Stretching Capabilities

The FSS guy last night said "well you've seen the facilities, we can't really handle much." An example is the long term parking ramp. There's a narrow taxiway leading from the main apron to a long narrow apron in front of the Red Deer Flying Club. There one finds a few aged picnic tables and a row of tiedowns on the grass, because the apron isn't wide enough for taxiing and parking. To the airport's credit the grass is kept mowed neatly and the ground is very level and seemed to be free of stones. I walked it, thinking I might have to taxi off the main apron across the grass to get here. But there aren't any spare tie-down spots.

Further down that apron there may be a place I could park. There seem to be some old freighters, airplanes I don't recognize with all their windows panelled over. And there's someone's DC-3 collection there too. I'll have to bring my camera out to show you. I asked one of the pilots who was tying down the tail on his fastback Cessna about the DC-3s, but he didn't know anything about them. I think the ramp effectively ended for him at the end of that row of aircraft. His was the third from the end and he asked me "are you a one-fifty-two pilot or a helicopter pilot?" his query matching the only two aircraft beyond his in that line-up.

I don't really want to park in the long term tie down area, what I want is access to the electrical power there. The August weather is plenty warm enough for the engines overnight, but there is some electrical equipment onboard that the client wants plugged in overnight. That's why I'm out here today, not to fly but to move the airplane to where I can get power. The customer loaned me his truck to come out.

The end of the tiedown row is about thirty metres from the edge of the pavement on the main apron. I start the engines and repark the airplane so that my left tire is right on the edge of the pavement and my electrical receptacle is as close as it can get to the plug in post without my parking on the grass. Now extension cords. I should have two 15 metre cords and some shorter ones. I imagine the guys in the tower cab are watching me, because traffic is pretty quiet. So they see this pilot open all the cargo hatches in the airplane looking for something. There are no cords in the nose, but there's some Febreeze. I'm going to use that, because the carpet stinks. There's a really long red and black cord in the left wing locker, along with the Y-spliced cord for the engine block heaters and a shorter heavy duty cord. I hook those three together, but that leaves me about three metres short. Another search through everything. I thought I had another cord. It must be in a maintenance hangar somewhere.

It's late, the stores will all be closed so I can't buy one tonight and they want it plugged in tonight. I'll have to park on the grass. Unless ...

I call the client and ask if he has an extension cord. He initially says no and then remembers that he has one in his truck to plug in his block heater. In the truck I have, so I don't even have to drive back into town for it. It just fits. But my coworker will laugh in the morning when she sees the crazy daisy chain of cords I have used to get the job done. I drive back to town and put the airplane keys under her door with a note promising to buy a proper cord before she lands back here tomorrow.

Red Deer Airport

The airport at Red Deer has two good paved runways, some good taxiways and at least one "wait, are you sure there wasn't an X on this?" taxiway. That's Delta. I was glad that I had specifically checked NOTAMs for the airport before coming here, so that I could be reasonably confident that I wasn't about to fall into a pit. This must be why the controller offered me the backtrack yesterday.

There is a proper airport terminal here, with washrooms and gates (okay, gate: I think there's only one) and PA announcements and CATSA security screening. In front of the terminal is a large paved apron with a big yellow square painted on it. The square is about the size of a B737 and it's the secure area of the airport. When there is a scheduled carrier parked there, no one without a badge or a security escort may cross the line. When there's no scheduled carrier, anyone may walk or taxi anywhere on the apron. When I first arrived at the airport there was a B737 parked in the square, but the FSS folk cheerfully assured me that it was just a charter, not scheduled, so the line was not in force. Because it's so much more practical to commit terrorist acts on a scheduled flight than with a private charter that operates on your schedule, I guess.

From the airside, the terminal has the name of the airport and the field elevation written on it and there is the word enter over one door. The other door goes to the FSS in the tower cab on top of the terminal. The FSS personnel don't go in and out that door, though, they use a wooden walkway with handrails that goes along the roof to the groundside, and then down a set of metal stairs. It must be a chilly gauntlet to run in the winter, but the summer weather is quite nice, not getting below ten or so overnight. The metal stairs end in a fenced cage with a coded entry door, next to the airport staff parking. From there a secure fence with a combination lock runs along the edge of the airfield. (Pilots: your first guess at the code is correct, and there's a sticker on both sides of the gate that gives the name of the four digit number clearly enough that it could be googled). Not to worry about the security of the airfield however, because the security fence ends a couple of hangars down the ramp and anyone can just walk or drive onto the field. Just like Miami.

As I'm leaving the airport at eleven p.m. a man comes down the stairs to his car. I ask if he's leaving for the night or just a shift change. I thought I remembered that it was 24 hour here, but I could be wrong. Eleven is a common time for services to stop. It's just a shift change, though. He explains that overnight when Edmonton City Centre tower closes, Red Deer Radio steps in and looks after that frequency. I told him that I had assumed it went to a pool of people in a room in Edmonton somewhere. He says it used to, but this is new. It's not a bad idea. It gives Red Deer Radio enough work to justify them being open twenty-four hours.

"Us"

I'm working more closely with another pilot these days, making me "one of the pilots" on site as opposed to "the pilot." I try to avoid writing too much about my coworkers, because who wants people putting stuff about you on the internet without your knowledge. But we do some things together, and sometimes someone else's actions form part of my story.

