Today I had probably the most eventful flight up here so far. I had to head an hour south to pick up the Chief's wife and daughter and bring them back up.
There was a cold front just south of the field travelling southbound, which brought 1200 ft ceilings, rain, and surface winds around 7 knots. It was raining lightly when I got out to the airport, so I threw my coat hood up, fueled the airplane and did my walk around. I also took out the seats I didn't need and stuffed them into the cab of the pickup. Usually we throw them in the back, or leave them by the tie-downs on the ground, but I didn't want them to get soaking wet in the rain. The flight south was fairly uneventful, it stopped raining about 15-20 minutes into the flight and the clouds started to break up and lift, but it was choppy the whole way.
The flight back was where things got interesting. By the time we were on our way back, the cold front had moved south a fair amount, so it wasn't long before we started going through some scattered showers, with the clouds broken to overcast above us at around 6000 ft. I considered attempting to get above the cloud layer and fly VFR on top to stay out of the rain and stay in air that was a little smoother (the Chief's wife is a bit of a nervous flyer and doesn't like rain or bumpy flights), but the clouds looked at least 3000 ft thick, so I decided against it, since the Cherokee doesn't have the gusto to get that high. A little we approached another thin layer of scattered clouds right at our height of 3500 ft. It looked to be only scattered, so I figured it we'd try to get on top of those, I climbed to 4000 and at that altitude we crossed overtop and were just skirting the tops of the lower layer. I wasn't high enough to get a good top-down view to see how many holes there were in the layer below me, but I'd have a pretty good idea after flying overtop of the layer, and if it was any thicker then scattered, I'd just find a hole and squeeze back down.
Unfortunately within 30 seconds the lower layer got much thicker and the layer above us got real low real fast and just like that we were into IMC (Instrument Weather Conditions, aka the soup). Alrighty then, time for a descent. As I was flying further north the clouds must have been getting lower and lower, because I was descending on instruments for what must have been a good 5 minutes and didn't break out of the bottoms of the clouds until 2000 ft (1900 ft AGL).
The rest of the flight until the last 15 minutes was spent humming along at 1500 ft with rain spattering the windshield. Within 20 miles of home I tuned in the AWOS to get the latest winds, which were being reported from the 300 degrees at 16 kts gusting to 21. So I called up the radio service, made my initial report, and advised I'd be landing on runway 32. They called back and told me it was closed, so the active runway was 06. Runways are named to the nearest 10 degrees on the compass heading they are lined up with. Therefore if you're using runway 32 you'll be facing 320 degrees magnetic. If you're using runway 14, that's really the same runway as 32, you're just facing the other way. Runway 06 faces 060 degrees magnetic. Anyways since 32 was closed, that meant that the winds were almost a direct crosswind, which makes things interesting when the winds are 16 kts gusting to 21. The maximum demonstrated crosswind for the Cherokee 6, which is the strongest winds the test pilots landed in when they were developing the airplane, is 17 kts. That means the winds I'm about to land in exceed the test pilot's max by 40%!
Well, here we go!
Normal crosswind landing technique involves banking the airplane into the wind, and then applying opposite rudder until the wheels are lined up straight to the runway. This cross control technique induces what we call a slip, which is basically the airplane flying a little bit sideways. An airplanes maximum crosswind ability is reached when the rudder can't induce a big enough slip to match the sideways motion the crosswind is creating.
The approach was gusty but so far so good, but when I crossed the threshhold and started my flare and slip, the rudder hit the stops well before my nose was straight. I've been in this situation before flying the Twin Comanche (which has a small rudder and so a low crosswind ability) and in those cases I've able to hold the airplane off the ground long enough with a bit of power if I had to, release the rudder input so the nose swings into the wind, and stomp on the rudder again. This causes the nose to swing back around straight with its momentum carrying it beyond what a smooth rudder input can bring it to. Before the nose can swing back on you, you chop the power and get it onto the ground. I'm not sure if this is the best or proper technique (if there is a "proper" technique which I doubt) when landing in a crosswind that exceeds the airplane's abilities, but it works for me.
Anyways in today's case I didn't have a chance to do that, because a split second beforehand, a gust of wind rolled the airplane to the right violently enough that the hand I had on the controls didn't have a good enough grip to hold on, so I took my right hand off the throttle and put both hands on the controls to keep the airplane where I wanted it. If I were to try my Comanche technique I would have had to add a bit of power to keep the airplane from touching down, but before I could grab the throttle again the wheels chirped on the ground. We skidded sideways on the tarmac a short second before I quickly dumped the flaps up (so we didn't go flying again in a gust) and got the airplane under control.
Whew! That's the most excitment I've had on landing in a long time! Man I love my job.
It wasn't until after we got out of the airplane and the Chief pulled up that I noticed my adrenaline pumping. The Chief must've noticed it too, cause he mentioned that I looked scared, and laughed that he used to land in crosswinds like that just for the fun of it. I'm not sure if he said it as sarcasm with the intention of agreeing how rediculous the winds were, or as a way of saying that its "no big deal". I laughed, but my pride resented that comment a little, because I don't like anyone (especially my boss) thinking I don't have the fortitude to do my job.
At any rate I was supposed to have another flight to take some fuel up the coast, but we decided to not push my luck and leave that until tomorrow.
Sunday, May 24, 2009
Saturday, May 23, 2009
Ahh I Love Computers
My pay structure is based on a base salary pay as well as an additional rate per mile I fly. Even though my employers do the tally at the end of month for my paycheque, I have still been keeping track on my own as well. Up until now I've kept a simple tally on a spreadsheet. I made a list of all my usual trips, with a column for distance to home base beside the routes, and a column for the number of times I've flown each route. At the end of the day I'd update each route tally, and the spreadsheet would sum the numbers for me.
It has worked well enough up until now, with the three main drawbacks to it. The first being the extra time I have each day doing record keeping I hate. Also there's been a couple times where the next day I couldn't remember if I did it or not for the previous day, and have been at the risk of either not recording flights or recording them twice, since the spreadsheet was not a log, just a tally - so it could be prone to error. Lastly my tally spreadsheet was limited in the ability to track mileage that didn't involve flying back to home base.
Well, I had some time tonight, so I've just gone high-tech. For some time now in addition to my paper pilot logbook I've also kept a pilot logbook on spreadsheet in excel so if I ever lose one copy my career is still accounted for. Also keeping a pilot log on spreadsheet makes it easy to keep track of every conceivable combination of hours I need to, such as time on each aircraft type, time in the last 30 days, 90 days, and 12 months, PIC times for single engine, multi-engine, and day and night for both categories, etc since I've programmed all those functions in. Included in that spreadsheet log is also the record of the route of each flight in the form of departure aerodrome and arrival aerodrome, so the information to calculate mileage had the potential to be tracked from this digital logbook... time for some programming!
I created a database on another worksheet of every airport in the area that I visit, which included their 4 letter ident code and the latitude and longitude coordinates, which I easily found from the CFS publication (Canada Flight Supplement - a publication of every aerodrome in canada).
I also already had the formula for calculating distance between points on a spherical surface (aka earth) from a program I wrote a couple years ago, so I didn't even need to do any math research, I already had the code, which just needed to be tweaked. Two hours later, voila, no more manually tracking my mileage. The computer now retrieves the route information for each flight, cross references the airport code with the lat-long database and calculates the distance between the departure and arrival points, which it spits out in a running-total ledger style form, with the monthly total mileage at the top. I love computers.
It has worked well enough up until now, with the three main drawbacks to it. The first being the extra time I have each day doing record keeping I hate. Also there's been a couple times where the next day I couldn't remember if I did it or not for the previous day, and have been at the risk of either not recording flights or recording them twice, since the spreadsheet was not a log, just a tally - so it could be prone to error. Lastly my tally spreadsheet was limited in the ability to track mileage that didn't involve flying back to home base.
Well, I had some time tonight, so I've just gone high-tech. For some time now in addition to my paper pilot logbook I've also kept a pilot logbook on spreadsheet in excel so if I ever lose one copy my career is still accounted for. Also keeping a pilot log on spreadsheet makes it easy to keep track of every conceivable combination of hours I need to, such as time on each aircraft type, time in the last 30 days, 90 days, and 12 months, PIC times for single engine, multi-engine, and day and night for both categories, etc since I've programmed all those functions in. Included in that spreadsheet log is also the record of the route of each flight in the form of departure aerodrome and arrival aerodrome, so the information to calculate mileage had the potential to be tracked from this digital logbook... time for some programming!
I created a database on another worksheet of every airport in the area that I visit, which included their 4 letter ident code and the latitude and longitude coordinates, which I easily found from the CFS publication (Canada Flight Supplement - a publication of every aerodrome in canada).
I also already had the formula for calculating distance between points on a spherical surface (aka earth) from a program I wrote a couple years ago, so I didn't even need to do any math research, I already had the code, which just needed to be tweaked. Two hours later, voila, no more manually tracking my mileage. The computer now retrieves the route information for each flight, cross references the airport code with the lat-long database and calculates the distance between the departure and arrival points, which it spits out in a running-total ledger style form, with the monthly total mileage at the top. I love computers.
