Anxiety Over Time

I find a letter in my mailbox from Transport Canada. My anxiety level increases. What do they want? I recall that the really bad ones are sent by registered mail, so they can prove you got it, so anxiety goes down a little. It's a window envelope, and the paper through the window looks like the kind government cheques are written on. Anxiety decreases further. Maybe I paid a licence fee than my company had already paid on my behalf and I'm getting a refund? I open the envelope.

Inside is a licence booklet sticker. When I pass a flight test to renew my instrument rating, the examiner will sign my licence booklet, and her signature is valid to prove my renewed rating for ninety days. If I haven't received a new sticker within the ninety day period, then I am not legal to fly. I have not taken a flight test in the last ninety days. My company does renewals in the spring. If I didn't receive my renewal sticker back in April, then I have been flying illegally all summer and fall. My anxiety level increases.

I look at the licence sticker. It has the same type ratings, endorsements, expired instructor rating and English language proficiency certification as the old one. I dig out my licence booklet to compare. Yep, everything is the same except there's no expiry date printed next to my instrument rating. What? My anxiety moves sideways.

I have a hunch. I google Transport Canada instrument rating expiry and quickly find Advisory Circular 401-004. Transport Canada in its wisdom has decided that instrument ratings no longer expire. Anxiety goes way down. Pilots still need to take a biennial Instrument Proficiency Check to ensure we still know what we are doing. Anxiety level reset to where it was before I opened the mailbox. All this means is that the format of the instrument test has changed slightly, it has a different name, and I need to keep track myself of when the thing expires, instead of having it conveniently printed on my licence. I have to keep track of it anyway, because as chief pilot I have to track it for all company pilots. Plus I am required to do a pilot proficiency check for each type I fly every year. Under the old system we simply paid a little extra every second year to have the test also renew the instrument rating. So no difference at all for me.

I read some more. The document says, "failures of instrument flight sequences during Pilot Proficiency Checks (PPC) or IPC no longer invoke suspensions of instrument rating privileges". That takes some stress off. Under the old system, you screwed up on any ride, even if you were just being the other pilot for someone else's test, and you lost your whole instrument rating. The examiner was instructed to scratch it off your licence. So it's a small difference, but worth going to the mailbox for.

I may blog later on the new IPC format. Anyone taken it yet? These changes took effect November 1st, but I was distracted.

Ups and Downs

Pilot Proficiency Check. Flight test time. The examiner is a check pilot from another company. The ride is scheduled for Friday. I make sure all the right exams have been written and recurrent training signed off.  The examiner calls on Thursday. "Let's do it today. The weather will be better than tomorrow." Why stress for another day when I don't have to?

The examiner doesn't enjoy sitting in an airplane watching people stress out. He just wants this over. After one turn in the hold my inbound leg is too short and I never really intercepted the inbound track completely. That's not abnormal for the first time around on a parallel entry. He asks me how I will correct for the wind, and when I tell him how long I will fly outbound for and on what heading, to try to make the next inbound a neat one minute line along the appropriate radial, he is satisfied and calls for the NDB approach.

I tell him I will fly two minutes outbound from the beacon before turning inbound, but he gets bored watching the scenery go by and tells me to turn in early. This puts me high on the approach. I know that is the main hazard of this step down approach, not being able to make the step down altitudes. It's why I chose the two minute outbound. Now I'm fighting to get down and not overspeed my flaps and gear. I don't make the MDA by the missed approach point. I'm too high to land. It wasn't a trick on his part, he was just impatient. He sees what he did, and says he won't fail me. Still I should have refused the early turn. I know my airplane. I'll take the low score there.

When I get the ride report back I grimace again that it's only good for a year. An instrument rating only has to be renewed every two years, and not too long ago PPCs were good for the same length of time, but they've now shortened it to one year. The first time that happened I called the examiner up to tell him he's made an error on the paperwork. But there's a good thing, too. He didn't even give me a 2, the lowest passing grade on that approach. It's a three, the "minor errors" rating. I don't know if he forgot, or felt badly for asking me to turn early. At any rate I'm licensed to commit aviation in this aircraft for another year.

Top Gun Hair

My hair is growing wildly in every direction. I've been working every day for almost as many days in a row as the law and company op specs allow, and the few days off that have materialized haven't aligned with the days my hairdresser is available. (Yes, I could go to another hairdresser. Indeed it was just such a crazy hair situation that caused me to find my current hairdresser, but I don't take cheating on my hairdresser lightly).  The days off have been occupied with laundry and what I call 'weeding.'

'Weeding' for me is pulling out handfuls of green things I don't know what they are so that I can see the colourful flowers that I don't know what they are either.  My favourite part is when the weeds attack one another, e.g. when a climbing vine weed binds itself around a fast-growing vertical weed. My garden is even more unkempt than my hair. I confessed to a neighbour that I really didn't know where to start on the weeding and she said a little contemptuously, "You could at least start." Her yard is enough houses away that I don't think my weeds actually attack hers, so I hope she derives satisfied pleasure that her garden is so much nicer than mine. It's good when one's garden brings others pleasure, don't you think?

I was scheduled to do a PPC ride (annual recurrent flight test) a couple of months ago, but the examiner got sick and missed his ride, so he wasn't qualified to do mine on the appropriate day. It's stressy getting ready for a PPC, because I have to demonstrate flying the airplane in a way I almost never fly it.  I don't even know what approach category I should put myself in. (Approach categories are based on approach speed in Canada, not on stall speed. I can comfortably approach at anything between max gear extension speed and blue line, a range of forty knots, spanning three categories. And in visual conditions I have accepted requests to maintain speeds outside that range at both ends. Sequenced with military jets for a long runway I can keep my speed above gear speed until short final, and then let it bleed off over the runway before dropping  gear and flaps. And sequenced with little training aircraft in a busy circuit I have turned final a few knots below blue line, still going about double the speed of the student in front of me.


Blue line is the best rate of climb speed on one engine, a speed I should be at or above while climbing, so I don't need to try and accelerate to it if I lose an engine. It's still faster than red line, the minimum controllable airspeed or Vmc. That's the speed below which the asymmetrical thrust resulting from an engine failure may render the airplane uncontrollable. Vmc is calculated at full power, so while being below blue line on final represents a low energy situation, it's not one that would flip me upside-down if an engine failed. Should I need to abort the landing and go around because the student in the Cessna didn't make it off the runway in time, I would be sure to increase speed above blue line before raising the nose for the climb.

It's at take off, during a full power go around, or in very low speed practice manoeuvres that Vmc becomes of most concern. The POH advises that at take off the airplane should be kept near the runway until Vmc. Given that the rotation speed specified in the POH is Vmc, except for a different place in the POH where it's given at Vmc+5, I think I can keep the airplane near the runway until after rotation. For approach it recommends only "Maintain sufficient speed during turns in the traffic pattern." Yeah, thanks. I got that. It's a good thing you told me, POH.

So I'm in the office, looking for more specific training materials and someone eyes the baseball cap under which I've crammed all my unruly hair, crying out for the attention of a competent hairdresser. "Is your hair a different colour under there?" he asks. I explain that I'm pretending to be like Kelly McGillis in Top Gun. He is unfamiliar with the reference. "Who is Kelly McGillis?" What is he doing in aviation?

I elaborate, "I'm imagining that if I take my hat off, my hair will cascade out, looking perfect." Everyone has seen that scene in some movie or another. And then I remember that in the scene where Kelly is wearing the baseball cap, she doesn't take it off. She's wearing the cap because that scene was filmed later, after she had already changed her hair colour for another movie she was in. My coworker was right all along. What am I doing in aviation? I'd better re-watch the movie. Surely there is some scene in which she takes off a hat? A motorcycle helmet?  No, I think they don't ride motorcycle helmets in that movie. They're too cool.

Later I overhear a snippet of conversation between an HR person and an office person about maintaining a professional appearance. Hmm, maybe I need a classier baseball cap. Or a day off. Coming soon! Right after my PPC I think.

Dauntless Aviation

I'm using software from Dauntless Aviation to study for the FAA exam. I definitely recommend it. It not only shows you all the questions you could see on the exam, with the correct answers, but highlights excerpts from the regulations that explain them and points out tricky parts of the questions. The merchant site is a little intimidating, but I think it's just that they are a very small company and hooked up with a somewhat aggressive payment processing company that they can't really rein in.
Today's confusion is over alternate requirements in the the US regulations. In Canada you always (with some very specialized op spec exceptions) require one alternate and there are complex but interpretable rules governing the weather conditions required to file a particular airport as your alternate. In the US you need one alternate, two alternates or zero alternates and whether you need them depends on what state you are flying in, the weather and possibly what operation type. I confess that I haven't got it all sorted out yet. I'm going to try and make a table of sorts:

Part	Type	Engine	Location	# alternates	Required fuel	Other
121	flag	turbine	?	0	2 hours

Sector Altitudes?

Question: What action should be taken when a pilot is "cleared for approach" while being radar vectored on an unpublished route?

Answer: Remain at last assigned altitude until established on a published route segment.

In Canada, cleared to the approach I would be able to, and probably would get into an untenable position later on the approach if I didn't, immediately descend to the 100 nm or 25 nm safe altitude published on the plate, as appropriate, in preparation for intersecting a published route segment. I would tell ATC I was "leaving one fife tousand for one zero tousand tree hundred" or whatever the sector altitude was, but I'm not sure I'd be required to do that. Saying it helps me remember it, and allows ATC to know what to expect.

I remember being told by a flight instructor long ago that in the US you were not allowed to descend immediately on being cleared for the approach, and commenters here told me that yes you were, but with this question I may have finally found the case that the original flight instructor was considering. It looks like if I'm on an airway or a published transition to an approach, cleared for the approach clears me to the MEA for that route, but if I'm off airway just being vectored towards the airport, I can't descend to a published safe altitude until directed? I suspect this is more because US airspace have more published transitions and routes and less just hammering around through the clag towards the NDB at the airport.