I could write the whole thing as if it were just me, which removes any fear of posting something someone doesn't want said about them. And you never know what that might be. But then I end up taking credit for the actions of others, which isn't really fair. I do that a little, anyway, trying to carry the story without unnecessary personal information.

I try to avoid too much detail of what we said or did solving a problem, because while it's okay for me to misremember or poorly condense my own actions and words, I shouldn't be misquoting someone else or accidentally accusing her of something she didn't do. I'd love to spend some time comparing and contrasting the two of us. There's lots of humour and learning in it, but even if I'm simply trying to describe a characteristic I admire, I'm almost guaranteed to say something that could be misinterpreted, so it's better not to go there.

So that's it. I work with competent people who work hard, do a good job, and are easy to get along with, but I don't mention them as individuals that much on the blog. It's not to deny them credit but to avoid infringing on their privacy. Often they have stories I'd love to tell you, but as I see it they are not mine to pilfer.

Yellowknife

I'm in Yellowknife right now probably until Tuesday, so drop me an e-mail if you'd like to meet up.

Survey Says ...

They do it.

They have to inspect all the circuits that are served by that breaker looking for anomalies. They basically open everything up, poke at it, don't find anything, and then can't reproduce the problem. "What do I put?" muses the engineer, pen poised over the journey log trying to write a rectification.

"You've got a three letter abbreviation for that, don't you?" I suggest. "I'm okay if you just put 'NFF'." It stands for 'no fault found.' It sometimes means "pilot is stupid/lazy." I suppose it sometimes means the engineer is, because this one declines to write that. He documents the steps he has taken and signs off the airplane. I offer the flight to my coworker, but she doesn't want it.

Taxi out again. Backtrack to the end. Turn around. Power up. Gauges green. Brakes release, airspeed alive and rotate. Gear up. I bring back the power before we speed up and we cycle the flaps. All good. Flaps up, back to climb power and we're en route for real.

Today's destination is Red Deer. It's in Alberta, almost exactly half way between Calgary and Edmonton. It's getting dark as we arrive. I set up for 16 and then am offered a straight in for 29 and take that instead. Landing on 16 would have had me roll out and be at the apron, but now I'm not sure of the best route. We're coming up on taxiway delta but before I can check if it goes where I want, the controller offers us the backtrack. It's not actually a control tower, but an FSS, but it's one of the assertive ones that coordinates traffic rather than just telling you where other aircraft are and asking "what are your intentions?"

There's a 737 parked on the apron, but we tuck into a corner where we won't be in the jet blast when they start up again, and shut down.

Time for a Pool

The hotel we stayed in has a really nice pool, so we go for a swim before I volunteer to drive back for the part. My coworker did all the driving for the previous trips, so I figure she should get to sit around a bit today.

I'm not actually picking up the part from the Fed Ex office: I'm picking it up from the part retailer who get it couriered to them, so what I collect is just the paperwork and the part, in its plastic baggie. Today's part is about the size of the last joint of my little finger. It's an electronic component. I don't know if it has a name or just a part number, but apparently it is responsible for the last two day's trouble. I drive back. They install it. They test it. It works.

We load our bags. We run up. We take off. I raise the gear. It starts goes up. The green lights go out and a red light goes on. The gear clunks into the belly and wings. The hydraulic cycle completes and the red light goes off. A glance in the mirror shows that the nosewheel is stowed.

I reduce the power from the take-off setting to the climb setting. I get distracted by a very odd indication on the panel and reduce the power too much. My coworker is reading the paper but this gets her attention and I show her that the flap indicator shows full down. They're not down even a little bit and the indication was correct on the ground. Flap indicators can be wonky. This one always indicates full down when electrical power is removed. Not all of them do that. Often cycling the flaps will fix an indication problem, but when selected down, they don't budge. I inspect the obvious culprit. Yep, the circuit breaker is popped. "I'll reset it once," I say and push on it, but it doesn't go in. She doesn't believe me and reaches over and tries it herself. I forgive her for thinking I'm too stupid to reset a CB, after my power setting stunt. It doesn't reset for her either.

We almost got out of there, too.

I'm in the U-turn, thinking about the short runway. I don't have flapless landing performance charts. There's still some wind, but not a whole lot. I consider going to the larger airport. That would allow a larger margin of safety, but it would introduce a lot of operational difficulties. A lot of people think that being a professional pilot is all about always making the safest decision. It's not. It's about making the decision that will come closest to achieving the operational objective while still remaining safe. Is it safe to land this airplane on this runway, at this weight, in only this much wind? In my judgement yes. And there's nothing to hit at the other end. Not even a fence.

I fly a long final to compensate for the fact that the flapless approach profile is less familiar. I want to land at the very beginning of the runway, and I want to do it with as little speed as is safe, so as to have less speed to kill by braking. Gear down and take a couple of extra inches of power off. Over the threshold, power idle, brakes ... and without jamming them on we almost make the centre taxiway.

My coworker has already texted the engineer about our issue. The popped circuit break is for the starter solenoid, flaps and right emergency fuel pump. Weird combination. Weirder are the combinations required to start it again. With the master off, the CB resets. They have me do various combinations of starting engines, operating the flaps and turning on the fuel pump. Sometimes it pops and sometimes it doesn't. The engineer and one of the apprentices work on the problem. We go inside and chat to the other apprentice, who is also a student pilot. We tell her that if we stay the night again, as it looks like we will, she can come to the excellent hotel pool as our guest. We aviatrices have to stick together.

