Trial by Rain

Morning comes as early as ever and I'm checked out and ready to go in the breakfast room. We are going back to Slave Lake to try to get that work done today before the clouds roll in. Asked me what I want 'to go' for lunch, I specify a peanut butter and jelly sandwich on whole wheat. I get a funny look for having the dietary preferences of an eight year old, but it won't go bad in the sun, and I can eat it with one hand while flying.

I fax off a request for "photo blocks," clearance into airspace about 12,500' where we must work under IFR or "controlled VFR," and by the time I call to get my transit code for Calgary airspace, they have an approval for me. We launch and soon reach the work area. It takes the controller two tries to get me to do a full readback on the CVFR clearance. Oh, I get it, CVFR is VFR in normally IFR airspace, so I have to do IFR-style readbacks. This can mess a girl up. I'm on oxygen up at 16,000' flying in really straight lines overhead Slave Lake and environs. This s so much easier at altitude. I even get the autopilot to fly one line, to make sure I know how it works, but the operator says he wants it hand-flown. I think the autopilot could be a very good tool to reduce my fatigue and thus increase overall quality, but I've never had one of those jobs where "you push the button and you take the money," as a reader once explained it to me. I get to fly the airplane.

The pattern we are flying is centred on the town of Slave Lake, and I still have the ADF tuned to the Slave Lake NDB -- I haven't used it since I left -- so every time I turn around it points back to town. It's a fine, clear day here and there is no smoke, mist or other obscuring phenomena interfering with good photos. From the air you see the somewhat peanut-shaped body of water that is Lesser Slave Lake, and the town of Slave Lake right at its eastern tip. We're too high to be usefully monitoring the Slave Lake mandatory frequency, but I listen to 126.7 most of the time just to hear who is coming and going across the north. It's a normal day of medevacs, helicopters and other working aviators. We finish all the north-south lines on either side of the Athabaska River and move onto the east-west ones. These were the ones assigned to the other airplane, but they are still in Edmonton getting the camera fixed, so we'll get a head start on their work. We fly until I have fifty minutes of fuel remaining and then head down for landing.

It's funny doing aerial work this high, right above the airport of landing. It's right there but it's going to take me 15-20 minutes to get there, even at a higher rate of descent than I would use for passengers. I check with him that he's used to rapid descents and he is. The wind direction favours runway 10, landing over the lake, so I'm going to make a big descending spiral along the north shore of the lake and back onto final. I start down at about 1500 fpm. I feel my sinuses squeak a little from the air pressure equalization, and there's a little pressure in my temples, but I wiggle my jaw and let the air leak through my head. Pilot Eustachian tubes must be more flexible than the general public's. At the same time I'm trying to reduce power in stages so as not to shock cool them. Passing about 7000' there is a mighty whack of turbulence which I realize is from the southeast winds whipping over the cliffs along the north shore of the lake and being forced up. It was quite a brutal hit. I'm just turning over the shore, but there will be more turbulence everywhere below. And now my camera operator says some terrifying words. "Oh my NECK!"

I've never had someone hurt on board my aircraft. Although I wasn't doing anything unreasonable, and we knew to expect turbulence descending into high winds, was there something I could have done to alleviate this? "Did you hit your head?" I ask. He says, no, it wasn't the turbulence that did it, his neck just started hurting, a spasm like when you wake up and have slept the wrong way. There's nothing I can do but fly well and put the airplane on the ground, so I do, land, short backtrack and roll off at the taxiway. His neck pain has gone away as quickly as it came. As I'm rolling to the pumps I'm mentally running along the streets of Slave Lake looking for a chiropractor or massage clinic. I hope he's not being macho about this, and the feeling of thinking someone has been hurt in the airplane you were flying is like having a pet or child left in your care be sick. Even if it had nothing to do with you, you feel responsible and want to fix it. But he's moving around normally, talking on the telephone, so perhaps it was just a transient ouch, coincident with the turbulence.

Now there's another issue, a perfectly ordinary one, a fuel transfer. There's a big tractor-trailer fuel truck parked in front of the pumps. I narrate what the operator probably already knows, as it's a common enough occurrence. "This can take thirty minutes or more before the pumps are available to us. I'll find out more as soon as I can." I park where I am physically next in line for the pumps, but the truck can still get out, stick chocks around the nosewheel and go do the pee, flight following, close with flight services, file new flight plan routine. They say fifteen minutes for fuel. I eat half of my peanut butter sandwich and then start just the left engine to pull around for the pumps. As soon as I start to apply power to taxi forward I know exactly what I have done. Damnit! Shut down, jump out, remove chocks, restart cranky hot left engine and this time do pull up to the pumps, close enough for the hose to reach but at an angle that will allow me to scootch out without hitting the small helicopter that is also waiting now.

I shut down there and while they are fuelling, chat to the helicopter folks. "You see my stupid?" They didn't, and say they would have come over and pulled the chock for me had they seen. They are doing photo work too. Very low level work with a special camera that hinges down off one of the skids. When my airplane is fuelled I check the caps, and start that left engine again to pull off the pumps, getting a thumbs up from the helicopter guys to indicate that I have correctly judged my wingtip clearance as I pull past. I shut down again and add some oil before the operator comes back aboard and we blast off to do some more work.

There's a split now in the fuel flow. It's a digital fuel flow meter, visible to the operator in the back. I acknowledge that I'm running the left engine richer but while the temperature gauges wouldn't be against it, that engine is noticeably rougher if I lean any more. I feel frustrated that my engine handling, on what is after all a familair engine, is not up to scratch, but I'd rather burn more fuel than an engine. We get a few long east-west lines done, and then a cloud shield that has been slowly moving from the west all day reaches the western end of our lines. We don't do partial lines, so that ends the work here and the operator wants to go land southwest of here, to have the best chance of staging for our next day's work. "Whitecourt," he says. I call the controller and request clearance out of controlled airspace for landing at Whitecourt. She thought we were landing at Slave Lake. So did I. It's a keep you on your toes sort of operation. She gives me a descent and I pick up Whitecourt weather on the way. It's 6000' broken, raining, with 6 sm vis. That's to be expected, given that we're flying towards the system that just put us out of work here.

The operator doesn't like that. Can we go somewhere else? Sure. I suggest Edmonton. We can see from the shape of the cloud that Edmonton doesn't have the rain yet. He wants to go further west than Edmonton, something southwest of Whitecourt? I'm running a map of Alberta in my head and there's not a lot out there. All I can think of is Grande Cache, which I point out that they built because there wasn't anything there , and we don't want to be stuck in the mountains if the weather is bad and they want to go back east tomorrow. Whitecourt it is. I've never been there, but he has.

The controller clears me down to 6000', which seems odd to me, because we should be in uncontrolled airspace out here by now, but whatever, it's nice to have someone looking out for us. Through 7000' it gets ridiculous bumpy again, so we tell her we're staying up until we get closer. She clears me for an approach into Whitecourt, at which point I realize that she thinks we're IFR. I would have liked to accept the IFR approach, into an unfamiliar airport in worsening weather, but I'm not sure that's legal given that we're actually on a CVFR flight plan. I let her know that, having another of what is going to be a very common confused controller conversation on the topic, and then am released VFR into Whitecourt. There's a NOTAM I don't have, rats, I didn't explicitly ask for it with the the weather and should have. There's a forest fire area inside their control zone. I end up having to stay high over the NOTAMed area than doing a left 270 to intercept final, and then I go to turn on the windshield wipers and darnit, this airplane doesn't have any. I bitch about that, as the operator helps me find the airport. He says "We only fly on nice days!" Point taken. This is crummy weather, but it's perfectly safe VFR visibility and this is the worst he normally flies in. I land and taxi to the pumps.

The weather really is miserable here, it actually got colder as we descended westbound into the front, the wind hasn't let up and it's raining big time. I huddle in the airplane and make my postflight calls from the cockpit. The briefer who takes the call is in Edmonton, so as I close my flight plan I add, "The weather is nasty and it's heading your way." She doesn't hear that and asks me to repeat, so I admit it was just irrelevant pilot whining. I whine some more to a helicopter pilot who is part of the forest fire fighting efforts nearby. Once I'm fuelled--gotta love fuel service, it's actually been a while since I fuelled my own airplane in nasty weather--I taxi to parking and put everything away for the night. Walking back across the apron I'm hailed by the pilot, putting blade covers on his helicopter. He asks me if I've called a taxi yet. I haven't. "Call two please, I need one in about half an hour."