American Birds Follow Airspace Rules

Both countries have a speed limit of 250 knots below 10,000', unless you're flying an airplane so crazy that it would be unsafe to operate it at a lower speed. In Canada the next speed limit restricts you to below 200 knots below 3000' within ten nautical miles of a control zone. In the US, it's below 200 knots below 2500' within 4 nm of the airport inside a class Charlie or Delta control zone. But in a class Bravo control zone, fill your boots at up to 250 kts. I'm writing Charlie out in full for the US version because that's how they say it (we say "cee"). That will maybe help me remember.

According to a document I read recently, the low altitude speed limits were established to reduce the severity of bird strikes, but I'm guessing that was just for the 250 kt ones, because I can't see that the birds would pay really close attention to which airspace they are in. The 200 kt speed limit is probably to help ATC control different speed aircraft.

Although the Americans have most of the same airspace letters as Canada, they don't really line up. They have class Bravo control zones whereas we only have class B airspace over 12,500'. If you pretend US Bravo is Canadian C you'll follow all the right rules, ensuring you have a clearance before entering the airspace. At 200 knots or below.

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.

Direct, But Not From Here

I mentioned taking deserved flack on my PPC ride for not using the GPS (it had an expired database and thus was not approved for IFR operations) to improve my situational awareness. While approach procedures change, and airway radials get renumbered, it's very rare that an airport or navaid is actually moved and pilots are encouraged to use situational awareness tools that are available to them, whether $15,000 installations or reused pieces of cereal box. (You can make a hold entry cheat sheet that way, if you have the normal problems with holds and not the crazy, make up a new way to screw up a hold everytime ones that I devise. Hint: do not track inbound on your EFC). The GPS avaialble to me here is a Garmin 530W.

It is familiar. There's a large rectangular screen with buttons and knobs all around it. It's a navcom unit, meaning that you use it to talk on the radio as well as tell where you're going, but the radio transmission readibility is poor, so we only use it for monitoring frequencies. I suspect an antenna connection, just because that was the cause of a simiar problem in a C172 years ago, and the maintenance manager said they hadn't investigated that yet. On the left side are knobs to adjust com volume and squelch and nav radio volume, plus there are flip flops switches to exchange active and standby frequencies. That means you never adjust the frequency you are actually using, but select the new frequency on standby and then switch them. That way it doesn't sound like you're in scan mode on your car stereo.

The exact tuning procedure is easy, with one little trick. The bottom left knob tunes either comm or nav frequencies, and by default it's the commuications frequency. You push it to toggle between control of each and it will time out and go back to comm. It's a double knob, with MHz on the outside knob, and kHz, in 25 kHz steps on the inner one. I'm not someone who walks around with a perfect picture of the wavelengths and frequencies of all her devices in her head, so I'm grateful to a pilot who years ago must have forgotten the English word frequency, because while he was in the run up area he asked the ground controller to repeat it with "Vat is ze megahertz?" That simple call forever reminds me that com and VOR frequencies are in MHz and I can place the others in relation, thanks to having learned my metric prefixes in grade three.

The bottom row is buttons: CDI, OBS, MSG, FPL, VNAV and PROC, are also familiar from other modern Garmins like the GNS430, and the right side has a range rocker, the lovely Direct-to button (looks kind of like D> except that the line carries right through the letter and ends in a rightward-pointing arrow), and MENU, CLR and ENTER buttons. On the bottom left is a double knob that cycles between page groups on the outside and individual pages on the inside. Yes, this is pretty much like the GNS430. Not that that means I'm awesome with it. I have a resistance to being really good with GPS units because I fear the loss of the navigation skills I developed before they were so ubiquitous. But really I am already losing those skills, but using GPS badly. In fact, if I learn to use this so well that it needs only the least amount of my attention, and I know its limitations well, that leaves more attention over to do real navigation.

A quick example of something I've already learned and used is how to use the direct to funtion to select a track not direct from my present position, but along a particular track to a facility. It's so obvious, once you know how: select the fix you want, hit the direct-to key, and then on the screen that comes up verifying the fix you asked for, cursor through the fields to the one that shows the direct track and change it to the desired track. Hit enter twice and there is the radial/track displayed on the moving map. This can be used to intercept final approach, a VOR radial or a track to an NDB. It's great when doing the last in wind, because it provides great confirmation that I am really on track, and improves my ability to intercept a track that is a moving and very unsteady target in a turn. (Banking affects the direction an ADF needle points, so you can never be sure you're on track until you're wings level again, making it hard to know if you have to increase or decrease bank to have the turn work out).

The Debrief

We both cab back out to the airport for the seven a.m. appointment. I know that it will start with my own assessment and I know the greatest weaknesses of my performance. Knowing one's weaknesses is more important than not having any. I've written down a list. It starts with "I'm sorry about the paperwork problems ..."

I don't get much further than that for a while. She practically explodes. She says she still doesn't have my training records. I'm very surprised. I had understood that my chief pilot e-mailed them right away. The conversation continues, and she points me at a computer in the other room, telling me that if they were e-mailed here then I should get them for her. It finally dawns on me that the examiner, who made that GPS unit do things I still haven't figured out how to do, doesn't do e-mail. I get the camera operator to print the things off for her and I continue with my biggest weakness: not using the GPS to its full advantage for situational awareness. I didn't because it was not for IFR use and I didn't want to get in trouble for relying on an instrument that wasn't certified. But I could tell from the way she brought things up on the GPS that she was demonstrating to me how I should be using it and wasn't. And I would like to be better at using it. Maybe I should spend more time with it and less with e-mail.

She lectures me for a bit on that, a little too intensely for me to ask where the boundary is between situational awareness and reliance on an uncertified tool. When that subsides I venture that I knew my systems well, but was confused by some of the general knowledge questions because I was trying to answer with CARs numbers instead of personal judgement. And that's when the worst of it came. The operator, returning with printouts of my training later tells me that he came that close to intervening and just stopping the whole procedure. He called the chief pilot to say I was catching hell in there, but the chief pilot knows that I've been through a few of these and can keep my cool. I'm being specifically chewed out for not being familiar with the section in my operations manual that deals with company takeoff minima. I have read manuals for three different companies in the last few months, and I'm pretty close to certain that the one for Eagle makes no mention of take off minima. I just nod and say yes, I should know that stuff.

She moves on to my not knowing what 'not assessed' means, and has me turn to the appropriate part in the CAP GEN. It says "IFR departures have not been assessed for obstacles. Pilots-in-command are responsible for determining minimum climb gradients and/or routings for obstacle and terrain avoidance during an IMC departure from that particular runway(s)." I said that it means the pilot is responsible for determining a safe departure route. I'm seriously being told I'm incompetent because I didn't say "Not assessed means that the runway environment hasn't been assessed for obstacles"? Really? That's not what it means it's what it says. Is that how dumb people are? Are there people out there smart enough to be flying airplanes but so dumb that they need to look in the help to know that the "File Save" command "Saves a File" while the "File Delete" command "Deletes a File." She says she could tell I didn't know the answer, so she didn't ask me any more questions on that because she didn't want to get me upset. There's no way for me to say now "I know not assessed means not assessed, what else could it mean?" and "I practically quoted the rest of the section, isn't it obvious I knew what it meant?" I just resolve, as I do after every single interview and flight test, to remember to state the obvious. Even the firetrucking obvious. She also says that re-land capability is required for all commercial IFR operations. That I didn't know, so I'll take that hit, although I haven't been able to find it in the CARs.

I catch flack for what I knew I hadn't done, not having the single-engine climb performance, accelerate stop distance, and the like precalculated for the conditions. I deserved that. I can't quite make myself believe I should do it for every take-off, more that I should know the conditions under which it might be a factor in decision making and calculate it then. But that's what a flight test is an artificial demonstration of. There's no excuse. Maybe I'll create an operational flight plan and do it every day, my legacy to the next poor pilot to have to fill in this OFP. Don't you hate forms that demand unnecessary calculations?

On to the part in the airplane. I didn't brief the emergencies and departure. "I have been told in the past not to do that on a single=pilot ride," I explain truthfully.

"That's probably because you talk too much." Ha! She is exactly right. I talk too much. She wants me to brief them aloud, and then shut up. I'll try that next time.

More nits. She says I didn't check my instruments on the taxi. "I did that one. Probably not the same place most students do, but I know I said it aloud." She believes me. I didn't, however, double check my altimeter with the published runway threshold elevation, double check my watch with ATC or the GPS, make notations on my flight log during the flight, perform a true air speed check, groundspeed, or a revised ETA calculation. I didn't draw my hold on the map. (I've never done that. People do that?) I forgot a lot more things, enough to make me wonder how I remember to breathe on a regular enough basis to remain alive, and how I keep passing these things.

She gives me a bit of heat too for letting a company push me into doing a ride under difficult circumstances and I don't point out that she could use exactly the same advice. The really odd bit is that at the end she tells me it wasn't bad, all things considered. And she offers me a job. It's more or less the same job as I have. I guess everyone needs cheap, flexible survey pilots, but I keep the contact information under consideration.

The operator pays her fee and I go out to the airplane. When he comes behind me I ask, "do they have antelopes here?" I just saw either the smallest antelope or the biggest rabbit I have ever seen. It ran off the taxiway and through a gap in the fence. I'm going to guess it was a rabbit. I bet it chases dogs for sport.

