I've been doing some thinking lately on my long term pilot goals. Last week on the ramp I ran into a PC-12 crew, and we got chatting as I unloaded. They were fascinated with the Cherokee 6 and its load hauling ability, and the Captain was marvelling at how this was "real flying" as compared to the button pushing they do on the PC-12 and the totally planned-to-the-detail type of flying IFR flying is, to the point where it becomes boring. The First Officer remarked that the most important decision they make is what type of reading material to bring for the day.
Strangely enough that same evening I was reading some of Dagny's blogs and came across one that had the retirement letter of a Northwest Captain, and an excellent article detailing how pilots are systematically being turned into robots and procedure followers, and the adventurer-pilot has been all but bread out of the industry, particularly the airline industry.
The retirement letter goes on about how airline pilots in the old days were revered, and respected for their skill, and paid well for it. Now they are looked at by their companies as liabilities and commodities, paid and treated poorly. In the name of safety there is no adventure to flying anymore. This is obviously a good thing in terms of making air travel incredibly safe, but it strips a flying career of the excitement and any personal rewards.
I have always been a little wary of this... I have heard and seen how the airline jobs are becoming less and less attractive for quite some time, and I'm not ignorant of it. I want to stay in the adventurous side of aviating - VFR bush flying, maybe some float flying, perhaps medevac, and hopefully, one day I can get into water bombing flying the CL-215's. I'd also like to try my hand at mountain flying, which is a whole new skill set I have yet to learn. Right now where I fly is completely flat. Much of what I enjoy about flying is the risk taking aspect of it, and the seat-of-your-pants decision making that you have to do sometimes; dealing with the unexpected. For now I am having the time of my life flying the Cherokee, especially when marginal weather rolls in. I find flying VFR in marginal weather far more rewarding then blue sky days. The other pilot I work with has tons of experience (2500+ hrs) flying the C206, which gets put on skis during the snow season. Some of the flying he does can be quite extreme in my eyes, and it looks like so much fun. He's landed on small untouched frozen lakes to drop off hunters, half melting rivers, and rough tundra (with the wheels on). Places where he's the first and only airplane to visit.
Eventually I imagine I'll want to settle down and fly a nice corporate jet with decent pay in or near my hometown. But right now I'm single, so I might as well go after and enjoy the more adventurous side of aviation.
Monday, June 29, 2009
Unpredictable Weather
I was supposed to take the Cherokee down for the 50 hr inspection today, but they were fogged in down south, so that got nixed until tomorrow. We still had a couple hours to spare before the inspection was due however, so we decided to fly a few trips up the coast.
The weather started out around 2500 ft ceilings at home, with afternoon t-storms and rain showers forecast. The first trip was uneventful, with the ceilings up the coast going down to 700 ft. Lower than ideal, but still easily flyable. By the time I got back the other pilot was there with a fresh weather update and ready to join the flying. The storms were now visible on the horizon but looked like they may pass to the south of us, and there were no lightning strikes observed, so we decided to depart and try to get one more flight in.
The flight on the way up was pretty much the same as the first trip. I landed 9 minutes ahead of the other pilot, and was just unloading the last of the freight when he pulled in and shut down. A passenger was flying back with me, so I installed the seat I had brought and we were off again.
As we worked our way back south the clouds were getting thicker and thicker, and we flew into some rain showers. Up ahead there was a dark foreboding patch of cloud, which looked like it had some serious lightning potential. It wasn't big at all, maybe a half a mile across, so we made a quick diversion around it.
