Grind

I'm finding it difficult to write interesting posts lately about our flying.  Most of it is flying long lines across empty blue seas for a half hour at a time.  We get excited if we see one boat in a 4 hour flight.  Even while focusing on the precision flying some days we have to fight to stay awake.  The hot sun beats into the cockpit and it there is nothing interesting to look at.  Perfect time for a nap... oh wait I have to fly an airplane at 200 ft.  Thank goodness for my music I can pipe directly into my headset.

I am still loving my new Bose A20 headset.  I'm still amazed at how quiet it is.  It does such a good job at noise cancelling actually that I have a hard time syncing the props with the noise cancelling turned on.  With constant speed props (adjustable pitch propellers), you set the pitch of the prop blades by moving the prop lever which controls an RPM governor.  If you move the lever forward the governor decreases the pitch of the propeller blades, which decreases the load on the engine and therefore increases the engine RPM.  So we set the props based on certain RPMs (usually 2300 for cruise, 2400 for climbs).  With twin engine aircraft, if the props on each engine aren't spinning at exactly the same RPM you get a resonant thumping you can hear which is incredibly annoying.  So we always fine tune the RPM settings by ear until the thumping disappears into a steady drone.  With my new headset the noise cancelling completely cancels out the resonating sound so I can't tell if the props are out of sync.  It drives my partner crazy because he uses a passive headset, so I've taken to leaving my noise cancelling feature turned off for takeoff and climb until we're into cruise and I have the props set properly, and only then do I turn the noise cancelling feature on.  Its probably for the best anyway since take-off is the most critical phase of the flight, and its good to be able to hear exactly what the engine is doing.  Hearing what the engine is doing can in some cases be a far better indicator than any gauge can be.

The only complaint I have with my headset is the location of the headset controls (volume, etc).  On my old Davey Clark the volume knob was on the right ear-cup.  As a result I always knew exactly where it was, and could instantly reach up and adjust it if I needed to.  Now with the Bose, the controls on are a little pod on the headset cable.  So in order to make adjustments I have to fish around my seat and find the cable, then find the cable control pod, and then adjust it from there.  The cable comes with a couple clips on it so you can fasten the pod down to somewhere.  My jeans have a hole in the left knee, so I usually fasten one clip to the hole in my jeans, and the other clip to my belt.  That way the control panel more or less stays near my left leg.  Still not as slick as the ear cup mounted controls though, but I'll never again go back to a passive headset.

Getting Work Done

Ten minutes into the flight.  We've just arrived at our block, and we're over the cliffs of the south western Newfoundland shore.  Our survey lines are mostly over the ocean, but the ends of them overlap onto the shore and over the 800' cliffs that drop straight into the ocean.  I'm in the process of turning in to intercept our first survey line.  This morning's flight was scrapped due to high winds, but those have since died down, so we're off to get some work done.  The sky is mostly clear except for some low cloud draped over the cliffs below us.

It doesn't look like I can get down to our 200' survey height without going into cloud, so I'll stay a little bit higher, and then when we clear the cloud layer I'll drop in on a steep descent down to the proper altitude.  We'll have to re-fly the portion of the line where we are too high later, but that's not a huge deal.  The rest of the block is CAVOK (Clouds And Visibility OK).  I already have the power pulled back in anticipation of our steep dive - its very easy to bury the airspeed indicator's needle past Vne (Never Exceed Speed) of 210 mph (much slower than a normal Navajo's Vne since we have our survey sensors hanging off the end of the wingtips).

We cross over the shoreline cliffs and continue our descent down below until we're skimming the sea at our usual 200'.  These cliffs have caused us some consternation lately.  The last few flights the wind tumbling over them has caused some severe turbulence for us, so much that we've had to avoid them entirely.  In those cases you have to tighten your seatbelt as much as possible, and then you can look out the window and watch the wingtips flex up and down as they bounce through the rough air.  Today the air is smooth but its the cloud cover preventing us from surveying over them.

Two hours into the flight, 50 nautical miles off shore.  We bear down on a tiny little sailboat, maybe a 26 or 28 footer.  Its wavy for him out here, he's bobbing like a cork but clearly sailing to somewhere.  We wonder where he came from.  He's a least a full day's sail from land in the direction he came from - he must have had a rough time this morning.  The ocean swells now are rocking him pretty good, and it was even windier this morning.  Kind of looks like fun actually.  Our next line a half an hour later takes us right over top of him.  Our belly camera must have surely snapped a picture of him as we went over, it might make for a cool photo.  I make a mental note.  We continue our precision flying back and forth, blue sea, blue sea, blue sea.

Four hours into the flight.  We're headed in to land.  As always the wind is blowing in from the water, so I've set us up for a tight left downwind for runway 27.  Its tight because there's some tall hills to the right of me, so I can either fly a wider, higher circuit at 1500' above airport elevation, or stick to the standard 1000' circuit and stay tighter in and away from the hills.  I prefer the tighter, lower circuit, but it makes for a challenging base-final approach.  Its tight enough that its almost a continuous 180° descending left turn all the way down onto the runway.  I'm proficient enough in the Navajo now that I can make these high demand approaches and still stay ahead of the airplane no problem.  One hundred hours ago I wouldn't have the confidence to try something like this in the Navajo, but now that I'm getting consistent left-seat practice I'm really starting to meld with the airplane.  It feels good.

I touch down right wheel first in the light crosswind with a bit of a bump, the remaining wheels come down smoothly.  Good flight.