Tuesday, May 19, 2009
Miles apart
Today started out slow, but then I ended up having 4 trips to do. They were the usual run up the coast, except all but one were pax flights, which is unusual. I guess perhaps its people going back home from the long weekend.
The last bit of the afternoon was a little interesting because myself and another pilot flying a Navajo for the other operator up here was also doing trips up and down the coast, so we were kind of following each other around. Rather he started out following me and then it ended up I was following him because a Navajo is faster then a Cherokee 6. I play soccer with the pilot on an indoor soccer team. At one point I was ready to take off and was waiting for him to touch down and clear the runway, and when he taxied by me we gave each other a wave and he keyed the mic and said, "see you at soccer tonight" over the radio as he taxied by.
It just struck me as strange. Here we were, across a 90 mile stretch of wilderness from where we both live, and yet we're in the same place, at the same time, and just give each other the wave as if there's nothing out of the ordinary. In reality there really ISN'T anything out of the ordinary, we both do this everyday all day, but the concept of us being so far away in the middle of nowhere and it being normal to see someone you know there is just odd, lol. We treat 100 miles of wilderness as if its just a block away from where we live and we're just nod to each other as if we're strolling down to the corner store. What a strange reality when you really think about. Maybe my job gives me too much time to think, lol.
On another note yesterday on the holiday monday I took two trips south to the same place, one in the Cherokee, the other in the Twin Comanche. They are two so very different airplanes. In the Cherokee on takeoff, when you rotate, you really have to almost coax it off the ground. Rotation speed is 70 mph, and at that point when you ease back on the controls, the nose will come off, and then gradually a couple seconds later the main wheels will haul themselves off the ground.
The Comanche is quite different, in that once you reach rotation speed (Vr), its ready to fly and just a touch back on the controls and it will leap into the air. It caught me by surprise after I've been getting used to flying the Cherokee. I imagine this may be due to the different Vr speeds. Vr for the Comanche is 80-90 mph (depending on the weight), not because its not ready to fly until that speed, but because we don't want it coming off the ground too far below Vmc (minimum controllable airspeed with one engine inop). That's because if we were below Vmc and we lost an engine, we'd lose control of the airplane, so we wait until we're closer to Vmc before we leave the ground. That's multi-engine procedure. The Cherokee is only a single, so we rotate at 70 mph, which is just at the point when the airplane is ready to fly, since there is no Vmc. The Comanche wouldn't probably leap off the ground so readily if we rotated at a more comparable airspeed that we rotate at in the Cherokee.
Another difference is that in the climbout in the Cherokee it needs immediate nose up trim, without which you find you're pulling fairly firmly back on the controls to maintain Vy (best rate of climb speed). The Comanche requires immediate nose down trim after liftoff otherwise you find yourself pushing firmly against the controls to maintain Vy.
The biggest difference between the airplanes however, is the landing. The Cherokee is a breeze to land. You can just float it down, and it flares nicely until the airspeed bleeds off enough and it kisses the ground. I attribute this to the high camber wing, and the long fuselage which gives lots of space between the nose gear and the main gear. The Comanche isn't so friendly. If you flare at too high an airspeed or too aggressively, you'll balloon up until the airspeed bleeds off and then you come plummetting back down to earth. To little of a flare and you'll come in on the nose gear. Its tricky to find the sweet spot of airspeed that allows a controllable sink rate and doesn't cause the airplane to balloon. In short I'd describe landing the Cherokee to floating it down to the runway, whereas in the Comanche you have to fly it down. I found I'm quite out of practice in the Comanche technique.
Its also interesting because in the past I've gone far longer between flights in the Comanche then I just did on monday, and still been as sharp as ever because I haven't flown any other type of aircraft. Whereas in this case I last flew the Comanche only a couple weeks ago but I'm as rusty as ever because in the meantime I've been becoming accustomed to the Cherokee style of flying. Its interesting how different airplane types screw with your proficiency. I would also add that I found it easier to go from flying the Comanche to the Cherokee, then the other way around. I greased the landing in my first checkout flight in the Cherokee, but even with 200 hrs in the Comanche and it only having been 2 weeks since I flew it last I find myself rusty.
The last bit of the afternoon was a little interesting because myself and another pilot flying a Navajo for the other operator up here was also doing trips up and down the coast, so we were kind of following each other around. Rather he started out following me and then it ended up I was following him because a Navajo is faster then a Cherokee 6. I play soccer with the pilot on an indoor soccer team. At one point I was ready to take off and was waiting for him to touch down and clear the runway, and when he taxied by me we gave each other a wave and he keyed the mic and said, "see you at soccer tonight" over the radio as he taxied by.
It just struck me as strange. Here we were, across a 90 mile stretch of wilderness from where we both live, and yet we're in the same place, at the same time, and just give each other the wave as if there's nothing out of the ordinary. In reality there really ISN'T anything out of the ordinary, we both do this everyday all day, but the concept of us being so far away in the middle of nowhere and it being normal to see someone you know there is just odd, lol. We treat 100 miles of wilderness as if its just a block away from where we live and we're just nod to each other as if we're strolling down to the corner store. What a strange reality when you really think about. Maybe my job gives me too much time to think, lol.
On another note yesterday on the holiday monday I took two trips south to the same place, one in the Cherokee, the other in the Twin Comanche. They are two so very different airplanes. In the Cherokee on takeoff, when you rotate, you really have to almost coax it off the ground. Rotation speed is 70 mph, and at that point when you ease back on the controls, the nose will come off, and then gradually a couple seconds later the main wheels will haul themselves off the ground.
The Comanche is quite different, in that once you reach rotation speed (Vr), its ready to fly and just a touch back on the controls and it will leap into the air. It caught me by surprise after I've been getting used to flying the Cherokee. I imagine this may be due to the different Vr speeds. Vr for the Comanche is 80-90 mph (depending on the weight), not because its not ready to fly until that speed, but because we don't want it coming off the ground too far below Vmc (minimum controllable airspeed with one engine inop). That's because if we were below Vmc and we lost an engine, we'd lose control of the airplane, so we wait until we're closer to Vmc before we leave the ground. That's multi-engine procedure. The Cherokee is only a single, so we rotate at 70 mph, which is just at the point when the airplane is ready to fly, since there is no Vmc. The Comanche wouldn't probably leap off the ground so readily if we rotated at a more comparable airspeed that we rotate at in the Cherokee.
Another difference is that in the climbout in the Cherokee it needs immediate nose up trim, without which you find you're pulling fairly firmly back on the controls to maintain Vy (best rate of climb speed). The Comanche requires immediate nose down trim after liftoff otherwise you find yourself pushing firmly against the controls to maintain Vy.
The biggest difference between the airplanes however, is the landing. The Cherokee is a breeze to land. You can just float it down, and it flares nicely until the airspeed bleeds off enough and it kisses the ground. I attribute this to the high camber wing, and the long fuselage which gives lots of space between the nose gear and the main gear. The Comanche isn't so friendly. If you flare at too high an airspeed or too aggressively, you'll balloon up until the airspeed bleeds off and then you come plummetting back down to earth. To little of a flare and you'll come in on the nose gear. Its tricky to find the sweet spot of airspeed that allows a controllable sink rate and doesn't cause the airplane to balloon. In short I'd describe landing the Cherokee to floating it down to the runway, whereas in the Comanche you have to fly it down. I found I'm quite out of practice in the Comanche technique.
Its also interesting because in the past I've gone far longer between flights in the Comanche then I just did on monday, and still been as sharp as ever because I haven't flown any other type of aircraft. Whereas in this case I last flew the Comanche only a couple weeks ago but I'm as rusty as ever because in the meantime I've been becoming accustomed to the Cherokee style of flying. Its interesting how different airplane types screw with your proficiency. I would also add that I found it easier to go from flying the Comanche to the Cherokee, then the other way around. I greased the landing in my first checkout flight in the Cherokee, but even with 200 hrs in the Comanche and it only having been 2 weeks since I flew it last I find myself rusty.
Saturday, May 16, 2009
Updates and Revelations
So my last post left me waiting for maintenance. I ended up staying the night there, and then headed further south to North Bay to pick up the Chief Pilot's daughter. The radio problem was only a minor issue so they were able to fix it.
I was airborne by 0703 Tuesday morning, and had an uneventful flight into North Bay. I met the Chief's daughter and she had a couple carloads of her stuff and a few of her friends there to see her off for the summer. As I was busy loading the plane, I heard from someone behind me, "Chad.", I turned around, and low and behold one of her friends/classmates was a guy I knew from way back in Sarnia. I was so stunned the first things that came out of my mouth were, "What the heck?!". lol. I shook his hand and we gave each other a more proper greeting. Once again I'm reminded of how small this world is, and how even smaller the world of aviation is.