Steadily the rain was getting heavier and the clouds thicker and lower as we approached home. About 40 miles out I checked the AWOS (weather reports), which was calling 6 miles visibility, 700 ft vertical visibility, and light rain showers. A few minutes later I tuned in again and it was calling for 1300 ft VV, even better. So far so good. It was not. In fact today was the first time working here, and the first time in a couple years now (since I had an adventure flying through torrential rain over the middle of Georgian Bay in the Twin Comanche) I became a little nervous about my situation. By the time I was approaching the airport the rain was coming down heavy enough that the rain drops and water flowing on the windshield made it difficult to see ahead. On top of that the clouds had pushed me down to 3-400 ft agl. On my 3 mile base leg I still couldn't see the airport. I had the runway guidance punched into the GPS and aside from being able to see the trees below me out the side window I was 100% on instruments. Following the GPS I turned final, and at 2 miles I still couldn't see much through the rain on the windshield. Frig I need wipers - or RainX. That stuff is awesome. But anyways. During my turn to final it crossed my mind that flying on instruments at 300 ft agl isn't exactly an ideal situation, even if it is flat everywhere. I don't have any reservations about flying on instruments, at least during cruise portions of the flight, I'm comfortable doing that. But the only navigational aids the Cherokee is equipped with is an old Apollo GPS with a text-only display, and my own handheld Lowrance. I didn't anticipate having poor visibility due to the rain on the windshield. Despite the unanticipated factors, I decided that landing was probably my best option anyways. It was either land or fly the 40 minutes back up the coast, as that is the nearest airport. By then the weather very well might be over top of that too, and I would be pretty low on fuel. My other option would be leave the zone and do a VFR hold with the GPS somewhere in IFR weather until it cleared up, which didn't seem to make much sense. So land it is. Its times like these that make me feel most alive. This is what makes flying interesting, challenging and exhilarating. Such is flying in the north - where airports and weather stations are few and far between.
By 1 mile final the runway popped into sight, and we landed uneventfully. I was suprised that the runway showed itself so far ahead, I was half expecting it to fill my windscreen at half a mile or less. I guess the rain on the windshield wasn't as bad as I thought, I just thought it was worse because trees and clouds don't allow much visual reference for how good the visibility is.
After I landing I taxied over to the terminal to drop my passenger off. There was a Dash-8 parked there, but there was still lots of room for me to pull up close to the door so my passenger didn't have to make a run for it in the rain. It wasn't until the last minute I noticed a ground power cart cord stretching across the ramp. I noticed it and slammed on the brakes at the same time a ground attendant saw that I was about to run over it and frantically motioned for me to stop. I stopped short of running the cord over, but so much for the passenger not having to make a run for it in the rain. Sorry 'bout that, but you gotta get out here.
The weather started out around 2500 ft ceilings at home, with afternoon t-storms and rain showers forecast. The first trip was uneventful, with the ceilings up the coast going down to 700 ft. Lower than ideal, but still easily flyable. By the time I got back the other pilot was there with a fresh weather update and ready to join the flying. The storms were now visible on the horizon but looked like they may pass to the south of us, and there were no lightning strikes observed, so we decided to depart and try to get one more flight in.
The flight on the way up was pretty much the same as the first trip. I landed 9 minutes ahead of the other pilot, and was just unloading the last of the freight when he pulled in and shut down. A passenger was flying back with me, so I installed the seat I had brought and we were off again.
As we worked our way back south the clouds were getting thicker and thicker, and we flew into some rain showers. Up ahead there was a dark foreboding patch of cloud, which looked like it had some serious lightning potential. It wasn't big at all, maybe a half a mile across, so we made a quick diversion around it.
Steadily the rain was getting heavier and the clouds thicker and lower as we approached home. About 40 miles out I checked the AWOS (weather reports), which was calling 6 miles visibility, 700 ft vertical visibility, and light rain showers. A few minutes later I tuned in again and it was calling for 1300 ft VV, even better. So far so good. It was not. In fact today was the first time working here, and the first time in a couple years now (since I had an adventure flying through torrential rain over the middle of Georgian Bay in the Twin Comanche) I became a little nervous about my situation. By the time I was approaching the airport the rain was coming down heavy enough that the rain drops and water flowing on the windshield made it difficult to see ahead. On top of that the clouds had pushed me down to 3-400 ft agl. On my 3 mile base leg I still couldn't see the airport. I had the runway guidance punched into the GPS and aside from being able to see the trees below me out the side window I was 100% on instruments. Following the GPS I turned final, and at 2 miles I still couldn't see much through the rain on the windshield. Frig I need wipers - or RainX. That stuff is awesome. But anyways. During my turn to final it crossed my mind that flying on instruments at 300 ft agl isn't exactly an ideal situation, even if it is flat everywhere. I don't have any reservations about flying on instruments, at least during cruise portions of the flight, I'm comfortable doing that. But the only navigational aids the Cherokee is equipped with is an old Apollo GPS with a text-only display, and my own handheld Lowrance. I didn't anticipate having poor visibility due to the rain on the windshield. Despite the unanticipated factors, I decided that landing was probably my best option anyways. It was either land or fly the 40 minutes back up the coast, as that is the nearest airport. By then the weather very well might be over top of that too, and I would be pretty low on fuel. My other option would be leave the zone and do a VFR hold with the GPS somewhere in IFR weather until it cleared up, which didn't seem to make much sense. So land it is. Its times like these that make me feel most alive. This is what makes flying interesting, challenging and exhilarating. Such is flying in the north - where airports and weather stations are few and far between.
