Landing During an Earthquake

I have another anonymous, much forwarded piece from a pilot who was operating in Japan during the earthquake. This one is also from a Delta pilot, identified as "J.D." It complements the other, as s/he was landing at the time. Note that if any of the pilots involved in these stories wants to be credited by name or to have the story removed, just let me know. I think they are fascinating examples of the kind of can't-plan-for-it decision making that flying entails. This is edited only in that I removed the part where the writer pointed out the Top Gun reference, because the punctuation involved broke my html, and you guys don't need that sort of thing pointed out for you.

I'm currently still in one piece, writing from my room in the Narita crew hotel. It's 8am. This is my inaugural trans-pacific trip as a brand new, recently checked out, international 767 Captain and it has been interesting, to say the least, so far. I've crossed the Atlantic three times so far so the ocean crossing procedures were familiar.

By the way, stunning scenery flying over the Aleutian Islands. Everything was going fine until 100 miles out from Tokyo and in the descent for arrival. The first indication of any trouble was that Japan air traffic control started putting everyone into holding patterns. At first we thought it was usual congestion on arrival. Then we got a company data link message advising about the earthquake, followed by another stating Narita airport was temporarily closed for inspection and expected to open shortly (the company is always so positive).

From our perspective things were obviously looking a little different. The Japanese controller's anxiety level seemed quite high and he said expect "indefinite" holding time. No one would commit to a time frame on that so I got my copilot and relief pilot busy looking at divert stations and our fuel situation, which, after an ocean crossing is typically low.

It wasn't long, maybe ten minutes, before the first pilots started requesting diversions to other airports. Air Canada, American, United, etc. all reporting minimal fuel situations. I still had enough fuel for 1.5 to 2.0 hours of holding. Needless to say, the diverts started complicating the situation.

Japan air traffic control then announced Narita was closed indefinitely due to damage. Planes immediately started requesting arrivals into Haneada, near Tokyo, a half dozen JAL and western planes got clearance in that direction but then ATC announced Haenada had just closed. Uh oh! Now instead of just holding, we all had to start looking at more distant alternatives like Osaka, or Nagoya.

One bad thing about a large airliner is that you can't just be-pop into any little airport. We generally need lots of runway. With more planes piling in from both east and west, all needing a place to land and several now fuel critical ATC was getting over-whelmed. In the scramble, and without waiting for my fuel to get critical, I got my flight a clearance to head for Nagoya, fuel situation still okay. So far so good. A few minutes into heading that way, I was "ordered" by ATC to reverse course. Nagoya was saturated with traffic and unable to handle more planes (read- airport full). Ditto for Osaka.

With that statement, my situation went instantly from fuel okay, to fuel minimal considering we might have to divert a much farther distance. Multiply my situation by a dozen other aircraft all in the same boat, all making demands requests and threats to ATC for clearances somewhere. Air Canada and then someone else went to "emergency" fuel situation. Planes started to heading for air force bases. The nearest to Tokyo was Yokoda AFB. I threw my hat in the ring for that initially. The answer - Yokoda closed! no more space.

By now it was a three ring circus in the cockpit, my copilot on the radios, me flying and making decisions and the relief copilot buried in the air charts trying to figure out where to go that was within range while data link messages were flying back and forth between us and company dispatch in Atlanta. I picked Misawa AFB at the north end of Honshu island. We could get there with minimal fuel remaining. ATC was happy to get rid of us so we cleared out of the maelstrom of the Tokyo region. We heard ATC try to send planes toward Sendai, a small regional airport on the coast which was later the one I think that got flooded by a tsunami.

Atlanta dispatch then sent us a message asking if we could continue to Chitose airport on the Island of Hokkaido, north of Honshu. Other Delta planes were heading that way. More scrambling in the cockpit - check weather, check charts, check fuel, okay. We could still make it and not be going into a fuel critical situation ... if we had no other fuel delays. As we approached Misawa we got clearance to continue to Chitose. Critical decision thought process. Let's see - trying to help company - plane overflies perfectly good divert airport for one farther away...wonder how that will look in the safety report, if anything goes wrong.

Suddenly ATC comes up and gives us a vector to a fix well short of Chitose and tells us to standby for holding instructions. Nightmare realized. Situation rapidly deteriorating. After initially holding near Tokyo, starting a divert to Nagoya, reversing course back to Tokyo then to re-diverting north toward Misawa, all that happy fuel reserve that I had was vaporizing fast. My subsequent conversation, paraphrased of course...., went something like this:

"Sapparo Control - Delta XX requesting immediate clearance direct to Chitose, minimum fuel, unable hold."

"Negative Ghost-Rider, the Pattern is full"

"Sapparo Control - make that - Delta XX declaring emergency, low fuel, proceeding direct Chitose"

"Roger Delta XX, understood, you are cleared direct to Chitose, contact Chitose approach....etc...."

Enough was enough, I had decided to preempt actually running critically low on fuel while in another indefinite holding pattern, especially after bypassing Misawa, and played my last ace...declaring an emergency. The problem with that is now I have a bit of company paperwork to do but what the heck.

As it was - landed Chitose, safe, with at least 30 minutes of fuel remaining before reaching a "true" fuel emergency situation. That's always a good feeling, being safe. They taxied us off to some remote parking area where we shut down and watched a half dozen or more other airplanes come streaming in. In the end, Delta had two 747s, my 767 and another 767 and a 777 all on the ramp at Chitose. We saw two American airlines planes, a United and two Air Canada as well. Not to mention several extra Al Nippon and Japan Air Lines planes.

Post-script - 9 hours later, Japan air lines finally got around to getting a boarding ladder to the plane where we were able to get off and clear customs. - that however, is another interesting story.

By the way - while writing this - I have felt four additional tremors that shook the hotel slightly - all in 45 minutes.

I can so empathize with the successive feelings of "yep, we're good on fuel ... okay we've got enough fuel ... if anything else happens we won't have enough fuel ... let me get on the ground now! now! now! ... phew we're on the ground with fuel in the tanks." You are always balancing the desire to please the company, ATC and passengers against the desire to land with lots of yummy delicious extra fuel. Pilots think about fuel the way broke people think about money: all the time.

Boarding During an Earthquake

I had this forwarded to me without a name. It's a first hand account by a Delta Airlines captain whose flight was boarding at Narita when the 8.9 earthquake struck off the coast of Japan.

We were at the gate onboard ship 7001 with passenger boarding in progress when the earthquake began. My F/O, Joe Haggerty, had taken his seat and I was standing behind the center radio console when the airplane began shaking. Initially thought it was wind gusts but ruled that out since it had been calm when we left the hotel. Jet blast from a taxiing aircraft? Nope, look, the terminal windows are flexing and the building is...moving! It's an earthquake...immediately, in a brilliant display of airmanship, Joe reached over and set the parking brake. It seemed quite possible that we could jump our wheel chocks and roll into something hard. After a minute of this, the shaking got much worse and lasted about 2 1/2 minutes total. Our passengers intuitively decided that the safest place in all of this was on the aircrart and not in the terminal or the jetway. Never seen 261 people board a 777 so quickly! Two long and impressive aftershocks followed during the next hour. Narita closed it's runways and our inbound flights began diverting. 281 from Atlanta was about 10 minutes from landing and diverted to Nagoya. Hanada and Narita were both closed. They evacuated everyone from the Narita terminals deeming the structures unsafe for occupancy. The Narita tower was evacuated, Narita Approach Control was evacuated. At about 4pm, the airport was notam'd closed "until 0600 tomorrow morning". So, Delta cancelled us and all of the other flights out of Narita.

Well.........there was only one "safe area" established at the airport (outside in a cold rain) where passengers could be taken if they deplaned. It became full. There was no chance of deplaning into the terminal. No chance of deplaning at all. No ground transportation as all busses and trains were shut down and the highways had been closed. So, Delta calls the Narita Airport Authority and suggests that since the runway had been inspected, it might be a real good idea to allow 6 Delta departures and get maybe 1,400 customers out of this mess. They agreed and after a four hour wait at the gate, we got out of there. On departure we could see four distinct, large fires in downtown Tokyo, 50 miles to the south. A refinery was on fire at the coastline to our east. We had no real idea of the size of the disaster until we had a datalink discussion with our dispatcher who filled us in. Now, watching the news at home, I am stunned at the devastation. All Delta crews and employees are safe and uninjured in Japan. I am not sure if the layover hotel has power. I'm glad I'm not in room 932 anymore with the aftershocks that they are getting.

Happy to be home and thanks for your concern.

It's weird when you're on the ground and the airplane is moving in a way you haven't commanded it. I remember the first time I couldn't taxi straight in wind, and can see why that was the captain's first impression.

Thirty Minutes of Oil

Oil: I'm supposed to put Exxon 2380 oil in this airplane and it goes all around and makes things slippery, cooled, cleaned and sealed. Done. Yeah, right.

C'mon, Aviatrix, it's not that bad. Half an hour on the oil system and then you can go play with your toy flight simulator. Minimum oil temperature for start is -40. You don't need units there, the Fahrenheit and Celsius scales cross at -40. I'd be cross, too. In addition to the standard four functions of oil referenced above, oil pressure on this airplane takes part in propeller operations, specifically normal blade adjustment, negative torque sensing, and the unfeathering pump. It's used in three parts of the anti-icing system, and it has gauges and annunciator lights associated with it.

Oil lubricates the reduction gear, so that the propeller rpm can be 2000 instead of the 42,000-odd rpm of the main engine, and oil pressure in the propeller hub drives the propeller towards fine, against the pressure of the feathering spring, using the usual system of flyweights governing a pilot valve to keep the propeller on speed. Feathering dumps the oil from the hub, allowing the feathering spring to drive the blades all the way to 89%, while negative torque adjusts the blade angle to windmill in the 18-28% range, waiting for the pilot to either feather or attempt a restart. It's a kind of half-hearted autofeather.

