New Faces

After almost a week-long maintenance episode we're back flying. A couple days ago we tackled the complicated job of flying over the largest and busiest airport in our grid, which also serves as a military base. It takes some coordination with ATC to go bombing over a busy airport at 200 ft AGL. As we crossed over the field I could see a row of six Mirage fighter jets parked on the ramp, and there were numerous green military hangars as well. Something about it felt really wrong - buzzing over an airport that had military establishments. Our flight yesterday was still in the vicinity of the airport and more than once we spotted fighter jets screaming past us at low level as well. We haven't been shot down or arrested yet though, so that's a good sign.

We also have some additional faces here on the job, as our geophysicist has arrived for the last couple weeks of the job to help wrap things up and review the data with the client. We also had the client here visiting for a couple days to review data with the geophysicist.

And finally a couple nights ago my boss arrived here for a visit for a couple days. This is our 3rd time in France working for this client now - they have all been very big projects - and from what I hear through the grapevine this has been the most successful project yet, so its good for the big man himself to show his face and make an appearance for the client. From what our geophysicist was saying was that our boss was really just looking forward to coming here to congratulate us in person. When my boss arrived the Captain and I had just landed from a flight and I was finishing up some post-flight operator duties out at the airplane when I saw the boss walk up. We greeted each other and made some small talk, and then he looked me in the eye and squeezed my shoulder and said "Good work." That was all he needed to say. I could tell he really meant what he was saying. Its really great to work for someone like that. The last couple nights he's also taken us out for dinner and drinks - all on him. I really do have a great boss, he is such a pleasure to work for. Its those kind of people that really motivate you to do a good job for them.

It turned out that he really doesn't have a whole lot to do here, but its good that he came anyways for the client. The client's family also owns a winery (oh yes we ARE in France, haha), so he brought some of his own Champagne to share. My boss was making the joke that usually he comes over to France to solve problems - but this time there aren't any so he has nothing to do!

We're so far 80% done, so we should be finished the main part of the flying within the next 10 or 12 days, and then there will probably be another 5 or 6 days to finish up any re-flights and pack up and ship out.

Acceleration

These last few days I've been indulging my nerdy streak and experimenting with Accelerate-Stop distance calculations. A while back I wrote a blog (found here) regarding Accelerate-Stop distances and the balanced field length of the Twin Comanche. That exercise came about as a result of a lack of Accelerate-Stop distance charts in my Twin Comanche flight manual, so I made my own. An Accelerate-Stop distance chart simply a chart that the pilot can use to determine the total distance required to accelerate to Vr (rotation speed), and then retard the throttles and stop using maximum braking. This distance changes depending on the field elevation, temperature, weight of the aircraft, and winds. These charts give a good indicator of the length of runway one would need to safely stop if they experienced an engine failure during the take-off roll.

I have recently been tinkering with an application that allows me to develop Apps for my Android Phone, called App Inventor. Its really quite fun, and while it does have some limitations on designing the user interface, it is really quite powerful on the functionality side. So I set out to design an Accelerate-Stop distance calculator for the Navajo. The Navajo does have proper Accelerate-Stop charts, but the challenge was in the ability to create a formula based on the variables present in paper chart in the flight manual. It ended up not being that hard, and after a day I managed to find a formula that produced results within +/- 50 ft of what the flight manual charts spit out. It took another hour to design and code a really simple app on my phone that makes use of the formula, allowing the user to input density altitude, loaded aircraft weight, and headwind component, and it makes the calculation. So now I have an app on my phone that can calculate Accelerate-Stop distances for a Piper Navajo.

I can't leave it at that however. That's way too easy. So here is the problem to solve: Accelerate-stop charts give a good reference, but they don't really have the flexibility of real-world operations. At least no more than just giving you a good idea. It still leaves room for ambiguity. In real life usually we're operating out of runways much longer than what is needed according to the Accel-Stop charts. For example here in France the runway is 5000 ft. So lets say for example that for the given day I check the accel-stop distance, and the chart (or my phone app) tells me the Accel-stop distance for that particular day is 3100 ft. So that means we can have an engine failure at Vr, and still stop with 1900 ft to spare. So if an engine quits on takeoff, up until Vr our go/no-go decision is a no brainer - we cut the power and stop. BUT, what if the engine fails AFTER Vr?

In theory we would clean the airplane up, continue climbing and return for a landing. But isn't that a waste of some really good extra runway? What if we still had the space to land and stop? Wouldn't that be a safer option than trying to climb out and fly an entire circuit on a single engine? Remember this is a light twin - climb performance will be extremely crippled on one engine. So how do we know if we have the space? An Accel-stop chart can't give you that answer, and that's a pretty tough decision to make in the chaos and confusion of a failed engine on takeoff.

This tough decision at a critical time is EXACTLY what every aircraft manufacturer and operator is trying to eliminate. In fact this is why manufacturers of large transport category aircraft do things a little differently than an Accel-Stop distance chart. Rather than using a chart that is only good up until one specific airspeed, they use charts/computers that do things the other way around. In addition to the normal variables like winds, temperature, and weight, the pilot will also input the length of runway he has to work with, and the computer program (or chart) will output an airspeed specific to those conditions (V1 - or takeoff decision speed). Below that airspeed, the pilot will have enough space to reject the takeoff and stop, above, he can be confident he has the space to fly away. There is no ambiguity with this method as its not based on one specific airspeed. If the runway is longer, takeoff decision speed (V1) increases to account for that extra length.

So that is the challenge for me. Create a computer program that rather than OUTPUTTING a distance like the Accel-Stop chart, it allows me INPUT the length we have to work with, and OUTPUT the takeoff decision speed that corresponds to that runway length (and the other variables). Easier said that done. I'm still working on it, but it has been a fascinating exercise so far. This is where math comes in, so I may lose the interest of a lot of my readers here, but if you're the kind of person who finds joy in applying math to real life, you'll LOVE this. The key to this whole solution is the kinematics formula of:

V = √2DA where

V = velocity (or our magic decision speed - V1)

D = distance

A = rate of acceleration

I get so excited when physics can be applied to real world scenarios!!

D is of course user-inputted, but A is going to be the magic value I need to figure out. This formula is for constant acceleration, so it doesn't COMPLETELY work out in the real world. In the real world as our velocity increases, so does air resistance to the square of velocity. This means that as we go charging down the runway, our rate of acceleration is actually diminishing as our speed increases - so how do we fit a changing rate of acceleration into the equation? The answer is to find our AVERAGE acceleration (from the point of stationary to our decision speed V1), and plug that into the equation - but how do we find that?

Well this is the fascinating challenge. I started by going to the Accel-Stop chart provided in the flight manual. This chart gives us two variables that we can use to find our average rate of acceleration - it gives us the distance of course (depending on the conditions), and it also defines the speed at which we accelerate to - which is 89 mph. The distance however is distance it takes to accelerate to 89 mph, and then decelerate back to 0, so we have to separate those two distances. There's an easy way to do this - the flight manual also provides a takeoff performance chart which gives the ground roll distance to accelerate to Vr. This is perfect, it gives us our acceleration distance right there, and we can get our deceleration portion by subtracting that from our Accel-Stop distance. Now we can calculate our average rate of acceleration for the acceleration portion, and the same for our stopping portion. We do this using this formula:

A = V^2/2D

Its the same formula as above, just solving for A instead of V. Simple. Now we have our value for rate of acceleration - so we've made some progress! Except we're not quite there because this acceleration value is only valid for one speed - the speed defined in the Accel-Stop chart. Because as you remember our rate of acceleration is going to change depending on our speed and the corresponding wind resistance. If we make our V1 speed higher than 89 mph, our average acceleration value will be less, if we make our V1 speed lower, our average acceleration will be higher. This is where it gets REALLY interesting, because some experimentation is in order, and this is where I haven't figured everything out yet, so I'm really enjoying it as a good brain challenge.

I know that I can calculate acceleration by using:

A=V/t

where t is time. So when we take-off I can time how long it takes to accelerate to a number of different speeds to get a good range of data (for example take the time as we pass through 60 mph, 70, 80, 90, and 100) and then we can plot that as a curve and extrapolate/interpolate as needed and calculate our average acceleration based off of that. OR......