By 1 mile final the runway popped into sight, and we landed uneventfully. I was suprised that the runway showed itself so far ahead, I was half expecting it to fill my windscreen at half a mile or less. I guess the rain on the windshield wasn't as bad as I thought, I just thought it was worse because trees and clouds don't allow much visual reference for how good the visibility is.
After I landing I taxied over to the terminal to drop my passenger off. There was a Dash-8 parked there, but there was still lots of room for me to pull up close to the door so my passenger didn't have to make a run for it in the rain. It wasn't until the last minute I noticed a ground power cart cord stretching across the ramp. I noticed it and slammed on the brakes at the same time a ground attendant saw that I was about to run over it and frantically motioned for me to stop. I stopped short of running the cord over, but so much for the passenger not having to make a run for it in the rain. Sorry 'bout that, but you gotta get out here.
Thursday, June 25, 2009
Summer
Its been hot this past week, especially before I figured out that there's air vents at my feet that open.
The smoke was drifting across our route of flight, you could catch a sweet scent of campire if you flew through it. For the most part I tried to climb above though, I'm not entirely sure how much smoke it would take to cause me to starting becoming hypoxic, and while it would be nice to know, I'm not about to try.
Today I retired my first logbook - all the pages are full at 739.5 hrs - whoo hoo! Its a good thing too because the binding threads were starting to all come out. It wouldn't be able to take much more abuse before the whole thing fell apart. The next flight I do will be entered into the larger professional style logbook I bought. With about 50% more pages and more lines to the page, it should be a LONG time before I fill this one up. I liked the size of my old one better, but each page would only take 11 entries, and each time the page is filled you have to do a bunch of totalling and carry it over to the next page, which is time consuming - especially if you're doing up to 12 entries per day. My new logbook can take 23 entries per page. One thing I'm not too sure about, and perhaps any 1000+ hr pilots can let me know, is how you manage to enter 5 digit flight times (0000.0) in those tiny little boxes? I have a hard enough time writing small enough for my current 4 digits to be legible! Hmm, maybe I should hire one of those asians who can write your name on a grain of rice to be my book-keeper.
Ok I'm rambling now, blog over.
A couple days ago even though we had flights we took the afternoon off because it was 32 degrees C. I suppose in addition to cooking the pilots and any passengers, the amount of weight the airplane can take no longer makes sense to do the trips from a business standpoint. Personally I don't mind cooking in the airplane. Once I figured out the vents its actually not too bad anymore, and its either sweating it out in the airplane, or sitting in my house on the ground sweating it out.
Yesterday I got to see something new. There's a small forest fire burning about halfway up the coast on the way to my usual stop. Its not really anywhere near any civilization, so they're just letting it burn. I managed to snap some pictures.
The smoke was drifting across our route of flight, you could catch a sweet scent of campire if you flew through it. For the most part I tried to climb above though, I'm not entirely sure how much smoke it would take to cause me to starting becoming hypoxic, and while it would be nice to know, I'm not about to try.
On one trip the other pilot who flies the other airplane, a Cessna 206, was coming back from a trip at the exact same time as I was, and we managed to move in close enough together to snap some pictures. He got some video of me as well.
Today I couple a couple flights in, but by around 2 pm we called it quits, probably for the day, as there is some low cloud/possibly fog moving in. Much of my last trip coming back from the north was spent at 4-500 ft agl under an overcast cloud layer. I would have probably tried it again, but about 30 miles north of base when coming back I passed an Air Ornge medevac heli heading north, and about five minutes later he turned around because of the cloud, so it must have been getting worse behind me.
On Saturday we go south all the way to Toronto Buttonville to pick up a new Cherokee 6 we just purchased. I'm excited to see the new airplane (well new to us) - its far better equipped then the one I currently fly. It even has an autopilot and a stormscope. I love the stormscopes, its been an awesome tool in my Twin Comanche, even just flying VFR. Hopefully the autopilot works too, those are great fatigue-reducing tools on long flights.