Anti-icing has already been described, oil circulates in the oil cooler inlet lip, and then if its temperature is still above 55 degrees it goes to the oil cooler, else it goes through the filter and back to work. Fifty-five is the oil's lucky number because that's also the pressure differential across the oil filter that will cause it to bypass the filter. Oil heat also anti-ices the lower part of the engine air inlet, provides the heat for the fuel anti-icing heat exchanger, and makes the airplane nice and warm if you put your hands against the nacelle after shutdown.

Would you believe that that took me thirty minutes? It did include going off to get another book to look at a diagram of the propeller system. I need to know more than this, but I need a break.

Engine Startrekinsey Sequence

I'm not sure if this is a cohesive description of the engine start sequence or an unpublished chapter of Joyce's Ulysses in which we follow Aviatrix's stream of consciousness as she slides into aircraft manual-induced, chocolate-deprived madness. Either way, come for the engines, stay for the Star Trek references and sexual innuendo.

When I start my car, I put my foot on the brake, the key in the ignition, turn and hold the key until the engine sounds just right, then release the key and the engine continues. That's a little bit complex. You have to get a feel for when to release the key. When I first learned to drive there was another complication, in that I had to put my foot on the gas as well and give it just enough gas to start. But many of you start old manual transmission cars every day without even thinking about the process. And some of you start up an electric car by, I understand, pushing a button. I think they just push a button to start the starship Enterprise too, so this is clearly the way of the future.

Push button airplanes exist, and starting mine does begin with pressing a button, but it's a little more complicated than that, and I have to know and understand the whole sequence, including the stuff that does happen automatically. I'm sure I'll be quizzed on this all during the test, and if I'm going to feel helpless someday when I can't get the engine started, I'd best know exactly what is failing to happen.

Before Start

I need to be sure that the inlet and exhaust are free of debris, that the first stage compressor has no visible damage, that the P2T2 probe is clear, the propeller is on the blade angle locks, and that it moves freely. I should check the oil, make sure the speed levers and power levers move freely and are set in the low and just ahead of ground idle positions, respectively. If I'm using a GPU I should make sure it's supplying 24 V and 1000 A, and if I'm using batteries I should check that they have a good charge.

0 - 10% RPM

After the prestart checks are complete, I press and hold the start button. As a result:

• the #1 start control relay closes
• the starter relay closes
• the oil vent valve opens
• the anti-ice lockout valve closes
• the starter engages to rotate the engine

And let's see what that all means.

The #1 start control relay "is used to control the starter relay and the oil vent valve during ground starts, and the propeller unfeather pump during air starts." It "also opens the voltage regulator 'B' to starter-generator 'A' lead to prevent field feedback during starts." The first part I get: The #1 start control relay is the electrical string you pull on to get the next two things on the list to happen. If the second part of the description mentioned some kind of particle or anti-matter, I would swear that was from one of the episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation where Wesley saved the ship again. I can surmise that for some reason the starter-generator has an 'A' lead, that the voltage regulator has a 'B' lead, and that these two are normally connected, but that that connection can lead to undesirable feedback during starts. I can further surmise that the voltage regulator is there to regulate generator output, but seeing as the generator isn't put on line until after it has finished being a starter, that there's no need for it to be connected during start.

The starter relay "energizes the starter generator, during ground starts only." That makes sense, because during air starts the starter is not needed: rotation of the engine from the propeller is sufficient.

The oil vent valve is a clever little kludge to prevent the starter having to work against cold sluggish oil pressure as it rotates the engine. It opens up the oil system to allow it to ingest air during ground starts.

The fuel anti-ice lockout valve closes off the line through which the fuel system cycles cold fuel to a heat exchanger with the oil to prevent ice crystals forming in the fuel. At start the oil isn't warm anyway, so the valve is closed to keep the fuel pressure high.

So that's two things that happen when the start button is pressed, two more that happen because of one of those (or three if we count the A-B lead thing) and one one that happens because of the second wave. And that's all before anything even catches on fire.

10 - 55% RPM

When engine RPM reaches 10% the fire is supposed to start. Specifically:

• the 10% speed switch closes
• the #2 start control relay closes
• the series/parallel relay connects the batteries in series, if selected
• the SPR valve is energized
• the fuel solenoid valve opens
• the 'primaries only' fuel solenoid opens
• ignition turns on

And I know what most of that means.

The speed switches contain reverse tachyon tribarium warp core interfaces a DC regulating system, a signal conditioning amplifier, timing pulse generators and voltage discriminating circuits (it only allows straight voltages to go through, and the ones with suntans don't get to use the good wires). The speed switches contain STUFF, okay, including three relays. The 10% relay (which the voltage discriminating circuits probably think is an overestimate, or maybe a lifestyle choice) is normally open, the 55% relay is normally closed and the 90% relay is normally open. They receive electrical signals from the "tach gen" which for the purpose of my own amusement I will imagine stands for tachyon generator. Each relay changes its respective state when engine rotation reaches the corresponding speed. The 90% one isn't important to engine starting, but I didn't want to leave it out, as it's probably already getting enough hassle from the voltage discriminating circuits. Best I can tell from the ten pages of starter circuit diagrams, when the 10% speed switch closes, it energizes the #2 start control relay, and the #2 start control relay does the four other things on the list: ignition on, batteries to series, SPR energized and fuel solenoid on.

Hey who thinks I should be allowed chocolate now?

The series-parallel switch sounds like something Scotty would do at the last minute to keep the Enterprise from falling into a black hole.

"It's no use Captain. We haven't got enough juice to get the warp engines online."

"You've got to get them online Scotty, or we're all dead!"

"Well I suppose if I cross connected the dilithium crystals from the other nacelle, it could possibly give enough of a boost to get the warp core online. It's never been done before, laddie."

And then he does it, and it works and the he publishes a paper on the subject, and the manufacturer comes out with a bulletin saying never to do it because it voids the warrantee. It's just like that. In fact it's hard to believe that some desperate pilot didn't invent it while stranded on a reserve somewhere, except that this isn't a bush plane. The manufacturer has set it up so you can flick a switch and the batteries, usually connected in parallel, one to each starter-generator, automatically go into series when the power is needed most. My company, however, says that the power is not needed most at 10% but rather at about 18-28% where there are bad vibrations (seriously, that's the reason), so what I'm supposed to do is start the engine with the series-parallel switch in parallel, but if the engine rpm is at or above 18% and not increasing steadily by 1% per second through 25%, I should flick the switch into series then. I was so impressed by this in groundschool I immediately asked why I wouldn't do it every time. It's because it's very hard on the batteries and if you drain both of them together, you only have one shot, so you have to hit it with your best shot. Also if you do it at night you need to have a flashlight handy, because it will dim the lights and you won;t be able to see the engine instruments.

The SPR valve is another thing they didn't get quite right, according to company procedures. It sounds all cool and modern with the TLA and all, and it stands for Start Pressure Regulator which brings to mind the idea that it might be some sort of computer. Nope. It's the primer. Yeah, the primer. I have to prime this puppy. Primer is available between ten and fifty-five percent rpm, but I should prime it between zero and ten percent, then not prime it between ten and twenty-five, then go back to priming until 55% when the 55% speed switch opens and de-energizes it. The SPR bypasses the fuel control unit and fuel flow transmitter, going straight to the primary fuel nozzles.

The fuel solenoid valve is the thing that lets the fuel into the engine so the igniters have something to ignite. I'm sure that makes them very happy. You can close these valves mechanically with an emergency stop control, but then you can't open them again. Ever. Okay probably not ever. I assume maintenance can fix you up again. The primaries only solenoid allows fuel through only the primary starter nozzles, not the full manifold.

The igniters are not something that I have a lot of information on, but the ignition exciters supply "a nominal high voltage of 18,000' volts to the igniters" so the exciters seem to be serving as fluffers to the igniters. The igniters are some kind of high tech spark plug that lights the fuel. I know they are different than glow plugs, because I flew an airplane once on which some models had glow plugs and some models had igniters and this was apparently different enough that I was supposed to care. (Can you tell I didn't?) I pretended to at the time, and phasers on kill, I swear I will pretend to care about this, too. The igniters light my fire. Can't start a fire without a spark. What is wrong with me? I almost never quote song lyrics. Because I don't know any.

A light comes on when the igniters are working, and the EGT should rise, indicating that something is actually on fire in there, and that the hot exhaust is coming out the right end. When it happens, the pilot can release the start button. If it doesn't happen within ten seconds of reaching 10% rpm, or before reaching 20% rpm, the pilot should shut down the engine. She does this by pressing the stop button, pulling the stop and feather control and then continuing to motor the engine for ten seconds with the starter test switch.

55% RPM

When the 55% switch (which the book calls a 50% switch, but the book is for an older model of engine, so I have to assume that changed) opens, everything that the #1 and #2 start control relays did gets undone, except for the opening of the fuel solenoid:

• the starter relay closes
• the starter turns off
• the anti-ice lockout valve opens
• the oil vent valve closes
• the series/parallel relay goes back to parallel, if it was used
• the ignition turns off
• SPR becomes unavailable
• primaries only fuel solenoid closes

Whew, that feels good. It was actually worth it. It took too long, though. I spent a couple of hours on that, between course notes, two manuals and the engine supplement. And stalking around hoping chocolate would spontaneously appear.

