Troubleshooting By Selfie

Dear Pilot,

While it is excellent that you communicate with company when you have in flight issues, please note that you have a commercial licence and something like 2000 hours of experience. Consider the fact that Captain Sullenberger and crew do not have any photographs of their landing in the Hudson River, and did not text their dispatcher for help. When they experienced a problem, they used their knowledge of the aircraft systems and their checklists to manage the problem. If you have time to take photos, you have time to pull out the checklist.

The reason we spent hours in groundschool learning how our electrical system, flaps and gear work is so that when something goes wrong you are immediately cognizant of what it could be, what systems will still be reliable and which are not. Also when maintenance pulls the data recorder, we can see exactly when the affected system failed, so when I ask you when it failed, I'm actually asking you how long it took for you to notice, so it's a good idea not to lie about it.

We will speak more.

- Aviatrix

Dear Diehard Remaining Readers,

My abject apologies that the few times I blog these days are exasperated diatribes at job applicants and pilots.  I don't get to fly the airplanes very much anymore, and when I do, any adventures I have immediately result in paperwork that is my problem, leaving me without time or inclination to write about them again in a more amusing way.

I complain about pilots not learning things, but I have to face the fact that I myself persist in not learning that I cannot expect a pilot with a commercial pilot licence to possess the knowledge taught in commercial groundschool, nor the knowledge taught in our own annual groundschool. This is especially depressing because it is my job to develop curriculum, teach and assess this learning.  So when I learn that a pilot cannot identify the cockpit indication that his ammeters are online, it is on me.  No tragedy occurred, but imagine if it had, and I was left with text messages that suggested I had not done my duty as a trainer.

I still 'think in blog' sometimes, making poor situations better because I'm imagining interesting blog entries, and I even take photos sometimes, thinking I will blog them. Like this one from a hotel.




I did not think to go to the front desk and ask for details of the unregistered guests. I will just imagine a bear wandered in and started pushing buttons on the lobby pop machine.

love,
Aviatrix

Hiring Again

I've discovered a fantastic interview question.  "Tell me about a time you had to use all your piloting skill to succeed." The answers show me how a pilot thinks about their own limits, what they consider piloting skills to be, what they understand about their aircraft, weather, or whatever the situation was, and a surprising number of times it results in the pilot telling on themselves about how they violated the regulations, and how they feel about that. They just hop into hangar flying mode and pull out a favourite "there I was" story.

There are two things a pilot can learn from making dumb decisions and getting into trouble. Some of them learn that the regulations are there for a reason, and it's better to follow them. And some of them learn that they didn't die the first time, so it's a viable choice. Their stories tell me about that.

And one I interviewed told a marvellous story, that right up until almost the end was almost the same as this joke. (The joke is older than the Internet, but I took this retelling from here).

A bush-pilot drops Bob and Ted, two moose hunters, at a remote lake in Northern Ontario. He tells them that he’ll be back in a week, and warns them that his plane won’t be able to take off with more than one moose.

The next week he returns, and sure enough, the hunters have bagged two moose. The pilot tells them there’s no way they can take off with the two moose. Ted says, “I don’t know, the pilot last year took off with two moose.” To which Bob adds, “Yeah, but maybe he wasn’t a total coward!”

Not wanting to be outdone, the pilot loads up everything and they start to move down the lake. The plane is gathering speed, but the pines on the shore are rapidly approaching. Finally, the plane gets airborne, but one wing clips the top of a tree. The plane spins, crashes into the trees, and breaks apart.

Sometime later Ted regains consciousness and begins searching for his buddy. He finds him, and when he wakes him up Bob asks, “Do you have any idea where we are?” Ted replies, “I think about 200 yards further than last year."

The candidate talked about how insistent the customers were, about how out at the lake there is no actual scale to weigh the cargo. You just have to go by look and feel. He talked about the wind, and the conditions and the geography. I was in suspense. Was he really going to tell me how hard it was to pull that Beaver off the water and then get enough speed in ground effect to clear the trees? Was he going to tell me how many Gs he pulled to avoid the hills, and how he recovered from the ensuing stall?