I can download an app on my Android phone that records measurements using the phone's accelerometers! I found a neat app that does just that, and charts the measurements as G's on all 3 axis. 1 G equals 9.81 m/s^2, so that's easy enough to convert the G measurements into acceleration. I've been playing with this feature for the last couple flights, and I must say, it works amazingly!! The app allows me to export the data into a spreadsheet. I can then calculate velocity from the raw G readings and graph it in excel.

Check THIS out:

This is a graph of today's takeoff taken from the data collected by my phone's accelerometers, and charted as speed (mph) over time (seconds) in excel. Isn't that a beautiful curve!?! Who would have thought I'd be able to produce such a beautiful curve from real world data collected by a smartphone!! Amazing. I haven't doctored the data at all except to delete everything after the point where we were airborne. Note the takeoff roll doesn't start until 6 seconds in, because that's the time between when I started recording data and when the Captain started the takeoff roll. So our takeoff roll took roughly 27 seconds, and we were airborne at a speed of around 110 mph.

Also note the sharp increase in acceleration at very beginning (probably due to the throttles being advanced and more power being added), and then the gradual decrease in acceleration (shown as the slope of the curve) as we picked up speed and air resistance became a bigger factor. I know the phone's sensors are kicking out accurate readings because the results I achieved were bang on the money with our airspeed readings (it was a calm day). I never imagined in a million years the data would come out this clean.

Using this data I can calculate our average acceleration at ANY airspeed, which I can then use to find our distance traveled (with I think a fairly high degree of real world accuracy). Voila! We have the brain behind our computer program.

The only problem is that these acceleration values are only good until we become airborne. After which there's a whole new set of kinematics in play that I still have to figure out, but I'm fairly confident with a few more data-recording sessions in the airplane and some math I'll be able to nail it down. Once I do, its a matter of writing the computer program to process the math and solve for velocity, and bingo, we can figure out exactly what decision speed corresponds to our given runway length.

I know, I'm a nerd, but seriously, isn't it amazing when you can use math, an android smartphone, and computer programming to make something useful?

Procedures Pay Off

I am happy to report that I totally greased my two subsequent landings after my last post. One of which was in a light crosswind. I think I've finally got the feel for this airplane now. Now we'll start working on nailing the touchdown point.

Our last flight lasted 8 minutes, and now we're grounded waiting for parts. An engine driven fuel pump that is. I was PNF (Pilot Not Flying) for that flight, so my duties involved monitoring engine instruments on take-off and making the required cockpit calls (Full Power Confirmed, Gauges Green, Airspeed Alive, 95 mph, Rotate, etc) and completing the after-takeoff checklist.

We took off, everything normal, and I started to complete the after-takeoff checklist on our climb through 500 ft. As I turned off the left Emergency fuel pump I watched the fuel pressure gauge to make sure the pressure didn't drop out (which would indicate an engine-driven fuel pump failure, and an immanent engine failure). Except this time as I flicked off the overhead switch the pressure DID drop out. Huh, didn't expect that.

At about the same time I watched the drop in fuel pressure, the Captain saw the Low Fuel Pressure light illuminate on the enunciator panel. I quickly flicked the switch back on just as the left engine started to cough. We turned around and landed without incident.

This is a very good example of why emergency fuel pumps exist, and why we employ the good practice of turning them on for take-off, and then then turning them off one at a time after takeoff. And also in a broader sense of how airplanes are designed so that stuff can break, but the airplane can still fly just fine.

Just like a Twin Comanche, the Navajo is equipped with an engine driven fuel pump, which does just what its name says. Normally the engine driven fuel pump is what provides fuel to the engine in normal flight, but if it were to fail, the engine would stop producing power. So we have a set of emergency fuel pumps, which do the same thing, except they are powered electrically as a back-up system. Without the emergency pumps turned on it would be a real bummer if the engine driven pump failed during takeoff, because that would mean the engine would quit, and we'd be stuck troubleshooting a failing engine during the most critical and time-sensitive phase of the flight. So its good practice to turn the emergency pumps on for every take-off we perform. That way if the engine driven pump fails, it will only affect the performance of the engine when we go to switch the emergency pump OFF.

So that's what we do. We only switch OFF the emergency pumps after we're a certain height above the ground such that we have time to troubleshoot potential problems without immediate action being required. Furthermore its good practice, for obvious reasons in light of our last flight, to turn off each fuel pump one at a time, and watch for any changes in fuel pressure. If we were to flick off both pumps at the same time, it would be far less intuitive to correctly identify which engine was in the process of failing.

On Tuesday all the cautious procedures paid off, and our fuel pump failure was a non-incident. Had we not been exercising good practice it is very possible we would have had an engine failure during takeoff.

The system works.

Landin... wait... ok Landings

*CHIRP*...................*Chirp* Dang it. I bounced it again. But I know exactly what I did wrong. I'm having trouble nailing down a good landing in the Navajo. I haven't really gotten that much practice lately. The Captain and I usually alternate Pilot Flying duties every flight, but the last two flights that were supposed to be mine the Captain ended up doing the landings because it was fairly gusty with a bit of a crosswind. I'm not complaining, I still don't feel perfectly at home yet in the airplane, and would rather get my practice in on calmer days. Part of it has to do with the fact that I've never flown an airplane from the right seat before, so I have to develop some new muscle memory skill sets. What used to be my throttle hand is now my flying hand, and my flying hand is now my throttle hand. Its also quite a bit bigger airplane than I have experience in.

This time the the reason I bounced all tied back to not having a stable approach. Normal approaches in the Navajo are done at 120 mph, and as we cross the airport fence we pull off the power slowly and let the airspeed bleed off so we're around 110 mph crossing the runway threshold. I'm finding that the Navajo is fairly sensitive to power changes, and it builds speed fairly quickly and doesn't lose it easily. Initially as I turned base I had the airspeed pegged at 120, but I found myself a little high, so I pushed the nose down and pulled off a touch of power, but apparently not enough, and soon enough I found the airspeed way up past 130 - way too fast. I spent the rest of the approach trying to work it back down, and ended up crossing the threshold carrying way too much speed. We floated for a long while in ground effect waiting for it to slow down, until the Captain eventually called me to chop the power cause we would be running out of runway soon. I pulled the power back to idle, and then that resulted in a bit of a firm landing with a small bounce.

That was a couple days ago, and today it was my turn again. This time I made sure I had the airplane properly slowed down and the approach speed and glideslope pegged with lots of time to spare. I made sure I stayed much more aware of my airspeed during power adjustments, and made a decent landing this time with no bounces. Still room for improvement, but we'll get there.

On a separate subject I saw a Twin Comanche doing touch and goes at our airport a few days ago. I couldn't help but stand and watch for a bit. It brought back memories, and made me wish for a few moments that I still had mine. It was just so much FUN.

Flight Planning

Part of the requirements of our permits that allow us to overfly small communities at low altitude is that we have to notify each town when we'll be overflying them. Part of that involves faxing a map of our flight path off to each town hall as well. So far I've compiled a database of over 100 small communities in our survey block that we've been notifying when our flight for the day takes us over them. Its tedious work to determine when exactly we'll be overflying each town, and which ones. So why put up with tedious monotony when you can write a computer program to do it for you?

I've gone over almost the entire map now, and recorded in a spreadsheet the names of the towns and the line # that runs over top of them. Every flight line in our grid is numbered, and the company geophysicist, who processes our data keeps a spreadsheet list of each numbered line, and how long it is. So after obtaining that, I've written a VBA (Visual Basic for Applications) excel program, and now I can specify the line # we're going to start our flight on, and the time we're going to begin surveying, and my VBA program will chew through my database of communities and the geophysicist's spreadsheet of survey lines, and spit out a list of each town we'll be overflying for that particular flight, and the start and end time of each line we fly. I send that list over to the Captain, and he sends out faxes to each community with the calculated time we'll be flying overhead. Done and done.

Now I don't have to spend hours pouring over the map calculating what towns and when we'll be flying over them. It just takes 10 seconds to get the program to spit me out a list, and if we change our flight plan I've only wasted 10 seconds and not an hour. Its also useful to find out how many lines and line kms we can expect to fly for the day. Its always fun when a hobby like computer programming becomes useful.

