Photo Finish

I checked with maintenance regarding my recent post about the fire protection system. Our fire detector is photocell activated. The photocell is sensitive to a particular wavelength of light, supposedly characteristic of fire.

I didn't get to ask the obvious questions about why fire detection systems aren't overwhelmed with false positives from the sun, an awesome source of almost every electromagnetic wavelength, and able at some time of the day or some practical bank angle, to shine through every chink and opening in an engine cowling. An apprentice had a more pressing question about reinstallation of an exhaust manifold, and I was wearing silly girl shoes for a social event, so I teetered back out of the hangar to the office and left the maintenance to the maintainers.

Along with the answer to my question, and before the apprentice needed direction, I received the following story. A certain air carrier's night maintenance crew (they know who they are) conducted an inspection on at least one of the carrier's fleet. Their fire detection system used visible light, and the crew followed the manufacturer's instructions to test it by shining a flashlight on the detectors. The system failed the test. The crew was preparing to replace several thousand dollars worth of aviation grade electronic gear, when someone realized that that instructions were as old as the system, twenty years or so, and predated the invention of the LED flashlights the crew were using. The diodes were not emitting the necessary wavelength to trigger the detector, because when the instructions said "flashlight" an incandescent flashlight was assumed.

 The Wikipedia article on Fire Detection suggests that our photocell might be tuned to multiple wavelengths, possibly including UV and/or IR to compare the ratios. This still doesn't explain how an ordinary incandescent flashlight would trigger it, but the sun wouldn't, but does make the concept of photometric flame detection clearer. While looking for more information on flame detectors I discovered that there is a whole new generation of fire detection that uses machine intelligence to recognize the appearance of actual flames, something that is pretty fricking clear to humans. Combined with smoke detectors, something a commenter suggested on the previous post, there are enough different kinds of combustion detectors on aircraft to warrant a survey post on the topic, some time when my working day is shorter.

I was also entertained by the Wikipedia article on the Flashlight, which explains why Americans call them flashlights. The earliest zinc–carbon batteries could not provide a steady electric current so when combined with the inefficient carbon-filament bulbs, the result was a light that frequently blinked off so the battery could recover.

Disowned

One of our aircraft has an optional engine fire extinguishing system installed. The extinguishing system is optional. Engine fires are an option we don't want to exercise. The system is fairly simple, a halon bottle installed in the accessories compartment, a sensor, a couple of lights on the dashboard, and a pair of guarded switches to discharge the bottle. There's very little in the way of documentation, because it's not original to the airplane, but what's called an STC. STC stands not very helpfully for "special type certificate" and what that means is that someone has paid a whole lot of money to have this gizmo approved for this airplane.

I don't actually know how the sensor works. I'm guessing the sensor is based on a bimetallic strip that will bend and close a contact if heated to a temperature hotter than a not-on-fire engine should induce at its location. Or it could be a photocell. I've flown an airplane with a photocell-based fire detection system before. Hmm, wouldn't a photocell result in the fire light going on when maintenance did an uncowled runup in the daytime? I don't think that happens. In the event of an engine fire, I'm supposed to select the appropriate switch in after I have completed the original manufacturer's engine fire checklist.

A fire extinguisher needs to be sent out for hydrostatic testing on a periodic basis, and the ones in the engine are no exception. They have their testing due date stamped on the bottles. The director of maintenance tells me he can't find any information on the STC, can I please research and find the schematics and the maintenance instructions for the unit.  I track down the company that bought the company that bought the company that manufactured the STCed (pronounced "ess-tee-seed") system, but they don't have any information on it. They refer me to their European affiliate, which finally tells me conclusively that the product was not profitable for them, so they no longer support it. They have apparently lost or destroyed all information pertaining to the system. Charming.

We will have no choice but to remove it.

Automatic Rough Running

I'm re-reading Vol de nuit by Antoine de Saint Exupéry. It's available here for free. I know it has been translated into English, but perhaps the copyright hasn't expired on the translations yet, because I didn't find it online in translation. It's one of those novel like Fate is the Hunter that pilots like to read because the author identifies situations and feelings we didn't even know were there to express. Non-pilots can read them and get a glimpse what a pilot thinks and feels. Both are about what now is history, so they allow me to look into the past and imagine life without SIGMETs, without reliable weather forecasting or reporting at all.

The passage that made me want to share was this. It's a conversation between a pilot and a manager, about the pilot's experience when his instrument lights failed. He has already admitted to being afraid.

Je me sentais au fond d'un grand trou dont il était difficile de remonter. Alors mon moteur s'est mis à vibrer...

— Non.
— Non ?
— Non. Nous l'avons examiné depuis. Il est parfait. Mais on croit toujours qu'un moteur vibre quand on a peur.

My translation: (if someone has a copy in English, a professional translation is probably better).

"I felt like I was at the bottom of a big hole that was difficult to get out of. Then my engine started vibrating..."

"No."

"No?"

"No. We examined it afterwards. It was perfect. But one always believes that an engine is vibrating when one is afraid."

It's so true. The name in English for the phenomenon is "automatic rough". You get automatic rough running as you get overhead a large body of water, impenetrable mountains, or simply go further from your home airport than you've ever been.

Trial by Fire

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

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

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

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

"How does it get that way?"

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

"Could it be the gauge?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Engine Startrekinsey Sequence

I'm not sure if this is a cohesive description of the engine start sequence or an unpublished chapter of Joyce's Ulysses in which we follow Aviatrix's stream of consciousness as she slides into aircraft manual-induced, chocolate-deprived madness. Either way, come for the engines, stay for the Star Trek references and sexual innuendo.

When I start my car, I put my foot on the brake, the key in the ignition, turn and hold the key until the engine sounds just right, then release the key and the engine continues. That's a little bit complex. You have to get a feel for when to release the key. When I first learned to drive there was another complication, in that I had to put my foot on the gas as well and give it just enough gas to start. But many of you start old manual transmission cars every day without even thinking about the process. And some of you start up an electric car by, I understand, pushing a button. I think they just push a button to start the starship Enterprise too, so this is clearly the way of the future.

Push button airplanes exist, and starting mine does begin with pressing a button, but it's a little more complicated than that, and I have to know and understand the whole sequence, including the stuff that does happen automatically. I'm sure I'll be quizzed on this all during the test, and if I'm going to feel helpless someday when I can't get the engine started, I'd best know exactly what is failing to happen.

Before Start

I need to be sure that the inlet and exhaust are free of debris, that the first stage compressor has no visible damage, that the P2T2 probe is clear, the propeller is on the blade angle locks, and that it moves freely. I should check the oil, make sure the speed levers and power levers move freely and are set in the low and just ahead of ground idle positions, respectively. If I'm using a GPU I should make sure it's supplying 24 V and 1000 A, and if I'm using batteries I should check that they have a good charge.

0 - 10% RPM

After the prestart checks are complete, I press and hold the start button. As a result:

• the #1 start control relay closes
• the starter relay closes
• the oil vent valve opens
• the anti-ice lockout valve closes
• the starter engages to rotate the engine

And let's see what that all means.