In contrast to how small the world of aviation is, whenever I look down at the ground below me when I'm flying, it strikes me as to how geographically big the world of aviation is. To the nearest place I fly its only a 35 minute flight, but its mind boggling to think of how much distance that would be to hike, especially in the swampy terrain. It makes me wonder how much of this land I'm flying over is land that has never been touched by a human foot, and probably never will.
Once we finally made it back to base, the Chief was already waiting for me with a load ready to go, and they kept coming until 8 PM. No rest for the wicked, but I don't mind, its money in my pocket.
Wednesday was another full day of flying, but it got really windy in the afternoon, so we called it a day early, and Thursday was no good for flying at all. Friday was a good solid day of flying.
Its Saturday today, and I've had one flight this morning, but the weather is once again iffy, so we're giving it a couple hours, and we're not that busy anyways. That one flight this morning was cool however, because it gave me a very cool chance to witness some weather theory in real life, that I've never seen before. Weather is so much easier to practically apply to flying when you see it happen for real, so today I learned an awesome lesson. When the temperature is in the vicinity of freezing, and there's a warm front passing through, you can get some very interesting weather phenomina. Its difficult to explain without diagrams, so here is a crude one I drew up in 5 minutes in paint:
Warm fronts with temperatures near the freezing point are recipes for freezing rain. We had just such an occurrance on my flight up the coast. There was a warm front forecast to be in between my departure point and destination.
Note the little dashed line representing our freezing level, which is the altitude at which below that it is above 0 deg C, and above that it is below 0 deg Celcius. Remember in general the higher the altitude the colder it gets. Note how in front of the Warm front (to the right) the freezing level is closer to the surface. This is because a Warm front brings warmer air, so once the warm front has passed, the freezing level will be higher up. Even Private Pilot's learn this theory, and I have even spent a fair amount of time teaching it to students, but up until this point I've never actually witnessed it while flying, so it was quite fascinating.
At home base the temperature was around 10 degrees on the surface, but on the way I passed through the warm front into the cold side of it (from left to right on the diagram), and within a matter of minutes the temperature dropped quite sharply. While I was flying, I started passing through some rain, and since I knew freezing rain was forecast as being possible, I glanced at the thermometer and noted it at 10 degrees. Ok so I'm good, it can't freeze in 10 degree weather. When I landed however, I noticed the temperature had dropped quite sharply, down to 1 degree. Wow, that's quite the change. I arrived early due to a wicked tailwind, and it was raining moderately, so I hopped out to check that the rain wasn't freezing to the airplane. It wasn't so I got lucky. Once my passengers arrived and we got everything loaded I checked once more to make sure that the water on my plane was still liquid and not freezing. I noticed on the tail there was once spot where there was just a very thin layer of ice in a small area. It melted and broke off as soon as I touched it. I figured we'd be ok as long as it stayed liquid until we took off, cause it would be getting warmer now since we would be flying back into the warm front.
I got lucky, if it had been 2 degrees colder, we would have had freezing rain. Freezing rain occurs in the spot on the diagram where it shows its raining. Precipiation which forms above the freezing level forms as snow, but as it falls, if it falls through the wedge shaped area that is below the freezing level then it melts into rain. If that rain once again falls through the boundary of the warm front (red line), it falls back into an area that is above the freezing level. In that spot, it becomes freezing rain since the air in that area is below 0 degrees. If the air is cold enough to bring the freezing level right down to the surface, then you'll have freezing rain on the surface. In my case today it was just warm enough to keep the freezing level off the surface, and by the time I had climbed to an altitude where it would have been below zero, I had crossed into the warm side of the Warm front, and the air temp rose back up to around 10 degrees. That has always been one of the most fascinating things for me about weather theory, so it was cool to witness it in real life. Its one thing to understand the theory, but seeing it happen helps me bring all the theory into real life application, and that makes it much more useful.
Monday, May 11, 2009
Back for Maintenance
I flew down south again for maintenance. The 100 hr inspection is now due. It doesn’t seem like very long ago since I last had the airplane down here for its last inspection - that’s because it hasn’t been very long. Last time we put the extension onto the inspection which allowed us to fly an extra 10 hrs before the inspection was due, but that means this inspection was due 10 hrs earlier then usual to make up the time.
I was up early this morning at 0530 to get an early start so the AME’s would have a chance to get it all done in a day, providing there’s no snags. By 0645 we were out to the airplane and by 0700 I was ready to start up and be gone. Wait I forgot one thing. I took the Twin Comanche flying yesterday and I left my GPS mount in that airplane, so I hopped down off the wing and walked across the ramp to retrieve it and suction cup it onto the window of the Cherokee. I climbed in, mixture rich, throttle in a bit, primed it, and Master Switch ON - oh crap! I must have left the Master Switch on overnight, and the battery is good and dead… IDIOT! This is the first time I’ve ever forgotten to switch off the Master, and go figure its on the day that we’re trying to get away early. The owner was there waiting to make sure I got away alright, so I sheepishly climbed back out and told him I left the Master On and the battery was dead. He kind of laughed and said we’d have to go back across town to the hangar and get some jumper cables. The owner is old-school, he mentioned that the Cherokee hand-starts ok, but it probably wasn’t a good idea since he’s got a bad knee (arthritis - he limps everywhere) so it wouldn’t be a great idea cause he’s not mobile enough to get out of the way of the prop once it starts. So we drove back to the hangar at the house, grabbed some cables and drove back to the airport. Half an hour later we’re back. The owner good-naturedly remarked how I could have been halfway there by now, but this was a regular occurrence for the pilot here last year, so I feel a little better.
So finally by 0740 I was underway. It was smooth air, and I packed a book to read to kill the time for the day, so I pulled that out. It’s a collection of all of C.S. Lewis’ books. Right now I’m reading “Mere Christianity”, which is a philosophical look at Christianity completely apart from the Bible. Quite fascinating. Lewis was himself an atheist who set out to genuinely disprove Christianity, but found himself unable to do so. Anyways this is an aviation blog.
So I was humming along, reading my book, every now and then looking up to make sure I wasn’t careening to the earth or hopelessly off-course, when the radio squelch started acting up. I would get static, and then it would turn stop, static again, turn off. Hmm, stupid thing. Sometimes you can turn the unit off and then back on again and the squelch will fix itself, so I tried that. Unfortunately, when I tried to turn the radio back on, the display stayed off. Uh oh. I could still here the static when the radio was on, but I couldn’t see which frequency I was on. I tried recycling the ON/OFF switch again, no luck. Bummer. Its not a big deal, I’m pretty sure I’m still on 126.7, the en-route frequency, but I don’t really have any way of changing the frequency cause I can’t see what I’m changing it to. For now its not a huge safety concern, I wasn't in the process of communicating with anyone, and I’m landing at a private airstrip so I don’t really need a radio for that either. Hopefully the AME’s can fix it for my trip back up though, cause I need it then.
I’m also supposed to fly to North Bay either tonight or tomorrow morning after the maintenance is finished, and pick up the Chief Pilot’s daughter, who’s going to school there, but is finished today so she’s coming home for the summer. She’s in school to be an AME. North Bay is actually WAY south for me, so I was looking forward to it, hopefully the broken radio doesn’t throw a wrench into things.
Anyways as for now I’m sitting around killing time for the day. I stopped at Canadian Tire and picked up a few things; one of them being a resistance strap for working out, those stretchy latex bands. I thought there was a weight room in the town I’m living, but it turns out there’s not, so hopefully this will provide me with a somewhat half decent substitute. It doesn’t look like they can really provide much resistance to give me a good workout though, but we’ll see I guess.
I also picked up one of those blue foam sleeping pads for camping to put on my bed. The bed I have been provided with has seen better days. You can feel the mattress springs through the mattress. It quite literally feels like I’m sleeping on a bunch of wire springs. I’m the kind of guy who’s not terribly picky about where I can sleep, I can fall asleep just about anywhere, so up until now I’ve found a way to fit the pressure points of my body into between the springs so I’m comfortable, but this foam mat should make things better anyways.
Well lucky for me I've managed to find an internet signal to borrow so I can upload this blog. I also took some video of the landing at the strip this time, and I'll get it uploaded onto here when able.
I was up early this morning at 0530 to get an early start so the AME’s would have a chance to get it all done in a day, providing there’s no snags. By 0645 we were out to the airplane and by 0700 I was ready to start up and be gone. Wait I forgot one thing. I took the Twin Comanche flying yesterday and I left my GPS mount in that airplane, so I hopped down off the wing and walked across the ramp to retrieve it and suction cup it onto the window of the Cherokee. I climbed in, mixture rich, throttle in a bit, primed it, and Master Switch ON - oh crap! I must have left the Master Switch on overnight, and the battery is good and dead… IDIOT! This is the first time I’ve ever forgotten to switch off the Master, and go figure its on the day that we’re trying to get away early. The owner was there waiting to make sure I got away alright, so I sheepishly climbed back out and told him I left the Master On and the battery was dead. He kind of laughed and said we’d have to go back across town to the hangar and get some jumper cables. The owner is old-school, he mentioned that the Cherokee hand-starts ok, but it probably wasn’t a good idea since he’s got a bad knee (arthritis - he limps everywhere) so it wouldn’t be a great idea cause he’s not mobile enough to get out of the way of the prop once it starts. So we drove back to the hangar at the house, grabbed some cables and drove back to the airport. Half an hour later we’re back. The owner good-naturedly remarked how I could have been halfway there by now, but this was a regular occurrence for the pilot here last year, so I feel a little better.
