Runner's High

This story starts about five years ago when I first realized that combining my fondness for running, maps, and cool watches in one technological device was possible and affordable, even if it did barely fit on my wrist. I bought a Garmin Forerunner 305. It's essentially a stopwatch integrated with a GPS, heart rate monitor, and computer, so I can know where I am, how fast I'm going, and how hard my body is working to achieve it, all at once. And then I can upload the resulting data to my laptop and stare at it in tables and graphs and maps to come to conclusions like "I get really tired when I run up mountains" and "I should run faster." I used to come to such conclusions without the technology, but now I have data to back it up. It's ludicrous how much more fun it is to go running when you get statistics at the end. I don't remember how I ever went running without a box on my wrist telling me if I was doing it right or not.

I took my GPS watch in my flight bag everywhere I went, so that if I had time to go running at the end of the day, I'd have the motivation of knowing how far and fast I was going, and also so I could activate the "Return to Start" feature. Return to Start gives turn-by-turn directions to get me back to the hotel, regardless of how identical the suburban streets, wooded trails, or gravel road turn-offs appear to be. I don't know that I would be still wandering around a highway truck stop somewhere without it, but there's more oxygen deprivation in my brain after fifteen kilometres of pushing my pace than after five hours of sucking supplemental oxygen through my nose at 17,000'. It's nice not to have to worry which forks I took in the trail network of an unfamiliar town.

I have my data all in Garmin's Training Center software: years of runs from Alaska to Florida and many where I have to zoom out on the little map several times before I figure out which little town with limited map information is traced by the record of my exertions. I like to review this data and use the Training Center "Compare" feature to virtually race the years-ago Aviatrix. (I'm pretty sure I can still take her). But while I've become sleeker, faster and more resilient with the years, the watch hasn't fared as well. It became harder to charge, and reluctant to connect to the computer to give up its data. The beeping sounds stopped working, and then it started shutting off in mid-workout. It's well out of warrantee, and the model is discontinued, so I had to choose a replacement. I could probably export the data in a standard format. Garmin is so prevalent in the GPS field that any manufacturer that couldn't convert or use their formats might be a little silly. But my first choice was just to stick with Garmin.

Their website is a mess of poor feature explanations. It doesn't suggest an upgrade path from the 305 to another product. I didn't find an overview on what the focus of the Forerunner, vivo-, or fēnix lines is, nor could I see any coherent logic to the Forerunner model numbers and suffixes.

I thought I'd had an e-mail conversation about this back when the Forerunner was still available and one could send it in to a Garmin-approved dealer for a flat-rate "repair" (obviously a replacement with a reconditioned model, but it was worth the $75 for me back then). Mining my e-mail archive for "GPS watch" found me all my old blog posts that mention "GPS" and "watch". The insane detail I included allowed me to relive some interesting flights and revisit all manner of places. No wonder people who weren't on the flights to begin with enjoyed reading them. This has somewhat inspired me to find a way to keep blogging about them. Perhaps I'll talk to the owner about the blog.

I tore myself away from my former adventures to google up second hand explanations and information on features and backwards compatibility of Garmin products. There are SO many models. Finally I decided to artificially limit my choices by going to a store and making my selection from only what they had. I took my flaky old Forerunner with me, and on the bus ride there, noticed that the crack between the layers of the case was quite wide. With no prying or wiggling, I lifted the face of the watch right off the back, revealing its electronic innards. Well no wonder it wasn't staying on, charging and connecting. I was lucky it hadn't fallen apart during a run. I feared I had killed it by carrying it with me everywhere, including into the flight levels in an unpressurized airplane.

The higher you go in the atmosphere, the less air there is on top of you, thus the less pressure you feel, so that instead of being all squished together to sea level pressure, the molecules are all spread out. One breath takes in less oxygen, unless I supplement it from a tank, which I do, through the aforementioned nose tubes. Anything with air sealed into it that I bring up from ground level retains the same pressure inside that it had on the ground. As it ascends, the differential between the inside pressure and the outside pressure increases, producing a force acting to expand the sealed container. The tank full of breathing oxygen is cylindrical, and its strong walls and robust valves are inspected weekly to ensure that as the pressure outside the tank decreases, the tank will not rupture, bulge or leak from the added force. Potato chips are deliberately packaged with trapped air, to protect the chips, and their bags will bulge out drum-tight, and sometimes burst, as we ascend. The gases in our intestines and ear canals expand and escape through the usual routes. I was afraid that the air sealed into my GPS watch damaged it. But then I realized that the Forerunner 305 isn't waterproof, and my Timex wristwatch, which works perfectly, is. (I'd tell you what model Timex, but it's so old that all the words have worn away, and the chunks of decorative plastic stuff have fallen off, leaving a bare case with buttons on it). A little more research showed me that plenty of people had their Forerunners come apart, sometimes falling off bike mounts and/or being run over by cars.

I got to the store and interrogated the clerk about the selection. I was almost ready to buy a Garmin Forerunner 225. It has the heart rate monitor integrated in the watch itself, with no need for a chest strap. It has a built-in accelerometer to give pace and distance information on indoor treadmill runs. "What about winter?" I asked. "Can I use it with a chest strap in the winter, when I wear the watch on the outside of long-sleeved garments?" To answer this question, the clerk went not to the Garmin website, but straight to the blog of DC Rainmaker, an obsessive sports technology reviewer. I'd encountered one of his reviews while googling for compatibility information earlier, and not noticed that everything I could ever want to know about pretty much any sports watch is on this guy's blog. The Forerunner 225 will pair with a chest strap, for people who mount it on bicycle handlebars, as well as winter runners, but it was missing a couple other features that I wanted. Indeed none of the watches they carried had the Back to Start feature, so I went home without buying any of them, and went back to DC Rainmaker's site.

Ray Maker (get it?) conveys the excitement of taking a new electronic toy out of the shipping box, gazing at its packaging, and then breaking the shrinkwrap. He includes photographs detailing the plastic bags and twist ties containing all the sub-components of the products. He does more running, biking, and swimming to test one device for a review than some buyers will log in the lifetime of their device. Every review is ridiculously detailed. Some people would say too detailed. So a little like many of my blog entries, if I did way more research. It parallels the way I'd like to blog if I had the diligence to drill down to the technological and legal root of everything I said, rather than speculating and drawing on knowledge already in my head. It made me cheer a little when I found a typo now and again, on his site, because it just goes to show that typo-free is not a requirement for an insanely awesome blog. He also displays a lot of integrity: he borrows and returns all reviewed gear despite the fact that his reviews are clearly enough work to deserve a lot of freebies. If you run or bike and like gear, you almost certainly already know his site, but if you don't you're in for a treat. If you never do anything more energetic than opening the refrigerator, but just like tech, especially GPS, you'll probably still want to read his site. The comparison tool there allowed me to quickly determine that the correct watch for my needs is the Forerunner 310XT. It wasn't at the store nor prominent on Garmin's website because it is ALSO being discontinued. I decided to get one now, through a site DC Rainmaker partners with, to compensate him for the work he does. I had some trouble with that site, so posted a comment on his blog, and as I was already thinking of blogging about the experience, I signed the comment "Aviatrix."

It turns out that DC Rainmaker is a long-time reader of Cockpit Conversation. It made me feel like a member of an elite when he asked if I was that Aviatrix. As I told him, some days I’m convinced that there are far fewer people on the Internet than is generally thought. Maybe it’s just you, me, the awesome people who comment on our blogs, and a lot of Chinese spambots.

Meanwhile I ordered a Forerunner 310XT somewhere else, bound my Forerunner 305 together with rubber bands, found it worked perfectly, glued it together with silicone sealant (as recommended by several people on the Internet), and am currently in high level discussions with my printer on why it should print the return mailing label for the 310XT. When the 305 gasps out its final beep I'll do this again, probably with a whole new set of features. I might get one of the "lifestyle" watches that track your every move, including sleeping.

Calgary Sights & Heights

In an account that has drifted loose from the day in which it actually occurred, I will now describe a half day free of duty in Calgary. I e-mailed everyone who responded to my Lunch invitation and whose e-mail comes up when I search on "Calgary" or "YYC," to see if anyone is up for a short notice visit. If I didn't e-mail you, and you wish I had, send me an e-mail with the name and airport identifiers that I might be putting in if I were in your neck of the woods, and you never know. I might have a free day there sometime. I search everything with the label Lunch in my gmail account, looking for the name of the town or airport, so put more than one in if you like, and avoid mentioning places you're not in the same e-mail.

No one is available for the afternoon, so I go solo to investigate the things on the hill behind the hotel. They're ski lifts and ski jumps, leftovers from the 1988 Winter Olympic Games. There's not enough snow left to ski--it's summer, after all--but there was enough to climb up a big pile of snow underneath the chairlifts and pretend I'm summitting Everest. Forgot my flag, though. I do climb up the whole hill. It's a little disorienting to find when I get to the top that the hill is really just an escarpment, and that there's a boring subdivision at the top, almost level with the top of the ski hill.

