NOTAM of the Week

170201 CYCD NANAIMO HARBOUR(WATER)
CAC8 AD CLSD DUE BATHTUB RACE
1707011745 TIL 1707011815

Because apparently that's how Nanaimoians celebrate Canada Day.

Flare Stack Unserviceable

I love this NOTAM. It's in oil country, just north of Edmonton and advises pilots that the flare stack, a pipe with gouts of flame shooting out the top, is currently not doing that thing. One often sees NOTAMs for things that are on fire, so one for something that is not on approach fire amuses me. I can think of two possible reasons why it is NOTAMed. One is that pilots are using the stack as a navigation beacon for night VFR, and the other, more likely one, is that the stack is close enough to the Josephburg aerodrome that its lack of illumination could cause a hazard for aircraft maneuvering to land. I've used Josephburg and remember the plant just past the runway, but not that the stack was worrisome.

160266 CYEG EDMONTON/JOSEPHBURG
CFB6 OBST FLARE STACK FLAME U/S 534751N 1130559W
(APRX 4 NM N AD) 310 FT AGL 2354 MSL
1604051926 TIL 1604191900

And then there's this one.

CZEG AIRBORNE LASER ACT IN AREA BOUNDED BY
81N 90W-81N 70W-78N 70W-78N 90W-81N 90W. ACFT AT 1500 FT AGL.
LASER BEAM IS PROJECTED FM ACFT IN THE NADIR DIRECTION. LASER BEAM
MAY BE HAZARDOUS IF VIEWED DIRECTLY ON AXIS WITHIN 935 FT OF ACFT.
THE BEAM WILL BE IMMEDIATELY TERMINATED BY THE OPR IF ANY ACFT ARE
DETECTED THAT MAY ENTER THE HAZARDOUS AREA.
1604181100 TIL 1604181900

So long as you're 936 feet or more away, there's no hazard. I don't know where they came up with that. It's 285 m, so not a really round number there, either. Also the airborne laser thing isn't me anymore. Used to be. But never that far north. I think the Canadian Armed Forces are testing a super weapon to stop the Russians from coming in and messing with the Canadian Arctic. Another line of defense, should they make it past the trained polar bear attack squadron, and the Rangers in bunny hugs.

Someone Has to Read Them

The flight that was cancelled in the previous blog entry is back on again, but there's a new weather puzzle to solve. The scud is still present in the low terrain, but this time the air is stable, only trace icing expected. The clouds only go up to ten thousand, so I can climb through them and fly on top with no fancy routing. We'll cancel IFR and alerting after we get into uncontrolled airspace further north, so we can descend out of radio contact and look at the things that it's our job to look at, without people getting all antsy about us showing up to do an approach at our destination.

This time we do depart, and the flight goes as planned. The wings and windshield stay clean as we climb through the slowly brightening grey. I switch to sunglasses as we break through the top into the sunshine. I'm going northwest, and the sun has risen behind me, projecting a round rainbow on the clouds below me, visible through the propeller. It's called a glory or the glory of the pilot because you have to be between the sun and the clouds to see it. The colours repeat through the ring, faintly right into the centre and fading away to the outside. It's a light refraction effect, obviously, but according to the Wikipedia article it isn't certain how they are formed.

As we continue north, dark shadowy holes appear in the solid deck of clouds below, and then they widen to become green and grey and sparkling as the clouds scatter out and we can see the rocks and lakes and trees that define most of Canadian geography. the lakes are not yet frozen and some of the deciduous trees still have their coloured leaves. The clouds thin to occasional wisps and I cancel IFR to fly without having to follow a clearance or stay so far above terrain. Once we finish our work we turn again toward our destination. I'm listening to the Centre frequency as well as the air-to-air en route frequency of 126.7. I can't communicate with Centre, but I can hear other aircraft talking to them and pick up some information that way. A Dash-8 announces that they are in the missed approach from what we'll have to call Elk Creek. The fact that Elk Creek is below minima is a bad sign for the weather at my destination, because the two airports are relatively close, but then the Dash-8 pilot reads back a clearance to my destination. That's a good sign that overrides the bad one. He wouldn't miss and then go somewhere dubious. Sure enough I soon hear the Dash-8 pilot say he's planning the contact approach, which means he has the terrain in sight and is confident he'll remain visual all the way to the runway. He asks to fly direct a fix I'll call WIBEL and then I start to be able to hear the controller, who can't find WIBEL, even after the pilot spells it. The pilot tells him which approach it's on, and that it's the fix before AXFUG. (I wonder who makes these things up. It's kind of fun.) The controller says that the fix before AXFUG is WAGPO. I know what the problem is, but I can't interrupt their conversation. The two of them discuss this for a while, get the pilot an appropriate clearance, and then the controller has a number of calls to catch up on. When he's done I check in and add, "There's a NOTAM out today on the WIBEL/WAGPO situation." I knew I was planning in here VFR, but my eye ran over a NOTAM mentioning a waypoint substitution, and them repeating the waypoint name has triggered my recall.

The controller says, "Thanks, Aviatrix," using my real name over the frequency. He finds the NOTAM and reads it out. WAGPO has been temporarily replaced by WIBEL. It's curious that the airliner had a database that showed the new temporary waypoint while the controller didn't. I would have expected it to be the other way around, or to have them both be operating with post-its on their screens.

Birds on a Schedule

A NOTAM (at some point it stood for NOTice to Airmen, but I think it's just a word now) is a bulletin advising pilots of non-meteorological hazards to aviation: e.g. runway closures, unlighted towers, air traffic control frequency outages, amended procedures, unserviceable navigation equipment or the presence of a nuisance bear at the airport. In Canada a NOTAM begins with the last two digits of the year it was issued, and then has more digits to make it a sequence number. I think the sequence is only unique for that "NOTAM file" -- the major airport under which all the NOTAM in an area are listed. The NOTAM file's four-letter code comes after the number, making the combination unique. After that is the written-out name of the individual airport to which the hazard pertains. After that is a new line, usually starting with the four-letter code for that airport. In fact I originally wrote that it DOES start with that code, but I've just noticed that sometimes they skip it. I wonder if such cases are errors. It's a little disquieting for me to realize this, because it means that one of my shortcuts could miss important information. More on that later. Whether or not the second line starts with an airport code, the rest of the line, and possibly several lines, is an abbreviation-ridden string of text describing the hazard. The last line of a NOTAM shows the period during which the NOTAM is in effect, and it can have three forms. I would have said two forms, but just found many examples like the first one below, where the final line takes the form absent:

150539 CYEG EDMONTON INTL
CYEG AMEND PUB:PRO:ADD: PILOTS TO CLOSE VFR FLT PLNS WITH EDMONTON
FIC (PHONE OR FISE FREQ) WHEN PRACTICABLE OR REQUEST CLOSURE FROM
ATC.