The #1 start control relay "is used to control the starter relay and the oil vent valve during ground starts, and the propeller unfeather pump during air starts." It "also opens the voltage regulator 'B' to starter-generator 'A' lead to prevent field feedback during starts." The first part I get: The #1 start control relay is the electrical string you pull on to get the next two things on the list to happen. If the second part of the description mentioned some kind of particle or anti-matter, I would swear that was from one of the episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation where Wesley saved the ship again. I can surmise that for some reason the starter-generator has an 'A' lead, that the voltage regulator has a 'B' lead, and that these two are normally connected, but that that connection can lead to undesirable feedback during starts. I can further surmise that the voltage regulator is there to regulate generator output, but seeing as the generator isn't put on line until after it has finished being a starter, that there's no need for it to be connected during start.

The starter relay "energizes the starter generator, during ground starts only." That makes sense, because during air starts the starter is not needed: rotation of the engine from the propeller is sufficient.

The oil vent valve is a clever little kludge to prevent the starter having to work against cold sluggish oil pressure as it rotates the engine. It opens up the oil system to allow it to ingest air during ground starts.

The fuel anti-ice lockout valve closes off the line through which the fuel system cycles cold fuel to a heat exchanger with the oil to prevent ice crystals forming in the fuel. At start the oil isn't warm anyway, so the valve is closed to keep the fuel pressure high.

So that's two things that happen when the start button is pressed, two more that happen because of one of those (or three if we count the A-B lead thing) and one one that happens because of the second wave. And that's all before anything even catches on fire.

10 - 55% RPM

When engine RPM reaches 10% the fire is supposed to start. Specifically:

• the 10% speed switch closes
• the #2 start control relay closes
• the series/parallel relay connects the batteries in series, if selected
• the SPR valve is energized
• the fuel solenoid valve opens
• the 'primaries only' fuel solenoid opens
• ignition turns on

And I know what most of that means.

The speed switches contain reverse tachyon tribarium warp core interfaces a DC regulating system, a signal conditioning amplifier, timing pulse generators and voltage discriminating circuits (it only allows straight voltages to go through, and the ones with suntans don't get to use the good wires). The speed switches contain STUFF, okay, including three relays. The 10% relay (which the voltage discriminating circuits probably think is an overestimate, or maybe a lifestyle choice) is normally open, the 55% relay is normally closed and the 90% relay is normally open. They receive electrical signals from the "tach gen" which for the purpose of my own amusement I will imagine stands for tachyon generator. Each relay changes its respective state when engine rotation reaches the corresponding speed. The 90% one isn't important to engine starting, but I didn't want to leave it out, as it's probably already getting enough hassle from the voltage discriminating circuits. Best I can tell from the ten pages of starter circuit diagrams, when the 10% speed switch closes, it energizes the #2 start control relay, and the #2 start control relay does the four other things on the list: ignition on, batteries to series, SPR energized and fuel solenoid on.

Hey who thinks I should be allowed chocolate now?

The series-parallel switch sounds like something Scotty would do at the last minute to keep the Enterprise from falling into a black hole.

"It's no use Captain. We haven't got enough juice to get the warp engines online."

"You've got to get them online Scotty, or we're all dead!"

"Well I suppose if I cross connected the dilithium crystals from the other nacelle, it could possibly give enough of a boost to get the warp core online. It's never been done before, laddie."

And then he does it, and it works and the he publishes a paper on the subject, and the manufacturer comes out with a bulletin saying never to do it because it voids the warrantee. It's just like that. In fact it's hard to believe that some desperate pilot didn't invent it while stranded on a reserve somewhere, except that this isn't a bush plane. The manufacturer has set it up so you can flick a switch and the batteries, usually connected in parallel, one to each starter-generator, automatically go into series when the power is needed most. My company, however, says that the power is not needed most at 10% but rather at about 18-28% where there are bad vibrations (seriously, that's the reason), so what I'm supposed to do is start the engine with the series-parallel switch in parallel, but if the engine rpm is at or above 18% and not increasing steadily by 1% per second through 25%, I should flick the switch into series then. I was so impressed by this in groundschool I immediately asked why I wouldn't do it every time. It's because it's very hard on the batteries and if you drain both of them together, you only have one shot, so you have to hit it with your best shot. Also if you do it at night you need to have a flashlight handy, because it will dim the lights and you won;t be able to see the engine instruments.

The SPR valve is another thing they didn't get quite right, according to company procedures. It sounds all cool and modern with the TLA and all, and it stands for Start Pressure Regulator which brings to mind the idea that it might be some sort of computer. Nope. It's the primer. Yeah, the primer. I have to prime this puppy. Primer is available between ten and fifty-five percent rpm, but I should prime it between zero and ten percent, then not prime it between ten and twenty-five, then go back to priming until 55% when the 55% speed switch opens and de-energizes it. The SPR bypasses the fuel control unit and fuel flow transmitter, going straight to the primary fuel nozzles.

The fuel solenoid valve is the thing that lets the fuel into the engine so the igniters have something to ignite. I'm sure that makes them very happy. You can close these valves mechanically with an emergency stop control, but then you can't open them again. Ever. Okay probably not ever. I assume maintenance can fix you up again. The primaries only solenoid allows fuel through only the primary starter nozzles, not the full manifold.

The igniters are not something that I have a lot of information on, but the ignition exciters supply "a nominal high voltage of 18,000' volts to the igniters" so the exciters seem to be serving as fluffers to the igniters. The igniters are some kind of high tech spark plug that lights the fuel. I know they are different than glow plugs, because I flew an airplane once on which some models had glow plugs and some models had igniters and this was apparently different enough that I was supposed to care. (Can you tell I didn't?) I pretended to at the time, and phasers on kill, I swear I will pretend to care about this, too. The igniters light my fire. Can't start a fire without a spark. What is wrong with me? I almost never quote song lyrics. Because I don't know any.

A light comes on when the igniters are working, and the EGT should rise, indicating that something is actually on fire in there, and that the hot exhaust is coming out the right end. When it happens, the pilot can release the start button. If it doesn't happen within ten seconds of reaching 10% rpm, or before reaching 20% rpm, the pilot should shut down the engine. She does this by pressing the stop button, pulling the stop and feather control and then continuing to motor the engine for ten seconds with the starter test switch.

55% RPM

When the 55% switch (which the book calls a 50% switch, but the book is for an older model of engine, so I have to assume that changed) opens, everything that the #1 and #2 start control relays did gets undone, except for the opening of the fuel solenoid:

• the starter relay closes
• the starter turns off
• the anti-ice lockout valve opens
• the oil vent valve closes
• the series/parallel relay goes back to parallel, if it was used
• the ignition turns off
• SPR becomes unavailable
• primaries only fuel solenoid closes

Whew, that feels good. It was actually worth it. It took too long, though. I spent a couple of hours on that, between course notes, two manuals and the engine supplement. And stalking around hoping chocolate would spontaneously appear.

Is there some kind of vitamin, found only in chocolate, from which deprivation makes it difficult to study without degenerating into lame Star Trek references, old song lyrics and crude jokes?