Along the ridge at the top of the ski hill there is a path that goes to the bases of a number of towers. They are the tops of ski jumps. You know when you see ski jumpingon TV and the person goes off the jump and sails through the air, bent forward over their skis into a human aerofoil? That sort of ski jump. The biggest two have elevators going to the top, but the others have stairs, and there's no gate nor "keep out" sign and it's all part of a public park. I walk on up. And up. And up. Maybe they just figured sightseeers wouldn't go up all those stairs. At the top there's a platform with that same potscrubber plastic stuff you get at the loading and unloading area of ski-lifts. There's a bar to hang onto as you position yourself at the top of the ski jump. And there's the steep, steep, precipitous drop. It's kind of freaky and at the same time flattering that the Calgary parksboard thinks highly enough of me to trust me to behave safely up here. I'm a little surprised that no one has killed themselves trying to mountain bike down the ski jump, for example. The amount more daring and less common sense than me that it would take to think that was worth trying is well within human variation. Or a mickey of Crown Royal.

I go down the wooden stairs along the side of the ski jump and then back to the hotel. During dinner, Carlos replies to my call for locals. Remember Carlos? He guest-blogged about a high tech cement mixer he drove. I look it up and that was 2007. I guess a few very loyal readers may do. He lives in Calgary now and has time before his next shift to squire me around the city. He comes by in a low-slung car, definitely not a dump truck and we head downtown. He's rocking the aviator sunglasses and the Latin flair as he points out the Bow River trails and other sights during the drive.

We start off at the Calgary Tower. Every city has to have its phallic symbol. There's an elevator, so I don't have to walk up the stairs. At the top is a similarly dizzying view, with better safety features. There's a glass floor and we entertain ourselves "balancing" on the girders within it, and jumping into the "spaces." It's a fun game of mind over mind, to use the logical part of the brain to overrule the more instinctive part, the one that says, "there's no FLOOR there!" Then we walk all the way around the tower, looking at the landscape. We can see the Rocky Mountains, the suburbs, the airport, along with arrivals and departures, and some of the downtown. Part of the view from the tower is blocked by a tall building that wasn't there when the tower was built. Ironically, it't the same building the controller wouldn't give me permission to overfly at 7,100' a few weeks ago. Now I get a better look at it, closer to the ground. Carlos also explains his crazy scheme to learn to fly and build time as a commercial bush pilot in South America. I realize at this moment that we were so busy discussing his plans that I never got around to telling him that I might be working there this winter. Now he's going to kill me.

Back at ground level it's too late (i.e. within twelve hours of my report time) to have a drink at Carlos' favourite bar, so he vows to find me some dessert. He consults with his dispatcher from work while driving around the city. It's amusingly similar to me trying to get airport information from the FSS while in descent. It's late enough that the best bet turns out to be Dairy Queen, so Carlos pulls up to some young ladies on the sidewalk, cranks the charm up a several notches and gets directions to the nearest. Ice cream doesn't have to be fancy to be good, and this was quick and delicious to get me home in time for my required duty rest.

I remember asking Carlos if he wanted me to hold anything back in my description of the evening, and he said to go ahead and tell it like it was, so I must have been planning to mock him for something, but I've forgotten what it was. Probably his driving. I don't think I screamed at all though, so it's all good.

It's funny sometimes, that a guy doing his best to impress you might not come off as the most impressive, but it makes a girl feel good that he's going to the effort, so in the end she's happy. Carlos was tired and busy, but he postponed some important tasks to make sure I felt welcome and had a great time in Calgary. Yeah, tip for everyone: spend more effort making the person you're with feel important than making them believe that you are important. That takes me right back to some advice I received may years ago from another Albertan: "stop trying to show people how smart you are, and concentrate on letting them see how nice you are." It's a rare friend who will offer constructive criticism that requires them to point out your personality flaws. I don't know where he is now, but if you're out there, K'Harv, you know who you are.

Carlos came to Canada from Colombia and over the past few years I have had the privilege of witnessing his gradual mastery of the English language and his pride in his new country through our e-mail correspondence. He teased me with a put-on accent when I remarked on having expected one. He sounds almost like he was born here now. He's even writing eloquent letters to the CBC, and just had an excerpt from one on climate change read on-air on a province-wide show. You can listen to it via podcast (at minute 20:34), or read the unedited version at his new blog. He notes that the units for the diesel consumption mentioned in the letter read on air should be km/liter, not liters per kilometers.

I'm proud to have friends who stand up and speak out for what they believe in.

Beware of Broken Glass

Loyal reader majroj forwarded me this link to an NTSB study on glass cockpits in general aviation. The term "glass cockpit" refers to integrated computerized information screens that augment and take the place of traditional instrumentation and paper documentation both. Instead of the pilot having to look at a paper chart then at separate instruments showing things like altitude, heading, airspeed time, and angular displacement from a selected line, they look at a high resolution screen that combines all that information and computes time en route and descent profile. Twelve years ago these were new shiny toys that some airlines had, and I remember a "hilarious" joke a friend and I had about installing such screens in a tiny two-place airplane. Now they are commonplace. After the initial learning curve, having that much information available seems to represent an enormous decrease in workload and increase in situational awareness. But the NTSB (the agency that investigates air crashes in the United States) didn't find the evidence supported that supposition.

The study compared aircraft of similar age and performance capability, but unfortunately did not control for the fact that people who invest in glass instrumentation use their aircraft differently. The aircraft with conventional instruments were involved in more accidents overall, but fewer fatal accidents, a predictable outcome when it is revealed that the conventional instruments are in airplanes used for flight training, which involves frequent, short, local flights used for flight training, while the glass cockpits were in aircraft flown less frequently but in long distance IFR flights in less ideal weather. Training accidents tend to be runway excursions and botched landings: embarrassing, expensive, but less likely to be fatal, while an accident on an IFR cross country is more likely to involve CFIT or loss of control in icing and thus kill someone.

The study report acknowledges the problem with the comparison, but doesn't appear to have made an attempt to control for it, which is unfortunate. I'd be interested to see a head-to-head comparison of similar flying with and without the modern tools. The integrated screens are fantastic, but the two big dangers I identify are catastrophic failure and tunnel vision, when the pilot gets so caught up in the avionics that they miss the big picture. Ask me if I haven't done that, in the last couple of weeks, and you'll just get an embarrassed mumble from me. People can literally fly into the side of a mountain or mumble mumble bust their assigned altitude while trying to make the little pink line point in the correct direction. When you learn to use conventional instruments, you learn how failures manifest and how to identify them by cross-checking with other instruments. You learn to disregard bogus information from failed instruments, perhaps using exactly the same technique as your flight instructor used to simulate failure in training: putting a post-it note over it. Once the misleading information is removed from your scan, it's gone and you can make decisions using only the believed trustworthy information remaining.

When the information from all the different sensors is processed and presented together, you don't have as smooth a way of removing the faulty information. The computer tries to make sense of conflicting data and while there are circuits and algorithms designed to remove unreliable data from the equation, the loss of control in Air France 447 is probably related to integrated displays reaching incorrect or ambiguous conclusions about the state of the aircraft.

My hypothesis is that if a study were done comparing the safety of similar flights by pilots of similar experience before and after glass cockpits in small GA aircraft they would find an initial increase in safety, followed by a return to pre-glass accident rates, or even worse accident rates. That is, initially they would increase safety, but then people would start taking greater risks. It appears that psychologically people have a certain level of risk tolerance, so if you make something safer, they'll find a way to make it more dangerous again.

The issue the NTSB identified is training. Just because a GPS display requires less interpretation than a VOR, doesn't mean that it needs less training and practice to be proficient and safe in its operation. Probably the opposite. It needs more initial training and more review to get and stay proficient with just one part of that formula, a complex GPS system. I started a while ago documenting my progress towards proficiency with the G530, but I never finished, and am especially guilty for not raving at more length and detail about Max Trescott's GPS and WAAS Instrument Flying Handbook, a book which I highly recommend to anyone using or teaching on the G430/530/1000. I'm never going to finish learning how to use this instrument, but I will post some more about it and the book.

I picked up my unrepairable camera and went to a store look for a replacement. I took out the broken camera and practiced holding and shooting with one hand, to remind myself how small it was and easy to use. I pressed the on button, and pointed it at things. See, easy to balance, and my thumb doesn't change settings while I'm holding it. And I can see my feet in the formerly broken screen.

"Can I help you?" asks the camera counter guy.

"I, uh, came to buy a replacement for this broken camera, but ..."

"Now it works?"

"Yeah."

He looks at it, takes a picture of my happy-my-camera-works smile and agrees that it works.

I guess while putting it back together after determining that they couldn't fix it, they accidentally fixed it. I know it probably won't last long, so I look at the cameras for sale, but none is as tiny. The company doesn't make that kind any more. Anyone have a Canon Power Shot SD10 they are not in love with? Or one that works really well, and which they would like extra batteries and a battery charger for?

Guest Posts

I fairly frequently receive e-mails asking if I accept guest posts for my blog. Almost always these requests are from people with something to sell or promote: people who want to take advantage of the fact that your eyeballs and minds will be on the blog. As far as I am concerned, you guys are not for sale. I'm not in principle opposed to guest posts, and if someone has something to contribute I will give them recognition, but I have standards for what I accept. I'm writing this post not as a solicitation for or warning about upcoming guest posts, but to give my readers a chance to comment on the idea that I might accept them, and so I can simply link to it next time someone asks me if I accept them.