Above, the pilot is requested to AMEND her PUBlication, in this case the CFS, because that's the one with a PROcedures section, to add the line about closing flight plans. Perhaps they used to close VFR flight plans automatically at YEG (Edmonton International), or maybe too many people were forgetting so they figured adding an extra line to what is already half a page of dense text on local procedures at the international was the right fix. This NOTAM will go away when the next issue of the CFS becomes current, right now, I think: 00z on the 20th. Also YEG is unsurprisingly in the YEG NOTAM file.

150517 CYEG SWAN HILLS
OBST LGT U/S TOWER 542759N 1153430W (APRX 13 NM S AD)
377 FT AGL 4298 MSL
1506171512 TIL 1509181330

Above we see the second form the effective period line can take: a string of numbers representing an exact date and time TIL a second such string. 1506171512 is June 17th 2015 at 1512z. I'm kind of impressed with the precision with which they noted the appearance of this obstacle. I suspect that it reflects the time at which the unserviceability of the light on top of the tower was reported, or entered into the system. The second date and time then is the one at which the NOTAM will no longer be in effect, here September 18th at 1330z. That's 7:30 a.m. on a Friday in Edmonton. I guess they ordered a new lightbulb from somewhere that has 30-day delivery and are going to install it at first light the day after it arrives. Or they told the owner of the tower that if she didn't put a light on top of that thing by Friday morning, they were going to knock it down with a backhoe. Or they just picked an arbitrary day and time for the unlighted obstacle to cease being a hazard. The end time is not a guarantee. Nav Canada just has to issue a cancelling NOTAM if the hazard is gone before then or a replacing NOTAM if the hazard will be there for longer. And this NOTAM does not give the identifier for Swan Hills, although I think it should.

150489 CYEG EDMONTON/COOKING LAKE(WATER)
CEE7 AD CLSD DUE LOW WATER
1506042150 TIL APRX 1509041800

Notice that the name of the aerodrome is Edmonton/Cooking Lake and it is a waterdrome, that is a place where you can't take off if your airplane doesn't float. You can sort of land, or at least alight, but that doesn't really work out well. It used to be just called Cooking Lake, but a few years ago they subsumed a bunch of aerodromes into the entries for nearby large ones, such that you have to guess whether a given aerodrome is far enough from the large one to merit its own entry, or whether you have to look it up under the name of the nearby large city. I'm not a fan of the change.

The last line is in the third form it can take, the TIL APRX statement. It means that even if your airplane does float, you're not allowed to use the aerodrome because there isn't enough water in the lake. Because the Edmonton area has not yet perfected weather control, there is no scheduled time for the aerodrome to reopen, but they figure that by noon on September 4th there will probably have been enough rain to use the lake again. They can still cancel or replace this NOTAM with another one, so you'd think there wasn't a big enough difference between the TIL and TIL APRX forms to be worth most of a blog entry, but there's even a question about this on the PSTAR exam you have to take before you're allowed to fly. So they care.

And so now I can reveal the scheduled birds.

150305 CYXS PRINCE GEORGE
CYXS EXTENSIVE BIRD ACT RWY 15/33
1508141530 TIL 1509210659

What ornithomaggedon is going to happen at precisely one minute before one a.m. on the 21st of September? I'm easily amused.

NOTAM are actually a freaking mess. You can't sort them by date or relevance. You have to sift through pages of unlighted towers at 300 agl 10 nm from an aerodrome you're not even landing at in order to find that the one you are planning on using is out of fuel, or has a sinkhole in the middle of the runway. If you want the NOTAM for one airport in an area the "file" system forces you to wade through all the NOTAM for all the airports in that area. And if you're in southern Saskatchewan there are a hundred farm strips in a file. One of my tricks is to load the NOTAM and then hit control-F in my browser and put in the identifier of the aerodrome I'm actually looking for, searching again until I'm back to the beginning and have cycled through all the ones for that aerodrome. Trick doesn't work if the aerodrome you're interested in is the same as the name of the file, and it also doesn't work if the aerodrome identifier is not included in the NOTAM. It's not the distinction between local and FIR NOTAM. All these examples are from the local section. It's not the distance from the airport, because I can find unlighted towers the same distance from an airport, both with and without the identifier. I blame kids these days.

Drawing From Both Bags

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Taxiiway Closures

I'm arriving at an airport with no control tower, and no flight services on the field, but it's a mandatory frequency, and this time of day the radio is answered by a flight services specialist at another airport. It's not an uncommon situation in Canada. It's funny sometimes listening when a pilot doesn't realize that the control tower at the airport he has just landed at is unoccupied, and asks questions like, "Is this a good place to park?"

The descent is over rugged forest with little lakes in it. I point out a boat on the lake to a new, non-pilot crew member, part of my running commentary on what I'm doing, so they get to know what is normal. I called the flight services specialist about 30 miles out and then again entering the zone. The specialist tells me that three out of the four taxiways are closed, rattling off the identifying letters. This is the wrong part of the flight for me to be fumbling for a publication to determine how this should affect my runway choice or route to the fuel pumps. Taxiway letters don't correspond in an obvious way to the runway layout. How could they, with so many ways to lay out runways? I do know of an airport with taxiways S to the south and E to the east, but even that makes no sense without the diagram out the CFS, Did I miss this mess in the NOTAMs? I often check NOTAMs the night before and not morning of, and perhaps I missed this airport.

I can see a vehicle parked across one of the taxiways.  Another pilot on frequency says somethign about "these baldies."  Bald eagles, he means. They're the most common kind of eagle around here. I was about to describe one, but guess everyone in the world knows what they look like, because they're an American symbol. There's one near my altitude, but fortunately not right in my path. I flare, and no eagles decide to challenge me.

I tax off the runway and negotiate my way to the apron. There is construction going on, and large trucks trundling to and fro. We get to the fuel pumps without incident and refuel. At the end of the day I recheck NOTAMs. There is nothing for this airport about taxiway closures, just three unlighted towers and some non-standard runway markings. Ubiquitous enough NOTAMs that I hadn't written them down.