I'm also getting antsy, waiting for my training to be scheduled. I have a job offer already, but until I actually go online as a pilot, I don't really have a job. They scheduled the first two while I was there, and I know the second one had a PPC ride today. But it could have been delayed by aircraft or training pilot availability. That happens. Or they decided they hated me and are just going to ignore me. It's not paranoia when they really are out to get you. I e-mailed the chief pilot with a question about where I should send my paperwork, kind of the way I ask ATC for an altimeter setting when I haven't talked to them in a while.

Fastest Seaplane in the World

When I returned from Cambodia Elizabeth wanted to know what I thought of the most recent postcard she had sent me. I mumbled vaguely about being pretty ignorant about fighter planes because I think of them more as weapons of war than aircraft. (Not that I would turn down a ride or some stick time in one, but I'm not a high-G freak). Elizabeth was, I think, offended. "It's not a military airplane, it's a racing seaplane!" I had to admit that I really didn't remember that and she muttered darkly that my not recalling it told her all she needed to know about my reaction.

So I felt really badly, and even considered digging through the pile of mail on my desk to find the seaplane, but no, you gotta be kidding, my taxes and HST bill are in there. That's not something that even a sweet little seaplane was going to assuage. I'm not ready for that pile yet. So I felt ever so redeemed when a few days later I picked up my mail and there in the pile was the fastest seaplane of all time. Just not the fastest at getting through the mail from Victoria, B.C.

I had never even heard of racing seaplanes. Well, I knew that at the dawn of aviation runways were rare and waterways plentiful, so many aircraft, especially if they needed a long takeoff run, were built for water operation. They were slow and draggy anyway, so what difference would a couple of floats make? You say seaplane and I think of the aerodynamics of the Beaver, the old single Otter, or the Clipper. You say 1934 and I think of of the DC-3, which could go maybe 340 kilometres an hour, flat out, or stubby little conventional gear, airplanes like the Lockheed Vega, clocked at 547 km/h. But if you can read the text on the postcard you'll see that that sleek skinny red Macchi Castoldi set a world speed record in 1934, clocked at 709 km/h.

According to this website, the Great Depression kept the US out of the Schneider Cup competition, so that probably explains why a North American-centric aviation education omitted this information. The contest was established to encourage innovation in seaplane design, and seems to have stressed safety and utility at first, but the figure-eight taxi around buoys and the operation on rough water elements of the competition are overshadowed by the speed races. It took a few years to improve the engine airflow so that the speed didn't "affect the carburetion." I suspect that this refers to intake turbulence depriving the engine of a steady flow of air at high speeds.

One of the problems with trying to get high speed out of piston aircraft is that as you increase the size of the engine, you either have to increase the drag profile of the airplane, or you have a long engine with poor cooling for the rear cylinders. The Macchi Castoldi has gone the second route, with a V24 engine--twenty-four cylinders in that long, long nose--and got around the cooling problem with radiators. Lots of radiators. The yellowish strips in the picture, on the floats, the wings, and I believe also the struts are radiators. The oil cooler is wrapped around the outside of the engine, inside the cowling, and there is an additional oil cooler in the rear of the floats! This is still the fastest piston seaplane ever, and it took over twenty-five years for its record to be broken by a jet-powered seaplane.

Thank you, Elizabeth for introducing me to a chapter in aviation history that I never knew was there. Also thank you Elizabeth for providing some bonus aviation postcards to the Cambodia trip donors who requested postcards.

Jackson Hole Overrun

I referred yesterday to the American Airlines runway excursion at Jackson Hole, Wyoming. That's looks like a tough, could-happen-to-anyone situation. The high airport elevation makes your gut instincts wrong, because as a result of low density air the airplane is moving faster over the ground than the airspeed indicator shows. The visibility means that you're on the gauges until decision height, then, drifting in a crosswind, you look up, find the runways lights off to one side, and land on the pavement that you trust is outlined by the lights, with everything reflecting off the swirling snow. The snow doesn't even look like snow. It looks like some weird flashing thing, just stabbing at you. Honestly, passengers who are perfectly familiar with the terrestrial sort of snow ask "what is that?" But you can't sit there and stare mesmerized like the Enterprise bridge crew. You have to land, make sure the thrust reversers have deployed, brake, trust the antilock, keep straight with no visual references and uncertain braking conditions and by that point all the formulae and calculations and runway friction data are academic. You are doing your job and just hoping that the rate of deceleration you're getting is such that by the time vee equals zero, half eh tee squared is less than runway length minus touchdown point. The Boeing 757 is slowed after landing by thrust reversers which direct the engine thrust forward, spoilers, which both provide aerodynamic drag and reduce the lifting power of the wings, increasing the weight on the wheels so that the wheel brakes are more effective.

The chart I have for the Jackson Hole runway 19 ILS approach shows a standard 200' decision height and what Canadians call an advisory visibility of three quarters of a mile. That is, one can reasonably expect to be able to see to land on the runway with that visibility and a ceiling above 200'. Reported conditions at the airport were a ceiling of 400 feet, light snow and visibility of 1 mile. Winds were 10 knots from 240 degrees. So the pilots expected to be able to land, and they did, but what went wrong?

I don't know. It's a sexy looking airplane, but I've never flown anything remotely like it. The information I have tells me:

The FDR data indicate that the aircraft touched down at approximately 132 knots. At touchdown, the air/ground parameter changes to "ground" for approximately one second and then switches to "air" for approximately ½ second before changing back to "ground" for the remainder of the recording. The thrust reverser discrete parameters on the FDR indicate that approximately 18 seconds elapsed from the time the reversers began moving until they were fully deployed.

I don't know the recommended touchdown speed for the aircraft at its actual landing weight, but 132 knots does not seem out of line. Without more knowledge of this aircraft systems I naïvely assume the air/ground parameter information means that the aircraft bounced slightly. This appears to have reset the thrust reversers and spoilers the same way a go-around would. Both are armed on approach and then activate automatically when the airplane sensors show that the main wheels are on the ground. This discussion suggests that wheel braking is restricted to half until sensors report that there is weight on the nosewheel. More informed discussion elsewhere doesn't mention the possibility of a bounce, and it's hard to see in the video. It does show very slow deployment of reverse thrust. Perhaps it was a landing gear sensor that "bounced" rather than the physical airplane. There also seems to have been a maintenance problem with the autospeedbrake (i.e. spoiler) handle in the cockpit, something that I'm sure will be scrutinized closely.

Look in the comments for possible contributions from readers more knowledgeable about this aircraft.

On Condition

Aircraft engines must be maintained according to a manufacturer's published TBO (pronounced Tee-Bee-Owe) or Time Before Overhaul. An airplane engine is typically considered reliable for about the same duration as a car engine, perhaps two thousand hours of use, but when a car's engine wears out, most owners discard the car and engine.1 With an airplane, you overhaul the engine: returning it to factory specifications, replacing whatever parts are necessary to achieve that. It's expensive and time consuming, interrupting normal use for the airplane and , like any maintenance procedure, sometimes introducing new problems. Engine life is a bell curve, of course, so a few engines break down and require overhaul before their TBO and many are in fine condition after reaching TBO. For this reason, regulatory provisions are available to allow an operator to run an engine beyond the TBO, subject to various conditions.

