Beating Popular Wisdom

On Saturday, sixteen-year-old Autumn Veatch was on board a Beech Bonanza, a zippy little single engine airplane, with her step-grandparents. Autumn must have been a passenger, as one must be seventeen to pilot an airplane like that in the United States. So her grandmother or grandfather was flying it. They were en route from Kalispell, Montana (at the southern end of the Rocky Mountain Trench) to Lynden, Washington (on the west coast, just south of the Canadian border). This route crosses mountains, some of the most rugged and remote territory in the contiguous United States. The aircraft is capable of flight up to about 25,000, enabling it to climb over some mid-level weather, assuming those on board have supplementary breathing oxygen. I don't know if they did, or if they flew at oxygen-requiring altitudes on this flight. In the US a pilot can cruise indefinitely up to 12,500' without supplementary oxygen, and the mountains in that area are not so high that they would need to be above 12,500'.

Autumn has probably flown with her grandparents before. She looks comfortable in her headset and a photo of her wearing it was available to the press. I don't think that her parents would have given it to them. CBC likely got the photo off social media. My experience shows that reporters will creep the Facebook galleries of a person, their family, employer, and known associates in order to print pictures of them and their family in association with a story. Having an unusual name just makes it easier for them. The Bonanza crossed the Idaho-Washington state line and then dropped off radar. If US radar is anything like Canadian radar in that area, that disappearance itself is nothing to be concerned about. Radar just doesn't cover aircraft below the flight levels as they cross that expanse of mountains. Typically Canadian controllers let the pilot know that they have been lost from radar, and that they are likely to lose radio contact also, then give the pilot a time and frequency to attempt to contact the next controller. But the Bonanza pilot did not ever contact the next controller. The aircraft was reported overdue on Saturday afternoon.

Autumn said that the plane entered a bank of clouds and then crashed and caught fire. Autumn escaped from the wreckage, largely uninjured. and stayed in the area, a mountainous, wooded and probably kind of smoky spot: smoky from numerous forest fires in British Columbia, in addition to the smoke from the burned plane. If she had her phone with her she may have tried to use it, but was unable to get a signal, or perhaps the battery was dead. Searchers were able to track the aircraft occupants' cellphones until about an hour and a half after the plane was lost from radar. Five aircraft equipped with special radios for detecting the missing plane's emergency-locator transmitter searched the mountains, while ground crews focused on the area along their course not far past where they dropped off radar.

The usual advice for anyone in an airplane crash is to stay with the aircraft and wait for rescue. The logic is that the airplane is a large metallic object that may have been tracked on radar and is probably emitting an emergency signal that can be tracked by satellites and search and rescue aircraft, while you are a tiny piece of meat who doesn't know exactly where she is. You are at risk of falling over a precipice, getting more lost and injuring or exhausting yourself. Whether Autumn knew this advice or not, she followed it for about a day and then decided to walk out. It was mostly downhill, but she didn't fall over a cliff. There was a trail and she followed it, walking for a couple of days. She came out at a road, the somewhat ambitiously-named "Highway 20." The road is often closed in the winter, but probably she didn't have to wait too long for someone to drive by. A motorist gave her a ride to the little town of Mazama, where they called 911.

Autumn is physically okay, but the civil Air Patrol has turned the search over to the Navy. Reading between the lines of the story, one can only presume that the grandparents were killed in the crash or the post-crash fire. No wonder Autumn chose to leave the site. I haven't searched for information beyond this one news story. I could probably find that half my assumptions are wrong if I looked a little further, but this isn't news reporting. I've merely added some information based on my own experiences. The NTSB preliminary report isn't even up yet. I don't know Autumn or her family. I just happen to have written a story a couple of years ago that included a sole survivor of a single-engine plane crash walking out of the woods in the northwest, and a damaged Beech Bonanza turned up in our hangar today, so it struck a chord.

Stowaway Cat

Here is one of the many reasons why there is not an exhaustive list of things to check on preflight inspection. You just walk around that airplane and poke bits of it until you're satisfied that it is airworthy. You'd think that would have included spotting a cat in a translucent wing, but apparently not. The cat seems less upset about the whole experience than the typical cat is about vacuum cleaners, hair dryers, or a change in cat food brand.

I have unexpectedly found cats in or on an aircraft on three occasions, but two were in the hangar and one was a cat in a cage that was part of cargo, and the PIC knew it was on board. Current boss won't let us get a hangar cat. We had to settle for a hangar fish, which doesn't do much about the mice and birds.

Is The Best Part Taking Off?

A friend wrote today to congratulate me and my countrymen on the 106th anniversary of powered flight in Canada, and then he followed up to ask "is the best part taking off? I always imagine that the best part must always be taking off." And he's right.

You get in and put on your seatbelt and make sure everyone's settled and nothing is in the way, just like heading out for a car trip if you have multiple children inside and pets possibly running around outside. (Don't forget to preflight your car by banging on the hood to evict cats or squirrels that might be snuggling up to your engine block for warmth). You start the engines, and while each one springing into life and turning around is a little victory, especially when it's cold, that's only a little more triumphant than getting the car started. It's nice to see the oil pressure come up, the vacuum pumps show that they are online and sucking, and the alternators come on line and flip the polarity of the charge rate shown on the ammeter, but those are just steps in the preamble. Taxiing to the runway is a bit of a warm up for the pilot, just as the run-up is a warm up for the engines, but finally you're cleared into position on the runway. It's big, like a wide open stretch of three-lane highway with no traffic ahead of you and you know for sure no speed traps. Cleared for take off, you put in the power and feel acceleration, and the rumbling of the tires against the pavement. You keep the airplane aligned with the centreline with your feet. At the correct speed you pull back on the yoke and lift the nosewheel off just a little bit. You wait, and in a few seconds there is no more rumbling. You are in exactly the same attitude, slightly nose up, but now YOU ARE SUSPENDED IN AIR! That's the best part.

Take off is also the part where the most spectacular things can go wrong, so it’s very alert and exciting, as you have to watch all the indications to ensure that none of those things are going wrong, and mostly they don’t go wrong, so that’s a good part too. Imagine that every time before you merged onto the highway you were legally required to recite what you would do if a bad thing happened, so you were all psyched to do whatever one would do if a semi crossed two lanes and tried to take you out. And then you merged and nothing bad happened at all. It’s a mini celebration every time.

I can't imagine the multiplication factor for the thrill of taking off in the Silver Dart in 1909. The aircraft took off from an ice surface, but was on wheels, not skis.Tricycle gear with fairly large, spoked wheels. (On later flights the rear wheels were replaced with skids). The vibration on the take off roll must have been quite juddering. Sea ice is not smooth like a hockey rink and those wheels are not mounted on piston-like oleos the way mine are. The account says that the craft was airborne in about a hundred feet. It would have been very obvious to the pilot the instant the wheels left the ice. People were throwing their hats and mittens in the air. The pilot flew for about half a mile and landed back on the ice, quite gently by his own account.

While a smooth landing is satisfying, and harder to achieve in an airworthy craft than a smooth take off, anything can land. For millennia we could only dream of taking off.

Shutdown Checklist

During an annual training session for flight followers, my ops manager stated that no information on company operations was to be posted on social media. This restriction definitely wasn't targeted at me, and don't think anyone at work knows about this blog, but the ban definitely includes the sort of things I have been posting here. I'm going to respect that request. Kinda too bad, because I have lots of stories to tell, but I have a rule that if your employer wants something done, and it's safe, legal and moral, you do it.

I will blog less now, and what I say will probably be duller without the personal anecdotes, but it may be truer to the original purpose of the blog: to learn by explaining.

The Ultimate Flight Bag

My current flight bag is a backpack. It's black, has the brand name Jaguar on it, and is in a traditional tombstone shape: flat on the bottom and curved on the top. There is a main zippered compartment with a smaller zippered compartment on the front of it, and a third, yet smaller, zippered compartment on the front of that. It looks nice and symmetrical with the three concentric zippers. In it I keep all the personal things I need to access outside of the hotel room, especially during flight: batteries, gloves, pens, lip balm, kleenex, pee bags, oxygen tester, more pens, flashlight, magnifying glass, other flashlight, extra binder clip, what the heck is this doing in here? You get the idea. It is also kind of worn out. The fabric has separated next to the zipper at the top of the largest compartment, so I can zip it closed, but it's still not completely closed.

So being busy, my first pass at solving this problem was to ignore it. The problem is not especially amenable to sewing, because the material is all frayed away from the edge, and there isn't a lot left on the zipper side to sew into. Maybe I should try to find an appropriate patch not made of duct tape, but, being a geek, my second course of action involved duct tape. The duct tape didn't last the first week of the season, so I started looking at ideas for a new bag.

I looked at the BrightLine bag over four years ago, and even had a link (now expired) to buy a discounted one, but I didn't buy one then. They've since been improved and are more modular, and I am considering them again. The blog entry I wrote then suggested that a Spider-Man backpack would be an unprofessional choice, which is amusing, because I've been considering getting a Star Trek or Top Gun backpack this time around. I also still have that leather messenger bag that I was using at the time I wrote that four year-old entry, so I think I'll try it again for a while before I buy something new. Your flight bag suggestions, links and stories happily accepted.

Drones and the Grey-Haired Biddy

For reasons that I don't wish to elaborate on, today I was reading Mary Worth, a legacy soap opera cartoon about a self-righteous senior citizen who can't keep her nose out of her neighbours' business. She's cast as the hero of the strip, always fixing everyone's problems with sage platitudes and quotations (usually mis-attributed or out of context) with never a hair out of place. I was reading the comic online and the page served me an ad on Transport Canada UAV regulations. It was the blandest little ad, no picture, just a slogan like Know How to Use a UAV, and the Transport Canada logo. (Yes, I've refreshed the page thirty times in search of the ad, but all I get now is cruises, AMEX and evening gowns). If I weren't concerned about the technology, I doubt I would have noticed the ad nor known what it meant. As it is, I wasn't entirely sure what it would be about until I clicked on it.