So finally by 0740 I was underway. It was smooth air, and I packed a book to read to kill the time for the day, so I pulled that out. It’s a collection of all of C.S. Lewis’ books. Right now I’m reading “Mere Christianity”, which is a philosophical look at Christianity completely apart from the Bible. Quite fascinating. Lewis was himself an atheist who set out to genuinely disprove Christianity, but found himself unable to do so. Anyways this is an aviation blog.
So I was humming along, reading my book, every now and then looking up to make sure I wasn’t careening to the earth or hopelessly off-course, when the radio squelch started acting up. I would get static, and then it would turn stop, static again, turn off. Hmm, stupid thing. Sometimes you can turn the unit off and then back on again and the squelch will fix itself, so I tried that. Unfortunately, when I tried to turn the radio back on, the display stayed off. Uh oh. I could still here the static when the radio was on, but I couldn’t see which frequency I was on. I tried recycling the ON/OFF switch again, no luck. Bummer. Its not a big deal, I’m pretty sure I’m still on 126.7, the en-route frequency, but I don’t really have any way of changing the frequency cause I can’t see what I’m changing it to. For now its not a huge safety concern, I wasn't in the process of communicating with anyone, and I’m landing at a private airstrip so I don’t really need a radio for that either. Hopefully the AME’s can fix it for my trip back up though, cause I need it then.
I’m also supposed to fly to North Bay either tonight or tomorrow morning after the maintenance is finished, and pick up the Chief Pilot’s daughter, who’s going to school there, but is finished today so she’s coming home for the summer. She’s in school to be an AME. North Bay is actually WAY south for me, so I was looking forward to it, hopefully the broken radio doesn’t throw a wrench into things.
Anyways as for now I’m sitting around killing time for the day. I stopped at Canadian Tire and picked up a few things; one of them being a resistance strap for working out, those stretchy latex bands. I thought there was a weight room in the town I’m living, but it turns out there’s not, so hopefully this will provide me with a somewhat half decent substitute. It doesn’t look like they can really provide much resistance to give me a good workout though, but we’ll see I guess.
I also picked up one of those blue foam sleeping pads for camping to put on my bed. The bed I have been provided with has seen better days. You can feel the mattress springs through the mattress. It quite literally feels like I’m sleeping on a bunch of wire springs. I’m the kind of guy who’s not terribly picky about where I can sleep, I can fall asleep just about anywhere, so up until now I’ve found a way to fit the pressure points of my body into between the springs so I’m comfortable, but this foam mat should make things better anyways.
Well lucky for me I've managed to find an internet signal to borrow so I can upload this blog. I also took some video of the landing at the strip this time, and I'll get it uploaded onto here when able.
Thursday, May 7, 2009
Docks Dieing and Low Flying
There hasn't been a whole lot of flying going on these past 3 days. I only flew once yesterday and then once today.
Before the river ice broke up there used to be a dock sitting on the shore that they used for the chief pilot's personal floatplane during the summer. However it disappeared at some point during ice breakup. Somewhere out in James Bay (or somewhere along the way) there is a single dock on a lonely journey to nowhere.
So a new dock is needed. A few days ago the chief pilot ran down to the dump and scooped a couple old truck gas tanks to use as floaters and brought them back on a trailer. Yesterday, having nothing else better to do and needing a reason to get out of the house, I volunteered my carpentry skills to start building the dock. The owner drew up a sketch plan for me, and we ordered the lumber. The lumber didn't arrive until late in the afternoon, so I didn't actually start work on it until after I had dinner. It wasn't much to build really, and it went together easily and it was fun to nail something together again. After about an hour's work I had the framing complete. All we had to do was fasten down the floats, and then put the deck on. I had the frame all squared up and nailed to the hangar floor so it wouldn't move, and was just getting ready to start putting the decking boards on, but then the owner came by and said he wanted to get the floaters tied on first before he put the deck on. Ok fair enough, it was getting late though, and seeing how it would take a couple of us to drag the floaters over and lift the dock frame on top, and also feeling accomplished enough with having the frame done, I called it a night.
This morning was spent fastening the floaters to the frame, and then spraying the whole thing with wood preserver. By 4:00 pm tonight we got a call for a flight, so I went back to the house to check the weather. The METAR (hourly weather observation) for here was calling 5200 ft ceilings and good vis, but the GFA (weather chart) showed a warm front cutting my route down the middle, with ceilings supposedly 400 to 1000 ft past the warm front. Hmm... decisions decisions. I wanted to fly, so I offered that I didn't mind giving it a try, and if the ceilings got too low I'd just turn around. So that was the plan. By 5:00 the plane was loaded and ready to go. I watched another plane, a Piper Cheyenne take off, and he disappeared into the clouds a lot lower then 5000 ft. I estimated it was closer to 1200 to 1500 ft. Oh well. The owner one more time assured me that if the ceilings were too low just turn around. By now I'm comfortable enough to fly in weather that is pretty much at minimums if it comes down to it, but they don't really pressure me to fly below legal minimums or in bad weather anyways, which I appreciate and respect. I've heard some stories of operators who let dollar signs decide more strongly on when to make trips, and try to push the legal limits. I've heard of one such operator out of Toronto (no longer in business) who constantly pushed his pilots (to the point of insulting them if they protested) to fly even when the weather conditions were dangerous, such as icing conditions that had even grounded larger airliners (the operator flew Cessna 310's and Navajo's). Eventually most of his pilots got fed up and quit, and then eventually the company went under. This guy was not a pilot himself, he was an East Indian businessman. I guess it helps that everyone in the company I work for are experienced pilot's themselves, so they understand the game better then a foreign non-aviating businessman.
Anyways I fired the Cherokee up and checked the AWOS. It was calling ceilings at 800 ft now. Technically that is below VFR weather minimum for VFR flight in a control zone. Minimums for a control zone surrounding an airport is that visibility has to be at least 3 miles, and the aircraft has to be operated at least 1 mile horizontally, and 500 ft vertically clear of cloud, and at least 500 ft above ground level. So basically that means no less then 1000 ft ceilings. There is a nifty little tool which I'm sure I've mentioned before which can be used in a control zone served by either a radio service or a tower. This is called Special VFR. When an aircraft operates under special VFR we only need 1 mile visibility and we only have to operate clear of cloud, we don't need to worry about the 1 mile horizontally and 500 ft vertically anymore. Special VFR is not allowed to be suggested by a controller. I imagine this is so pilots who are uncomfortable flying in such poor conditions don't feel pressured into accepting such a responsibility. Pilots can request it however.
In uncontrolled airspace when operating below 1000 ft all that is required for visibility is 2 sm miles during the day and to operate clear of cloud. As far as in the wording defining the limits of a cloud ceiling, there is technically no limit, but usually the requirements to stay a certain distance above man-made objects and built up areas come into play which dictates the minimum cloud ceiling based on that. For example if I have to operate at least 500 ft from any man made property, and I only have to operate clear of cloud, then that means my minimum ceiling is 500 ft. There is no such requirement to stay a certain height above terrain that is not build up or populated, which is the case up north here in the wilderness. So seeing as the visibility was good and I could operate clear of cloud without hitting the ground, outside of the control zone I'm good to go.
So based on the low ceilings when I started up and made my initial radio call to the radio service, I was expecting them to tell me conditions were below VFR for inside the control zone and that I wasn't allowed to depart. At that point I would request Special VFR thus removing my requirment to stay 500 ft vertically away from the cloud, and I'd be good to go. However he didn't tell me that. He didn't mention anything at all about the weather conditions, he just advised me of some IFR traffic shooting an approach and told me to call rolling as usual. Hmm, interesting. I'm not sure if he just wasn't up to date on the below VFR weather, or if he saw the inevitable Special VFR exchange coming and didn't want to bother with the semantics. Oh well, not that I care. Time to go flying.
I took off and I started skimming the bottoms of the clouds at 600 ft. They were even lower then what the AWOS was calling. Oh well, they're still do-able. I had a terrible headwind so I spent the duration of the abnormally long flight bouncing along at 600 ft agl, and crossing my fingers that it wouldn't get worse behind me stranding me for the night at my destination. That'd be a bugger. I landed uneventfully, unloaded my freight and installed the seat I brought with me to bring back my one passenger.