After discussion with the clients we decide not to fly today. We'll just hang out and wait until the next weather opportunity. We find someone who can look at the heater and he tells us to start it up on the ground, but it doesn't even start. He pulls out the igniter, bangs it on the ground a couple of times and and then replaces it. The heater fires up on the next try. I wave my hand in the exhaust to see if it's warming up and it is, but apparently the exhaust should be so hot I could't put my hand in it. The next theory is plugged nozzles, but the entire heater is so old that company says we'll just order a new one. Which takes a month. We call all over the province of Alberta to see if someone has one sitting on a shelf, but the best we can do is an express order that should get us one in a week. I guess we'll be cold for a week.

Meanwhile the operator asks me, "So are we allowed to fly above 18,000' now?" We iPhone the new signature in my licence booklet to company and then we get the thumbs up from Transport Canada that we are.

The PPC Ride

The examiner holds up to ask someone to let a student know she is going to be late for the lesson following my flight test, so I have a chance to go ahead and verify that no one has run into the airplane while it sat there, and that nothing is leaking out of it. Hour eleven of my duty day is beginning as I climb into the pilot seat. I welcome the examiner on board and quickly brief her on the location of emergency equipment. I set my prefolded charts where I can reach them and get myself buckled into my seat. The airplane starts nicely and I record the time then start working through checklists, explaining what I am doing. I made a list of which frequencies to put on which nav aids to get going, and I pre-identify what I can. I have an ADF not an RMI so I do what I always do with these and set north to the top, explaining that is to prevent me from mistaking it for an RMI and thinking it shows the correct heading. I also note to her that the GPS database is expired, hence the prominent NOT FOR IFR USE label across the bottom of the screen. I tell her she's welcome to use it for situational awareness if she wishes. I love it when the examiner has something interesting to look at so I don't freak out from the scrutiny while doing basic preflight checks.

I copy the ATIS and then call for clearance. Someone should tell them to speak slowly. I had to ask for two parts of the clearance to be repeated before I could write it down and read it back correctly. The clearance, from my notes, appears to be B △ eva 1/B M70 Rr^r 'u 4616 7600 on caus followed by A 2Z91 X25 125.42. This apparently all meant something to me at the time, because I taxied out. The examiner tolerated my careful pauses at each intersection while I consulted the taxi diagram for the airport she knew her way around perfectly. After I was clear of the parking area and established en route to the runway I made some small turns and rattled off "turning left, wings, er stick left, decreasing, decreasing, steady, steady," for the various instruments that should and should not respond to directional change on the ground. I told her that as this was the airplane's fourth flight today I would not be doing a run-up, if she was comfortable with that, and she was. The examiner had much better handwriting than me, because I remember seeing something akin to "confident and comfortable in the cockpit" written on her clipboard. I can read pretty much any way up. I didn't realize that was a thing everyone couldn't do until I saw it posited as a trick. I have a moment of "got her fooled" but that's washed away by a realization that I've lived in this cockpit for the last few days, and I do know how to fly, even if I don't have the recent specific experience common to students who have trained here.

I switch to tower frequency when I'm ready to go and they clear me for takeoff. Roll, straight, rotate, going up, going up, gear up, fly straight, climb speed, trimmed, after takeoff checks. I switch to terminal and they radar identify me and clear me direct the NDB. Level off, call level (even though I don't have to, and I'm not hinting for anything). Now concentrate on tracking to the NDB. I get two sets of marks for this, one for en route procedures and one for ADF tracking. And I'm doing it nice and straight. I'm as proud of this as a kid who can tie her own shoes. A basic skill done well. Now I have to keep doing it while doing something else: copy a hold clearance.

It looks like + U D> M70 HN IB 160 <FC 0045. That makes way more sense than the previous clearance, so I must be improving. If inbound is 160 then outbound is 340. With no explicit instruction on the direction of the turns, they must be to the right. I look at the ADF, by which I'm tracking to the NDB, and see that it falls just to the left of the top of the instrument, which according your basic flying school rules indicates a parallel entry, an initial left turn to 340, followed by a left turn to intercept the inbound track and then subsequent right turns on crossing the station. And I'm still tracking like a pro. I tell the examiner my intentions and she asks how it can left turn. Because on a parallel entry you start by going the wrong way ... and I'm an idiot. I'm looking at an instrument that is set to north and not to my course. Three forty is almost directly behind me. They have given me the easiest hold in the world, and I should have anticipated it, because it's the logical hold to give me, and because a sensible pilot would have been thinking about holding at the NDB the easiest way instead of being all proud she could tie her shoes. I know I would have caught that when I looked at the actual heading indicator to make the turn, but jeeeeez, HOLDS, why do I always find a new and exciting way to screw up my holds?!

I enter the insanely simple direct hold. I start the timer in the right place, I turn at the correct second, I have to bank a little more intercept, I time inbound, I declare the required outbound timing and outbound heading and both the intercept and time to station are to the degree and to the second. Not that it matters, as she has only the choice between "major error" and "fail" for my inability to state the correct entry without prompting. They don't have to tell you you've failed or stop the test on the first one. I should put a post it on the ADF: 'this is not an RMI.'

Crossing the NDB, the examiner asks for a block of airspace and now I'm visual to do the manouevring part of the test. A steep turn, which only passes because they don't fail you if you promptly correct excursions from tolerances, and a stall recovery, executed correctly, including the flaps first, then gear order peculiar to this airplane. What else is in the airwork? Maybe that's it. Slow flight included in the stall demonstration, I guess. Back to IFR. They clear me for the VFR-only full procedure approach at the NDB. It's direct the NDB, hockey stick, outbound, timer, don't forget to reset the DG, monitor the morse code for the NDB, turn 45 degrees, see the terrain on the GPS, yikes, no wonder this is not for IFR use. Fly out the time, hold altitude, turn inbound, established within 5 degrees of the inbound track I can start descent to the first stepdown. Reset the DG again. It drifts fast during turns at low power. Man, how is it even legal to do IFR NDB approaches with out a slaved gyro? It's never set to within two degrees. The examiner has set the correct radial on the GPS but I focus on the DG and ADF to track as well as I can, step down, step down, MDA. Should be visual, no contact. The examiner shows me the aerodrome off to the side and makes a note for herself that the track she gave me was not ideal. Unlike the VOR radials I discussed earlier, tracks to an NDB depend on magnetic fields, so they shift when the magnetic poles do, thus a long-outdated IFR approach based on an NDB no longer leads to the runway.

I fly the missed. There must have been a simulated engine failure in all that, as she gave me back my engine after the missed, and then cancels IFR then gets me a clearance for a simulated straight in ILS back to the airport we came from. I tuned the localizer before I left, and set the inbound track, because there weren't any VORs en route, so now all I have to do is slow to approach speed, double check the identifier and follow the vectors to intercept it. I'm cleared to do so. "Loc alive!" Set the DG again and intercept. I overcorrect for a moment, then settle down. Staring at the instrument, I see that it's one of the kind with dots on them. Most of them have dots, but now I'm laughing inside myself at the dots. MORE DOTS! This is what I do all day. I put that needle right in the middle of the dots and pin it there. "Glideslope alive!" It's one of the glideslope indicators that hinges at the side like a drawbridge. I put the gear down as it swings just before level and then put the nose down and descend on the glideslope. I need to pull the power back a bit more, otherwise the turbocharged engines give me more power as I descend and I'll get above the glideslope. Despite the fact that I'm descending on the glideslope, I am given a "not below" clearance, and I reach that altitude while still on the glideslope. I hold altitude and watch the needle drop away below me, until the restriction is lifted then I ask the examiner what she wants me to do. She tells me to recapture the glideslope. I tell her I would normally conduct a missed, not dive for a glideslope, but I do manage to get it back just before reaching the circling altitude. I circle out, mentally choosing points that represent my circling limits, but just as I put down my gear to start turning in, the tower asks me to extend my downwind, they'll call my base. I should have taken the gear up again, but instead I let my speed decay and make the examiner nervous before I'm finally cleared to turn in and do my touch and go. I grin to myself, glad I did one this morning. As I turn crosswind, the examiner says she wants the next landing to be flapless. Ha ha. I admit straight out that I haven't landed this airplane flapless before, that there's no checklist, but that I'll have a shallower approach angle, higher approach speed, more runway... While I'm babbling the examiner grabs the left throttle and pulls it to idle. "This should help you get down." I simulate feathering the propeller and securing that engine and it so happens that as her simulation has taken out my hydraulics, this would be a flapless landing anyway. I simulate activating the gear electrically, and wouldn't have chosen to pump down the flaps with a runway of this length. She tells me I can have the power if I need it, but I entirely forget in the flare that the "zero thrust" simulation that the examiner has set is actually not zero thrust and the residual power, afternoon warmth and lack of flaps prolongs my touchdown so far it's funny. I stop and turn off at the end.

After landing checks done, I ask the examiner for suggestions on where to park and she gets the taxi clearance for me and gives directions. There's a whole back lot full of interchangeably anonymous hangars. It's like the last scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark. If I park the airplane back here I'll never find it again. The examiner knows that there is no airplane in this hangar and that the owner won't be here for a while, so it's okay to park in front of it. She's now late for her next lesson, so the debriefing will be in the morning, at 7 a.m.

"Can you please at least tell me if I can tell my company I passed?"

"You passed."

If she had made me wait, you had better believe I would have made you wait. Most of them do. I really wonder how bad some pilots must be, that they are worse than me and actually fail these things. Is my expectation of the world just too high? Like the fact that my customer today said he thought I was the most punctual pilot he had ever worked with. I mean what? How can you be more punctual than on time? And how can your job be to file a flight plan saying you will take off at 1430, and not be sitting at the hold short line waiting for a take-off clearance at 1429? Most of the job that isn't memorizing and practicing emergency procedures is calculating how long things take, and writing that down in four places.