It lead to this page, which lists the places you cannot fly your unmanned vehicle:

• Closer than 9 km from any airport, heliport, or aerodrome.
• Higher than 90 metres from above the ground.
• Closer than 150 metres from people, animals, buildings, structures, or vehicles.
• In populated areas or near large groups of people, including sporting events, concerts, festivals, and firework shows.
• Near moving vehicles, avoid highways, bridges, busy streets or anywhere you could endanger or distract drivers.
• Within restricted airspace, including near or over military bases, prisons, and forest fires.
• Anywhere you may interfere with first responders

It also requires the drone operator to have direct visual contact (not remote camera) with the craft at all times, and has provisions for Special Flight Operations Certificates for people who need to fly in these areas.

This list is not all that different from a list of places you aren't allowed to fly an airplane without contact with air traffic control or other airspace users, plus it restricts drones to an altitude below the lowest operational specification I've ever had for operating an airplane. It's a set of rules that should keep innocent bystanders and licenced airspace users reasonably safe from drones. It's also a set of rules that almost no toy helicopter operator will ever comply with.

Do you know where all the heliports, airports and aerodromes are in a ten kilometre radius of where you are? Did you say there aren't any? Are you within ten kilometres of a hospital, television news station, or navigable water body? Chances are, the first two have heliports and the water is used for seaplanes, and there may also be a heliport to ferry harbour pilots to and from the ships. I have been in plenty of towns where the whole town is within ten kilometres of the airport.

But lets say you're diligent and manage to get nine kilometres from any airport. You drive out of town, away from the airport, and heliport to a big empty field. This field is the size of a Canadian football field and there is nothing in it. That sounds like a pretty prudent place to fly your model airplane, doesn't it? Can you fly your drone in this field, below 90 metres? If there is a cow looking over the fence on one side, a haybarn in the next field over the other way, or a road with any traffic at the end of the field, then no. A Canadian football field is 150 m long, so even in the very centre of that field, you are not 150 m from the listed hazards.

Even if you stay a football field length away, you're still probably "near" a large group of people. That's not even well enough defined to determine how easy it is to violate accidentally. The "military bases, prisons and forest fires" plus the prohibition on interfering with first responders will probably cover most restricted airspace, but I can think of some wonderfully remote spots not obviously associated with any of those institutions, where the airspace is restricted. Heck, when I was a kid I got in trouble--where in trouble means a stern man in a military police car talked to my dad--for flying a paper kite. We had managed to infringe on the protected airspace for a military airport in the area.

These regulations render pretty much all recreational UAV use illegal. Even in their video--look at the very first few frames--there appears to be a structure, a two or three story building. Would you say it was within 150 m? I'm not sure. It's really hard to find a location that meets all the criteria.

There are no grey-haired old ladies in the video, and neighbourhood busybodies should now know that it is unlawful to snoop on your neighbours with your drones. I think it's more of a Mary Worth move to go up to the couple with the UAV and tell them off for disturbing the dog. The dog in the hammock may be the best part of that video. Or maybe the man and woman are just friends, and Mary set them up with the drone to try and push them into a relationship they don't want.

Where Is That?

An "ordinary" flight plan, filed by a pilot whose goal is to get from point A to point B, has a fairly simple format: a point of origin, a route, and a destination. The origin and destination are typically airports. (Those of you who start or end your flights in places other than airports know what it's like to be not filing an "ordinary" flight plan). A route may be along airways, direct between points, or a combination of the two. They're fairly similar. On an ICAO flight plan, to go direct between points you can just write the identifiers of the two points side by side and it's assumed your route between them is direct. On a Canadian flight plan you can also put a D between them, typically written with a horizontal arrow across the middle of the letter. If part of the route will be on an airway, you specify the point at which you will enter the airway, and then name the airway, finishing with the point at which you will exit the airway. Specifying the points is the subject of this post.

If point A and B are airports, they are easy to specify, as every airport has a four-character code. I say character and not letter because while the bigger ones have four-letter codes, smaller airports may have digits included. Many airports I know the codes for by heart, while others I have to look up in the CFS. Other points along a flight plan might be NDBs, identified by two-letter codes, VORs, identified by three-letter codes, or intersections, identified by five-letter codes. And then of course there is me, going to random places that are not at any of these easily filed waypoints.

I can specify my location by giving a latitude and longitude, there's even an official format for such a waypoint: 5025N09823W, although I usually leave a space after the N. I hope that doesn't irritate anyone. Another way to give a location is "fifty nautical miles northwest of" some other point. You code it as the point, the bearing, and the distance. I once filed such a waypoint: EC330050, and the flight planner called me back to ask me what it meant. It was an obscure little NDB that no one ever filed to, so combined with the bearing and distance information, he just didn't clue into what it was.

Regional Rivalries

In the course of our operations we operate both VFR and IFR, often switching between the two regimes, sometimes more than once, in the course of a single flight. VFR stands for Visual Flight Rules, and the rules are simple. As long as my company knows where I am, I don't need to file any flight plan, follow any specific route or maintain a particular altitude or speed. Under VFR I am not allowed above 18,000' in most places, and I need to plan a landing with thirty minutes of fuel remaining, and I need at all times to be able to navigate and maintain control of the airplane by looking out the window at visual features, e.g. rocks, lakes, roads, cities and the horizon. If I can't see where I'm going, I must file IFR.

IFR stands for Instrument Flight Rules. It requires an advance flight plan showing a precise routing, a clearance before departure, and permission to make any changes in altitude or heading. In any area, I'm not allowed below the minimum IFR altitude, even if I can see that it's perfectly safe. If I fly IFR at all during a day, I am limited to eight hours of any flying during that day, which may limit reaching an objective. I must fly IFR if the weather conditions anywhere along the route do not allow me to fly visually, or if I wish to fly above about 17,000'.

So you can see that if my company wanted me to leave an area of poor weather, do some low level flying in an area of good weather, and then land somewhere else covered in low clouds, I would need to be IFR then VFR then IFR. But if the task was to fly low over a city for thirty minutes and then climb up to flight level 220 (about 22,000') for three hours and then then land at a tiny airport in the mountains with no instrument approaches, I would be VFR then IFR then VFR. Such a plan is called a composite flight plan. This shouldn't be that complicated, except that the people in the IFR and VFR systems hate one another. As best as I can tell, the controllers that handle the stereotypical high speed, prestigious IFR traffic are contemptuous of the people in the system that handles the slower, lower, quirkier VFR traffic, and the VFR folks in turn resent the IFR controllers. They aren't really set up as two different systems. The Flight Service Specialists who track VFR flights also pass clearances to IFR traffic, but they get it from the people who will be managing the IFR flight after departure. Those same controllers handle many VFR flights, but in many cases they release us as soon as we are clear of controlled airspace, lacking radar coverage or time to pay attention to flights they have no legal obligation to provide coverage for.

Let's say I file an IFR flight plan out of Frog Valley, proposed to last two hours and terminate under VFR in Weasel Swamp. I can file this flight plan with either the predominately VFR FSS or with directly with the IFR data people. If I do the former, the FSS will simply forward the IFR portion to IFR data, where the planners will map it out to ensure that it doesn't interfere with other traffic or violate any rules or procedures. If I file with data they will lob the VFR portion off to the FSS. So imagine I depart on that flight, but after an hour company calls and tells me to fly to Ptarmigan Inlet. I tell the controller that we aren't going to Weasel after all, please amend our destination to Ptarmigan, estimated time enroute, three hours from now. I request descent out of controlled airspace, turn en route for Ptarmigan Inlet and then an hour out call up Flight Services to update destination weather. At least half the time I will encounter a controller who is on the edge of frantic, considering me an hour overdue into Weasel. The IFR controllers forget to propagate the change in destination and ETA through the system, even when I explicitly confirm with them that they will. Simultaneously changing flight rules, destination and ETA is an extremely common occurrence for our operation. I tried for a while explicitly telling the IFR data controller NOT to propagate the VFR portoin of the plan, that company flight following would handle it, but they didn't always comply with my request, so I still had to check, and I discovered that the FSS was annoyed at being circumvented. I now always close the flight plan with both the IFR controller and Flight Services, but often terrain, altitude or remote location prevents me from reaching an FSS right away. I've learned, however, that when I call late, telling the annoyed flight service specialist that I did amend the plan, but the IFR controller forgot to pass on the change immediately soothes the wrath. In fact, just about any error occurring in the course of a composite flight plan can safely be blamed on the part of the system you are not currently speaking to. A similar lack of communication, but not the outright hatred, applies across provincial and territorial borders, even on a flight plan that is not composite. A controller from one flight information region (FIR) was unfamiliar with the abbreviation PTD (proposed time of departure) that designated the content of a blank on a standard form from an adjacent FIR, and to work the edges of our national, integrated air traffic control system, it pays to have an intimate knowledge of regional and departmental preferences.

Your Clearance Cancelled Time is Cancelled

I overheard this post title on switching to a frequency. No one has ever said that to me and I'm not certain which of two possible but contradictory meanings it might have. If I received it, I would ask a clarifying question, but the pilot who received it did not.