Is there some kind of vitamin, found only in chocolate, from which deprivation makes it difficult to study without degenerating into lame Star Trek references, old song lyrics and crude jokes?

I'm also getting antsy, waiting for my training to be scheduled. I have a job offer already, but until I actually go online as a pilot, I don't really have a job. They scheduled the first two while I was there, and I know the second one had a PPC ride today. But it could have been delayed by aircraft or training pilot availability. That happens. Or they decided they hated me and are just going to ignore me. It's not paranoia when they really are out to get you. I e-mailed the chief pilot with a question about where I should send my paperwork, kind of the way I ask ATC for an altimeter setting when I haven't talked to them in a while.

Smelly Question

This news story poses a very interesting question. A group of people who had used a toiletry item that had an odour other people found offensive were deboarded from a flight. That's the essence of it, but it's complicated by the fact that the complainers were white and the people they were complaining about were black.

An American judge, Oliver Wendell Holmes, said "The right to swing my fist ends where the other man's nose begins," and this story that shows that there's more than one way to assail a nose. There must be a line somewhere between someone turning up a nose at an unfamiliar odour, and hence at the person attached to it, versus someone truly experiencing physical distress on account of an offensive odour. It's not uncommon for an airline to refuse carriage to someone with extremely poor personal hygiene, and one often sees requests for people to avoid wearing extreme amounts of cologne in public places. But where is that line, and how do you draw it? If I sit next to you in an airplane I can likely smell your shampoo, your hair control products, your deodorant, whether you had garlic for lunch, and whether you're sacred scared. I may find your smell distracting, but would you deserve to be kicked off a plane for it? Smelly is in the nose of the beholder.

I suspect that if the airline offered to accommodate the complaining passengers on a later flight, they may have suddenly found the odour more acceptable.

The Short Bus

When I was working on my commercial licence I met a guy who flew the Screaming Whippet and one of the things I remember him saying about the aircraft was that it had a very complicated electrical system. I was looking forward to meeting this beast, but we were warned in ground school not to pre-read about it in the manual, because there were many options and modifications and that we'd get confused if we did. So it was unveiled on I believe the morning of the second day of class.

It's not so bad. Yeah, it has DC power and three different flavours of AC power, but I can understand the circuitry. There are two 24V lead acid batteries, two 28V starter-generators, and capacity to accept ground power (max 1000A), which can power electrical systems and/or charge the batteries. I've done this enough time that those are pretty standard numbers. The batteries each have their own relay connecting them to the system, then an additional relay connecting the combination, plus the GPU if connected to the battery bus. The battery bus is power distribution central on this airplane. It's located in a junction box behind the left pilot seat, and everything connects to it. Each starter-generator connects to it through a generator relay and a 325A current limiter. The DC battery bus provides power to the left and right essential buses, through 225A current limiters and also to a non-essential bus, through a 150A circuit breaker. The current limiters and circuit breaker are all located in the junction box. Each of those three DC buses described also has a bus tie switch. They are on the circuit breaker panels, under the windows on the left and right sides of the cockpit.

Most of the services are quite predictable, with the left side of the airplane being on the left bus and the right side on the right bus. There are also nine or ten (the tenth is optional) transferable items that can be switched from the left to the right DC bus in the event of a left DC bus failure. They are the turn and bank indicator, the fuel crossflow valve, the valves controlling wing and tail deicing, the windshield heat, the valve controlling left inlet anti-ice, the valve controlling right inlet anti-ice, the flap and gear position indicators, the valves controlling landing gear operation, the solenoid that applies vaccum to open the dump valve and (optionally) the pilot-side DC cockpit instruments. Flaps, nosewheel steering and all exterior lights, including landing lights are on the non-essential bus.

Each essential DC bus has one inverter, and each inverter is connected to 26V AC bus and a 115V AC bus, so four AC buses in total. The L and R 115V buses are connected together through a circuit breaker, as are the two 26V buses, so that with one inverter online, all four buses are powered. Only one inverter can be online at a time. The fuel pressure, oil pressure and some cockpit instruments are on the 26V AC bus. The fuel quantity gauge takes 115V AC. The cockpit edge lighting is powered from the 115V bus, but stepped down to 6V. Other instruments may be on one or the other depending on the airplane, you need to check the CB panels to see.

My brain is full. Remember this two weeks worth of system spam you've been receiving was a three day blitz for me. And I have SOPs and limitations to learn on top of this. I think I'll go jump on the treadmill for an hour. There's too much snow outside to go running, but it's too slushy to go skiing.

Today is Pi Day. You should celebrate by eating pie. You may heat it in an electric, gas or wood-burning, dung-burning or solar powered oven. Or another sort if you have one I didn't think of.

P.S. I got on the scale after jumping off the treadmill. Target weight minus five hundred grams. Booyah! No sugar, no alcohol and get some damned exercise. It works, people. Girl's got legs and she knows how to use 'em. Now to keep it off.

A Zebra is Its Own Opposite

Kind of funny how "sucks" and "blows" ought to be opposites, but for fellatio, undesirable situations and even airplane systems, they are pretty much the same. The pneumatic system on the Screaming Whippet produces unregulated bleed air ranging up to around 175 p.s.i., regulated 31 p.s.i. bleed air, regulated 18 p.s.i. bleed air and about 4.4 to 5.8 inches Hg suction, all by pulling hot compressed air out of the second stage compressor diffuser.

The way I look at it, the pneumatic system consists of two parts, the part that can be turned on and off with the bleed air switches, and the part that is supplied with bleed air whenever either engine is running. Bleed air tees into these two parts right after leaving each engine. The main bleed air supply to the air cycler and the pressurization system passes though left and right electrically-operated cockpit controllable bleed air valves. Even if those valves are selected open, they are spring-closed when the engine is not running, so open in response to bleed air pressure. The bleed air valves receive DC power from the non-essential bus.

The remainder of the bleed air goes through a smaller line and through check valves to supply everything else with bleed air all the time an engine is running. The two lines combine after the check valves and then divide again, with some supplying a 31 p.s.i regulator to pressurize the hydraulic system, the only system that uses air regulated at that pressure. The rest goes through an 18 p.s.i. regulator. Here there is a connection to the cockpit deice pressure gauge and a 21 p.s.i. pressure relief valve. Some 18 p.s.i. air is drawn off to the pneumatic door seal, some to an air ejector pump, to create suction, and some goes to the distributor valve. All these things are clever, and I will talk about them.

The door seal is clever because when you turn the handle to close the door, not only are you poking bayonets in to align the door, and engaging catches with door frame microswitches that report on whether or not they are properly latched, but you are opening a valve connected to the 18 p.s.i. bleed air. Once the engines are started and bleed air is available, that bleed air seals the door, so you can't turn the latch handle until the engines are shut down. Child safety locks, except that there isn't a button to press on the door frame to disable the feature. One problem is that sometimes moisture in the air can freeze that valve in the open position, so that if the engines are started with the door open (because one crew member is still outside the aircraft to disconnect the GPU) then seal inflates and it becomes impossible to turn the handle to the closed position. Advice we were given for this situation was to either shut down, then start both engines on batteries with everyone inside, or to rapidly operate the deicing boots in an attempt to lower the bleed air pressure enough to wrestle the door shut.

The ejector pump is clever just because it's an ejector pump, I mean how cool is that to create suction from blowing? Ejector (or jet or jet transfer, or injector--same thing) pumps are interesting, and fairly common in aviation, but not necessarily part of everyone's experience. It's a little bit counterintuitive, but if you're willing to accept that the force of something hurtling through a tube creates suction at the junction with other side tubes, then you can be happy like me. The intimate relationship between a thing and its opposite always fascinates me. Refrigerators, prisms, trees growing out of dead logs and ejector pumps rock my world. The air that runs the ejector is dumped overboard, having done its job. The suction line has connections to the pressurization controller, the pneumatic relay and the dump valve, plus there's the expected vacuum regulator, which has a filter, suction indicator and a suction warning switch for the low suction annunciator. I always think that should be high suction. Negative numbers are fun. They are the opposite of positive numbers, but except for a little line, they are the same. Also, I looooove zebras. Black and white both at once and shaped like a horse. There are no zebras in the suction system, but there is a connection to the distribution valve mentioned two paragraphs ago.

The distribution valve is like a four-way intersection with a traffic light (but sadly no zebra crossings). The four streets that meet there are 18 p.s.i. regulated bleed air, suction, wing boots and tail boots. Depending on how the valve is positioned, suction or pressure goes to the wing and/or tail boots. When the deicing is off, suction goes to both. During the auto cycle suction goes to one and pressure to the other, then reverse, then back to both suction. And on the manual deice setting, pressure goes to all boots.

I tried to make this make sense of the earlier story about the inlet anti-ice getting bleed air from two sources, but none of the pneumatic diagrams in my manuals show it. I think it is unregulated bleed air taken before either the bleed air shutoff valve or the 18 psi regulator.

The groundschool went well. Management pilots did a little them-on-one with each of us, answering questions. They intelligently identified the weaknesses in my experience, and I acknowledged them and asserted how I would overcome them. Or at least that's how I remember it. Maybe I just drooled and picked my nose. They scheduled training for the first two, and will call next week when they are through and it's our turn.

Anti-Ice Without Electrical Heating

Yesterday's post was mostly about electrical heating elements that prevent ice from accreting on various parts of the airframe. Today is about anti-icing measures that do not involve electrical heating, except in as much as the flow of electricity always causes some heating.