In the terminal there are no taxi company numbers or cards by the payphone, but there's a phone book, one of the northern kind that has twenty or so different small communities all in one book. I leaf through the cab section finding "Sparky's" with a Whitecourt phone number. He can be there in ten minutes, and then can go back for the other guy. I don't think it's a two-cab town.

In fact it's not a fully one-cab town. The vehicle arrives has a spiderweb-cracked windshield, no seatbelts and an inoperative right side sliding door. It's the sketchiest cab I've ever been in, and recall that I've been to Cambodia. The driver looks like one of the Yukon prospectors who didn't strike gold. He appears sober, so we ride into town and send him back for helicopter guy, whose name I forgot to ask, so I give the company name from the side of the helicopter.

We're at the Super-8, across the street from Boston Pizza. Ahh good times, old times. You know, you can be nostalgic for anything. I'll bet there are Cambodians my age who manage to have moments of nostalgia for the days that they woke up at five a.m. to try and grow rice under conditions that rice doesn't grow. I alert the operator that I am going to order my "high-maintenance pizza" and he wants to know what that is. "Are you sure you want to hear it twice?" He does. It's a small Rustic Italian, whole wheat crust, double sauce, no cheese, add pineapple, and extra sauce on the side for dipping, please. He rolls his eyes, but the waitress accepts it cheerfully.

It's seven p.m. and we're discussing the next day's plans. He'd like to be over the mountains and working in the Vancouver area at 9:30 a.m. I do napkin math. So take off at nine from an airport near there, maybe Abbotsford, at nine, so have to land Abbotsford at 8:30, assuming unfavourable winds leave here at 5:30, so get to the airport at 5:00 a.m. so allowing for taxi and hotel stupidity, a 4:00 a.m. wake-up call, which means I have to be in bed by eight, the restaurant isn't too busy, so we should be done in time for that. Yup I can do it.

"You can go to bed at eight, just like that?"

"That's my job." I could go to sleep right now, but I'm going to eat my pizza first. You may have noticed that I missed a step in my math. Neither of us did, at that point.

I say I'll have my leftover half peanut butter sandwich for breakfast, and he suggests that I can have leftovers too. That's before he watches me inhale the pizza. I was going to have a dessert too, but have to get to bed for eight.

It's absolutely pouring now. I'm glad I through that big coat in the plane with me. It seemed pretty silly on a 20+ degree day leaving home, but now it's perfect. This is the company coat (logo covered over with a generic patch) that I snared on my first day at Victory Airways, electing to take one size too big rather than wait an uncertain period for someone to get me one the right size. Pilot decision-making at its finest. The hood keeps me dry.

I go straight to bed and encourage sleep by running gently through the alphabet picturing an animal for each letter of the alphabet as it curls up and goes to sleep. Somewhere around giraffe I realize the error in my napkin-based planning, but I will fix it in the morning. I never got past giraffe. Think about it for a while before you scroll down for the horrifying truth. In what position would a giraffe sleep? Standing up? There's no way the head would balance up there. Standing with the head drooping down and lying on the ground? Lying on its side with the head and neck stretched way out where another animal might step on it? Curled up like a cat? I somehow always had sleeping gorillas, gerbils, goats and geckos. This is the first time I've had to contemplate nap time for the poor giraffe.

Sleep is very very important to me, and I won't compromise my duty rest for anything. I know how quickly a sleep debt can build up and how severely it can impact my behaviour. I'll forever wonder if the giraffe would like to get much more sleep, but just can't get comfortable. More on sleep postures and sleep behaviour here.

Trial By Wind

Morning dawns in Slave Lake. It's a beautiful day, by most standards, but there are clouds present at an altitude that would prevent our doing the photo job to specifications. The decision is taken to work today on another assignment, in the Calgary area. My job is to get there expeditiously, and negotiate with the Calgary terminal controllers to allow this. The "Calgary job" is one that everyone has been dreading, because it's a low altitude job with unusually demanding tolerances. I was assured that I wouldn't be dropped into Calgary until I had some experience with the system. There's another crew here, working on the Slave Lake job, but they have had some camera problems and are going to Edmonton for consultation with the camera service guy. So I'm going to cut my teeth on the "Calgary Job."

I call Calgary terminal, requesting a VFR entry code for their airspace and describing the work we hope to do in terms of their reporting points. I have the mission map, the CFS and the Calgary VTA chart all spread out, trying to describe what I want to do in the vocabulary of the Calgary controllers. They are not impressed, but grudgingly give us a squawk code and launch clearance for the mission. I call head office to back me up by faxing them maps, because we're checked out and in the airplane, so don't have the ability to do it ourselves.

We make slow progress south, with a strong headwind. Edmonton clears me through their airspace unblinkingly. I can't remember if I used the Calgary code for that transit or was still squawking VFR. As we continue south, the camera operator sets me up with some practice lines. I have to stay right on the line, wings level, pitch level, holding altitude without sudden movements. It's a narrower, more sensitive line than the one I tried in the training session. At first it's really difficult and I talk to myself, calming myself down, "C'mon Aviatrix, you're a pilot, you know how to fly in a straight line." And suddenly I reply to myself, "Yes, I do, and it's not like this!" I adjust the screen, sit up straighter and look out the window more. That's how a pilot flies in a straight line in VMC. It makes an immediate difference, especially as we're flying due south along the section lines. ("Section" is an old-fashioned measurement of land, about 260 hectares, and when Alberta was first homesteaded the farms were carved out in rectangular sections, with roads and irrigation channels and other obvious landmarks running along the boundaries). I can look out the window and align with a visible line that runs right to the horizon. So I can do this. Let's go.

Approaching their airspace, I talk to Calgary, and they clear me for lines one and two. They are east-west lines, but not aligned with section lines, so I visually line up on a mountain peak. It's turbulent and between the little pitching and rolling motions and my over-correcting responses, the line is not skillfully enough flown to be a keeper. So I fly line one again, trying to get it right. I still see the pitch and roll indicator flash red again and again. I fly line two. And I need to fly line two again, but ATC tells me to hold west of the approach. What important installation are we taking pictures of? Can I tell you? Yes. We're taking super-high resolution high tech stereoscopic pictures of golf courses. If you don't think of airports and the space around them three dimensionally, you might not realize where the golf courses fit in relative to the airports in a city. See, the no-trespassing control that an airport has over the area surrounding its runways does not stop at the airport fence. Nothing is permitted to be built protruding into the approach surfaces, invisible ramps leading straight to each runway. Look around the ends of the runways in your city and if it's not water or farmland you'll see parks and golf courses. This means that if you're photographing golf courses, you are by definition in the runway approach or departure path.

They tell us it will be at least fifteen minutes before they can allow me to refly line two. I start asking about other lines, and get clearance to fly some to the east, in the approach to a crossing runway, not currently in use. I have all but one of those lines complete, my skills improving, but still pretty marginal, when they say I need to pull off them. I ask to go back to line two, at which point they decide I can do my one last line here. No pressure or anything. I can't mess this one up. Turn, align, stay straight, stay straight, stay level, correct for turbulence, last photo, breathe. I did it. Back to line two.

Line two is easier. Practice makes ... barely acceptable. But it's done. Now off to the west side. They aren't running approaches or departures through here right now, or my altitude and distance combination makes it easier for them to work around me. I do hear Air Canada being held above and below me, for me to get this work done. We're making things harder for Calgary controllers, no question. Thanks guys.

As well as being flown at lower than usual altitudes for this type of survey, this work must be done at much slower than normal airspeeds. I have the airplane in slow flight with the flaps down, and this complicates control. In normal flight, if the airplane is a little bit low, you can raise the nose slightly and you will lose a little bit of airspeed, and gain a little bit of altitude. You get the airspeed back when you return the nose to the former position. This is the way a pilot usually manages slight deviations from altitude. In slow flight, or the region of reverse control, if you raise the nose you will lose airspeed and altitude, because raising the nose reduces the speed, and it actually requires more power to maintain altitude at a lower airspeed. If I lower the nose, I can both descend and speed up, but I will possibly exit slow flight, meaning that with the same power settings I will be going considerably faster. There are two different speeds I could be going with any given power setting, a slow flight one and a normal flight one. The camera operator is extremely experienced and gives me directives to raise the nose to keep the airplane level and he thinks that if I'm a little bit low I should raise it a little bit more in order to sneak up a few feet. It's complicated trying to explain that today I need to add more power to go slower, and it makes the already backwards display even more confusing.