And then he demonstrated a vastly underrated piloting skill, but one that has kept me alive all these years and that I insist on in my pilots. He said no. The hunting bounty would have to come out in multiple loads. A pilot has to be able to do that.

The Most Jawdropping Resume This Week

Apparently the time when I build up the most blogging manifold pressure is when we're interviewing and training. Because here I am again, with a story I can't not share. It's the worst resume format I have ever seen. 

The resume content itself is, I suppose, not that bad. It conforms to a new trend I am seeing where a pilot with no experience cites their flight training as if it were employment. I received a different resume where a pilot who listed "198.6h" of flight experience (you need 200h even hold a commercial aeroplane licence in Canada) laid claim to "three years of flight training experience."  Yup, it took the guy three years to get his licence, so he listed that in the same words as would someone who had spent three years training other people to fly.  I've seen a candidate's own flight training listed on his resume with little point form duties and responsibilities, like checked NOTAMs and calculated weight and balance.

Pilots, your prospective employer understands the flight training syllabus. Tell us where you learned to fly if you like, but one line will do. We've either heard of it and have an opinion, or haven't and either don't care or can google. (I did that for one candidate and the year he said he got his commercial licence was earlier than the year the school listed him on their site as a PPL alumni. It was fishy. I didn't call that guy). So there was some of that, and perhaps half as much actual flight time as I was asking for, and no operational multi-engine experience, but everyone has to start somewhere.

But what was it that led me back to this resume to stare at it in horror again and again? Was it the font? It wasn't Comic Sans. It was a condensed serif font with a lot of ligatures, not the best for clarity of reading, but I've seen worse. Hmm, sudden thought, it might not be a bad idea to use the font the company uses on the readable parts of their own website. It might make them feel like you're one of them. Or perhaps they have a terrible website, or the flight department hates the website that marketing made. I would not have given a second thought to this candidate's suboptimal font choice had it not been for the standout thing.

Ok, the resume wasn't in concrete poetry, with the text shaped into an airplane or something. I've never seen that. And the actual content formatting was pretty standard, with the flight time summary correctly at the top, and headings for qualifications and work experience and so on. It ran to two pages, which is unnecessary for someone who has only held one aviation job, and the two pages were separate documents.  Usually the two documents attached to the e-mail from an applicant are resume plus cover letter, but whatever. And then as I moved the two pages side by side on my screen I saw that they were jpegs. He sent his resume as two jpegs.  But there's more. The jpegs were named not "resume1" and "resume2."  That would be the ordinary level of poor file naming. Put your own name in the file name, and make it the same name you have on your resume. 

I get that you don't use the entire name your parents gave you every day, and that you may go by a nickname or a name that is easier for English-speakers to spell and pronounce than your passport name. I appreciate that if you have an name that is uncommon in Canada, or was when your prospective employer was learning about the world, that is a move you may feel obliged to make for social and business ease. Just put the same form of name on all your documents and on your e-mail so we can match them up.

When you send anyone a file or e-mail, think about the types of files they receive. If you're e-mailing a company that only installs air conditioners, a subject line of Air Conditioner is kind of useless. How about Request AC Quote for 1000 sq ft home.  A great pilot e-mail subject for a job application is Pilot 2000 TT 1000 ME PIC.  Especially if that meets the requirements of the position. If the chief pilot was going to delete your e-mail unread because the subject line was CPL 204TT, do you think making her open the e-mail and look at your resume to see that you are straight out of flight school will make you more appealing? It does not.

Also don't wait to the end of the resume to put your hours, the way I'm putting the weirdest thing about this resume at the end of this rant. Here it is: the names of the files were similar to Screenshot_20221227-12765_Chrome.jpg. The guy typed in his resume details, made it all nice the way he wanted with his favourite font, then took a screenshot of each page and saved them as jpegs. And sent them to me. I think you'd have had to write your resume on a taco to top that.

I did not follow up.