The leading edge of the wing and tail are covered in what is essentially a network of bicycle wheel inner tubes stretched out straight, covered in a neoprene sheet and connected to a nozzle. At the pilot's command, an electrically operated regulated 18 p.s.i. bleed air inflates the tubes, called boots and pops off the ice. Whether the pilot commands it or not, at all times that the boots are not being inflated, suction pulls the boots back snugly against the wing. The suction also comes from the 18 p.s.i. regulated bleed air, through the same distributor as the positive pressure. I'll explain how it can both suck and blow later. This system is yet another controlled by a three position switch. The OFF position leaves the solenoids controlling the distributor de-energized, and the wing boots connected to vacuum and sucked against the wing and tail. The AUTO position opens the solenoid allowing 18 p.s.i. regulated bleed air into the wing boots, inflating them for six seconds. Then that pressure is dumped overboard and the wing boots gets sucked back against the wing while the tail boots get inflates for four seconds. After that the system rests for 170 seconds and starts over. The third position is MANUAL and all the boots will remain inflated for as long as the pilot holds the switch in that position. Electrical control of the solenoid can be assigned to either the left or right essential bus.

Inside the engine inlet is a probe called the P2T2 probe (or the R2D2 probe, depending on who is talking). Its job ought to be transmitting pressure and temperature readings for that station to the engine computer, but considering that it is kept ice free with P3 bleed air, it seems that it wouldn't be an accurate indicator of the temperature and pressure there. What am I missing? And does its output have to be translated by a C3PO probe before it can be used? This web page has condescending British people telling someone else who dared ask that anyone at the ATPL level who has to ask questions about a P2T2 probe is lazy and stupider than a toenail. Maybe so, but I know how it's anti-iced. Mostly I know. I'm not sure if it is automatically supplied with bleed air at all times or whether that's part of the inlet anti-ice.

I like the way the anti-ice for the oil cooler works. It simply runs the line taking hot oil from the engine around the lip of the air intake before routing it to the oil cooler. No electricity required.

The fuel anti-icing (i.e. to prevent ice crystals from forming in the fuel thus blocking the filters or lines) also uses heat from the oil, but not quite so simply. As the high-pressure engine fuel pumps draws fuel through the filter towards the fuel control unit, some fuel is routed off to the side, through a heat exchanger, heated with scavenged hot oil and then metered through a temperature-controlled anti-icing valve and sent right back to where it started before the filter. I don't know the exact mechanism; it probably involves a bimetallic controller, but the colder the fuel, the wider the anti-icing valve opens and the more fuel has to take the scenic route through the oil-fuel heater. An additional valve in the system, just before the heater, closes when the engine speed is below about 50 or 55% rpm, to prevent any fuel from being diverted during engine start, the only time such low speeds should occur.

Back to the very low tech, the manufacturer claims that the static ports and fuel vents on the airplane are anti-ice. They have no heating, it's just that the fuel vents are concave and out of the airflow, so there is nothing for ice to build up on, and the static ports are also very flat and at the rear of the aircraft. Just in case they were to ice up, there is an alternate static source located in the unpressurized forward baggage compartment.

There are two more anti-icing systems on the standard aircraft, but they are both irrelevant to this fleet, one because the system it belongs to has been removed, and the other because it was an option not installed.

Also, can someone please tell the person who writes the scripts for my bank's drones to read at me while I try to set up automatic payment on my new credit card that (a) a new credit card is not an occasion for "congratulations," and (b) "I want to inform you some points" is not English.

And in current news, when a huge tragedy strikes, and it's too much to take in all at once, people focus on the corners of it that are most relevant to them. I woke up to e-mail chatter about international flight schedules, plus this video of the tsunami associated with Japan's earthquake hitting an airport. Even people with no international connections have something in Japan they can relate to. I laughed to see the internet hasten to assure us that Maru the Cat and his owner are fine. But what is a mass tragedy if not thousands of individual tragedies, and, thanks to stringent building standards combined with preparation and training, millions of people who can say, "I'm okay, and so is my cat."

Heating Elements: Making Coffee, Shedding Ice

You know you've been reading too many airplane manuals when you can't turn on the coffee maker without thinking, "horizontally-mounted unlabelled three-position rocker switch spring loaded to the centre position, with an adjacent amber indicator light illuminating when the heat cycle has been activated by momentary left pressure on the rocker switch," and then wondering about the circuitry of the heating cycle and of the timer that deactivates it if you walk away and leave it on.

The Screaming Whippet has electrical heating elements, but not for making coffee. Both left and right pitot tubes are electrically heated, from their respective DC power buses, and there is a switchable loadmeter in the cockpit for checking their operation. The pitot heats are operated by a vertically mounted three-position rocker switch, but the upper, pitot heat position is rarely used, in favour of the lower position which heats both the stall indication vane and the pitot tubes. The windshields are also electrically heated, through the largest (60A & 50A) circuit breakers on the airplane, via the left and right essential DC buses. With windshield heat selected to LOW, the panes in front of both the pilot and the copilot are heated together, with single thermostat, such that if the sun is to one side or the other of the airplane and one windshield reaches the 90-100 degree Fahrenheit temperature, it will cycle off despite the other one not being hot yet. With the windshield heat switch set to HIGH the windshields cycle separately, with twice as much power as before going to the captain's side. I'll have to check, but I think the FO may not get any more heat on HIGH.

Let's see, what else is electrically heated? The propellers are. On the leading edge of each blade there is a little grid of wires, kind of like the ones on your car's rear window defogger, except that these are under a rubber cover. There is an inner and outer element, although it looks like just one. And there's a really really long skinny cord so that it can wrap round and round and round the propeller without coming unplugged. No, I'm kidding about that. It's tricky to have an electrical cord on a propeller. There is instead a slip ring assembly with a brush block so that electrical contact can be made without a hardwired connection as the propeller goes round and round about two thousand times a minute. Each propeller heating element draws power through a 25A CB on its same-side 28V essential DC bus. The system operates on a timer, switching on all inner and then all outer elements on either propeller, and it's not crystal clear from the description whether that means a four stage cycle with only one propeller at a time or a two stage cycle with the inner for both props together and then the outer for both props. There's an ammeter that shows the current being supplied to the prop anti-ice; the manual says it should be about 14-18 A per propeller, which suggests to me that they are both on at once. You can switch the ammeter back and forth to show the left propeller or right propeller draw. But then it also says there is a separate timer for each propeller, so I'm not quite sure. When you turn it on, heating starts wherever it left off last, not at any predetermined position.

Propeller heat is on the same switch as nacelle inlet anti-ice, but in the case of a failure of one essential DC bus, only the inlet anti-ice can be switched to the other. Power can not be supplied to the propeller elements on the side with the failure.

I didn't mentioned the inlet anti-ice before the above paragraph, because it doesn't include an electrically heated element, but seeing as it's on the same switch as the propeller heat, I'll put it here. Inlet anti-ice refers to the engine inlet, the part at the front of the engine where air comes in to make the engine work. It is important that this area not become clogged with snow or ice. Instead of using electricity to heat this area, really hot air is blasted into it. This works well and being that the engine inlet is really close to the engine, it has a ready supply of really hot air. It's not exhaust: that's too hot and is at the other end of the engine. (A number of readers will now being going clue! because believe it or not "the exhaust comes out the back of the engine" is not a universal truth with airplanes). This is bleed air that has been heated by compression in the front part of the engine.

I will now quote some facts about the engine intake air from the training manual. Keep in mind this is a training manual, a collection of useful information felt essential for new pilots to learn before flying this airplane. It is not a maintenance and repair manual or a set of blueprints. The first paragraph of the description tells me that bleed air is obtained for this purpose from two different ports, one being "the main anti-icing bleed port" and the other the "cabin pressurization bleed port." It doesn't tell me the relative location of these ports in the engine or how the two sources are different, so I'm not sure why I should care, but in the second paragraph they want to be sure that I know that "the flow from the main anti-icing bleed port runs through an anti-ice valve to a tee: the tee has an orifice of 0.234 inch diameter." Sadly, I will now remember this, and possibly I will also remember that "the line supplying the left-hand side of the distribution duct has a 0.204 inch diameter orifice." Why? Why am I burdened with this information? I understand that the brain does not actually fill up with facts, so that having this one thrust upon me does not decrease the likelihood of my remembering the essential items to complete in case of an engine fire (stop it, close the firewall fuel shutoff, close the hydraulic shutoff, discharge the fire bottle), but still, it's distracting.

Manual-provided information of which I do approve includes more about the switches and annunciator lights. The switches (one for each side) each have three positions: ON, OFF and TEST. In the ON position, the electrically operated valve that allows bleed air to flow through those very specifically sized orifices to do its deicing job is commanded to open, and if the circuitry can verify that the valve did indeed open, the appropriate INTAKE HEAT ON annunciator is illuminated. In the OFF position, the valve should close. Assigning bleed air to this task comes at a cost: a drop in engine torque and a rise in exhaust gas temperature. That is to be expected because the compressed air would otherwise have been used to cool and contain the combustion area and to drive the power turbines. Because of the performance hit we would take if the valves did not motor to the off position when so commanded, electrical power to those valves can be taken from either essential DC bus. There is also a means of verifying that they actually did close: when the switch is depressed to the test position, if the circuitry can verify that the valve is closed, the INTAKE HEAT ON annunciator illuminates. That's kind of backwards, but pretty clever, really. And far more interesting than the diameter of the bleed air orifices. Hey, I just figured out why they included the diameter of the bleed air orifices in the manual. It's to ensure that the test function of the inlet anti-icing valves could be far more interesting than something.

There are more anti-icing measures on the Screaming Whippet, but there are several more anti-icing systems on the airplane, most of which have an electrical component, but I'll put them in a different post, because this one is mainly about heating elements.