A headwind there meant a tailwind on the way back. I took off and once again levelled off at around 700 ft (the clouds were a little higher closer to destination). We were making great time, or it at least felt like it. We were so low and doing 142 kts groundspeed - the ground underneath whipped by pretty quickly. The ceiling for the most part remained unchanged. I think my passenger was a little nervous with the flight, it was bumpy and we were flying abnormally low to the ground. He kept tapping me on the shoulder and asking how much longer. Normally I don't mind tending to passengers needs, except when I'm busy. I always kind of expect passengers to have enough sense to leave me alone when we're taking off and landing, or when I'm noticeably busy. I'm not sure if its fair to expect passengers to intuitively know that or not. Since I'm the pilot, my opinion is tainted. In this case he tapped me on the shoulder when I was busy trying to spot the airport, join the downwind, slow the airplane down, and perform the prelanding check. Normally these would be separate steps with a fair amount of time in between, but in this situation the tailwind, combined with being so close to the ground meant the airport was coming up pretty fast. I was slightly annoyed that he was bugging me when I was busy, and at the fact that 15 minutes ago I told him we'd be landing in 17 minutes. You would think he could do the math. I half turned my head and thrust up my hand indicating "two minutes".
Once again on touchdown I managed to keep from ramming the landing gear through the top of the wings and stayed out of the weeds off the side, so I guess that makes for another successful flight.
Before the river ice broke up there used to be a dock sitting on the shore that they used for the chief pilot's personal floatplane during the summer. However it disappeared at some point during ice breakup. Somewhere out in James Bay (or somewhere along the way) there is a single dock on a lonely journey to nowhere.
So a new dock is needed. A few days ago the chief pilot ran down to the dump and scooped a couple old truck gas tanks to use as floaters and brought them back on a trailer. Yesterday, having nothing else better to do and needing a reason to get out of the house, I volunteered my carpentry skills to start building the dock. The owner drew up a sketch plan for me, and we ordered the lumber. The lumber didn't arrive until late in the afternoon, so I didn't actually start work on it until after I had dinner. It wasn't much to build really, and it went together easily and it was fun to nail something together again. After about an hour's work I had the framing complete. All we had to do was fasten down the floats, and then put the deck on. I had the frame all squared up and nailed to the hangar floor so it wouldn't move, and was just getting ready to start putting the decking boards on, but then the owner came by and said he wanted to get the floaters tied on first before he put the deck on. Ok fair enough, it was getting late though, and seeing how it would take a couple of us to drag the floaters over and lift the dock frame on top, and also feeling accomplished enough with having the frame done, I called it a night.
This morning was spent fastening the floaters to the frame, and then spraying the whole thing with wood preserver. By 4:00 pm tonight we got a call for a flight, so I went back to the house to check the weather. The METAR (hourly weather observation) for here was calling 5200 ft ceilings and good vis, but the GFA (weather chart) showed a warm front cutting my route down the middle, with ceilings supposedly 400 to 1000 ft past the warm front. Hmm... decisions decisions. I wanted to fly, so I offered that I didn't mind giving it a try, and if the ceilings got too low I'd just turn around. So that was the plan. By 5:00 the plane was loaded and ready to go. I watched another plane, a Piper Cheyenne take off, and he disappeared into the clouds a lot lower then 5000 ft. I estimated it was closer to 1200 to 1500 ft. Oh well. The owner one more time assured me that if the ceilings were too low just turn around. By now I'm comfortable enough to fly in weather that is pretty much at minimums if it comes down to it, but they don't really pressure me to fly below legal minimums or in bad weather anyways, which I appreciate and respect. I've heard some stories of operators who let dollar signs decide more strongly on when to make trips, and try to push the legal limits. I've heard of one such operator out of Toronto (no longer in business) who constantly pushed his pilots (to the point of insulting them if they protested) to fly even when the weather conditions were dangerous, such as icing conditions that had even grounded larger airliners (the operator flew Cessna 310's and Navajo's). Eventually most of his pilots got fed up and quit, and then eventually the company went under. This guy was not a pilot himself, he was an East Indian businessman. I guess it helps that everyone in the company I work for are experienced pilot's themselves, so they understand the game better then a foreign non-aviating businessman.
Anyways I fired the Cherokee up and checked the AWOS. It was calling ceilings at 800 ft now. Technically that is below VFR weather minimum for VFR flight in a control zone. Minimums for a control zone surrounding an airport is that visibility has to be at least 3 miles, and the aircraft has to be operated at least 1 mile horizontally, and 500 ft vertically clear of cloud, and at least 500 ft above ground level. So basically that means no less then 1000 ft ceilings. There is a nifty little tool which I'm sure I've mentioned before which can be used in a control zone served by either a radio service or a tower. This is called Special VFR. When an aircraft operates under special VFR we only need 1 mile visibility and we only have to operate clear of cloud, we don't need to worry about the 1 mile horizontally and 500 ft vertically anymore. Special VFR is not allowed to be suggested by a controller. I imagine this is so pilots who are uncomfortable flying in such poor conditions don't feel pressured into accepting such a responsibility. Pilots can request it however.
In uncontrolled airspace when operating below 1000 ft all that is required for visibility is 2 sm miles during the day and to operate clear of cloud. As far as in the wording defining the limits of a cloud ceiling, there is technically no limit, but usually the requirements to stay a certain distance above man-made objects and built up areas come into play which dictates the minimum cloud ceiling based on that. For example if I have to operate at least 500 ft from any man made property, and I only have to operate clear of cloud, then that means my minimum ceiling is 500 ft. There is no such requirement to stay a certain height above terrain that is not build up or populated, which is the case up north here in the wilderness. So seeing as the visibility was good and I could operate clear of cloud without hitting the ground, outside of the control zone I'm good to go.
So based on the low ceilings when I started up and made my initial radio call to the radio service, I was expecting them to tell me conditions were below VFR for inside the control zone and that I wasn't allowed to depart. At that point I would request Special VFR thus removing my requirment to stay 500 ft vertically away from the cloud, and I'd be good to go. However he didn't tell me that. He didn't mention anything at all about the weather conditions, he just advised me of some IFR traffic shooting an approach and told me to call rolling as usual. Hmm, interesting. I'm not sure if he just wasn't up to date on the below VFR weather, or if he saw the inevitable Special VFR exchange coming and didn't want to bother with the semantics. Oh well, not that I care. Time to go flying.
I took off and I started skimming the bottoms of the clouds at 600 ft. They were even lower then what the AWOS was calling. Oh well, they're still do-able. I had a terrible headwind so I spent the duration of the abnormally long flight bouncing along at 600 ft agl, and crossing my fingers that it wouldn't get worse behind me stranding me for the night at my destination. That'd be a bugger. I landed uneventfully, unloaded my freight and installed the seat I brought with me to bring back my one passenger.
A headwind there meant a tailwind on the way back. I took off and once again levelled off at around 700 ft (the clouds were a little higher closer to destination). We were making great time, or it at least felt like it. We were so low and doing 142 kts groundspeed - the ground underneath whipped by pretty quickly. The ceiling for the most part remained unchanged. I think my passenger was a little nervous with the flight, it was bumpy and we were flying abnormally low to the ground. He kept tapping me on the shoulder and asking how much longer. Normally I don't mind tending to passengers needs, except when I'm busy. I always kind of expect passengers to have enough sense to leave me alone when we're taking off and landing, or when I'm noticeably busy. I'm not sure if its fair to expect passengers to intuitively know that or not. Since I'm the pilot, my opinion is tainted. In this case he tapped me on the shoulder when I was busy trying to spot the airport, join the downwind, slow the airplane down, and perform the prelanding check. Normally these would be separate steps with a fair amount of time in between, but in this situation the tailwind, combined with being so close to the ground meant the airport was coming up pretty fast. I was slightly annoyed that he was bugging me when I was busy, and at the fact that 15 minutes ago I told him we'd be landing in 17 minutes. You would think he could do the math. I half turned my head and thrust up my hand indicating "two minutes".
Once again on touchdown I managed to keep from ramming the landing gear through the top of the wings and stayed out of the weeds off the side, so I guess that makes for another successful flight.
Sunday, May 3, 2009
More Adventures
Yesterday I had another exciting Saturday. My first flight was a pax flight up the west coast. The weather was marginal with low ceilings and snow showers on the way up. When we got to the airport I noticed the runway was snow covered.
It was only an inch deep of loose dry snow but I was suprised when the touchdown was almost perfectly silent, it made me look good, haha. I dropped my passengers off and headed back. I took note of the ceilings and snow showers and made a PIREP (Pilot Report) to the radio service when I called inbound. The only weather station up in this area is the airport where I'm based out of, so pilot's appreciate when other pilot's make pireps of the conditions up the coast.