We all have to learn. I believe the first resume I ever handed in was handwritten on purple notepaper while I was on the bus on the way to the interview.  And I got the job. Those were different times. And it was a non-aviation job that involved wearing a funny hat. I wore it with panache.

Underlying Factors

I'm re-reading the TSB Report on an air crash at Fond-du-Lac, in preparation for another class I'm teaching. At every step of the recounting, pilots who have never worked in the north will be crying, "What?" and "No!" while pilots who have may nod their heads with understanding. 

When I got to this sentence ...

Early in this investigation, it became clear that more information was needed to determine whether the underlying factors identified in this occurrence were present elsewhere in the Canadian commercial aviation industry.

... I said out loud, "Where have you been?" How can someone be working in accident investigation in Canada and need any more information in order to know that the underlying factors in that accident are omnipresent across the land? 

The summary refers to "the inadequacy of de-icing equipment or services at these locations."  Inadequacy doesn't begin to describe it. You'd be lucky to get potable water at Fond-du-Lac. They say, like it makes any difference:

There are many defences in place to ensure the clean aircraft concept is followed, such as regulations, company operating manuals, and standard operating procedures. However, all of these defences rely singularly on flight crew compliance.

And sure, that captain could have picked up that cell phone and called company to tell them there was too much ice on the plane and he was not departing. How would that have worked out for him? Well, probably better than the serious back injuries he received in the crash. That sentence should finish, "... defences rely singularly on flight crew ability to defy company expectations." No, the company doesn't expect crews to fly with iced up aircraft. They just expect you to fly, and don't want to hear about the difficulties.

I think five to ten percent of my training in anything is assuring pilots that I really want them to follow the regulations, the company operating manual, and the SOPs, that they won't get in trouble for cancelling a flight if the conditions aren't right, or for grounding an airplane with a snag. By the time I get them, and I'm by no means at the top of the aviation food chain, the industry has already taught pilots that there is one set of rules for the classroom and another set for the skies. I have to beat it out of them. And myself.

Missing? Search Again!

 As well as training pilots, I train flight followers, the people responsible for, in the words of the legislation ...

CARS 722.12 (2) Flight Following

Flight Following for a Type D system is the monitoring of a flight's progress and the notification of appropriate air operator and search and rescue authorities if the flight is overdue or missing.

Naturally if I train people to notify the authorities when a flight is missing, they have to know what that means, so I looked it up. First hit was on Wikipedia ...

According to Annex 13 of the International Civil Aviation Organization, an aircraft is considered to be missing "when the official search has been terminated and the wreckage has not been located"

That doesn't make any sense, but it wouldn't be the first time Wikipedia was wrong or that Canada had a different definition than the international one. I find a Transport Canada source.

Advisory Circular (AC) No. 100-001 Subject: Glossary for Pilots and Air Traffic Services Personnel

An aircraft is considered to be missing when the official search has been terminated and the wreckage has not been located.

So, according to Transport Canada, I am to train the flight followers to report an overdue aircraft promptly to SAR, and then, weeks later when the search and rescue experts have failed to locate the aircraft and advise that they are discontinuing the search, to report the missing aircraft once again to SAR. At least I won't have to look very hard for relevant humour to spice up this part of the instruction.

Not Always the Best

 I am busy preparing training, as I always seem to be these days, but something in the regs made me giggle:

"A pilot who accepts an aircraft with defects, the repair of which has been deferred in accordance with an approved system, has a good defence against any possible charge of flying an unairworthy aircraft, whereas a pilot who undertakes a flight with an aircraft that is not in compliance with the approved system commits an offence."

So what they are saying is that a good offence is not always the best defence. Or perhaps this would be a bad offence.

SOP development, COM revision, Training Plan, Filing or Sleep?

