of my filed flight time thanks to a tailwind and crew about it after landing. Or I would have, had the past tense of these English verbs not changed over the years. I kind of like yold and clomb, though. They sound better than yielded and climbed. Maybe I'll start a fad to reestablish them.

yield - yold
shave - shove
climb - clomb
crow - crew

The Shadin fuel flow meter always shows more fuel on board than there actually is. Taking notes, I think it may least accurate during high fuel flows. It always overreports fuel flow and underreports fuel remaining. I kind of like it that way, because I always have more fuel than it says. I still need to be careful though. A few years ago I hit a wingtip because a particular building always looked closer than it really was, and one day I took too much advantage of that safety margin. I cracked the plexiglass cover on the nav light and it had to be replaced. Maintenance shrugged and said it was the cost of doing business. The chief pilot said only, "The new one looks much better. Can you break the other one next?" The owner didn't say anything that I recall. I work with nice people.