Before departing on an IFR flight, a pilot first files a flight plan, specifying for the air traffic control system exactly which route she intends to follow, with what timing. The flight plan may be filed online, by phone, or sometimes by radio. I usually file mine by phone, because I can do that while using my eyes and the non-phone-holding hand for other things, and can say what I'm doing in words rather than having to code it for the online form. I would only file by radio if I discovered while airborne a need to convert to an IFR flight, and I was out of cell tower range so I couldn't use my awesome Bluetooth headset-iPhone combo. (I didn't want Bluetooth at the time I bought the headset, but I needed a new headset RIGHT AWAY and that was all they had in stock. If you ever have reasons to talk to someone on the phone with your engine(s) running, get the Bluetooth. The days of holding the phone against your ear and yelling, "I can't hear you: I'm in the plane" are over).

The IFR flight plan is supposed to be filed minimum thirty minutes before departure, but the controllers are generally so awesome that the plan is coded and available in the system in minutes. When my company says, "Can we go to Fort Dead Royalty now?" and the flight requires an IFR clearance, I say "sure," file the flight plan for thirty minutes hence, and then board, start, run up and call for clearance. My actual take off time will usually be fifteen to twenty minutes after filing, and I'm calling for clearance as few as five minutes after filing, but it's almost always ready as soon as I need it.

The clearance I get may be identical to the one I filed, or it may be altered to comply with local procedures I didn't know about, specific runways that are active, or I may be cleared not to my destination airport but to an intermediate point, requireing me to get a new clearance before I leave that point. (Yes, I would have to stop and hold, flying in a little oval, if I hadn't received the clearance by then, but it's almost always given to me before I need it). If the airport I will be departing is a controlled airport, then when I am ready to take off, the tower controller will talk on the phone to the IFR departure/en route controllers and get an IFR release, allowing them to clear me for take off. But if the airport is uncontrolled: unstaffed or staffed only by a Flight Service Specialist, the initial IFR clearance will include a clearance cancelled time. The controller giving me the clearance is going to ensure there is a space in the system for me, but if I'm not airborne by the clearance cancelled time, I'm not allowed to go, because my space will have passed by. My departure clearance will have been cancelled. Sometimes there is also a clearance valid time, meaning that I can depart any time between the clearance valid and clearance cancelled time.

So if I were given a clearance cancelled time, and then my clearance cancelled time were cancelled, my first guess is that that means the traffic that was going to be a problem after the clearance cancelled time is no longer considered to be interfering with me--perhaps it has changed course or altitude--and that I can delay as long as I like before take off. My second guess is that "your clearance cancelled time is cancelled" is synonymous with "your clearance is cancelled." I'm ninety-five per cent sure that the first meaning is correct, but because there is a chance that I'm wrong, I'd ask. Beats getting run over by a Boeing 737.

The World Is For Me

I imagine a spectrum in which each person's feeling of entitlement shows up as a different colour. On average, people feel entitled to somewhat more than the world can provide for them, leading to the phenomenon of the tragedy of the commons, a general dissatisfaction with one's lot, or the assumption that rules are for other people, and that whatever works best for me is the thing to do. So at one end of the spectrum we have Mother Teresa who sees that the world has problems, and that there is something she can do about some of them, so dedicates her life to helping people. At the other end we have extreme psychopaths who will kill someone for entertainment. Some people dump unwanted items and garbage in vacant lots or on the highway. Some people separate all their unwanted items into things that can be used again by others, various types of recyclables, and garbage, and then make the effort to get them all to the right places. Some people organize others in their community and go out to clean up garbage that has been dumped in vacant lots. I'm not saying that Mother Teresa never littered or that if you throw your trash in my backyard you're probably a psycho killer, but these are examples on the spectrum of how much a person feels entitled to inconvenience others.

I once expressed reluctance to be the first person to park in a curb lane after morning rush hour had ended, when it became legal. I said something like, "I hate to be that person who takes that lane out of service for everyone else." My friend thought that was bizarre. She said she loved to be the first person to park on a block, because it was so easy. Someone's going to be the first person to park there, so why not her? The effect one's actions will have on others affects different people's actions by different amounts. Intelligence and experience factor into it a little, but I have observed young children and those with intellectual disabilities make decisions for the good of the many. I'm not talking about decisions driven by ignorance or malice, just those made by assigning different weights to "this inconveniences me" and "this inconveniences someone I don't know." People's behaviour can be artificially bumped along these scales by laws and social norms. I want six cookies, I don't care if anyone else gets one, but I share them equally because it would be more inconvenient to me to have all these people annoyed at me and consider me rude, than it would for me to forego five of the cookies I want. It is a lot of bother to find a legal parking spot in rush hour, but my friend does so, because if she parks in the curb lane before nine am she'll be ticketed and towed, and that would be a lot more inconvenient than driving a few more blocks and walking back.

This spectrum of empathy and entitlement speaks to whether you crowd around the boarding lane at the gate before your row is called, recline your airline seat, put one of your carry-ons under the seat in front of you, and otherwise share the limited space on board a passenger airplane. And then there's this guy. I suppose it is possible that he was really as clueless as he claims, that he didn't figure out that others were queuing in the aisle because that's how one gets off an airplane. But I think he saw a special little door just for him, the way solo drivers in the HOV lanes "didn't see" the signs or the diamonds painted on the tarmac, just the opportunity for them to get where they are going more quickly. The bright side is that he showed that the emergency exits are obvious enough to use that a passenger who wasn't paying attention had no problem operating one. I wonder if he brought his carry on with him.

Secretly, don't we all want to go down the airplane slide? How much would you pay for a chance to do that? How much extra to be the one who pops the door and sets off the slide? At the $16,000 to reset, quoted in the article, I don't think it's a missed revenue stream for the airlines, especially as passengers often sustain minor injuries, such as broken ankles, during real evacuations, but wheeee! slide!

The aircraft I fly doesn't have an escape slide, but I require all crew members to practice opening and egressing through an emergency exit at annual training. It causes a little wear and tear on the aircraft and the crew members, but I flew so many airplanes myself without ever having actually operated their exits, that I wanted it done. It's hard to describe exactly how it opens until you do it, and this way we know for sure that they work.

Oh! Don't tell anyone, but I'm going to see if I can get a toy inflatable slide for this year's training.

Beavers, Thunderstorms, Motel Rooms

No one kicks in the door of my sketchy motel room overnight. Company is not sending another crew member today. I'm to stay here and wait for the weather to change. I make a private bet with our office manager that company will sit me here for three nights and then tell me to leave the airplane here and go home. I pay for another night in the motel, and go out for a run. The best place to run in this town is along the river. There's a path there. Most prairie towns have a river, and a similar trail. This one is deluxe, paved and signposted, with pretty little bridges going across to the other side now and again. One of the signs announces the presence of moose and bear and advises me to take appropriate caution. I am less worried about bears and moose than with my sketchy motel. Were the path not populated by numerous joggers, walkers, and cyclists or were it early spring, when cranky, hungry bears emerge from their dens, I might be more concerned. As it is, the greatest threat to my well-being here is probably either rollerbladers with poor directional control, or those long invisible leashes that connect dog walkers to their dogs. I'll pit them one against the other and run to safety.

As I continue on the path, I see signs of beaver: the stumps of obviously beaver-felled trees and the piles of chips the beavers leave behind. I googled "attacked by beaver" while writing this and discovered that a number of people have suffered quite serious beaver bites, but they all seem to have been swimming or boating, not jogging, and they are far less numerous than the results of an "attacked in motel room" search. As far as I can tell, no beaver has ever broken into a motel room to attack a traveller. I am not attacked by a beaver on the jogging path. I don't even see one, but I do see a deer. It does not attack either. It's fat and happy, grazing in a meadow next to the jogging path. It's not so tame as to realize that joggers don't veer off the path, but it doesn't go far. It's in almost exactly the same spot when I come by again on my way back.

The rodeo grounds are several kilometres out of town and there's no public transit, so I don't check it out. The motel has abyssimal internet too, so I can't watch movies or even read text webpages with any reliability. I buy art supplies and make postcards, including the thunderstorm one I mentioned earlier. There's another thunderstorm here in the afternoon, typical prairie weather. I like the METAR that reports +TSRARA: the + means heavy, the TS means thunderstorm, the RA means rain, and presumably the second RA means even more rain. It's not usual to code the same group twice. I can only assume it's an error, but it's funny and true.

The next day they again tell me to stay another night, but just when I think I'm about to collect on the bet, they send the missing crew member out to join me. He arrives after I've gone to bed. He too spends a night in the sketchy motel, and then we depart for somewhere there isn't a rodeo.

Qausuittuq

At the end of the year I usually check on the progress of my New Year's resolutions, and then make new ones. I did make eight resolutions for 2014, but they were all personal, not aviation, and I'm not telling you exactly what they were, so this will be dull, or at least cryptic:

1. Achieved: A+
2. Social - 71% achieved (51% before the middle of April and 10% after the beginning of November): B-
3. Academic - never set measurable goals, even though that was part of the resolution, achieved maybe 20% anyway: F
4. Fun - 58% (25% before the end of March and 25% during December): C-
5. Ha ha ha ... I don't think that one lasted to the end of New Year's Day: Withdrawn
6. Physical - Achieved by the beginning of March. Now EXACTLY back where I started. I still think that's still a pass, because I did achieve it: C
7. Speed - Negative progress: F
8. Martial arts - Did really well until April 6th, then lost momentum, and had to work through both the events I was supposed to be training for - 40%: F

The general theme is that I kept them well until work got busy and then life became entirely sleep, eat, plan, fly, laundry. I think I just have to not make resolutions that involve doing anything not on that list on a recurring basis through the year. For next year I am going to set month-by-month goals that allow for no progress to be made during peak months, and encourage me to pick things up again as my time increases at the end of the season, without feeling defeated.

Qausuittuq means "place where the sun does not rise" but it's on this post because the place that bears that traditional name is usually called Resolute.

