Pictures!

So here are a few pictures. Top left: The Cherokee 6 I fly.

Top Right: Flying over my town... anyone recognize where it is?

Bottom Left: The maintenance strip I flew into. Not its not a road, and yes what you see is what you get. The picture was taken standing on the plane at the end of the runway.

Bottom Right: The main terminal where I'm based at...

Hanging Out

So right now its Tuesday morning, I'm just waiting for the call that the plane is ready. I'm also crossing my fingers that the weather will improve, because the ceilings are at 800 ft, so its not quite VFR and there's forecast to be mixed rain and snow which is ideal icing conditions as well.

The maintenance base runway didn't disappoint. The width between the trees from side to side is about 60-80, just barely twice the wingspan of the Cherokee. I came over the trees at the threshold a little fast and ended up floating for much of the runway before I plunked the wheels down. There is a slight dip in the runway, making the middle of the runway the lowest point, which meant I was slowing down slightly uphill. That assisted my breaking and I ended up having at least a couple hundred feet of runway left between me and a floatplane parked at the end, so all ended well. When I get back I'll post some pictures I promise. I don't have the cord that connects my camera to my computer with me, otherwise now would have been a good time to do it.

After I shut down filled out the logs and gathered my stuff I took a taxi from the there to the main airport, where the company keeps a car for the pilots. Its a pimping 1990-something Buick Roadmaster station wagon, so it was nice to have wheels for my stay here.

Not much else to report. There's a small Canadian Tire here, so I spent a lot of my time in there. I have always felt a little sorry for my passengers when flying because I have a nice comfy David Clark headseat to keep the noise down, but the passengers don't have any ear protection. So I picked up a box of those little foam disposable earplugs to offer them. I don't carry passengers THAT often, so I figured a box of 80 pairs should last a while if I kept them in my flight bag for them. We'll see I guess, when they're gone they're gone. Anyways I have to check out from the hotel soon, so I think I'm going to go check in with Company and see what the plan is.

Runways and Layovers

Thursday was another long day of flying. I had a bunch of pax (passenger) trips and a couple freight runs as well. Most of the day was uneventful with blue skies and light winds. There was however one semi-exciting landing I had at one of the reserve's up the coast during one of my freight runs.

I was on short final and three coyete's ran out onto the runway. The runway, though gravel, is nice and long and wide to accomodate the small airline service that comes in there, so it wasn't a huge deal to add a bit of power fly over the coyete's and land long. A little further up ahead however there was also a flock of seagulls milling about on the runway, blocking the runway from the middle over to the right. Because of the coyete distraction I didn't notice this obstacle until after I had touched down, and was rolling at still a fairly high speed towards them. Nonetheless I managed to swerve the airplane, slightly violenty to the left and avoid the seagulls. Talk about an obstacle course... good thing I didn't have passengers!

On another note the Cherokee has timed out and is due for inspection, so I'm taking it down to our maintenance base tommorrow. The AMO who does our maintenance apparently has their own grass strip that we fly into, which is 1600 ft long with power lines/trees on either side and a valley in the middle, at least that's how I understand it. I'm quite looking forward to the challenge. This will officially be the shortest runway I've ever landed on. Technically speaking there may have been some runways around this length in Sarnia that I used to take the C-150 into, but I never knew their exact lengths, and certainly none of them had obstacles on either end. Its a bit of a deja vu from the Comanche annual inspection last year, as the AME I had do it also had his own short grass strip. His however was 2200 ft long, with power lines on one end, and trees about 400 ft past the other end. I am proud of the fact that so far to my knowledge, I am the only pilot who has successfully flown a light twin into that runway (one other has tried, but he chickened out after shooting a couple approaches).

This one tommorrow is however essentially 1000 ft shorter then my AME's down south. The Cherokee is a much slower flying bird, and gets off the ground much sooner as well, which makes it possible here. I won't be the first to fly the Cherokee into this strip, which takes away bragging rights, but it also takes away a little bit of the unknowns, which adds to safety. It will be a first for me however, and I look forward to the challenge.

