After take-off I routinely scan the instruments. The left oil temperature is a little high in the climb. It's no concern. The summer heat is here. I climb at a slightly higher speed: that probably sounds contradictory, but that means I leave the power the same and lower the pitch of the nose slightly, giving more airflow through the oil cooler. And I leave the cowl flaps open until after level off. I usually close them a couple of hundred feet below the target altitude.
I'm flying in the north. It doesn't really matter north of what. Every province turns from roads and fields to rocks and trees and lakes as you move north. We're in the north and some of the lakes are still partly frozen. I can't tell if the rocks or trees are frozen, given that they remain solid summer and winter. Also there's smoke again, another constant of the north. Water from the lakes evaporates. The sun heats up the rocks, causing the moist air to rise into thunderstorms which unleash lightning, setting the trees on fire, hence the smoke. The only relief from this is when winter comes and the lakes freeze. Or you get far enough north that you run out of trees. Lichen doesn't support much of a fire. I make a note on the OFP to get maintenance to check the air filters early, and keep flying.
I wrote a few other notes on the OFP to share with you.
"We already nuked the strip." I didn't write down the context for that, but obviously it's Centre's line. The "strip" is the data on where an airplane is going and what clearance they have to get there. It used to be a literal strip of paper, but now it's just data in a computer. Someone must have cancelled IFR and then wanted something that required ATC to have the just-deleted information. It was probably funnier at sixty degrees north.
I'm pretty sure that if I had been able to hear the response to the ATC call "German Air Force 55 heavy, what are your intentions here?" I would have written it down, so we'll all have to wonder together.
An airline pilot was told, "You were cleared for an IFR approach, not a circling." The answer was a testy mumble followed by ATC saying, "Now you're cleared for it all." ATC aren't that forbidding, you just have to ask for what you want before you do it.
The OFP also contains a note about how much I would like to eat BBQ shishkababs.
4 comments:
Isn't a circling approach an IFR approach? In the US, anyway, "circle-to-land" is an outcome of the final approach course not being aligned with the desired runway.
I don't think opspecs in the US normally allow airliners to use circle-to-land approaches.
Maybe I'm missing something in the testy mumbling. Nice turn of phrase, that. Sounds like an English actress from when they were called actresses.
For your perusal:
BBQ Kabobs
I don't think opspecs in the US normally allow airliners to use circle-to-land approaches.
My current airline and my previous one both had authorization for circling approaches. It's not that uncommon.
That's a good point, Sarah. If I were cleared for a IFR approach I would think it did cover NDB 29 circling 11. Maybe my notes imprecisely record what the controller said, or maybe there was some missed context that explained it.
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