I call to talk to a flight briefer to see if I've missed a NOTAM somewhere. Nope, they don't have anything either. I tell them about the construction.

This sort of thing undermines my confidence in the system. I depend on this system to tell me if there is fuel and a place to put my wheels when I land. I check NOTAMs again in the morning. Now there are two unlighted towers plus non-standard runway markings. Overnight someone either put up some lights or took down a tower, I guess. But the construction still doesn't exist.

Not Stranded at Animal Waterbody

Those of you who haven't followed this blog for years may not know that almost every town in Canada is named after an animal, a body of water or both. If you think it isn't, chances are that it is, just in another language. Also members of the Royal Family and European explorers count as animals. Place names in this blog are often not named after the same animals and bodies of water as they are in real life. Our story begins in

I preflighted an airplane that was parked at Antelope airport this morning. It was clean and had all the right parts attached the right way around, but had mysterious scratches on the inside of the pilot's side window. I think there may have been a seat removal incident. (Getting seats in an out of an airplane is sometimes a topological challenge). The side windows I use more for finding the runway than finding traffic, so the scratches aren't a tragic impediment.

I confirmed the fuel load and then filed two IFR flight plans: one from Beaver Bridge to Civet Creet and one from Civet Creek to Duck Ditch. Then I loaded the airplane and flew it on a VFR itinerary (meaning with no flight plan at all, just my company keeping track of where I am) from Antelope to Beaver. I then departed Beaver on the filed IFR flight plan, but before I reached Civet, asked Centre to pull up my subsequent flight plan from Civet to Duck and asked to now intercept that pla, without actually landing at Civet. They were okay with that, so we did it. About three hours after that, we were discussing the relative merits of landing at Elk, Fox and Gopher. The fuel at Elk was by callout only, and this was a holiday weekend. I've never been to Fox, but the CFS makes it seem like a reasonable place, and with no hours given on the fuel service, it must be self-serve. Fuel is self-serve at Gopher, too, but the airport is really remote and kind of an awkward set up. If we go there and something is wrong we won't have the fuel to go anywhere else, and we'll be stuck there until the long weekend is over.

You'll notice that Elk, Fox, and Gopher weren't on the menu this morning. I definitely didn't check NOTAMs for Gopher. I don't like Gopher much. They have dingy hotels and restaurants. But the airport is fine, if you aren't in a hurry for your fuel. I try to call Flight Services. I'm in the flight levels, something like 20,000' and I can't reach Flight Services on any of the surrounding frequencies, in two different FIRs. Usually the flight follower also acts as ground support, but it's a long weekend, and someone is out on compassionate leave, so the flight follower today is the company president, holding a cell phone that we can send satellite texts to, but don't want to disturb just to ask for a NOTAM.

Finally I ask the Centre controller if he can see if there are any NOTAMs for Gopher, for me. He says doesn't have access, and I understand. But a few minutes later he comes back and tells me no NOTAMs for Gopher. I thank him, explaining that we're considering landing there and I really didn't want to spend the rest of the weekend there if there wasn't fuel. He says, "No kidding!" in such a heartfelt way that I suspect he had personal experience with the place. I advise the controller that in five minutes are going to start a descent out of high level airspace, cancel IFR and land at Gopher. Could we please get an appropriate altimeter setting? The field has none, but he finds one not too far away and there is a huge ridge of high pressure, so they should be about the same. He asks me to report through 18,000'.

Through 18,000' I call, but there's no reply. I try again on the back up frequency he gave me--it's common in remote areas for controllers to give you a "if I lose you on this frequency, try me on ___," instruction. I hear another aircraft make a call on this frequency, but when I call to ask for a relay they don't respond. I'm not going back up to make a call that I was told to make below. I suspected this might happen. That's why I told him what I was going to do before starting my descent. I continue down, trusting the controller will figure it out. The CFS says that there is an abandoned aerodrome a mile east from my destination, so I look carefully, trying to spot the old one so I know I've correctly identified the new one. I can only see one, and the one I see doesn't appear to have any pavement markings. I'm about to circle west, but then I see two airplanes and a functional windsock at this one. The pavement markings are very faded, but present.

Once I land I make a quick phone call to let the IFR controllers know I'm down and that I tried to call when they told me to. They seem unconcerned. The fuel pump works, and we use it. Our next leg is VFR and we just advise the flight follower, no flight plan.

Dashed Yellow Line

In flight school (or if you're both older and diligent about new weather products, when the GFA replaced the FA) you learned that a yellow dashed line on the GFA surrounds an area of reduced visibility in fog or mist. In the north you learn that it might also denote reduced visibility in smoke. While I have encountered reduced visibility in smoke in an urban area due to a mattress factory fire, this usually means forest fire smoke. It's actually a natural state for great swathes of the boreal forest to be on fire at any one time, but because the trees are so valuable in Canada, and because forest fires can threaten towns and cities, we have a vast industry dedicated to detecting, tracking and extinguishing fires. That all takes time, so even with so many resources committed to putting them out there are still a lot of fires. For example here's a map showing the fires burning in Ontario today. The further north you go, the smaller and less valuable the trees get, and the less politically important the settlements are, so the more likely the decision makers are to let the fire just burn. I guess it costs less to evacuate a few hundred people than to fight the fire. So there can be a lot of smoke.

Fog and smoke are very different. Fog sticks around usually for no more than a few hours and while it may render the airports it blankets completely unusable, fog is usually only a few hundred feet thick, so the airspace above it is perfectly usable. Smoke doesn't stop you taking off. Usually visibilities are quite good on the ground and decrease as you climb. Smoke can produce IFR visibilities up to the flight levels and can persist for weeks.

It's sort of cool to see the yellow dashed lines swirling across the map from one GFA to another. In this case its a small burn area, producing lots of smoke and just the wrong winds bringing it to where we wanted to work. We find somewhere else to go, and I check NOTAMs. The runway is reported "90% bare and dry" and it's May. The ten percent is presumably old snow piled up at the sides. Better than April where I got completely snowed in for two days. When it finally stopped snowing I had to get the airport snowplough operator to dig a path so I could get the airplane out. They don't give you dashed yellow lines for low visibility in snow. Precipitation gets green lines. Freezing precipitation gets red lines. Moisture or particles parked in the air and refusing to precipitate get yellow lines. Clouds get brown curlicues. GFAs are very colourful.