No Room at the (Good) Inns

The next day the clouds are still towering above the mountains. Their fluffy-seeming shapes are pregnant with supercooled water, yearning for something to freeze on, especially something thin and sharp like my propeller blades or the leading edges of my wings and stabilizers. I won't fly through them, but today their bases are higher, and I have mapped a few passes that will allow me to remain clear of terrain while still comfortably below the cloud bases. The bad weather is predominately on the other side of the mountains in the plains, and that I can deal with. I take a cab out to the airport and prepare for flight.

The airplane has waited patiently for me, and is ready to go. Fuel is on account, so all I have to do is verify that the tanks have been filled per my request and I have no paperwork to do with the FBO. I notify company of my intentions and various fallback plans and fire up the engines. Oil pressure rises, suction indicators clear, and the discharge light on the ammeter extinguishes. It showed a discharge as I drew current from the battery to start the engines, but now the needle flips past the zero to the positive side of the scale to show that the alternators are now charging the battery. No, I lie: in this airplane it's a digital ammeter, so it's just the flip of the sign, but my memory stores the information as if it were from as analogue instrument. At the end of the engine run-up I will ensure that the battery is charged, that the alternator output is sufficient, and that the load is balanced between the two alternators. A split could indicate a problem with one of them, or its accompanying voltage regulator. All is well and I depart, heading towards my chosen mountain pass.

I have entered GPS waypoints corresponding to the valley choices I have to make, but they are a back up to the very old fashioned visual flying I will do, identifying my valleys by the shapes of the rivers and the valleys. It's much easier to do by looking at the spacing and shapes of the peaks, but the clouds cover them. I can't use conventional navigation aids, because the rocks block their transmissions. This was before I got my tablet GPS toy, so I'm using paper charts. Once upon a time people did this without charts at all, and of course if I flew through this range all the time I would know it well enough not to need the map, but I can't know every mountain and don't expect myself to. The crucial piece of navigation on this route is to turn right into a valley that will not be immediately visible. This will be after I reach a very distinctive hook-shaped lake. When I do, it's unmistakable, and I make my turn, with the clouds darkening above. The valley widens and diverges into many valleys, but I don't have to choose one because the terrain is dropping away below, the mountains fading to mere foothills. Under the shadow of the clouds I notice how bright my strobes are. It's recommended to turn strobes off in cloud or dark night conditions, but it's broad daylight and I am not in cloud. And then I remember that this airplane doesn't have wingtip strobes. The bright flashes are lightning. The storm is far enough north that I am not concerned about it striking the airplane. I am not dodging clouds or in turbulence or heavy rain. I see photographs sometimes of lightning that show it looking like it looks in my eyes but I think you have to use a fancy camera with a long exposure. My pictures just look like dark clouds. I later drew a postcard to show what it looked like to me, but I must have forgotten to photograph that one before I sent it, because I don't see it with the others.

The thunderstorms are the signal that I have completed my trip through the mountains, and am on the plains. It isn't much further to my destination, and I land and taxi up to the FBO we use there. They are repaving their apron, but they know my by the airplane and value our business, so marshal me to a prime parking spot and greet me enthusiastically. It's nice to be known. I'm bringing this airplane here alone. The other crew member will meet me when the weather becomes suitable for our main job.

I call my usual hotels here, but it's the local rodeo week, and all the rooms are occupied. Every hotel I know is full. The FBO attendant steps up and keeps calling, working his way down the chain until we find an available room. It's in a motel. I watch a little anxiously out of the cab as we go down the highway to find it. The parking lot is right off the highway. The building isn't in terrible repair. I check in at the office, paying in advance, because that's what they require. They give me a metal key and direct me back outside. My room is on the ground floor, in the centre of the horseshoe facing the parking lot. It's not necessary to go through a lobby or past hotel security to reach it. The door is not very heavy and I think I could kick the deadbolt out of the wood myself. I close the door and the curtains, drop off my stuff and go for dinner.

At the end of the day I think about the fact that I feel safer alone in an airplane in a thunderstorm in the mountains than I do in a motel in Alberta oil country. Does this speak to the society I live in, or to the well-documented human failing when it comes to judging and acting on relative risks? I don't know.

The Days I Don't

I'm sitting in a hotel room in British Columbia while an airplane my company wants in Alberta sits on the ramp at the local airport. It's a nice airplane, but some of the equipment that required for dispatch into "known ice" has been removed for weight consideration, so with today's cold weather and convective conditions, it isn't safe or legal to fly it over the mountains. The clouds are too low to go under, too high to go over, and too highly composed of supercooled (liquid below zero) water droplets to go through. And, to be thorough, I should add too extensive to go around. An air mass that has moved across the Pacific Ocean is being forced up and over the BC mountain ranges, producing a lot of precipitation and humidity. It's a very nice hotel room, but it's stressful having my company want me somewhere, and me be unable to go.

I scrutinize each new METAR, each new TAF and each new set of GFAs looking for an opportunity. I set myself a "not after" time: if I left after that time then I would not be able to reach my destination and shut down within my permitted fourteen hours from when I started this vigil. I should just say, "screw it, not happening," but there is always a faint hope of success. And it's miserable weather here, too.

I go for a run in the miserable weather. Too slow, and I can't entirely blame my poor speed on the stumble-making cracked sidewalks, the muddy trail, the cold temperature or the traffic lights and crosswalks I have to navigate on the way to the running trail. I haven't been running enough lately. My body forgets how to do what it hasn't done consistently. I'm always on the road in the summer so I can't enter races to give me the incentive to train hard. Often in the summer there literally are not enough hours in the day for me to get legal rest and work out, too. And in the winter it's so dark in the evening I don't want to run on uneven sidewalks.

I get back to the hotel and before I do anything else I check the weather again. No miraculous path has opened through the mountains.

The glass wall of the shower stall makes up one wall of the bathroom, so I can see though it into the bedroom. It's made of a special adjustable glass, that can switch between transparent and opaque. It's fun to make it clear, and watch TV while I'm in the shower. Too bad there is no switch that will make the weather clear through the mountains.

I call the vigil off for today and go to dinner.

Information Asynchrony

As anyone who has tried to contact me through my blog e-mail knows, I'm not amazingly responsive there. It's not by accident, and I'm not ashamed of it. While I love you guys, my blog is a hobby, and the e-mail account attached to it is like a sub-hobby of my hobby. But I happened to look at it this week, and found a request for participants in a research study on a topic that interests me: pilot-ATC communications.

It's very important that information relayed between pilots and controllers be clear and understood by both parties, but it also needs to be sent efficiently. Recently I had a controller tell me that I was hard to understand on the radio, but that it wasn't my radio, it was my rate of speech. I think it may have been that I had just switched from an extremely busy frequency with the controller speaking quickly and saying "break break" between transmissions so as to get everything said, and I had matched my rate of speech to his. But clearly if I wasn't understandable, I was overdoing it.

I'm always fascinated by tidbits of research regarding the way pilots and controllers exchange information. When given a number with a doubled digit, pilots are very likely to double the wrong digit. Does this speak to how we store "3221" and "3211" in our brains? I remember being castigated in the US for reading back a runway number as "zero five" when the controller had said only "five." In Canada there are no single digit runway numbers, and apparently when I am given a runway number I assign it to one of thirty-six pre-labelled boxes in my head, rather than storing the words the controller actually said. (I still think that controller was a bit of a dick, as ATC communications are supposed to accommodate international differences, but it's possible he thought I was "correcting" him, so he was slapping me down.

The researcher says,

Hello:

My name is Samuel Lien and I am a graduate student at the University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada conducting research on human factors in aviation / air traffic control. I am from Humans in Complex Systems Lab. Information can be found here.

https://uwaterloo.ca/humans-complex-systems-lab/

I am writing this to ask if you might be able to help me, or direct me to someone who could help me create exposure to a study I am conducting that looks at the effect of information asynchrony on pilot-ATC communication. The study will be conducted completely online.

We are interested in professional pilots, preferably commercial license and air traffic controllers (any domain) as our subject-matter expert and participants for the study.

Participation in this study involves going to our online experiment website from participant’s computer as the experiment will be conducted online. Participation in this study would take approximately 2 and half hours of your time. I would like to assure you that the study has been reviewed and received ethics clearance through a University of Waterloo Research Ethics Committee.

The online experiment website is here:

http://rbhagat.uwaterloo.ca/IDEA/ I haven't opened it yet, because I'm told it will take approximately 2.5 hours to complete. That's quite a chunk of time, but I intend to do it, because I think it will contribute to safety.

As far as I can tell, the information asynchrony under study is pilots getting information at times other than when they actually need it. Maybe when I've done the questionnaire, I'll know what they mean.

Out of My Nose

Six hours ago I was woken for work. Five hours ago I arrived at the airport. Four and a half hours ago I had completed a preflight inspection, towed an airplane out of the hangar, and was supervising fuelling. Three and a half hours ago I knew the weather forecasts everywhere in our purview, and was out of Candy Crush lives and unread Facebook entries. Forty-five minutes ago I was told I would be released from duty in thirty minutes. Half an hour ago I called friends to say I could be at their place in forty-five minutes. Twenty minutes ago I was given a destination to fly to. Nineteen minutes ago I filed an IFR flight plan according to the CFS-listed Preferred Routes, and cancelled with the friends. Thirteen minutes ago I started the engines. One minute ago I was at the hold-short line waiting for departure clearance. "Traffic ahead is in the circuit; turn right ten degrees as soon as safely able so as not to run him over; contact departure airborne; cleared take off." Now I'm airborne.