A guest post must be on a topic linked to aviation. If it is a technical topic on which the writer has considerable expertise, that link may be quite tenuous. For example I'd accept a technical post on the production of the multi-layer aluminum sheeting used aircraft skin, on petroleum fractionation, or on the transport of materials to Uranium City for construction of the runway there. It should be well- written and go beyond what I could produce on the same subject with a little research. If it treats a less technical topic, then I would prefer you write a first person account of an interesting aviation experience, something that gives an insider's view. It could be something you'd put on your own blog if you had one, or something you don't want to put on your own blog because it's too embarrassing, but that you'd like to share anonymously.

I'm not interested in posts about ordinary passenger experiences on large commercial aircraft, how to get first class upgrades, exciting places to go on vacation, or the benefits of going to a particular technical college, or anything that reads like an infomercial. I'd welcome a post from a crewmember or controller about an emergency situation, from a customer of a Canadian bushplane operator, from a student describing a first solo or an AME changing a cylinder in the field. If it's a well-written personal account with technical details by a woman in Canadian aviation, then it's probably a homerun. You may include links in the post as necessary to tell the story. Length isn't really important. If it's super short I may throw in a related story of my own or a YouTube link. If it's really long but worthwhile I might split it across more than one post.

I will introduce the guest post, stating my relationship with you, and then at the end I will link to the website you wish to promote and/or to the author's personal website. You keep the copyright, and I don't mind if you simulpost the story to your own blog. I will maintain your anonymity if it's that kind of story.

If you have an idea for something that would fit here, please e-mail me with a specific description so I can give you a go-ahead before you go to any trouble. If you have a product to sell, please include a link to a sample of your writing so I know you don't write like a comment robot. If you're just sharing an experience with nothing to sell, but you happen to write like a comment robot, I can probably fix it up for you.

Metaphors for Life

Friends take a while to get it when I say things like, "I hope it will rain on the weekend, so I can go to the park!" But you see when you're an on-call photo pilot, you have to work on the sunny days. Today it's raining, but fortunately not a thunderstorm, so I'm at the amusement park with an eleven year old. Eleven year olds are about the best companions for amusement parks because they are big enough to go on all the rides and I've never found an adult who wants to go on the water flume ride thirty times in succession. I recently discovered that most parents consider taking their kids to the amusement park a chore. If this one works out, I think I'll get a season's pass and take all my friends' well-behaved kids, one a week all summer. Also rainy days are the best, because there are no lines. No lines at all, no one waiting, so we've been riding around and around on the water flume without getting off. The ride attendants don't care, less work for them. It's raining anyway, so we're not going to get any less wet if we get off. And water coasters are fun.

I've been around this same ride enough times to get philosophical. We went on wheeled roller coasters first, with the eleven year old bravely marching up to each one without giving himself any time to chicken out. Some things in life are quite as committed as getting on a roller coaster. You make your decision, you get strapped in, and then you're there, despite the fact that you may not enjoy the whole ride. His eyes were screwed tightly shut all the way through the roller coaster that went upside-down, and he was hanging on for dear life on the steepest one. Mind you, so was I. It really feels like you're going to fall out!

Going round and round on the water coaster he gradually comes to terms with the feeling of the big drop and when we finally get off, he wants to go back on the other roller coasters. They're still scary, but he's conquered them. And then we spend the rest of the day on the bumper cars. I adore bumper cars. If I win the lottery I am so getting my own bumper car arena, and you can all come over and we can smash into one another over and over again. On the way home it's all I can do to remember not to slam into the other traffic. I also remember to use the gear shift and not the steering wheel to engage reverse.

I find a place that repairs cameras, because even though I know my little camera is probably toast, I'd rather hear it from an expert than throw it out not knowing. I even pay a $25 diagnostic fee, to be credited to the repair cost if I give the go ahead, but forfeit if I decide not to have it repaired. I press a little, "do you think you'll be able to fix it?" but the technician impassively says he doesn't know until they examine it.

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Ever post something and imagine someone might be reading it, but know it's very unlikely? That was me, sending best wishes to South Sudan a few days ago. How about this, reader ScurvyDog who blogs at Tales from the Clouds was in South Sudan on its first Independence Day, celebrating along with the nationals. I never get over the astonishing breadth of the readership here.

Last Post

I wrote this not knowing if it was a last blog entry I would never post, or the first blog entry in a new chapter of my blog. Today someone, two people actually, sent me Google+ invites. I thought "Eh, what could it hurt? I might as well try this out." I clicked through on one of them and started filling out the form. I never give my actual birthdate to fun services online, because that's part of the verification information for real services like banking. I give a fake birthdate that I can easily remember. For this account I decided to give the memorable date of my first flying lesson.

Immediately Google seized on this information and determined me underage. I haven't been flying for eighteen years, and apparently you have to be eighteen years old to author a blog. The screen said Google would delete my blog in twenty-nine days if I did not send them government-issued ID demonstrating that I am over eighteen. Unfortunately Aviatrix Anon does not have government-issued ID, so I knew that unless I had a friend at Google, that would be the end of my blog.

I knew that I probably did have a friend at Google, or at least a friend of a friend, but my blog contact list is on Gmail, and Google locked not only the blog, but the Gmail account. Of course that means they also locked the back-up Cockpit Conversation Redirection blog, my account through which I could access Google Help, and even my ability to comment identifiably on other blogs. I sent a fax to the Google people explaining the situation, then plea-for-help e-mail to a few bloggers with common traffic, whose e-mails I happened to have on my home account, and then I waited.

This paragraph was going to contain either gratitude to the person or persons who helped me out, or a fond farewell to all the people who have read and commented on the blog, and even met me in person, over the years. If the blog was deleted, I wasn't going to start a new one. It's too much to lose and try to start over.

While waiting for someone at Google to get back to me one way or another, I decided to try the other offered means of age verification, the credit card. I don't have a credit card with the name Aviatrix Anon on it, either, but maybe they wouldn't check. Seeing as you can get a credit card for your cat or dog and buy preloaded credit cards at the grocery store checkout, I thought it was only scammer porn sites that professed to use credit cards for ID verification, but I decided my blog was worth thirty United States cents, and Google probably wasn't running a credit card scam. I gave Google my credit card information and instantly my Blogger account was restored. Thirty cents is a cheaper bribe than I thought I'd need. Most of you probably never noticed the interruption.

So kids, if you want a blog, lie about your age. Grownups, lie about your age if you will, but make sure you don't take too much off. Either way, any credit card will do to fix your error.

I can't really recommend Google Plus, but if you use other Google services with the identity you use to connect to Google Plus, please make sure you tell it you are over eighteen.

First Full Day of Summer

Today (that is the UTC day, not necessarily your local day) is the first full day of summer. In the latitudes I have been operating in there was snow a couple of weeks before, and it doesn't mean there won't be snow tomorrow, but the sun has set once since it had its moment overhead the Tropic of Cancer, and will remain north of the equator until the equinox in September. Yes, it's odd that we've settled on what is also known as Midsummer's Day as the beginning of summer, but it is pretty close to marking the date of the beginning of warm weather in the northern hemisphere.

As announced earlier, today is also the date SunglassesShop.com is sponsoring a contest in which you can win a pair of SXUC mirrored aviator-style sunglasses, specifically these ones. SunglassesShop.com sells expensive brands, as well, but the website copy makes it clear that SXUC is not an expensive brand, just fun, but they do have UV400 protection. (For work I use expensive sunglasses, but when I'm not working I typically wear sunglasses in about this price so that I won't scream in pain when they get sat on, scratched, or lost. I get my optometrist to verify that they have the advertised UV protection, and he puts them in a machine and tells me they do, even though he's the one who sells me the expensive sunglasses).

After considering various options for the workings of a contest, I've decided that we will play nosewheel roulette. On my next flight, I will mark and photograph a chalk line on the left side of the lowest point of my nosewheel tire during preflight. Then I will taxi, take-off, fly an entire flight and return to parking, at which point I will disembark and re-examine the chalk mark. Your task is to predict how many centimetres clockwise around the circumference of the tire the chalk mark will appear once the airplane is stopped. This may be at the fuel pumps or it may be at the final parking location, wherever I first get an opportunity to photograph and measure it for you.

The total circumference of the tire is 128 centimetres, giving a giant roulette wheel with 128 possibilities, from zero to 127. Post your selection in the comments, then back it up with an e-mail to me with the subject Sunglasses. Your e-mail should contain the same guess, so I don't need to sort out which Anonymous or which David is which, when I need to contact you for your mailing address. You can also save that step and put your mailing address in the e-mail. I won't use it for anything except maybe sending you a postcard sometime, unless you win in which case I will send it to SunglassesShop.com so they can send you your prize. If you live underground and don't need sunglasses, or want to play for glory only, and prefer to cede your prize to the next runner up, you can put that in the e-mail too.

Don't pick a number someone else has chosen, because I'll give priority to the person whose comment appears first. If two guesses are equidistant either side of the correct location, that's okay because there are two pairs of sunglasses available to be won. If there is some added complication I haven't thought of, I'll do my best to be fair.