Diversions

The days start early in the summer. Our flight planning is done in the space between the completion of eight hours of sleep and the engine start time required to be in the right place at the right time. If we're lucky, hotel breakfast is also available during that period. The real reason my charts need replacing every 56 days has more to do with the effects of toast and orange juice than of airspace changes. Ironically the further the place we need to be is from the place sleep and flight planning occur, the less time in which I have to do flight planning. I look at the GFAs and scan as many NOTAMs as I can for runway closures and fuel unavailability. The weather is generally good, I don't see any problems that will stop us from reaching our destination, or slow us down enough to affect planning.

We have some work to do, but the main goal of the day's flight is to get the airplane back to base for a scheduled inspection, so when the work is done I push a couple of buttons on the magic GPS box--I love that box so much. I can't imagine how much time I would have had to spend flight planning every morning if I had to get from A to B for innumerable values of A and B not necessarily known in advance of take off, without GPS. We don't have enough fuel to get all the way to base, but I have a good picture in my head of the airports along the route, and I can check my intuition by adding my choice as a GPS waypoint to see how far it is and how straight a line it makes. Not requiring a detour is a good property for an en route fuel stop, but I also need to consider the quality of the apron so we won't contaminate or damage our equipment and the ease of fuelling. Better to go a few minutes out of the way for an airport with an easy drive-up fuel pump with a high flow rate than to land at one that is right on the way but requires waiting for a slow response to a callout.

The visibility is dropping straight ahead. It's not obvious at first, because there isn't anything I'm looking for many miles straight ahead, but the next sign is that the cloud layer above gets a little darker. The unmissable sign is when the clouds ahead are illuminated by lightning. I'm flying towards an active thunderstorm. I deviate towards a lighter area of the sky and try to turn back behind the storm that blocked me, but there's another one too close behind it. I call flight services and pick up SIGMET M1, reporting this line of previously unforecast thunderstorms and forecasting them to remain. I love that radar and other modern technologies allow weather forecasters to sit in another province and see the factors that lead to thunderstorms forming, but that these ones still managed to sneak in without being on the GFA. There are enough of them that I have to bypass two airports and proceed to my third choice airport for landing.

I land behind and park next to a small single-engine airplane and chat to the pilot about the weather. It's a smart-looking composite airplane but I don't ask him what it is, because I know it's something I should recognize, and am just blanking on the type. I go in and update the weather at the FBO computer, and then plot an alternate route to destination. The flight services specialist asks me as I line up for take off if I have the SIGMET. "Affimative, we have M2," I say. I sound so like I know what I'm doing. I must know somewhat, as I get home without incident and taxi to our ramp.

I shut down, and complete the post shutdown checklist items, which includes making a journey log entry. The ops manager keeps the journey log in the back of the airplane, but it's always behind the seat when I fly. I like to fill it out before I get out of the airplane. For me it's the best way to make sure it gets done. Meanwhile our maintenance personnel have opened the hangar door, hooked the airplane up to the tug and towed me inside before I even get my seatbelt off. They do this to me a lot. I'm never really fast at getting out of an airplane after a flight.

And I figured it out. It was a Diamond Katana. I'm slow at airplane identification as well as egress.

Always Check NOTAMs -- Even When Running Drugs

Pilots and regular readers know that a NOTAM (NOtice To Air[wo]Men) is a little bulletin describing a change to facilities, airspace or procedures that isn't published on the current charts and publications. They look boring. They can be tedious and repetitive to read. Most of them won't pertain to your operation. If you fly out of some little flat bit of the wilderness airport there's probably a NOTAM about the airport lighting being unserviceable from shortly after the snow melts until whenever it is that gophers go back into hibernation.

You can look them up here for Canada if you know your airport identifier. They look like this.

CYHZ
110478 CYHZ CHURCH LAKE(WATER)
CHL3 AMEND PUB: OPR TEL TO READ 902-644-3604

110792 CYHZ AMHERST(HELI)
CCB3 AMEND PUB: NEW WIND FARM 15 TURBINES 0.7 NM RADIUS 455002N 641504W (APRX 1.8 NM NNW AD) 454 FT AGL 483 FT MSL. LGTD NOT PAINTED

110796 CYHZ STANLEY
CCW4 AMEND PUB: NEW TOWER 445602N 635751W (APRX 10 NM SSW AD) 299 FT AGL 988 MSL. NOT LGTD AND NOT PAINTED

110817 CYHZ NEW GLASGOW(ABERDEEN HOSP)(HELI)
OBST LGT U/S 12 TOWERS AT WINDFARM WITHIN 2.7 NM RADIUS 453359N 625746W (APRX 13 NM WNW AD) 377 FT AGL 1460 MSL
1111301630 TIL 1202291600

110844 CYHZ TRENTON
CYTN RNAV(GNSS) RWY 07, RNAV(GNSS) RWY 25 AND NDB RWY 25 APCH: RESTRICTED OPS SPEC 099 OR 410 REQUIRED AD VISUAL SFC NOT ASSESSED CREWS MUST BE FAMILIAR WITH AD ENVIRONMENT
1112151230 TIL APRX 1203161800

110845 CYHZ DEBERT
CCQ3 RNAV(GNSS) RWY 09 AND RNAV(GNSS) RWY 27 APCH ARE RESTRICTED. OPS SPEC 099 OR 410 REQUIRED. AD VISUAL SFC NOT ASSESSED. CREWS MUST BE FAMILIAR WITH AD ENVIRONMENT
1112151230 TIL APRX 1203161800

That's less than half of the Halifax NOTAMs this afternoon. If you're really operating out of Halifax you need to read them all, plus all the ones for the place you are going, and the ones covering airspace you'll be passing through, and possible diversion airports. The float plane guys don't care about the GNSS approaches. The airlines don't care about the windfarms. No one on wheels cares about the change in the operator's telephone number for the Church Lake waterdrome, but they are filed by the order they were filed in, and no one has realized the safety benefit of somehow filtering or classifying them.

They're a fairly often neglected aspect of flight planning. If you're flying between familiar aerodromes on a regular basis, there's a strong temptation to skip them. The flight briefers don't give them unless you ask. (And I still haven't forgiven the briefer I asked for NOTAMs for a flight from Meadow Lake to Buffalo Narrows, who neglected to tell me that the airspace I was chartered to fly through was in use by the Canadian military and their international guests for fighter jet exercises. It's the only time I've called and asked to speak to the supervisor of someone paid to provide me with flight services.) I have fielded a phone call from an airborne coworker who sighted vehicles working in the vicinity of his destination runway, "Avi, could you please check and see if there's a NOTAM ..." (There was).