I was amused by this line at the beginning of the Transport Canada description of the process: "The program was not being used as envisioned, for an extension to a useful life, but has been extended, beyond its intended purpose, to an overhaul avoidance program." Well duh! What would the purpose of extending an engine's useful life be if not avoiding overhauling it? It's not a humanitarian gesture to allow old engines to feel useful, or an environmental statement. Every decision made in an aviation environment is balancing safety against economics, and if you're cynical even the safety decisions are based on economic criteria: accidents are expensive.

As I read it, the on-condition program is a bet the operator makes that his pilots, AMEs and operating conditions are better than the manufacturer's assumptions and that therefore his engines don't have to be overhauled as soon as the manufacturer says. You have to make that bet for your whole fleet, and stick to it. There's nothing that specifically says you can't hedge your bets and decide to go on condition a few hundred hours from the end of the engine life, but once one aircraft is officially on condition, the others of the same type in the fleet must be too, regardless of the relative time on their engines. Once the "approved maintenance schedule" specifies that the fleet operates on condition, then all the relevant extra checks must be done.

The price of the bet the operator makes is:
a) the specified inspections, which I assume are slightly more thorough than the regular inspections of an engine, and
b) the risk that the engine fails an on condition inspection before TBO.
I think b) is not a great worry, because if an engine component were in a condition that it would fail such a check, then you'd be glad to have caught it in a routine inspection rather than through a catastrophic failure causing further damage and downtime.

The payoff of the bet is that you may be able to extend the engine life past the usual TBO. Experience with our fleet suggest that it's not necessarily a safe bet, because the engines seem to need major attention pretty close to TBO anyway. If the on condition inspections cost any appreciable time or money over the regular ones, it might not be a good bet for the long term. But it always seems like a good idea just as an overhaul is coming due on both engines of a reliable airplane that is needed online.

This afternoon I went out for a run with the new AME. He's fast. His pace quickly sends my heart rate out of my training zone, but just switch off my heart rate monitor and keep up. A fast run now and again is probably good for me. After that it's Pasta Tuesday at Boston Pizza, which we admit sadly has become the highlight of our week.

1. There are people who do overhaul automotive engines, and keep automobiles running rather than discarding them. This is much more common in the US than Canada, and evident as soon as you cross the border, because the mix of automobiles on the road immediately skews to older and more American makes. I'm guessing it's because the American cars manufactured twenty or thirty years ago were a lot more amenable to user-maintenance than the European and Japanese models that were already more common in Canada. American movies always show guys fixing up old cars, sometimes as a rite of passage. I think it's part of the culture.

What We Train For

I'm way too late to the party to comment much on the uncontained engine failure on Qantas flight 32 on November 5th, but I wanted to share with you the cabin PA the captain made during the incident. I'm always interested in what makes these sound frightening or reassuring, and I think this captain did a very good job of this minor detail of the emergency handling, as well as the major job of putting the airplane back on the ground efficiently. They had some hard decisions to make.

The issue that has forced the grounding of Qantas' entire fleet of A380, as you'll know if you've been following the story, is not so much an Airbus problem as a Rolls-Royce problem. The engine failed so spectacularly that Rolls Royce has recalled forty of its Trent 900 engines worldwide, and the incident airframe may be a write-off. Debris from the engine damaged the wing spar and it's not certain how that might be repaired or replaced in this new, composite aircraft. Christine Negroni drew my attention to and summarizes a power point presentation on the extent of the damage, blogged by Ben Sandilands.

Amazing Little-Known Aircraft

I really should spend some of the energy I expend reading webcomics and watching Law & Order reruns on keeping up with the coolness of experimental aviation. Here are a few I've been collecting to share with you, none of which I found out about as soon as I should have, so don't expect any breaking news.

The Goodyear Inflatoplane was built long before I was born, but really that is the sort of thing that legend should keep alive in everyone's hearts, even though the project is long gone. I love inflatable stuff. Inflatable Christmas decorations, punching bags, air mattresses, pool toys, you name it. And "Inflatoplane" is the best name. They really knew how to name things back then. The airplane I learned to fly in was designed in the same age of naming, and its features includes omnivision, paralift and land-o-matic.

Fortunately the fifties named inventions that were yet to be invented, so that this is still called a rocket pack or a jetpack or a rocket belt. It's a bit like the personal videophone though, into the proof of concept phase, but still not really there. Another model leaves the fuel on the ground, and removes dangerous exhaust from the vicinity of the user, allowing for much more flight time, but restricting the flight path to over relatively calm water.

This experimental miniature airplane uses the same flight techniques as the birds I love to watch, controlling their momentum with such precise timing that they come to a full-stall landing on a single point. It's awesome to watch them adjusting everything to make that landing. They mess up sometimes, but because their wingtips and tail sections are made of feathers, they don't need to report for major repairs or inspections when they do. Birds land on power lines because they are available and away from predators, so it's doubly cool that the MAV is using the power line as a food source, actually poaching the current to recharge its batteries.

And finally, last month the Solar Impulse has completed a flight of over twenty-six hours (yes, through the night and into the next day) entirely on solar power. The team is planning to build an even more efficient solar-powered airplane and do a round the world trip. I'm embarrassed that I didn't know about this the same day it happened, because it's the coolest thing ever. I'd love to fly a solar or human-powered aircraft. I should really get my glider licence. Started it once, but then I moved for a job, to somewhere there weren't gliders.

Old Joke - New Ending

This post started out as me just posting a joke, but then I thought too hard about it.

Passenger: Why was the flight delayed?
CSA: The pilot didn't like the sound of the engine.
Passenger: Did they get another engine?
Old Ending: No, they got another pilot.
New Ending: No, they downloaded new sounds.

They're talking about putting artificial sounds on electric cars so that blind people can hear them. They already have artificial pre-stall warning symptoms (i.e. the stick shaker) on airliner flight decks, to mimic the feeling of the stall buffet in the airplanes most pilots learned to fly in. Perhaps someday there will be a reason to use artificial engine sounds to mimic the sounds pilots are accustomed to in monitoring our engines. Detonation, backfiring, missed cylinders, loose flyweights, or "scary banging sounds."

Usually gauges provide the information we need, but there have certainly been many times when an engine sound has made me look at the gauges. Gauge irregularities make us listen to the engines (make us look at them too, that's actually part of the procedure, to make sure they aren't on fire).

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There's an unexpected aviation connection to breaking news. Prince William, who is second in line to the throne and will probably become the King of Canada someday, has just announced his engagement to a woman who is the progeny of a flight attendant and a flight dispatcher. Long live the Queen!

And The Winner Is ...

I would be disappointed with your response to the Jet Age book giveaway except that it tells me something amusingly wonderful about the community of people who read this blog. You really do think it's better to give than receive. That is, when I asked you to donate something to help me help Cambodians recover from decades of brutality, so many of you responded, and so fast and so generously that I literally lost count. But when I had an opportunity to give a prize to you, you had some fun telling stories, but there wasn't much enthusiasm in voting or competing for a prize. I guess for the American majority there's been too much talk about voting this week.