Traffic Awareness

Today was our first day we managed to get two flights done in a single day. Yay for us. Being a Sunday and a beautiful clear day it was also quite busy in the air around the local airports, and we had our hands full tracking all the local general aviation traffic that was up for a Sunday joy-ride.

Despite the heavily populated countryside our survey lines still dictate that we just plow right over top of any local airports in our survey block at the usual 200 ft. The less times we have to break line and go around things the better our data is. Unfortunately overflying airports at 200 ft can provide for some unique safety issues if the airport does have local traffic flying around, so its important to keep in radio contact and keep other traffic informed, as well as have both sets of eyes scanning for traffic.

The Navajo is also equipped with a Zaon PCAS (Portable Collision Avoidance System) unit, and it got a pretty full workout today. I have to say I'm impressed with it. I've seen them before in Aviation shops before but never got to use them, but have always been intrigued by the idea but have been a little skeptical. But I can honestly say this thing is an excellent piece of gear for what you would pay for it.

As far as air-to-air collision avoidance systems go, there a few different levels, all with a different levels of features, and different levels with which they will drain your bank account.

All of these systems are dependent on potential conflict aircraft being equipped with a functioning transponder that will send out return signals after it receives an "interrogation" signal from either a ground radar site, or a special type of transponder (Mode S) from another aircraft. If the other airplane that is about to cross your path doesn't have a transponder, or its not turned on, no system is going to see it - unless of course you're flying a military jet that's equipped with air-to-air radar. The good news is that the vast majority of airplanes do have transponders.

A PCAS system like the one we have in the airplane is entirely passive. It doesn't have the ability to send out its own interrogation signals, but merely listens for the reply signals of other airplanes, and it can plot their position relative to itself that way. Like I said I'm quite surprised how well it works. The major disadvantage to it being passive however is that it is depending on ground radar stations or third party Mode S equipped aircraft to send an interrogation signal and trigger the target aircraft's transponder reply. That means that PCAS is basically useless up north where there is no ground radar coverage. If an aircraft doesn't have its transponder triggered, the PCAS can't see it. For use in medium to high density airspace however, where there most likely is ground radar coverage that can trigger transponders, it has been excellent. The model we have does give relative direction, distance, and altitude with reasonable accuracy. And I've been able to visually spot targets in about the same amount of time it takes me to find traffic when its vocally pointed out by ATC for me.

We happened to buzz by a para-glider who was floating around in the updrafts of some hills, and the PCAS didn't pick him up (no transponder) but his big parachute was easy to spot nonetheless. We probably scared the pants off of him though, haha.

Rock & Roll!

Well finally after a painfully slow and troublesome start we have had our first actual production survey flight! Surveying in France is not like going up to the Northern Canada Bush and doing a survey job like I have been used to in the 206. The airspace here is incredibly dense.

Surveying in the north involves little more than setting up at the nearest airport, and going flying. Up there you can fly at 200 ft all day every day and no one cares because its just wilderness. Here in France its a little different. We're buzzing towns at 200 ft agl, blowing right over top of local airports, criss-crossing military airspace and even working around a nuclear generating plant. Part of the reason of the slow start was getting all the government permits to do this. Even though we're allowed to fly over top of small towns, we have to notify a half dozen different agencies and organizations every time we fly. That's the boring part.

The exciting part is the actual flying. To be a honest I was wondering if I would be of much use as co-pilot/operator, considering this kind of flying is usually done single-pilot with an unlicensed operator. But after today's flight I felt like I contributed to the flight considerably as co-pilot and not just "operator". The navigating is intense! The entire 4 hr flight I served as navigator while the Captain flew the lines. In Canada if we're surveying and we see a road, that's been an eventful flight. Here, there's so many things to look out for; airports, airplanes, power lines, towers and restricted airspace that we were both kept on our toes. I never thought that anyone would let us fly over built up areas at 200 ft agl, everything about flight training says its not allowed, but surprisingly our permits basically (with lots of fine print) allow us to fly over everything but the larger towns. The flight planning and flying is quite complex, and its going to be a great learning experience. I would never know how to even attempt a job like this on my own, so its fascinating to be involved in the planning and thought process of a pilot who has done this before.

There's lots to see scenery wise as well. We flew past about a half dozen great big French castles, and some cathedrals, and just in general French countryside is very beautiful.

Usually I don't bother to share photos on this blog, but these ones are worth sharing for sure.

Its incredibly warm here though, over 30 degrees C, and one thing I forgot about Pipers is that there isn't nearly enough ventilation for them. Cessnas have those big ol' overhead vents that you can direct at your face, but the Navajo only has little tiny ones like you'd find on an airliner, and then the side storm windows, which give good airflow but are really noisy to open. We're thinking we might buy some flex hose to stick one end out the window into the airflow and the other end down our shirts to keep us cool. I'll report on how that works out if/when it happens.

Navajo Checkout

So I got a little more than half of my Navajo PCC done today in a beautiful warm, calm day. I still need 1.1 hrs more flight training to be considered complete.

I am SO glad to be back into multi-engine flying. Its just so much more fun. We started out with a briefing on the things we planned to cover - all the typical air work stuff like turns, steep turns, slow flight, approach to stall, etc. and then fired the ol' girl up and taxied out. The first take-off went ok, it was both fun and challenging to get back into the swing of a busy take-off roll and climb-out. The biggest error I made was getting distracted after we were airborne with retracting the landing gear and flaps and setting climb power and letting my airspeed decrease too much. Airspeed should always be maintained during the climb-out after takeoff. But that will come as I get more accustomed to the airplane.

Up at altitude most of the air work was a piece of cake, and most of the multi-engine emergency procedures came back to me fairly quickly as well. I was obviously no multi-engine master, but I think I did represent my experience fairly well and looked like someone who didn't have to be taught all over again how to fly a twin.

We went back to the airport for a couple circuits, and although my approach was fairly good, the first landing attempt was pretty ugly. This is no Cessna anymore! Actually the Navajo behaves very similarly to how the Twin Comanche behaves on landing, it just sits much higher off the ground. I think I overcompensated for the high stance and ended up flaring too high, didn't have enough power on into the flare and ended up stalling it onto the runway. Nothing too jolting, but still it was one of those "oh crap add power" moments just as we were touching down.

Unfortunately a few months ago back in the spring, the Company tried to hire a pilot for the Navajo, but unfortunately he couldn't really get the hang of the airplane and during training he put it down hard and did many thousands of dollars of damage to the landing gear. I think that is still in the back of everyone's mind and is still a bruise to the company wallet, so the pressure is on both for me, and for my training Captain not to let the same thing happen again.

My second approach I was feeling that pressure. In mind its acceptable to not grease your first attempt at landing a new aircraft, so there's really not a whole lot of pressure there as long as you don't panic and over-control and do something stupid. But the second attempt you had better have learned. I was feeling the pressure on final for our second landing. My approach was perfect - nice and stabilized, my target airspeed was pinned, and I had a good power setting and glideslope going in. Even still I had a moment where my heart started beating and I was thinking "Don't screw this up!". I actually don't remember when was the last time in my professional career that I felt the pressure like that. Luckily I did have the advantage of a perfectly calm day, and I managed to overcome any anxiety and make the touchdown a pretty good one (of course there is much room for mastery yet). The Captain seemed happy, so we taxied into the fuel pumps and shut down. He didn't say much about anything, which I interpret as meaning I did a good job, and I was fairly satisfied with my performance. You always have to be sparing with the praise when you're dealing with pilots, otherwise our heads swell and it makes it difficult to fit into the cockpit.