I have to do one of the things in the title of this post. Actually all of them, but mostly one at a time, and blogging isn't in that list. But I want you to know that I am well, and think of many of you readers whenever I draw on my years ago experience to make decisions, or just to tell stories. Having told many of them once to you helps me remember them. While I am typing this, someone is trying to discuss an accident report, for a flight that departed an aerodrome where I worked. Maybe things have changed there, but things don't change fast in the north. Probably no one has moved that former crew truck, still rusting on its rims. Maybe the other antler has fallen off the moose rack. I know the utter lack of resources they must have had there, and the pressures they would have been under, and I'm glad I don't work in those conditions.

I had a conversation recently about how people operating single-pilot have to hold themselves accountable. In a two-pilot operation the captain has to set a good example for the FO, so as not to have a witness to poor behaviour, while the FO has to exhibit good behaviour or get backhanded by the captain. Working alone in the cockpit we have to be both the captain and the FO. Evidence shows that a decision made in a team tends to be riskier than one made by an individual, because even though the responsibility rests with the team leader, there is a shared feeling of "If this were really a bad idea, someone would speak up." As pilots we have to let the voice in our heads that wants to speak up for safety overrule the one that wants to get home or keep to the schedule.

I'm glad you have come through the pandemic well enough to read this. I am well and strong, and touched that you still check in now and again. Maybe I'll retire and catch up with the blog.  Do people still blog? And let me know if you know about that moose rack. Going to sleep now.

How to Get Your Pilot Resume in the Wrong Pile

My company is hiring. Not a lot of aviation companies are right now. I'm seeing a lot of resumes. Far too many to honestly evaluate every individual one.  I understand better than I used to the value of having  a friend walk your resume in.  But I recommend you apply through the regular channel as well. Somewhere in my office there is a pile of walked-in resumes that I'm not looking at, because I'm working from home, and back when I accepted them, the choice of pilots was not so great.

Now, faced with an inbox full of resumes, I am almost looking for a reason to throw yours aside. Here, let me help you find a job, and some other chief pilot not have to look at your terrible application. Here are some reasons I have hit the delete key:

• not even close to the published job requirements

You're just annoying when you do this. I sometimes want to hit reply and ask the candidate why he is wasting my time. Don't apply blindly to every job.  If there's a job you really want when you have enough time, write that chief pilot a letter when they aren't hiring and tell them that's your ambition, that you don't yet have their requirements, but you're working on it.  If they give you advice, thank them, take it, and write back again later to thank them for how the advice worked out.  I've got a job that way, lacking the required time.

• misspell the name of the company you're applying to

This one is most amusing when coupled with resume claims about your attention to detail. If you really have attention to detail you'll find out how that company likes its name capitalized, and whether they routinely use the Co. or the Inc. If the name is difficult and you copy paste it into to your cover letter, ensure the font and typeface match, so it doesn't look like a Reader's Digest Sweepstakes mailout from the 1980s.

• don't include your types flown with your jobs on the resume

Listing all the types you've flown at the top of the resume doesn't do it for me. It's not a minus, but I assume it's a full on listing of everything you have in your logbook, not the aircraft you have worked as a pilot on for six months or more. I don't really care about that one time you ferried a Twin Comanche from Swift Current to Moose Jaw or when your friend gave you some stick time in his Yak-52. Okay, the Yak-52 is pretty cool and I might ask you about it at the interview, but you're unlikely to get the interview if I'm not seeing a progression of aircraft types flown commercially at various companies. Yes, I probably know what aircraft many of those companies operate, but don't make me guess which ones you were flying when.

• list yourself as 'pilot' on two crew aircraft

I'm left wondering, are you saying 'pilot' the way a first officer does in the bar to try to sound more impressive to a pick-up target, or are you saying it the way a news reporter does, referring to the captain, because they think the first officer is not actually a pilot?  Either way it doesn't speak to CRM or a desire to communicate clearly. If you upgraded during your tenure, list yourself as captain, and if you were simultaneously captain on one type and FO on another, list both positions. If you flew a type normally operated two-crew, note that you were single-pilot.

• make me hunt for your hours flown

If you're hiding them, they're probably insufficient. If you don't put them on at all why are we here?

•  include the decimals in your hours

That was adorable when you soloed at 10.3 hours but stops once you're looking for a job.