Also I've been reading over the details of the job offer. I think this is a real job. Like I get paid extra for working on statutory holidays. Just to keep the Canadian content up, I'll tell you what they are: New Year’s Day, Good Friday, Victoria Day, Canada Day, Labour Day, Thanksgiving Day, Remembrance Day, Christmas Day, and Boxing Day. It seems that for International Ice Cream for Breakfast Day (first Saturday in February) I'll be on my own.

Juice Holding and Delivery

The airplane has a fairly simple fuel system. At least, I've seen worse. The fuel sits right in the wings, no fancy tanks, no bladders, just fuel everywhere, with the ribs acting as anti-slosh baffles and the five percent dihedral directing the fuel inboard. Yup, it leaks. There are flapper valves on three of the ribs to allow fuel to flow inboard but not outboard. Inboard of the engine nacelle, at the wing root, the inside of the wing is divided along the the chord into three sections: a forward collector tank, a centre hopper tank and an aft collector tank. Two submersible boost pumps are in the fuel in the hopper tank and the tanks are connected to each other and the main body of the wing though flapper valves, allowing fuel into but not out of the hopper tank. The boost pumps (only one per wing can be selected on at a time, so they are used on alternate days) send the fuel towards the engines, but on the way there some of the fuel is diverted down a side line to provide the motive force for a pair of jet pumps (the same as ejector pumps, look it up) to transfer fuel from the collector tanks to the hopper tank and always keep the hopper tank full to its fourteen gallon capacity.

Further downstream in that line is an electrically operated emergency shutoff valve, a filter, with a bypass line in case the filter gets plugged, a fuel heating loop through which an anti-icing valve will automatically meter fuel if need be, a fuel transmitter, engine driven fuel pumps, a fuel control unit, and the engine. There is no crossfeed system, but there's an electrically operated valve you can open that connects the two wing tanks through a pipe, and you can transfer fuel through it by sideslipping, or balance the two sides (they have to be within 500 lbs) by remaining in level flight with it open. Sophisticated, eh?

Fuel indication is through capacitance, with five capacitance probes in each tank. The cockpit fuel gauge reads in pounds and is corrected to read zero when only the thirteen pounds of unusable fuel remains. For reasons I haven't researched, failure of one of the probes causes fuel quantity to overread on the gauge, which requires 115V AC power for its operation. There is also a float switch in the hopper tank which illuminates an annunciator whenever there is less than 13 gallons in the hopper. The annunciator is labelled L/R XFER PUMP, because one reason for there to be less than 14 gallons in a hopper tank is that the corresponding boost pump failed, so the ejectors aren't transferring fuel from the collectors, and there is less than 600-700 lbs of fuel in the tank so that the hopper doesn't stay full anyway. If you turn on the other boost pump in that tank and the light goes out, then you had a bad boost pump. If the light doesn't go out, then it means one of
(a) you have two bad boost pumps and less than 700 lbs of fuel on that side,
(b) the boost pump is working and you have less than 75 lbs of fuel on that side, or
(c) the flapper valve that triggers the XFER PUMP light is stuck.
Option (c) is by far the most likely, and can be verified to near-certainly by knowing how much fuel you put in the airplane and crosschecking with the fuel gauge and the fuel flow totalizer. If no boost pump is working in a tank, the unusable fuel increases to 88 lbs, and the usable fuel will have been exhausted when the gauge reads 75 lbs. Because AC gauges freeze in place when power is removed, there is a test switch on the fuel gauge. When the test switch is depressed, the fuel gauge should indicate zero, if it's working correctly.

Here's some more about the boost pumps. The two pumps on any one side are exactly the same as far as I know, but one is called "main" and the other called "aux," just so you can tell them apart. The switch that controls them is a vertically mounted three position rocker switch, OFF in the middle, MAIN on the top and AUX on the bottom. For each wing the main pump runs on 28.5V DC electric from the corresponding essential DC electrical bus, and the aux pump draws power through the opposite bus. That way, with one essential bus failed, you can still have one operating boost pump in each tank.

There is a gauge showing fuel pressure between the engine-driven low and high pressure boost pumps. It requires 26V AC power and should read 20-30 p.s.i. while the engine is in operation.

And in case you're wondering, yes I am going to just spew airplane systems at you for the next little while. I'm writing multiple ones a day, so they'll last you a couple of weeks. This is what I have to know and do in order to get to the point where you're pushing the throttles forward. Feel free to e-mail me random quizzes on what I profess to know.

More Pressure

These puppies have pressurized airframes, and so have an entire system to control the coming in and the going out of the air. Like the other posts in this series, this one will concentrate on what I have to know, with little concession to those who don't know what I'm talking about, but I find it most useful to explain things in quirky ways, so it may be interesting anyway. And feel free to ask questions. You may hit on something I ought to know. The pressurization system includes static ports (holes in the airplane used to sense how rarefied the outside air is), bleed air (compressed air from the engines), an outflow valve (a hole to let the air out), a dump valve (a bigger hole to let all the air out if you need to) a controller (a gauge in the instrument panel with a dial and a knob that you use to tell the airplane how much air to keep inside and how much to dump overboard), a couple of safety valves, a bunch of lines and relays and things, and a couple of gauges that tell you how all that is going for you.

The maximum differential pressure between the inside of the airplane and the outside of the airplane is 7.0 p.s.i., giving a sea level cabin at 16,800' and a 4600' cabin at the service ceiling of 25,000'. The various gauges work kind of like an altimeter or a VSI, comparing reference pressure, cabin pressure and static pressure as appropriate to drive indicator needles. Pneumatic relays associated with the controller create pressure differentials that can drive valves. There is more detail available on this system, but all they need me to know is that I turn knobs to set the controller and that the controller commands things to happen according to my whims, such as allowing or not allowing air out the outflow valve in order to hold the cabin pressure at the set value. The outflow controller will also open if the differential between cabin and external pressure exceeds 7.25 p.s.i. or if the outside air pressure exceeds the inside. When these things aren't happening, a spring holds the outflow valve closed. The training manual describes a number of interesting diaphragms and valves that activate the opening and closing of the outflow valve under different conditions, but they want me to say only that it is opened by vacuum and closed by a spring.

The cabin air pressure dump valve has a similar pressure release function, as the outflow valve, both in the overpressure and underpressure case, plus it can be opened with an electric solenoid valve to dump the cabin pressure, equalizing the cabin with the outside atmosphere. Technically the electric solenoid connects the dump valve to vacuum pressure, causing "the dump valve diaphragm to open the dump valve." But I think I would lose points for getting into that detail, and should say that it is opened electrically, using a solenoid that gets its power from the left essential DC bus, transferable to the right. When pressure is dumped, it is dumped into the nose baggage compartment, which happens to be the same place the alternate static source gets its pressure, so a cabin dump should not be performed while instruments are operating on the alternate static source.

There is also a manual control valve that can be used to bypass the pressure controller and directly adjust the opening of the outflow valve. For the manual valve to have an effect, a switch on the console must be moved from auto to manual. This is the sort of thing I expect from pressurization systems, so you can perhaps get an inkling of the sort of things pilots were yelling at the screen during Snakes on a Plane, which if I recall correctly was the movie in which they solved an overpressurization problem with gunfire through the fuselage.

More interesting than the magic boxes and networks of vacuum hoses is how I use it. First some terminology. The cabin altitude is the altitude I'd be at in an unpressurized airplane for the cabin to be at the pressure it's at. The rate of climb or descent of the cabin is the rate of change of the pressure there. With pressurization, the cabin altitude can be different than the airplane altitude, so that we don't have wear oxygen masks above 13,000'. To set the pressure I dial the controller so that the bottom part displays about a thousand feet higher than the altitude I will be flying at. That way the arrow points to the minimum cabin altitude I can maintain for the flight, without worrying about it banging up and down on small altitude deviations. If the world were flat, I could mostly leave it at that, but airports are at all different elevations and this introduces some issues.

To begin with, the airplane is not pressurized on the ground. It's bad for the airframe to land pressurized, there's no point, you'd have to depressurize to open the door, and why pump up the cabin to an altitude lower than the one the passengers walked in the door at? It wouldn't work anyway, as the dump valve is linked to the squat switch and if it's working properly it stays open on the ground. If you set the cabin altitude to sea level then took off from an airport with a 3000' altitude, as soon as the weight came off the wheels, the dump valve would close and the airplane would try to pressurize the cabin down to sea level. That's just weird, and most people don't like the feeling on their ears when they are descending. The whole point of a pressurized airplane is to avoid that as much as possible. So I set the cabin altitude to the higher of what I will be maintaining in cruise and the departure airport pressure altitude plus a thousand. So coming off a 3000' airport I'd set it to 4000' if I was cruising at 20,000' or below, but if I was going to cruise at 25,000', I'd set the cabin altitude to 5000' or so, because the controller says I can maintain a cabin altitude of 4600' at 25,000'. So I'd take off, the dump valve would close, and the cabin pressure would be 3000'. The controller would not start pressurizing the cabin because it was already at a lower altitude than selected. It would let some air leak out as we climbed to 4000' and then it would stop letting air out and start hoarding it, to keep the cabin altitude at 4000' as the airplane rockets on up to cruise altitude. At top of descent I would set the controller to maintain a cabin altitude about 500' above the landing airport, and a descent rate of 500 feet per minute. If the landing airport were at 1000', that would take five minutes, and meanwhile I could be plummeting through the real descent at 3000 fpm without hurting anyone's ears.