Ego's are a difficult thing to manage when two pilots are working together. Unfortunately I have almost zero experience working side-by-side with other pilots. My jobs prior to now have been single-pilot affairs, so I pretty much got to be the one and final authority in the airplane. If I made a small mistake, no one would notice and I wouldn't look stupid to anyone. But also I didn't have the advantage of spending mass amounts of time watching a more experienced pilot do his thing. All my experience up until now has been born out of personal lessons I've learned and experience from being Pilot-in-Command and I've had very little influence from watching more seasoned pilots. This is one thing I'm actually really looking forward to - getting to tag along as First Officer with a high-time pilot to see how he does things. Its also going to be a challenge as well though, because now there are two ego's in the cockpit, and a first officer has to walk a fine line between challenging the Captain's ego, and safely managing his human side (that can sometimes make mistakes) to contribute to a safer flight. Its going to be especially challenging because this is the first time the company is implementing two-crew SOPs (standard operating procedures) for the Navajo, so up until now my Captain has been accustomed to flying the airplane all by himself (as have I in the airplanes I've flown), so giving up a little bit of control and trusting the guy next to you is going to be a bit of a change for both of us.

Happy Days!

Well since my last post I have trained a new pilot to replace me on the 206, gone on vacation to visit The Lovely Girlfriend in the merry old land of Auz, and now I'm once again deployed - to France this time! France is quite beautiful, I just wish I could speak the language a little better, as we're located in a fairly small town and not many people speak English. My French is improving though.

HOWEVER, I mentioned I trained a pilot to replace me on the 206 because I am finally being promoted to co-pilot on the company Navajo! Finally a twin job! Whoo hoo!! Part of the deal with the upgrade is that I also have operator duties, so I've been trained on that already, and I'm now in the midst of writing the PA-31 type exams for the Navajo. Let me tell you in comparison to all the other aircraft I have flown since now, the Navajo is like a REAL airplane. It has a very detailed Flight Manual (which I've been buried in the last couple days), lots of power with the ability to go really high in the form of two 325 HP turbocharged piston engines (More than double the power of any other airplane in my logbook), an air-stair door, copilot flight instruments, and an overhead switches panel (I've always thought that to be one of the defining aspects between "real" airplanes and "little" airplanes.

The Twin Comanche being the only other Twin I've flown before the Navajo, naturally I have some comparisons of the two airplanes: In one sense they're very similar. They have the same wing shape, the engine positioning is the same, and actually looking out the side window at the wings and engines is very much Deja Vu to the Comanche. The engines and wing have the same proportions, the Navajo is just scaled up a little bit. The engine start procedures are basically the same between the two airplanes, so I'll be at home there, and the approaches for landing are even made at the same airspeed (110 mph). The Twin Comanche, although a slightly slower and less powerful airplane, actually has a slightly higher Vmc (minimum speed at which the airplane can be controlled with a failed engine), and that is mainly what dictates what speed you can fly the approach at. The only thing I think may take some getting used to is the stance the Navajo has on the runway. The Navajo sits fairly high in comparison, while the Comanche was a true low-rider. I'm going to have to develop a new sense for when to start my flair for landing and touching down. But, realistically I'll have lots of chance to develop that because most of the takeoffs and landings will still be done by the Captain. I am just the co-pilot after all. In the other sense of comparison, the Navajo is built and flown like a transport category aircraft. Its solid and the engines need to be operated in a very precise, by the book way otherwise cylinders start cracking and things wear out too fast. The Twin Comanche on the other hand is really just a small private airplane with two engines. It doesn't have a proper flight manual, and other than some of the flight characteristics that were a little bit tricky in comparison to other private airplanes (due to the wing design and high Vmc), the engines were still just your typical Cessna 172 engine. A simple little 4-banger. Overall the Navajo is definitely a step up, but I think my experience in the Twin Comanche will go a long way in helping to prepare me for flying the Navajo.

Hopefully in the next couple days we'll get the flying portion of my Navajo checkout done, and I can officially call myself a Navajo pilot! After that, because of the mass amounts of PIC flight time I've already accumulated and my Twin Comanche multi-PIC time, I'll be eligible for the upgrade to Captain as soon as I get 250 hrs on type.

When I get my checkout done, I'll post again on my experiences in learning to fly the Navajo, because until now I've only flown a few times in it as an Operator, and I have to get the exams finished first before I start the flying portion of my checkout.

Crosswinds & Rudolphs

Yesterday I laughed when my new-to-fixed-wing-ops operator had a chance to cut his teeth as a small aircraft passenger and had a moment of sheer terror on takeoff. These last couple days the winds have been fairly strong and blowing pretty much across the one gravel runway where we are. Yesterday's flight was no exception. I pulled out onto the runway and started my takeoff roll with a 16 knot crosswind from the left. Just before I rotated and lifted off he lowered his head to look down at something on his display screen, when he looked up a second later, I had just gotten airborne and let the nose of the aircraft weather-vane into the wind, and was skimming the runway 10 ft off the ground while I accelerated in ground effect to my climb out speed. For the non-pilots, with a strong crosswind like that the result is the airplane tracking straight down the runway, but pointing sideways in a crab angle. My operator looked up out his side window to look straight down the runway with it scrolling beneath him. For that one second he thought we were about to crash and start cartwheeling down the runway. It was a bad sense of timing on his part to look up if he wasn't familiar with how the airplane reacts in a crosswind takeoff. I had to laugh at his moment of terror. I have to give him credit though, other than that short moment of terror he hasn't expressed any other moments of terror, and has just trusted me and let me do my thing.

**Disclaimer: These next paragraph's may be tedius and uninteresting to those not interested in the technical side of aviation, but I have more non-technical stories coming. Scroll down to the line of # signs to skip my technical babbling.

Personally I've been enjoying the crosswind landing practice. The winds have stayed pretty much around 15 kts at 90 degrees to the runway, so they haven't been strong enough to make the takeoff's hairy, but just strong enough to keep it a challenge and make me work for a smooth departure and arrival. Normally between takeoffs and landings, a good landing is more of a challenge, but I've found in strong crosswinds its actually reversed. I find crosswind takeoffs more difficult to accomplish smoothly than crosswind landings. On strong crosswind takeoffs good rudder pedal control is key. On the initial acceleration when most of the weight is on the wheels, I find the airplane has a tendency to be pushed by the wind to the downwind side of the runway. Proper aileron position on takeoff is to start turning into the wind and then slowly neutralize the ailerons as you accelerator. However since ailerons are an aerodynamic control, on the initial acceleration there's not enough airflow over them to affect directional control of the airplane. Therefore to counteract the wind pushing the airplane to the downwind side of the runway, you have to steer into the wind with the nosewheel (controlled by rudder pedals).

As you accelerate however, and aerodynamic control increases with the increased airflow, steering into the wind with the nosewheel/rudder begins to work against you, because the weight on the wheels lightens, which reduces the effectiveness of the nosewheel, and the effectiveness of the rudder increases with the increased airflow. Now with the rudder turning you into the wind you're now compounding the problems you start to have with weather-vaning, which is the effect of a crosswind exerting force on the tail and causing the nose to pivot TOWARDS the wind.

So as the airplane accelerates and you're fighting the crosswind trying to push you downwind, as you accelerate and airflow around the airplane starts to increase, the airplane starts to weather-vane which starts to pull you upwind, in the OTHER direction. This change can catch you by surprise if you're not ready for it. At the point where this change starts to happen, which can be very quickly, you have to REVERSE your rudder pedal input from steering the aircraft upwind, and start counteracting the weather-vaning effect by steering with the rudder DOWNWIND. Its at this moment the ailerons really start coming into play. This whole time you've been steering with the ailerons into the wind, which hasn't really had an effect until now, but now this causes the airplane to want to bank. This is a good thing, because without banking into the wind, your rudder control, which is counteracting the weather-vaning, would cause the airplane to drift back downwind and off the side of the runway.

So now that aerodynamic control is in effect, you have to counteract weather-vaning with rudder to the DOWNWIND side, but you have to counteract your rudder steer with aileron to the UPWIND side. This in effect puts the airplane into what we call a "slip", which is essentially flying sideways. We want the airplane to fly sideways at the exact opposite angle that the wind is trying to push the airplane sideways. In theory these two sideways effects cancel each other out and we end up tracking perfectly straight down the runway without the wheels skidding along the runway surface.