• fail to follow the instructions given in the job ad

If I hire you. I will be giving you instructions.  Consider the application to be a short test of whether you are willing and able to follow instructions. 

• phone me, phone my colleagues, or physically visit the office

Someone did the last, repeatedly, during a pandemic. 

• omit contact information

It's unfair, perhaps, but while I don't want you to contact me by any means than that specified in the job ad, I want to be able to contact you.  Put your current phone number, a respectable-looking e-mail address you monitor, and at least a city, on your resume and cover letter. Tip: if there is an address in the same area as the employer where you can receive mail, list it on your resume and cover letter. We started our search with candidates with local ties. I probably bypassed local folks because their telephone area codes reflected the province or territory where they last worked and not where they are today.

• use the same cover letter for all employers

I understand there are employers who don't care about cover letters, but I expect the candidate to do some of the work for me there. Rather than me combing through the resume looking for the bits relevant to me, the competent applicant highlights the aspects of their resume that are most relevant to the job, showing how they match each job requirement. The really savvy applicant matches the tone of the letter to that of the ad, brings in more information that shows they know the company, and persuades me they want this job especially.  A cover letter applying for a job that doesn't match mine tells me the applicant doesn't want the job I'm hiring for.

• waste any time applying

The first resume into my inbox got an interview. The person did also meet all the criteria, with a fantastic cover letter, so it's possible they would have got the interview anyway. But after three days I had so many applications that I took down the ad and a day or so later started filtering subsequent applications into a Late folder that I'm not sure I've ever opened. This is totally unfair, as I did not put an application deadline on the ad, but I can only look at so many resumes. While many of the points above are somewhat mocking, this one is just a reality of today's pilot job market. 

Not all employers are going to agree with all of these, so if you hire pilots and like what I hate, feel free to say so in the comments. I started off this post blowing off steam, but there are so many really good candidates out there, I don't want them to blow a chance with a poor first impression.

Good luck out there. I might follow up with some strategies I saw on winning resumes and cover letter, or what made us think yes and no during interviews.

EFB Forever

Nav Canada has just discontinued the issuance of paper approach plates, the little diagrams telling pilots the safe and legal way to arrive at runways in bad weather. They used to come out every 56 days, but the last ones expired about a month ago. You may recall -- if you have a really good memory -- previous posts I have made comparing the utility and reliability of paper and electronic charts. My opinion on this matters no more. Every operator in Canada must convert to an electronic form. I have been wondering every fifty-six days since I started this process how many operators neglected to read the little yellow insert in the Nav Canada publications box warning us of the end, and who are only this month finding out that they have to convert. And no, Transport Canada doesn't let us just pick up an iPad and go. The company operations manual has to give painful detail on how the hardware and software will be administered. My manuals aren't quite as interesting as my blog posts, although these days they are issued far more frequently.

This sentence from my Company Operations Manual perhaps gives you a tiny taste.

While the EFB cannot mimic the ability of paper charts and books to serve as tinder in a remote survival situation, its battery can instead provide ignition for locally sourced kindling.

The section on RNAV operations also contains the phrase "pilots shall not blindly follow the magic pink line" which I put in as a placeholder while writing the manual, but I got busy flying and someone else finished it up, apparently not being able to tell the difference between me putting down random thoughts while thinking of what to write, and me actually writing. Not that surprising, really.

Callout Fee

The following is an e-mail I sent to accounting, with only the obvious redactions:

At Mustelid Falls the last couple of weeks we have been buying fuel at a place that officially closes at 6 p.m. but we kept getting the fueller to stay late or come back and fuel us later.  There was no formal callout  procedure, so she didn’t have a way to add a fee to the fuel bill, so I gave her some cash, the cheapest callout fee ever, really, less than $10 a day but it made the difference between treating someone badly and having them feel respected.

This is only about the third sketchiest receipt I’ve ever submitted at Our Company, and it probably allowed us to bill several more hours to Customer Company than we would otherwise, so well worth it.