Unfortunately even though we pick in up on Saturday, it won't be ready for a few weeks because the engine is timed out so we have to drop it off at maintenance on the way back up.
Today I retired my first logbook - all the pages are full at 739.5 hrs - whoo hoo! Its a good thing too because the binding threads were starting to all come out. It wouldn't be able to take much more abuse before the whole thing fell apart. The next flight I do will be entered into the larger professional style logbook I bought. With about 50% more pages and more lines to the page, it should be a LONG time before I fill this one up. I liked the size of my old one better, but each page would only take 11 entries, and each time the page is filled you have to do a bunch of totalling and carry it over to the next page, which is time consuming - especially if you're doing up to 12 entries per day. My new logbook can take 23 entries per page. One thing I'm not too sure about, and perhaps any 1000+ hr pilots can let me know, is how you manage to enter 5 digit flight times (0000.0) in those tiny little boxes? I have a hard enough time writing small enough for my current 4 digits to be legible! Hmm, maybe I should hire one of those asians who can write your name on a grain of rice to be my book-keeper.
Ok I'm rambling now, blog over.
Monday, June 22, 2009
Bug shield, Canadian Shield
Today made for a bit of a long day. Good, but long. My duty day started at 0930, and my first flight was off the ground at Ten AM. As for flight time it wasn't a super long day, I only did 5 trips, which is one less then a usual chock full day, but they seemed to be spread out a bit more. I did a few morning flights, and then we had to wait for the train to get it, because I had some passengers to take north once they got off the train. The train is supposed to be here at 2 in the afternoon, but didn't actually show up until closer to 5:30. So I got a break from flying for a bit, but I had to cut the grass in front of the house I'm staying in, which is I guess technically part of my duties. My duties in my job description when I accepted the job includes general duties as well as flying, but I've gotten off pretty easy with the general duties thing. Other then taking the fuel truck down to the depot to get it filled up every now and then, cutting the grass has been the only thing other then flying that they've asked me to do so far, and this has been the first time. So I can't really complain.
It suddenly turned hot up here in the past week, its be near 30 degrees C almost every day, and today was no exception at around 25. So by the time I was finished the mowing I was covered in grass, hot and sweaty. It felt good, but the shower I took afterwards felt even better.
So by 5:30 I was back flying, with three more trips to do, although I wasn't aware of each succeeding trip until I returned from the previous one. Finally by 10:47 PM I was on the ground, and a half hour later back at home. Almost 14 hours from start to finish. Wow. The final flights I was not in my top form. It was a good thing its not busy that time of day, because I was exhausted and my brain wasn't functioning at peak efficiency either. Instead of the crisp, succinct nature of my usual radio calls they sounded more like, "Traffic advisory for the **** area, uhh.... Cherokee.... Golf Yankee Bravo Tango... uhh... 15 to south level two point five...". Its pretty bad when you have stop and think for a second what your registration is, lol.
Unloading the airplane and the first bit of the return leg for my last flight wasn't very much fun either for a different reason. The mosquitoes where I landed were at near-plague level. It was terrible. Even the locals helping me unload were shocked at how bad they were. I unloaded the airplane as fast as humanly possible while trying to swat away the 5 or so biting my arm all at once. By the time we had finished unloading and I had the doors to the airplane closed, they were swarming inside the airplane as well. As fast as I could I dug out my mosquito jacket from my flight bag and pulled it on to cover my arms and face, but I found out I couldn't fly with the hood covering my face because I couldn't read the instruments well enough through the mesh.
I spent some time before starting up slapping at mosquitoes to try to make a little more bearable to fly. By counting the dead bugs splattering the inside of my windshield, and the ones smeared over my pants and arms, I figured there must have been an excess of 70 mosquitoes INSIDE the airplane with me! Frig, talk about next worst thing to hell. Tomorrow I'm going to have to go clean up the mess of dead bugs on the airplane windows, for now I'm just glad to be safely in my house and away from them. Hopefully this is an event out of the ordinary that will not be a regular occurrence.