So in effect, when we're taking off, we start steering with our feet one way, and at a critical point reverse that steering in the opposite direction, and at the same time begin to balance that steering with aileron control with our hands. What actually ends up happening, while we're in our slip maneuver but still not fast enough yet to become airborne, is we end up going up on one wheel and rolling down the runway perfectly balancing on that single wheel, with the nose wheel and downwind main wheel lifted off the ground.

This "wheelie" is a side effect of a slip manuever, which is straight flight that is "banked" or leaning into the wind. We're only in this state for a few seconds, between the point the airplane is sufficiently aerodynamic to cause a bank, and the point where we're going fast enough to actually leave earth altogether. Despite the brief time, is quite fun to go rolling down the runway in this balancing act. Once we're airborne, we're free of the burden of making sure the wheels are tracking straight, and we can then neutralize all controls, at which point the airplane yaws sideways, weather-vaning, and we accelerate to climb out. Even though at this point the airplane appears to be flying sideways (and may be very scary looking for new-to-fixed-wing-ops operators), from an aerodynamic sense its actually flying straight (not in a slip), and thats a more efficient way for the airplane to fly, which is a good thing when we're trying to generate lots of lift and very little drag as we climb out.

My experience has been that even in very strong crosswinds the wheelie effect is an experience unique to high-wing airplanes that have narrow-stanced landing gear. Low wing airplanes like a Cherokee 6 or Twin Comanche that have a wider landing gear stance don't typically do this because the aerodynamic force required to lift the one wheel is much greater when the stance is wider, so usually they end up just rolling down the runway and then lifting off, without the whole "wheelie" phase. Its not nearly as dramatic, but sometimes it can be just as challenging to make a smooth and safe crosswind takeoff.

The same "wheelie" maneuver comes into play during a crosswind landing as well, for the very same reasons, although its much easier to hold it for longer periods during landing, because we're not in a mad dash to accelerate, but more in a slow, controlled deceleration back to earth. I remember one of my old instructors used to make his commercial students do a crosswind touch and go landing and takeoff, while only ever letting one wheel touch the ground. We had to land in the wheelie, and balance it there while we accelerated again to takeoff.

I remember way back in flight school, before I had even soloed, and before I fully mastered the muscle memory required for the right input at the right time, I had a few scary moments practicing takeoffs (even in light crosswinds fit for a student). I'd start to drift off to side of the runway because my control inputs weren't correct, at which point I would freeze, because I wasn't grasping what was happening. Thanks to my instructors who were always vigilant and quick to take over and provide instruction. Primary flight training is filled with exciting moments of terror, when you know things are going quickly wrong, but you're not quite skilled enough to recognize it and correct the problem, lol. Kudos to all the instructors out there who bail their students out like that and are still ready to get into the airplane again for the next lesson.

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Ok, so some stories now of a different nature. Today we started work on the survey block we were flying before my break. When I came back the clients were anxious to finish the other one first, so we flew that one, but now we're back to our original one. This second one is further inland... and HOLY CARIBOU BATMAN!! I've never seen so many caribou in my entire life. Apparently the migration has just finished, so they're all just chilling out. Up until today I can count the total number of caribou I've ever seen on 1 hand. After today the number is in the triple digits. Before it was the highlight of the flight if we saw one. But after 10 minutes into our flight today, we stopped counting, and didn't even bother to point them out anymore. They were all over the place. There were 2's and 3s all over the place, a number of small herds numbering between 8-15, and then we even flew over a herd that probably numbered between 30 and 40. It was quite the site, the sheer vastness of the open land with caribou spotting the landscape everywhere you could look.

Also, I've come to realize that there are differing opinions amongst the caribou over what should be considered imminent danger. It was pretty funny actually. Most of the caribou we flew over we hear us coming and kind of hustle out of the way. Others would half heartedly get up if they were laying down, you know "just in case" I guess. While others would run like it was the end of the world. I laughed out loud when I saw a small group of 5 that we flew over. Four of them were laying down on the tundra, and didn't even bother to get up when we flew over. The fifth in the herd was convinced we were death from above. He went running for dear life (pun not intended), just blasting right past the other 4. The rest didn't budge, but just watched him run past like he was an idiot. I could just imagine the dialogue:

Blitzen: "RUN FOR YOUR LIVES!! RUUUUN!!"

Comet: "Relax you idiot, they've been flying over us all day"

Blitzen, who now stops running: "Oh."

It was quite comical to see the different reactions. There was another one who panicked just a little too late, and got up to run, but he wasn't sure which direction to go because we were directly overhead. He just ended up deeking back and forth until I lost sight of him behind us.

It was also interesting to watch them run flat out on the tundra. The tundra surface, although generally flat, is incredibly rocky and uneven. Yet the caribou would goose step around all the stones and rocky ground and splash through the puddles like nothing. I consider myself fairly athletic, but if I tried to run flat out on that terrain, I'd end up tripping on a rock and smashing my teeth out or rolling my ankle in no time flat. It was quite impressive.

We also saw many young colts, some probably less than a month old. They stuck to their mother's heels like little ankle-biters as she hustled away from us. It was interesting to note that all of the young ones are a much darker colour than the grown caribou, which are kind of an off-white tan colour. My theory is that calves are born in the spring, when there is no snow and the land is brown, so they blend into the summer terrain. Grown caribou camouflage better in the snow with their lighter colour. Any expert's opinion welcome.

We should be finished up here soon, and then we have another very short job in Ontario again on our way to Northern Quebec.

Soggy

Well I'm back from a couple weeks of glorious time off. My medical is renewed for another year, my recurrent training is complete, and I'm ready to get back at 'er.

We left the airplane at a maintenance base just north of Winnipeg, where they had a grass strip that I flew into. After a Westjet flight to Winnipeg, and then a long taxi ride out to the airport, I had a chance to meet my new operator, who meets me there after driving out in the van.

Our plan was to meet there Monday afternoon and fly out to Thompson for the night, but as always plans never go as planned. Southern Manitoba had a couple days of rain a few days ago, and the grass runway was very soggy. We loaded the airplane up and taxied out to the runway. I always love flying into private airstrips. This one has the long gravel driveway doubling as a taxiway that goes out behind the two houses and the shop hangar out to the runway. I taxi past a row of evergreen trees/hedges on one side and a car graveyard on the other side. There's a narrow culvert bridge crossing a drainage ditch that takes me onto the runway. I make a mental note of a spot on the runway that will serve as my go/no-go decision point.

As soon as I get into the grass and on the runway I can feel the airplane nose-wheel sinking into the muck. I add power to keep a fast paced backtracking taxi down the runway to avoid getting stuck. Even with 20 degrees of flap set and pulling fully back on the controls to keep as much weight off the nose as possible, I can feel the wheels just bogging down. I look out the window and the main wheel I can see is splashing through water and tall grass. Getting to the end of the runway I do my final takeoff checks still rolling, add more power and swing around to line up on the runway, and then add full power. The acceleration is lethargic. At a third ways down the 2500 ft runway I'm still barely faster than a fast taxi, but the acceleration is getting better as the weight slowly comes off the wheels. Two thirds behind me and I finally have an indication on the airspeed indicator at 40 mph. Even with the Robertson STOL (short takeoff and landing) kit I need a bare minimum of 55 to get airborne, and then I still need to fly in ground effect for another several hundred feet. I pass my go/no-go point and am still bouncing along on the ground - no good. I pull the power off and abort the takeoff. There's no need to use the breaks, I slow down and sink into the boggy grass almost instantly.

I tell my operator we'll give it another attempt, and hopefully we can find a path along the runway that isn't quite as boggy. I wonder what he's thinking. He's very experienced with survey operating, but all of his flying has been in helicopters. This is his very first flight with me, as well as in a light fixed wing piston aircraft. He seems calm and lets me do my thing. What an introduction to fixed wing flying though!

We line up again, and the runway is wide enough that I shift to the left just a bit, hoping to catch some higher ground that is less saturated. Throttle in, confirm full power, gauges green, and off we go crashing through puddles and ruts as I keep the controls back and the nose out of the muck as best I can. The end result is the same, and we taxi back in. I never thought I'd get to be a swamp boat driver. Its very close, we're very light on our toes as I pass the abort point. If I was ballsier there'd be a decent chance that I could have gotten airborne and clear the bushes if I continued with the takeoff. But the risk outweighs the reward. I'm confident that I could get the airplane airborne no problem if we empty our gear out. There's a paved runway a half hour down the road, but its too late to go there today and still make the 3 hr flight north before dark. We pack it in for the day and go check into a local hotel for the night. The underside of the wings and the side of the fuselage are splattered with mud being kicked up from the wheels, and the back door step has collected a pile of wet grass blades.