My clearance was to follow the filed route. I'm coming up on the waypoint at the end of the published departure from the airport. The plate says "expect radar vectors to assigned route" and sure enough the departure controller assigns me a heading. It's a left turn of about twenty-five degrees, keeping me clear of some traffic, I presume. He approves a climb right to en route altitude. I put the ice protection on before entering cloud, but the forecast was correct, and I picked up no ice at all. After about ten minutes, I'm cleared direct my next filed waypoint, to continue on the flight planned route. I come up through the cloud layers into the sun.

For two hours I fly on top of the clouds, enjoying brilliant bright sunshine. Clouds look so much nicer from the top. At top of descent the icing protection goes back on and I start down. Oxygen valve off below ten thousand, but I still have the nasal cannula on my face, because it's tangled up with my headset and I'm busy with charts and checklists and engine controls. The controller clears me to an altitude that is just above the clouds. We skim along, almost touching them. It's the only way you can see how fast an airplane goes, to be that close to clouds whipping by. I take off the cannula and set it aside. Ahh, nose freedom. I'm told to expect direct to the initial fix for the destination approach in five minutes, and I'm starting to slow down to configure for that. The airplane has microswitches in the throttles: retard either one below a certain point before the gear is locked down, and it will set off an alarm. The point at which the microswitch is tripped is a constant amount of throttle travel, but it's not marked on the throttle quadrant--and I don't look at the throttle quadrant markings while adjusting power anyway. I'm looking at the manifold pressure. The manifold pressure reading at which the gear horn will sound varies by an inch or so (I originally wrote "150 rpm or so" which is too confusing to leave, but too funny to just delete). I guess it depends on temperature and air pressure and who tuned the engine last. I sometimes want the power that low before I want to put the gear down, so I warn my crew that the alarm may sound. I do this today, and he replies with a question, "Why would that make the stall horn sound?"

I realize I have inadvertently said "stall horn" instead of "gear horn." I accept the correction and explain, "The wrong word came out of my nose."

At the end of the flight I admitted that I hadn't intended to say "nose" there either. Apparently my brain was busy processing altitude calculations and thought "nose" was close enough to the word I had asked for.

Risk

“There is a risk involved — anything flying, there is risk.”

The above quote is from a drone operator. The drone was part of a restaurant promotion in which helicopters bearing mistletoe and cameras swoop over patrons, trying to get them to kiss for the audience. Someone got hurt.

Two things here: One, there's risk in anything. After an incident, the nature of the risk is the question, not the answer. Two, if you have an incident, shut up and let the spokesperson talk to the media. Your job is to spin the blades, not the story.

Sorry about the posting drought. You all probably know by now that I write a novel every November. (It was over 100,000 words this year, but I still think 2012 was my best effort). The posts you got last month were pre-scheduled.

Today I washed an airplane. Tomorrow we might wax it. We will endeavour to mitigate risks.

Geo Referencing

You have at some point probably seen a movie or a television show, usually for children, that uses a gimmick where a story in a book comes to life, or morph into the action of the show. Usually the pages of a book are shown on screen, with text introducing the story, and then a picture. The picture becomes live action, or perhaps the pictures move around in the text. In a movie it's a sufficiently common device that you know if it starts that way, the movie will end back on the printed page with the ornate words The End. But imagine if you were reading a regular, real book. A familiar reference book whose fonts, diagrams, and footnote style have so long been part of your life that you know exactly what to expect of it. Now imagine that a picture or diagram in that book, the one you are holding in your hand, comes to life and starts explaining itself. That's how my introduction to approach plate Geo Referencing went.

An approach plate is a diagram showing an airport runway and the procedures, points and aids associated with navigating an airplane to a point in space from which a safe landing can be performed. If shows the plan view and the side view, with symbols showing where and how to turn, minimum altitudes for each sector and part of the approach, distances, magnetic variation, and type of lighting. It tells you the frequencies for ATC, how much to add to your minimum altitude if using a remote altimeter setting, and has an effective date. The Canada Air Pilot for each region, the physical book in which these things are published is reprinted with changes every 56 days. Most plates don't change from one revision cycle to the next, but the whole CAP is reprinted. When the new one comes you strip the coil bindings off the old one and toss the pages into the recycling. You can tell there's no change if the new plate has the same effective date, worth looking at in case you have inadvertently memorized some data that has changed.

With the Fore Flight electronic flight bag, these approach plates are replicated on the iPad. Instead of paging through the coil-bound CAP trying to guess whether a particular airport will be alphabetized under its own name, or considered a sub-plate of the larger nearby airport, you hold your finger on an airport displayed on the iPad chart until a box comes up, showing all the airports that your stubby finger could reasonably have been aiming at. Tap More next to the one you wanted, then Details then scroll down to Procedures and you can tap Approach and select the approach plate you want. I haven't done a timed test from pulling the iPad or CAP out of the map box, to looking at the desired plate, but I think the iPad is faster. The paper one is easier to read in bright light conditions, even with the iPad turned up full, but in dim light the self-illuminating iPad is great, until it is pitch black dark, at which point it becomes too bright, even if you follow the instructions and turn the brightness to minimum in settings before dimming within the app.

Either way I get the familiar approach plate, very carefully replicated. It's possible to zoom into the iPad ones to read little numbers, easier than pulling out a magnifying glass, but you have to be careful not to leave it zoomed in, when that moment comes on the approach where you glance back at the plate to confirm the minimum descent altitude, and the data isn't on the screen because you zoomed in to see if that waypoint was spelled with an F or a B. A hundred feet above MDA is not a good place to have to pinch or scroll a screen.

The first time I used the iPad for an approach, I had the conventional paper chart and the iPad both out, and it was VMC. I briefed the approach, flew direct the cleared fix and then eeep! the approach plate came to life. A symbolic airplane representing my position appeared on the screen in the position where I actually was. Even though I have used moving maps for years, the appearance of a moving you-are-here dot, Fore Flight calls it "ownship position" on the plate was freaky exciting magic. Ten years from now pilots will stare at old approach plates in puzzlement, unable to situate themselves mentally. This is a huge benefit for situational awareness. It even switches automatically to the taxi diagram and shows me where I am on the airport after landing.

I learned that this was called Geo Referencing a couple of days ago, from an error message. The app told me that Geo Referencing was not available because the plates were not current. What? These are valid until November 13th. (And the error message came up in October). I think American charts are on a 28-day cycle, so the app auto-expired Canadian stuff after that time period. I brought the iPad into the hotel to try and update them. It's just downloading the same set again, I'm sure, but this is hotel internet. It hasn't worked in all the time I've spent writing this blog entry. Why did it not update everything before I left when I selected "pack" for the flight out here? There are a number of things that Fore Flight doesn't get quite right for Canada, and I haven't found a bulletin board or user forum where these things are discussed, to determine for sure whether it is the product and not me who is missing something. I now know that the iPad has to be updated at the same time as I update the GPS database (which comes from the US, on a 28-day cycle).

Highway 63

I've been to this airport before. I remember that you can't buy fuel on Sundays, but today is Saturday, and it turns out we've landed at the same time as another pilot who has a key to the pump, so she can fuel any time she likes. When she has filled the tiny tanks on her Cessna single, we stretch the hose out to our tanks and put in fifteen times as much fuel. (The fueller who filled us beside at the FBO next to the solar-powered coke bottles said we had set a record for the amount of avgas she had ever put in one plane. But we were really empty then. I'd gone a couple of minutes into our reserves, because we were working overhead the airport, and there was another one just down the valley, in case of emergency). We go in and pay, and call a cab, which arrives eventually, in the manner of small town cabs on the weekend.

It's an okay hotel, but it's on the edge of town, and the town is spread out enough that it would take about forty-five minutes to walk to a restaurant. And probably as long to get that cab back again, so we order pizza. We try to avoid eating pizza on the road, because eventually we'll be forced to, and we want it to be a treat. We eat the pizza together in my room, while watching a show called "Naked and Alone." It's kind of like Survivor except without the odd psychological games and the uncanny ability of the women to maintain an absence of bodily hair through the whole ordeal. There are actually two people, and they do start out naked, but have made themselves television-acceptable clothing by the time I tune in. They are really miserable: diarrhea from eating too much fruit, driven crazy from insect bites, and one of them doesn't like seafood, but the other one makes him eat it. At the end they get scores out of ten for their survival skills.

In the morning we come down to breakfast, standard motel breakfast of wrapped muffins, fruit, and make-your-own waffles. We ask the clerk if she can call us a cab. There are no cabs here until 9 am. The airport is not actually very far away from the hotel, but we'll be behind schedule if we throw in a half hour walk with our baggage. Back to the breakfast room to chat with the guys in reflective outwear and work boots. They have trucks. I ask them where they work.

"We work on highway 63."

They didn't even know there was an airport around here, but agree to make a small detour to drop us off. I've hitched rides before with a friend of the hotel receptionist, a medevac pilot, someone who just came to drop off her friend at the airport, and the guy who came out to sell us the fuel. It's become just part of the adventure.

Solar-Powered Coke Bottles

I don't know what these things are. We see them on mountaintops. We saw one at an airport, just outside the perimeter fence, but obviously not installed. We thought it might have come down for maintenance or be waiting for transport to its mountaintop.

They are made of fibreglass. The transparent panes don't seem to be solar panels--I named these things solar-powered coke bottles when we only saw then from afar, and I assumed they were. The thing at the top appears to be a lightning rod, not an antenna. Are there transmitters inside? Are they radio relays? Lightning detectors? A suit of armor for a tree? Are they all over Canada or just in the mountains where we have noticed them?

I expect the full story from a solar-powered coke bottle expert who reads this blog. Don't disappoint me, Internet.