What votes there were produced a tie between Chris's story of the downed C172 pilot:

A friend of mine told me a story of his service in the Royal Australian Air Force - it even has a Canadian connection.

He was ferrying the original flight of DHC-4 Caribou aircraft from Canada to Australia which necessitated a number of stops, the Caribou being relatively short legged and not equipped for inflight refuelling. Somewhere over North Africa he picked up a very faint distress signal on 121.5. He diverted to the source of the signal and because it was so faint they had a hard time tracking it down, often losing it entirely. Eventually he found a lone pilot standing under the wing of his wrecked C172. Circling for a bit, the crew dropped some food and all the water they had, then bid the pilot farewell and flew on for their destination, reporting the crash site at the next aerodrome. They flew onward but before reaching their original destination of Australia they were again diverted - this time for South Vietnam. He never learned of the fate of that bloke, stranded in the sea of sand.

Years later, standing in a bar in Laos in a small village in the middle of nowhere. An Air America pilot heard the Australian voices and came over shouting the whole crew a drink. He said bought drinks for any Australian flight crews he met because years earlier he had an engine failure ferrying a C172 across North Africa, crash landed and was on his last legs when a Caribou dropped food and water and sent rescuers to his position...it was the same bloke whose life they had saved.

... and an anonymous reader who e-mailed me before posting to identify himself:

When I was a boy I listened to Tom Rutledge tell a story about when he was a young man. Tom worked for the Wright engine company and was tasked with building J5 engines and “running them in”. A variety of plane and pilot teams were then attempting to be the first to cross the Atlantic non-stop. Since the Wright J5 was the a reliable engine most were choosing it for their planes. Tom’s coworkers with more seniority were allowed first choice of whose engines they would build.

After assembly, the J5 engines would run on a test stand with the valve cove removed so that one could “hit” the valve rocker arms with a rubber mallet when the valves became stuck. The valves would stick sometimes until they had been run for a time. While Tom was working with an especially difficult engine, whacking on it with his mallet, he was introduced to Charles Lindberg, his engine’s owner.

I like both stories. Note that they both were stories the teller had heard someone else tell. Telling each other stories is part of aviation, for sure. Together they illustrate some true things, good and bad about aviation. The risk involved in crossing stretches of water in smaller airplanes. Dependence on our engines and our mechanics. Looking out for one another, and paying it forward. All favours and bribes are paid in beer. And no matter where you are, if there's another pilot there you'll have a connection.

As I have to cast the tie-breaking vote, I'll choose the C172 story. Chris, please send me your mailing address.

Test Flight

I stay in the hotel this morning, anticipating the airplane working in the p.m. and me needing a fresh duty day. I believe they cleared some small deferred snags in the morning and then I joined them for lunch and to check Greyhound for our package. The AME returns to the truck swearing. He has the package. The disinterested girl at the counter has just told him it arrived yesterday. He says he didn't even bother telling her, "You just cost the company $10,000," because she wasn't going to care.

He manages to remove the old servo in an hour, but it takes three to put it on and reassemble the airplane. We go for dinner, where the service is terrible. The waitress never looks at us. She has admirable breasts, and probably complains about people staring at them, but lady the "my eyes are up here" thing works both ways. We get pretty much all of our service requests relayed through a waitress who is working in a different section.

After dinner the AME starts the paperwork. He asks me to check the throttle and mixture cable connections inside the engine, something I haven't been officially assigned before. After verifying that they are attached and that the levers have proper cockpit travel I sign part of the paperwork, too. I've signed many times after a test flight for the airplane conforming to the type, but this is my first dual signature for the work itself. The law allows me to do this as the pilot of the airplane, because I'm expected to know how it should work.

We run up and taxi out for a test flight. The AME wants to fly, so I do the same thing I did as a flight instructor: have him taxi along the centreline of the taxiway so I can see his control. The taxiway is wiggly here, as it goes around the terminal loading area, and he follows the line adequately, so I have him do the take-off. We start with full static power (that is: advance the throttles to full while holding the brakes) to see that the correct power is developing with all the temperatures and pressures correct. It is, so we release the brakes and I let him drive for the take-off roll. I call rotation and coach him to the correct attitude for a blue line climb. Everything looks good and I bring back the power to slow cruise. There's no one around, so it doesn't matter where we go. He does a couple of airborne doughnuts and everything is fine, so I direct him to a downwind back towards the airport and ask him to reduce the throttles by one inch of manifold pressure. He pulls about five inches off and jockeys them back and forth trying to get it right. "Just so you know," I explain, "That's what pilots mean if we complain about a throttle being oversensitive. These aren't that bad, but sometimes they can be almost impossible to set with one motion.

I ask him if he knows how to use the trim, which he does, theoretically, because he knows how to repair it, but he didn't expect the trim to be so sensitive, either. He knows it's about seven turns from one end to the other, so puts in a quarter turn instead of just nudging it, and startles himself. I take over and approach to land. There's no PAPI approach slope indicator on this runway and he asks about that. It's only on the opposite runway. We land and then he tells me we have to let the engines cool off a bit for five minutes and then go up again.

This time I fly a quick circuit, to land back on the end of the runway that has the PAPI, so he can see it. He points out that I have left the emergency fuel pumps on for the whole circuit and I agree. I leave them on any time that it would be severely inconvenient to have an engine quit. If I were teaching a student to fly circuits I'd have them turn them off reaching circuit altitude and on again on downwind with prelanding checks, but for one circuit I deliberately leave them on for the whole time. I put down the gear and turn base, then final. He looks at the PAPI on short final and quotes "four red you're dead!" I explain that if we follow the PAPI exactly to keep two red and two while all the way to the runway we land 1000' in, so since we have to turn around and backtrack the runway to get off, I'm landing on the numbers, which to the PAPI is way low.

We return to parking and I text the PRM with the successful outcome. He replies "Next time don't do a test flight at night." We look around. I guess it might be getting a bit dark now, but I don't think it's night. I didn't check specifically, but usually one can tell. I text back that it's not night yet. He texts back "At 10 p.m.?!" I check with Flight Services. Night officially started six minutes after we landed. We're good. The PRM meanwhile has considered our latitude and conceded that it might still be light here.

I sign the part in the logbook that says the airplane can fly the way it's supposed to, and we head to Boston Pizza where I buy the AME a beer, because he worked hard and I know he's broke. He offers me a sip and laughs at me when I look at my watch before accepting it. That's ingrained. I am never going to be "oops" illegal on a flight as far as alcohol is concerned.

The HSI still doesn't work, and it can't be replaced with the copilot side directional gyro because that DG is driven by pneumatic suction and the HSI is electric, so the connections aren't the same. We're technically legal for night or IFR now because there's another VOR and an NDB, and the law doesn't say where the heading indicator has to be, but a scan involving a heading instrument on the other side of the cockpit isn't the most fun thing to do.

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Also, there's still time to enter the contest to win a book by telling me your favourite true aviation story, personal or historical. Judging in a couple of days.