Additionally, the speed I am assigned to fly is a ground speed, which means that southbound I can fly quite comfortably in range, but northbound I'm whipping over the ground and flirting with Vmc to try and attain the parameters. "Turn harder" he says as I try to pick up the next line. But this is as steep a bank as is safe in this configuration. I'm glad I have the knowledge and experience I have, because it's barely enough here. We whip through the northbound lines, having to refly some of them southbound. The increasing quality of my work from improvement through practice is starting to be affected by fatigue, increased turbulence and a shift change to a more cautious air traffic controller. We have perhaps half an hour work time remaining before we have to land for fuel, but the operator calls it and says we'll land for a break.

"Springbank?" I ask. That's the training airport adjacent to Calgary, we're pretty near it.

"High River," he wants. I tell Calgary where we are going and they give me their local winds at the field, something gusting thirty. Overflying High River we see the sock straight out, straight across the field. "We can go somewhere else," he advises.

"This is okay," I say, bearing in mind that it isn't an aircraft I have a lot of recent experience in. "I'll be able to tell on final if it's too strong." I get blown through final and realign, then enter a slip to show myself that I have sufficient rudder authority to hold a straight line to the runway. The touchdown isn't the prettiest, but I'm not even going to blame it on the wind. I'm still getting in touch with where my wheels are. This is what, the third landing I've made in this airplane. Or the second. I can't remember who landed on the training flight.

We taxi in and the price of avgas is almost as low as car gas. "That's why I like this airport." My fuel consumption has been higher than the previous pilot's. I'm leaning properly, and he can even hear the left engine complain if I lean more aggressively. The first flight it was because I was using a higher power setting, but this flight I used a lower one in cruise at the cost of airspeed. I blame the slow flight configuration for the consumption. You have to run a little richer to compensate for poor cooling at low airspeeds and high nose attitudes.

We refuel, and I borrow a phone to check with Calgary to make sure our code is still valid for the return. We eat some snacks, and go right back at it.

We depart the opposite direction as we landed: I'm not kidding about the wind being straight across the runway, and go back to the lines. The break has made a difference, as do little things like my not having to divide my concentration between fuel remaining and the straight line. I was willing to work right to minimum reserves, but I had to keep in my head what I needed on top of that for the approach and landing. If you turned a pilot's brain into a pie chart, the biggest slice would always be thinking "fuel." It still bashes us around a lot, always seeming to sneak in the big whacks of turbulence just as the camera is about to take a picture.

The southern lines are complete and we now have one more line at a higher altitude, 7,100', right across the middle of the city. I request that one and the controller clears me direct the city. I explain that I need to hold my heading in order to intercept my photo line, and he accepts that and clears me to 7,500'. "Callsign request seven thousand one hundred," I explain, on the way up."

"Seven thousand one hundred will be below you," he quips. "I'm not going to shut down the whole airport for you." I get the okay for that altitude from the camera operator and we fly the line at 7500'. There will be some sort of post processing to compensate.

I offer to ask to fly line two again, because it really wasn't very good, but he says it's fine and we're done. Back to High River, and this time I get a compliment on my crosswind landing. It still wasn't my very best, but at least it was competent. I've been thrown into this without a net and I don't like that that last sentence is starting to feel like my motto.

I call the flight follower to tell her we're down and she promises that this truly difficult job was not given to me as a hazing prank. I laugh and decide to pretend that it was, because it makes it more fun. The locals direct me to park on the oil stain at the back of the apron. I park facing into the wind, borrow bigger chocks, and secure the controls with a seatbelt, before I leave the airplane.

Even though we weren't on a flight plan, I've been briefed to call flight services to close out, because sometimes generating a VFR code for VFR terminal work results in a flight plan being opened. The FBO guy is out securing his own aircraft, so I reach over the counter and borrow the phone again, calling the FSS. I get the FSS in Québec for some reason, and tell the briefer that I'm actually landed in Alberta but I've been connected to him. It turns out that it's a VOIP phone, so it went to Québec, same thing that happens on a satellite phone. We sort that out and I say, "Well in that case, 'Je suis aterrisée à High River, Alberta et je voudrais fermer mon plan de vol, s'il vous plait'." He seems to both understand and appreciate the effort, though in retrospect, aterriser probably isn't an être verb, and I think I spelled it wrong.

We discover in the evening that the wind was so strong it made the news, which is saying a lot because Calgary gets a lot of high winds. Also the client for the work was in town, so he will see the conditions under which we worked to get the job done.

So I spent five hours today flying a somewhat unfamiliar multi-engine aircraft in slow flight in turbulence, at 10 mph above Vmc, at 2000' agl, in busy terminal airspace. And I loved it. I am back, people. And I am a pilot.

Pine and Beaver

I'm out for a walk in the rain, pausing at the corner of Pine and Beaver. Where am I?

That Dot

I guess I should tell you what we're doing here. There's a million-dollar camera mounted in the belly of the airplane and I'm contracted as a photo survey pilot to fly it around and take pictures. The mystery crosshairs and dot from a couple of days ago are part of the pilot guidance screen. Let me explain that.

The crosshairs is only one small part of the guidance system. While I am on line, the main screen depicts a red line for the track I am supposed to follow and an amber line with a green airplane on it for the track I am on. There are also two other parallel lines denoting out of bounds to either side of the central red line. That only gives my lateral positioning over the ground. I also have to keep the camera level and maintain the proper groundspeed and altitude. Groundspeed and altitude are poorly represented with tiny-font tapes slightly too far from my area of focus, and the targets not marked on the tapes but hidden off to the side, in among too many other unnecessary pieces of data. But the pièce de résistance is that little green dot.

With the green dot centred exactly on the crosshairs, the airplane is perfectly level and the camera pointed straight down at the ground. (The operator adjusts the camera to maintain "level" for different cruise attitudes at different power settings). You see that in my representation the green dot is slightly above the line and a little bit further towards the left. Many of you guessed that it represents a needed change in aircraft pitch attitude and bank angle. Did you guess that I have to steer towards the dot, by pitching up slightly and rolling left a bit more? You would be wrong. Did you guess that I have to "fly the dot" back to the centre by pitching the nose down ever so slightly and rolling to the right? You would also be wrong. Amazingly, one person did get it, albeit on his fifth guess, but you've mostly demonstrated the natural way to think about it. This is not a natural interface.

The configuration shown indicates that I should pitch down slightly (away from the dot) and roll left slightly (towards the dot). They are both minuscule corrections. The airplane is pretty much wings level in a level pitch attitude, but it is asking me to apply the tiniest bit of forward pressure on the control column and a touch of roll to the left. I was completely baffled as to how any sane human being could think this was a reasonable interface, until I showed it to a computer programmer. He explained, "If the dot is up, the nose is too high. If the dot is to the left, the left wing is too high." It makes perfect sense, so long as you don't know how an airplane actually works. And thanks to the amazing adaptability of the human brain, I am able to use this thing. I don't know if I'll be able to fly IFR on an attitude indicator anymore, but we shall see.

The crosshairs depiction on my screen is at the bottom left, far enough away from the lateral placement line that I can just see both at once, and far enough from the altitude information that I almost never see that. If you're thinking, "That's an awfully pale dot colour. Why didn't you use a brighter green?" then you are thinking something that I have spent several hours thinking. The dot on my screen is actually paler than the one in the simulation above, and the crosshairs on my screen are tiny. If the light is bright, I can't see the dot at all, and because of how pale it is, I have to focus on it to see it, not rely on peripheral vision. When the dot goes "too far" (I don't know how that is defined) from the centre in any direction it turns red, which is helpful in that the colour change allows me to see it, but bizarre in that in bright light it's like playing whack-a-mole, just flying along wondering where the red dot will pop up next.

It is a lot like playing a video game all day. I make Pac Man jokes all the time. "Maybe this dot will give me the energy boost!" I loved all your creative explanations of the nature of the dot.