So I can see how if you were conducting an operation that wasn't actually legal in the first place, transporting certain agricultural products, for example, that you just might not bother to check them. But these folks would have had a better day had they done so. A US reader will probably clarify the difference, but the Americans do have what I'm going to term a special relative of the NOTAM called the TFR (Temporary Flight Restriction) which highlights what in Canada would be NOTAMs restricting airspace to certain operations. They probably did this because people were missing NOTAMs and ending up on the windshield of Air Force One, but what it probably does is make the problem worse, with people clicking on the fun little map that tells you where they don't want you flying today (hey, is President Obama in Seattle today?) and then figuring that covers the important stuff and not going through to the boring list of nav aid outages.

We Interrupt This Sequence

I'm going to suspend the trip I've been describing right there to describe--and solicit your help with--the process of converting a Canadian ATPL to an FAA one. I have an opportunity for an interesting short term job, and potentially others in the longer term, if I have an FAA licence. Don't worry, Americans, I'm not stealing your jobs, the job is not in the USA and is not for an American company. It's for a company based in country A that is operating an airplane in country B and that airplane just happens to be N-registered, that is, it's registered in the US. The law says that the pilot's licence has to match the airplane registration. (In many cases you have a period of time, typically six months to a year, to make the transition from in internationally respected licence such as a Canadian one to the local licence, but not for the US).

The process involves getting an FAA medical certificate, passing a written exam, and putting them together with a bit of paperwork and a processing fee. I've already had the FAA physical, and am just waiting for their approval. I'm studying for the exam so I can have that written as soon as possible. I haven't yet figured out if I need to make an appointment to write it or can just show up at a testing centre. Er, I guess that's a testing "center."

My first impression as I look at the material to be studied is that there's a disconnect between what I have and what I'm converting to. There's an assumption that someone writing an ATPL level exam has mastered the material of the private pilot level, but I have to figure that out too. The material is totally unrelated to what I'll be doing, so there isn't a lot of point in thoroughly learning and understanding it. In the US all test bank questions are available in advance, so when you're in this situation you can just learn the correct answers with out really know why. I've never taken a test this way before, but when in Rome Washington, D.C. Things like I've learned that "part 91" means general aviation, "part 135" is on-demand air carriers and "part 121" is scheduled air carriers. But the questions mention "domestic carriers" and "flag carriers" and "supplemental air carriers." They must be defined somewhere. My local pilot shop has run out of the FAR/AIM because the new one is on order, so I've ordered one directly from the US.

I have to figure out how aircraft approach categories (A B C D) work in the US. There's something in the questions that implies that it's not just based on approach speed as in Canada. I have to figure out how the NOTAM system works. Apparently you get different sorts of NOTAMs with different letters from different sources.

Up until now I've almost deliberately not learned about US regulations that don't affect Canadian pilots (like needing one flight attendant for the first 10 passengers (in aircraft with a payload capacity of 7500 lbs and up) of for the first 20 passengers when the aircraft payload is under 7500. With 50 to 100 passengers you need two flight attendants, and one more for every fifty passengers or part thereof after that. And it's based on seating capacity, not boarded passengers, implying that you need three flight attendants for a B737-600 with four people in the back. Or something. Maybe I can store this in a part of my brain that's reusable.

Always Check NOTAMs

Here's an account of an aviatrix who found that her computer wasn't working to pick up the NOTAMs. She could have called 1-800-WX-BRIEF (this takes place in the USA) and asked, but she hadn't flown in a week and was anxious to get back in the sky. What possible NOTAM could affect her flight in and out of her own backyard strip, in very familiar airspace? She was so used to people admiring her prize-winning airplane that she wasn't fazed by the intercepting F-16s. I won't mention her age, because as the last line of the story mentions, she was a little put out that the FAA released it to the media.

May we all be flying as long, but further from the scrutiny of military aviators.

Oil Exploration

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

---

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

Whirlwind Tour

The weather is good in BC, so I'm checking NOTAMs for a whole list of airports all over the province. It doesn't matter which ones I check, I'll be told to fly to somewhere I didn't check, and once airborne I'll be asked to land somewhere entirely different. I check the major northern Alberta ones like Whitecourt (no issues), Fort Mac (surrounded by forest fires), Slave Lake (surprisingly normal considering what they've gone through), Peace River (unlighted obstructions), Edmonton City Centre (all the approaches are messed up), Calgary (closed taxiways) and Lloydminster (more unlighted obstructions). I'm mostly interested in showstoppers like fuel unavailability or closed runways. The obstructions are typically 300' agl and more than a mile away. Unless it's right on final approach, it's not going to be in my path, and to be honest if something went so wrong that I was at 300' agl and not just under a mile back stabilized on final, I wouldn't have room in my brain to remember where the I end up having to update my NOTAMs after I have put away my computer in the morning, so I call a briefer with my embarrassingly long list of possible landing spots. McBride, Nakusp, Vernon, Squamish, Prince George, Fort St. John, Vancouver, everywhere we might go. The briefer tells me it will take a while because it's difficult to know where the NOTAMs are filed for small aerodromes. "They aren't just listed under the airports?" I ask. Nope. It all depends on what was done in the 1940s. Vernon, for example, was a military training base or something, so although it has no air traffic services, it has its own NOTAM file. Larger aerodromes elsewhere in the province are kept in other aerodrome files. The briefer tracks it all down for me.

We head out across the mountains, VFR this time, because we want to take pictures on the way and passing through cloud gets water on the camera, and might leave streaks on the glass that would show up in the pictures. Around Whitecourt there is a lot of cloud and it's raining, so I try to dodge it all, going way south and even a bit east in an attempt to avoid getting wet. Then I make an attempt to outclimb billowing cumulus. I know where this is going, as every altitude I climb too just shows more tops. They probably can't grow faster than I can climb they way they could when I was in Florida in an ultralight, but it's still silly trying to outclimb them. I go back down below the clouds and work on outlasting them. I know the low ones don't extend that far to the west.

I'll be going through a mountain pass below the clouds and this is something that GPSes with their straight pink (the guys call them "magenta") lines aren't as good at as old-fashioned technology. I have my chart out, folded so I can see Grande Cache and the mountains beyond, just as I see Grande Cache below and just ahead. I have a pencil, and I have an accurate watch. I identify my location on the chart and I mark the time I am there, resetting the directional gyro to the compass and paying close attention to which valley I go down. I can cheat big time because the GPS gives me both terrain and exact lat-long position, but this is the way to do it, so you don't lose track of where you are in identical-looking valleys with very different things at their ends, and so that if you take a wrong turn or encounter adverse weather, you know where you were when things were good and how to get back. And it gives me an excuse to look ahead and anticipate where I will see lakes and rivers around the corners.