Fixing Things That Aren't the Fuel Servo

While we're waiting for the part, we go out and work on the airplane to see if we can find another cause that doesn't require a new part. I think it's a bit like looking for your lost contact lens in the spot that has the best light, but what else do we have to do? It's also kind of entertaining seeing how everything comes apart. We know the fuel isn't getting to the engine fast enough at full throttle, so maybe it could be a fuel flow blockage somewhere.

While the AME works on the main problem, the pilots go to work on some small snags. My coworker is using a screwdriver and a flashlight inside an awkwardly situated access port in order to try and fix the cowl flap position indicator. It has been registering half open when the cowl flap is really fully open. He tweaks the sender one way and I motor the cowl flap up and down. Now it registers a quarter open when it is fully closed. After a lot of fiddling he gets it to show closed when it is closed and almost all the way open when it is fully open. The AME says it will probably fail completely soon, and he has ordered the potentiometer required to repair it properly. There's also one blade on one propeller that isn't heating up properly, but that turns out to be merely a disconnected wire, and a very easy fix.

The AME does not remove the unserviceable HSI because his licence doesn't permit him to take it apart anyway, and he hopes to have a good avionics shop in Edmonton look at it in situ, which will be quicker and less expensive than removing it and shipping it.

He also can't put on the new tire, not only because we don't have a jack, but also because we don't have the right paperwork. The tire company sent was purchased for another airplane in the fleet in a two-for-one sale, and the certification for both tires was on the same piece of paper, which is in the other airplane's technical log. Or somewhere. We have to get it before this tire can be legally used, to prove that it isn't counterfeit.

Breaking Things

I wake up and check my text messages. I should buy a scrubbing brush so I can clean my nails better. There are three texts for me. The first one says the a.m. flight departed at 16Z. The second one says it didn't depart after all, but aborted on the runway for an engine problem. One of the engines--not the one that had the problem earlier--wasn't making full manifold pressure. The third text asks me if I noticed any unusual yaw or power loss. No, I didn't. It climbed like a dog,but it was thirty freaking degrees out, so I can't blame it. They're disassembling it looking for a problem.

Meanwhile I play on the Internet. Dav e Carroll, the United Breaks Guitars guy has release the third and final song to make good his threat to United. This one is no longer angry or sad. It acknowledges that United "broke" his career, but that while he has come out well from the incident, there are a lot of other customers whose damage claims have been ignored and who haven't been able to fight back as well. And it's funny Canadian folk music, which is what I like.

I check the weather and it's ... um ... interesting. Not the weather itself, but the delivery. The METARs have been served up on the screen in completely random order, not chronological at all. The number after 06 in each row is the observation time. There are hardly any two in the right order, just scrambled all over the place. The weather turns out to be irrelevant because the problem is suspected to be a failure of the fuel servo, brand new with the engine, and we don't have a spare with us. We are getting one on Greyhound, yes, the bus. It's the fastest way to get it here, short of chartering a plane to fly it directly.

As we go out to dinner I hear the AME on his phone telling someone about the problem. "And then the GFY light came on," he explains. I ask the other pilot sotto voce what that is and he whispers the answer back to me. Oh. Right.

It's Orange

My airplane, the real airplane this time, not a simulation, arrived at 9:45 a.m. and was wheels up on the next flight at 10:45 exactly. It's not orange, and neither is the mystery plane, but I'll get there. A coworker flew my plane in from the southern shop that did the engine change. We met him at the airplane, helped unload his gear and he briefed me on its various idiosyncrasies. There were no specific engine break-in instructions for me, as the first few hours had been done in test flights and ground runs. My walk around revealed a tire near the end of its tread life, three matching burrs on the three blades of the left propeller and a dirty windscreen. The arriving pilot assured me that a replacement tire was on its way and that the propeller had been clean when he left. We agreed not to park on that gravelly section of the ramp. Also the copilot DG was missing from the panel. It had not been working properly, but don't worry, there's a spare one in a box waiting to be installed. I cleaned the windshield and started up.

It took me a couple of tries to start the left engine, probably a combination of it being already hot from the flight and from the rigging being different, so the ideal throttle position isn't as it was. But I fix my technique for the right and engine, and they both sound great.

I raise the gear when I'm out of runway and climb up over the clearway. It's been trimmed since last time I was here. It was getting scraggly. I notice a black insect with yellow stripes buzzing against the inside of the windscreen. It's not a wasp or a bee. Maybe it's something that doesn't even sting and just has the stripes to scare predators into thinking it will sting. I expect it to stop flying and huddle in a corner of the dashboard, the rapid pressure drop from the climb activating its instinct to shelter from a storm.

I call clear of the zone but remain on frequency to monitor incoming traffic. It's very quiet for a while. The first call I hear is made by an older male voice with a slight northern European accent, maybe Dutch or German. The aircraft is a Cessna 172. Usually an old guy in a C172 is a recreational pilot, probably in his own plane. If you're flying a C172 for work, it's probably early in your career. But I must be wrong in this case, because he says he's on a company flight plan. He then contradicts that by asking for a touch and go. Hmm, is he a student and the "company" is the school? Is he out of currency and needs one more landing before he can pick up his passengers? I'm going to continue with the older guy in his own airplane, but add that he has his own company, too. Maybe he runs a lodge or something. Later he tells the FSS that he's taxiing to the terminal for his passengers. And then they're off, tooling around the north in a single engine airplane. Ça c'est fini.

Just as he is leaving, the airspace gets busy. The FSS is juggling position reports for an inbound Bonanza, a couple of helicopters and me. Everyone reports in and then ATC tells everyone individually where everyone else is with relation to each other. It's not fully necessary, because we aren't even inside the five mile zone and we are listening to each other, but I guess it's their job. And it's an impressive job of spacial visualization considering that they don't have any radar. A pilot calls up in a "Pitts 300S" and the controller asks him what that is. At first I think "How can he not know that? It's a famous aerobatic aircraft!" and then I realize that he didn't say Pitts Special or Extra 300S but Pitts 300S. He tells the controller it's a homebuilt. Ha ha, clever name. Perhaps I'll build a homemade "Comcorde" or "FR-71". Pitts 300S guy gives his ETA as "Four minutes forty-five seconds." Someone has an airplane with ambitions of grandeur and a brand new GPS.

The stripey insect hasn't read the manual on the dangers posed by a rapid drop in air pressure and is still buzzing around. The black and yellow one gives up on the windscreen and flies into the back where the mission specialist complains about it. I admit, "Yeah, there's a mosquito in here too." He asks me to please keep my pets in the cockpit.

I've got critters everywhere. I mash something especially juicy on the outside of the window, then happen to fly through a little rainstorm and get rid of it. That was convenient. That giant smear would have bugged me for hours.

There's a Dash 8 arriving now. (It's probably that same "secured" one I saw in Dawson Creek). I'm crossing their runway approach path and position report so they know it. They have me on TCAS and then they cancel IFR and go by behind me, straight in for landing.

An A-Star calls up "5.4 miles" out and ATC relays his position to another pilot, who makes passive aggressive remarks about how it "would be nice" if the other traffic gave more than 0.4 miles warning of his approach to the airspace. The controller pretends not to notice his attitude.