The examiner takes her paperwork and leaves while ponder these things, fill out the journey log and gather my belongings.

There's a young man sitting in a C172 parked on the apron without the engine running. I say hi and ask him if he's practicing emergency procedures. He says no, he's just waiting for his instructor. I apologize, explaining I'm the reason she's late, and hoping I haven't got her in a bad mood for him. He's relaxed about it. He's working on his initial private pilot licence, trying to get landings right. The instructor in me makes me ask what the hardest part is. Not that he doesn't have a very competent instructor, but sometimes even the same words from someone new trigger something. He says just getting everything done, sometimes they work out and sometimes they don't.

The operator has gone to meet with a client, and left me with the name of a hotel where we have reservations, and instructions to get a cab there. I go and find a phone at the flying club and call one. They say I'm first in line for a cab in the area and when I ask how long that might take the dispatcher repeats You're first in line for a cab in your area! I should have hung up and called another company. I'd rather be treated with respect than have an uncracked windshield. But I say whatever and wait. There's another pilot at the club and I express some of my "phew, flight test over" relief to him and he recognizes which airplane I must have been in, from the examiner's voice getting my clearance. He was in the airplane that interrupted my ILS approach, and apologizes for that. I tell him that really it helped me out, because the closer to the airfield I get, the harder it is to keep the needles centres, so breaking me off early made me look better. I go out to wait for the cab. I wait a while. Rude and slow.

The driver is a lot nicer than the dispatcher. He turns out to be an IT guy taking a break from his career. I have supper and should be ready to collapse, but I'm still kind of wired. Maybe that was especially potent coffee. I call the front desk. "Do you guys have a swimming pool or something?" She doesn't even say 'yes,' just gives me directions. The pool has a bunch of kids in it, and I join them on the waterslide, making sure it's all clear below before I launch myself down it. It's a good one! They compliment me on my happy shrieking. One of the 'kids' turns out to be the mom. I tell her I'm decompressing from a flight test, which leads to the usual conversation about what airline I don't fly for. I tell her about taking pictures at Slave Lake and get a blank look.

"Oh, what province are you from?"

"Alberta. But we've been away."

They've been away for six months. The parents have jobs that allow them to work via the internet for a good portion of the year, and the kids are homeschooled, so they've just been travelling. "Oh where?" I ask.

"Everywhere. The whole world."

Wow. I ask about some countries I'm interested in. Cambodia? She doesn't know where it is. I tell her. No, they haven't been to Asia. Or Africa. Or South America. Or Central America including Mexico. She hasn't heard of Estonia. Hasn't been east of Germany. They have been only been to countries dominantly populated by white people who speak germanic or romance languages. I wouldn't challenge your right to call a vacation covering the UK, Australia and Western Europe a world tour, but if you're home schooling your kids, they have to know that that is not "everywhere - the whole world." She has a reason, though, but a kind of weird one, for not wanting to go to 'those places.' Her partner, not currently in the pool area, is from the Caribbean, and dark skinned, so her kids look like 'their kids.' She's afraid that they will be mistaken for locals in one of those places and taken for slaves, because that happens there. I don't know where to start. I'm not going to touch the paranoia that goes with a mother's love, or her subscription to "all brown people look alike," so I tell her that in Cambodia, children in slavery are usually sold by their own parents to feed the others in the family, or by luring runaways, not by snatching the children of the wealthy. I'm pretty sure that's the way slavery works most places these days, because capturing people that the authorities would come looking for is bad for business. I try to express that just because a country doesn't have the same standards or the same traditions as Canada, that it isn't a place you can travel safely. I've never travelled with children, but if they'll eat what's available, sleep where you tell them to and have the basic sit stay and recall training of a pet dog, I think they could enjoy travel, to the whole world.

And at the end of the day-- and it really is the end of the day--it makes me wonder how fundamentally broken my world view is. I need to see more of it, and look harder at the places I already am. I spend a few minutes in the really hot hot tub, then go to bed.

Hours Nine and Ten

This is going to be a flight test like none other I have ever done. In every other case, I have trained to fly the specific airplane in the specific manoeuvres that will be required for the flight test and in the area where the flight test will take place. In every other case the examiner has had some relationship with the company that owns the aircraft. But this examiner knows as much about me and us as I know about her. That would be ... each other's telephone numbers.

She examines my documents, asks me when my medical and IFR is valid until, when my last PPC expired. She confuses me by saying that this won't change the expiry date of my IFR, because it should reset the two-year period, presuming I pass. If I fail it will void the rating. I spell the name of the company for her, including the accent, but she ignores that. I don't know the official number of the company for Transport Canada purposes, but presumably she finds it in the documentation. She's pleased that I have brought the aircraft documents, but needs my training records. Of course, for other PPCs I have either done the training right there and still had custody of my own documents, or company has set up the meeting and provided the examiner with all the documents. Company sort of set up this meeting, but apparently proof of my training has not been included in the communications. I get the examiner's e-mail address then call company and have my records sent. Next, the examiner wants to see the Ops Manual, to confirm that the training I have received conforms to the training required. I remember the training requirements in the ops manual and I remember being a tiny bit amused by how rigourously we stuck to them. The manual specified time to be spent on each aspect of the ground training and we really spent that long on them, possibly a first in I don't know how many companies. We got a little creative in that inventorying the aircraft survival kit counted towards the survival training, but seeing as it included us discussing each item and how we would use it, it was probably more useful than watching another video about people staying calm and remaining with a downed aircraft. The ops manual specified three hours of aircraft training, most of which was directed towards the specific task of playing connect the dots in cooperation with the camera operator. But she's not willing to take my word for it.

I don't believe I'm required to have an ops manual on board for this operation. More importantly I don't believe I have one on board. It might be in the airplane. I go out to the airplane to look for a copy, but I can't find one. I find the camera operator in the flying club and ask if he knows anything about it. He provides me with a copy on a USB stick. I return to the office with this, and the examiner is about as displeased as an examiner could possibly be to see this thing. She wants something she can leaf through. It's not a really extensive document but it's wordy Transport Canada boilerplate, too much to print. She puts verifying my training off until later and asks me about the airplane. She wants to know the procedure if the landing gear fails to extend. Okay, here we go, something I am responsible for and can answer.

"The landing gear safety systems are quite interesting on this aircraft," I begin, because they are, and because I was taught to answer systems questions in essay form, not point form. My first flight instructor insisted. I guess it sounds more prepared, less like someone grasping at any knowledge they happen to remember, the way it might in point form. She interrupts to tell me that she doesn't need me to tell me it is interesting, just what the procedure is. "Using the checklist I would verify that the airspeed is below 150 miles per hour and the gear handle is selected down. Next I would activate the STCed electric gear extension assist ..." I'm a fast talker, and the command I've been given implies that I should get this over with but I follow advice and slow down. If the electric assist fails there is a hydraulic hand pump. If the hydraulic hand pump fails there is a CO2 cartridge, and if the CO2 cartridge fails to extend the gear there is yet another step to saving the aircraft. The examiner has herself landed one of these airplanes with the gear retracted, without damage. I don't remember other systems questions. If they were asked they were also things I knew well and she moved on.

I'm asked the minimum visibility for departure from a particular airport. I look it up and it's marked "not assessed," but the terrain around is flat, and I could safely climb to an en route altitude without a published departure, so I say "one half mile," the legal minimum for an airplane where there is no specified visibility requirement and the company does not have the op spec for low visibility departures. She asks me what is the minimum required visibility for an approach at this aerodrome. I note that approaches are predicates on ceiling but that low visibility can trigger the approach ban, and recite the litany surrounding that. She indicates the advisory visibility on the plate--three-quarters of a mile, in this case--and I explain that while it is not limiting, it is a good predictor of whether the pilot will have the required visual reference at minima. She wants to know what visibility I would really take off in. I tell her the truth, probably not less than a mile. I'm thinking single pilot, unfamiliar aerodrome, only one set of eyes for both runway and instruments, no one wants pictures of fog anyway. She tells me there isn't any point in having an IFR rating if I'm going to be that conservative. I refrain from telling her that the point of the IFR rating in this operation is so I can fly above FL180 on sky clear days, and I just nod and say yes. She already knows the nature of the operation. She asks me what "Not assessed" means. I stare at it again, leaf through the CAP GEN a little. Is there some visibility requirement implied by not assessed? Not that I can think of. What have I missed here? I tell her, "It's the pilot's responsibility to ensure a safe departure ..." She's obviously not happy, but she moves on.

The theme is consistent with me squirming to answer things I can't articulate to her satisfaction. There's so much to know. I feel I know it, but even in an open book unlimited time exam it's impossible to put the right answers in the right spaces to satisfy every examiner. I seem to be particularly bad at this, rarely not knowing but frequently not satisfying. I explain my weight and balance, fuel on board and that I won't be switching tanks during the exam because the selected tanks contain more fuel than the other tanks will on landing.

Fortunately she spends no time on my pathetic nav log, except to suggest I use a pencil another time. She must have asked me more questions than that, but there's no crazy "how many vortex generators?" type questions. I identify the airplane for her through the window and am sent out to it. I see some of the flight instructors who have been in and out during the day and tell them we're going fly. If you fail any item on the ground you don't go flying, so the comfort here is that she hasn't failed me yet.

I'm almost at the door when I think of something. A performance enhancing drug that I don't usually take in this environment, because it's also a diuretic. But this is only an hour to an hour and a half flight, and my alertness could be enhanced. I ask the instructors, "Is there by chance some coffee around here?" There is, but it's not a pot of hours old coffee, but instead a really fancy high tech brewing station. I explain that there's an examiner coming down the stairs right behind me and I jut need to insert caffeine and go. This is not for pleasure. There's a jar of instant on the counter and a rounded teaspoon of that combined with some water from the kettle gives me half a cup of surprisingly palatable lukewarm double-strength coffee, which I down, just as the examiner appears. I start guiltily, "Sorry, stopped for a coffee," and lead the way to the airplane.