On another entirely different note, for me there have always been a number of things, prerequisites that I have to do in order to consider myself a "real" pilot. Every time I check one thing off on that list I tend to unconsciously invent another to put on it, so that I never seem to actually complete the list making me a full fledged, legit, REAL professional pilot. When I first accepted this job, seeing as how I finally completed the BIG thing, which is have a full time job with the word "pilot" in it, I invented this new requirement - the layover. REAL pilots go on layovers and have overnight trips. So far I've only had day trips with my job, however tomorrow that changes. I get a layover! The maintenance that has to be done is going to take more then a day, which means I have to stay down with the airplane. I'm fully aware that its not going to be nearly as exciting as I think (is that a paradoxical statement?), but it does mean I get to check off the "layerover" item on my real pilot checklist. It also means I'll get to go tool around a different for a day, just because I've got time to kill. I was going to say real town, but this place by some has been called the "A**hole of the World", so its still not really a real town. Hopefully I can get some internet at the hotel I stay at (we're still in Northern Ontario here don't get your hopes up). If that's the case it won't be any worse then staying at my house here.

So tomorrow is an exciting day, I'll take some pictures of the runway once I get there so you can have a visual. I also have other pictures which I promised I'd upload, I'm just too lazy right now and its getting late. Also stay tuned for another piece of news regarding tomorrow. I'd write about it now , but like I said, its getting late, this blog is getting long, and I can't write about too many topics in one blog, because this post already has too many topics as it is.

Handholders and Weathervanes

So today I had a full day of flying. I did five trips - 10 flights. The weather was blue skies but bumpy and windy all day. My first trip had me going south to pick up a couple gentlemen and about 20 dead, frozen Canadian Geese. Luckily they were all sealed up in bags - the geese. I've heard in some cases, especially flying right out of the bush, they just throw the dead birds in the back of the plane. Which would be all right if they stayed frozen... Anyways I had it good from what I hear.

My home base has an off-site radio service which handles the traffic. There are essentially three levels of traffic control in Canada. The lowest level, which the vast majority of airports in Canada use, is called an ATF, or Aerodrome Traffic Frequency. My hometown, Sarnia, has this. Essentially it is just a standard frequency that's designated for all aircraft in the area to use. There's no controller, all the airplanes taking off and landing from that airport state their intentions and actions on that frequency, and if there is a conflict with another aircraft, that other aircraft, which is monitoring the same radio freqency, will hear it and the two airplanes can work it out between the two of them. Its entirely optional to monitor the ATF within the vicinity of an airport that has one, although highly recommended. This allows NORAD (aircraft with NO RADio) to use the airport. The next level up uses a Radio Service, more on that in a second. The highest level of traffic control an airport can have is a control tower. Most people before they learn otherwise assume that all airports have a control tower. This is not so, in fact I can list on two hands the airports in Ontario that have one. Usually it has to be pretty busy. A control tower is essentially in charge of the traffic on and around the airport. They must issue you a clearance to land, takeoff, join the circuit, taxi, and go to the bathroom. Its actually quite nice. For some newer pilots, if they haven't had much experience flying within airspace with a control tower, it can be quite intimidating. Since I did all of my initial flight training in Sarnia with no control tower, I was terrified of flying into places with one, and avoided them until I got more practice flying in them with an instructor.

After you get the hang of it, it can actually become quite the security blanket, because you have someone holding your hand telling you what to do and pointing out traffic for you. The middle level of traffic control, like at the home base where I'm working now, is like I said a Radio Service, which is somewhere in between an ATF and a control tower. A Radio Service is not really air traffic control in that they can't tell you what to do and when to do, but they are someone who is monitoring the frequency and keeping track of all the airplanes in the area. All airplanes within the designated zone must be talking to the Radio Service, however the Radio Service provides advisory information only. Sometimes these Radio Services are located directly on the field and are equipped with radar and everything, other times, like here, they are off somewhere in a different town listenning in.

So far up here I have counted three different voices who monitor the Radio Service. There's two males and one female. And they all have different styles. When I say styles I simply mean their tone of voice really. Everything is so standardized with phrases and procedure there's not much room for style in how you handle traffic, but there is in how you treat it. I like the female controller here the best. She's the friendliess and most professional. That is in contrast to my opinion of the controllers down in London. In London I think there were at lease four, 3 males and one female. One controller in London sounds Australian and is quite friendly, he was my favourite to talk to there. The female controller however is often times less then friendly. I've heard her snap on other pilots for mistakes they've made, both major and minor, including me, and chewed them out. Its always an embarrasing moment for a pilot to get chewed or "talked down to" by a controller over the radio.

