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.