The thing to watch is if the cabin is going to take longer to reach the landing elevation than the actual airplane, because you can "catch the cabin." The problem with that is that the cabin cannot be at a higher altitude than the airplane, because that would mean less pressure inside than outside, and the pressure vessel is only designed to take pressure from the inside. The outflow valve will automatically let in outside pressure if it exceeds the inside pressure, so as soon as you catch the cabin, you feel the descent just as you would in an unpressurized airplane. So to prevent this you can increase the descent rate of the cabin, decrease the descent rate of the real airplane, or level off at an intermediate altitude to allow the cabin to get ahead.

The pressure comes from P3 bleed air, from the second stage diffuser. I'll probably have much more to say about this system once I've actually worked with it.

When I need a break from hard studying work, I start filling out all the company forms. I have to put my height and weight on my security pass application. I'm 1.5 kg above my target weight. I omit the half and put myself down at one above. Or I could wait a week and lose those last 1500g and put down what I should be. I look way better now. You don't notice the little layer when it creeps up on you. A little more butt toning and I'll look the way I want to.

Variable Authority

Up to now in my career, I have flown airplanes that I steered on the ground through pure mechanical linkages powered by my own muscles. I was using levers to physically shove the nosewheel into pointing the way I wanted to turn the airplane. The Screaming Whippet one is too big for me to kick around by myself, or they don't want to make levers that big, so it uses electrically controlled, hydraulically activated, variable authority nosewheel steering. I have to remember that description in case I'm asked about it on the ride. (Ride is pilotspeak for flight test). I also have to remember a whole lot more about how it works.

First pass, what I remember and understand from the class and the reading without looking anything more up:

Nosewheel steering is on the non-essential DC electrical bus. It must be armed and activated to be used. You arm it with a toggle switch, the location and position of which I can't picture now and it becomes activated when the squat switch indicates that you are on the ground and one of the following things happens. Either a) the right speed lever is moved into the low position or b) a button on the side of the left power lever is pressed and held. (Yes, I have both speed and power levers: resolving units, you'd think you'd get a power lever by forcing the speed lever, but that would be a geeky joke and not the reality of this airplane). Once the system is activated, you steer with the rudder pedals, just like old times.

Moving a rudder pedal sends a signal to a potentiometer. There's a pile of potentiometers, I think it was four. One of them represents the input you gave to the rudder pedal, one the position of the nosewheel, one the target position and one for good luck. So maybe it was three. The difference between the target and the position is sent to a selector valve which shuttles the appropriate way to send hydraulic fluid to a piston operating rack and pinion steering to pivot the nose gear in the appropriate direction. The channels in the shuttle valve go straight through for left turns and criss-cross to reverse the pressure for right turns. When the commanded steering meets the actual steering, the system holds that input until a new input is received or the system is disarmed. In the later case it smoothly recentres. The maximum steering in this mode is ten degrees either side of centre, but you can get up to sixty-three degrees deflection in park mode, by pressing and holding the park button. This is for manoeuvring into a tight parking spot. I really hope I don't often have to parallel park this airplane.

There's an annunciator for the system being armed, an annunciator for it activated and a flashing one if it fails. Because it's an electrical system, there is a chance of transient weirdness, and transient weirdness is not something you want to see in large vehicle steering If there's a three degree disagreement between two of the potentiometers, representing some form of where it's requested to be and where it thinks it is going, the system disconnects. You can still steer with braking and power.

Now let me see if by re-reading the chapter I can fix that up, and add things I forgot.

There is a command potentiometer (my "input you gave the rudder pedal") on the left side of the rudder pedal linkage, and a fault protection monitor potentiometer (my "target position") on the right side. There are two more potentiometers on top of the steering actuator, a control follow-up potentiometer (my "position of the nosewheel") and another one for the fault protection monitor circuit. So I was right, there are four, and if monitoring faults is good luck, I got them all right. Well, let's see.

There is a "Nose Steer Computer/Amplifier" which "contains Servo Valve Solenoid drive circuitry to initiate steering based on Rudder Pedal Potentiometer and Nose Gear Follow-up Potentiometer Position." (Why yes, this training manual is apparently so old that it predates the late eighteenth century English move to distance itself from its Germanic roots and not capitalize all nouns).

Okay, reading the quasi-incunabulum more closely, I surmise that the follow-up potentiometer simply turns with the nosewheel steering column, and has the same type of electrical connections as the rudder pedal potentiometer. When the "wiper resistance," a term I am not familiar with, but which I'll read as "the combined effect of the electrical connection and the turning," of the two is the same, the steering is deemed to have turned as far as commanded. The hydraulic supply ports close, so the wheel is locked in the position it was steered to.

I think the Rudder Pedal Monitor Potentiometer must be at the same wiper resistance as the Rudder Pedal Potentiometer--perhaps one potentiometer can only be compares with one other potentiometer, so the latter needs the former to shadow it. My manual names former, and the fourth potentiometer, the Hydraulic Actuator Monitor Potentiometer only once, in the sentence, "In either case, if a difference greater than approximately 3 degrees exists between the Rudder Pedal Monitor Potentiometer and the Hydraulic Actuator Monitor Potentiometer, the protective circuitry within the computer will shut down the system." I can't quite follow that all the way, but I know it means that if the monitor circuit thinks that the commands sent to the hydraulic system are incorrect, it will disconnect the steering to avoid having an electrical irregularity steer an airplane off a runway.

Absent positive steering, you still have directional control of an airplane through braking and differential power, so this is better than definitive by incorrect steering inputs. The "in either case" above refers to the case of a wheel being locked in place despite commanded steering versus uncommanded steering occurring.

The arming switch is located on the left hand console.

I also need to remember the fault test switch and that the system acts as a shimmy damper when not activated, but left in what is known as castoring mode, and that on retraction it automatically centres because the centre position is the low point in the race ... ah I guess I don't understand that well enough to explain it clearly. Also variable authority. I'll say that again to make sure I remember it.

Today is, I believe, International Women's Day. There is one male on our course and the rest are females, who happened to all be connected. The man had a eureka moment when the women all had connections to one another, either having previously met, knowing people in common, or just the familiarity of being females in aviation. We were all talking about then and catching up. He suddenly realized what it must feel like to not be part of the "old boys' network," and the girls saw it at about the same time. We promised not to exclude him from our network, and of course had no intention to do so, but through the week I noticed that our conversations would drift into discussions of female interest topics like clothing, or career planning in the context of postponing or forgoing pregnancy and he would be unintentionally excluded by dint of not having experience or opinions. It must have been for him exactly as it is for me when my usually all male colleagues start discussing football, or someone getting drunk while hunting and rolling his truck. It's hard to get into a conversation when you can't identify with the decisions being made or discussed. I can sort of feel for the men who feel threatened about women in traditionally male-dominated fields, but I don't think it will hurt them to learn to say "aww" when they hear about strangers' babies any more than it has hurt the women to feign interest in football for social purposes.

Pressure

I have four days to learn all the systems and SOPs for the Screaming Whippet and its larger cousin, I guess that must be the Screaming Greyhound. Then they'll schedule flight training and tests, and on passing we will have our job offers finalized and be paid for the time we have spent in school and training. So, no pressure or anything, right? More like pressure down over the top and around to every corner. And pressure that can cause action by going around corners is what the hydraulic system is about.

The hydraulic system provides motive force for the flaps, nosewheel steering, normal landing gear extension, and emergency landing gear extension. It contains one approximately 2.5 L reservoir, serviced with Brayco-882 hydraulic fluid and pressurized to 31 psi with regulated P3 bleed air. It has a relief valve on top which will release pressure over 45 psi. The reservoir supplies fluid through emergency shutoff valves (which are only to be used in emergencies, because otherwise they cut off the fluid supply to two engine driven hydraulic pumps which will be damaged if they are working away trying to pressurize the system to 2000 psi but there is no fluid for them to pump. The high pressure fluid from each hydraulic pump continues through a line containing a low pressure sensor. The sensor illuminates a low hydraulic pressure annunciator at or below about 1250 psi. Both hydraulic pumps must be working to depart, but it's okay if one of the low pressure switches is broken. If a low pressure light is on after both engines are started, you have to figure out if it represents a bad pump or bad sensor.

You can't do this by looking at the hydraulic pressure gauge, because it is located downstream of checkvalves, after the two lines from the two pumps have been merged together, and either pump alone is enough to provide 2000 psi to the system. And you can't do it by momentarily selecting the hydraulic pump off on the good side, because I was serious when I said the hydraulic pumps were to be shut off only in an emergency. So you have to do it by shutting off the engine on the good side. (You do this only on the ground, because if it happens in the air you don't need to worry about being good to depart: you've already departed). With one engine running, if that side's low hydraulic pressure warning light is still on and the system hydraulic pressure is still at 2000 psi, then obviously there is nothing wrong with the pump and it must be the pressure switch or something in the low hydraulic light circuit that is unserviceable, and you are allowed to depart. You have to remember to restart the other engine, though.

The system also includes an accumulator (a buffer for sudden high demand) with a 750 psi nitrogen precharge. There is also a high pressure relief valve if the pressure manages to exceed about 2300 psi, and return lines from the pressure relief valve and the various services, back through a filter to the main resevoir. The reservoir, accumulator, filter and the flap and landing gear selector valves are all located outboard in the left engine nacelle. The engine-driven pumps are in the engines, with the shut-off valves nearby. The pressure gauge and warning lights are in the cockpit, where I can see them.