Anyways my next trip was eastbound to pick up a family I dropped off last week, and on departure I was talking to the female controller. I made a mental note that she was my favourite of the three, which is why I just told the above story. When I landed at destination it was a gusty 15-18 knot direct crosswind to the runway, and it was a bit of a struggle to bring the airplane down nicely, but I enjoyed every second of it. The runway is gravel, and afterwards I decided that I actually like landing on gravel.

In a crosswind landing, there's two difficult parts to the landing. The first is actually making sure the wheels touch down aligned in the direction of motion to prevent premature wear of the tires, and more importantly, to stop from shooting off the side of the runway. The next difficult part is keeping the airplane travelling straight down the runway after touchdown. Airplanes have a tendency to do what's called weathervaning in a crosswind. That when an airplane's nose wants to turn into the wind. This is because the vertical stabilizer is at the back of the airplane, so if the wind pushes the v-stab downwind, then the nose turns upwind just like a weathervane. This isn't a problem with flying, but when you're rolling on the ground it can make it difficult to keep the airplane running straight without weathervaning and rolling off the upwind side of the runway. I decided I like gravel because there's less traction then pavement. This means I can let the airplane weathervane and "skid" sideways a bit after I've touched down during my deceleration which makes things a little easier since the airplane doesn't feel so much like shooting off to one side. At any rate we are trying to prevent any skidding motion, because I imagine on gravel its still hard on the tires, but it does take the edge off landing rollouts in a stiff crosswind.

I knew from dropping the family off last week that it was the wife's first time on an airplane, and she was pretty nervous from what I heard. Last week she had a perfectly smooth day, but today was far from it. Considering that and the turbulence today and gusty crosswind I had today I let everyone know when we were strapping in to takeoff that it would be a bit bumpy today. I felt a bit bad for the wife, because it was a pretty wild takeoff and climbout until we got up a little higher to the smoother air, but she seemed ok since she was prepared for it.

The rest of the flights were uneventful. Today I logged almost 10 hrs of flight time in total, and I'm quite tired and hungry, but it was a good day.

Funny Thought

I just thought I'd mention a funny thought I had when I was flying with all my freight on Friday. It occurred to me that if I ever went down with all this freight onboard, and I survived the landing - which is pretty good chances cause there's lots of open space in amongst the groupings of trees - all I'd have to do was make a fire and it'd be nothing worse then a camping trip by myself. I'm already pretty much dressed for the weather, and I'd also have a half ton worth of food with me! What more could I want? I'd just collect some firewood, cook up some ravioli, and hang out until the search party found me, haha. Too bad I don't know how to play the guitar.

Finally Flying

Written April 11, 2009

So yesterday I finally started flying. The day before I did a quick checkout with the other pilot who flies for the company, and he gave me the thumbs up, so yesterday the chief pilot and I went up for a single checkout before they turned me loose.

While on takeoff however I noted the airspeed indicator was non-functional, however it was too late to abort the takeoff. If the airspeed indicator doesn’t work, this indicates that the pitot tube is clogged. The pitot tube is a little tube hanging off the underside of one wing that measures ram air pressure, and displays it in the form of knots or mph, on our airspeed indicator in the cockpit. If the pitot tube is blocked, our airspeed indicator doesn’t work. Its not uncommon in snowy conditions for the pitot tube to become blocked with snow or ice, so every certified airplane is equipped with the ability to electrically heat up the pitot tube via a switch in the cockpit to melt off any ice in the pitot tube and thus unclog it.

The airspeed indicator is one of the most important instruments in the cockpit because essentially we fly the airplane using it. Our stall speed is in the form indicated airspeed, we also use a specific airspeed to achieve the best climb performance, and to tell us when its structurally safe to lower the flaps and landing gear (if applicable). So its nice to have a working airspeed indicator.

Anyways in this case we were already past the point of no return. I should have caught this on the takeoff roll before it was too late to go airborne, but it was only my second flight in the airplane, and being not too familiar and comfortable in the airplane yet my reaction times were diminished. Not to mention the Cherokee 6 accelerates and climbs like a bat out of hell when its empty. If I was more comfortable in the airplane I am confident I’d be more on the ball. Oh well, so we did the circuit anyways. In any regard the chief pilot was happy with my performance and was content to turn me loose on the cargo runs.