The First Eight Hours of My Duty Day

So I wake up, a bit earlier than I would have liked to. This is it. Flight test day. Why am I doing this again? I remember back when I was a flight instructor when I advised my students to get all their paperwork done that they can, get a good night's sleep and arrive for the flight test rested and ready. Yeah, that would be nice. I'm not even in the right city yet, and there's no really firm guarantee that I will be. I eat breakfast: oatmeal with fruit. I go to the airport. I spray stuff on the soot stains aft of the heater exhaust and scrub it off several times. It's not having a big effect. Maybe the paint is a bit cleaner. There's a special product for soot stain removal. I've used it once, on a turboprop. I can't remember if it did a better job, but it gave me a happier feeling of doing all I could to get the smoke stains off. I clean off the bugs and walk around and make sure all the parts are attached that should be. There's a dime-sized chip out of the nose cowling and a corresponding little burr on both blades of the prop on that side. It's not a no-go item, just a "damn!" like having a scratch on your car. I'm pretty sure I got it on the runway. I saw a white chip like that fly by as I added power on the button for one of my test flights. I assumed it was paint coming off the runway stripe, but now I bet it was the result of a rock being swatted by both blades of the prop then whackign off the fuselage. It's very common for FOD to hit more than one blade in the same place.

Next I go for another test flight, to make sure none of the cleaning products ran into any crevices from which they can emerge to soil the camera, and to make sure the hydraulic fluid dripping problem is completely solved. I'm told to just cycle the gear a lot of times. So I take off, climb to a thousand feet above circuit altitude and then set the autopilot. While I'm cycling the gear it intercepts a radial and tracks towards the VOR on my command, then I turn it back to heading mode and use it to fly a circuit. A couple more engine failure drills, a touch and go, more gear cycling, and I'm ready to land. I considered doing a flapless landing, never done one in this airplane, but I'd need a longer final approach to get down without flaps, so instead I just turn base where I am and fly a normal length final. I check several times to make sure the gear is down before I land.

The operator asks me if I did a touch and go, and I say yes. "For practice?" her asks, and I agree with that too. It's nice to have done something once before being tested on it. I'll see if I can fly the ILS on the way into the flight test airport. This is so crazily unlike any flight test I've ever done. If I can do this, I can pass anything.

There is no hydraulic fluid at all on the belly or the camera, and not even a drop in the breather line, so we load up the airplane, top up the fuel, and go to work. The fueller (and a commenter a few days ago) says it is the pine trees that are spewing the yellow pollen. It's still too early to call an examiner and ask if we're good to go, so I have to trust it's going to work out. Our work is higher altitude today, controlled VFR between 15,000' and 17,700'. I accept an altitude block clearance for FL150 to FL180, then the controller calls back and amends it to FL150 to FL190 "because of the altimeter setting." I smile as I accept it, because I know why, but it's a little obscure. I only remember it because I was reviewing my high altitude rules back in February. I'll put the explanation in a later post, because this is going to be a long enough day already.

I'd tell you the exciting sights and so on of the flight, but ATC assigns us a block of altitude, then pretty much leaves us alone to fly in really straight lines. It was just three hours of being fairly cold while focusing on coloured dots on the screen in front of me and following instructions from the operator to reach each next line. I only get to take a good look around at the turns, and there isn't a whole lot to look at. It's flat. Someone is paying us a lot of money for some very boring pictures. But they're very good pictures. Until the clouds start. It's what clouds do, in the late morning, and it ends high altitude photography for the day.

I ask ATC for descent out of controlled airspace direct our landing aerodrome. They're confused because the aerodrome I've just asked to land at is not the one on my flight plan. Flight plans are primarily about going from A to B, so ATC expects us to go to B unless there's some kind of emergency or impassable weather. But for us the journey is the important part. We hardly ever land at the airport we filed. I try to guess right when I file the flight plan. but the operator just likes to pick places he's never been before. Adaptability is an important concept for a pilot who works for Eagle. He picks an aerodrome. I look at the CFS and determine that it's appropriate for the aircraft and the conditions, call flight services for NOTAMs and go there. It generally confuses ATC, but I try to keep them informed.

The cabin warms up as we descend and I set course for the newly chosen aerodrome. I've never been there before. It's just a good place to stop for fuel on the way to the flight test. The clouds are building, too. I deviate to the right to go around one buildup and then while I'm still on that heading I zone out for a moment, looking back at the GPS and thinking I've wandered off track. I correct my heading, then see the cloud I was avoiding and realize what I'm doing. Gah, I'd better not zone out like that on the flight test.

I brief myself on the destination, looking for wind signs on the ground and water and listening out on frequency for local traffic. Based on the wind and runway orientation, I can fly straight in on this heading, if I can establish that it is safe to do so, but the frequency is buzzing. I can't tell if all this traffic is at the destination or at another aerodrome sharing the same frequency, with pilots making calls like, "Ed is turning north on the powerlines, have Rod in sight."

I make a normal call to alert traffic I'm inbound to my fuel stop, and no one responds from that aerodrome. Just to make sure I make a call asking, "Ed and Rod, what airport are you at?"

They aren't at my destination, and one pilot catches my sarcasm, explaining that their abbreviated calls are because they are doing COPA flights--taking kids up for a few minutes each to introduce them to the fun of flying--and they're trying to keep coordinated while reducing frequency congestion. It's actually a good idea. They weren't chatting about cheeseburgers, just joining the circuit to land.

I satisfy myself that there is no one else at my destination and land straight in, over a bunch of dirt piles on short final, and off the runway to the fuel pumps. They are the classic little honour system flying club pumps and while the operator sorts them out --he's the one with the credit card-- I go to use the washroom and file an onward flight plan. There's a little terminal building right there and people barbecuing in front of it, but when I try to open the door to go in, they tell me to go around the back. They're reflooring the clubhouse. There are some workmen at the back, but they okay me going in and I find the toilets and then a payphone with the shortest handset cord ever. I can't get a hold of the examiner, so I just leave voicemail that I'm on target for a 2 p.m. test. It makes it a little awkward to refer to my charts and notes while answering questions, and you don't realize how much you talk with your hands until they're tethered with a metal cable. I'm also trying to share the corner that houses the payphone with a giant UNICOM radio, an anemometer, and the operator who is trying to operate an ancient credit card processing machine. Will that be Cash or Chargex? swick swick! (Chargex was the old name for Visa in Canada, but would you believe I can't find a video clip of the old commercial?) He wins the battle, takes his receipt and we go back to the airplane. The operator goes to get something out of the back to clean the camera with and comes back with his polycarbonate water bottle. Full of slush and chunks of ice. So yeah, it was cold up there. That bottle must have been frozen almost solid before we descended.

I double check fuel caps and then start up and taxi out to depart. There's one more tiny job to do before the flight test, it's right near the flight test airport, so we head off in that direction and set up for the line. There are clouds above our altitude and we don't want their shadows in the photos, so we literally hang out, circle around and try and time our passes so that we get pictures with no shadows. It only takes a few tries and we nail it, so I head for the airport where the flight test is. They're too busy to accommodate a practice ILS, as they're using the opposite runway as the ILS is on, so I just get to see the needles twitching on the spurious backcourse. I'm sure a sizable portion of my readership is thinking disparaging things about my preparation and diligence right now. You'd better be, because I sure was. I don't even know where I'm going.

I assume the examiner is associated with a flying school, but even if she isn't, most of her victims are going to be students, It's not a giant leap for me to switch to ground and say, "Request taxi instructions to the flying school."

"Which one?"

"How many are there?"

"About eight."

Eight? No wonder they were too busy to accept wrong-way traffic. I can see the sign on one of them from right where I am on the taxiway, so I ask to go there. I'll sort out where I'm supposed to be after I shut down. It's a big school with a busy ramp and I start to manoeuvre for a parking area when a guy in coveralls comes out to marshal me to another section. I follow him gratefully, but balk when his signals lead me over a rough area of bad pavement. I make a "no" face and shake my head, pointing, and he's smart enough to understand why (I don't want to damage my propellers any further), and immediately selects a different route. I shut down where he designates, and thank him. He apologizes for directing me over the bad spot, they're meaning to get that fixed. He explains that the first parking area I chose would have been blocked in by trainers in a few minutes. I tell him I'm meeting an examiner here, planning to take off again in a couple of hours. He's happy with that. The operator goes into the flying school lounge to wait for me and I call the examiner's number, leaving another message, then clean up the airplane and make sure it's ready for the flight.

It's about 1:30 p.m. so I'll have time to get weather and NOTAMs before the flight. I'm just deciding where to go for that, when my phone rings. Two p.m. is still fine, and the examiner has the go-ahead from Transport Canada to do the ride. She gives me directions to her school. It's easy to walk and leave the airplane where it is, so I take my paperwork, the aircraft flight manual and the journey log and go over.