The controller calls us again, saying that possible traffic is a Rawlins coming from Peace River. Now I don't know what something is. I ask her to say again type. She clarifies. "It's a homebuilt. It's orange." They are expected to be receive only, unable to make radio transmissions and are expected soon. The Dash-8 calls taxiing and the FSS fills him in on the homebuilt. "Expected now, actually."

The Dash-8 calls for its IFR clearance, while sitting in position on the runway. That would be ridiculous at a busy airport in the south, but it's pretty common here for an airliner to sit on the runway waiting to copy their instructions for the whle flight. I let the FSS know that I'm about to pass through the extended centreline of the runway, ten miles back, but they get their clearance and take off anyway. Once again they "have me on TCAS" but I've lost them all together. Then I spot them zooming away to the southeast, lower than I expected. Rather than waiting five seconds they just stayed lower than normal and zoomed underneath me.

The missing orange homebuilt still isn't here. The FSS passes it as 'possible traffic' to everyone. It was due sixteen minutes ago. I hope this isn't going to turn into a search. At least orange is easy to spot. Finally he calls, "39 miles out, be there in thirty minutes." I guess he does have a radio after all, but it's terrible. The FSS can barely understand him. Eventually he arrives, landing on the long runway in the least convenient direction, requiring a long backtrack. But I guess if you fly at sixty knots you land slowly enough that tolerating a five knot tailwind is not a good idea. He frustrates someone by taxiing slowly back down the long runway.

After all this excitement, I'm setting up to land. While orbiting overhead the aerodrome I hear a call "...Tutor jets, flight of two, planning overhead the VOR for the 03 ILS approach." Ha ha! I know what colour they are. There's only one operator that flies Tutor jets. It's our national military aerobatic team. Where there are two there are likely to be all eleven.

I call final and "Snowbird eleven" asks the controller if I am a full stop or a touch and go to remain in the circuit. The controller says full stop and I append, "after six and a half hours, I just want to get it on the ground." The Snowbird pilot says he wishes he had that kind of fuel range. It doesn't matter what you're flying: you're always jealous of someone. I'm in the flare now, so I don't banter, but the controller answers for me. "You're not likely to get much sympathy here, considering what you're flying."

I call clear of the landing surface, "taxiing to parking to watch the airshow."

I was just making a smart remark but there is an airshow. Snowbird 10 and 11 do a low level formation pass and then break and come around to land, followed by three groups of three Snowbirds, doing the same thing, fast and loud and low. "That was awesome" says the controller. "I wish there were more people than just me and that pilot around to see it."

I have parked, not very elegantly, in my usual spot opposite the fuel shack. The engines are still running for the equipment in the back. The jets taxi in and park, one by one in a perfectly straight line next to me. It makes me laugh so hard to be part of this lineup. Of all the days to park crooked.

They climb out of the cockpits, wanting the same thing I want after a mission: the washroom. We direct them, then they come back and we exchange airplane stats. They've just come from Anchorage via Whitehorse and some place in between that they can't remember the name of, in the middle of the Alaskan mountains. They only fly one-hour legs. They can't fly Anchorage to Whitehorse in one leg the way I can. Mind you, they can still do it faster, even with the fuel stop. One of the pilots shows me how to extend the access steps from the outside of his airplane, and invites me to climb up on them and look in his cockpit. Hmm, a single hour in there is probably worth six and a half in mine. And they've had two people in each airplane the whole way, with overnight bags stuffed in the canopy behind the headrests. I'm not sure they can even stretch. And the equipment, wow. As you folks have probably figured out already, this is the mystery panel. Here's a diagram of what they are. These instruments have been serving the Canadian military long enough to retire with a full pension. One of the aviation technicians is there and I ask him how many of these airplanes there are. He says "eleven," but I explain no, not the team, I mean all together. I forget the number, but it was small. They don't have a large pool of parts planes. They have to keep these birds flying with what they have. This is an elite team making commitments all over North America every year and they are flying metal older than mine with not a lot of upgraded components. I'm not quite sure how I asked it, some combination of words and facial expression, to convey, "How do you keep them in the air?" without denigrating a national icon. The technician understands and answers with a wry smile, "It's a labour of love."

The publicist brings me a poster, but I opt not to go after the team for autographs. Their job involves a lot of PR, but they're on a break now. I would have liked to chat to one of the women, though just because we'd have a little more in common. There are so many different aircraft and missions out there but there's enough in common: chatting on the same frequencies, landing at little en route airports we forget the name of and having stray Cheerios rolling around under seats. I giggle at the idea of Cheerios loose in the cockpit of a Tutor jet, but that's what was in the snack bag. The comments are now open to any aircraft maintainers who would like to whine about stupid pilots and their snacks. I know they get everywhere, and I'm sorry, but we all eat Cheerios like we were toddlers.

My favourite snack guess is perogies, just because I like the logistical challenge of actually having them. They would have to be warm, because who wants cold perogies, but they couldn't be too hot, because you have to be able to pop them in your mouth without burning yourself. I guess you cook them, cool them a bit in a colander, then take them on board in a squat thermos, or tupperware wrapped in tinfoil and towels. Kind of awkward, but I have heard stories of a pilot who would bring onboard an entire roast chicken and ingredients to mix for a full Caesar salad.

The jet jockeys let me cut in line to get some fuel before they finish, because they aren't all leaving right away. I hear them leaving later and look out my hotel window as they take off in flights of three, beat up the town, and then zoom off all in formation. They'll be doing airshows in Daytona on the 9th-10th, Atlanta on the 16th-17th and then back in Moose Jaw for their 40th anniversary celebration on the 22nd-23rd.

Much Left Unsaid

The airplane is still not ready. The left engine did not pass its run in check. After about an hour of ground running it made metal and then failed spectacularly enough to damage itself. They apparently have the parts and technology, and are rebuilding it.

Meanwhile the other pilot reports that he is expecting a somewhat perishable package to arrive care of this hotel. Could I please collect it for him and ensure that the enclosed butter tarts get eaten or refrigerated or something? No problem, but this town is the slowest mail delivery place ever. Overnight express Canada Post takes a week. Anything else takes longer. I promise to check every day at the front desk for him, though. They aren't there now, and the desk clerk has no idea at what time the mail is usually delivered. Mail? Delivered? Do you know where you are? Yeah. The ends of the Earth.

Meanwhile the The History Channel is doing a show on the biblical End of Days. I'm not sure how that is history, but it may be of itself a sign of the apocalypse. I'm watching bad TV because hotel internet ranges between terrible and non-existent. I'm afraid this will be a blog theme that becomes boring over the next few weeks, but the internet is not just my entertainment but my communication with company, how I get the weather, file reports and keep in touch with people. And every once in a while the top half of the television picture cuts out, too.

Engine Fairies

I wake up and enjoy the hotel breakfast. (That's something I get to do for the first few days, before my reaction to do-it-yourself waffles and chilled apple juice subsides to "tolerate" or "endure.") There's a Far Side cartoon mocking dogs for getting excited every meal about "Dog food again!" I don't know how they do it.