There will also be a booby prize for the entry furthest from correct. The booby prize is a second-hand (or possibly more) aviation-themed decorative towel in extremely questionable taste. Someone sent it to me and after I looked at it, it went right back into the envelope waiting for its next victim.

Heads Up for a Pop Quiz

I get a lot of requests to advertise on this blog. It doesn't gather millions of eyeballs, but I suppose it's a niche market of people who trust me, and advertisers are feeling around for a way to reach people. I know I should just ignore the robotic linkfarm spam, but I often respond anyway, explaining briefly how vastly unlikely it is that I would ever place a link to their site on my blog. I know it just confirms me as a live one, but it amuses me to reply.

Every once in a while my "Sorry, I don't participate in linkfarms" or "Why would I link to a site scraper?" gets a response from a real human being, who isn't always a linkfarmer or a barely literate employee of a scammer. The problem with linkfarmers trying to look like legitimate bloggers is that sometimes legitimate bloggers end up looking like linkfarmers.

My first contact with John of the cleverly named Golf Hotel Whiskey was like that. I had looked at the site briefly, not parsed the name, seen something I thought was a generic travel review site, and given him a brush off. He defended himself, I took a second look, and while it still isn't a regular read of mine, I acknowledge it as original work, related to aviation and worthy of respect. Another site I dismissed as a site-scraper is How It Flies. I told him flat out that it's obvious that all the content has been scraped directly from Wikipedia, making not only the material unoriginal, but the concept. Paste a chunk of text from any Wikipedia article into Google's search engine with quotation marks around it, and you'll see how popular it is to build a site by plagiarizing Wikipedia. Keith argues that the Wikipedia material is just the seed and that his site has a different purpose. I'm still not entirely convinced, but it isn't advertising supported, so he must be doing this out of conviction. I'll let him explain.

I understand your aversion to site scrapers. I debated long and hard before incorporating Wikipedia content for a number of reasons. One is that the quality is inconsistent, but mostly because their focus is not what I'm aiming for. Their writing is for a general audience while How It Flies is oriented towards pilots. Over time I imagine that the articles will shift focus as people edit them. Their content focus is also limited. I'm looking to have a much larger collection of photos as well as videos. All of this though takes an immense amount of time and my calculations showed that, without seeding the site with content, I would never have the critical mass necessary to create a useful resource. I have been stunned at the results. Since adding wiki articles a little over a month ago, traffic to the site has quintupled.

Besides the different focus, we're also making the information from Wikipedia more useful by creating structured data. Wiki information is one big text file. I've been able to get a great deal of the information into a database which will eventually allow people to search and manipulate it in ways I can't even foresee.

A big-name company interested in grassroots marketing but completely unrelated to the topic of my blog sent me an "infographic" they thought I might like to share with my readers. It was ... an infographic. Someone with some amount of skill in information presentation had crafted it, but still, it had nothing to do with anything. I told him that if it weren't for linkfarm spam, his missive would win the award for the lamest attempt to be featured on my blog that I have received all year, and that I very nearly opened Microsoft Paint to make him an infographic he could put on his wall to commemorate that stunning failure to impress me. "I may yet sponsor a reader contest to do so," I claimed.

Perhaps this inspired me, because recently an advertiser actually associated with a vaguely aviation product enquired about the price of links or banners and instead of saying "no" I said, "I don't do banners, but I would do a contest giveway." I was thinking, "I don't want to burden my readers with ads, but if I can give them something, that's different." And the manufacturer thought it was a fair deal. So I'm just deciding what sort of contest this will be.

Fellow blogger Michael 5000 runs a weekly honour-system quiz which I always have a great time attempting, despite my woefully poor knowledge of art, American literature, and music. I think I may start a similar regular feature: only aviation-related. You would be on your honour not to use Google, Wikipedia, books, posters, roommates or other resources not already located within your own head to answer the questions posed. I think this is probably not the best choice for a contest with a prize, because it would literally reward people for cheating. I don't want to do an open-book quiz, because then it just turns into a Google/Wikipedia competition, and that's no fun.

I have been thinking for years of doing a "how well do you know me" quiz covering everything from random eggs and burrowing mammals to my most abused adverbs, and that would favour long-term and attentive readers, but seems a little narcissistic. (Wow there are a lot of ess sounds in narcissistic). And it might be tantamount to just giving the prize to my friends.

I did a giveaway a while ago where I asked contestants to explain why they were the most deserving of the prize, but you were all so nice to each other that you all just awarded the prize to the first cute kid entrant. Another option is to ask for your creative work, such as your speculation on what the dot was asking me. (Let me tell you, after five hours of keeping it centred, the dot is usually asking me to do unspeakable things).

I'm leaning towards a game of "nosewheel roulette". I make a chalk mark on the nosewheel, normal to its low point on the ground, then I taxi out and do a flight. After shutdown I get out and see where the chalk mark ends up. The pockets on the roulette wheel correspond to the number of centimetres around the circumference of the tire from bottom dead centre to the chalkmark. Whoever guesses closest wins a prize. The downside is that it's purely a game of chance, but the upside is that it's easy to judge, impossible to cheat, and someone gets free stuff. I'll let you know the circumference of the nosewheel when the contest is on.

Busy Calendar

A blog reader who flies a Citation XL is going to be in the next town over, and we've made a date for me to meet him at the FBO there at 10:30. As soon as that was confirmed, I received an e-mail asking me if I'm available for an interview, at the same airport, "late morning." The request acknowledges that it's short notice and assures me another time would be fine, but I figure a job interview is a chance for me to show my willingness and flexibility as well as my knowledge and personality. Yet I spend so much of my life ditching my friends for work that I don't want to just cancel the other meeting so I suggest earlier.

"Would nine a.m. be alright? That's late morning for a pilot," I joke.

Nine it is. I'll spare my mainly male audience the "what do I wear to a casual interview for what will be a fairly casual job just before going out to meet a friend?" agonizing and affirm that I put on clothes and drove out there. This is the "Facebook job."

The working conditions are good, the pay okay, the company small but professional, the aircraft well-serviced and the work within my capabilities. I think I will be offered the job. And I think I would take it. But I have to check out the other possibility, too.

I head over to the FBO. I'm a bit early, and I know my friend has to land, clear customs, look after the passengers, and complete all his postflight duties. An FBO is like an airport terminal, but for private aircraft, so (so far, thankfully) there's no security screening or ticket counters, just a lounge with big windows and a counter behind which sit people who will sell you fuel, rent you a car or help you provide services to your passengers. I walk up to the counter and talk to the guy there. He's a retired flight engineer, doing fuelling, towing airplanes and chatting to people like me. I tell him I'm waiting for someone, and recite the tail number. He looks the flight up on Flight Aware and notes that it's just a few minutes away. He laughs that I know the aircraft ident. He says a lot of people show up here to meet a flight not knowing even the aircraft type or point of origin.

We see my friend's airplane (of course it's my friend's boss's airplane) land and then it taxies past to go to customs. They get held up at customs for a while but eventually come back to the FBO and after my friend sorts out an appropriate rental vehicle (a Canadian "full-sized" car isn't big enough for four men and bags) for his passengers. I get a quick tour of the airplane then help him and his FO put in brand new engine plugs. Brand new. The pilots have no more experience using these things than I do. I did had this exact same experience last winter when the boss bought shiny new monogrammed (okay not technically monogrammed, but with the aircraft ident on, just like these) wing covers and engine plugs. These ones fit oddly. The FO announces he's done the other side, then realizes that the ribbon streamer on his is marked "LEFT". We're on the left side. And ours is marked RIGHT. We just assumed the streamer said REMOVE BEFORE FLIGHT. We swap sides and they fit better.

Someday I'll stop being amused by the way aviation experiences are more the same than different despite radically different operations. They have the same plastic bin in the rear cargo space I had on my last job, and the same products in it: leather wipes, Mr. Clean Eraser, Febreeze and other products for keeping the airplane shipshape. Before we leave, the captain disconnects the aircraft battery. The airplane is only going to be parked for four days. I've left an airplane for months before with the battery connected, but not this sort. Apparently it's a weakness of this type: so many services on the hot battery bus that parking it for a few days can drain the battery.

This is the point at which I should have a fabulous restaurant recommendation, stuff the three of us into my definitely not full-sized car and go find it. But I'm uninspired so we just walk to one on the airport. It's more about people than food, anyway.

I enjoyed meaning the captain reader friend. He too was recently unemployed, when his previous jet charter company stopped operating. He was assigned to take a company jet to Wichita for refurbishing by Cessna for its new owner, and ended up working for the new owner.

He's actualy originally from Canada, with more northern piston time than I have. He tells me that when his first American co-workers found out how much time he had, they thought he must be an idiot. U.S. career progression is different. The newly PPCed copilot on this jet, for example went straight from flight instruction to jets. He knows how lucky he is, though.

My new friend gave me a book, which I'll read and report on later. It's a novel and he says it was a favourite of his years ago, but he hasn't reread it lately. It's foolproof though, he tell me, because either I will read it and enjoy it or I will read it and say "I could write a better aviation novel than this!" and then I will.