And Here I Am

So, here's a bit of review. I had a job I liked, which was actually contract work, for a few years and then the company ceased operations, so I looked for a new job. I didn't find exactly find one, but I kind of found two: two companies that wish to contract me for flying: Eagle and Seagull. Eagle starts right away, and Seagull will pick up in a month or so. It's not the two-pilot IFR operations I had sought, but it's work I can do, with the familiar dynamic of one pilot and one non-pilot crewmember.

My first assignment at Eagle is to fly to Slave Lake. (Yes, that Slave Lake. Who knew that events in Slave Lake would try to interfere with me telling a leisurely story? Canadians, please don't spoil the ending just yet.) Is it becoming a tradition for me that each new job takes me to familiar territory, or have I just spent so much time in so many places by now that it would be more of a coincidence had the job taken me to somewhere I had never been? The community of Slave Lake is where I remember it, the threshold of runway 10 almost against the eastern shore of Lesser Slave Lake and the two-eight end hidden behind little hills until I am almost upon it, helicopter traffic on the radio alerting me to the activity before I enter the zone. Winds favour 28, so I select approach flaps and join a left base. Flaps half, gear speed, gear down, turn final, call final, landing flaps. Three green, one in the mirror, mixtures and props forward. Land (maybe I should work on that) and roll out to the taxiway.

Stop and take my time to confirm after landing checks with a not-yet-instinctive checklist, then taxi to the pumps. It's after six p.m. I still have the phone number for fuel callout here in my iPod, so I call without even getting out of my seat. The after-hours callout fee is $25, very reasonable for the north, and the fueller is friendly. He wasn't here last time I was here, so he doesn't know it's "me again." I'm just another transient aircraft.

I get out of the airplane and it's absolutely gorgeous. It's about twenty degrees here, with a light breeze, almost cloudless sky, and clean fresh air. It's a beautiful place that gets overlooked because of its ugly name. People assume it's going to be like Fort McMurray just because it's in Northern Alberta. But Slave is a friendly little town, with paths and treed greenways all through town so that although it has grown, everyone can still walk to the cool forest in only a few blocks.

Fuelling complete, I taxi to parking and chock the aircraft. The other crew member asks me for the baggage door key and I give it to him. The owner gave it to me on a neck lanyard, stressing that it was the only copy they had at the moment, they hadn't been able to get another cut. "No, not this key, the rear one."

"Isn't it the same key?" I say, but I should have known. I can even recall now the owner complaining that thanks to the front baggage door AD, they now have to lock it with a key. That should have twigged in my mind that the front key was a new key and therefore most likely different from the old ones. Expediency in effecting the AD would probably have hindered someone going to the trouble to find the same sort of lock and tumble it to match the others, even if that lock type was available to satisfy the AD. One of the things you get when you hire an experienced pilot is someone familiar with weather patterns and able to cope with different conditions, but the package also includes someone who knows about the craziness of airplane keys. "I should have asked," I apologize, but he doesn't see how I could have known, and takes full responsibility. There are actually three separate keys, and without the missing one we can't properly secure the aircraft.

I know Slave Lake to be a pretty good area. He warily eyes the gaps in the airport fence. It's not that reassuring to tell people that it's really easy to break into one of these, so the key isn't that important. See that's why I need a blog delay, so you don't know where there are unlocked airplanes sitting in front of the terminal.

Coworkers are already here so we call them instead of a cab for a pickup. I smile at the familiar streets and businesses of downtown Slave Lake. We go by the school, and the new mall. It wasn't quite finished when I was here before. We arrive at a brand new Holiday Inn. I don't even think it was a foundation when I was here last. It's where they are staying, but the Inn is out of non-smoking rooms, so we go across the street to the Super-8. Ahh, the Slave Lake Super-8. Some things never change. Well except the staff here, who seem to change weekly. So what hasn't changed is the quirkiness of the check-in clerk. I ask her, the others waiting in the car, if she has two non-smoking rooms. She's not a multi-tasker, and she has clearly set a rule for herself to help one customer at a time, in order of arrival. So I wait through the slow, careful check in process of another customer before she can tell me that yes, she does have the rooms. And the guy who lost a twoonie in the vending machine has to wait until both of us are checked in before she can help him. "I don't have a twoonie," I hear her say in the end. But she solves the problem herself after only a moment, by giving him two loonies.

It's fun being the one on the team who knows the town, because it completely erases the inequality of being the new one on the team. I can recommend a nearby restaurant, and find the Wal-Mart, Shoppers Drug Mart and Canadian Tire for us to get supplies. I have a delicious Bison burger--hey if you're going to eat large animals, do it in the Alberta plains. I notice that although it's still bright daylight, it's gone nine o' clock and ask the waitress if she knows how late the Wal-Mart is open here. She thinks at least ten, so we're good. The waitress is, by her accent, from the east coast and she says that while at first she was daunted by the short winter days that she adores the long summer ones so much that it's all worth it. She's going camping on the weekend, up in the park, and there will be time after work Friday for her to drive up and set up camp in the daylight. We go and buy batteries, then it's bedtime.

Small Green Dot

When I was shown this, and had its function described to me, I thought it was an imperfect design, but usable and logical, but that's because I hadn't been listening closely enough to the explanation. I showed it to a computer programmer and he managed too backfit a sort of logic to it, but I don't think he could have done so had I not told him the rules. So here's your turn.

The question is, given that the display above asks the pilot to make control inputs that will centre the green dot exactly on the crosshairs--I'll give you that much--what control inputs does it ask for as depicted? Give your answer in direction and relative magnitude of pitch, roll, yaw and/or speed. If you're not sure what those terms mean (and those who are not probably have a better chance of getting it right), just describe what you think it might be asking the pilot to do, in whatever terms make sense to you. As usual I ask any of you familiar with this particular instrument of guidance to recuse yourselves, or at least hide your knowledge in polite snickering.

I'll give you one more piece of information, although it would be incorrect to call it a 'hint,' and that is that sometimes the dot turns red.

en français:
le point - dot
la réticule - crosshairs
le lacet - yaw
le tangage - pitch
le roulis - roll

Pour mettre le point vert sur le centre de la réticule on doit ajuster le lacet et le tangage, ou peut être le roulis et la vitesse.

Let Me Help

In declining the opportunity with Eagle, I included the offer to help out in the meantime because I have a number of skills that match the needs of the small company and didn't want to leave them in the lurch. My offer was accepted and the day after I returned to my own province, I was out at that airport doing ... can you guess? Company exams, of course. Deicing, aircraft, ground handling, ops, flight following, all very thorough and properly done. I believe it may be the first time I've actually had the prescribed number of hours tracked for each segment of the indoctrination. There was another new employee there, so we went off to the airplane together and inventoried the survival kit and first aid kit for some independent learning. We checked off and initialled all the boxes, got my name on the insurance and went for a training flight.

Thanks to my experience and the nature of the operating certificate, I actually require minimal aircraft training. It turns out I've flown both the airframe type and engine type for an acceptable number of hours, but never both at once--but I need to learn how the practical aspects of the particular operation, so this is a working flight.

I'm in the left seat, at an unfamiliar airport, stumbling my way through clearance delivery, ground, not taxiing anywhere I shouldn't, and then following an unfamiliar departure procedure. Oh whom am I kidding? I love it. The sky is blue, the engines are in limits, and I quickly see what it is that we have to do to fulfil the mission. My situational awareness is still quite narrow, but I'm learning. Doing it all correctly is another matter, though, and I give control to the owner for the more complicated tasks. I fly a few shaky practice lines, and then the weather changes and we head back for landing. I don't think there's a reason I can't tell you a bit more about this operation, so I will do that next day.

en français:
la piste - runway
la vois de circulation - taxiway
le seuil - threshold
le point d'attente - holding point
circuler - to taxi

Je circule lentement parce que je ne suis certain ou se trouve le point d'attente et je ne veux pas être sur la piste sans authorisation.