Each leg of the landing gear has two dual (i.e. up and down) action hydraulic actuators. Both are required to make the gear come up, but only one is required to put the gear down, thanks to assistance from gravity and airflow for the latter task. (It's forward-retracting gear, a first for me). Thus for normal landing gear extension, the landing gear selector valve sends pressure to only one actuator on each gear leg. The extension side of the other three actuators are connected to another parallel section of the hydraulic system that I haven't mentioned yet. In addition to the lines leading to the engine-driven hydraulic pumps, there is a standpipe that holds about one litre of fluid and which connects to an emergency hand pump, and thence to the extension side of those second landing gear actuators. If the pressure in the normal side of the hydraulic system is too low (below about 250 psi) to extend the gear, the pilot turns on the emergency landing gear selector valve, turns the emergency gear release lever, and ensures the gear is fully extended by pumping a handle in the cockpit. A shuttle valve causes the hydraulic pressure gauge to always display whichever is higher, the emergency or normal system pressure.

There is one dual-action actuator for each flap, and the flaps are interconnected such that either actuator can move both flaps through their full 36 degrees of travel, making asymmetrical flap deployment an impossibility unless the airplane is first disassembled. There is no provision for emergency flap extension or retraction. If the normal hydraulic system fails, the flaps are locked where they are by the flap selector valves and the flap lock valves. If electrical power (to operate the valve) or hydraulic power (to operate the flap actuators) should fail during flap movement, the valve fails to the closed position, locking the flap where it was.

Nosewheel steering I will address in another post.

No Stalling

No, I'm not slacking off or stalling by blogging. Telling other people how a system works is one of my favourite ways of integrating knowledge. And stall protection is an important system on this airplane. Aviation people know what a "stall" is and non-aviation people can probably follow this if I say merely that a stall is a loss of aerodynamic lift experienced when an airplane is not getting the right airflow over its wings, typically a result of going too slowly. Its only relation to the locomotion problem of the same name experienced in an automobile (say if there's a problem with the engine or if the driver is out of practice operating a manual transmission) is that the vehicle in question stops going forward. This is especially bad in an airplane because then it goes down. This is a gross simplification to get to the topic. For more information on the physics of the stall, see your local aerodynamics textbook or the comment pedants below. If you are bored or baffled by the technical aircraft information in this and the following posts, recall that the other option would be no posts at all while I am busy.

The Screaming Whippet has a multistage stall prevention system. Indications to the pilot of the possibility of a stall include an angle of attack indicator with coloured sectors (green for cruise, white for approach, yellow for slow, black and red striped for the warning area and red for stall), an audible stall horn, a stick pusher, and a plethora of annunciator lights for the various states of the system.

The system gets its inputs from an angle of attack vane (which may be either a paddle that is pivoted so that it is free to align with the airflow against the side of the left forward fuselage or a motoring pitot tube-like arrangement on the outboard right wing leading edge), a flap position transmitter (the same speed may be safe or not, depending on flap position), an airspeed limit switch in the copilot's pitot system, a squat switch inboard on the left main gear (it is not a danger to be going slowly while on the ground), and a test circuit. The first three inputs go to a computer which uses them to calculate the ratio of V/Vs (current speed to stall speed) and output it to the pointer on the AoA indicator. At approximately 1.1 Vs, or 5-10 kts above stall, a warning horn will sound. At stall speed (from 1 knot below to 4 knots above) a stick pusher will apply 60 lbs of forward force to the control column, commanding the airplane into a nose-down attitude, the first step in stall recovery.

The motive force for the stick pusher comes from a loud servo motor (everything on the Whippet screams) for which there is a slip clutch, so that it can be overpowered by the pilot if need be, and a magnetic clutch to enable it to give a varying amount of pulling force. It's attached to the elevator actuator beam, which is linked directly to the yoke my cables. Its engagement serves to both jolt the nose down and jolt the pilot out of whatever stupidity caused her to almost stall the aircraft. The servo is not powered unless the squat switch indicates that there is no weight on the wheels, the airspeed limit switch indicates that the airspeed is below 140 (+/-5) kts, and the emergency override switch has not been set to disengage the clutch. So if the airplane is flying, but below 140 kts, that switch should be on and an annunciator light should indicate that the system is armed.

If something is not working, the system tells me about that too. The warning light flashes if the servo has stopped or the clutch is disengaged, and comes on steady if the computer fails. (It's steady if the servo and/or clutch has failed as well as the computer).

The system must be tested before flight, so there is a test function. It consists of a three position switch, spring-loaded to the centre off position. The other tow positions connects the servo to power and respectively give the computer stall and cruise inputs. The indicator, warning horn and stick pusher should all respond as at a stall to the first position, and the indicator should show 1.3 Vs, with no horn or pusher at the cruise position. It's important to ensure that the gust lock system is disengaged before testing the stick pusher, and also to hold the control column firmly to prevent the stick pusher from smashing any instruments.

We were told in class that if the test mode was unserviceable, we could still test it on the ground by manually moving the external AoA vane, from the stalled position to the cruise position, while having someone manually depress the squat switch. (I know it sounds odd that a squat switch could be manually bypassed without lifting the airplane, but this is an odd design where lifting the weight off the wheels depresses the switch and placing weight on the wheels unpresses it).

Also, this hotel room is freezing. What is this? Winter in Canada?

And in isn't it supposed to only be in movies that you can escape the passenger cabin through an aircraft toilet?

The Airplane Moves Even Faster

If you're looking for a job right now, take heart. The incubation period for resumés can be long, but eventually things start to happen. My life is like popcorn right now. Within twenty-four hours I've had a "come and see" type groundschool invitation, a phone interview, another interview scheduled somewhere else, and a job offer for a job I didn't apply for. Imagine that all going past in a montage now, me at a groundschool, and you hoping I'll have time to explain how I got here in a flashback, later.

This industry is fast. So is the airplane I'm learning now. I shall dub it the "Screaming Whippet," because it is loud, fast and needs attentive management or it will escape and start digging holes. (I think the dog sort of whippet is more likely to chase cars than dig holes, but all metaphors get snagged somewhere). Some of you will recognize the aircraft, and I will much appreciate both your e-mailed advice and your not naming it or providing further hints to its identity or that of its operator in the comments. You all know the drill.

My other comment for the day is "Oy, new employment ... so many forms!" The provincial, and federal tax forms, confidentiality forms, payroll deposit forms, emergency contact and all would be terrifying in themselves, but they pale next to the brain flattening terror of the draconian training bond. The lizard part of my brain tells me the correct response to risk is to curl up under a rock and hold really still, but its input is not really applicable now that I am no longer a lizard. I'm climbing out from under my rock to do this right.

Ask and Ye Shall Receive

I have a little bit of lawn and a little bit of garden, such that I can plant herbs¹ and then come back from work and discover that the lawn and the herbs have all gone to seed, plus that the lawn-garden interface has lost any kind of delineation. I'd been toying a while with the idea of enforcing some kind of separation of chervil and sod: dig a moat, put up a fence, deadly slugs², that sort of thing, and had even gone so far as to stop off at a closed garden store to look through the car window at a display of different kinds of bricks available for purchase as garden edging.

While I was in Cambodia I was inspired by the local creativity in making handbags out of out of old feed sacks, crafts from broken motorcycle seats, homes and even fishing trawlers out of what would be landfill in Canada. I decided that I would reduce what I bought and edge my garden in some cleverly crafted reused item, maybe jars or tin cans from the recycling bin.³ I met a friend for lunch and enthusiastically explained this plan. Before I could get into my musings on the aesthetic possibilities of empty pickle jars, she pointed out that there was a pile of interlocking bricks in the alley behind her house, and she'd be grateful if they went away. Well, that would work too. Work better, in fact.

Her bricks turned out to be exactly the sort I had tagged as my favourite at the garden store, so I dug them out of the snowbank beside her garage and hauled them home. When the angle of the sun on the planet cranked around enough that it was possible to work in the garden, I hacked into the grassroot-matted mess around the perennials, dug a brick-sized trench, and filled it in with a line of bricks. It immediately looked better. The only problem, which I discussed with my neighbour while carefully avoiding having my fingers crushed by her two-year-old's enthusiastic assistance with the brick laying, was that I had not quite enough bricks. "Oh you'll find some more somewhere," my neighbour assured me, after attempting to explain to said two-year-old the difference between passing someone a brick and throwing it at her.

I finished up with what I had and drove off to the cow guy's⁴ farm to get a hundred kilograms of frozen cow bits. Parked in the farmyard I noticed a pile of bricks bigger than my car. Some of the bricks were just like the ones I had run out of. "What are the bricks for?" I asked. They were for an abandoned project, and were unneeded. With the meat, there was just enough room left in the back of the car for ten bricks.

And then when I got home from delivering the meat there was an e-mail inviting me to groundschool for one of the jobs I had applied for. It's not a job offer, but it will get me off the couch, allow me to meet some other pilots, learn about a new airplane, and I hope will lead to a job offer. I think I will go.

1. Being that I'm Canadian, I'd better specify that I'm talking about the culinary rather that the 'medicinal' variety.
2. Being that I'm Canadian, I shouldn't have to specify that I'm talking about the gastropod, not the lead kind.
3. Having travelled to places that don't routinely recycle even office paper or aluminum beverage cans, I should explain that in many places in Canada there is curbside pickup or drop-off depots for many recyclable items: glass, plastics, metal, compost, paper, so recycling is mainstream, not a wacky hippie pursuit.
4. I'm in a sort of mini co-op where we bulk buy farmgate meat, and I volunteered to drive this time.

Tailor-Made Job

An advertised job caught my eye because the requirements spanned experience gained at every phase of my aviation career. Writing a cover letter was suddenly easy because I could knock everything he asked for out of the park. I did some research on the company to find out more about what they were doing and I realized I had more skills that were relevant. I swear if you sat down with my resumé and my life history you could not design a job that was more perfectly targeted to hire me. There was no way the guy was not going to look at my resumé and say, "Wow! She's perfect!" I had friends that way I haven't seen in a while, so I closed with an offer to come out and meet him. Proofread, attach, send.