The next morning I'll go swamp boat driving again with an empty airplane - with better results.

Flight Planning

We have finally finished our first job here, finally. We had a long stretch of bad weather, and then a broken airplane so we had to wait for an AME to arrive with a replacement part, but after 3 weeks of sitting we finally finished the job. We have another job in Nunavut that is an hour flight south. We're still tecnically waiting for authorization from the client to demobilize, so in the meantime we've been making the 50 minute ferry flight south to survey the blocks on the next job.

We might have a job coming up on the other side of Hudson Bay in Eastern Northern Quebec, so they asked me to plan a flight from our current location so they could do a cost estimation. It was an interesting problem to solve.

First of all the most apparent problem is that a direct route would take me directly across Hudson Bay. Obviously in a single engine airplane that's out of the question, so the question became whether to take the northern route over the top of the Bay, or go south all the way down around Hudson and James Bay. The northern route is almost 600 miles shorter - 900 nm vs 1500 nm. That's a huge difference. The problem, there are only a small number of communities where I could potentially land and refuel. I looked all of them up, and none of them had Avgas except for Iqualuit. The flight from here to Iqualuit would be a grueling 6 hrs. The airplane could do it, but that's almost a full hour longer than I've ever done in one leg. Furthermore, the northern route would require crossing a number of stretches of water between the islands that would be well beyond gliding distance. Legally it could be done if I brought along the proper survival equipment, but even with a liferaft onboard and a maritime survival suit I'm not sure I'd want to have to swim in Arctic water. The southern route was longer but it seemed safer and better.

Even heading south I can't just pick the most convienent place to land and expect they will have fuel. A lot of airports up here are little more than a stretch of gravel and a small terminal building with limited operating hours, so you have to do your research if you expect to land and just pull up to the pumps.

At the end of it I came up with 2 stops, one in Gillam, MB, and the next in Moosonee, one airport I know VERY well...

I'm not sure if we'll even get that contract out east, or if we do I'll be flying from where I planned it from, but it was a fun scenario to plan out.

The Far North

Well we have made it to the far north. I flew up on Monday, while my operator made it up by Airline the next day. We managed to get our FOM flight done with our last day of great weather, and then one survey flight. And then we spent the next couple days sitting. With springtime comes bad weather. The fog here rolls in quickly without warning, and then just like that clears out a couple hours later. I'm going to have to keep a close eye on the temperature/dew-point spread. When the temperature is close to the dewpoint, that means the relative humidity is high, and therefore so is the possibility of fog.

Yesterday afternoon the snow and low cloud seemed to have cleared enough that we decided to try a flight. We got out to the airplane and by the time we got it ready for flight it had started lightly snowing again. We started up and taxied out, and I called for a weather report before taking off. It was still calling 7 miles visibility, ceilings 1500 ft, so off we went. Well the flight didn't last long. We got out to the block and it was terrible conditions, fog on the ground with multiple other cloud layers below 1000 ft. It was an easy decision to turn back. By the time we got back to the airport, it was snowing heavily and we landed with visibility around 2 to 3 miles. I have a feeling this will be a common scenario for the next few weeks.

Today we finally got up for a couple hrs survey in the afternoon, and it looks like the weather is going to be decent for the next few days, so hopefully we can get some work done. My operator and I weren't prepared for how cold it turned today however. It was close to 20 C below. Up until now the heater knob in the airplane has hovered somewhere around the quarter to halfway out position. Today it was full on the whole flight, and still the cockpit stayed JUST warm enough. By the time we landed it was almost 8 pm. Fueling the airplane and putting it to bed was miserably cold. We are fueling out of barrels, so its a huge process to refuel the airplane. We have to unpack the fuel pump, assemble it, roll a barrel over from our cache, set the pump up, fuel one wing, slide the barrel over to the other wing, fuel it, and then disassemble the pump and put it away. And then we have to put the wing covers on, and engine blanket, and make sure the space heater is plugged in to keep our survey equipment in the back warm. We both ended up putting on our winter overalls that we keep in the back of the airplane. I even broke out a couple hand-warmers, and my fingers were STILL numb. Holding a metal fuel pump nozzle with sub-zero temperature fuel flowing through it can suck the heat out of your hands insanely fast.

Welcome to Nunavut I guess. Tomorrow I'll be sporting the long underwear and an extra sweater, along with my overalls standing by. Being a pilot is so glamorous.

The town itself isn't bad to live in. Its comprised about 50/50 white people and Inuit, and everybody seems friendly enough. Its quite a difference to some of the reserves in Northern Ontario where there is almost hostility against us "whitey's". There are a few restaurants here as well, so we have a bit of variety, although much of the selection is still your typical diner style food. There are a few good dishes I have discovered however that are reasonably healthy and a good change from greasy food.

Don't Blink You'll Miss It

We finished up our second small job, and quite quickly. Luck was on our side this time and everything in the airplane is working beautifully, and we've had almost a week now of fantastic blue sky weather.

Now we're back in Thunder Bay. Today we both started and finished a third small job that popped up here. It only took us one flight, and we continue to have great weather. The Thunder Bay job was very small as well, we finished it in one flight today. We didn't have to do an FOM (calibration flight) for it because the one we did on the last job was geographically near enough to count for this job as well. The survey block was small enough to bang off in 4 hrs even. Tomorrow we finally head to Rankin Inlet.

I enjoyed flying out of Thunder Bay, if only for a short time. Thunder Bay while not a large city by Southern Ontario standards is a large city for Northern Ontario, and is therefore a major air carrier hub. Its quite a busy airport, complete with its own control tower and all the fixings of a major airport. Its been a while since I've flown out of a busy towered airport, and it was good to get back into that fast paced environment of busy airports and clean the rust off of those skills. I do really enjoy the fast paced atmosphere and wish I could spend more time here. But oh well, duty calls.

My next task for the moment is planning my exact route up to Rankin Inlet, and also look into how my operator is going to get there as well. I'll probably do it in a couple days. We're not going to drive the van all the way up there, and we have too much gear to bring it all in the airplane, so my operator is most likely going to have to fly commercial air service up there, along with much of our gear.

To the best of my memory, the trip up to Rankin Inlet will be both the furthest north I have ever been, as well as be the longest continuous cross country trip I will have taken. Only by a few miles though.

Headset Swap

We spent 3 nights hanging out in Thunder Bay waiting for the airplane to get out of maintenance in Sioux. Finally after some relaxing, and a little bit of adventure (we went and climbed a nearby "mountain" outside Thunder Bay), my operator headed off to our next spot, and I took the 5 hr bus back to the Sioux, and then flew the airplane in. Most of the 2 hr flight was spent at 800-1000 agl running along under a low cloud deck. You really get a sense of the terrain you're flying over at that altitude. I never tire of watching cliff formations and little steep rocky terrain scroll by under the wings.

The weather has since turned turned great. A nice big High Pressure system has moved in from the North which means blue skies and light winds. It also has turned very cold. Today we got up and set up our base station, and then got up to do our FOM flight. So far from what we hear everything worked out well, and we should be able to get out tomorrow and start AND finish the survey. Its a very small job here.

Today for the flight I forgot to bring my headset from the hotel, but we happened to have a spare in the back. My headset is only a passive David Clark model. Nothing fancy on it. I've had it for almost a decade now, and it still works flawlessly unfortunately. The only thing I've done to it is replace the mic muff, put some fat new gel ear pads and upgrade the headband pad on it. I keep eyeballing all the new fancy ANR (active noise reduction - a feature that emits a tone that cancels out the sound of the engine to make it quieter) headsets that my operator's use (purchased by the company). The extra one we had was a Lightspeed brand (20xl or something like that I think). I was impressed with the noise cancelling - it did make the engine noise much quieter, but the speaker sound quality I found was far less impressive. My Davie headset was much clearer. I also found my headset to be more comfortable, even if a little heavier, but maybe thats just because its what I'm used to. Despite the lower engine noise, I'm not so sure I'm ready to trade in my headset just yet.