Digital Fuel Management

I've spent my career flying airplanes with instrument panels that haven't been substantially updated since the aircraft were designed in the 1950s or 1960s. Anything electronic is a newfangled after-market device not in the original aircraft specifications. Of course I haven't had any trouble using the newfangled stuff with which my various employers retrofit their aircraft. A new installation always comes with a manual, and you can usually find manufacturers' information online, too. I've enjoyed electronic tachs, EGTs, navcoms, and even a Sandel-OMFG-it's-everything-in-one-instrument, please don't let me push the button that makes it turn into a microwave oven just as I'm intercepting the glideslope (okay I had a little trouble with that one, but not as much trouble as the poor guy who owned it and had hired me to help him pass his IFR renewal with it). There's an instrument I've seen a few times, in airplanes I've flown once, or flown for short flights, and never bothered to learn how to use, but now there's one installed in an airplane I will fly for work, so I'd better learn to use it properly.

It's a Shadin Digital Fuel Management System, a fuel flow meter that, given information on how much fuel you started the flight with, should give excellent information on how much is left. See, normally you spend the flight comparing the known time and power setting with the fuel gauges and hoping everything you are looking at is as accurate as the agreement among them. You could have some weird fuel leak on the same day as you had a fuel gauge over-reading error and had your watch stop. It's not likely, but you could. That's the sort of not likely but it could happen scenario that pilots are paid to think about every day. The Shadin is another tool for tracking fuel consumption, and it's supposed to be extremely accurate, much better than fuel gauges, and it's digital, with readouts like fuel endurance so I don't have to peer at parallax, estimate needle widths, or even do any math.

Here's a post based on the manual for the Digiflo model, with notes on the slightly different Digidata model, which I think is on another member of the fleet. I start by verifying the fuel quantity the only way I really can, by visually confirming how much fuel is in the tanks. So this is on the ground, immediately after fuelling. Then I enter fuel on board into the device. It doesn't have a keyboard. In fact it's one of those nifty little pieces of electronics designed to fit in the dashboard hole made for a traditional round instrument, about the size of the bottom of a standard soup can. The picture below isn't quite the right product. Mine has three display windows, three push buttons, one three position toggle switch and a four position rotary knob. The top window normally displays whatever is selected by the rotary knob: NM/GAL, GAL. TO DESTINATION, GAL RESERVE or ENDURANCE HRS:MIN, and is flanked by the GAL REM. and GAL USED push buttons, which while held change the display appropriately. The bottom two windows display the fuel flow per engine.

The Digidata has the "ENTER/TEST" button in the left, a "REM/USED" toggle in the middle, a "FULL/ADD" toggle on the right, a rotary knob, and two display windows, one for the fuel flow and one for whatever is selected on the rotary knob. On that model, to display the fuel flow per engine you squeeze the REM/USED and FULL/ADD toggles together. I'm not sure if this is the right picture.

There are three options for entering fuel on board on the Digiflow. One is if I have filled all the tanks, in which case I move the FULL/ADD toggle to the FULL position and hold it there while pressing the ENTER/TEST button. I can then press the REM button to verify that it reads the full amount as fuel remaining. That's already set for the airplane. If I'm not filling the tanks I have to specify how much fuel I have added, by holding the REM button and pressing the TEST/ENTER button until it reaches the right level. For some reason there's a second way to do this, by holding the FUEL/ADD toggle in the ADD position and pressing the REM button to reach the right number. If I overshoot, I can press and hold the USED button and then press and hold the TEST/ENTER button until the right value is shown.

On the Digidata model I hold the REM/USED toggle in the REM position and hold down the ENTER/TEST button until the window displays the fuelled quantity. If I overshoot, I can remove some by holding the REM/USED toggle in the USED position and pressing the ENTER/TEST button to reduce the displayed quantity.

Once the amount is entered, I press the “ENTER/TEST” button and it should display in succession:

• 1. GOOd to verify that the display is OK
• 2. the K-factor (a calibration value for the fuel flow transducers)
• 3. the maximum usable fuel for the aircraft
• 4. software & revision version #
• 5. distance to a waypoint or destination

It achieves the fifth calculation because it can talk to--and I love this old meets new specification--the panel mount GPS or the LORAN C. Someone must have really loved his trusty LORAN C.

Fuel flow transducers are like little turbines spinning in the fuel lines, but if you thought "hmm, the speed of the turbine might not always be directly proportional to the fuel flow rate" then you would be right. If you not only did not pause to wonder that, but aren't sure whether it's worth pausing to wonder what it means, then you should pause instead to give thanks that there are engineers in the world, because it's important. The math to take into account the effect of 'viscous', 'transient' and 'turbulent' flows is probably fascinating. Maybe instead of stealing linguistics, I should have been stealing fluid dynamics. Those classes are probably harder to figure out when you drop in three quarters of the way through the semester, though. The manufacturer also assures us that if a transducer somehow gets stuck and stops spinning, it will not impede fuel flow to the engine.

The readout updates very rapidly and is easier to see than the EGT. I can see that once I get some familiarity with the airplane I will be setting mixtures by fuel flow, and then confirming that the EGT is within limits, rather than peering at the tiny digital or usually inaccurate analog EGT gauges. Also the display flashes if the fuel remaining is insufficient to reach the selected destination with 45 minutes reserve fuel.

En français:
un carburant - fuel
l'essence aviation (f) - aviation gasoline
le débit carburant - fuel flow
à court de carburant - low on fuel
avoir une panne d’essence - run out of fuel

Je veux apprendre à utiliser cet indicateur du débit carburant pour je n'ai jamais avoir une panne d'essence.

Licence Languages

English is the international language of aviation, and all air traffic controllers are supposed to be able to provide services in English, but some pilots can get away without speaking English. First off, they only need enough English to understand basic ATC transmissions, and as anyone who has ever waited for a controller to get a read back from a Korean crew can tell you, that may not be much. Secondly, if a crew is operating only in a subarea of the world where a non-English language is prevalent, they may be able to operate legally using only that language. For example, you may fly in the province of Québec using French only, or between former Eastern bloc countries with only Russian. Pilots who are not native speakers of English undergo an oral exam to qualify as "English-speaking" on their licence, and anyone can test to have French added, too.

I speak some French. I took five years in school, but it wasn't intensive. It sounds better than Stephen Harper's French, but I don't know aviation vocabulary, and I never learned the subjunctive because we learned new verb tenses year by year, with passé historique in grade eleven and then I didn't take French in grade twelve. I'm going to assume that they taught us things in an order roughly corresponding to its utility, and given that one mostly encounters passé historique on historical markers and in textbooks, I can probably live a long and happy life without ever mastering le subjunctif.

But if I'm going to do work for an operation based in a French-speaking area, I'm going to learn some basic airplane vocabulary and try to increase my command of French enough to get French competency listed on my licence. This is not so much because I want to talk to ATC in French, but so I can talk to mechanics in remote areas of Québec without charades, and simply to socialize with pilots who prefer French.

The vocabulary of today will be basic parts of the airplane, because it's a massive cheat. The French and English were working on airplanes at the same time as the Wright brothers, and innovations and terminology went across the channel and across the Atlantic. Thus we have:

le fuselage - fuselage (main body of the airplane)
l'aileron (m) - aileron (wing trailing edge hinged surface used to control roll)
l'empennage (m) - empennage (tail section of the airplane)
le longeron - longeron (wing spar)
le canard - canard (horizontal stabilizer forward of wing)
l'aile (f) - wing (aileron is a diminutive form of this word)
le train d'atterrissage - landing gear (as in terre, land)
l'hélice (f) - propeller (think 'helix')
le volet - flap (maybe related to voler, to fly?)
le stabilisateur - horizontal stabilizer
la dérive - vertical stabilizer
le gouvernail de direction - rudder

I've taken all these from figure 1 on the first page of Entre Ciel et Terre. Interesting to me is the fact that the gender of the nouns, necessary for using each word correctly in sentences, is not included in the figure. I had to search the text to see which articles were used, or look up the words elsewhere. Obviously a word like aile would be familiar to anyone who spoke French well enough to be using this textbook, and volet is a word with a non-technical meaning that, like English flap, applies to anything that hinges off a main part, but there must be some words on the list that would be new to a new student of aviation. Would they just use their instincts to determine the gender? There are some forms that imply a certain noun gender, but even a native speaker can't predict that with perfect accuracy.

French speaking readers are encouraged to add or correct anything here, and to leave comments on the blog in French, for me to puzzle out, even if you have to use use le subjunctif. And while we're on language, a reader wanted to know how you all pronounce the English words inaugural, jugular, rectangular, and circular. Say where you learned English, and if it's your first language.