On a more enjoyable note, on Friday I made a flight a couple hundred miles into Quebec to a small town tucked into some breathtaking scenery. Unlike where I am where the landscape is completely flat and very muddy and swampy, here it was beautiful Canadian Shield rocky hills, and dozens of little lakes tucked in amongst them with clear blue water. I spent most of the flight on the way back after I dropped off my pax below 500 agl to just enjoy the landscape. It was a wonderful change from flat. I took some pictures as well, see below:
If I wasn't in someone else's airplane, burning someone else's gas I could have spent hours bombing around through those hills just for the sheer joy of it.
It suddenly turned hot up here in the past week, its be near 30 degrees C almost every day, and today was no exception at around 25. So by the time I was finished the mowing I was covered in grass, hot and sweaty. It felt good, but the shower I took afterwards felt even better.
So by 5:30 I was back flying, with three more trips to do, although I wasn't aware of each succeeding trip until I returned from the previous one. Finally by 10:47 PM I was on the ground, and a half hour later back at home. Almost 14 hours from start to finish. Wow. The final flights I was not in my top form. It was a good thing its not busy that time of day, because I was exhausted and my brain wasn't functioning at peak efficiency either. Instead of the crisp, succinct nature of my usual radio calls they sounded more like, "Traffic advisory for the **** area, uhh.... Cherokee.... Golf Yankee Bravo Tango... uhh... 15 to south level two point five...". Its pretty bad when you have stop and think for a second what your registration is, lol.
Unloading the airplane and the first bit of the return leg for my last flight wasn't very much fun either for a different reason. The mosquitoes where I landed were at near-plague level. It was terrible. Even the locals helping me unload were shocked at how bad they were. I unloaded the airplane as fast as humanly possible while trying to swat away the 5 or so biting my arm all at once. By the time we had finished unloading and I had the doors to the airplane closed, they were swarming inside the airplane as well. As fast as I could I dug out my mosquito jacket from my flight bag and pulled it on to cover my arms and face, but I found out I couldn't fly with the hood covering my face because I couldn't read the instruments well enough through the mesh.
I spent some time before starting up slapping at mosquitoes to try to make a little more bearable to fly. By counting the dead bugs splattering the inside of my windshield, and the ones smeared over my pants and arms, I figured there must have been an excess of 70 mosquitoes INSIDE the airplane with me! Frig, talk about next worst thing to hell. Tomorrow I'm going to have to go clean up the mess of dead bugs on the airplane windows, for now I'm just glad to be safely in my house and away from them. Hopefully this is an event out of the ordinary that will not be a regular occurrence.
On a more enjoyable note, on Friday I made a flight a couple hundred miles into Quebec to a small town tucked into some breathtaking scenery. Unlike where I am where the landscape is completely flat and very muddy and swampy, here it was beautiful Canadian Shield rocky hills, and dozens of little lakes tucked in amongst them with clear blue water. I spent most of the flight on the way back after I dropped off my pax below 500 agl to just enjoy the landscape. It was a wonderful change from flat. I took some pictures as well, see below:
If I wasn't in someone else's airplane, burning someone else's gas I could have spent hours bombing around through those hills just for the sheer joy of it.
Tuesday, June 16, 2009
Light shows, and lack thereof
Spent the weekend back home in London, which was nice, since the flying has been slow this month. I flew the Twin home Friday morning which was very enjoyable as well, if not a little long. It doesn't matter what kind of airplane it is 3.4 hrs is long. However I think I'm finally adjusting to switching between flying the Comanche and Cherokee now that I've got a feel for how they fly differently. I can cognatively anticipate the differences now so I'm not caught off guard quite as much when I jump into the Comanche after flying the Cherokee.
I flew back into home base Sunday night at around midnight. I haven't flown in the dark of night yet up here, it was a very interesting experience. Aside from our little town, there is quite literally NOTHING around, which meant that looking down during the dead of night revealed pure blackness. It was kind of cool, because having no visual reference save for the little town lights off on the horizon growing bigger as we got closer, it was difficult to judge altitude. I was cruising at 6500, but for all my senses knew I could have been at 500, or 20,000. The only reference of altitude I had was the altimeter. The feeling of having no gut frame of reference is difficult to describe to those who haven't gone flying - its very peculiar. It felt like I was in space. Just seeing nothingness and then our tiny little corner of civilization lit up amidst the suffocating darkness was also an interesting and lonely sight. It felt like it was the only town on earth - possibly the only piece of tangible matter on earth, and we were heading straight towards it to escape the nothingness trying to swallow us. That sounds quite dramatic but that really is how it felt. Flying at night I find always tends to give me a bit of that feeling of complete isolation - I love it actually. But until this point all my night flying experience has been in southern Ontario where even over the country there is still the odd streetlight below or lit up house - some sort of indication that I'm not the only human on earth. The ground has always been marked out below. Up here there is nothing.