On a side note the takeoff caught me by surprise. When you fly an airplane almost every day you don't realize how much your ears tune into the tone of the engine to listen for any anomalies. Wearing the ANR headset made for a totally different engine tone as I pushed in the throttle, and it caught me by surprise. My instinct was telling me "The engine doesn't sound right! Something's wrong!" and I had to consciously tell myself it was the ANR headset. It was quite a different sound. It was an interesting feeling though, accelerating down the runway and not being able to trust your sense of hearing as an additional engine monitor. I'm sure if I wore the headset regularly my ears would tune into what normal sounded like.

Touring the North

Well I have changed towns again. Quite the story. Due to a huge hockey tournament going on, I could only get a hotel room in Sioux for that first night. Then I was out of luck. Thursday morning I stopped by the AMO shop to drop off some paperwork, then spent the rest of the morning trying to devise a plan to find somewhere else to stay for the night. All the hotels were full, so I tried the Bed & Breakfasts. Those were full too. I looked into maybe taking a bus to nearby Dryden, but there was no such thing. The lady at Greyhound tried to sell me on bus ride that got routed through Thunder Bay, making for almost a 16 hr trip just to get to Dryden which is only an hour and a bit drive. I'm pretty sure the booking service was based probably down south and the lady obviously had no geographical knowledge, otherwise she would have seen the ludicrousness of her solution. I'm not impressed with people who out of their own ignorance of the industry they work in cannot at least point me in the right direction to find a practical solution. Granted not a whole of people in souther Ontario know exactly where Sioux Lookout and Dryden are, but you'd think that at least someone working for Greyhound booking bus routes would have a working knowledge of where all these towns were that they served. I pointed out that Dryden was only an hour and a bit drive from Sioux, so I wasn't going to go all the way to Thunder Bay (5 hrs one way) and then all the way back to Dryden on the bus. She didn't seem to grasp the sillyness of the routing, so I said thank you and hung up the phone. I could probably take a taxi for less, or even rent a car. Besides, if I was going to go to Thunder Bay I might as well just stay there and meet my operator there, who was at that time en-route in the Van.

So I tried the one car rental place in town. Nothing available. Looked like Thunder Bay might have to be an option. It wouldn't be that bad if I made it there anyways. Its a nice big town, and thats where my operator would be anyways. I looked up the bus line in town and called them. It was just an answering service with scheduled times and rates, but there was a bus running. I touched base with my operator to let him know my plan as it stood at that moment, and then called a cab and off I was to the bus station/convenience store. I was chatting to the cabby on the way there, and he mentioned that last night he had driven a guy who was in the same boat as me to Dryden, and then elsewhere as there weren't even any rooms in Dryden. Crazy.

I got to the bus stop about 2 hrs before the bus was scheduled to leave, and I was lucky to get there when I did. I got the LAST ticket available on the bus, which was actually just a big van. Soon enough I was on my way to Thunder Bay for the 5 hr drive. Just to find a place to sleep for the night, sheesh. But now I am successfully in Thunder Bay, with a place to sleep, and have rendezvoused with my operator - and we are chilling for the next couple days until the airplane is finished inspection. After that, onto the next job. Never a dull moment.

Next!

Well after having to do a quick flight to re-fly one line that we somehow missed, we got the ok to move out. Next stop, Sioux Lookout for maintenance, which is where I am now. It was a long 4.5 hr flight with headwinds, but the weather was great the whole way there.

This was my first time at the Sioux airport, and the runway sits at a lower elevation than the main ramp, and there's a taxi-way that winds its way up the hill almost like a mini mountain road. It was kind of fun going up. I imagine it will be even more fun going downhill, its almost like a go-cart track. Hopefully the winds are such when I depart that I'll get to use it going downhill.

After landing and parking I couldn't find my wallet for the life of me. It was not a good time. I had already called the cab and had my bags loaded, and after searching my bad a dozen times and tearing apart all the nooks and crannies in the airplane that it might have fallen, I still couldn't find it. I had to tell the cabby that I was going to go walk the parking area where I had been walking around after landing to see if I could find it, and told him I'd call him back. He didn't seem happy but didn't say much. What could I do? I couldn't pay him.

The owner of the AMO (Maintenance Shop) came by as I was looking around on the ground for my wallet. It was after-hours but he knew I was coming so I guess he swung by to see if I made it. He asked if I needed a lift into town and I gratefully accepted and told him of my predicament. When I got to the hotel thankfully when I booked the room I gave them my credit card, so I still got to check in and had a place to sleep for the night. I wasn't sure how I was going to get dinner though, I hadn't really eaten all day as we were in a bit of a rush after our morning flight to get out of there.

After calling my operator and have him tear apart the van to see if I left my wallet in there, I found it - stuffed behind a flap in a pocket of my flight bag. I felt dumb, I don't know how I didn't find it the previous 12 times I searched my bag, but also I felt relieved. Losing your wallet while you're in a strange town 1000 miles from home sucks. It probably took 2 years off my life with the stress, lol. But all is well again. Happy ending.

On a side note, I ate dinner at a place called Dick and Nellie's Bar and Grill cause I heard it was wing night. The wings sucked. They were nice and saucy, but very small and overpriced, especially for "wing night". On the plus side their nachos were huge, and loaded with cheese and stuff. That made up for the disappointing wings. I couldn't even finish the nachos. They'd be a full meal in themselves for 2 big eaters. Just sayin'

And they're off!

Finally. A good day of production. It took a few more days of snow, another test flight, and one false start where we had to turn back, but we've managed to sort out the technical problems and start biting into the survey grid.

And oh ya, that hangar that I said we put the airplane into? It didn't end up doing much. The wind ended up blowing in the right direction to send the snow right into the hangar door opening and our poor airplane was covered in snow despite being under a roof. It took me the better part of an hour of brushing and scraping and washing the remaining ice off, but I finally got it cleaned up enough to go flying for a test flight. That was a couple days ago. Its been fantastic weather since. My only complaint is that the temperature is hovering around the threshold that requires the winter fronts be either installed or not installed. The winter fronts are basically sheets of metal with slits in them that you screw onto the engine cowl intake to impede airflow into the engine cowl.

The engine is cooled by the air that flows into the front of the engine, but on cold winter days the air can actually be cold enough to do too good of a job cooling the engine so that the engine can't properly warm up. In aviation fashion the high-tech solution (yes that is sarcasm) is to screw some sheet metal onto the front of the engine intake to block a good portion of the intake air and thus impede cooling. I dislike installing and removing winter fronts. There are two pieces (one for each side of the engine) and each piece requires 10 machine screws to fasten it to the engine cowl. That's a lot of screwing and unscrewing by hand. We generally don't like to use power drills on airplanes because they have the ability to cross-thread the screws and then mangle them, in case anyone was wondering.

Today we finally completed a successful FOM (calibration) flight in the morning and then we went back and flew survey lines in the afternoon for a good 2 and a half hours. We're almost halfway done the job now, and provided the equipment behaves we should finish up tomorrow in either one long flight or two shorter ones, depending on how we feel. I love surveying in this area. We were in almost this exact spot back in the fall, and we're back again doing a block that is directly adjacent to the one we did then. Its very hilly, and keeps my interest even though it makes for very fatiguing flying. The hills add a dimension (literally) to the number of variables I have to manage to stay on-line and at the proper height. Actually two new dimensions. In addition to staying within horizontal limits, I am constantly pitching the airplane to follow the contour of the hills as best I can. The pitch changes introduce the second variable, which is maintaining a relatively constant speed which we do with power adjustments. Its constant roll, pitch, and throttle adjustments for the entire flight, and its draining! I haven't had to focus this hard in a while! Up until now this particular contract has mainly composed of fighting off boredom in between short test flights/attempts. The time of boredom is over.

After we finished the flight I got back to the hotel room and sent off my daily reports back to the office and then ended up passing out on the bed. I woke up sprawled face-down with my phone ringing (my operator wanted to go to dinner). I will neither confirm nor deny that I may or may not have been drooling...