So what do you think? Are we going to spend another night here? Will we go back to the parts distributor in the morning? Will they fix the airplane and see us on our way tonight? If it's of any help to your guess there is a ridge of high pressure over western Canada leaving it clear all the way to destination.

Any Bets?

Same drill as yesterday. We check out of the hotel, load our gear in the vehicle, drive to the first airport, collect a squat switch and accompanying paperwork, and drive to the second airport. The weather is good here, but poor at destination, however it should clear up by the time the part is installed and we get there. We walk into the hangar with our delivery.

The airplane is up on jacks, with the gear retracted. It looks really creepy that way. I'm used to seeing airplanes sitting on their wheels, and it's okay to have them hoisted onto jacks, but it's very weird when the wheels are up, but the airplane is sitting in a hangar. It looks so precarious like that. The engineer and his apprentice are looking glum. We hold up the part triumphantly, but this doesn't lighten their mood.

"Uh thanks," the engineer says. The switch doesn't seem to be the problem. At the moment they're cleaning out the nose compartment because they had a hydraulic line come off. There's something more other than the switch that sends an electric locked or not locked signal that is causing the airplane to believe its gear is not extended when it is. They aren't going to have this today. This time we check into a hotel in this town, but it turns out we'll have to drive back to the first airport to get a part again tomorrow.

No, I did not just post the same post two days in a row. Yesterday, for example, the weather was poor here and good at destination. Today it's the opposite. In neither case does it matter, as we're not going anywhere until that airplane works. How long do you think we can keep this up?

Fed Ex R Us

The delivery isn't until the early afternoon, so we take advantage of our regular customer status at the hotel chain and get a late checkout time so we can lounge around in our palatial upgraded rooms, do a workout, and get some lunch. Life is hard, eh?

As we're leaving, a couple of Skywest pilots are having a cigarette outside the hotel before checking in, and we stop to chat. They're glad to be working, of course, but not thrilled with their working conditions. I confess that I'd like to fly for a regional, but don't seem to have what they are looking for. They both know other pilots who do what we do and don't think it's a bad option. "Yeah," I say, "But I'd really like to ..." and the captain finishes the sentence before I do with "flight privileges?"

Yeah.

They're really not all they are cracked up to be. And I already know this. Sure you fly for nothing or for a fraction of the regular fare, but it's space available. You can plan to get on the first flight out after your shift ends, but you might wait a day to get where you are going. Or even get stranded part way. You have to leave a day or more buffer to be sure you get back. Might as well make more money and buy cheap tickets that you know you will get to use. I know Skywest pilots don't make much money. But the FO had an awesome haircut. Maybe her brother or sister is a high-end hairdresser and she gets free cuts.

So we pile our luggage into our vehicle and drive out to the airport. It's accessed by a dirt road that turns off a poorly paved road that turns off the main highway. There's no airport fence or even a clear delineation of where the airport ends and farmland stops. We park in front of the hangar and bring in the part. While they are installing it, we load our luggage into the airplane and secure it. The hangar has no password on the wireless internet -- who's going to poach your bandwidth in the middle of a field? -- so I download and install a new version of my navigation program and update the weather. It's supposed to be a little low for the first 200 miles, with a bit of rain, and then open up for clear weather to destination. Winds are, of course, headwinds. There's a good breeze here, too, which is good because it's straight down the runway and will help us get out of the short strip full of fuel and gear.

The engineer comes in from the run-up shaking his head. "Doesn't it work?" we ask. The gauge works fine. There's something wrong with the squat switch. The gear horn blares continuously. The airplane is convinced that the landing gear is not locked down and is desperately trying to warn us to either extend it or pull up. The engineer goes into his office and returns. He's ordered another part, a new squat switch.

"I knew I shouldn't have loaded the bags!" says my coworker.

We unload the bags and put them back in our vehicle, then drive back to the hotel we just checked out of. Once again we will stay the night in preparation for doing the Fed Ex pick up dance again tomorrow.

Safety First

I got the call, as usual, with my chief pilot telling me which city to fly to. I bought the ticket online but didn't check in online. I just went to the airport and checked in at a kiosk, receiving a paper boarding pass. My destination was a Fed Ex hub in the prairies, and the airport code on the printed bag tag matched my intended destination. Bonus.

Additional bonus: somehow despite checking in at the airport close to the minimum time before the flight, I have been assigned an exit row seat for one leg, the kind with so much space in front of you that you can't reach your bag under the seat ahead with your seatbelt on. And the emergency exit is a thing to behold. The aircraft is an A321, and looking at the R3 exit door I suspect that the door alone has a manual as thick as the one for my entire airplane. It has straps and levers and handles and lots of placards in English and French, plus a window with a pressure warning light. There's a little placard down by my ankle showing temperature versus pressure, but I'm not sure whether this are expected or maximum, nor do I know what use it might be here. I would dearly love to see the manual for this door, but the best I can find is in Korean, merely increasing its mystery.

I pick up the briefing card and look through it to determine which of the many controls on the door I am supposed to operate in an emergency, and which way the door is to be pushed, pulled or slid. The man next to me gestures at the card and says superciliously, "I knew there must be someone who read those things."

Some people think they are too cool for safety.