My next trip was East up the other coast, to drop off a passenger at that reserve. When I left the sky was scattered clouds at around 3000 ft. The flight and landing was uneventful, and in a couple minutes I was back in the air climbing out on my way home. On this trip there are couple bays to either climb up high and cross over, or go around. When I'm empty, I like to climb higher and fly direct, because it doesn't take long to get to higher altitudes with a lightly loaded airplane. So within a couple minutes after takeoff I was already at 4500 ft, and for reasons that I can't recall, maybe a little boredom and a compulsive need to flick switches and press buttons, I tuned into my destination's AWOS (Automatic Weather Observation System). AWOS basically automatically gives the station's current weather conditions and broadcasts it on a specific frequency for pilots to listen to. It was calling 1/4 sm visibility, and 100 ft vertical visibility (essentially 100 ft ceilings). This was way below even basic IFR minimums. Crap, where the heck did that come from?
So I made the easy decision of turning around and landing again. The airport terminal building was closed for the weekend so I couldn't get to a phone, but after waiting around for 15 minutes another flight crew came out to the airport, and one of them let me borrow his cellphone to call company and give them an update of my predicament. They looked at the forecast for me, and to make a long story short, it became apparent I would be waiting there for a while, so I decided to walk into town. I could see from the air that the road from the airport into down kind of followed along outside of town first before turning left into it, and I could also see from the air that it would be a much shorter distance to cut through the woods from the corner of the airport into some houses on the outskirts. Rather then following the road, I elected for a little hiking adventure and decided to try to hike through the woods. I had my handheld compass that I bought, so I figured if I just made a heading of North NorthEast that would get me the shortest route into civilization.
My first challenge however was crossing a 10 ft wide ditch filled with water. I walked along it for a few hundred feet and found a spot where I might be able to cross without getting wet. It was a pile of bushes and then a snowbank making somewhat of a bridge across the ditch. Carefully I climbed across. On my last step before I was clear, my foot broke through the snowbank and I went up to my shins in water. Crap! Oh well, not much I can do now. I set off into the bushes. Well even though most of the snow everywhere else was melted off, in the forest it was still knee deep, and soggy. I spent about 15 seconds bushing through branches and hauling myself through knee deep snow before realizing that this would be neither faster nor the dryer way of getting into town. So much for that. So I pushed my way back out of the forest to the road. I had to cross the ditch again... hmm. I found another spot that held a dim hope of keeping my feet dry, but I didn't have any luck. Once again I crashed through, this time with both feet, into shin deep water. Dang. Oh well. So I walked along the road for a bit and a car drove by with a couple who offered to take me into town. Sweet.
They dropped me off, and once again I got another sense of Deja Vu. This is the place I stayed a couple years ago working for Flight Exec. I had some time to kill, and wet feet, so I walked into the Northern Store, wandered around there for a bit, and bought some nice wool socks. I remember watching Survivorman and he said wool has the property of not really holding water, so it makes it easier to stay warm and dry when wearing wool. I went outside, sat down on a bench to take my soggy boots off. It felt wonderful to put my nice new wool socks on, and it was true, even though my boots were still sopping wet, my feet felt dry in the socks.
There's not much to see in this place, so for a good half hour I wandered around aimlessly, killing time, and feeling like a homeless person. Across from the Northern store there's the Lodge, a hotel and restaurant called Wavies. And that is the extent of downtown. The lodge is actually quite nice considering where it is, its got a nice riverfront view, with a huge vaulted ceiling in the restaurant. I sat in the lobby for a couple hours, called Flight Service to get an update on the weather, with which they gave me bad news. Once the snowstorms at home base cleared up, they were supposed to move east to where I was now. The weather briefer didn't think I'd be able to make it out of here VFR until late tonight. Well our operation only flies day VFR, so that's no good. I called company to both give them an update on my situation, and try to formulate an action plan. After that, I wasn't really hungry, but it was 6:00, so I ate dinner anyways, just to kill time. I'm lucky I have a fast metabolism, cause when I'm bored, I eat.
I had a 1/4 roasted chicken, which ended up being a little overcooked and dry, but the fries were good. More waiting. I also noticed while waiting that it started to snow, quite heavily. Crap. By 7:00 I called company again to get an update. The weather at home had cleared, but as the weatherman said there was supposed to be a cold front in between along my route bringing bad weather. Looking out the window where I was it looked overcast, hard to tell the cloud height, but no snow, so we agreed we'd wait another half hour and see how things were then, and I'd depart. Pretty much as soon as I hung up the phone it started snowing again, and I couldn't even see across the river. Crappy deal. Oh well, we'll give it till 7:30. At 7:30 the snow seemed to lighten up again, so I called company one last time, and we agreed that I'd make a run for it. I crossed my fingers that the snow didn't freeze onto my airplane. By this point the hotel front desk had closed, so I don't even think I could even get a room anymore if I needed it for the night.
Off I went again walking back to the airport. I got about 2/3 there, and someone came by and offered to give me a ride. Sweet. We made small talk for a bit, he knew the guy I dropped off today. He was on his way to the airport as well, he was ground crew for a medivac helicopter that was coming in. He also mentioned that my airplane was an ice cube. Perfect. We got to the airport, and sure enough, the entire airplane was covered in 1/2 inch sized droplets of ice frozen solid onto the skin. Did I also mention that it was -8 below, 7:50 pm, with the sun setting at 8:45, and official nighttime at 9:15. Sweet. Luckily a couple days ago I threw a hand scraper into the back of the airplane "just in case". Feverishly I started scraping the ice off the airplane in a rush to beat the sunset. It's about a half hour flight back, so if I can take off before the sun sets, I'll make it time before official nighttime.
As I was scraping, and wondering who's idea it was to become a bush pilot, the medivac chopper came in and landed, and they offloaded what looked like a hypothermic passenger. They were wrapped head to toe in one of those hypothermic bags. It was a sobering reminder to make sure I scrape the ice off properly. Its a tedius job, to get every bit of ice off all of the critical surfaces, but I didn't want to end up off the end of the runway, as a medivac patient because I didn't clean the airplane off properly. I'm not a fan of becoming a statistic.
Without a minute to spare I had the airplane clean and ready to start up. It was snowing again, but only lightly, so visibility was still ok. I had no way of knowing what the ceilings were. I did my runup, taxied out, and pushed the throttle forward. Ceilings were ok with a couple hundred feet to spare. Minimum VFR ceilings didn't allow me to climb high enough to fly over the bay however, so I had to go around. When I got closer to home, it started snowing again, fairly heavily, but it was cold enough that I didn't pick up any icing. I could see the snow when I turned my landing light on, but the lights of the town came into view about 8 miles back. It was pretty well dark by now. I flew overhead the field and joined the downwind, and I could see the headlights of a truck on the ramp, I knew it was company waiting for me.
All ended well, I landed safely, and I got to sleep in my own bed.
It was only an inch deep of loose dry snow but I was suprised when the touchdown was almost perfectly silent, it made me look good, haha. I dropped my passengers off and headed back. I took note of the ceilings and snow showers and made a PIREP (Pilot Report) to the radio service when I called inbound. The only weather station up in this area is the airport where I'm based out of, so pilot's appreciate when other pilot's make pireps of the conditions up the coast.
My next trip was East up the other coast, to drop off a passenger at that reserve. When I left the sky was scattered clouds at around 3000 ft. The flight and landing was uneventful, and in a couple minutes I was back in the air climbing out on my way home. On this trip there are couple bays to either climb up high and cross over, or go around. When I'm empty, I like to climb higher and fly direct, because it doesn't take long to get to higher altitudes with a lightly loaded airplane. So within a couple minutes after takeoff I was already at 4500 ft, and for reasons that I can't recall, maybe a little boredom and a compulsive need to flick switches and press buttons, I tuned into my destination's AWOS (Automatic Weather Observation System). AWOS basically automatically gives the station's current weather conditions and broadcasts it on a specific frequency for pilots to listen to. It was calling 1/4 sm visibility, and 100 ft vertical visibility (essentially 100 ft ceilings). This was way below even basic IFR minimums. Crap, where the heck did that come from?
So I made the easy decision of turning around and landing again. The airport terminal building was closed for the weekend so I couldn't get to a phone, but after waiting around for 15 minutes another flight crew came out to the airport, and one of them let me borrow his cellphone to call company and give them an update of my predicament. They looked at the forecast for me, and to make a long story short, it became apparent I would be waiting there for a while, so I decided to walk into town. I could see from the air that the road from the airport into down kind of followed along outside of town first before turning left into it, and I could also see from the air that it would be a much shorter distance to cut through the woods from the corner of the airport into some houses on the outskirts. Rather then following the road, I elected for a little hiking adventure and decided to try to hike through the woods. I had my handheld compass that I bought, so I figured if I just made a heading of North NorthEast that would get me the shortest route into civilization.