I was almost concerned whether this job was the aviation equivalent of the Red Headed League, a tailor made job designed to lure me away from something more important. I'll just have to keep my eyes open. My real concern was whether I would enjoy working with the person, and whether the job would afford me the opportunity to get a PPC on a particular type I was interested in. I quickly found people who knew the employer and reviews were mixed. I waited for a call.

The job evidently isn't directed at me, because there was no immediate answer, then a weeks-later, "apology for the delay, we are assembling a shortlist of candidates." I felt amusingly affronted, thinking that if they can't see I'm perfect right off the bat, or at least be a little more personal in a response, then they don't deserve me. Job hunting is such a peculiar pursuit.

Lots of Canadians are pursing it right now. I received a flyer from Statistics Canada saying that my household has been randomly selected for inclusion in a survey on employment. It's actually kind of cool, because they ask how many hours I worked for pay in the last four weeks, and when was the last time I worked for pay, and then they are going to follow up regularly over a six month period. I hope my own personal fortunes get to contribute to data that shows that more Canadians find work this year. And of course if you are in another country looking for work, I hope you land a tailor-made job, too.

Because It Feels So Good When I Stop

In Canada, Air Canada represents the traditional pinnacle of a pilot career. That doesn't mean that every single commercial pilot in the country is aiming for a front seat at the flag carrier, nor that anyone who finishes a career without such a job has failed. There are lots of interesting, important well-paying jobs that do not have red maple leaves painted on the side of them, and I'm sure there are plenty of unhappy pilots at Air Canada, too. Regardless of whether pilots want to work there, they are also the largest employer of pilots in the country and thus the primary driver of pilot hiring. When Air Canada hires, pilots all over the country get jobs, if not through being hired by Air Canada, then through being hired by companies whose pilots were hired away as a result of the wave that sweeps through the industry.

Why do I keep applying to Air Canada? I first applied to them as soon as I got my commercial licence, because that was the wisdom back then. You keep sending them a resume every six months so your file gets fat and dog-eared and eventually they'll pull it out and call you. Who knows if that was true. You really did send them off a paper resume and cover letter, and presumably they had some kind of filing system for them all. Later there was an official update form to fill out. It was something I did with the passing of the seasons, renew my Air Canada application.

Eventually they computerized the system and you could do the updating online. You didn't need a new cover letter every time then. Then they outsourced it so another company managed the applications. They explicitly have no published minimum experience, which I've always assumed was to facilitate nepotism, or equal opportunity hiring. Realistically you need a few thousand hours and more turbine experience than I have. At one point the company almost went under and there were layoffs, and no hiring for a long time.

At the time I started writing this I was procrastinating in my writhing attempts to craft the perfect cover letter. Struggling with even the beginning, I e-mailed an Air Canada captain to find out whom I should be addressing it to. He said, "To be honest, I really don't know who is looking after the hiring. We haven't done it so long the committee members are doing other things." Yeah. They haven't hired anyone in so long they've forgotten how.

Why do I bother? Well, at the time they were hiring fifty-one plots. From the whole country. I know I don't have the right mix of hours, or the right ration of experience to age to hit their sweet spot. Almost every commercial pilot in Canada aims for AC at some point, so there is tonnes of competition. I personally probably know fifty-one pilots who on paper, or by the numbers of the electronic application, are better qualified for this job than I am.

If I got an interview, and then impressed them sufficiently to continue with the process, I'd have to pass a battery of tests. Academic tests of knowledge are not a problem, and I should pass a medical, but my medical history is not flawless. There's also a battery of psyche tests. I'm mentally stable, but will I test out as fitting the airline pilot profile when it's based on men born in the 1950s who happen to be good airline pilots? How do they distinguish the bias that makes people hire people who are like them from the qualities that make someone a good airline pilot? They don't need to. They can find enough people that fit the established profile and have the required qualifications without going outside their parameters, so why would they?

“Although a pilot’s technical skills. education, training and experience are all-important in meeting the challenges of a complex and demanding environment, it is the individual’s emotional intelligence that ultimately determines success or failure in this rapidly changing industry. Incorporating the EQ-i® into Air Canada’s pilot selection process has enables our company to identify candidates who not only possess advanced technical skills, but also the necessary emotional and social competencies predictive of long-term success as an Air Canada pilot.”
-Captain David Legge, Director, Flight Operations Technical, Air Canada

I own an EQ book, but I haven't read it yet. It's orange, a colour that turns me off. And there are lots more books in that pile. While looking for information on something else I found this fascinating age discrimination suit on hiring practices at Air Canada in the 1970s. Boy times have changed in terms of the structure of the Canadian air transport industry "He informed James that he required a commercial Licence, Instrument Rating, Multi-Engine Rating and around 200-300 hours flying time." Candidates of 35 and 36 years of age had notations on their resumes marking them unsuitable by reason of age. "He spoke with Captain Bill Irvine of Air Canada who said he was rather old since he was 29 at the time." They preferred candidates in the "low to mid twenty age group."

The tribunal, in 1982, found for the pilots claiming age discrimination. But I don't know what good that did them. They weren't going to get hired after all that time. I don't know that it would fundamentally change the institutional memory of the way things are done at Air Canada. I'm sure ever since there have been a couple of older people in every groundschool, and that no one ever writes on a resume any reason for unsuitability that is considered unlawful discrimination in Canada, but it's easy to write instead that the person had a poor attitude or did not carry herself with sufficient authority.

I laboured over that application. Why do I do this to myself? Fifty-one is a very small number. Maybe they don't all want to be Air Canada pilots. I'll just apply this one last time, then I will be free. I need to sort myself out and find a sensible, attainable career goal. Ducks can't be astronauts.

I send it off anyway. An e-mail comes to my inbox. It's an automated reply: We would like to thank you for applying for the position of Pilot-CAN10041 We have received your application and are currently reviewing your experience and qualifications. Yeah, I bet you are.

And then the other day someone told me Air Canada just hired a guy who is fifty years old. Sure, he has better experience than me, but dammit by fifty what couldn't I do? I think I'll have yet another opportunity to make my last application ever to Air Canada.

I can't remember who sent me this, but it's about right.

I also hope you get to work for Air Canada or any other company with great colleagues, a work schedule that makes you feel you work neither too much nor too little, and a pay that lets you pay your bills and order what you like from the menu most of the time. Air Canada would be cool, though, wouldn't it.

The Cover Letter Cover Letter

Some of the rules and procedures for applying for a job haven't changed in a century. You put together a resumé listing your jobs and achievements in chronological order, write a cover letter explaining why your resume makes you so ideal for the job, and you send it to the Chief Pilot or HR manager. Once upon a time you mailed these things on paper. When I started my career, postage was a serious job search expense. The purpose of the cover letter was so that when the employer opened the envelope and withdrew two sheets of paper, the top one explained who you were, what job you were applying for and why you were especially suited for the job and the one underneath, the one it was covering listed your experience.

You can also fax your resume (and could then too), but I wanted it to look nice, not depend on the quality of the destination fax machine paper and ink for my professional appearance. Hand delivering is a good option, because you often are allowed a moment to meet the person who might hire you. You can hand-deliver local resumés, or go on a road trip and hand deliver them to more remote operations. It usually makes a positive impression if you go in person to a remote place. If they have a job suitable for your experience and you are right there in front of them asking for the job, they'll rarely call in someone from far away. For remote (and for the most part I mean gravel road or fly-in remote) operations that is the best way to get the job.

For most other operations, nowadays you e-mail the resume and cover letter as attachments. There's usually a page linked from "Careers" in small print on the company website that gives you the requirements and the e-mail address to send resumés. Depending on the operation it may be better to bypass HR and send your resumé directly to a management pilot, whose name and e-mail you have obtained from a friend. When you e-mail your resume, make sure you use a subject line that makes them likely to open your e-mail. "Resumé" is better than a blank subject line, but not by much. Your name is already in the header. (At least the name associated with an e-mail account you make job applications from had better not be "c00lpIl0t1973.") It would be best is the e-mail address itself had your real name. At minimum it shouldn't be someone else's name or anything offensive. So something like "Pilot: 2000 TT, 500 on DHC3" where the operation in question flies Beavers.

So you have the cover letter all nicely formatted in Word but then you have to write something in the e-mail too, to induce them to open it. So the cover letter has a cover letter. You might say why bother, just write the cover letter in the e-mail, then attach the resumé. Sometimes I do that. But sometimes the ad specifically requests a resumé and cover letter, and you know they're going to be printed off and passed around the table. You don't want to be the one with the e-mail headers and formatting all over her cover letter.

I always try to get a picture of how this works, from what I know about the operation. Is the resume going to a non-pilot HR screener? I imagine someone opening the e-mail, based on the size and type of operation. Is this a dedicated HR mailbox? The CP going through his e-mail between flights? Someone in the customer service office sorting e-mail enquiries about charters? Sometimes I put the resume and cover letter in one document that will be printed off together. Sometimes I copy the exact text of the cover letter into the e-mail. Sometimes I put two lines in the e-mail telling them my hours, ATPL and what position I am applying for.

I go through phases where I agonize way too much about this. I know that I spelled experience wrong on the cover letter that got me my first job. I only noticed a year later when I opened the file to edit it into a new cover letter. I wonder what the heck I thought I had experienced then anyway. I don't dare to open that file now and suffer the embarrassment of seeing my past self boasting about "My 215 hours flying expereince."

But now I send off resumes and imagine that the only reason the CP doesn't phone and offer the job immediately is that he is stunned by how perfect I am for the job.