The examiner is super busy: teaching, supervising, managing, and scheduling. She says hello and points me at a room to set up in: "the middle office." There are four. I decide not to count the one she was in, so pick the third, but she comes back and moves me to the second. Great start, examiner thinks I can't count. I rework out my weight and balance, based on the amount of fuel I actually have on board, more than I planned for, so it takes some cargo juggling to keep it within limits. I lay that out with my flight planning, licences and aircraft documents. I eat a couple of energy bars. 'm not hungry yet, as I'm used to working all day between breakfast and supper, but I know this will call for more energy. I call for a weather briefing and take copious notes, adding those to the array. The examiner comes back and gives me a copy of the approach plate for the airport I couldn't find. Turns out I couldn't find the airport because it doesn't exist, it's a made-up practice approach for flight training, based off a private NDB. Instructors keep coming into the room where I'm working and using the filing cabinet. I say hi and try to pump them for information on the traps in the route. Instructors know if students tend to descend too soon or too late, or other typical mistakes. One of the instructors can't find the approach plate he wants, and the examiner comes back to help him find it. I have been given the wrong plate. They give me the right one, on a different NDB, but the same made up approach. The examiner corrects the bearings on the plate, because the printed ones apparently don't work right. It's also in a different direction and a different distance than my original planning, so I have to redo the wind calculations. The instructor comes back and needs another plate. He sees my current CAP (approach plate book) on the table and asks if he can borrow it to make a photocopy. I tell him of course, but the payment required is one tip for pleasing this examiner. If I'd trained here with these instructors I'd know all her pet peeves and ways to avoid being yelled at. That alone doesn't pass a flight test, but it's local knowledge that can keep me from being yelled at and thus rattled.

I'm making a mess now. I had a pencil last night, but it must be in my suitcase. I can't find it in my flight bag, so I'm doing stuff in pen, which is getting ugly. You don't fail on ugly paperwork, but you lose marks and create a poor first impression. I traditionally do not lose marks on the ground in flight tests, but that's not happening today. The instructor comes back with my CAP and says simply "Speak slowly," as he puts it down and walks away. I bargain with another instructor for the advice, "Be precise." I'm still trying to get that flight plan to look right when the examiner comes in and starts the test.

I've been on duty for eight hours now. That would be a full day for some people, but I'm legal for another seven. And if I can't pass a flight test after working for eight hours, why should I be legal to fly an airplane for real?

Can You Hear Me Now?

Morning comes early. I have no recollection of what that hotel room looked like. I was in it an conscious for maybe eight minutes total. I drag my bag down the corridor to the breakfast room with two minutes to spare before the agreed-upon departure time. The cab is already here. I shove a couple of apples and a bagel in my flight bag along with whatever I ordered last night to go, some kind of wrap, I think, and get in the cab.

I check oil and move the airplane from parking back to the pumps and do the run up there, while waiting for the fueller to arrive. He does, and I then finish my preflight inspection and set up charts for the trip and file a flight plan while it's being fuelled. Full all around and caps checked, we take off only a little behind schedule. The wind is calm, so I take off from the apron end of the runway, straight off and then a turn to the northeast as I climb enroute.

I bid adieu to the circuit traffic at Salmon Arm on the ATF and then make a general call on 126.7 to let folks know where I am. The radio doesn't sound quite right. I'm not hearing myself in my own headset the way I should be. The camera operator says he can't hear me. Oh oh. I check the plugs on my headset jack. They're fine. Just my luck to get a headset with a problem. I grab a spare headset. Oh my God it's been a long time since I wore a cheap headset. It's uncomfortable from the earseals, to the weight, to the way it fits on my head, to the amount of noise it lets in. How do people stand these things? I guess I've become a headset snob. From that point of view it's fortunate that the headset swap doesn't fix the problem, because I couldn't work in one anymore, and I'm glad my new headset isn't defective. So is the jack defective? Maybe there's nothing wrong with my old headset. I put my own headset back on and try plugging it in the jack for the other side, trying that intercom jack. No joy. The operator tries the same headset and jack swap in the back.

I can hear the operator, but he can't hear me at all. I'm literally writing notes on my little notepad, then tearing off the sheets and tossing them in the back. He suggests that the intercom may be set incorrectly. It has an electronic control panel that cycles between PILOT, CREW and ALL. I assume that those put the left seat, both front seats or all seats into the intercom circuit, but we test all positions anyway. I'm pretty much in despair about fixing it until I realize that there is a master volume knob for the whole stack and it is in two parts, concentric rings. The inner ring is set to a reasonable volume, but the outer ring, intercom volume, is somehow turned right down. I dial it up and all is well. I still have no idea how it got turned down in the first place. I haven't adjusted anything in that vicinity. I must have hit it with something. How can I have flown so many airplanes and take so long to sort that out. At least I'm in the middle of the mountains in the early morning and not in terminal airspace in a busy time.

We continue over the mountains then I start descent towards a small airport where I have been asked to land. The operator is concerned about some aspect of the camera software, so asks me not to land yet while he tests the system. I fly big circuits overflying the runway at circuit altitude while he sorts it out. It gives me a chance to verify the winds. There's no other traffic around, so my presence isn't interfering with anyone. Each time around it's "just a few minutes more" but eventually I'm given the okay to land. Because of the elevation, landing appears very fast, but it's at a normal airspeed.

We taxi in, looking for the fuel pump, which turns out to be about ten metres across gravel from a narrow taxiway, partially blocked by a tied-down Cessna. I inch by, not wanting to snag my wingtip on the tiedown, nor to put my spinning propeller over the gravel to the side of the taxiway. I go well past the parked airplane then over to the far side of the taxiway to turn around and pull up behind it, making the closest approach to the pump we can without blocking myself in behind the Cessna.

The hose isn't quite long enough to reach the furthest tank, so we ground handle the airplane a little to wiggle closer until it is. The pump isn't clearly labelled as avgas, and it's not a standard cardlock pump, so we call the telephone number in the CFS for information on fuel purchase. They confirm the fuel type, take the company name, aircraft ident and credit card information and then tell us the codes to turn on the pump. I also call Edmonton Centre to notify them of the photo blocks we will be flying in. Meanwhile the airplane and camera have become covered in fine yellow pollen. There are no obvious flowers around, it's a bit early for flowers this far north. I speculate that it's tree pollen and then remind myself that trees have cones not pollen. They're all conifers around here that I can see. I add some oil, too, and clean the windshield, then we start up and roll out to take pictures. A pretty quick turn: thirty-one minutes from engine off to restart.

We're working at about 8,000', I think, and it's cold outside, but we don't dare turn on the heater, lest the backfiring soil the camera lens, or even worse cause a fire in the aircraft. We just wear our parkas and tough it out. The outside air temperature is -7C but it's warmer than that in the airplane, with our two bodies and the multiple cameras and the thirteen computers computers that control them all generating heat. Still the low temperatures can't be good for all the electrical equipment. They aren't like us humans who have adapted to living at altitudes higher and temperatures lower than this. I'm not personally so adapted, so I am breathing supplemental oxygen and wearing leather gloves and a stretchy toque I pulled out of my flight bag. I have to admit to not being too disappointed when clouds prevent us from flying out the complete mission. We made a big dent in it, though. We land at a larger airport and then jump out and bask in the warmth of the sun while the airplane is fuelled.

I also manage to make contact with the examiner, who says that she needs seven days notice to do a PPC test, because Transport Canada needs opportunity to demand to do the ride themselves. I know that company has been working on this for at least that long, so I get the name of the person at Transport who can waive the seven day notice, and then toss the ball back into my boss' court. The examiner says that if that is worked out, tomorrow around 2 p.m. will be fine, and she gives me, when I request it, the route to plan for the flight test.

Fuelling complete, I go and park. The operator climbs underneath to check the camera and comes out raving about a fuel leak. He says there's fuel all over the belly. The fuelling was competent, no overflow, and even fuel running aft off the flaps should have reached the camera. The operator says it's staining the camera red. Wait, red?.

"The fuel we use is blue." I say. "Red is hydraulic fluid." I climb underneath to see.

"Yeah, I know," he says. "I thought something might make it look red."

I don't really see anything. There's the soot stain from the heater outlet, more of that yellow pollen, but nothing covering the belly. A thin oily stripe does run from the edge of a belly panel towards the camera array. It's consistent with dirty hydraulic fluid. He's cleaned the camera lens already. I don't know what that panel conceals. I don't see why a hydraulic line would be running that far aft, but perhaps a hydraulic leak further forward has pooled inside the fuselage then run out of this access panel. I grab a screwdriver and start loosening the panel. I rely on hydraulics to get the landing gear up and down, so regardless of what it does to the camera, I want to know what's going on here. The operator takes a turn removing screws. It's actually pretty tiring lying on your back twisting your arms overhead. We remove enough screws to peel back the panel and see what's inside. Nothing. There is no pooled fluid, no leaking line, no stains. It seems to be a coincidence that the dirty stripe starts just aft of this panel. Perhaps it was clean enough or enough in the airstream that the fluid was carried over it without staining, then it picked up some grime at the aft edge of the panel.

There are a few drops of red hydraulic fluid visible in the nosewheel hydraulic breather line. It's probably just a few millilitres, normal seepage, maybe from the altitude changes, the purpose of having a breather line in the first place. Text messages and photos go between us and the maintenance unit and they don't think it's anything serious. Except that for the mission of this aircraft is is serious. If it happened on gear retraction after takeoff, it has ruined our day's work, and it means the loss of more than a day, because the weather may not be right for this work tomorrow. We hope it happened on extension before landing.

I ask if he can check the photos now, but the resolution is so great that on the screen in the airplane they may look fine when they are really ruined. We'll have to see later. We haul our gear to the terminal then after more discussion I'm assigned to take off and cycle the gear several times to see if it happens again.

As I strap into the pilot seat I grin to myself. "Hey, first solo." I haven't flown this airplane by myself before. I taxi out "for a local test flight" and cycle the gear up and down, up and down, making sure it's locked in each position before restarting the cycle. I give myself a couple of simulated engine failures while I'm at it, to practice the procedure: gear down, approach power, engine failure, maintain direction, power to hold on the other engine, gear up, simulate feather, emergency checklist complete, give myself the engine back, start over. Instead of doing touch-and-goes I just overfly the runway. And then I land and taxi in. There's a little bit of fluid, but not much. He sends me up to do the same thing again. Cycle, cycle, cycle, cycle, up, down, up, down, up, down, make sure it's down, land. Now there is no seepage. So maybe we're good. We go shopping for airplane cleaning supplies, and call it a day.