You’ll see the expense form on your desk.

Said expense form was accompanied by a receipt handwritten by me with a sharpie, on the back of a company form, and signed by the long-suffering fueller, on top of the pumps. She was a maintenance apprentice who hadn't known that her job was going to involve fuelling airplanes.  When I found out that she wasn't getting paid any extra for it, I peeled off some twenties. This was all in the before-times, pre-COVID-19. I found the e-mail while looking for something else, and decided to share it with you.

The sketchiest ever was either a fuel receipt for over $800 cash, written on a Super-8 scratchpad by the third-in-command of the local flying club, or any of a number totally formal government liquor store receipts for cases of beer that the accountant has to take my word for that I've exchanged for goods or services.

Small Town Cab

I found this partly-written post from 2015.

I'm in a small town not too far from a big city, at a hotel early in the morning, and need to get back to the airport for another day of making lines in the sky. The cab is on time, but it turns out that it's the driver's first day, and I'm her first ever customer.  I had to give her instructions on how to close the door. It's one of those new ones where you can't slam it, you have to kind of indicate that you want the door to close, and then wait patiently for it to close itself. Not a Type A person's door. It took me a while.

There's an odd sound from the motor. I ask if the vehicle is an electric hybrid. "I dunno," the cab driver admits, "They just told me to pick a car."

I have to give the driver directions to the airport. People in small towns near big cities often aren't aware that they have their own airport. "The airport" means the big city airport.  Sometimes it takes a lot of convincing, especially if English is not the driver's first language. This driver is fluent in English and she is willing to believe there is an airport in this direction. We go there.  I landed here once in an airplane with a GPS that didn't have the airport in the database, and the poor thing went into panic mode, thinking I was crashing instead of landing. It is one of those almost-deserted airports with a waist-high chain link fence, a little gate where you just lift the latch to swing it open, and engineless airplanes sitting in the long grass beside the pavement.

My notes say she charged me double, but not how I dealt with that. I probably just told her she was wrong and let her go through the credit card machine procedure again. While she was searching for the receipt book, I noticed that her fleece vest bears the logo of a transit company in the big city.  I asked about it and said she usually drives a school bus.

And then I suppose I went flying.

Lampposts and Overpasses

Apparently this happened today.

One of the useful things about small planes is that they do land at about the speed of traffic, typically touching down at 75-120 km/h. It is cool that no one saw the airplane and freaked out.  I know someone who was making a similar emergency landing and the driver of the car he was following saw the airplane in the rear view mirror and slammed on the brakes. Fortunately my friend had enough momentum to bobble up and land in front of the car, but better that everyone just keep their chill. I think there's a telescoping effect that makes everything look closer together in this picture.  From the angle we see it, it looks like a Ford Probe could barely merge into that space, but there's no honking or swerving as the Piper slots in.

This may be as much about Québec drivers as this pilot. I suppose every city's drivers look maniacal to every other city's drivers, but this is the only province in Canada with signs advising you to "attendez le feu vert" -- wait for the green light.  Maybe it's to prevent people from making right turns on red, allowed in, I think, all other provinces, but it seems to me that Québec drivers need the reminder that traffic lights aren't optional. If you've been to Toronto and to Paris, you will understand when I tell you that being a pedestrian in Montréal is much more like the Paris than the Toronto experience. In my opinion, the anything-can-happen-next experience of driving in la belle province has prepared these drivers for traffic that casually merges from above and then takes up three lanes.

The thing that freaks me out is the non-motorized obstacles.  Look at all the wires, the signs, the overpass and the lamp standards. If you're in control of your airplane you can put it on a runway point of your choosing, but damn, I like my approach corridors uncluttered.

Isolated

It's eerily quiet out there. I was on the ramp at an airport that usually makes the top ten or fifteen list for the most aircraft movements in the country, and during the pre-flight briefing I could hear frogs croaking in a distant ditch.