Flying, Finally

There is time for a Seagull flight before I go home, but the chief pilot has been up most of the night at the hospital, and says he is not fit to fly. This scores more points with me, because it indicates the company's safety culture. The boss doesn't press him for a moment, despite the fact that it is pretty inconvenient, and the boss says he'll take me flying, at which point the chief pilot elects to go along as a passenger.

We go out to the flight line, walk around the airplane. It has a pilot relief tube, something I've coveted for a few years of landing cross-legged. The boss hasn't hired a female before, and this is one of those rare cases in employment where having the boss think about your personal anatomy as part of the hiring process actually makes sense. I know I can manage with products like the TravelJohn, but he's come up with a solution that he thinks is better for everyone. The airplane type already has one passenger seat that hides a toilet, so he's going to re-install those. Zipper placement on the flight suits might be more of an issue if the manufacturer hasn't thought of anatomical variations. Mr. Seagull indicates that the flight suit manufacturer has placed safety over anatomical convenience, giving as an example the fact that the forward hip pockets are actual pockets not open at the bottom. "Ah yes," I indicate my understanding, "So you can't get at the things in your regular pockets." That, too, he admits, but the primary inconvenience is that when you're a guy, sitting for any period of time, sometimes things need adjusting, and that's difficult to do in a flight suit. Flying is a full body job. It's a feminist cry that unless a job actually requires a penis or a vagina it should be open to all, and I don't disagree. I'm just amused that I am coming on board in an operation where the equipment I will be operating actually has a penis-to-airframe interface. I think I can improvise a female-to-male adaptor for it, though.

I take the left seat and we go for a short local flight, where I do some standard manoeuvres and I would discuss the rest of the flight but instead I will report a conversation from the day before.

Me: I guess I have one more question. You know I keep a blog. I don't name companies, coworkers, customers or anything that I think could place the company in a bad light, are there any aspects of your operation that ...

Him: No, you can't blog about this.

That also explains the Xs, Ys and Qs you might have wondered about in the previous post about potential work locations. I'll still tell you stories, I'll let you know what I'm learning, and perhaps the friend of Mr. Seagull who connected me with this company will have a chance to explain that my style reveals nothing, and get my leash loosened, but as a show of good faith I'm cutting off here, even though it was an interesting flight.

I went back to the passenger terminal and flew home, expecting to be called for a contract in a month and a half or so. My houseguest has forgiven me for abandoning her, but hasn't been as successful this week as I have. And there waiting for me at home is a very polite rejection letter from the previous company that interviewed me. That's good in a way. Never being told is like never finding the body.

Seagull Versus Eagle

Most people spent their whole lives waiting for an opportunity that was good enough, and then they died. While seizing opportunities would mean that all sorts of things went wrong, it wasn't nearly as bad as being a hopeless lump.

The morning dawns with miserable drizzle and low ceilings, too low for training. It's forecast to clear up later, so we'll wait on it. Boss picks me up and then the chief pilot comes into the office and we're introduced. He's francophone so I speak a few sentences in French because again I think it's polite. It's like you go to the boss's office rather than asking him to come to yours. It shows my willingness to do things his way, and also demonstrates what he's working with in terms of my ability in French. The company operates in English, I checked that out before I came, and our conversation switches quickly back into English. We go over the exams, he answers some more of my questions, and then we all go for lunch. The weather may be good enough to fly after we get back.

We've all travelled enough that no one is left out as our stories and hangar flying ranges all over the world. In fact the chief pilot is from a French-speaking European company, not from Québec at all, and it turns out that most of the pilots are. I knew I was an outsider in Québec for being an anglophone, but once you speak French you're still an outsider because you're not fluent, and then it's because you're not a native speaker, and then apparently it's because you're from France or Luxembourg or Belgium instead of from Québec. My boss has a stable of pilots who have had trouble getting jobs elsewhere in the province because despite their fluent French, they are not "one of them." It's pur laine or nothing, apparently. When does cultural and linguistic pride veer into insularity or racism? I think true pride in ones culture and nation includes enough confidence in its strength to welcome newcomers and teach them to embrace what you do, and make them one of you, rather than holding them forever at bay, one of "them" living among you. I notice myself that I may have a slight "them" feeling about someone whose accent doesn't match that of some region of my own country, but when they care about the same issues I do, not necessarily even supporting the same side, just understanding them in a Canadian context, that they become Canadian to me.

The sky opens up blue, but the wind is picking up and they nix the training plans again for today. I think it's odd at first, who doesn't fly in wind, but then the wind becomes quite extreme. I worry about a Tim Horton's sign coming down on me in the parking lot. So instead we massage my resume into the format in which he presents pilot résumés on proposals. My experience is now a resource for him to use. And yes, this is not all an elaborate ruse. He does want to contract my services, probably starting a month and a half out. He's confident that I'll get along well with clients, not get into fistfights with my coworkers and have the maturity to make good decisions. And he figures I can probably fly an airplane, too.

We quit for the day. There may be time before my flight home tomorrow for a flight, but I really have to give a decision to the other potential employer. I've already held them off and I know their timeline is tighter than here. I'm going to call that job "Eagle" and the Québec-based one "Seagull" in recognition of the fact that the real life company names are similar, and there are certain aspects of the jobs that match up. I like both eagles and seagulls; neither term is intended to disparage or praise the company I've attached it to. I just need to stop saying "this one" or "the other one."

It's a difficult decision. I should be savouring this more. After all both potential employers have called me "perfect" to my face. I'm in demand. But that's stressful. I make myself a spreadsheet comparing schedule, aircraft, pay, travel opportunities, coworkers, organization, stability, gut feelings, and everything else I can think of. It gets really elaborate with me rating each company on each aspect, and then going through and rating how important each aspect is to me, to create a multiplier. I know without doing the math that Eagle is the sensible job that gives me almost everything I could ask for at this level of the industry and Seagull is the slightly crazy one that could be terrifying or miserable. I can't believe I'm being such a hopeless lump. I haven't quite finished the elaborate spreadsheet but I find I've made up my mind.

I e-mail Eagle with thanks for their patience, to let them know that I will be taking the offer from Seagull, but that as they won't be needing me for a few weeks that if there is anything I can do for them in the meantime, I'd be happy to help. Yeah, that's right. Who says I have to choose just one company?

The lead quote is, rather embarrassingly, from Harry Potter fan fiction, but I'll defend myself with words from aviation philosopher Richard Bach's Illusions

"You are quoting Snoopy the Dog, I believe?

I quote the truth wherever I find it.

Funny Way To Make A Living

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Decorating

I'm in the back of a jet, flying as a passenger to a city in La Belle Province, where I'll meet a potential employer. We got along well on the telephone. I know I have experience he can use, and his operation goes to places I'd like to see. I want to know that it's safe and that I'll fit in with what sounds like a testosterone-charged crowd. He says to call when I get in, but that we'll meet tomorrow. And yes, I still have that friend visiting me. Social events are sort of like laundry in aviation: put a load in the washer or have someone over and you will get called out to fly somewhere. There's food in the fridge and I left her with my home and my car, and explicit permission to drive it wherever she likes. She drove me to the airport and assured me without prompting that she would take good care of it, and not give my car a reputation for being driven rudely. I feel like I've matured a notch, because I'm relaxed about it. I was never good at sharing my crayons.

The airplane has seat-back TVs and I'm watching a show called something like Take This House and Sell It, in which the experts come into someone's house and make it more marketable for a quick sale. The featured house looks pretty good to me, not to cluttered, interiors nicely painted in warm colours. The furniture is a little worn, but not a difficult-to-show house. Then the team come in, rolling their eyes and snickering at the cinnamon-coloured walls, a nude painting in the living room (you can see one female nipple), and what they call disastrous kitchen cupboards. "Is there some story behind that?" they ask the homeowner about the painting. They had the restraint to check their mockery slightly when informed that a niece had painted it, but it still had to go. They repainted the walls white, hauled off most of the furniture, and replaced the doors on the kitchen cabinets with ones that didn't really look better to me. I knew why it all had to be done, but I disagreed. I didn't get to see what else they did, or whether the house sold immediately at the asking price, as we landed and I headed out with my gear.