Post Mortem

Well what a clusterfailure that was. Imagine if that vacuum and indication failure had all happened over the course of once turbulent flight in night IMC across the mountains. Suction failures are extremely dangerous. The suction-driven instruments are central to the instrument scan and experiments and studies of actual accidents show that they have a very high chance of killing you. The "ninety percent" figure sometimes quoted is misleading: accidents attributed to vacuum failures (about three per year in the US) result in fatalities 90% of the time. That's because there aren't many ways to crash an airplane due to spatial disorientation without it being deadly. More than ten percent of pilots who experience vacuum failure in IMC do get out alive, but I'm not going to guarantee I would be one of the survivors.

Here's what a vacuum failure can look like.

The gyrating blue and black instrument is the attitude indicator. It won't necessarily look that energetic in a failure. Its slide to one side or the other may look exactly like a functional instrument indicating a real wing drop, prompting the pilot to bank and pitch in an attempt to return the aircraft to straight and level flight. The pilot must fly by the turn coordinator, the tippy little white symbolic airplane at bottom left. It indicates rate of turn, not bank angle, so doesn't respond as instantaneously to changes in attitude.

I had difficulty identifying the failed vacuum system because its own indication system did not work properly. When I felt that the heading indicator was not working properly, I suspected the vacuum system, but the indicator lied to me, telling me the system was okay. When I shut down an engine, the associated vacuum failure indication appears immediately, leading me to believe that the same thing would happen in the case of a real suction failure. The two vacuum pumps are in two different engines, had widely separated serial numbers and had been installed by different people at different times. I had never heard of one vacuum pump failing and taking out another one.

If an electric instrument has a power loss, it immediately throws up a flag, so I know not to trust it. There is no failure indicator on the heading indicator or attitude indicator and without other reference, it is really easy to follow the dying instrument. The autopilot tried to follow it, too. With TWO failing vacuum pumps, there was no pressure differential across the shuttle valve to pull the autopilot out of the system. Flying across the mountains to the FBO where company has shipped the replacement pumps, I have post-it notes over the failed instruments, still the only indication, apart from their unresponsiveness, that they are not working. When practicing flying on instruments, if the pilot can see the real horizon, even a little, the task is much easier. Even if you try to ignore it, you subconsciously draw on a lifetime of doing what your species does: visually determining which way up you are. While it's easy to design an indicator that is invisible until electrical power is removed from it, I guess it's harder to calibrate one to not enough suction. Maybe it could depend on gyro rpm. This FAA document claims that "attitude indicators with failure warning flags are available in newer model aircraft and are slowly making their way into the general aviation fleet as retrofits," but I think they may be talking about replacing vacuum-driven AIs with electric ones.

The cause of the double failure is eventually determined to be poorly-installed air-oil separators. Oil was able to enter the dry vacuum pumps and damage the vanes. I'm not sure if the indication issue was because it was a gradual failure, or because oil got in the indicator, too. It is all functional now, but now the vacuum pumps are in phase, which makes me nervous, because that airplane has flown about 900 hours since that happened, and I'm back in it. This article seems to think that vacuum pumps fail every 500 hours or so, but our mandated time between overhaul is definitely 1000 h.

Are there one or two Ns in "Brokenness"?

I start the engines the next day to do some VFR work. As the engines fire up, the engine start checklist directs my eyes to the tachometer, then the oil pressure, and to the suction gauge. The suction gauge indicates that the right vacuum pump has died. Okay! That sort of explains the zombie heading indicator, and means that I've snagged the wrong instrument. I should have not written it up while it was questionable. The laws don't allow me to write, "never mind, it's not broken after all," which is why there are so many airplanes flying around with sort of broken stuff. As soon as it's written down, it grounds or restricts the airplane. As I understand it, only a maintenance engineer is allowed to correct a pilot's mistaken snags.

Fortunately, the effect of the unserviceability is the same, as I'm not allowed to conduct IFR flights with only one vacuum pump working, and we're in the north in the summer, so "night" is virtually non-existent. What's weird, though, is that the reason there are two vacuum pumps, is that one is supposed to be able to serve as a back up. Either suction pump on its own is supposed to be sufficient to run both the attitude indicator and heading indicator. I'm supposed to be able to safely complete an IFR flight with one suction pump failed. Come to think of it, the autopilot is not supposed to engage if only one vacuum pump is operating, to ensure that there is sufficient suction to run the essential instruments. The autopilot is still working, although a little half-heartedly, as the heading indicator is still sluggish. So is the attitude indicator. The shuttle valve that is supposed to disable the autopilot must have failed, so the autopilot is remaining on line, leaving not enough suction for the heading indicator and attitude indicator. I turn off the autopilot, but it doesn't help much.

After a few hours the heading indicator and attitude indicator are both completely useless. Weirdly, the autopilot will still engage. (I keep forgetting and snapping it on when I want to look something up or open a Clif Bar to eat). But it will attempt to follow the slowly toppling attitude indicator. Pretty scary, really. How far would it roll the airplane? That's not in the manual.

In the old days, there were no heading indicators or attitude indicators or autopilots. The turn and bank instrument and the compass were all you had for staying right side up, and if the former died, it was just the compass, which has all kinds of errors or lag and lead. The old bush pilot trick for letting down through an overcast was to do so on a heading of south. On south, if you bank at all, the compass will immediately swing around, even before the heading has changed, especially at high latitudes. I try this at the end of the flight, because my destination is pretty close to due south of my position. It's pretty hard. Try it sometime.

As I taxi in at the end of the flight the suction gauge indicates that the second vacuum pump has failed. Well this would make a fair amount of sense: the pressure differential between the working and failed vacuum pumps is what is supposed to throw the shuttle valve to disconnect the autopilot. And obviously if they have both failed I can't expect the suction instruments to work properly.

Company has already made arrangements to ship a vacuum pump to a maintenance shop a few hours flight away, so now they will ships two vacuum pumps, and we will head there on the next flight.

Death Rates

I'm IFR in the flight levels on a clear VMC day. The IFR part means I'm following a set of rules and procedures ("Instrument Flight Rules") designed for pilots of aircraft in weather conditions that don't allow them to navigate by looking out the window. The flight levels part means I'm flying above about 18,000'. In Canada the "transition altitude," between altitudes designated by the local air pressure and those altitudes designated by a universal standard pressure setting, is 18,000'. One never flies at 18,000', but instead sets the altimeter to 29.92 and flies at flight level 180. I don't know how our transition level was determined. Our highest mountain is about 19,000', so it wasn't set relative to that. VMC is "Visual Meteorological Conditions," that is weather that permits navigation just by looking out the window.

So why am I IFR in VMC? Because in Canada everyone operating in the flight levels is required to do so under an IFR clearance. It's a safety regulation. I have to fly only as directed and cleared by ATC, in order to ensure separation from all other aircraft. And I'm up this high because this is where I need to work. There's only half as much air pressure up here as at sea level, which means only half as much oxygen per breath, so I'm wearing a mask that provides me with supplemental oxygen. The masks do a great job of that. Testing my blood oxygen level always shows me at 98 or 99% saturation, the same level I get sitting on my chesterfield at home. (The tester looks at my blood by shining a light through my fingernail: it doesn't take a blood sample). Only problem is that in providing a tight seal around my face and being secured to my head underneath my headset, the mask give me no opportunity to eat or drink during the flight. Air before food.

The mask also interferes with the seal between my headset earpieces and my ears, so it's a little noisier with the mask on. Even noisier when my noise cancelling cuts out because my headset batteries died. I'm not sure if the noise cancelling "works harder" to keep up, or if it has the same battery consumption regardless of the ambient noise, and this is just coincidence. I use rechargeable batteries, which when they are new last about fifty hours in the airplane before they die, but after many cycles have shorter lives. I have numbered all my rechargeables and track how long each set (the headset takes two AAs) lasts before it dies. When they can't go a full flight, they get retired to a plastic baggie in my kitchen. Eventually they will go to recycling, when I figure out where to recycle rechargeables. They last pretty well: there are only six batteries in the retirement baggie and I've been using rechargeables in my headset and flashlights for at least eight years.

I change batteries and then notice I'm off my heading. The autopilot has disconnected. I must have hit the button. I reset it and then turn to a new heading, but something doesn't look right. The GPS says I'm going where I want to be, but the heading indicator is way off. I reset it to the compass, and it follows for a while, but soon loses interest again. The heading indicator is powered by two engine driven vacuum pumps, one of which I reported close to needing replacement a few days ago. The suction gauge shows slightly less of a vacuum than ideal, but in the green range and no less than it has for a few weeks. The other part of the instrument shows both vacuum pumps on line. The attitude indicator, powered by the same system, still appears to be working. Legally I'm required to inform ATC of the failure of a heading indicator. I do so, and they seem confused. No, it isn't affecting my operation at all. I'm using an electronic guidance system, and I will be landing at an airport that I'll be able to see sixty kilometres away. I don't need it for the flight. Maybe people don't routinely comply with that regulation anymore.

Before I land, the stupid thing comes back to life. Charming. I'm far from base, but I call maintenance so they can order one, or pull one out of another plane or something for when I come back. They don't have any troubleshooting tips for a zombie heading indicator. It's working now, but it's not reliable, so I snag it. That is, I write in the journey log that it is not operating correctly. This will limit our operations to day VFR (the looking out the window counterpart of IFR) only, which is a huge pain in the neck, because it prevents me from continuing the work above FL180, even though its effect on safety is negligible. I have had transient problems with equipment that never recur, but usually they hint at trouble and then throw a full failure if ignored. I think I've only seen simple heading indicators (as opposed to the more expensive and complex HSI) fail twice before in about 7000 hours of flying. And one was a simple fix, turned out that there was an installation error that had made a screw come loose. I wonder if the suction line is leaking or blocked or something. Nothing I can do about it, anyway.