Once we got back on the ground we fiddled a bit with blowing out the pitot tube to unclog it, and I took it for one more test flight circuit and the airspeed indicator seemed to be working well this time.

So finally we loaded up the Cherokee with 1000 lbs of groceries and off I went. I flew up the coast with my cargo, landed, and helped load it into the pickup truck they had waiting for me. When I got back there was another load waiting for me, so we loaded the plane up once again and off I went again, this time I had about 900 lbs of potatoes and a few cases of pop. I had three trips for the day, all the while thinking that this beats the heck out of framing houses! Other then when I’m loading and unloading the airplane, which doesn‘t even really take more then 5-10 minutes, it doesn’t even feel like I’m working. Life is good.

End of Day 1

So yesterday I flew in, unpacked my stuff. Today has been my first full day here. The accommodations aren’t luxurious, but they do the trick, and I get it all to myself since the other pilot who was supposed to be up here with me quit. I’m getting a wi-fi internet connection off my boss’s house next door, but the connection is very poor due to the long range, so I’m working on getting my own internet.

My first experience was this morning at around 9:30. We managed to fit a snow mobile into a Cessna 206. I didn’t think it would be possible. They had to remove all the seats in the airplane including the pilot seat, which was reinstalled after the snow mobile was wrestled in. The snow mobile itself had to have the windscreen and the two front skis removed as well. It went in though, as well as a bunch of other stuff - incredible.

The plan for today was also to take the Cherokee 6 up flying to get me checked out in it, but the weather wasn’t good enough for training, so it never happened. I went and did some grocery shopping, and then refuelled the 206 when it was back. It’s a family run company, and they all, as well as me, live in houses right by the river. The river is frozen this time of year, so the 206 is on skis and they fly it right off the river behind the house. The Cherokee is at the airport.

In the meantime I have the company operations manual to study, because I have to write a test on it. I'm also studying the Cherokee's flight manual so I'll be competant and familiar with the airplane for my flight check. According to the operations manual I require 3 hours air time of initial training.

The Northern Store up here is surprisingly large. Its no Super-Walmart, but it has a reasonable selection of groceries, unlike the one in Waskagonish when I was there. It is more expensive then down south, but not as bad as I was expecting. I spent $100 for about a weeks worth of groceries as well as a number of household supplies like toilet paper and cleaning supplies. I suspect my weekly groceries will be around $50-80.

There is a cute little 8 week old Beagle pup owned by the owner of the company, which I met this morning. This afternoon as I was walking back from fuelling the airplane, she came bounding through the snow towards me, with mom reluctantly and cautiously following. I played with them for a bit. The pup couldn’t get enough of me, and would have followed me home if the mother would have let her, but the mom was shy and uneasy about the encounter, but let us play for a bit before she decided it was time to go and herded her puppy back towards the house. Very cute.

The Trip

I’m on my way. Right now I’m the plane, its on autopilot, just heading over the south shore of Georgian Bay north of Wiarton. The sky is so far clear so its an easy flight and I have time to blog on my brand spankin new netbook (a mini laptop computer). I anticipate lower ceilings past Sudbury, and I’ll have to pay a little more attention to flying. All I see right now is the blue sky above with a few clouds in the distance around me, and an expanse of deep blue water ahead of me. I barely see any ice in the water, its mostly melted off by this time of year.

I like flying twins, they give me a warm fuzzy. Not only do they allow me to fly over water legally with no lifejackets on board, but they give me the confidence in the aircraft to do it as well. It will be an interesting change switching back to flying singles in my job, especially since it will be almost all over hostile terrain. Its going to require me to change my thinking again in that I’ll have to constantly be looking for good places to land if my engine quits - it will always have to be in the back of my mind. But for now, I’m in the Twin Comanche.

Its Sunday afternoon as a I write this, I’ve been delayed by weather 3 days now. I suppose that’s not too bad now that I say it, but its seemed like an eternity. Especially this morning, I basically spent the entire morning clicking refresh on the AWWS (Aviation Weather Website) waiting for the weather to change. It finally looks like I may be able to squeak through, so I’m on my way making a run for it.