The end of the day brings encouraging e-mail from both potential employers. Even after all the times employers have led me on, I feel like two-timing scum talking to both of them.

I'd Rather My Life Be About Flying, Too

A few days ago, a reader posted a comment that I was expecting. Truthfully I was expecting more resembling this comment, and sooner.

OK, I think this diversion was fun. I also think it has gone on long enough and we ought to get back to flying or something close. Don't ya 'spoze... If we don't (or won't) want to write about flying anymore, let's reclassify and get off the aviation lists. Frankly, I DO think you still give a twit about flying and you are just hiding it because you are a bit frustrated - and I can appreciate that. Maybe it is time to take a slightly lesser flying job, keep those hours building and do what you are supposed to do. Some folks on their way up the ladder believe that ANY flying is better than no flying. Where do you stand?

I answered briefly (or at least as briefly as I get) in a comment, but decided to take some more room here to answer more thoroughly, point by point. As I learned as an instructor, most of the time when someone asks a question there are others wondering the same thing. I appreciate your attention and your comments, and enjoy hearing from different people as I happen to veer into your areas of expertise. This blog, as it has always said up there at the top, is about the adventures of an aviatrix: me. I am doing my level best to make them once again aviation-related adventures, but I can only write so many posts about PDFs of resumes. I like to be a reliable blogger, but in my case reliability is in the regularity my posts, or at least reliable information on when I'll blog next, as opposed to reliably blogging on a given topic. Despite my diversions, I think I produce as many aviation-themed posts in any given year as any other non-aggregator in the blogosphere. Remember in that vein that a non-aviation post is not depriving you of an aviation one, just giving you something to see before the next time I have an aviation-related one ready.

I'm a little surprised to have given the impression that I was unwilling to write about flying, or that I didn't care about flying. I didn't think much more than a week went by without me saying something about my desire to be flying, my impatience to hear back from a company I had interviewed with, or at least comparing what I was doing to some aspect of flying. I'm definitely not trying to hide it. Getting off aviation lists wouldn't really be something I could do of my own accord. Most blog directories, well the good ones, at least, classify blogs themselves and I wouldn't even know where to look to find what lists I'm on or how to get off them.

The "time to take a slightly lesser flying job" question is an interesting one. I wonder if he has ever tried to take a slightly lesser flying job. What is a "lesser" flying job? For less money? The job for which I attended groundschool would have paid half as much as my previous one, and for close to twice as much work. A slower or smaller airplane? Not out of the question. Every type of commercial operation is different, and the management want pilots who have direct, recent experience in the narrow area they are hiring for, yet who do not have so much experience that they could easily get a different job. I apply for but don't get called to interview for near-entry level jobs, even ones I really want, because my resume is clearly not one of an entry level pilot, and the employers want someone who needs the job as a rung on the ladder, and who will take some time to be eligible for a different one. Cynically, such a pilot is easier for them to abuse, and practically they feel they have a better chance of amortizing their investment. I'm already eligible for almost any job advertised without specific type-rating demands, but as the specific type of time any given employer might be asking for falls further into the past, my competitiveness as a candidate declines. And yes, that's very frustrating, and it's something that sent me to go back to school and prove that I could go and learn things like I was still twenty.

I have absolutely no interest in time-building. It's one of the strengths of my resume, that any employer can look at it and see that I'm not applying because I'm looking to build time. My time is built. I'm not sure what "do what you were supposed to do" means in the question. If I was supposed to fly airplanes and write only about aviation, then you not I are the one doing the supposing. I'm a whole person and I do lots of stuff, little of which I consider to be something I'm not supposed to do.

Any flying is most definitely not better than no flying. If you are flying unsafe aircraft, with undocumented dangerous goods, with abusive management or customers, or otherwise operating in an environment hazardous to the physical or mental health of yourself or others, you're making a poor decision. I will fly for any operation I consider to be safe and respectful. Regular readers have seen me accept a contract to fly an airplane I could lift without starting the engine, and jump in a simulator for an airplane that could probably lift my house. I'll follow any SOPs I consider safe, legal and moral, but I won't stay long where I'm not respected.

It so happens that the school from which I embezzled the most recent phase of my education ended its winter term. The students all applauded the professors on the last day of classes, something that seems superior to what happened when I went to school. I think we all walked out grumbling about the exam schedule. I cancelled the Netflix subscription without watching anything else I deemed worth reporting on. Except that I watched all the Red Dwarf episodes, including a few series that weren't out the first time I watched them. I discovered that you can be inspired and roll your eyes at the same time, with the line, "Even the word "hopeless" has hope in it." Netflix Canada has a very poor selection. I'm holding back on trying another movie delivery option because whether DVDs-by-mail will work depends on whether the job I am destined to get is in Nowhere, Nunavut or Downtown Distribution City.

And all this blogging isn't a complete waste of time, as I now have e-mail from a couple of blog readers with real job tips: jobs that are available to a Canadian, and related to my experience. One of the companies experiences an unfortunate setback actually during our rapid-fire e-mail conversation but the other one seems promising, as the employer e-mailed me back.

Update: I removed the reader's posting name from this blog entry because, while I wasn't intending it as a name and shame, he took some heat from the blogosphere and sent me a sincere apology. So we're good now.

Some Backstory

Do you play video games? Sometimes while I am playing video games I realize a moment too late what move I should make and then make that move anyway. So I shoot the wall, instead of the enemy, wasting ammunition. I jump after the door has closed, and slam into the wall. I turn around right after the Pac-Man ghost stops being blue. It's not slow reflexes, it's more of a "no! I meant to do this!" It's the action of a pilot who moves the gear lever to the "extend" position after landing gear up.

I'm wondering to what extent I do that in my career. There are jobs I would have killed for years ago that I shouldn't take now, but the instinct is that I still want them. What should I aim for? Do I have enough power dots left on this level to try and lure the ghosts to me, or should I just sneak around and get all the little dots to get through without dying?

A few weeks ago I realized I was sending out job applications without much of a plan, or a really clear idea of what it was reasonable for me to expect to achieve. I needed some help sorting out my career. I needed someone who knew me, who knew the various aspects of aviation in which I have participated, and who had realistic knowledge of the Canadian aviation scene. I know a number of wonderful people The name of the right person came to me one morning and when I e-mailed him, I discovered that he had moved back to my part of the country since I'd seen him last, so his home was only a couple of hours drive away. And he was happy to counsel me, declining my offer to pay for his time.

I brought my logbooks, my resumé, and a big box of kleenex, but I'm proud to say that I didn't burst into tears the whole time. He listened, he nodded, he told me my aspirations were not unreasonable for my age and experience and then as a bonus he rattled off a list of potential employers along with inside information on their hiring. It was encouraging and enjoyable, and I kind of wish I had built on that in a more stable fashion, but the next day I received the job offer that launched the most recent round of Aviatrix rides the roller coaster.

I'll go back to reading manuals at you in a few days, no doubt. Or I'll get a job and move across the country and you won't hear a thing for weeks.

Sarah linked to the above picture yesterday in a comment and it made me laugh so hard I had to share it. What is that eagle doing? Is the image upside-down?

Gravel Kit

While I was a student pilot I had a friend and mentor who was an instructor at a big school in California. I gave him an outdated Canada Flight Supplement, the fat then-green [now blue] book that lists all Canadian airports along with their frequencies, runways, nav aids, services, and other information for pilots. He had already given me an equivalent book for California, the A/FD, and I wanted to show him how the information was presented differently in the Canadian equivalent. I thought ours was better, as it includes pictures, and fewer cryptic abbreviations for information required in flight. The FAA seems to agree with me about the pictures, because they've since added them to the American publication.

I've told you this bit and some other parts before, but it's a good introduction to the rest of the post. My friend flipped open the CFS and looked at the first entry that met his eye. "Huh? Why does it say they have Jet-A fuel for sale at an airport with a gravel runway? Why would someone land a jet on a gravel runway?"

Even then I knew enough about my country's geography to have the answer. "Because that's their destination, and it's the only runway for hundreds of kilometres, and it's too far from anywhere to serve easily with piston aircraft." Paving is difficult in remote locations. Gravel is easily relevelled when the ground heaves with the freeze and thaw. It's not as slippery as pavement when covered with ice, and once the snow is packed deep, it doesn't matter what kind of surface is underneath. Pavement is nice to land on, but it won't keep you from sliding off the end on a snowy day.

You need particular techniques and equipment to cope with northern conditions. A lot of it is simply being diligent in applying the techniques you already know. Land under control, at the lowest speed that is safe to maintain on approach, at the beginning of the runway, and with no sideways momentum. Sturdy landing gear and runway friction will forgive a multitude of sins, but if you're going even a little bit sideways at touchdown and there's limited friction, you'll keep going sideways until you meet some resistance, maybe a snowbank at the side of the runway.