We'll go for an early start tomorrow, finish the second half of our survey block, and then we're off to the next destination on the list.

Cockpit Organization

Well we managed to get our calibration flight in (technically called a "Figure of Merit" flight, or FOM for short) yesterday, but there have been technical problems with the data, and the techies don't seem to know exactly what went wrong, so we're into some troubleshooting.

In the meantime its been snowing quite heavily, so we're grounded anyways until the weather clears. Apart from the occasional medevac flight that comes and goes, the airport here is pretty dead. There is a lone hangar with no door that houses a small number of private ultralights, and I've convinced the airport manager to let us tuck the airplane into that as best as we can. The tail section of the airplane is sticking outside of the hangar, but we have the wings under a roof and out of the snow for the most part. It'll saves a lot of brushing/scraping snow and ice and it also means we won't need to put the wing covers on, which are annoying at best to put on and remove due to the wing pods and STOL kit (short take-off and landing).

Back in Markham I purchased a knee-board (a foldable pouch with pockets and a clipboard which straps to your leg), which I am quite happy with after having a few flights to try it out. Until now I've never flown with one. The Twin Comanche and Cherokee 6 aircraft I used to fly had room to stick my flight back in between the front seats so I had access and a place to store everything I needed for the flight right beside me. The Cessna 206 does not have the room between the seats so I've been stuck stowing my flight bag behind the pilot seat, which makes it difficult to retrieve maps and notebooks from it during flight. Until now I've just resorted to placing my maps, notebooks, and checklist on the floor in between the seats, but that has been disorganized at the best of times. In addition to those things, the engine will be going to an On-condition maintenance program soon which means I now have to fill out trend-monitoring forms during flight which record and track engine gauge readings such as oil temp, oil pressure, cylinder head temperature, exhaust gas temperature, and a number of other things to track subtle changes in engine performance. This extra piece of paper in the cockpit has finally caused me to surpass the threshold of the number of pieces of paper I can keep track of in the cockpit without an easy to access pocket.

Enter the kneeboard. I love it actually. Its a tri-fold design and carries everything I need for the flight in a handy little kit that's strapped to my knee. Its like a mini flight bag. I made up paper sheets that fit on the clipboard to record flight times, crucial flight plan information, weather, fuel log, and all the trend monitoring parameters. I also re-wrote the aircraft checklist, formatted it and had it laminated in a size that will clip to one side of the fold out flaps of the kneeboard (thanks to my oodles of free time down south waiting for the airplane in maintenance). And there's also room in another pouch to hold my map. I am proud to say that I now have every piece of information and form I need for the flight at my fingertips and I don't have to feel around on the cockpit floor for the map or piece of paper that has slid out of reach.

If I had a choice I would still prefer to keep everything in my flight bag beside me in between the seats, because I would rather not have something strapped to my lap, but the kneeboard is a close second alternative, and far superior to having to reach behind me or grope for things on the floor.

Tomorrow despite the forecast being as bleak as it was today, I remain hopeful that we'll get to go flying.

One small step for me...

...One giant leap towards finally making the company some money.

I've finally made it to our destination. We had another 2 days of mechanically-related delays, but now we're finally up and running and I landed early this evening. Tomorrow the weather is supposed to be beautiful still so we'll fly our calibration flight, and providing that is ok we'll hopefully have time to fly a few survey lines.

After living in Limbo for the last few days constantly checking out of my hotel and then checking in again and having to eat out I'm glad to finally be somewhere that I know I'll stay in for at least 3 or days. I didn't know if I could handle many more meals at the three restaurants I've been rotating through that were near my hotel down south. Tonight after I had dinner with my operator I stopped by the grocery store which just happens to be next to the hotel and picked up some milk and cereal and plastic bowls for breakfast, as well as some sandwich meat and buns for lunch. Finally I can stop eating out, at least for 2 meals of day. It saves money too.

Mostly I'm glad to be back "on the job" and feeling like I'm getting something accomplished. Technically we haven't gotten anything accomplished yet, but considering the last few days of nothing but delays, just GETTING to where I'm supposed to be counts as a big victory. Tomorrow I will go ply my trade with which I'm being paid for and we'll hopefully get some REAL work done.

Waiting to Depart

Well I was finally ready and was supposed to depart yesterday, but a low pressure system bringing freezing rain, low visibility and low cloud is sweeping across the province leaving me grounded probably until Sunday in Toronto.

Yesterday I spent most of the day trying to get a working fuel transfer pump (for fueling the aircraft out of barrels) together. I had initially thought we had one ready to go in the back of the shop, but it turned out to be more complicated than that. We did have small number of pumps and parts to go with the pumps, but they were all either worn out, the wrong voltage, and/or missing pieces.

Finally we decided to just go buy a new one, and then I spent much of the remainder of the afternoon assembling and making sure I had all the correct fittings and pieces for it. I can proudly say that at the end of the day I did indeed have a working fuel pump with all the correct pieces to fuel an airplane.

Today has been spent killing time. Right across the street from my hotel is an outdoor themed store, which is really fantastic to walk through if you're an outdoorsy person. They have some packages of freeze-dried food by Mountain House made for the purpose of camping/back-packing/survival and the like. The kind where you just add boiling water. We keep several meal packages in our survival kit. I've never had them before, so I decided I'd try a package and see what they're like and if they'd be any good for taking with me on camping trips. They were around $9 per package, which are supposed to serve 2. The "Chicken Teriyaki with Rice" that I tried, contained 580 calories per package, which seems low if you're planning to feed 2 people from it.

I took it back to my hotel room and microwaved the required amount of water to add, poured it in, and let it stand for a few minutes as directed.

It was actually pretty good, relatively speaking. I ate the whole thing, so it definitely couldn't feed 2 grown adults, at least if one or both of those adults was a man. I ate the whole package for lunch and am already starting to feel hungry again only 2 hours later. For a survival food it would be good. Tasty enough to maintain my morale if I was sitting around by a crashed airplane waiting for rescue. As a camping or backpacking ration, its easy and convenient to prepare, isn't heavy and doesn't take up TOO much space, but its not tasty enough that I would use it as a main meal source. I can imagine growing tired of eating them very quickly, so would probably only take enough for perhaps one meal on a "bush style" camping or backpacking trip where space for food was minimal. All in all, its not bad considering its freeze dried food that needs to be re-hydrated - but its still freeze-dried food.

Back at it

Wow, its been a while. I wonder if anyone out there is still reading this haha. The fall and winter was pretty slow for survey jobs. I spent most of it working construction to pay the bills. But it looks like this upcoming spring is going to be solid with work until mid-summer.

I've spent the last few weeks commuting to the office in Toronto for a few days each week to stay busy helping with some recent office work, and also to conduct some test flights for a new piece of R&D we're installing in the 206 I fly. The new technology is supposedly a "holy grail" for survey flying. It doesn't really mean much for me as a pilot, except that I have to spent more time on the ground before each flight doing taxi calibrations, but it is somewhat interesting.

When you're young and in flight school, or still dreaming of starting flight school you imagine being a pilot is mostly just showing up a few minutes before the flight, hopping in and taking off to your next destination. Thats only natural to assume that. Flight school trains you purely in the operation of an airplane, so thats what you spend most of your time doing. In reality however, at least in my experience, a vast majority of your time is spent in the less glamorous aspects of aviation for a pilot - lots of waiting. Pilots stand around a lot. We stand around a lot while we wait for our airplane to finish inspection and be put back together, we stand around and wait for passengers, or we stand around while the technicians wrestle with a piece of survey equipment that has decided to do something unexpected.

As soon as we get this R&D project out of the way, we'll finally be off again on some new contracts. First will be a couple days back in Kirkland Lake, and from there we MIGHT do a few weeks in Moosonee - the birthplace of my professional career, haha. I'm looking forward to going back actually, it will be fun to see that place again. After that we have a contract signed for Rankin Inlet, Nunavut. I'm looking forward to that as well. I've never been north of 60 yet, so I'll be able to check that off my list soon. Hopefully I'll see some polar bears as well.