The flight attendant comes by and briefs us on the door operation. I point out the presence of a red Remove Before Flight tag on the door. She assures me that removing that tag is a part of her pre-takeoff checklist, as she arms the door. When she does it, she moves the tag over a bit into another socket. So I'm still staring at this stupid tag. I consider hiding it for the duration of the flight, but the risk of getting in trouble over it is greater than my no red tag neurosis.

I spend part of the flight reviewing my own normal and emergency checklists. I think that Mr. Too Cool To Read The Briefing Card doesn't believe I'm a pilot, but I really don't care. I then switch over to translating the dialogue from a really bad movie into an obscure language I'm trying to learn , a process which Mr. TCTRTBC observes and proclaims tedious. Not really. It's an action movie with really lame dialogue, so there aren't a lot of words to translate. It's fun. But different people have different concepts of fun. I don't ask Mr. TCTRTBC what he does for fun.

Computer put away for landing and we're down. At least fifteen knots, about 30 degrees off the runway. Another happy afternoon in the prairies.

The other crew has already left for their time off. My shift coworker has been here for a few hours already, so she knows the plan. The original plan was for us to get a vehicle, drive out to the airplane and fly to Medicine Hat. But airplanes only like original plans to the extent that they think they're being original when they thwart them, necessitating a new plan.

The airplane is sitting on a 2700' strip in the next town over, waiting for a new part. The cylinder head temperature indication for the right engine had been flickering up into the red. There was no indication of a reason for excessive CHT, and the oscillating behaviour of the needle pointed to a gauge problem. I guess on a car you'd probably just drive until something more serious happened, but with an airplane, you make it right. The replacement gauge is expected at this airport tomorrow, so rather than waiting for Fed Ex to deliver it to the airplane, we will pick it up ourselves and drive it out there. The mechanics will install it, test it out, and we'll fly away.

Oh and it's hoax week on Aviatrix's blog, as a drunk calls a suicide hotline and tells them he's an airline pilot planning to bring down his next flight.

Unbelievable

I'm back at work, luxuriating in not blogging, and chatting online.

"Did you see the video of the guy that lands the airplane with one wing?" asks a non-pilot. He provides a link, but I'm too lazy to click it.

"The military jet?" I ask. "Those airplanes get so much lift from the fuselage that it's possible to do that." I realize how pretentious that sounds and add, "Not that I wouldn't lose control of an airplane like that with two wings."

(The six minute video documents an F-15 landing after a training accident that separated almost all of one wing).

"No," says the person. "It wasn't a jet. It had a propeller. It was at an airshow."

So them I'm thinking it's probably Kent Pietsch with his detachable aileron stunt. He has a dummy aileron, and a quick release to disconnect it, so it visibly falls of the airplane in flight. He also throws a wheel out of the airplane, and then lands on one wheel, the wheel facing towards the airshow viewers. It's also set up so the announcer is acting as though this airplane is not part of the show but has violated the NOTAMed off airspace due to its emergency. The first time I saw that stunt I got some shocked reactions from other airshow patrons because I was laughing at what they thought was a serious emergency.

Finally I click the link.

The video is shaky airshow spectator footage showing an aircraft doing a low an over. It pulls up, one wing separates, it comes in and out of frame a few times then makes a knife edge approach, weight opposed by the thrust of the propeller and lift generated over the fuselage. I'm thinking, "The pilot is going to survive this!" Theres a moment of blur and then the airplane is on the ground, on the wheels. A member of the ground crew runs up and the video ends.

Whoa! When did this happen? Why have I not heard of it? Who is the pilot? I found more information at AvWeb.

So it was a good fantasy. Fun to imagine having the skill, power, presence of mind and luck to pull that off.

Grass Growing Through the Cracks

So I'm in an airplane, looking out the window at grass growing through the cracks in the pavement, as we taxi by. But where is this taxiway? It's paved, so you know I'm not too far from civilization. It's not Whitehorse, or anything named after an animal or body of water. It doesn't have Grande or Fort in the name, and it doesn't contain any Qs or Ks. Could Aviatrix be in the civilized part of the world?

You betcha. I'm sitting in the back of an Air Canada jet on taxiway D at YYZ. I'm going on vacation. No blogging until a) I get back and b) I feel like it.

My New Computer Came With Cool Games

What, you expected a blog post today after I discovered that?

?

Blogging motivation is low anyway. I'm considering changing formats. We'll see.

Also, I'm not going to EAA Airventure in Oshkosh for 2009, but the person who helped me get there last year is addicted and going back. She is looking for a ride from the airport in Appleton, and for interesting people to meet up with. Please contact her at the temporary e-mail robert_hc172@yahoo.com if you'll be there. She happens to be working in the former Weasel River (long-time readers will remember) so deserves all the fun she can get.

Mobile Device

My morning e-mail included the usual notice from Air Canada urging me to check in online, or on my mobile device. Hey, I have a mobile device now. I think I'll give this a try.

The Internet in the Whitehorse hotel is excruciatingly slow, but I manage to click on the "or check in with your mobile device" link in the e-mail. The page starts to load. Oddly, it seems to be loading the regular Air Canada website, not a page optimized for the mobile, but I give it time. I go and brush my teeth and then return to see, yes it is the regular Air Canada website. It is not the check-in page, but a page of instructions on how to check in online, including a section on how to check in with a mobile. All I have to do is go to mobile.aircanada.com, it tells me. I click on those words. Uh I try to click on those words. Although the URL of the website is given multiple times on the page, in a contrasting colour, in no case is it a link.