I now have about forty minutes to prepare for tomorrow's flight test and get to bed in order to have the required rest for tomorrow's report time. Forty minutes is probably more time than I pend on preflight paperwork for a normal flight, but for a normal flight I use the standard, precalculated weight and balance, use block fuel, round times roughly and only calculate takeoff and climb performance if it's an issue because of high temperatures or marginal runways. And then I generally round up to the next highest weight, temperature and altitude that has its own line, and just verify that it doesn't ask for more runway or lower obstacles than I have. For a flight test, I want the examiner to walk in and see about six pieces of paper with neat, meticulous calculations for each phase of flight. Yeah, that's not happening, considering it takes me at least fifteen minutes to figure out how to rearrange everything on board to accommodate an examiner in the front seat and stay within the weight and balance envelope. This airplane is nose heavy, and not usually flown with no one in the back. My next problem is that I can't find the airport I was told to plan to. The examiner mentioned that the approach was a VFR-only training approach and that she would give me the approach plate, but I need to at least plan fuel to get there. I find an airport with a similar name in the approximate area, and plan to that, eventually saying "screw it, I use block fuel and average winds every day, I'm not losing sleep to do calculations per segment for this artificial situation." I know, I know, a flight test is an artificial situation, but my need for sleep is real. It's already too late for me to get the required eight hours. Maybe I'll have some time to do more paperwork in the morning.

I suddenly remember as I'm drifting off to sleep that a single pilot PPC includes demonstration of competence with the autopilot. I've not mastered it, though. I've never had a chance to practice intercepting and descending on an ILS with this one, because the only airport I've been to that has one has controllers who prefer to vector me all over the place for a close-in base below the glideslope, or a visual diagonal final. I've done a PPC before where the autopilot went below the glideslope and I simply took control and finished it by hand, with no censure from the examiner. If I or the autopilot don't set this up correctly, I'll do the same. There are a few more "better figure out how to do that" moments before I drift off to sleep. It's really embarrassing but there has simply not been opportunity for a proper practice flight.

You guys have made a few guesses as to the nature of the Aviation-Themed Towel of Questionable Taste, which will be the booby prize in the sunglasses contest. No one has come close to guessing how bad it is. It has four different aspects of badness to it. Perhaps I should rename it, the Aviation-Themed Towel of Definitely Poor Taste. The only questions about it is why did someone send it to me, and why is it suddenly so popular?

Mountain Valleys

The next morning's weather actually is better, it wasn't just a procrastination technique on my part. I let the operator know I'm willing to do the flight. The weather at Vancouver is still marginal, but the altitudes I need through the Rockies should be ice-free, so I file an IFR flight plan for the trip. I may be able to do it VFR, depending on when the operator actually chooses to go, but I'd like a chance to fly this airplane IFR before the ride. I also get his okay on doing the approach to destination (in visual weather) with the power to one engine pulled back, so I can see what this airplane flies like on one engine.

We go to the airport, but now the operator doesn't want to leave yet. I unpack various cleaning supplies from the nose and use the leather cleaner to try and make the seats look nicer. They aren't disgusting, just a little grimy, but like all cleaners, the product isn't magical and while my effort makes the rags noticeably dirtier, it doesn't make the seats seem a lot cleaner. This is an airport where people have security badges like crazy, and I don't have one. I go on the airport website to try and find a ramp badge policy, but there doesn't seem to be one. I know I could get in trouble if I'm standing about poking at an airplane with no badge, if I'm supposed to have one. But I can't tell if I am. I call security to ask about the south side badging policy. The guy puts me on hold twice. I get the idea it's his first day. Or maybe he's the team enforcer. He seems to be telling me that it's the responsibility of whoever's hangar we're working out of. That would be the maintenance unit that looked into the EGT overtemp situation, but they aren't escorting me. They said my pilot licence would do the trick. I try to get security guy to confirm that my pilot licence is sufficient ID for a ramp check here, but he defers to my employer. Well of course THEY say I can be here. How does he know I don't work for a radical BC Separatist organization that wants to bomb the local legislature? I ask if it's possible to get a temporary badge, but apparently it would take a couple of weeks just to get an interview to apply for any sort of badge. Funny that. A friend who works at Air Canada said that the non-union temp workers they brought in to cover during the strike all seemed to get badges overnight.

I get an e-mail with an examiner's name and instructions to call and arrange the ride directly. I leave voice mail with my own e-mail and phone number and the fact that I am on the road, but am hoping to be there to do a ride on Tuesday. My guess for when we are leaving is about to expire, so I call back to flight services to change my filed departure time, just guessing a new one, I can change it again later. While I am waiting to be told to I sit down to study the aircraft operating handbook and the CAP GEN for my mysteriously situated PPC ride. I think I know most of it. I was well-prepared last time, but I'll never forget the ride I was underprepared for. It was a similar situation, "I did a ride recently. I know this stuff," but I didn't. So I study again.

When the operator is ready to go, I discover the weather is pretty good now, and also good on the webcams through the mountains. He only wants to get across the first mountain range tonight, to be sure we won't be trapped in Vancouver by coastal weather. I call Flight Services to file a VFR flight plan (can probably do the whole trip around 9,500' and get out of here more efficiently) to possibly replace the IFR flight one (at 15,000'). For some reason this is a big deal for them. It turns out that I've called on the day that some kind of changeover is happening, so they could have done it easily yesterday and will be able to do it effortlessly tomorrow, but today it's an issue. They can't have two flight plans in the system at once for the same airplane. I suggest that they put the VFR one with a proposed departure after the ETA of the IFR one and then I can change it just before departure if I go VFR, but that doesn't work for them. I can't remember how we resolved that, possibly by departing IFR and then taking advantage of the phenomenally poor tower-terminal relationship to cancel in the air. Or the ground controller was surprisingly accommodating and helped me have the best of both worlds. There's a massive banner on the control tower, cheering on the Vancouver Canucks hockey team.

I was originally planning to fly eastbound along the Fraser River to Hope and up the highway, but once airborne, I see that the more northerly route looks better initially, and that ties in with the worst of the weather being to the south, too. I request an altitude that will take me through the passes up the valley overhead Whistler Mountain, where the 2010 Winter Olympics were. I'd show you pictures, but did I tell you? My camera is sort of broken. In some sort of cosmic joke, while I fly a giant camera around, the one in my flight bag doesn't work. It still thinks it is taking pictures, but all the resulting saved images are just pure black rectangles. I hope maybe there's just a broken spring (do cameras even have springs anymore?) somewhere and that the shutter isn't opening properly. I'll try to get it repaired, and in the meantime I may be able to borrow one.

I plug a few coordinates in on the GPS and set it in terrain mode, but mostly this kind of flying is about looking out the window and making sure the valleys in real life match the valleys on the VFR chart. There are clouds above, but not in sufficient numbers to hamper my turning around if some low ones block the valley, and I don't think they will. Their bases get higher as I go up the valley. I do reach one wall of cloud. It's a cumulus build-up along a ridge that I thought I could hop over by going visually between peaks. There are too many clouds to do that, so I turn south along the valley the ridge defines, to climb in order to turn back and go over them. Normally outclimbing a bank of Cu is a poor proposition, because there tend to be higher and higher ones beyond. This I'm pretty sure is just at this ridge, with a lower plateau without the buildups beyond it. I'm right, but as we climb over it, there's a kind of a slapping sound, like a loose strap or a hatch come open. Maybe it's the new headset. Wouldn't that be rich, buy a new headset and have it be defective.

There's that noise again. Maybe it's a cable slap. The ailerons make some odd noises as a result of rerouting for the camera port in the belly. That's a little freaky, but it's all STCed and frequently inspected. The sound stops. I ask the operator if he heard it, and he did. I pull my headset plugs out to see if he still hears it. There's a long pause, but it happens again without my headset in the system. And then it's quiet. Maybe the ANR screwed up the intercom. I've been blamed for intercom problems before, back when I was an early adopter of ANR technology and everyone else with passive DC units would blame problems on freaky electronic headset girl. But the operator still hears the noise when he unplugs from the intercom.

Some minutes later I hear it again, variously a banging, slapping, popping sound. I have to adjust the trim as the operator wanders around trying to pinpoint the source. It seems more on the left than the right, sometimes further forward, sometimes further back. There is no yawing or fluctuating engine indication. We keep thinking it's stopped, then it starts again. The operator suggests turning off the heater, and I try that. It doesn't happen for a long time ... then it continues to not happen for a further long time. It seems to have stopped. Not good. The heater burns fuel. We hate to think what it's doing when it malfunctions.

We continue without further incident over the plateau and then dip down over the lake to land at Salmon Arm, the same place in the BC mountains where I surveyed last summer. I make a call on the traffic frequency and there's a small airplane up. He tells me the wind is calm. I cross over the town and join downwind, the narrow valley clearly showing why the CFS recommends using this airport at night unless you are very familiar with the area, and all the hazard beacons are operating. I land close over the trees and the golf course and roll out to the exit. There's a guy in a little airplane in the run up area. I wave and taxi in for fuel, which according to the CFS is available for another thirty minutes.

We park at the pumps and call all the numbers listed for fuel, with no reply. I walk over to the hangar where the pilot has parked and ask him when the fuel is open until. He agrees that it should still be open this time of year and says the guy was around recently. He gives me another number, and I call that. It's now about seven minutes to the time the CFS says fuel closes. The fueller doesn't want to come out now, so he agrees to come in a bit early the next morning to get us going on time.