It’s a little less then a 3.5 hr trip from takeoff to landing. Timmins is the last airport before my destination, which is about 45 min away, but thanks to the Comanche’s tip tanks, I have enough fuel to fly all the way to my destination, dink around for a bit, and fly all the way back to Timmins with fuel remaining in case the weather is no good. That gives me another warm fuzzy. Its important to always have a plan B.

I’m pretty much over the center of Georgian Bay now, and there’s a big cluster of ice chunks, it kind of looks cool. Too bad I forgot to put fresh batteries in my camera.

Its 4:03 right now, I’ve been airborne for an hour, so in about 40 more minutes my tip tanks will be dry and I’ll have to switch to my auxiliary fuel tanks. I’ll burn on those for a bit, but I want to keep a little fuel in them, so I won’t run them dry. I’ll make my final fuel selector switch over to the main tanks after about 45 minutes on them.

I also have to remember to make a position report. I’m getting into pretty remote terrain, and if I go down it would be nice to have narrowed down the search parameters for the SAR guys, giving them a better chance to find me sooner.

Gauges check all green. I’ve got a headwind so groundspeed is only showing 144 kts, so if I don’t have to fly a dogleg around weather I’ll be there in 2 hours 20 minutes.

Well I’m just crossing over the north shore of Georgian Bay now, with Sudbury about 30 nm ahead. Weather still looks great, minus the suddden light turbulence that is making it difficult to type on my netbook. The turbulence appears to have subsided now.

Here’s another cool picture. I’m flying about a hundred feet below a layer of scattered to few clouds. Once again no camera, but I have a bunch of pictures of clouds anyways. The awesome view from the cockpit doesn’t quite translate into an equally awesome photo.

Gauges check green, will expect to switch tanks in about 20 minutes. The tip tanks are nice because I can run those right bone dry since they don’t have a rubber bladder. The other ones, while they can be run dry if I wanted too, its better to leave some fuel in them.

I’ve now climbed 500 hundred feet so I could get on top of that scattered layer of clouds. Its always smoother above cumulous clouds then it is below. For now the layer is only few to scattered, so its okay to be on top, but I’ll have to watch and make sure they don’t close in on me and trap above the cloud layer.

I’m over Sudbury now, I can see the smoke stacks below me. Once I’m on the North Side I’ll call London Radio and make a position report. Actually I might as well do it now.

Done. Now SAR knows I’ve at least made it past Sudbury.

The cloud layer seems to be getting a little thicker now. Its now definitely a scattered layer, looking like it might turn into broken shortly. I might have to descend through a hole shortly to get underneath.

I expect my engines will start sputtering shortly, meaning I’ll have to switch the fuel tanks over. Whenever I have passengers I usually try to warn them that the engines may start surging shortly and that its nothing to worry about so they are not terrified when it starts happening. Its caught me off guard in the past before when my mind was occupied with other things, and …

Ok I’m now below the cloud layer. I’ve made a spiral desent through a hole in the clouds, and I’m now at 2500 ft above sea level, down from 5000. Its much bumpier down here, so I may have to end my blogging here.

As I was saying though, running a tank dry can really catch you off guard if you’re not expecting it! The first thing you brain tells you is "engine failure!", and just before you crap your pants you remember the fuel tank just needs switching over.

Anyways I must be going now.

5:31
So I’m down to 2000 ft, cruising underneath the clouds. The weather is stable enough for me to pull out the netbook and write a quick update. I passed by Timmins about 15 minutes ago. Oh I see Cochcrane off my left wing. Less then an hour to go.

Ok as I was typing that the cloud layer lifted a couple hundred feet, and now I’m at a more comfortable 2200, about 1400 ft above ground level. Much of the last hour was spent skirting hills and treetops 400-800 ft above the ground, but now the terrain is dropping away a little bit, so I have some more room to play with.

I passed a lone lookout tower on a hilltop in between Timmins and Sudbury, which I marked on my GPS. I couldn’t see any roads leading up to it or anything. It would be quite the trek to get to, I wonder what it was there for, and how old it was. How erie. I always think things like that are so cool. They have a past and a story to tell and it makes me wonder.

Well in another 30 minutes or so I’ll begin landing preparations, and I don’t have much else to talk about at the moment. Once I get settled in and hooked up to the internet I’ll upload this blog and maybe write another. Peace.