What were they thinking? All I can come up with is that they were concerned that non-mobile users would attempt to check in using that link and then would be confused when it didn't work. Instead they have decided to inconvenience people who are actively and accurately trying to check in with a mobile device. I can't quite believe they made that decision. I enter the URL in the Safari navigation bar. And it returns an error message. It says Uniquement les dispositifs WML sont autorises a utiliser cette application. Hmm. I was not at that moment familiar with the abbreviation WML, so I assumed it was a French term I didn't know for mobile web-enabled device. I've since learned that it is the same abbreviation in French or English and represents a mobile version of HTML. (Technically of XML, but more people are going to know what HTML is). Either way the error message is telling me that that my device was not qualified to access this site.

I honestly don't know if it is or not. It's a mobile device. It can receive e-mail. But does it use WML? Google found me this unanswered forum question from someone who had the same problem with the same airline almost a year ago. Which is odd, because the feature has a "NEW!" flag on it.

But one way or the other, I want to check in. I know now it would be faster to do it at the gate, but this is technology! Let me make it work! So I go back to the original e-mail and try the "web check-in" option. After more tedious loading I'm back to the Air Canada site, and a page giving me instructions on how to check in on the web, with a link to "check in now." Again, why did it not give me that link in the e-mail, with options to get instructions? I guess because someone who needs instructions on filling out an online form isn't savvy enough to choose to ask for instructions. I mean, it's a form: how hard can it be?

I click "check in now" and get the message "Safari can't open the page because the address is invalid." I don't believe this, so I reclick the link, and this time it works. I'm going to pretend the first time was a hallucination. I have to enter my name, my airport of origin, and my destination. And now the form requires my Aeroplan number or booking reference number. Firetruck! If I go back to the e-mail I'll have to go through this all over again. And did I enter my Aeroplan number when I booked this? I would ordinarily, but I booked it on my colleague's computer without logging in properly, because I rely on my computer or the memory stick to remember things like frequent flyer passwords for me. Fortunately it successfully looks up the booking based on my Aeroplan number. I must have manually entered it. I click continue.

"Please wait while we prepare your request."

It gives me a seat assignment, asks for my number of checked bags, and has me confirm that I am checking no bicycles, firearms, surfboards or antlers. And then it asks if I would like to receive the boarding pass via mobile e-mail. I say yes, enter the e-mail address they already have, and click continue.

It tells me I'm done. I know better. You're not done until you get the boarding pass. I check my e-mail. It has arrived. Load, load, load ... there's a simple one-line e-mail with my flight numbers and itinerary. And then "click the link below to receive your electronic boarding passes. You could also be asked to display this message to airport security." So I leave that message on the screen and open the link below in a new window. Each boarding pass is a little magic eye picture with my seat number on it. I practice a couple of times displaying the boarding pass and the e-mail. I turn off the device and turn it back on again to make sure it's still there, still working. Okay, I can do this.

When I check my bag at the counter, the CSA asks if I have printed a boarding pass. I say no, but I have it on my iPod, and start to show her. She doesn't need to see it. She prints out my bag claim stickers and gives them to me stuck to a piece of paper that is blank on one side and has Warsaw Convention baggage liability rules printed on the other. She sticks the tags to the side with the writing on, not the blank side. Why? Because had I not claimed to have a boarding pass on my iPod, there would have been a boarding pass printed on that side. So the savings accrued to Air Canada so far amount to the ink on the boarding pass.

And now for security. I turn on the iPod and have my magic eye picture all ready to display. I get my big computer out of its bag, put it, my carry-on and my jacket on the x-ray belt and show the iPod to the checker who asks for my boarding pass. Ta-da! I hold up the iPod. The screener takes it and turns it sideways to look at. The gravity feature in the device rotates the display, cutting off the image. "This is a boarding pass?" she asks dubiously.

"That's what Air Canada told me."

She shows the device to another security person. He says, "you have to look at the e-mail. Just make sure it has the right date and airport." No problem. I take the device back and switch screens to the e-mail. There's free wireless in this airport -- I was using it earlier to look at web pages in a different window. So when I switch to the e-mail it tries to reload the page. And it fails. It has the e-mail, but it's an HTML e-mail and the picture has to download from Air Canada's server and it won't. So now I don't have the e-mail and I can't get to it either. I go back out of security and mess with it for fifteen minutes, trying to get it to display. Finally I go back to the Air Canada counter where they print me a paper boarding pass. Security likes that one much better.

I continue to fiddle with the iPod in the departure area until I get the e-mail to display again. As a final gesture of embracing new technology I attempt to board the aircraft by showing my magic eye picture. "We don't have the scanner, do you have the e-mail?" At least she knows what it is. I show the e-mail. It works this time, and she lets me on. I absolutely could have faked that e-mail with less trouble than it took to obtain and display it. It would have got me through security and onto the tarmac, ready to wreak havoc with ... okay maybe Air North isn't a big terrorist target, but I'd have been there!

I did get home. But it's clear that my expectations, Air Canada, Apple, Safari and horrible hotel internet combined into a not-so-good customer experience. I'll try mobile check in again sometime when I have some more iPod-specific software, like a better e-mail program and something to do screen captures. But I think when the fun of complaining about it wears off, I'll go back to the method that takes less time and doesn't require me to hold and hand off a small valuable item in a busy area while burdened with luggage. It's easier to have the iPod stored safely and wave around a piece of easily replaceable paper.