My first challenge however was crossing a 10 ft wide ditch filled with water. I walked along it for a few hundred feet and found a spot where I might be able to cross without getting wet. It was a pile of bushes and then a snowbank making somewhat of a bridge across the ditch. Carefully I climbed across. On my last step before I was clear, my foot broke through the snowbank and I went up to my shins in water. Crap! Oh well, not much I can do now. I set off into the bushes. Well even though most of the snow everywhere else was melted off, in the forest it was still knee deep, and soggy. I spent about 15 seconds bushing through branches and hauling myself through knee deep snow before realizing that this would be neither faster nor the dryer way of getting into town. So much for that. So I pushed my way back out of the forest to the road. I had to cross the ditch again... hmm. I found another spot that held a dim hope of keeping my feet dry, but I didn't have any luck. Once again I crashed through, this time with both feet, into shin deep water. Dang. Oh well. So I walked along the road for a bit and a car drove by with a couple who offered to take me into town. Sweet.
They dropped me off, and once again I got another sense of Deja Vu. This is the place I stayed a couple years ago working for Flight Exec. I had some time to kill, and wet feet, so I walked into the Northern Store, wandered around there for a bit, and bought some nice wool socks. I remember watching Survivorman and he said wool has the property of not really holding water, so it makes it easier to stay warm and dry when wearing wool. I went outside, sat down on a bench to take my soggy boots off. It felt wonderful to put my nice new wool socks on, and it was true, even though my boots were still sopping wet, my feet felt dry in the socks.
There's not much to see in this place, so for a good half hour I wandered around aimlessly, killing time, and feeling like a homeless person. Across from the Northern store there's the Lodge, a hotel and restaurant called Wavies. And that is the extent of downtown. The lodge is actually quite nice considering where it is, its got a nice riverfront view, with a huge vaulted ceiling in the restaurant. I sat in the lobby for a couple hours, called Flight Service to get an update on the weather, with which they gave me bad news. Once the snowstorms at home base cleared up, they were supposed to move east to where I was now. The weather briefer didn't think I'd be able to make it out of here VFR until late tonight. Well our operation only flies day VFR, so that's no good. I called company to both give them an update on my situation, and try to formulate an action plan. After that, I wasn't really hungry, but it was 6:00, so I ate dinner anyways, just to kill time. I'm lucky I have a fast metabolism, cause when I'm bored, I eat.
I had a 1/4 roasted chicken, which ended up being a little overcooked and dry, but the fries were good. More waiting. I also noticed while waiting that it started to snow, quite heavily. Crap. By 7:00 I called company again to get an update. The weather at home had cleared, but as the weatherman said there was supposed to be a cold front in between along my route bringing bad weather. Looking out the window where I was it looked overcast, hard to tell the cloud height, but no snow, so we agreed we'd wait another half hour and see how things were then, and I'd depart. Pretty much as soon as I hung up the phone it started snowing again, and I couldn't even see across the river. Crappy deal. Oh well, we'll give it till 7:30. At 7:30 the snow seemed to lighten up again, so I called company one last time, and we agreed that I'd make a run for it. I crossed my fingers that the snow didn't freeze onto my airplane. By this point the hotel front desk had closed, so I don't even think I could even get a room anymore if I needed it for the night.
Off I went again walking back to the airport. I got about 2/3 there, and someone came by and offered to give me a ride. Sweet. We made small talk for a bit, he knew the guy I dropped off today. He was on his way to the airport as well, he was ground crew for a medivac helicopter that was coming in. He also mentioned that my airplane was an ice cube. Perfect. We got to the airport, and sure enough, the entire airplane was covered in 1/2 inch sized droplets of ice frozen solid onto the skin. Did I also mention that it was -8 below, 7:50 pm, with the sun setting at 8:45, and official nighttime at 9:15. Sweet. Luckily a couple days ago I threw a hand scraper into the back of the airplane "just in case". Feverishly I started scraping the ice off the airplane in a rush to beat the sunset. It's about a half hour flight back, so if I can take off before the sun sets, I'll make it time before official nighttime.
As I was scraping, and wondering who's idea it was to become a bush pilot, the medivac chopper came in and landed, and they offloaded what looked like a hypothermic passenger. They were wrapped head to toe in one of those hypothermic bags. It was a sobering reminder to make sure I scrape the ice off properly. Its a tedius job, to get every bit of ice off all of the critical surfaces, but I didn't want to end up off the end of the runway, as a medivac patient because I didn't clean the airplane off properly. I'm not a fan of becoming a statistic.
Without a minute to spare I had the airplane clean and ready to start up. It was snowing again, but only lightly, so visibility was still ok. I had no way of knowing what the ceilings were. I did my runup, taxied out, and pushed the throttle forward. Ceilings were ok with a couple hundred feet to spare. Minimum VFR ceilings didn't allow me to climb high enough to fly over the bay however, so I had to go around. When I got closer to home, it started snowing again, fairly heavily, but it was cold enough that I didn't pick up any icing. I could see the snow when I turned my landing light on, but the lights of the town came into view about 8 miles back. It was pretty well dark by now. I flew overhead the field and joined the downwind, and I could see the headlights of a truck on the ramp, I knew it was company waiting for me.
All ended well, I landed safely, and I got to sleep in my own bed.
Friday, May 1, 2009
I had both an eventful and interesting day today. I'm not quite sure where to start, so I suppose I'll go chronologically. Beware this may be a lengthy post.
My day started slow. I knew I had a bunch of trips lined up, but it was supposed to snow in the morning, which it did. So when my alarm went off I woke up and immediately knew I had to look out the window. I tried to imagine what it would look like out the window and draw a conclusion from that so I didn't have to get out of bed (it seems reasonable when you're still half asleep), but using that method I could not ascertain an accurate observation as to weather or not it was ok to fly, so I had to haul myself out of bed and to the window to have a look. Yep, it was snowing, pretty hard in fact - and its May 1st. No flying yet, oh well, I'm going back to bed.
So an hour rolls by, and what seems like a more reasonable time to get up arrives, so I get up, even though its still snowing. I milled about the house for a bit, had a shower, got dressed, and before I knew it the chief was knocking on my door asking if I could go gas up the Cherokee and then take the fuel truck to get it filled up. During the morning routine the weather had indeed cleared up. So, as I've learned, even though he didn't actually ask me to get ready to go flying, chances are that before I get an opportunity to return to my house it will be time to take to the skies, so I got my bags ready, made some sandwiches and packed some food, and headed out.
I got down to the airport to gas up the plane and the Chief was already there scraping the snow off the airplane. What a guy, I always appreciate help. I pulled the fuel truck up and started fuelling. Empty. Dang, there was no fuel left in the truck, I was hoping there'd be enough before taking the truck itself to get refuelled, cause then we'd have a completely full fuel truck for the weekend. Oh well, off I go to the fuel depot. When I got back to the airport, most of the snow was melted/scraped off the airplane, except for a stubborn little chunk inside the propellor spinner. We spent about 20 minutes scraping, tapping, and melting that chunk out from inside the spinner so there wouldn't be excessive vibration with the engine running due to the off-balance spinner.
Finally by noon I'm under way for the day, and just as I expected I didn't really have a chance to go home, so lucky thing I'm already good to go. The winds were very strong at 20 knots, which made things a little more fun and interesting with the landings, and there were spotty snow showers in places as well. Most of the airports up here have only one runway, so its almost guarenteed there will be some sort of crosswind component. My first trip was up the coast to a small mining town.
On the way up there was a Hawker twin turboprop aircraft inbound on the reciprocal track as me going outbound, so on my departure I stayed at 1000 ft while he passed over me at 2000. It was a cool sight to see this big twin turbine bearing down on you at 12 o'clock. I didn't think about grabbing my camera in time, it would have made an awesome photo.
The mission was to land there, pick up an Canadian Forces Ranger and bring him and his stuff across the river to the other small town about 8 miles away. Each town has an airport, but since the ice road across the river has melted but its still too icy for boats, an airplane is the only way. This guy was an instructor for the Canadian Forces Rangers. I talked to him for a bit and I guess they're up here training and getting ready for the spring thaw, in case these communities flood and that have to evacuate the residents. Who knew? Can I say I've served my country now? I was responsible for relocating the Canadian Forces equipment and personnel (singular) to a different location. I guess when they only need to move one guy, a bunch of cots and radio equipment, it makes more sense to hire a Cherokee then fire up a C-130 Herc. I felt pretty important flying a guy in Canadian Forces Camo greens around. He was an older middle aged man, and he seemed to enjoy the short flight, despite it being terriby bumpy due to the strong winds. I made two trips across the river, the first to bring him and half of the equipment, and a second trip to bring the rest of it.
After that I was to bring two passengers back to home base with me. On the way back the same thing happened, a Turbo Beaver passed almost directly overhead of me. This time I did have my camera ready. I kind of wondered what my passengers would think about the pilot taking pictures of airplanes and not flying the airplane, but they didn't seem to mind. My front pax asked me if I got the shot, to which I nodded yes. A Turbo Beaver is a cool airplane, its just not quite as intimidating as a big twin turbine, so the picture wasn't exactly what I was hoping for. Oh well.