Seeing as there is no one else here and no airplane, I can't be asked to work today, so I make sure I have my cellphone with me and go for a run. A fast one, not a long one. I just warm up for a kilometre, run a fast mile and then do a couple of kilometres of warm down. I'd do my whole run in kilometres, but the standards on the 5BX programme are for a mile run. I finish three seconds over today's target time. I should have pushed harder, but I could have pushed harder, so I'll get it next time.

In preparation for the airplane arriving, I sort out my flight bag. That means digging all the sharp and liquid stuff that I like to carry with me while I'm flying out of the suitcase and putting it in the flight bag, while taking all the heavy and fragile stuff that I didn't want to check out of the flight bag and putting it back in the suitcase. Plus I buy some apples to eat while I'm flying, and start an OFP for working out of here.

At dinner time I ask at the desk if anyone from my company or the expected customer's company has checked in. Nope, they aren't here. I walk across the parking lot to Boston Pizza and there is a group of people I have worked with enough to recognize. They didn't know I was here. Neat trick, seeing as I checked in on the strength of the reservation they made for me and are paying for. At first they are all excited that if the pilot is here the airplane must be too, but I have to disappoint them. The airplane is still down south finishing up an engine install. Company sent me here early to be prepared for the most optimistic possible scenario, which of course never happens in aviation. In this case that most optimistic scenario probably would have had to involve magical engine fairies and teleportation.

The customers are just finishing up, but one very kindly stays to chat while I eat my dinner.

Uncontained Failure

A Qantas Airlines Boeing 747 jet climbing out of San Francisco on Monday experienced an uncontained failure of the number four engine. That means that the outside right-side engine failed so spectacularly that pieces of it penetrated the cowling, the case around the engine. The linked article has photos, and even though they were taken in the dark you can still see some of the turbine fan blades through the hole.

The pilots of course couldn't see the hole in the engine, only feel the vibrations through the airframe and see whatever indications the engine instruments reported. They certainly wouldn't have been normal. They shut the engine down, dumped fuel to get down to landing weight (you can see a couple of orbits on the Flight Aware track in the Flightglobal piece linked above), and returned for landing at San Francisco to investigate. Passengers saw flames and sparks coming from the engine; one of them took a video of the sparks streaking by, even after the engine was secured.

It's always interesting to see how pilots handle PAs in situations like this. (You can hear a little bit of the captain's announcement in the above video). Some companies give you a script, but the nature of emergencies is that they don't always suit the script. This captain emphasized that the crew train for this, and then I think he tried to throw in a bit of humour by saying, "in the simulator." He sounds calm, and I hope that calmed people down. Passengers tend to think they're all going to die whenever anything happens. The problem with reassuring people is that they always think you're lying to them, or at least that there's a reasonable chance of whatever you are saying won't happen, happening. My approach is to be honest, but a little bit vague about the problem and then distract them from worrying about imminent death by reassuring them that we will find them another airplane, and make sure they get to their destination. They can then worry about missed connections and lost baggage, which is not life threatening and returns them to the comfort of the habitual concerns of the air traveller.

This could have been worse if the containment failure had been on the left side of the cowling, (or the right side of an engine on the left of the airplane) because debris could have damaged the other engine or penetrated the cabin. Components leaving a turbine engine have a lot of energy. Those things rotate at over 10000 rpm.

LiveATC recording of the event from the perspective of the radio communications is available buried in this file. The Qantas pilots report their difficulties 18:20 into the recording. Eric M. has edited it down to the eighteen minutes directly concerned with the incident flight but you can only hear that version if you register (for free) at LiveATC.net. There's some confusion on the part of ATC, as Australia and the US seem to have different standards for the information an aircraft with an emergency must convey. Although the Qantas crew do deny they have an emergency. That means they don't believe they need any kind of priority to ensure safety.

An interesting detail about of the B747 is that it is equipped with a hardpoint for carrying a spare engine. Not connected up to fuel and power, just sitting there ready to be installed, like a spare tire on the back of your SUV. They don't carry one around all the time because they add a lot of drag and are very rarely needed. It's just a provision for transporting them. Another Qantas B747 will bring a spare in today for the one on the ground at SFO.

That's today's blog entry early, although I'll edit it to make it look like it appeared at 00Z as usual. Tomorrow's will be at the usual time.

Aviation Grade Easy-Off

Next day I spend more time scrubbing the airplane belly, and crouching under the wing getting oil off the flaps. It's not so much that cleaning is unpleasant, as working above your head in a cramped position. It's too high to do lying on my back, but I have to tip my head sideways to work crouching and it gets uncomfortable quickly. Every once in a while I get called to go up to the cockpit and move some levers so the AME can check on the engine controls.

We're feeling grateful to the people in the shop for all the help they are giving us, so just before coffee break we go in search of doughnuts. The expedition almost comes to a screeching halt when we realize that there is no Tim Horton's in town. There's no Tim Horton's for over a thousand kilometres. Where do we get doughnuts? We ask and are directed to the grocery store. They don't look as good as Timmy's doughnuts, but if that's what people eat around here it will have to do. We get two dozen, because there are at least a dozen people working here, and who doesn't like seconds? They are well received.

Later we go back over to Reese's to get more supplies, but even though it's only about 100 metres away from the hangar we have to drive because the direct route would take us across the runway. Instead we have to drive the length of the runway down the on-airport road, turn left on a street, turn left again at the traffic lights, go halfway back down the length of the runway on a major street, then turn left off that street into parking for the supplier. I can't remember what we bought, random stuff that pilots don't even know exists until it breaks. I re-expressed my wish for magical airplane cleaning spray and was offered something called X-IT. What the heck. It might work. Or at minimum I can spray it on and fantasize for the seven minutes recommended dwell time that it will work, before I wipe it off and discover no difference. I'll spare you the suspense: it doesn't work. It might work better than the last stuff, or maybe it just doesn't work in a different way than the other stuff. I think the problem is that the soot has penetrated the paint. The only thing I could spray on this airplane to have it come clean is paint remover.

In between bouts of pretending that I can make the airplane presentable, we look around the shop. There's an engine test bed vehicle that's pretty interesting to me. It has an engine bolted to the front, complete with a propeller, except it's just a stubby-armed test propeller without proper blades, so it provides the right resistance but does not develop thrust. There's a crazy Frankenstein's monster of a cowling over the engine, because in order to run an engine for any length of time it has to be cowled or it won't have proper cooling.

And that, as you guessed, is the answer to my "mystery panel" from the 29th. It's a generic engine panel, installed in what I think was once a forklift. They bolt on the engine that needs testing, drive it outside to the runup area and run the engine for as long as they need to, then drive it back inside and check it for leaks, or make whatever adjustments it needs. The two photos are taken on different days, so the test propeller is on in the top photo and not in the lower one.

I have very much enjoyed all your answers, both the marvellous vehicles I wish I had seen and information on test stands. Please tell me more about them. I didn't get a chance to ask any questions about this one. I think I have some more photos from different angles, if there's something you want to see that doesn't show up in these shots.

Update: Earlier someone asked for more pixels. Here's the unedited shot and an equally pixelful shot of the vehicle's own control panel.