Peer Pressure

As I fly from one airport to another I speak to numerous air traffic controllers. Let's say I depart Grande Prairie (I think they're almost finished the runway upgrade) for Calgary. I would call Grand Prairie Radio, who would ask me to monitor the clearance delivery frequency. Once I had the clearance I would go back to radio, until after take off, when I would switch to Edmonton Centre. They clear me to my cruise altitude and on course heading, and then might switch me to Edmonton Centre on a different frequency to continue monitoring my flight. As I approach Calgary they will switch me to Calgary Arrivals (which is probably the same frequency as Calgary Departures), who will give me an approach clearance. If there are numerous approaches available at an airport, they may ask me which I prefer. If not, they'll just assign me the usable one. If the weather conditions are fine and I can see the airport, the approach may be "visual" -- no fancy electronics required, just fly to the runway. They can assign me the visual, or I can ask for it, but if I don't feel comfortable with the visual, or just want to practise my skills, I can ask for an instrument approach.

On this occasion I've just switched to the arrivals frequency and I hear the controller telling a pilot, "Everyone is doing visuals, but if that's what you really want to do, you can plan it." That pilot had obviously just asked for an instrument approach.

The pilot responds, "Okay, we'll do the visual."

We did the visual, too, as fast as we could and still get the gear down, because that's what tower (the frequency approach handed me off to) asked for.

Migratory Birds

I learned to use a GPS receiver for air navigation when I was working in the north. Many of the airplanes in the fleet had three line text GPS units. Some had none, but even that nascent technology was so useful, compared to the NDB airways and map-compass-watch navigation they supplemented, that captains spent their own money on handheld units, for the days we were assigned airplanes that lacked the magic box. Airports, radio navigation aids and other named fixes are few and far between in the far north. Given a full load of passengers and cargo and fuel to max gross weight, there wouldn't usually be more than four or five airports within range. It was pretty much guaranteed that when we selected the we selected the "nearest" function, the intended destination would be on the first page. That was the quickest way to select waypoints: no tedious dialing in three- to five-letter identifiers letter-by-letter. Back then we just hit NRST (or rather, I don't remember exactly how, selected it from an obscure user interface), and selected the one we wanted from the list.

Of course this technique doesn't work down south, where there may be hundreds of little municipal and farm airports within an hour's range. Now I'm resigned to dialing in my waypoints, one letter at a time, into the much newer, but still not state of the art GPS unit. But every once in a while the way I learned first re-emerges and I hit the NRST button, to be bewildered by a list of unfamiliar identifiers. Today 'm flying in northern Alberta, not much in the way of towns around here, just a big whack of restricted military airspace. I'm given a reroute via a five-letter fix, still called an "intersection" because once upon a time each was defined by the intersection of two airways. Some still can be located that way, but many are simply convenient lat-long points in space. I always wonder why there are so many of them in close vicinity of LETRM. I think it may have something to do with routing aircraft around the military airspace. Usually they aren't that dense outside the terminal airspace of a busy cluster of airports. Or maybe I just remember better not to do that nearest thing when I'm in an urban area.

Approaching destination I hear the controller talking to a pilot who says he's on a migratory bird tracking flight. I'd never heard of such a thing. The controller says it's great to watch the birds migrating on the radar. Wow, I did not know that either. Birds so thick that they paint primary surveillance radar are a force to be reckoned with. The controller offers to send the pilot a tape, and if I weren't busy getting set up for the approach, I might have asked "me too!"

Here's a composite radar picture of bird migration in the US (see the notes on YouTube for an explanation of what you are looking at). I couldn't find a recording of what it looks like on a local level. How many birds does it take to show up, and can you see the V shape of the skein?

I switched to tower frequency and landed in a challenging crosswind, fighting winds twenty to thirty degrees off the runway and twenty-two knots gusting up to thirty-five, all the way down to the runway. I touch down centred and straight and straight, with one little bounce, but I laugh and point out that they were both smooth landings.

Future So Bright

It's a rainy, miserable fall day with the freezing level a little lower than the minimum en route IFR altitude. I study the GFA showing the cloud levels and types in the area I'll be flying through, and decide that yes, we can do the flight in this airplane. I can climb above the level of the cloud that will carry the most dangerous ice before I reach the area that has those clouds, and destination is clear, giving a safe descent. I file a flight plan beginning with a waypoint that we always file out of this airport, because it's the end of the published departure procedure, but as we're going the other way, I don't expect to actually go there. We'll be in radar contact with ATC as soon as we're off the ground and they will vector us on course.

Except they're busy. I end up flying all the way to the waypoint, and then a little bit past on vectors, and then more vectors. Vectors to the right towards the way I want to go, and then, possibly because I wasn't climbing fast enough for the controller's liking, vectors back to the left. "Vectors" just means the controller assigns me a heading to fly. Altitude is being meted out to me in thousand foot increments, from the departure plate up to the MEA, but still not my filed altitude. We're intermittently in rain, cloud, raining cloud and between clouds. "Raining cloud" isn't a thing that I've ever heard anyone say before, but it's sort of a thing. Sometimes when you're in cloud it's quite light, but you just can't see anything around you. That would be near the top of a cloud with sunlight above. Sometimes it's dark and cold. It's usually very moist, with water running up the windshield, but sometimes it's dark, with obscured vision and pelting rain. I guess on those times I'm inside a cloud underneath another cloud that is raining. It's kind of hard to see, as I'm in a cloud.

I say to my co-worker, "you bring your sunglasses?" He hasn't. "Just wait and see," I tell him. "This is one of the most fun parts of being a pilot."

We're level now, with the outside air temperature flickering between plus and minus zero (it rounds to the nearest degree on the instrument, but must have finer gradations internally). Into another cloud. This one is bumpy, a bad sign, and it's a raining cloud, but water doesn't stream up the windshield. It freezes onto it. All this vectoring around and delayed climb has got me into the area I want to avoid. I can see the water running back on the wings and freezing in little horizontal dribbles, exactly like the icing on the edge of a cake. (I think Americans call that frosting). There's a strip of rime building forward, too. This is not acceptable. Thanks to terrific weather forecasting technology I know exactly where the tops of these clouds are. I tell the controller we are picking up ice and ask for a climb to that level, the level I had wanted to fly in the first place. We get it, breaking through the tops of the clouds, a perspective that changes them instantly from dark monsters that obscure my vision and threaten to burden my airplane enough to tear it from the sky, to a brilliant white reflector for the sun. There's nothing but blue sky overhead, and I quickly put on my sunglasses. The temperature here is below freezing, but the air is dry so the ice sublimates, passes from solid to vapour, leaving me again with a clean airplane after a few minutes.

Approaching destination, ATC advises me that there is opposite direction traffic that could be a conflict, do I want to start down now early, or arrive high? I ask for the early descent and we slip through a few wispy clouds before coming out at our destination, under clear skies. At the end of the day I update the flight time in company records and advise company that there are less than fifty hours left on the right hand vacuum pump. Vacuum pumps have to be replaced every thousand hours. I have often seen them fail early. The possibility of failure is why there are two of them, and I'm pleased that the two on this airplane are out of phase; the left one has only five hundred hours on it.

I Would Have Gone With Stephen Hawking

Before making an approach to an airport, every pilot wants to know the wind strength and direction, what clouds they will encounter, the altimeter setting, and what runway is in use. At some airports the pilot figures out this information herself by flying over the field. At others a flight service specialist simply recites the information to each arriving pilot. At busy airports, a recorded message called ATIS recites the information on a dedicated frequency. The information on the ATIS is typically updated once an hour, or when conditions change. At some airports a controller just reads the information into a recording machine, so you can hear his or her voice, fast or slow, annoyed or cheerful, with occasional minor stumbles and the tower background noise. At others an automated voice reads the ATIS.

Here's a live human reading the ATIS:

Here's the ATIS read by the English-language automated voice Nav Canada uses (in Montréal, the Frech ATIS is on a different frequency):

Today I've just picked up an ATIS that uses an automated voice, and my non-pilot co-worker says, "I like him. He reminds me of David Suzuki." It's pretty obvious that "he" is a robot, and I've never thought of David Suzuki as sounding robotic. For foreigners not familiar with Suzuki, here's a clip. (I ask you to please refrain from commenting here on Malthusian economics, environmental sustainability or Suzuki as a person. The clip is there just so you can hear his voice).

I don't hear the resemblance, except perhaps that he has the earnest careful way of speaking, slowing down to make points. But not more so than any other public speaker. It made me realize, though, that I always assumed the robot was a white guy. I'll try and picture him as different ethnicities now, and wearing different funny hats and ties.

Here's a British automated ATIS voice, not as frightfully British as I was expecting.

People

My eye just fell on a story from a month ago, of a Cirrus that flew into restricted airspace over Washington, DC. Intercepting jets noted that the pilot appeared unconscious, and followed the airplane until it crashed into the sea, I'm presuming because it ran out of fuel. Here's a flight log from FlightAware. The incident itself is not astonishing. The pilot was sixty-seven years old, and while I hope I'm still doing many things safely and well at that age, he wouldn't be the first sixty-seven year old to die suddenly and unexpectedly while in control of a vehicle. The thing that elevates the story to the "I have to blog this" level, was the comments I saw on articles about it.

They aren't vituperative rants blaming the government or the other party (or maybe I haven't read that far yet). They are well-meaning people who have read a news article, digested the information and formed opinions on the material, opinions that they are proud enough of to share. (Okay, that's a low bar: I write this blog, for example). I'm fascinated by the ideas some have, the way they see my world.