I Love Paper

After seeing as much as I could of Whitehorse, I took the hotel shuttle to the airport where I chatted with a Toronto geologist who was originally from the Caribbean and an outfitter who was originally from Calgary but now lived further north than Whitehorse and had come south to here for business. There's a lot of Canada I don't think about from day to day.

As a result of my experiences in the airport, I made the following list.

Ten Things You Can Do Easily with a Paper Air Canada Boarding Pass
(but not with the iPod)

1. Hold it in your teeth
2. Use it as a bookmark
3. Fold it inside your wallet
4. Abandon it in the seat pocket in front of you before changing planes
5. Roll your luggage over it
6. Watch security personnel drop it on the floor
7. Get a new one for free if it is lost or mutilated
8. Walk through the security scanner carrying it
9. Staple it to your expense report
10. Get admitted to the secure area at Whitehorse airport

Details on that tomorrow.

Technology Is Whatever Works

The next morning I got a better daylight look at such attractions as the three-story log skyscraper (it appeared from the rows of electric meters and mailboxes, and the vehicles parked around it to be a regular cheap apartment building that just happened to be a three story tower made out of logs) and other places around town. It's like living in an old stone building in another town. The way I calculate it, Whitehorse is a young town that grew explosively at first and then shrunk a little, such that the original buildings were still in use, or at least still existing in the 1960s. And that was a time when there was enough money and sentiment around to try and preserve them. So the old telegraph office and the old railway station are still there on the waterfront, log buildings, both. The original log church is still there and at least as functional as the 1960s replacement next door.

I bought a few souvenirs and talked to some locals, most of whom had come for a short time earlier but never gone home. The tourism centre was huge, a bustling nexus of information on all the places in the territory that a person can go, and all the adventures you can have. There was a hook-up noticeboard for people looking for rides and hiking companions. I smiled the technologies proposed by the note writers to contact them. They ranged from telephone numbers and e-mail addresses down to "leave a note on the green Ford 150 with Nunavut plates." I hope everyone found their rides, companions and lost possessions.

Another notice that caught my attention was this one on import restrictions to Alaska. Apparently you can take anything you like across the border as long as it isn't goat or lamb meat or Florida oranges. So does that mean mutton is okay? I'm familiar with fruit transport restrictions, but into Alaska? It's not like Alaska has a thriving citrus fruit industry, or is Alaska even more unexpectedly amazing than Whitehorse? And South African oranges are okay?

Whitehorse is Awesome

I was expecting Whitehorse to be a one horse town. After all, it's not called "Whitehorses." But before we'd completed the cab ride into town we saw that this place was at least a kilohorse town. It has multilane paved roads with signs and traffic signals. We see some chain stores like Home Depot and Costco on the way in and then my co-worker cries, "There's a Starbucks!"

"There are two Starbucks," responds the cab driver, but don't think the corporate interests have taken over the town. It consists mainly of interesting wooden buildings two or three stories high. We later learn that the building code maximizes construction at four stories, so there are no skyscrapers, just medium density along astonishingly well-kept streets.

We checked into the hotel. It's obviously done up for the tourists, with moose and mounties and that sort of kitsch. You can fly direct to Whitehorse from Germany, and Whitehorse has taken pains to be the Canada the Germans expect. The elevator door is made up to look like the entrance to an old- time bank vault. Upstairs some of the corridors are very narrow, so although the hotel is in excellent repair, I think parts of it are actually quite old. We met up with our relief shift and all went out to eat in a building with an antique airline advertisement painted on the side. Menu choices included caribou stew, Musk ox stroganoff and grilled arctic char (a sort of fish). I had the musk ox, as I'd only tasted musk ox in jerky before. It was delicious, and very generous portions, too. The meals came with good salads, focaccia bread, and vegetables, all for $24, a good price for a meal of that quality and quantity anywhere in Canada. We all stuffed ourselves.

We walked around town some more. It's eminently walkable, plus dozens of people were on bikes and there were bike racks everywhere. There were a lot of stores selling things to tourists, but they tended more towards interesting well-crafted items specific to the place and not just plastic tourist junk. There were also a few very nice consignment clothing stores. Not thrift stores. That gave me pause. For stores like that to exist, there have to be women who live here who don't just wear parkas and sweaters in the winter and shorts in the summer. There have to be women here who make enough money to buy nice clothes and there have to be events and business calling for such clothes, and they have to live here long enough that the clothes go out of fashion and are replaced. I guess that was my first clue that people don't just pass through here, they come to stay.

That evening there was a midnight music festival and I went to that. I wasn't terribly impressed with the bands, but I got in free by asking the gate security people nicely, so I shouldn't dis their show. I just wanted to hang out. Wow, Whitehorse is diverse. Most northern towns just have native folk, lots of white men and a few white women. Whitehorse is every bit as diverse as Toronto, but more integrated. Caribbean accents were not what I was expecting at a midnight sun party.

When that wound down, I walked around taking pictures, giggling at myself that it was light enough to take outdoor pictures of historic buildings at 12:30 a.m. One of the rows of buildings I photographed turned out to be a trompe d'oeil mural in an alley. You know your town is clean when the tourists are photographing the dumpsters.

Despite the primping for the tourists, Whitehorse is genuine. It really is the beginning of any wilderness adventure you could want: dogsledding, horseback riding, the Chilkoot trail, river rafting, and mountain climbing all here. And it's not just any old trail or river: you'd be following the gold rush routes. That's why it's here. And ever since the gold rush people have come for one reason and stayed on. I really wished I didn't already have a ticket home. At least it's not until tomorrow afternoon so I have another half day to look around.