We cross the Great Divide, which forms the Alberta-BC border here, and marks the time zone boundary as well as the high point of the mountain range. Our destination was originally Prince George but I've gone far enough south in the avoidance manoeuvre that the valley I've chosen will bring me out just south of McBride. I adjust the range on the GPS to show the operator this. He is surprised to learn that there is an airport at McBride. To him it's just a place that we will take pictures. "Can we land there?" he wants to know.

"Pass me that book."

That book is the manual for the airplane, because when it's not a flight test at an airport with a runway twice as long as I need, I do do my calculations. Not landing distance, but take-off, because "Can we land?" really means, "Can we land and then take off again?" and take-off distance is greater. I look up the airport elevation and then follow the line for the next highest elevation, at the hottest temperature it could possibly be down there, rounding up on the weight and assuming no wind, and there is still plenty of runway available to get out of there. "Yes, we can land."

We do, and the operator double-checks the camera glass, plus we both reset our bladders before taking off and taking pictures. We continue up the valley to Prince George, where we climb up to ten thousand feet or so and take some more pictures. We continue in this fashion, a giant, province-wide game of connect-the-dots that doesn't even draw anything, but wow is it scenic. Fuel is down to a little over an hour remaining as we approach Revelstoke, but I bypass it for one more set of photos. Part of my job is to plan fuel for efficient flight, and that means not always having the happy empty bladder and full fuel tanks that one would if it were a pleasure flight. There's opposite direction traffic at Nakusp, where we're taking pictures of a ski resort next to a lake, or maybe a lake next to a ski resort. We let him go by and then descend for the second set of photos, and then it's off to Vernon to land.

Approaching Vernon, I tune their frequency and hear a skydiving airplane preparing to drop. Argh, that wasn't in the NOTAMs. Closer scrutiny of the chart shows the airport to be in a marked advisory area for continuous daytime parachute activity, so it doesn't need a NOTAM. I advise that I will hold outside the area until the jumpers are on the ground. I'm irritated with myself for not noting this earlier, and it must have come out in my voice as the operator asks me if I'm mad at the drop plane pilot. I'm not. The drop plane pilot is pretty lackadaisical about his meatbombs, assuring me that there's no conflict. I ask how long the drop will take and something about the way he starts the sentence makes me think he's going to say "it depends on whether they remember to open their chutes or not." He doesn't though, just describes the seconds of freefall followed by where they open their chutes. I follow his advice and join a downwind without crossing the field. It's a little close to the runway, because of terrain, so I fly an ugly teardrop through final and back again, then over a big group of trees to the runway. The operator says pilots always come in high here because of the trees.

I backtrack to the apron and shut down behind another airplane at the fuel pumps, then we haul ours up to the pumps and fuel. We're pumping a lot of litres in, and quite a line forms behind us as the pilots who normally take maybe thirty to fifty litres at a time wait for us to fill all the tanks with an order of magnitude more fuel. No one is in too much of a hurry, though. They help us shove the airplane off the pump so the next people can fuel. There's a washroom but no payphone in the terminal, an increasing and annoying trend these days. Cellphones die. Payphones connect. I do succeed in filing a flight plan, pretty much guessing at how long our remaining work will take and where we'll end up, then jump in the airplane and fire it up.

We taxi out and take off straight away, climbing straight out over the lake to avoid the parachutes, and then up a valley to get to altitude before the hills do in this heat. Some photos of a secret lake, and then set course for an Indian reserve. Although we're dodging jagged mountain peaks with no sign of any civilization in sight, the chart tells me that I'm approaching Vancouver's inverted wedding cake airspace and lists a frequency to call Vancouver Centre before I enter Class C. Theoretically there's a number there, written against the violent colours and squiggles of the hypsometric tints and contour lines. I think I need bifocal sunglasses. I call the controller for clearance into the airspace and to advise her of a few photo lines that we'll be flying within the area controlled by Vancouver terminal. She has trouble understanding me at first. It's amazing she receives me at all. Do they have repeating antennae out here in the barren mountains? Wouldn't they just blow down, get covered in snow, or be destroyed by rutting moose and itchy bears? She clears me into the class C, but advises me that there are too many photo aircraft in the area and the mission will not be approved. Grr. Damn damn damn. The sun angle will be too low soon, so we can't wait long. I would have got preapproval this morning before coming but it was hard to predict when we would be here and truth-be-told I had some of today's assignment mixed up with the work we did last time we were here, so I didn't realize those Vancouver area dots were new work and not completed work. Communication: important.

The first valley we're in is below the reaches of Vancouver's airspace, so they can't tell us what we can and can't do. I have to fly up a valley towards mountains while on line, which is a little nerve-wracking because it's difficult to look at terrain and photo dots at the same time. I have to assure myself that there is no risk of CFIT on the line, but I still want to look out the window. We have to take a couple of runs at some lines because it takes a bit of a run-in to get on line and from one direction there isn't room to do that. There's a lot of snow up here still and at least one photo is just an overexposed white blob from the glare of the snow.

The next area has very few lines, and is partly in and partly out of terminal airspace. I get on the first line heading towards the airspace boundary, and then call up terminal for clearance in. Nothing about photo lines, just where I am, my altitude, and where I'm going. No problem. I'm coming down a valley and at an altitude where this is a pretty normal request. The line is complete. I look at the chart and where we need to be next. Now I'm taking advantage of the poor communication I've observed between layers of control in the Vancouver airport. I'm betting this guy has no idea I'm a photo flight that was denied.

"Request to overfly Bowen Island west to east at six thousand."

"That's approved."

The operator is laughing at me, because he sees what I'm doing, and it's working. No pressure though. I can't screw up my casual "overflight" of the island. I have to be right on line, but it's not anywhere any airplane might not be. Finishing that line of photos I ask to continue to the river ahead, and that's approved, too. Sneaky, but done before the sun angle or fuel level got too low or my duty day ended. And then I land. As I roll out I see that it was almost to the minute right on the flight plan, which greatly amuses me, considering where I pulled those numbers from. I have an experienced ... hat.

We barely needed the heater, but it seems to work.