I called the prospective employer to tell him I've landed and he says he'll come by. So I'm standing on the curb, with my stuff, dressed in the manner of my occupation, waiting to get into a vehicle with a guy I don't know, so he can take me to a hotel. Is there anyone who is not a prostitute who has done this so many times they couldn't say how many? It's a part of my job. I have a moment of realization that seeing as this meeting was set up through my blog, it could be a kidnapping. Sure I've looked at the company website, but did I check with Transport Canada that the company even owns those planes? It could be a fake website. Or a real company but how do I know the guy is who he says he is? And I've just stepped off an airplane with no checked luggage so I'm totally unarmed.

Someone in this conversation with myself watches too much Law & Order. The truck he described arrives, we thrown my bag in the back and go to the hotel. He has a couple of company manuals for me to look over and we set a meet time tomorrow morning. He asks about the flight, and right there I make a decision that just as I'm not selling my body on streetcorners, I'm not a house to be renovated either. You get me or nothing. I tell him about the decorating show, and that it's just like interviewing for an airline job, really. You have to whitewash over all your colourful spots, hide anything about you that is different or quirky in the garage, and replace some perfectly functional opinions with the ones designated for you. I tell him about the airline interview prep course where they told me what my hobbies should be, because mine weren't correct. I let him know that I am structurally sound, well-maintained and in a good neighbourhood, but that I just might have cinnamon walls. I'm not such a rebel that I'm not willing to put a couple of coats of paint on my personality to hold a good job, but I'm going to let you know what's underneath.

Some of you readers probably think I'm an incredible idiot for this. But it's worth rather a lot to me not to lie about who I am. And I've judged him correctly. He doesn't need that.

The hotel is comfortable, and across the parking lot from a Thai restaurant, which turns out to be mostly a Chinese restaurant, with some Thai dishes. There is adequate but not amazing food and friendly service. I saved my fortune cookie fortune to share with you, and moments ago I swear it was on this table, but now I can't find it. I think it said, "A merry heart maketh a cheerful countenance" on one side and something like "Un coeur joyeux rend le visage serein" (the same thing in French) on the other. I initially assumed it was something they made up in fortune cookie factories, but a bit of research shows that it's a bible quotation, and really only half of the message. It finishes "... but by sorrow of the heart the spirit is broken." It's probably not even the original source of the 'positive thinking' message but it's notable that it doesn't promise success from positivity or even threaten failure from negativity, just states that if you feel good you're going to smile and that it's hard to fight on when you're sad. It might as well say, "A good night's sleep makes you rested." I try for that.

Hats Not Cats

The electrical system in those airplanes I once flew (someone suggest a nickname for it, eh?) underwent a few changes from version to version. I remember that the first one was the first airplane I flew equipped with generators, not alternators, the functional difference being that a generator will not charge the battery at low rpm, but it can be used to charge an absolutely flat battery (assuming the battery has the capability of holding a charge) while an alternator can charge at low rpm but needs there to be a bit of juice left in the battery to excite the field so it can work. You know what? I've recited that a hundred times, and can continue, but in order to ensure I really know what it means, I shall try to build an airplane electrical system from stone knives and bearskins. Let this be my apology for weeks of soul-searching, arts classes and lolcats.

Electricity is essentially the displacement of charges. Rub dissimilar materials and they may become oppositely charged and cling together. The differential may discharge in the form of a spark. It's as if every neutrally charged molecules were wearing a hat, but when you rub them together the hats all fly up in the air and the molecules with a greater millinery affinity grab more than their share. So when the dust settles you have the molecules of one substance wearing extra hats and the molecules of the other being hatless. This isn't a stable situation, and given the chance to correct it, the ones with extra hats will give up their headgear and the bareheaded ones will grab up stray hats. By this model, electric current would compare to a string of people with hats, all snatching the hat off the person to their left and putting it on, over and over again around in a circle.

A flow of electric current induces a magnetic field around a wire, and likewise movement of a wire through a magnetic field induces electric current in a wire. It's like passing hats creates a breeze, but a breeze itself lifts up people's hats. Can't have one without the other. The hat passing is driven by the power source, such as a battery. In a motor the magnetic field is used to create rotation--doing work with the breeze from the hats. In a generator, a breeze is used to make the hats move.

Rather than using just one wire for this effect, wire is wrapped in layers around a core, giving more electric-magnetic interaction in a more compact area, so making the whole thing neater and more efficient, like arranging your hat-wearing people on tiered benches so the same breeze can lift more hats or to increase the breeze in a small area. I think I'll stop talking about hats now, but if you like hats, then from here on read "movement of hats" for electric current and "breeze" for magnetic field.

In a generator an electromagnet creates a magnetic field around an armature (a spinny thing) wrapped with wire. The spinning movement induces an electric current along the wire. The force to spin the armature comes from the airplane's internal combustion engine, the thing that's driving the propeller. That's right, they use electricity to make a magnet, then they use the magnet to make more electricity. With this much information it seems as though the generator can't produce power unless it already has power, because otherwise what would power the electromagnet, but the trick is that having acted as the core of an electromagnet, the iron contains remanent magnetism. It's not a lot, just enough to induce a small current in the spinning armature, which is enough to increase the magnetic field so that it can generate a greater electric current and so on until it reaches a steady state. You can get more current by turning the engine faster, but you can't get more at low engine speeds. In fact you might not get enough at low engine speed, the weakness mentioned in the first paragraph of this entry. I've just learned from this site (which describes alternators and generators well, albeit without hats) that when you first connect a generator you need to polarize it before starting the engine. That also implies that if I disconnected a generator for some reason and then reconnected it, I could damage something by starting up without polarizing it. Another reason to keep screwdrivers out of the hands of your pilots.

The direction of the electrical current induced in a wire depends on the direction of its movement relative to the direction of the magnetic field. There are wacky things you can do with your fingers to figure out which way that is, but we're not reliving our grade eleven physics classes here, so you can put your fingers down. The point is, if you're spinning the armature, you can see that you'll get a relatively strong current as the wire cuts across the magnetic field, a current weakening to nothing as it moves to be parallel to the field, and then a strengthening current in the opposite direction. That is, it will produce an alternating current. An old airplane like this wants one-way direct current, so to prevent it from flipping back and forth, it's connected to the rest of the electrical system via a split ring device called a commutator, which reverses the connection every half turn. The end result of having both the connection reversed and the current reversed is steady current.

Generators are old-fashioned and more troublesome for maintenance, so the manufacturer allows you to replace the ones in this airplane with alternators. An alternator works on the same principle as the generator except that in the alternator, the wire windings in which the current will be induced are on the outside, and hold still, while the electromagnet that creates the magnetic field spins on the inside, connected to electrical power via a slip ring, which is simpler than a commutator. AC is converted to DC with a diode. A voltage regulator increases the current to electromagnet so that the alternator produces sufficient power for the aircraft electrical services, even at low rpm. That requires the alternator to draw power from the battery in order to get going, but it's worth it, because the alternator can then charge the battery immediately after start. A generator may be still discharging during low power taxi.

The POH copy I have here claims the aircraft has a 12V 33 ampere-hour battery and two 12V 50 A generators, one on each engine, but who knows if the airplane it belonged to still has generators. If it does, each generator has a voltage regulator and a there is a paralleling circuit to divide the load between the generators. If only one engine is running, a reverse current relay cuts its generator out of the circuit. Also, typically an alternator produces a higher voltage than the battery, so that it can charge the battery. I'm winding down now, so I'll see if I can write about voltage regulators, RCRs and paralleling circuits later.

Hyperphysics is an excellent site for this kind of thing, but I'm not too impressed with their 3D field diagrams.

Fighting for Others

I have a pilot friend visiting from another province, looking for work herself. It's no conflict of interest, because we have different experience and different goals, so it's been a source of inspiration to see her share my frustrating experiences and the same psychological difficulty to do the simplest things like walk into someone's place of business and hand over a resume. Preparing for her visit renewed my efforts, and possibly paid off in the opportunities that are opening up for me now. I hope it's not too frustrating for her to see me getting a chance when she is at a tough stage of the hunt.

As I strategize and arrange networking opportunities for her with people who I think can give her advice or help get her resume in the right hands, it occurs to me that I am somehow willing to work harder to help her find employment than I am for myself. I've been more creative in my thinking and more willing to call people to ask for help when it's not for me. I don't even think of myself as a particularly nice or generous person, maybe a six or a seven on a scale of one to ten running from most selfish to most generous. I hate it when people mess with my stuff, but there's something in me that leaps to defend against injustice, and leaves me almost unable to not help, if something is within my power. How to harness this energy for my own success? Heck, if I could just harness it to get my own laundry done I'd be ahead.