West to Whitehorse

The next day I pick up the weather by telephone and am a little late meeting the others in the lobby, as I got one of those briefers who insists on telling you about every unlighted tower all the way from origin to destination, even though it's a daytime flight. I guess if widespread darkness were cast upon the land due to a volcanic eruption, and we therefore diverted to Takla, and decided to do this at 300' agl, I'd be very grateful to know about that 305' unlighted tower eight miles SSE of the aerodrome. But as it is I'm happy to have the weather, which involves the remains of a cold front until about Watson Lake and should be good thereafter.

There is a small fuel stain on the ramp. It's a known time-to-time problem caused by a valve connecting one of the auxiliary tanks to another tank, which is full. It appears that the valve sometimes doesn't seat properly, so the fuel drains from the aux tank to the main tank and then leaks out the main tank vent. The engineer makes a sound of frustration. He wanted to fix it but as he says, "for two days in the hangar it didn't leak!" It's not a safety problem for us and it doesn't cause us to lose fuel in flight, because the rate of accidental transfer is far less than the fuel burn from the destination tank. The fuel level in the aux tank doesn't even appear any lower than it did before maintenance.

Everything is still normal on the runup, so I taxi out and take off. I can feel the airplane being at max weight. At the proper speed I rotate to the correct take-off attitude, and the airplane rolls along on just the mains for a moment before it rises off the runway.

We took off from runway 26 and my heading to Whitehorse is 269, so I make that slight turn on course and continue the climb straight ahead. The magnetic deviation is huge here, 22 degrees east, meaning that in order to fly northwest with respect to the globe, we fly due west by the compass. I keep poking at the GPS to catch the moment when we have crossed the 60th parallel to the Yukon, but the clouds draw in beneath us so I can't see the eskers. I let the non-flying pilot take photographs for me.

The highest mountains along our route peak around 6000', but there is still snow along all the mountain ridges. We pass Watson Lake and then the clouds thin out as promised.

Whitehorse has a tower and an FSS, but no ATIS. By listening on frequency we learn that arriving aircraft pick up weather and traffic avoidance from the FSS until they are close enough to contact tower, and then are sequenced. There's a little runway 19 and a parallel set of 13/31 L & R. The wind is from 190 at 15 gusting twenty. We are initially sequenced to join left downwind for 13 right, but despite having looked it over, I screw up the arrival. There's a mountain where downwind should be, so the local procedures are to fly a very tight downwind inside the mountain and then teardrop out or fly extra long to turn back for the runway. I understand the arrival diagram as being over the lake and river, but try to leave myself some room for a proper circuit and arrive in the zone on the wrong side of the mountain, so I have to cross over it before descent to circuit altitude. They have a Jazz CRJ ready to taxi, so out of wariness of my unpredictability, they sidestep me to 13 left where I can be as slow as I like without interfering with the jet departure.

I get myself on the correct side of the mountain, turn final and land. The crosswind is, as usual, not an issue in this airplane. It would be much more exciting to land a little single in a 15 kt crosswind. I roll out and they give me the backtrack, hold short 19. There is no painted hold short line, but I stop well short of the crossing runway and watch as an amphib Cessna lands in front of us.

Now I'm cleared to taxi up 19, hold short 13R. The Jazz is ready to go now. I make the left turn and come to a stop for the yellow line, then realize that the yellow line I have stopped at is a dashed line with a solid line behind it: the hold short line for traffic waiting to cross 13L, the runway I've just come off. The hold short line with a solid line and a dashed line behind it, for 13R, is still ahead of me. I start rolling again, then see that the Jazz is rolling now, so stop where I am. The pilot doesn't need to see an airplane moving on an intersecting runway during his take-off roll.

When the Jazz jet is gone I'm cleared across the last runway and to call ground, who direct me to transient parking near the tower. When I turn on the phone to call the flight follower I get a text from the pilot who will be replacing me, with his hotel room number. I text him back and then we haul our personal gear out and lock the airplane. While we are waiting for our cab we meet the family who was in the C185. They're travelling around all over BC and the Yukon. I'll have to come back and see some of these places someday.

Oh and you can't talk about YXY without mentioning the wind direction indicator: outside the airport there's an entire DC-3 on a pylon, free to rotate with the wind.

Weighing In

While our engineer finishes up the premature inspection, I go out to the airplane to weigh and load customer equipment. Frustratingly, I don't have a working computer so I can't quickly enter everything in the spreadsheet to see if the easiest way to load the equipment will result in a properly loaded airplane.

My parameters require that everything fit on board, that certain items be in the heated cabin with us, that the especially heavy or difficult-to-secure items be in confined cargo lockers, that the centre of gravity be within prescribed limits and that the total weight be under the legal ramp weight.

We go together to do the post maintenance run up. The engines start beautifully: a combination of his having tuned something and of me not starting them when they are still too hot to touch after the morning flight. In the run-up area he specifies the power settings he wants to see, but also lets me do the tests I do, so we're both satisfied with all the readings. Once upon a time it used to make me nervous doing a runup for a maintenance engineer. I was afraid they were going to tell me I was doing something wrong or say "so that's why this keeps breaking!" but now I'm happy to do the run up. Besides, if the engineer spots something I could do better, I'd like to know.