The article describes the Cirrus as having an emergency parachute. This is true. It's a safety feature. The Cirrus was designed to attract non-pilots into flying, and one thing many non-pilots wanted was a parachute. A number of pilots have deployed the Cirrus parachute and survived situations they did not believe they would have otherwise. And then you get the comment: Something tells me that a plane built with a parachute for engine failures is not a safe plane to fly. Does this person also believe that cars without seatbelts and roads without guardrails are safer? I've seen this before in comments from non-pilots: adding a layer of safety, be it a procedure, an attitude, or a piece of equipment, is perceived as reducing the safety of the operation. It's as if they assume that any aviation operation has a constant level of safety, so any added safety feature causes it to be lacking in another area.

Another reader asserts, This is a good reason why recreational pilots should be required to have co-pilots. While I don't deny that a second pilot in the cockpit represents a huge safety benefit, requiring recreational pilots to fly with a copilot would pretty much destroy recreational aviation. Most recreational airplanes don't have a lot of useful load, so a pilot would have to leave behind a member of her family or most of the fuel in order to take on a another pilot. Recreational pilots can't be paid for their services, so the pilots would have to negotiate where they were going to go and when, I suppose on the basis of "I'll sit with you when you fly to Montreal, if you'll sit with me while I fly to Halifax." Imagine if you were required to have another qualified driver beside you during every car trip you took. While it must have happened, I cannot think of an accident where a person on the ground was hurt because a private pilot was incapacitated. It's not a sufficient problem to require a legislated solution.

This next one fascinates me because it appears to use the term "nanny state" in a non-pejoritive fashion. Or is my sarcasm detector broken? Google is working on a driver free car, next is the pilot free airplane. I'm not going to see a lot of these advancements, but I sure hope my grandkids don't feel the need to rebel against this cradle to grave nanny state. there are enough mindless thrill seekers out there to fill the emergency rooms right now.

This thread is from an aviation site, so most of the farfetched ideas are corrected and explained by other commenters.

This one is from an American public radio station known to be left leading. Its commenters see a coverup for the plane being shot down, or ISIS action. It makes less sense for ISIS to take down a private pilot on his way from Waukesha, Wisconsin to Manassas, Virginia than it would for them to ambush a suburban soccer mom on the way to the grocery store.

This is from an eyewitness in a boat, quoted in this article. “You could tell the jets were extremely well-equipped and in control of the situation. We obviously paid close attention, but at no time did we think we were in danger. I think the jets could have controlled where and when it went down.” While they could have done that with armaments, the way the Cirrus is described descending into the sea is consistent with running out of fuel and not with being blown out of the sky.

And finally, not to forget that the pilot was a person, I found this blog that compiles the NTSB report, a few news stories, and numerous obituaries. It would appear that Cirrus pilot Ronald Hutchinson was an experienced pilot and well-regarded community member. My condolences to his family and friends.

Female Problems

Don't worry, this post isn't about instrument air filters or the lack thereof. But for the "problems men don't have" category I submit:

Attend aviation conference before work. Bring flight clothes to change into. Forget shoes. Do six hour flight wearing really cute little ankle boots, colour coordinated with your camisole.

Could have been worse. At least I wasn't wearing stiletto heels. I might have punctured the aircraft.

Child Prodigy Inspiration

You know the kind. The kid who built a nuclear power plant in his parents' garage. The seventeen year old wunderkind who is flying an airplane she built herself across the continent. The teenager who is not yet old enough to vote, but who has successfully lobbied for a change in foreign policy and raised $300,000 to help enslaved kids in the third world. They used to make me kind of depressed and irritated that I had so much lower an accomplishment to lifespan ratio. But recently I started to look at them in a new way.

If a kid has accomplished so much in ten years, the first few of which he or she was mainly focused on learning to talk and control bodily elimination functions, then any of us can take the next ten years and do whatever we want without having a lifetime of that behind us. Whatever we know about the subject is going to be greater than what the kid started with. All the kid has on us is that he or she didn't know it couldn't be done.

I haven't decided what to do with my newfound inspiration, except maybe use it as a procrastination excuse, but I thought I'd share it.

Cold, Hypoxia and Spiders

From time to time a person stows away in the wheel well of an airliner. There's a big space up there, with room for all the hydraulics, a retracted wheel, and a person. Doors close over the opening to provide streamlining, but I don't know that they close tightly enough to prevent draughts. Mine certainly don't. My gear doors don't even cover the whole opening. There is no pressurization and no heating in that space. At altitude the proportion of oxygen in the air is the same as at sea level, but the total air pressure is less, so the partial pressure of oxygen is also less. This pressure is important. A person can't get sufficient oxygen just by breathing faster. The pressure of the oxygen is what allows oxygen to enter the bloodstream. If the pressure isn't high enough, there is insufficient oxygen for the brain to function. A person loses the ability to make decisions, passes out and if the deprivation is severe enough, eventually dies.

The air temperature decreases by two or three degrees for every thousand feet of altitude, down to about -56C. I've never seen one of these where the stowaway had sufficient knowledge--or resources--to wear a parka. I've been outdoors in temperatures down to about -40. Wearing a parka, and gloves, and a toque underneath my parka hood, and giant Sorel boots, and mittens, while physically active. If I had stopped and curled up for a few hours I know I would have become very very cold.

Most of the time the cold, lack of oxygen and sometimes falling out of the wheelwell kills the stowaway. But sometimes they make it, like this kid from California. Humans can be freaking tough. I find it hilarious, but not that surprising that an unhappy teenager successfully breached airfield security. There is trust involved in aviation. Many places we pay for fuel on the honour system. It takes no genius and rarely requires tools to breech an airport gate. There is also a trade off, mutual assistance among aviators is a tradition much older than airfield security. It's hard to stop people from helping one another. And absolutely any tool someone might need on an airport can literally fly over the fence.

I'm amused that the commenters on that CBC piece include someone who insists a wheelwell monitoring camera and pre-departure check thereof should be standard, someone who doesn't believe the incident happened at all, and someone who sees a conspiracy theory at work.

My airplane often carries little stowaways that seem to suffer no ill effect. Spiders crawl up in my wheel wells. I landed the other day, taxied a short distance off the runway, shut down and got out to clean the windshield. In that time, maybe five minutes since the propellers had stopped spinning, a spider had already strung silk from the propeller across to the fuselage, such that I had to break the web to access my forward cargo area, where the windshield cleaner is. I don't know that it was one of the spiders I carry with me, but I like to think the conditions are producing super spiders. I wonder if insects are attracted to the heat coming off the nacelles, making that a prime spot for web building.

Who Knew September Was Such a Busy Month

I haven't dropped off the face of the Earth. I've been flying, amassing comments on the iPad, assessing the proposed new duty time regulations for pilots and how they will affect my company's operations, and mostly stuck in hotels with terrible Internet. That makes company paperwork take twice as long and leaves no room for blogging. Oh good grief, "An error occurred while trying to save or publish your post," and this is one of the better hotels this week. Okay, this is what I've got got for you today: an aviation headset has two plugs, one that connects the earphones to the system so the crewmember can hear, and one that connects the microphone to the system so the crewmember can speak on the intercom or radio. Each seat in the airplane has two receptacles to hold these two plugs. The intercom in this plane has three settings: ISO, CREW, and ALL. The ISO setting allows the left seat pilot to hear and transmit on the radio and talk to herself, while everyone else plugged into the intercom can talk amongst themselves but not hear or disturb the pilot or the radios. The CREW setting allows the two front seat occupants to speak without being heard by the person in the back, and ALL puts everyone in the loop. Generally the intercom is on ALL for normal operations. I will use the ISO settings if the crewmember in the right seat is training the crewmember in the back (or vice versa) and they are talking over ATC or want to talk during sterile cockpit times. I use CREW if I'm training a pilot in the front and want to give feedback in private. Or if the crewmember in the right seat is training the one in the back and we want to make snide remarks about them. I'll also use the ISO setting if I notice the crewmember in the back has fallen asleep (this is permitted, and indeed encouraged when they have no duties) but hasn't pulled out his or her headset jack, so that radio transmissions don't wake them up. I encourage them to pull their headset plugs if they want to sleep, because that way they don't have to throw crumpled up wads of paper at me to get me to turn the intercom back on when they wake up and want my attention. And then there's today: howling headwinds had us slowed to a crawl, done our work but proceeding to another aerodrome where they want us to start tomorrow. And the pilot starts singing, "The propellers on the plane go 'round and 'round, 'round and 'round ..." Usually I swing my microphone away from my mouth before I sing, but sometimes my fellow crewmembers must suffer. This, ladies and gentlemen, is why I teach you how to pull out your headset plugs.

Bad Technology Day

I've been struggling with my phone lately, not getting text messages, not having it ring when I'm called. An update to the OS did the trick, even though the OS update notes were all for apps I don't use. I heard someone in the air having an equally frustrating time with technology.

"We're struggling with the FMS right now. Can we have direct BOXON?"

The FMS is the flight management system, the magic box that tells the flight director and the autopilot where the airplane is supposed to go. I don't know the clearance that the pilots were given initially, but they were apparently unable to persuade their FMS to accept the waypoint or procedure, so they chose one it would accept to fly towards it while they continued the battle.

I hear another pilot given a hellish multi-stage missed approach clearance including direct to a random sounding lat-long. It's because there is a large swathe of NOTAMed active military airspace blocking access to the normal airways no doubt. Programming a lat-long into the FMS while on approach sounds fun. Not. I screw it up on the ground from time to time. I have to create a user waypoint for the lat-long, can't enter it in the flight plan or direct-to screen. The pilot reads the clearance all back and life goes on. But a while later she comes back to confirm the lat-long. Yep, it's correct.

"The FMS won't take lat-long. Can we go direct [fix]?" she says. Negative, that's in restricted airspace.

"How about [fix]?" That's approved.

We cancel IFR and slip underneath it all.