But I'm back to work now. Today, admist the slowness of June, I had the busiest day yet, even if it didn't start out that way. Its downright hot up here all of a sudden, when I left on friday the daily high's didn't go much higher then 12 degrees C. Today it was up to 30 for most of the day. The skies were for the most part clear, but it got a little bit gusty in the afternoon due to the daytime heating. Near the end of the day around 9 pm there were some lightning storms that were gradually working there way south. The last flight of the day the other pilot was heading to our usual destination up the coast, with me following about 10 minutes behind. By the time I was landing there was small storm cell about 5 miles to the west of the field with lightning coming out of the clouds every minute or so. The other pilot got some pretty cool video of me on final with the lightning storm behind. Pretty cool. Needless to say we didn't waste time unloading the airplane to head back home again. The cell didn't really look like it was going to move over the field, but its still always a little bit unnerving flying in the vicinity of lightning.
It made for an interesting end of the day however. All in all logged about 10 and a half hrs today, which has finally nudged me past the 700 hr total time mark. Whoo hoo! 300 to go and I'm in the quadruple digits!
I flew back into home base Sunday night at around midnight. I haven't flown in the dark of night yet up here, it was a very interesting experience. Aside from our little town, there is quite literally NOTHING around, which meant that looking down during the dead of night revealed pure blackness. It was kind of cool, because having no visual reference save for the little town lights off on the horizon growing bigger as we got closer, it was difficult to judge altitude. I was cruising at 6500, but for all my senses knew I could have been at 500, or 20,000. The only reference of altitude I had was the altimeter. The feeling of having no gut frame of reference is difficult to describe to those who haven't gone flying - its very peculiar. It felt like I was in space. Just seeing nothingness and then our tiny little corner of civilization lit up amidst the suffocating darkness was also an interesting and lonely sight. It felt like it was the only town on earth - possibly the only piece of tangible matter on earth, and we were heading straight towards it to escape the nothingness trying to swallow us. That sounds quite dramatic but that really is how it felt. Flying at night I find always tends to give me a bit of that feeling of complete isolation - I love it actually. But until this point all my night flying experience has been in southern Ontario where even over the country there is still the odd streetlight below or lit up house - some sort of indication that I'm not the only human on earth. The ground has always been marked out below. Up here there is nothing.
But I'm back to work now. Today, admist the slowness of June, I had the busiest day yet, even if it didn't start out that way. Its downright hot up here all of a sudden, when I left on friday the daily high's didn't go much higher then 12 degrees C. Today it was up to 30 for most of the day. The skies were for the most part clear, but it got a little bit gusty in the afternoon due to the daytime heating. Near the end of the day around 9 pm there were some lightning storms that were gradually working there way south. The last flight of the day the other pilot was heading to our usual destination up the coast, with me following about 10 minutes behind. By the time I was landing there was small storm cell about 5 miles to the west of the field with lightning coming out of the clouds every minute or so. The other pilot got some pretty cool video of me on final with the lightning storm behind. Pretty cool. Needless to say we didn't waste time unloading the airplane to head back home again. The cell didn't really look like it was going to move over the field, but its still always a little bit unnerving flying in the vicinity of lightning.
It made for an interesting end of the day however. All in all logged about 10 and a half hrs today, which has finally nudged me past the 700 hr total time mark. Whoo hoo! 300 to go and I'm in the quadruple digits!
Tuesday, June 2, 2009
Hazards of the Job
So far I've found the most hazardous part of this job seems to be on the ground, when I'm unloading and loading the airplane. The cargo door of the Cherokee has two sections to it. The first part is the main door which swings open towards the front of the airplane, and then a secondary rectangular smaller door unlatches and flips straight up to increase the opening. The problem is that since the secondary door isn't quite as high as the main part, it leaves a nasty corner protruding into the opening. I have hit my head on that corner while leaning in more times then I can count. I can still feel a bruise there actually. The worst part is that I always hit the same part of my head! Gah it makes me so angry when it happens.