Gravel that is not covered in snow actually allows for some very soft landings, maybe because it crunches slightly out of your way, spreading the deceleration from any remaining vertical speed over a longer time than wheels hitting pavement. I flew on gravel for so long I can remember the "whoa, lines!" feeling when I went down south and landed on a paved runway with paint markings. At startup, taxi, and takeoff on gravel you have to be careful not to damage the airplane with flying gravel. Many gravel airports have little paved pads you can park between, positioning your engines over them so that when you start up or apply taxi power, the propellers won't kick up gravel. With jets, the danger is the nosewheel launching gravel that subsequently gets ingested into the engines. Here, and this is the whole point of this post, I have some pictures of the B737-200 gravel kit, a modification that physically deflects gravel from being kicked up by the nosewheel and then pneumatically protects the engine intakes.

This excellent website on the B737 lists nine other modifications that go with the gravel kit, such as extra shields on cabling and a retractable anti-collision light. The page notes that in 1975 dollars, landing on gravel costs about $15 extra in maintenance costs, per landing.

Above is the deflector on the front wheel. It looks as if it is resting on the ground, but there is actually a nine centimetre gap between the plate and the ground. Below you can see the vortex dissipators, spines that shoot out compressed air in front of the engines.

When retracted, the deflector serves acts as a gear door. There are more pictures and information at the website linked above.

Gravel kits are available for various aircraft. Here's one that caused a landing problem for a Challenger CL-600, when another problem combined with the gravel kit to jam the nosegear inside the airplane. No one was hurt, but there you go: there's no such thing as safety, just decisions you make to try to be safer than you would otherwise.

There's a piece of ATC dialogue I'm trying to find, where a pilot at an urban Canadian airport is following a northern airplane on the taxiway, and calls ATC to report that the aircraft ahead has a problem with their gear doors. It is, of course, just the gravel kit, with no problem at all.

Extra fact: The reader who sent me the above pictures is someone I met three different ways, once through this website, once through another website, and once through a shared sport. I never connected them, but fortunately she did.

Unrelated story: an unusually detailed report on a passenger aircraft fatal accident in Cork, Ireland.

Happy Winter Holiday

This post is scheduled as the sun is directly overhead the Tropic of Capricorn, giving northerners like me the darkest day and the beginning of the return to longer days. No, I have no pagan upbringing. I like physics and I like understanding the model of the solar system that allows for a simple explanation of seasons, day length, and apparent solar and lunar positions. As far as I'm concerned, the reversing of the seasons is like the reversing of the Tonlé Sap river, an obvious reason to celebrate. Lots of people celebrate lots of things, about this time of year, and many of their festivals involve lights, probably influenced in timing if not in substance by the beginning of the end of the winter darkness.

I feel a little improper pronouncing to people what is in effect the blessing of a religion I don't strictly follow. Of course I do it sometimes, just as in Cambodia I gave many polite greetings and gestures that I didn't have the cultural or linguistic background to understand. I'm feel equally hypocritical wishing someone a happy Hanukkah or giving them Diwali greetings. I don't think there's anything wrong with doing so, nor in giving a religious greeting to someone who doesn't follow the corresponding faith. One Christian I know assured me that, despite the antics of some of his coreligionists, it is okay by him that not every joyous greeting or commercial activity in the entire month of December is labelled with the name of his God. In that vein, I will simply thank you all for reading, commenting, correcting, informing, and participating in what has turned into a quasi-community that I have the honour to host. I'm especially grateful to everyone who donated to the Cambodia effort, and I promise to continue telling you all about that next year.

I'll be back just before New Year's to see how I did on resolutions this year. I know already it's "badly," but a tradition is a tradition. It made me disproportionately happy when reader GPS Direct rolled off a list of silly and serious descriptors of me and admitted to knowing what my usual end-of-year topics would be. I think I didn't yet have "having people remember something about me" on my list of things that make me happy, but it should have been there. Thank you all for remembering my URL well enough to keep checking up on me for all this time.

In the meantime, enjoy anything you like to celebrate, and please keep an eye out for people for whom this is a season of pressure and loneliness. If you are someone who hopes only to survive this season, please hang on, and know that I at least am not expecting you to be automatically filled with joy and happiness just because of the date on the calendar, or the position of the sun with respect to the equator.

And The Winner Is ...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Other Projects

I was going to write a blog entry today, really I was, but I don't have time. It was going to be about a project reader Townmouse is associated with, a project to rebuild a Link trainer.

Update: Sorry, there's no information on the link trainer there, just about the museum where it is happening. Townmouse says in the comments:

Yay! Thanks for the link to the museum site - there probably won't be anything there about the link trainer project because the whole place is run by old boys in overalls who are much happier with a spanner in their hands than sitting at a computer. My other half (despite not having any overalls and not being that old) is busy taking the Link trainer apart piece by piece and lovingly restoring it. It's a fascinating project because the trainer itself was based on player piano and organ technology so it's all operated by bellows and vacuum pipes and the electronics are 40s technology, if that. Complicated doesn't even begin to describe it. A few people have restored them and there are a few resources around on the internet but mostly it's been a question of looking at the original manual and tinkering. A few weeks ago they managed to get it turning and pitching under power, although there's still a long way to go

If anyone is in SouthWest Scotland and is interested, it's being restored right there in the museum in a polytunnel so go and have a look. In fact, I recommend the museum to anyone in the area who's interested in old planes and world war 2. It's run entirely by volunteers and while not the slickest museum in the world, it's full of interesting stuff and they let you climb into most of the planes and make aeroplane noises if you like.

All Aboard the Pan Am Clipper Ship

At the beginning of the year, I introduced you to Elizabeth, who spends much of her spare time, energy and money on the Postcard Project, sending postcards to anyone who wants one, especially to those whose lives are improved by the gesture. She's still alive, beating all kinds of odds, and still sending hundreds of personally selected and hand-decorated postcards. I keep telling her not to send them to me because firstly I'm never home to receive them, secondly she really does have limited resources, and thirdly I didn't think she was ever going to beat the very first card she sent me. But just as she defies the expectations of all medical professionals, Elizabeth defies any attempt to get her to stop sending postcards. And I think she may have found a better one.

It's not just a postcard, but an actual card depicting the boarding process on a "Giant 32 Passenger Pan American Flying Clipper Ship." That's a flying boat, a seaplane, with a giant high wing fitted with four Pratt & Whitney engines. I can only see three in the picture, but I assume it's an S-42 and that artistic licence has hidden the edge of the fourth engine in the picture, so they didn't have to depict part of the engine cut off by the frame.

Elizabeth puts a lot of pictures of pictures on her blog, and they don't have big camera flash solarization marks on them. I found out how she does it, too. She waits for a sunny day and photographs them in natural sunlight. Next I'll have to get her to teach me how to make them not be crooked.

I've never flown an airplane of that size, especially not a seaplane. My experience of flying boats is that on account of the hull being down at water level, I don't have a good enough view of the water around me to spot sticks and deadheads and waves. It's nerve-wracking not knowing for sure that your takeoff surface is clear. I see that a number of the clippers were destroyed in take-off accidents so perhaps my caution is justified.

When I told Elizabeth I would be posting this one on my blog she urged me to tell you that she has other classic airplane and car postcards, plus railway, cats, dogs and space. I only ask that if you're going to take advantage of her generosity that you consider getting something for her, from her wishlist.

A Square Meal

The work we did in two flights on our first full day here is judged complete and correct and we're all getting out of here today: me in our airplane and the customers on the airlines. Some of them are going home and some are stopping in Anchorage before taking different flights to the next job, wherever that may be. We seem to always finish any given job on a Sunday or a long weekend and have to wait around for marching orders to the next one.

There is a big weighing scale in a tent outside the lodge. It's for people chartering floatplanes to weigh their loads, but I hop on it just for fun. I weigh the same as I did at last medical two months ago, except that in the doctor's office I wasn't wearing boots and carrying my handbag and headset. Either I've lost a lot of weight in the last couple of months or the people chartering Beavers are getting a deal.

I file a VFR flight plan over the phone, yelling to be understood, then I'm dropped off at the airport, where I call the air traffic controller and ask them to please call the fuel truck for me. (That's a weird way to do it, but there doesn't seem to be a public phone here and my cellphone doesn't work. The tower offers to do it and does it cheerfully when asked, so I assume it's normal for here).While I wait I finish securing my load. That takes a while, but there's still no sign of the fuel truck. I clean the windows, preflight the whole airplane, do my nails, play a couple of games of iPod mahjong and then call the tower back to ask if they know what happened to the fueller. A reader who has been here has been teasing me all week about how lucky I've been with fuel and now I discover the joys of trying to get fuel before noon here. There are a lot of places where fuel before noon on a Sunday is a problem, but here it seems pretty consistent. I laugh every time at his description. I'm laughing right now as I proofread what I've pasted below.

They were consistently unable to have both a fueler and a fuel truck with at least 800 gallons of fuel ready to go at 0630, despite the fact that we (their biggest avgas customer) needed 800 gallons of avgas at 0630, 6 days a week, 52 weeks a year, like clockwork. They always seemed a bit surprised that they were there at such an unexpected time, expecting such a large amount of fuel.

I only need a quarter of that amount, but I do need it today, so I call back the tower. The controller says she has already called them back on my behalf to see what the delay is and relays that they are "doing their morning routine." Which apparently doesn't include selling fuel. She says I can get fuel more quickly if I taxi over there, so I tell her I'll start up and call her back for taxi clearance.