Meanwhile, it's obvious the heater was the problem. There's a stream of soot down the belly of the airplane. I wipe off what I can and put "soot remover" on my shopping list. The pilot is done in his hangar and gives us a ride into town where we get a hotel and a quick meal. The waitress is intrigued by our "detailed maps" as we pore over the next day's flying, and she is very helpful in packing "to-go" meals for tomorrow's lunch. The time we have to leave in the morning is the same time breakfast starts at the hotel, but we can probably grab muffins and fruit to go as the cab arrives.

None Shall Know the Day Nor the Airport

I did an IFR flight test on an unfamiliar airplane several months ago, so I should be good at this now. I know I know my IFR details, but this is a PPC ride, where I'll be grilled on the airplane. I have been asked crazy details on PPC rides, like how many vortex generators an airplane had (88), the identity and amperage of the largest circuit breaker (hydraulic motor and I think it was 30A), and the identity of every antenna and line sticking out of ports in the belly and engines. Sometimes you have to fall back on, "I don't know! If it comes loose or leaks a lot I'll take a picture of it and e-mail it to maintenance." But I should know how this airplane works. I spend a day with its manuals and many supplements and hope I have the right things memorized. When you're working towards a PPC ride with a particular examiner, the person training you knows what the examiner is sticky about and primes you for such questions. I would not, otherwise, have been counting vortex generators. But not only do I not know who the examiner will be, I don't have anyone training me. I'm a pilot, so I'm supposed to know how to fly this thing.

And now the monitored ride with the Vancouver examiners is unlikely, because company wants me to take this airplane back to Alberta. They're going to find an examiner for me in Edmonton. Okay, I can do that. Except maybe I can't right now, because the mountain passes are choked with stratus and fog, and there is weather all around Vancouver, too. Oddly, although I need an IFR PPC on the aircraft in order to fly it around in beautiful weather at 20,000', my regular IFR rating is sufficient for me to launch into actual IFR conditions, for a ferry flight. It's only for revenue flights that I need a PPC.

So the pilot is approved and the operation is approved, but what about the airplane? It has an autopilot. I have a yoke-mountable chart holder, and a headset with a boom mike, almost archaic (as in who doesn't have these things?) requirements for single-pilot IFR. The airplane, however, does not have leading edge ice protection. It is therefore "not certified for flight into known ice."

So we look at the icing forecast, of which this is part. Red is turbulence, blue is ice.

I'm headed from the bottom left of British Columbia, the province outlined in black, to the middle of Alberta, the next province to the east. That route goes nowhere near the one patch of blue on the whole forecast. So does that mean there's no ice? It doesn't. This seems so weird now that I have to explain it, but if you look at the bottom of the chart, right above the red Canadian flag, you see some bold yet cryptic notes proclaiming that CB TCU AND ACC IMPLY SIG TURB AND ICG. This translates to a reminder that cumulonimbus, towering cumulus and altocumulus castellanus clouds can be counted on to be full of the supercooled water droplets that cause airframe icing. An airplane without leading edge ice protection definitely cannot safely fly through such a cloud. To see where those clouds are, you have to consult the corresponding clouds and weather chart.

Even if you don't read weather, you can pick out ACC and TCU in the bubbles I need to fly through. They are 'scattered', which means that theoretically I could go around them, but what if they are inside other clouds? This looks tricky. Later in the day they are calling for better weather on the coast, but thunderstorms through the mountains. I tell them tomorrow looks better, and they believe me. And now they can't get an examiner this week in Edmonton, but there might be one at some little northern airport somewhere. I'm not sure whether I've finally done enough flight tests that I'm not panicked about this one, or whether I don't really believe they will be able to find an examiner on such short notice.

Vancouver, meanwhile, lives up to its reputation of being rainy.

I have to wait until I can get my camera fixed, because I want to properly document our game of nosewheel roulette (and I'm embarrassed to ask someone else to photograph it for me), so its still not too late to enter the contest to win a pair of sunglasses.

Funny Way To Make A Living

The potential employer picks me up at the appointed time, well actually a bit later because he forgot about me until his assistant asked if I was coming today, but I spent the extra time sitting in the hotel lobby reviewing their procedures manual, so it wasn't a waste of time. The original plan was for me to go flying with the chief pilot today, for me to see to see how the operation worked and be persuaded that I wanted to join, and for them to see how I work. The flight would also count towards the required training to put me on his operating certificate, but the chief pilot has not come in today, due to a family medical emergency, and the boss is too busy to do the flight, so we're improvising.

So we chat for a while. I'm not sure it counts as an interview, because no one asks me what kind of tree I would be, what my greatest strengths and weaknesses are, or what I would do if the pilot I were flying with stated an intention to go below minima. We're telling each other stories, comparing our philosophies of life, flying and les politiques des deux solitudes du Canada. The smart psychology people amongst my readers are shaking their heads and rolling their eyes at the screen now, saying "You idiot, Aviatrix, that was the interview," but hell then, my whole life is an interview. Remember when I had a line check and didn't know it until it was over? That was awesome, too. We get along amusingly well. I tell him a story that illustrates the freedom and responsibility of being pilot-in-command compared to terrestrial rules. I've probably told it on the blog before, of driving my car on an icy, windy day, keeping my speed at what I judged safe for the conditions, which happened to be below the city speed limit. As I approached an intersection, the traffic light turned amber. On a normal day, I might have braked to a stop, but today I knew the ice would make my stopping distance longer and that locked wheels would make the car less manoeuvrable if it skidded through the intersection, buffeted by a crosswind. I elected to continue through the intersection at my cautious speed. There was no cross traffic. The combination of my low speed and a rather short duration light left me still in the intersection when the light turned red, and I knew that intersection was equipped with a red light camera, where they snap your licence plate and send you a ticket in the mail when they catch you. As far as I was concerned, the red light rule is secondary to safety, and it so happened that I had made a chain of safest decisions that contradicted the red light rule and was fully prepared to defend my decisions in court should I be issued a ticket. And there my prospective employer picked up the baton because he had had exactly the same experience--it's a Canada thing, I suppose--and he had been issued said ticket, and he had defended himself in court with weather reports and diagrams and calmly reasoned arguments, and he won. So it seems I don't need to paint any walls white for this guy.

He has work to do, so sets me up with another task, something amusingly familiar. I'm writing company exams. "Writing exams" sounds stressful, but in ten years of writing them at least once a year I can only remember one occasion in which it was a timed, competitive, closed-book event (and in that case I scored so well that the chief pilot teased me about it). It's really just an exercise in demonstrating that a pilot has reviewed all the company manuals and is familiar with their contents. You typically complete the exams as you read the manuals, noting the speeds, baggage arms, wingspan, fuel capacity, and other items that the chief pilot has chosen to test you on. There are similar manuals for icing, ground handling, the ops manual and other special aspects of the operation.

The boss pulls up an example of something on his computer. I can't not notice that it's in Xxxxxxxx. There's a chance of me flying in Xxxxxxxx! I know it's probably just like Témiscamingue or Deep East Texas with different accents on the radio, and squiggly letters on the airport terminals, and people excited about buzkashi instead of hockey or football, and mares' milk instead of poutine or barbecue, and ... oh face it, it would be totally different from Témiscamingue and Texas, and I would wrestle on horseback over possession of a goat carcass for the opportunity to go there.

I go back to writing exams, figuring out all the details of the company deicing rules. I hear the boss next door fielding a call that implies that a client has urgent need of his services in Yyyyyyy. He's telling them he has an airplane and a pilot ready to go, and can dispatch them today if need be. Replace buzkashi with surfing, and mares' milk with little drinks with umbrellas in them. The boss's assistant comes into the room where I'm writing and hisses excitedly, "hurry up and finish those exams!" gesturing with her head towards the Yyyyyyy conversation. I grin and nod, but voice reality, "That's not a mission the new hire is going to get." I'm more likely to get the mission to Qqqqqq that I think I heard him negotiating for fuel for. But hey, replace buzkashi with the knuckle hop, and mares' milk with seal blubber. I don't have to leave my own country to find an exotic culture.

If this is all a test, or some sort of set up, who cares. If someone wants to fly me to somewhere in the world, put me up in a hotel and buy me a few meals in order to have me write exams and then be told that I'm not needed after all, I'm okay with that. It gets me out of the house and gives me travel, new people to meet, and at least the opportunity to feel like I'm going to get a cool job.

I finish all the exams and get a tour of the maintenance hangar. There's a garishly-painted partial airplane in there, but I'm assured that it's the parts plane, and not representative of the appearance of the fleet. We'll try again for flying the next day.

Back at the hotel my card doesn't work. I go back to the lobby and tell the desk clerk. I always feel that in someone else's territory you should at least attempt to speak their language. Although I usually waive that rule at service points in highly traveller-oriented places like hotels and airports, I know that this clerk is francophone, so I say, "le clef ne marche plus." The key doesn't work anymore. He says the same thing I've heard a hundred other times I've experienced this, it happens, you need to keep it away from your telephone. I pull my telephone out of the same pocket and display it guiltily. I knew that. I'm clearly out of practice for hotel living. He remagnetizes the card. And then I realize that he continued the conversation in the same language as I started it. Usually bilingual Quebeckers switch into English right away in response to my French. I give everyone the benefit of the doubt and presume that they are being polite and accommodating rather then implying that my French is too execrable to listen to. I haven't been here for a while though. Is it a political wind shift, or just that this guy really prefers to speak French, even at the cost of having to listen to my accent. (The word Quebeckers looks so wrong written down, but lots of people say it aloud. I've almost decided that it's the anglo pronunciation of Québecois). I know it doesn't represent any great improvement in my ability.

Oh and did I mention that potential employer number one wants me for that operation? I've stalled them while I check out this opportunity. I find that stressful.