In the air I'm having the sort of chats with air traffic controllers that usually happen at three a.m. I can ask for direct just about anywhere from anywhere and get it instantly. I've a few times called up and had the controller reply "is that [airplane that's not me] calling for [something irrelevant to me]?"  That seems to mean that there's only one airplane in that controller's airspace, and the controller wasn't expecting it to want anything in the near future, so kind of zoned out. Maybe conducting a conversation with another bored controller, at a desk two metres away.

I asked a military controller whose airspace I was working in if he had other traffic on other frequencies, but he said it was just me.

Even in the sky we're isolated. Many thanks to all the people staying home, and staying away from people and places they'd love to visit, so that when some of us get this disease despite everyone's efforts, the hospitals are not overwhelmed and we have our best chance to recover.

Don't touch your face

Actual excerpt from aircraft journey log maintenance entry:

A 

Stay safe. Wash your hands.

Seeing Resolutely

New Year's resolution: clean my glasses with optician-provided spray and a microfibre cloth instead of licking them and wiping them on my t-shirt. Not sure if I achieved last years' ones or not. I didn't make them measurable enough.

Bring Beer

Yes, I know I haven't updated in a year and a half. I do miss you guys, and I think about you when things happen that you would appreciate. I'm in my office--the one with a desk, not the good one with wings--late tonight, because maintenance is, and they have questions for me. I'm cleaning up old files. I found an outdated contact list for approved maintenance organizations. It's nicely formatted in three colours, I think colour-coded for the type of service. You probably all know Airparts of Lockhaven--didn't I get a fuel gauge from there once when the needle fell off the old one? There's a fuel cells place, and lots of avionics shops, and an upholstery specialist. The contact name for the custom upholsterer is printed as "Walter the Grouch," and there's a handwritten notation next to it. "Bring Beer."

Beer, the universal aviation currency.

Life is Good

A comment on a recent post made me realize that I haven't updated since last summer, and that when pilots disappear people can worry. I'm fine, really fine, stronger than I've ever been.

Life is amazing. I have two completely different side gigs, both with formal secrecy aspects, so I can't tell you about the awesome things I am doing, but if you read all the credits when you watch a TV show you'll see my name--nope, not telling you which show, but it's awesome. (Television is so much better than it was when I was a kid. The other day a millennial who had been YouTubing classic TV asked me, "did you you watch these non-ironically? Did you think they were good?") I have many new things to learn, some of which are difficult, different from anything I have done before, and diametrically opposed to my talents and existing skill sets, making it challenging and frustrating to the point of tears, but that makes it all the better when I win. In all three of my jobs I work with skilled people whom I respect and trust and they have all commended me for my contribution, so my life is a roller coaster slamming between lows of almost paralyzing self-doubt and glorious highs of triumph and camaraderie.

I also have to study and teach and write reports, and do some forms of creative writing (not that my reports aren't creative), so I have no need for blogging as an impetus to learn new things or provide an outlet for the desire to tell people things. I hope YOU are all well, coasting into exciting new jobs as the pilot shortage wave travels through the demographics, and learning new things that are fun and satisfying.

I have at least one reader who knows me in real life, so if anything irrevocable did happen to me that I couldn't tell you about myself, someone will let you know.

Eclipse Awareness

While I think it's kind of cool that our moon and sun are just the right size and distance away to do this very neatly, I'm not awed by solar eclipses. I prefer lunar eclipses, because you can watch them safely without projecting them or having special glasses.

I was flying during the eclipse yesterday, although not through the path of totality. A bit before it, a pilot asked air traffic control, "what time is the eclipse at this latitude?" I think he meant longitude. Pilots ask controllers everything. Hockey scores, election results, what's that lake in front of me called? The controller said, "I think it's happening now where we are at the Centre. Some people just went outside on break with the glasses." As you would have expected, air traffic controllers are smart enough not to stare at the sun.

It might have been starting then. Or maybe a bit later. It got a bit darker. I turned the cockpit lights on and concentrated on not looking out the window in the direction of the sun. Eventually it got lighter again. Then the earth turned some more and it got darker again. I'm pretty sure that it will be lighter again in the morning.