My next trip was back up the coast to the reserve to bring some passengers back. Origionally the intel I got was it was supposed to be 3 adults and two kids. However when I showed up there were two vehicles waiting for me, a minivan and an extended cab pickup truck. It turns out these people were expecting to bring 4 adults, 3 children and all their baggage. The Cherokee only has six seats, and while its reasonable for a child to sit on an adult's lap for the flight, there is a certain amount of reason that has to be excercised. They had expected that 3 of the adults would have the kids on their laps, including an adult in the copilot seat with a child on their lap. This is a big no-no since its easy to understand that a child in someone's arms in the cockpit can be a very deady hazard simpy by the fact that I would not have full movement of the controls. I'm sure we could all think of at least 3 other hazards associated with baby's in mother's arms in cockpits as well. So anyways 8 people (including me) in a six seat aircraft was pretty much an impossibility. Next you should have seen the amount of baggage they brought along. It was enough to fill the airplane with no seats installed at all! I tried to explain it to them that there simply wasn't enough room, but they didn't seem to understand the problem. I suppose I could have made my point well enough by asking one of them to pack the airplane, and then they would have seen the unsolvable volume issues, aside from the fact that care must be taken to load the airplane within its center of gravity limitations.
Anyways after more explaining then I thought would be necessary, I managed to get across the point that either all of them could come but they'd have to leave most of their bags, or only some of them could come and we could remove a couple seats and fit in most of their bags. They eventually came to the conclusion that one of the family's wouldn't go at all. Sweet. That made it much easier for me to only have to fit half the stuff and half the people in. I suppose I should have felt bad that they had to cancel their trip (I'm not sure where their final destination was), but I don't have much sympathy for people who think its realistic to charter a small airplane at a small airplane price and expect it to carry what a large airplane does. I mean come on, they needed a pickup truck and a minivan to get everything and everyone out to the airport! Sheesh.
After that trip I had two more trips up the coast before the end of the day. These were freight trips. By now the winds that I had been wrangling with all day had calmed down significantly. Too bad, I was enjoying them. One thing I have noticed now that the snow on the ground is started to melt is how much of the terrain is actually wetland. All the open treeless areas I think I mentioned in a previous blog is treeless because its actually swamp area. Turns out there's fewer spots then I thought that would make an ideal put-down area in case of engine trouble. Surviveable probably, but not ideal.
So I did my last two trips, with the sun starting to set and a good amount of fatigue setting into my body. After I landed from my last trip I parked the airplane, pushed it back into its place, fuelled it up for tomorrow, put the wing covers and engine blanket on and heater in, and done. Time to go home. Not quite done yet though. I now have a crapload of log entries to fill in at some point tonight, make dinner, and write a blog. Goodnight.
My day started slow. I knew I had a bunch of trips lined up, but it was supposed to snow in the morning, which it did. So when my alarm went off I woke up and immediately knew I had to look out the window. I tried to imagine what it would look like out the window and draw a conclusion from that so I didn't have to get out of bed (it seems reasonable when you're still half asleep), but using that method I could not ascertain an accurate observation as to weather or not it was ok to fly, so I had to haul myself out of bed and to the window to have a look. Yep, it was snowing, pretty hard in fact - and its May 1st. No flying yet, oh well, I'm going back to bed.
So an hour rolls by, and what seems like a more reasonable time to get up arrives, so I get up, even though its still snowing. I milled about the house for a bit, had a shower, got dressed, and before I knew it the chief was knocking on my door asking if I could go gas up the Cherokee and then take the fuel truck to get it filled up. During the morning routine the weather had indeed cleared up. So, as I've learned, even though he didn't actually ask me to get ready to go flying, chances are that before I get an opportunity to return to my house it will be time to take to the skies, so I got my bags ready, made some sandwiches and packed some food, and headed out.
I got down to the airport to gas up the plane and the Chief was already there scraping the snow off the airplane. What a guy, I always appreciate help. I pulled the fuel truck up and started fuelling. Empty. Dang, there was no fuel left in the truck, I was hoping there'd be enough before taking the truck itself to get refuelled, cause then we'd have a completely full fuel truck for the weekend. Oh well, off I go to the fuel depot. When I got back to the airport, most of the snow was melted/scraped off the airplane, except for a stubborn little chunk inside the propellor spinner. We spent about 20 minutes scraping, tapping, and melting that chunk out from inside the spinner so there wouldn't be excessive vibration with the engine running due to the off-balance spinner.
Finally by noon I'm under way for the day, and just as I expected I didn't really have a chance to go home, so lucky thing I'm already good to go. The winds were very strong at 20 knots, which made things a little more fun and interesting with the landings, and there were spotty snow showers in places as well. Most of the airports up here have only one runway, so its almost guarenteed there will be some sort of crosswind component. My first trip was up the coast to a small mining town.
On the way up there was a Hawker twin turboprop aircraft inbound on the reciprocal track as me going outbound, so on my departure I stayed at 1000 ft while he passed over me at 2000. It was a cool sight to see this big twin turbine bearing down on you at 12 o'clock. I didn't think about grabbing my camera in time, it would have made an awesome photo.
The mission was to land there, pick up an Canadian Forces Ranger and bring him and his stuff across the river to the other small town about 8 miles away. Each town has an airport, but since the ice road across the river has melted but its still too icy for boats, an airplane is the only way. This guy was an instructor for the Canadian Forces Rangers. I talked to him for a bit and I guess they're up here training and getting ready for the spring thaw, in case these communities flood and that have to evacuate the residents. Who knew? Can I say I've served my country now? I was responsible for relocating the Canadian Forces equipment and personnel (singular) to a different location. I guess when they only need to move one guy, a bunch of cots and radio equipment, it makes more sense to hire a Cherokee then fire up a C-130 Herc. I felt pretty important flying a guy in Canadian Forces Camo greens around. He was an older middle aged man, and he seemed to enjoy the short flight, despite it being terriby bumpy due to the strong winds. I made two trips across the river, the first to bring him and half of the equipment, and a second trip to bring the rest of it.
After that I was to bring two passengers back to home base with me. On the way back the same thing happened, a Turbo Beaver passed almost directly overhead of me. This time I did have my camera ready. I kind of wondered what my passengers would think about the pilot taking pictures of airplanes and not flying the airplane, but they didn't seem to mind. My front pax asked me if I got the shot, to which I nodded yes. A Turbo Beaver is a cool airplane, its just not quite as intimidating as a big twin turbine, so the picture wasn't exactly what I was hoping for. Oh well.
My next trip was back up the coast to the reserve to bring some passengers back. Origionally the intel I got was it was supposed to be 3 adults and two kids. However when I showed up there were two vehicles waiting for me, a minivan and an extended cab pickup truck. It turns out these people were expecting to bring 4 adults, 3 children and all their baggage. The Cherokee only has six seats, and while its reasonable for a child to sit on an adult's lap for the flight, there is a certain amount of reason that has to be excercised. They had expected that 3 of the adults would have the kids on their laps, including an adult in the copilot seat with a child on their lap. This is a big no-no since its easy to understand that a child in someone's arms in the cockpit can be a very deady hazard simpy by the fact that I would not have full movement of the controls. I'm sure we could all think of at least 3 other hazards associated with baby's in mother's arms in cockpits as well. So anyways 8 people (including me) in a six seat aircraft was pretty much an impossibility. Next you should have seen the amount of baggage they brought along. It was enough to fill the airplane with no seats installed at all! I tried to explain it to them that there simply wasn't enough room, but they didn't seem to understand the problem. I suppose I could have made my point well enough by asking one of them to pack the airplane, and then they would have seen the unsolvable volume issues, aside from the fact that care must be taken to load the airplane within its center of gravity limitations.
Anyways after more explaining then I thought would be necessary, I managed to get across the point that either all of them could come but they'd have to leave most of their bags, or only some of them could come and we could remove a couple seats and fit in most of their bags. They eventually came to the conclusion that one of the family's wouldn't go at all. Sweet. That made it much easier for me to only have to fit half the stuff and half the people in. I suppose I should have felt bad that they had to cancel their trip (I'm not sure where their final destination was), but I don't have much sympathy for people who think its realistic to charter a small airplane at a small airplane price and expect it to carry what a large airplane does. I mean come on, they needed a pickup truck and a minivan to get everything and everyone out to the airport! Sheesh.
After that trip I had two more trips up the coast before the end of the day. These were freight trips. By now the winds that I had been wrangling with all day had calmed down significantly. Too bad, I was enjoying them. One thing I have noticed now that the snow on the ground is started to melt is how much of the terrain is actually wetland. All the open treeless areas I think I mentioned in a previous blog is treeless because its actually swamp area. Turns out there's fewer spots then I thought that would make an ideal put-down area in case of engine trouble. Surviveable probably, but not ideal.
So I did my last two trips, with the sun starting to set and a good amount of fatigue setting into my body. After I landed from my last trip I parked the airplane, pushed it back into its place, fuelled it up for tomorrow, put the wing covers and engine blanket on and heater in, and done. Time to go home. Not quite done yet though. I now have a crapload of log entries to fill in at some point tonight, make dinner, and write a blog. Goodnight.
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