I remove and stow the chocks then jump in and start up. She tells me to taxi via November, cross runway 30 and look for the fuel truck on the other side. I look at my official and up-to-date FAA airport diagram. I turn it around a couple of times. I read the footnotes. I sheepishly call back and confess, "I'm sorry, taxiway November doesn't seem to be depicted on the airport diagram."

"Oh," she says cheerfully. "That's just nomenclature. November is what we call foxtrot south of three zero."

Alrighty then. I look at the chart some more and realize that it doesn't depict a taxiway south of three zero foxtrot. It doesn't even depict the part of the apron on which I'm parked. The pavement isn't brand new. I guess they expanded the airport without telling anyone in Oklahoma City. I find taxiway N. It's even labelled as such. I intended to find the proper e-mail address to report this discrepancy to, but I forgot until now and the current airport diagram now depicts the apron and taxiway accurately. That controller seemed pretty sharp. Perhaps she reported the problem after I pointed it out. Or the change was in the works and it just takes a year for the FAA to update publications that come out every 56 days. But I like to think I had some small role in the update. It gives me a sense of control and participation in the universe. If the apron had been expanded in the last year or so it would also explain the sign I mentioned last week, requiring advanced parking permits. Without that new part of the apron, parking might be a problem for transient aircraft.

Once I'm at the fuel station I get fuel fairly quickly. I asked about the 'morning routine' but didn't get a clear answer, so I think it might consist of sleeping in and having a cigarette and a couple of cups of coffee. I sign the credit card receipt for a ridiculous amount of money. There's a maximum single purchase limit on the card, but fortunately it's set for two full loads of fuel at medium-high prices, so the card doesn't explode.

I call for taxi and am cleared down to the main apron during morning rush hour. I'm number three for take off and as I join the queue I see that number five has an awesome paint job. I almost want to delay my departure to pull around and get a better picture than this.

There's a bit of low cloud, on the way out but I avoid it and the traffic and climb up above a scattered to broken layer. It rains steadily for a couple of hundred miles, with about five miles vis, and I file a PIREP because there aren't a lot of reporting stations out here, and it might be relevant to someone. Plus it's an easy way to get my control and participation fix. As I get closer to the final range separating me from Anchorage I gradually climb to 11,500' and sneak over the top of the rocks. It's better weather on the other side and I descend into the pass as soon as I clear the ridge, coming out over Chackachamna Lake. There are dirty glaciers hanging from the rocks right off my wingtips. Spectacular. I give a position report with reference to "the big lake with a really long name beginning with C," and it is accepted and understood.

I descend a few thousand feet so I won't be diving into Anchorage airspace and then get clearance into the class B. They ask me to stay over the west shore and report at a point that is easy to find on the chart, so I comply. I finally spot a beluga, but sadly it is not a whale, just an aerodrome and presumably a town named beluga. The air traffic controller tells me to fly direct Ship Creek. I'm about to give him the "unfamiliar local landmarks" line when suddenly I remember that I know where Ship Creek is. That's where the ulu knife factory was. I look over at downtown Anchorage and pick out the bridge we crossed to get to the industrial area. The creek is obvious. And you thought shopping for souvenirs was a frivolous activity.

I follow Ship Creek into a close right downwind, during which I am cautioned in a friendly, 'just for next time' way that my left wing is in the airspace for Elmendorf Air Force Base and in future I must stay right of Ship Creek. Perhaps I should have picked that up from the chart. I tighten my downwind further and then make a tight turn to final, being too close in to level my wings for any kind of base, and land at Merrill Field. I exit and ask for taxi instructions to transient parking. It's a little parking area, pretty busy, but there's a space I can fit into in the middle row, which is good because I can drive straight in, then straight out when I leave. But this airport not only looks like a shopping mall, but parking here is like one too. I have never had someone take the space I had my eye on while parking an airplane before, but no sooner have I turned into the parking area when I realize that little Taylorcraft has nabbed the space I was planning on. Now the only open space for me is against the fence, so I'll have to push the airplane back manually to get away. But my other option is to shut down right here in the aisle in order to get out of here at all, so I take the fence spot. There's a tiny airplane on one side and a high wing on the other, so I can fit in there without hitting wingtips. I shut down and open the back door while call the customers to let them know I arrived safely with their gear. They know I departed, because their airline flight was only a few airplanes behind me in the departure queue. I was too busy looking at the shark to see. That and I don't have a rear view mirror, anyway. I give them driving directions to come here and get their stuff. I notice as I fill out the journey log that I'm close to the minute on my ETA. Good girl. I start unloading everything into a big pile beside the airplane.

They arrive with a minivan and I dart over to cue the gate to open so they can drive in and load. It won't all fit in one truckload, so they sort it into categories that depend on how they're going to ship it out of here. One of the guys bangs his head on the horizontal stabilizer and I feel guilty because I should have realized that possibility when I stacked gear underneath it. They go off with the first load and I go and see about paying for parking.

It's on the honour system and you just fill out your information and put it in a slot in a desk either a credit card slip or cash, five dollars a night. I pay for two nights, expecting it will take that long to get word from company where to go next. One of the guys comes back for the rest of the load and I go with him to get a few more items from a local storage locker. The locker is pretty much exactly like the warehouse in which the US Government keeps the Ark of the Covenant, in the Indiana Jones movies, so we crack jokes and imaginary whips and adjust our fedoras while we haul stuff out to the van. Some of the storage locker items belong to my company: we left a bunch of gear we didn't need here to make room for the trans-Alaska load, so we stop off at the airplane again.

I ask the client to just leave me here with the airplane, because earlier I made another call I didn't tell you about, to a regular reader and commenter on the blog. He's someone I've never met in person but have known online for years, since even before I started this blog. In fact he knew me under a different alias on in aviation chatroom, and recognized me here by my narrative voice, which to me is extraordinary. I wouldn't have thought I even told stories the same way in a chatroom as on a blog, but there you have it. Perhaps out of the thousands of Canadian women who fly commercially I'm the only one who regularly says both 'yup' and 'whom.' You can probably guess who he is from the fact that he's a knowledgeable Alaskan, the kind that answers my questions like "Who was Sparrevohn?"

He's the one who was in Papua New Guinea when I first contacted him, and when he told me when he would return I automatically knew that would be the date I left Anchorage. Turns out I was off by one day, so I have the privilege of his slightly jetlagged company this afternoon. We start by visiting his airplane, a Cessna 180 still on wheelskis in June, showing how much he's been around to enjoy it since the snow melted. It's a clever design with a little arm putting the ski either under or in front of the wheel so the pilot can choose the landing configuration.

We drive to Earthquake Park, along Cook Inlet, no prizes for guessing the explorer who first anchored here. We park near PANC, departures from runway 32 whistling over our heads, and go down a trail to the beach. I want to touch the sea. I can't remember if it was warmer or colder than i expected, but it was stinkier than seawater typically is. "So, where's your civic sewage discharge, and what sort of processing do you do?" Somewhere in me is a latent civil engineer, because this is actually a question I've asked people at less relevant moments. I'm terribly interested in the development of cities, where and how they grow and the bottlenecks common to different cities around the world.

There was a navigational marker for ships on the shore and I made him wait while I framed an airplane departing PANC together with the marker in one shot in my camera. That's not a long wait as they launch departures as fast as they can line them up on the runway. We went for a walk along the embankment, I'm not sure if it was in the park or not, and then met up with his lady friend at a restaurant that was either called the Snow Goose or served Snow Goose beer (these are the perils of blogging from notes taken two months previously) overlooking Ship Creek and the inlet. It's a great view and good food too, well suited to the company. I'm not just saying that because he bought me dinner, either.

After dinner we went for a walk around Hood Lake, the one at the airport with all the floatplanes. Few of them were especially expensive or fancy aircraft, just basic family transportation, most with little huts next to them on the shore for storage of things like lifejackets, cleaning supplies and off-season equipment. Some were decorated with flower boxes and miniature landscaping. The area around the lake is not part of the airport secure area and a lot of people were there jogging, walking dogs and the like. It's a great area and there seems to be some commitment to keeping it multiuse. I think it was on this expedition that I learned about Gull Island, the island separating the taxi lane from the water runway on the lake. It was, as you can guess from its name and its seclusion from people stomping around, a preferred place for seagulls to nest. But birds and airplanes in critical stages of flight are a poor combination, so to control the gull population, they let loose pigs on the island. The pigs were so efficient at eating all the seagull eggs that there are no longer gulls nesting on the island. I suppose eventually some gulls that haven't heard about the pigs will come back and nest there, but pigs are easy to come by, so that can be taken care of again.

I didn't get to meet Dave, of Flight Level 390, but we exchange some good e-mails. I find in general you have two or three near misses before you actually see someone in person in this business. I do hope we intersect at some point. I did warn him that I was going to brag on my blog that I've landed on a PANC runway that he hasn't. Apparently he's never landed on runway 32 of the international. It's reserved for crazily maneuvering Canadians who have just been asked to go around from 07.

After dinner I let my poor jetlagged friend go to sleep and go back to the hotel to do laundry. I'm in the same room as I had before. The clock is still an hour slow. And I still don't adjust it.