---

On the subject of pulling things out of body parts, we have the latest thing to be paranoid about: surgically implanted explosives. Perhaps I am glad I'm not going through the secure side of airports much these days. I wonder what proportion of the travelling public has had surgery recently enough to raise TSA suspicions. If the explosive device were disguised in a breast implant as they suggest, the incision could be hidden under the breast where it would take a very thorough search to find it, especially if one covered the mark with that make up putty and made it look like an old implant incision.

South Sudan Embarks on Nationhood

I only heard about the new country of South Sudan on July 9th, the day it declared independence and haven't had time to write about them until now. The United Nations should be recognizing them as an official world country in the next couple of days. Somewhere in the neighbourhood of eight million people

In some places, including on the government website the name of the country is written Southern Sudan, but the official seal styles it as the Republic of South Sudan. I think the Southern Sudan references are from material describing the area before independence. They have a flag, a national animal (the secretary bird), a coat of arms, a national anthem (link plays music), a capital city (Juba) and a president. They're still using the currency and postage stamps of their northern neighbour, so I think getting mail through to South Sudan is going to be a bit like communicating with a friend when you only have the mailing address of her ex. And they've fought for twenty years over the divorce.

They say that a what a country really needs to be official is a sports team, a beer and an airline. It looks like South Sudan is getting right on that. They already have a football team, and it's even played a match already. They lost 3-1 to Kenya but it's not an offical result as they are still waiting on FIFA membership. I thought that a beer would be a no-brainer but they have a good excuse for not having one quite yet. The construction of their new brewery is a big deal because under the former Muslim regime, alcoholic beverages were outlawed. And they even have the beginnings of an airline , complete with a webpage that doesn't actually link to a booking database, just a form. The date of the maiden flight has not yet been announced, but Juba does have an airport with a paved runway (13-31), which was apparently closed on Independence Day but airlines didn't receive a NOTAM, possibly because of that communications via Khartoum thing. The Republic of South Sudan will have to join ICAO, at which point I suspect it will go straight on the list of countries in which one should avoid boarding an airplane at all costs. They're a very poor state with terribly low education and healthcare.

I met a pilot/AME recently who says he started the war in the Sudan. He was there years ago, when the Sudan had nothing of value to the rest of the world, and nothing to fight over internally but camels and goats. He was there surveying for oil. He also made a positive contribution to the national infrastructure because they discovered that he could fix things. He would call for taxi clearance at the airport and then have the clearance rescinded because the airport firetruck wasn't working. They possibly were looking for a bribe the first time, but he solved the problem by restoring the firetruck to working order, and after that there was always something that needed fixing.

I hope South Sudan gets what needs fixing fixed faster than it gets itself into new conflicts and problems. I don't suppose there's anyone reading this blog from there. Few in that country can read let alone have access to communication technology, but if you are, know that I wish your new country well. South Sudan has apparently applied for the internet country code .ss but a regime that collapsed sixty years ago has such a lock on those letters in some people's minds that it may be denied.

P.S. Beda Otwari, the Director of Administration and Human Resources for Southern Sudan Airlines is a Canadian.

Yay! Fireworks!

I didn't have time to post this when it belonged, so I'll post it for my American friends, who celebrate their national day today.

CZEG PURSUANT TO SECTION 5.1 OF THE AERONAUTICS ACT, THE AIRSPACE WITHIN 0.5 NM RADIUS 533141N 1133037W (KINSMEN PARK, APRX 3 NM SSE EDMONTON CITY CENTRE(BLATCHFORD FIELD) AD) IS RESTRICTED DRG FIREWORKS ACT. SFC TO 3600 FT MSL. NO PERSON SHALL OPR AN ACFT WITHIN THE AREA DESCRIBED UNLESS THE FLT IS AUTH BY EDMONTON TML FREQ 119.5 1107020455 TIL 1107020555

1107020455 TIL 1107020555 was the evening of July 1st, the 144th anniversary of my country being founded, and we get our faces painted, wave little paper flags, have a day off work during which we often barbecue something or attend a street festival, and then set off fireworks to celebrate. Except for places where it's not dark enough for fireworks in midsummer, so they save them for Hallowe'en or New Year's.

Happy everything that you like to celebrate with firewooks, food, fun and friends.

Magnetic North is Not the Same

People not involved in map-related sports or professions probably don't think about "north" much. I think most people have learned that "true north" and "magnetic north" are not the same, but I worded the title of this post the way I did to cover the fact that magnetic north is also not the same as itself over time. The earth's magnetic field varies somewhat randomly on a daily basis and also steadily over time. It still amuses me when I come across concrete manifestations of the unconstant nature of magnetic north, and I saw one in a NOTAM recently.

110345 CYVR VANCOUVER INTL
YVR- VANCOUVER VOR 115.9 ROTATION, ADD 4 DEG TO ALL PUB APPROACH RDL ASSOCIATED WITH YVR. SPECIFIC RDL ISSUED BY ATC SHALL BE ADHERED TO AS PER THE RECEIVED AND ACKNOWLEDGED CLEARANCE
TIL 1105050901

YVR is a VOR -- a navigational radio station -- near the CYVR airport and it "tells" a pilot that her airplane is on a particular radial, i.e. that it is located a particular magnetic direction from the VOR ground station. She uses that information to navigate in the vicinity of the airport, perhaps to do an instrument approach that follows a specified radial straight to a runway, or to stay out of a restricted area that she has determined from the chart to be west of a particular radial. A number of radials are published on charts as named routes, for example on the expired chart I have here, the 037 radial from the YVR VOR was designated as part of the V304 airway to Calgary, sort of like Portage Avenue in Winnipeg forms part of the Trans-Canada Highway. A pilot tracking a radial makes heading corrections as needed to compensate for any crosswind, but she expects that in zero wind she will be flying on the same magnetic heading as the radial while tracking away from a station, and on the reciprocal heading while tracking towards a station. (To get to the station on the 000 radial, you fly 180, or south). A pilot who filed a flight plan from Vancouver to Calgary along V304 would expect to be flying on a heading of 037, and because the published minimum obstacle clearance along that radial is 9000', she would also expect that by keeping the 037 radial selected and centred on her VOR at 9000' that she wouldn't fly through any clouds with crunchy centres.