Busy Calendar

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

From the Mop to the Top

The relationship between pilots and air traffic controllers is nothing like that between drivers and traffic cops. It's closer to the relationship between runners and the people who cheer us on and hand us food and cups of water. I don't know how they select and train people for the job, but the typical air traffic controller's desire to do everything they can to expedite traffic seems to be tempered only by their desire to keep us safe. I know that occasional arbitrary-seeming restrictions on my access to airspace are required for separation. I can't think that I've ever felt a controller was holding me up because she was being lazy. They do make mistakes, and every once in a while we joke that one is trying to kill us, but we forgive them, because they always forgive our mistakes and protect us from their consequences. I can't think that I've ever felt rage at an air traffic controller. I've certainly never wished one dead.

So it's with admiration and sorrow that I present the life story of the late Eleanor Joyce Toliver-Williams, an FAA air traffic controller I found out about recently through Greg Gross's travel blog. She retired as chief of the Cleveland ARTCC, which is pretty impressive for anyone seeing as it's the busiest of only twenty-two such 'Centers' in the US. But it's remarkable because she started as an FAA janitor. In Alaska(*). She went from janitor to stenographer to certified controller in three years, which is about half the time than it took me to go from flight instructor to charter captain. Then it took five more years for her to be given an actual assignment as a controller. I'm not sure if that was because she was the first black woman to qualify and America didn't know if it was ready for her, or if she had some time off before she got a placement she wanted. She did raise seven children along the way.

It's worth reading her full obituary here.

* That's only one step up from unemployed in Greenland, isn't it.

Useful Little Twin

I'm not getting back into the meat of aviation as quickly as I had intended, so I'm going to just pick up a manual and start reviewing systems. Eeeny-meeny-miney-moe gets me an airplane type I have flown a few times. I knew three people who owned these airplanes, and have flown four different aircraft of this type, including a couple of flight tests. It's a great little twin, a good IFR platform and the extra engine will actually take you somewhere, even with the aircraft well-loaded. There's no reason for me to obscure the make and model, except that it's fun and I know some of you will enjoy guessing.

Now I'm trying to decide which system is the most generic, so you don't all know it immediately. The trick is that even as I look at the index of the manual (it's a photocopy of my friend's POH) I smile remembering unique quirks of each system, and how they all interacted for good and for bad. I guess I'll start with the airframe.

It's an all-metal low-wing aluminum-skinned monoplane with semi-monocoque construction. (The semi-monocoque bit means that it has internal bracing but unlike early open-frame or canvas-covered aircraft, the skin is necessary to the structural integrity of the airplane). The fuselage is built in four pieces: nose cone, cabin, tail cone and an enamelled steel tube structure that runs from the tail cone to the nosewheel to hold it all together. The wings are rectangular, with a main centre spar plus a fore and aft spar, plus additional lateral stringers running through the ribs. The main spars are bolted together in the centre of the fuselage, but the rest of the wing does not carry through, but is bolted to the steel tube structure. The wings have a removable tip section, and five degrees of dihedral (the angle at which the wing slopes up from root to tip). The ratio of nose-to-tail length to wingspan is 0.81. That last is not a standard aircraft statistic, but I spoil guessing fun if I actually give the length and wingspan.

A detail in the manual is that the main wing spar is "stepped-down." I'm not certain how that is achieved. I assume that it's thicker at the wing roots than the wingtips through having less metal, but rather than being tapered ('cause they'd presumably just say "tapered") the gauge is otherwise quantized. I'll try to find out exactly how that works on a metal wing spar. On a wooden one it might be a reduction in the number of laminate layers. I don't often see aircraft wings with the skin removed, and when I do it's usually either an ancient hulk or a hobby plane under construction.

Illogical Hope

I'm still holding out faint hope for the employer that never called back. The first aviation job I ever got was offered to me after the "expect a call by" date. Sometimes it takes longer than an employer anticipates to make a decision. Maybe I'm not their first choice, but they don't want to tell me to foad yet, because the first choice candidates might go to Air Canada before they get on there. I left a polite "could you please let me know if all the successful candidates have been notified" message on the chief pilot's voicemail, and I'm a little surprised that they didn't at least e-mail, because they seemed to be more respectful than that.

I get home from grocery shopping and there's a phone message. Oooh, lovely phone message. I press the button. It's from a charity that wants to come and pick up used clothing, furniture and small appliance donations. Hey, disabled people, if I get that job you can have bags of it, as I move across the country again. I realize what I've been doing wrong though. I bought a little electric grinder, for grinding spices, because they taste so much better fresh, and I decided I wouldn't open it until I got the job and moved to the new town. That's not how superstition works! I have to open the box, throw the packaging away, and then I will get the job and have to pack it up and get cinnamon or cumin all over my towels. I take it out and use it.

I found this story (many of you have probably already seen it on Bruce Schneier's blog) interesting twice. First, there's the idea that the logic of "If P then Q; P. therefore Q" or "If P then Q; Not Q. Therefore not P," is difficult. I really didn't know that most people found it difficult to follow.

When I was in university there was a third year philosophy course that math majors took for an easy arts credit. (I never grasped the concept of paying for useless courses, so I didn't take it, but I trust the accounts of my friends). It was trivial logic problems. All you had to do was memorize the names of the different types of actual logic and logical fallacies and it was an easy A. You didn't even have to attend the classes. I guess I hang out with logical people. Perhaps I should have followed the logic that if they could get As without trying, there must be other people who were getting the marks at the other end of the scale, but then we also laughed at the kinesiology students whose hardest course was a special version of first year physics that allowed them to understand skeletal structure and musculature in terms of basic Newtonian physics of levers, mass and energy.

I imagine most of my readers will also find that type of logic simple, because the logical elite hang out with me. but I'm fascinated that even those of you who would fail the "if someone is going to Boston he takes a plane" card-flipping test nevertheless have no trouble with the exact same logic in the "has to eat vegetables to get dessert" card test. And I'm now mature enough to realize that people have different skills, and if I hurt my abductor hallucis (which I think I may have) I'd be better off consulting a kin grad than a mathematician.

In case you're wondering, there's no connection between my waiting for an employer to respond and taking a plane to Boston, eating dessert, hurting my foot, or minding my logical Ps and Qs. They're just the top things on my pile.

Prior Spaceflight Experience is a Plus

Here are two pilot jobs that amused me, but which I must admit I didn't apply to. The first one is a modification on the usual tactic of hiring people at starvation wages to throw bags and check in customers, while dangling "if you show a good work ethic we'll put you on the airplane" in front of them. It works fairly well for the companies. They get a relatively sober, intelligent and obedient workforce for the price of dumping them in a remote location and ensuring they don't starve to death. Promote a few into the airplanes every spring and the supply of new suckers keeps pace with the ones you have to fire for going crazy.

Need IT pilot with extensive experience in servers and software to help with our computer system and be in line to move up to be trained as first officer. If you have over 1500 hrs you might be eligible for immediate consideration.

There are so many pilots out there that if an employer has specific needs, they might as well ask for what they want. Pilots who do not meet the qualifications will apply. Reader Chris Thompson sent me the second one requiring more than just IT experience.

Virgin Galactic seeking private spaceship pilots

MOJAVE, Calif.—Virgin Galactic is seeking people with the right stuff. The Antelope Valley Press in California says the spaceline founded by Sir Richard Branson has put out a call for pilots to operate its SpaceShipTwo spacecraft and WhiteKnightTwo mother ship. Those selected would fly during development testing currently under way and commercial operations at some point in the future. The company is looking for test pilots who graduated from a respectable flight school and who have a minimum of 3,000 hours of flying experience. Prior spaceflight experience is a plus, but not required. Virgin Galactic plans to fly tourists on brief suborbital flights at a cost of $200,000 per person. SpaceShipTwo is based on the design of SpaceShipOne, the first private manned craft to reach space.

That's the first time I remember seeing the word 'spaceline'. We have airlines and bus lines, railway lines and cruise ship lines, and had stagecoach lines (my great-something grandfather ran one). I wonder what the first thing we called a transportation "line" was.