I still have to finish loading, but he has paperwork to do and says he is as happy doing it here as he would be at the hotel. I ask the engineer if he has the weight and balance spreadsheet on his computer, and he doesn't, but the hangar has wireless and he is kind enough to get my colleague to e-mail it. He enters in the numbers I give him for what I have packed and what is yet to come. We're just barely overweight and just forward of the limits, but then he adjusts the fuel on board number to reflect what he has burned during his work, and I move the station position of one of the yet-to-be-loaded bags further aft, and we're in limits. We print out the sheet so we have it in case of a ramp inspection and then I help him pack up his tools.

We go over to the terminal to try to get a flight home for him, but there's nothing available until tomorrow. Someone suggests he ride with us to Whitehorse because it's much easier to get a flight from there. He laughs, knowing how full the airplane is. He books the first flight out tomorrow, which has him stay here until we have departed safely for Whitehorse.

She Can Talk, Too!

This is a really old article from 2003, and I started to write it up as "a few years old but sounds like it's from fifty years ago," a commentary on how far ahead women in the west are of their third world counterparts. And then I read on and realized that the Kiowa helicopter pilot Adrineh Shahijanian it describes is in the American military. it was an American soldier who looked at her in uniform, then turned to a man sitting next to her and asked if women flew Kiowas.

When I bookmarked this I honestly thought the story was about some remote country in central Asia where the women are just crawling out from behind their veils. I know there are quite a lot of women in air combat roles in the US. And women were ferrying American combat aircraft before some of today's soldiers' parents were born. I guess some corners of the military are fifty years behind the general population when it comes to women. I'm so lucky to be in an environment where I don't encounter this. Or perhaps simply a mindset where I don't see it.

The "pee in the field" directive is an interesting one, because here is an area where, yeah, men are better equipped than women. But only if they are both wearing flight suits styled for men. If it were me who had to pee in fields on a regular basis, I'd extend the flight suit opening far enough south (with a velcro closure) that I didn't have to do the Kabuki dance to pee. If circumstances require me to participate in literal pissing competitions, I'm up for it.

You've got to love the part where the soldier asks the man who is with the woman about her capabilities, as if following some cultural law where he can't address a woman directly himself. This sort of thing alone would be hilarious, except that you know that for every man who asks if women can fly helicopters, there are a lot who just assume we can't, or can't do it well enough to be worth hiring. I try and think of it as their loss, and the gain of employers who don't think that way.

Also, Canadian Centennial of Flight celebration. John Lovelace is the Wings Over Canada guy, so he knows how to organize air travel, but hee hee, I want to know what happens to sleepy YQR ATC when 123 little airplanes pull into Regina for the night.

''I closed comments not to stifle debate, but because I laughed so hard at "People who suffer that attitude always seem to have lots of spare aggression, so it seems silly to treat women soldiers that way and NOT let them blow things up!" that I wanted it to remain the last word.''

Changing Horses in Midstream

While I flew the final flight for this job yesterday, my most excellent colleague was multitasking: sunbathing while fielding telephone calls and text messages from company. Field personnel have looked at the facilities we're supposed to use and while the runway is a usable 5000' gravel strip in reasonable repair, the accommodations are ATCO trailers that don't even have doors. This is deemed unacceptable even for pilots, so they've chosen another more remote and seemingly even more poorly maintained strip. The FAA description uses phrases like "GRASS & WEEDS GROWING ON RY SFC WITH RUTS UP TO 4 IN. RY SOFT WHEN WET," and "RAMP AREA SFC ROUGH; STANDING WATER & SOFT WHEN WET." A flurry of overlapping e-mails discuss this and in the end it is determined that some sort of global warming research organization has taken over the aerodrome and not only upgraded the runway but established wireless internet.

We know that the plans will probably change again a few times, but we seemed to be at least up-to-date on the changes, and they were about to book flights, which tends to cement things a little. An engineer even texted to ask that we book him a hotel room.

My co-worker called him back. "No problem. In which city, province, territory or state?"

He'd apparently been told to book a flight here, where he was to do the maintenance, and then when that's done we're to fly the airplane to Whitehorse and go home from there. Whitehorse, Deadhorse, what's the difference, right?

Later I am invited to a local pilot's house party, where someone mentions the recent haphazard flight services. The locals say that the specialist has just come back from a visit with an out of town boyfriend, and then worked a double shift. We spend a few minutes speculating on whether she is exhausted, hungover or distraught from a break up with her boyfriend. In aviation this is known as human factors. In a small town it is called gossip.

In appreciation of local hospitality, and to give anyone local who stumbles across this blog a smile, I'll identify the pilot house as one with an elaborately decorated Tiki Bar complete with a stunning tropical poster that stretched across two walls. That must be an extremely welcome sight when the door leads out into twenty below and snowbound darkness. Good folks. Good town. Moving on to Whitehorse next. There's no guarantee that when we get there they won't change their minds again and send us to Alaska anyway.

This on-again off-again where-will-we-go-next? stuff is a staple (almost typed "stable" there, in keeping with the horse theme) of my working life. I don't usually chronicle it in such detail because it makes for confusing storytelling and I usually already have the charts so I can mostly ignore the deliberations until they are final. The other variation is when they tell us we'll be working out of one base for a month and we do things like buy a fridge full of groceries, just before they change their minds and tell us we're leaving tomorrow.