A VOR does not use the orientation of the earth's magnetic field to function, but it is set up and calibrated so that its zero radial runs due magnetic north of the station. That means that when the earth's magnetic field shifts, the YVR 037 radial still runs along a safe path between YVR and the next VOR on the airway. The pilot might just have to fly a different heading to stay on the airway. But after a number of years the accumulated magnetic shift is enough that Nav Canada wants to recalibrate the VOR such that the 037R really does run in the 037 direction. So they rotate the actual VOR signal. I'm pretty sure they just go in there and electronically adjust the direction in which the station sends its signals, but it's more fun to imagine that they jacked the whole thing up (they're usually about the size of a garage, except round) and cranked it around four degrees counterclockwise. But once they've done that, the 037 radial no longer runs through that safe route towards Calgary. It might pass a lot closer to some pointy rocks. So they have to amend all the publications so that what once specified the 037 radial now specifies the 041 radial, and so on all the way around. There are about fourteen airways defined off the YVR VOR. And they do amend all the publications that show those airways, and pilots or their companies are required to buy new ones every fifty-six days, but they didn't rotate the VOR on the same day as the new publications come out. This NOTAM informed me that until the new chart became effective, on May 5th, that I should add four degrees to any published radial from YVR. The new chart labels the 041 radial as V304, and the 039 radial subsides into unpublished obscurity.

There was a Nav Canada Challenger at YVR while I was there, probably in town to check the alignment of the airways and approaches.

Runway Ten

And it's time to go back to work. Expedia.ca can't find any flights into my destination, but I've flown there before and I know the airline that goes there still serves it. They must have had a fight with the Expedia people. I book the connecting flight separately and then work on the leg into the boondocks. I was going to say disdainful things about the little airline, but one of my friends works there, so I'll just bitch about their website. The customer service staff are wonderful, obviously the pilots are terrific (you'd better appreciate this if you're reading, girl), but the website really sucks. It's hard to find flights that go where you're going unless you're familiar with the route structure, and then when you buy a ticket there's a blank box that says "Enter Terms and Conditions here." It's the same level of not- caring demonstrated by spammers who begin their missives with "Dear %name%." Do they never look at the hideousness of their own website? I enter a constructive comment on the feedback form and it responds with an error message instructing me to use the latin alphabet. I did. No accented characters at all. I try again, gradually eliminating top row symbols, numerals, and all punctuation, but the box keeps urging me to restrict myself to the latin alphabet. I call up an online English to Latin translation site and copy from it the Latin translation result of "This is the worst air ship site ever." When I paste that into the comment form, the website stops responding to inputs all together.

I reload it in a new tab, and now the flight I found earlier is listed as unavailable. I pick up the phone and speak to one of the ever -helpful customer service agents, who completes the transaction. And then the next day--yes that's the sort of notice I get of where I'm going--I get on a plane.

At the connecting airport I have to go all the way down to the end of a terminal and go outside to board the airplane. It's a tight connection--maybe that's why Expedia wouldn't approve it--and I run all the way down the concourse and show my boarding pass through the gate onto the ramp. There are two airplanes parked there: one is a Dash-8, like it says on my ticket, but is not the right airline. The other is the same airline as it says on my ticket, but is not the right type. I walk towards the one that is the right airline and the captain puts his head out the window to ask where I'm going, then directs me back to the Dash-8. I guess they are subcontractors.

This Dash-8 is familiar. This is the same Dash-8 that skirt woman was so vigourously defending in Dawson Creek. And guess where we are landing enroute to refuel: Dawson Creek! I don't disembark there, but I crane my neck looking for skirt woman. I don't see her but I want to run to the doorway and yell, "I'm SECURE! I'm coming from VANCOUVER!"

I'm a good little passenger and stay in my seat. There's an interesting passenger announcement while we are there, directing all passengers to remain seated and unfasten our seatbelts during fuelling. It's obviously to facilitate emergency evacuation in the case of a fulling accident, but I've never encountered this before. The CARs forbid fuelling with passengers on board unless it is in compliance with the company operations manual, which means that a company needs individual approval from Transport Canada and a set of procedures in their company manual regarding how it is to be done. Evidentally this company has included seatbelts unfastened in their manual.

As we depart I can see that there is a big white X on the grass in front of the water landing area. An X is the 'closed' symbol for airport maneuvering areas, and sure enough when I get a chance to check the NOTAMs for the airport I see that it is closed until the 6th of October.

NOTAM 100062 CYDQ DAWSON CREEK(WATER)
CBD3 AD CLSD
1007060600 TIL APRX 1010061800

No explanation is included. The water looked full of algae, but it probably always does. There was plenty of water, it's nowhere near freeze-up. I suppose there could have been some kind of construction going on, but nothing I noticed that would justify closing one of the few fuel stops for float planes on the Alaska Highway route.

We have a quick hop to destination, then it turns out there's another airplane that beat us to the airport and it's on the IFR approach, so we hold. You really don't know the difference between turning and straight in a properly coordinated airplane with no visual reference. We get our approach clearance and land. I think the airplane that we had to wait for was the same one that I didn't gt on in Vancouver.

I collect my bags, which somehow made it, and call the hotel shuttle. The guy at the hotel asks my to clarify which part of the airport I'm at. Aha! They know it's not all about the passenger terminal. The shuttle picks me up and then stops again at an ATCO trailer to pick up three people who arrived in a C172. They are VFR and the weather to the south is too iffy for them. It looks nice here now. I mean it's raining, but a decent ceiling. Yet I know how nasty it can get around here. Also it's July and I'm wearing a heavy jacket, the one I wear in January. Love the north.

I check into the hotel. My room not ready, but at least they have a booking for me this time. The airplane is not here yet. Another pilot is bringing it. I sit down in the lobby and make some local calls, phoning around to find hangar space for scheduled maintenance. Someone has a hangar, but isn't sure that the airplane will fit inside. I know my dimensions, and they say yes, they've had this type in the hangar before, some fit, some don't. Does it have a high beacon on top of the tail? I have a photo of the airplane that will be coming here on my iPod and I zoom in to look. Yes, it has a beacon on the top of the vertical stabilizer. We'll see, maybe we can maneuver it in.

I go for a meal (perogies) and then get into my room and e-mail the other pilot about what I've learned about hangar space. He says nope, the airplane doesn't have that beacon anymore. It stopped working and instead of repairing it they took it off, capped off the hole, and replaced it with a multi LED belly beacon.

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.

Time Check

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

9:00 Eat apple.

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

9:31 Add nose down trim.

9:32 Restore nose up trim.

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

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

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

11:30 Run out of arrowroot cookies.

12:15 Switch tank selectors to inboards.

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

12:33 Discuss the clouds that are forming

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

20:00 Blog.

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

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

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

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