You guys are hilarious with respect to the clip from the couple days' ago post. I found it on the floor of the cockpit during preflight inspection after the AME had been under the dash checking connections on a malfunctioning HSI. I asked him about it and he assured me it was garbage, in a tone of voice that made it clear he, like some of you, considered it garbage when it was brand new. He said he had replaced it with a much easier to use clip, likely the kind that is adjusted with a screwdriver. Most of you called it a hose clamp, but this one was holding wiring bundles. I didn't climb under the dashboard to inspect. I was trying to choose a winner from the creative guesses, but they are all so funny I can't decided. I love clip-on antler piercing, aquatic alien mind control implement and dealie for something that has to be opened at a 25 degree angle. And then after I added this, I see there are yet more suggestions from the people back at work after the Labour Day weekend, and there are just too many brilliant suggestions to do anything with but laugh at. Among those who couldn't resist showing off their knowledge, the link with the spoiler warning was the best solution. If someone has a link to a picture of one in situ that would be appreciated, too.

On The Frontier

We get a call from the customers, still on the edge of nowhere, waiting for both workable weather and an airplane. Today the weather is starting to clear, and they expect it will be good enough to fly by this afternoon or tomorrow, so they're desperate to get the airplane so they can take advantage of the rare opportunity. Their cellphones don't work there, and the one landline available at whatever accommodations they are enduring is so poor that they are almost unintelligible when they call. Before the call is cut off, we understand that they want us there asap, and this message is underscored by numerous texts and calls from our own company president. Yes, we will do what we can to get there today as soon as possible! It's not like we usually dally.

I help the mechanic while my coworker returns to the hotel to reset his duty day, so we can still fly tonight even if it takes us all day to finish up. There also isn't that much left for an unskilled person to do, until it's time to close the cowls. I can crochet okay, but my lockwiring is really abysmal.

I sit next door in the departure lounge for the charter company and do paperwork and, when they give me permission to use their wireless, e-mail. The woman checking in the passengers is a licensed A&P (American version of an AME), and a licensed commercial pilot. We could have used her next door for the last couple of days! I ask her about her career goals, and she wants to be a missionary pilot. I think she's pretty much set. Strong faith: check. Local church outreach experience: check. Can fly airplane: check. Can fix it when it breaks down in the bush: check. She has a tiny bit of flying left to do to complete her licences, because she somehow holds a multi-engine commercial licence without the corresponding single engine one, something that isn't even possible in Canada, because commercial is a licence and multi is a rating for us. That doesn't sound too hard or even too expensive to finish up. I'm sure she'll meet the missionary goal quickly, and I wonder what she'll do next. This business might be a family run one too, so maybe someday she'll come back here and take it over.

At one point when she was talking about where she had flown already for mission work, she held up one hand in a thumbs down gesture, except with the index finger extended as well as the thumb. Picture the "loser!" gesture, but tilted so the thumb pointed down. With her hand held this way she tapped the back of her hand and the knuckle of her index finger, and immediately I saw what she was doing. That is a map of Alaska. The thumb is the panhandle and the index finger the Aleutian islands. It was so cool I immediately wondered what other states or places might have indigenous hand or other signals. I might have used my vertical palm to represent one of the basically rectangular western provinces, but it's not that representative. Do Italians point their toes slightly and tap parts of their foot and calf to describe their travels? Do you have a gesture or hand shape that represents your area? I need to know these things.

Meanwhile there's someone at dispatch answering radio calls. I'm not listening closely, and he's kind of around the corner, but after a while I realize that he's speaking in a Russian-English pidgin. Things like "Skazhi him I'll be tooda ootrom." This really shouldn't be news to me. It's no different than a New Brunswick Acadien sentence like "Je vais hanguper le telephone et callez-vous back." It's normal for a linguistic border with a history of occupation and regime change to have a transition zone where both languages or a combination are spoken. Why am I surprised here? I think it is because it is the Americans, the same people who take to the streets to fend off the encroachment of Spanish. But of course they aren't the same people. The United States is a huge and diverse country and the more I travel in it the more I am convinced that the only thing that unites the whole is the legend of being Americans. This isn't a criticism. If only every country composed of such diverse parts could embrace its nationhood so firmly that civil war was not on the menu.

I wonder now too at how many other borders is there angst about the prevalence of the language from the other side. Certainly Québec has fought hard over the years to maintain its linguistic identity in a sea of English. Do Finns freak out about so much Swedish being spoken? Is there angst in the Alsace Lorraine that there are people there who live their lives in the language of their ancestors, regardless of where the border happens to be this century?

My coworker decides he's done resting and comes back. We help recowl the airplane. I close up all the inspection ports with no screws left over or missing. There's nothing sitting on the wings, the cowls are on properly and there's oil in the engines. I go out to do a run up check. everything checks out, so I ask for high speed taxi on the runway and wear in the brakes according to the package instructions before returning to the hangar. There are no issues or oil leaks, but I spot an open access panel under the horizontal stabilizer I didn't notice before. I point it out guiltily and muse that I didn't have any screws left over. My coworker removed that one and he put the screws on a nearby barrel. Another reason to use a designated screw container, in my opinion. I finish the walkaround and that appears to be the only thing that was wrong.

We load everything back in the airplane, faster this time--because we now know the best way to load it, not because the clients aren't watching--and secure it down. Wonderful, wonderful tie down rings. But couldn't the stupid airplane manufacturer have provided some tiedown points in the aft half of the airplane? I mean, they expected us to put stuff in the airplane, right?

We bid "do svidaniya," to our new friends and takeoff, following ATC instruction out of PANC terminal airspace (but the Americans don't call it that, what do you call it, again?) and the weather allows us to climb high enough to go through the pass with no cloud dodging, just gradually climbing and then descending through a hole on the other side so we don't get stuck above a layer. It's rugged and beautiful until we're clear of the first range and then it becomes more rugged and bleak. The terrain is crinkled and gray-green depending on the rock to short-fuzzy-growing-stuff ratio. I think I spot some caribou, but I was really hoping to see some, so I may have allowed my mind to play tricks on me. Canadian law doesn't permit overflight of caribou below 2000' agl. I don't know if US law is exactly the same, but if an animal manages to make its living out here, year round, I'm not going to make its life any harder, so I couldn't get a close look anyway.

There's a VOR way out here in the boonies. I keep forgetting its name, saying, "Begins in S. A short sounding name, but it has a lot of letters in it. Sparrevohn. I have the story of how it got its name, but I'll tell that another day. Sparrevohn is also a military aerodrome, so I'm watching for it as a landmark. There's a kind of knack you get for finding airports after a while. You look at the lay of the land and there's a place where an airport fits, both because the people who sited the airport put it in a reasonable place, and because subsequent land development has taken into account the approach surfaces and noise areas. I suggest that it will be in a flatter area ahead, behind the second ridge.

I mentioned Sparrevohn to someone at the barbecue last night as a possible emergency landing site "if the emergency was bad enough to overwhelm the fear of doing paperwork for an unauthorized landing at a military aerodrome," but was told that if I had an emergency I really didn't want to land there. I didn't ask why, assuming that it was a particularly paranoid base. But then I see the aerodrome and now I see why you don't want to attempt it in an emergency. For some reason, perhaps old fashioned defensibility, or shelter from wind for the base on the ground, it's tucked in very closely between two ridges. We don't land there.

Beyond Sparrevohn the terrain flattens out into swamp again. We could tell from the sectional map that it would, because the map is one low colour with hundreds of little smooth edged lakes. Any place like that that I have been has been swamp. There are no trees. I think the vegetation below is grass and lichen and maybe some bushes. We find the destination airport and land, approaching over a lake that has floatplanes moored at it. It's a fair sized airport with a paved runway and paved taxiways and apron, too. A foreboding sign suggests that we needed prior arrangements to park here, even though I called ahead to check on fuel and such and was told there was plenty of parking. There is plenty of space, and We find an appropriate place to park, with the assistance of the tower. We can't find a payphone, but the tower volunteers to call for fuel for us, and the clients turn up in two truck they've somehow managed to procure. We unload everything, sorting it into what they need now and what will go back to the hotel, and then they take off in a chartered Beaver to do reconnaissance.

We drive to our accommodations--I'll describe them and town tomorrow--and unload. There will be be no mission for us tonight, but we'll go early tomorrow.

Oh and the person whose company I enjoyed so much in the air charter company next to the maintenance hangar? She's a regular reader and commenter who had previously e-mailed me a welcome to Alaska and invited me to come and talk to her if I happened to be one of the Canadians who had rented the next door hangar. At the time I received her e-mail I didn't know about the hangar plans, so told her it wasn't us. And then--this is the ridiculous part--I chatted with her face-to-face for hours and did not clue in that I already knew her in the virtual world until months later when she e-mailed me about something else and mentioned that she enjoyed meeting me. I was actually worried at the time that I might be annoying her with all my chatter. From this I conclude that (a) I am a champion scatterbrain and (b) Cockpit Conversation readers are simply fantastic people whom I am delighted to meet even when I don't know I'm meeting you. May there be many more.