Another hazard of the job is trying to avoid getting hit by pickup trucks. There was an occasion a few weeks ago that just left me shaking my head. I landed at one of the reserves with my usual load of stuff, and the truck was there waiting for me. I usually stand by the cargo door and guide the trucks in because I'm A) paranoid that they're going to hit the airplane, and B) if they don't back in far enough it creates twice as much work when unloading the freight from the airplane into the truck.
So here I was standing at the back cargo door, watching the truck back up. As this was happening however, another person approached me to ask how much we'd charge them to take them somewhere, and for the second my attention was diverted, I looked back over at the truck and the native driver had managed to back into the back corner of the wing! GAH!! STOP! STOP!!! GO FORWARD!! Actually apparently Cherokee 6's are tougher then I thought. The back edge of the wing was poking into their taillight and bending the lens cover in on the truck. Frig, crazy driver.
So they pulled forward again, and I went up to inspect the wingtip, it actually had no damage, I got lucky. Once again I walked back to the cargo door to pay more attention to guiding the driver in. You'd think after hitting the airplane he'd drive more carefully... Well after pulling forward and straightening out, what does he do? He GUNS it backwards. WHOA!! STOP!! He managed to skid to a stop about a foot short of pinning me in between the truck and the airplane.
At this point I was getting angry. FRIG MAN! You gotta be more careful! Pull forward a bit... SLOWLY. He finally managed to position the truck properly and I and the airplane managed to stay intact. Sheesh, some people make me wonder.
There was another incident just a couple days ago that left me shaking my head again. This was a different native driver. I was once again guiding the truck up to the cargo door, and he was a little off, so I motioned for him to bring it right. He turned the wheel the wrong way and backed up further moving the truck in the wrong direction. He stopped, realizing he had gone the wrong way, and straightened the wheels and pulled forward. Once again he turned the wheel the wrong way again and started backing up. He pulled forward a second time to correct it, but for the third time he turned the wheel the wrong way again. The one good thing he was doing was driving slow and being careful at least. Nevertheless he never did manage to get it maneuvered into the optimal position. Oh well, I guess that will have to do.
Another hazard of the job is trying to avoid getting hit by pickup trucks. There was an occasion a few weeks ago that just left me shaking my head. I landed at one of the reserves with my usual load of stuff, and the truck was there waiting for me. I usually stand by the cargo door and guide the trucks in because I'm A) paranoid that they're going to hit the airplane, and B) if they don't back in far enough it creates twice as much work when unloading the freight from the airplane into the truck.
So here I was standing at the back cargo door, watching the truck back up. As this was happening however, another person approached me to ask how much we'd charge them to take them somewhere, and for the second my attention was diverted, I looked back over at the truck and the native driver had managed to back into the back corner of the wing! GAH!! STOP! STOP!!! GO FORWARD!! Actually apparently Cherokee 6's are tougher then I thought. The back edge of the wing was poking into their taillight and bending the lens cover in on the truck. Frig, crazy driver.
So they pulled forward again, and I went up to inspect the wingtip, it actually had no damage, I got lucky. Once again I walked back to the cargo door to pay more attention to guiding the driver in. You'd think after hitting the airplane he'd drive more carefully... Well after pulling forward and straightening out, what does he do? He GUNS it backwards. WHOA!! STOP!! He managed to skid to a stop about a foot short of pinning me in between the truck and the airplane.
At this point I was getting angry. FRIG MAN! You gotta be more careful! Pull forward a bit... SLOWLY. He finally managed to position the truck properly and I and the airplane managed to stay intact. Sheesh, some people make me wonder.
There was another incident just a couple days ago that left me shaking my head again. This was a different native driver. I was once again guiding the truck up to the cargo door, and he was a little off, so I motioned for him to bring it right. He turned the wheel the wrong way and backed up further moving the truck in the wrong direction. He stopped, realizing he had gone the wrong way, and straightened the wheels and pulled forward. Once again he turned the wheel the wrong way again and started backing up. He pulled forward a second time to correct it, but for the third time he turned the wheel the wrong way again. The one good thing he was doing was driving slow and being careful at least. Nevertheless he never did manage to get it maneuvered into the optimal position. Oh well, I guess that will have to do.
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