Handholders and Weathervanes

So today I had a full day of flying. I did five trips - 10 flights. The weather was blue skies but bumpy and windy all day. My first trip had me going south to pick up a couple gentlemen and about 20 dead, frozen Canadian Geese. Luckily they were all sealed up in bags - the geese. I've heard in some cases, especially flying right out of the bush, they just throw the dead birds in the back of the plane. Which would be all right if they stayed frozen... Anyways I had it good from what I hear.

My home base has an off-site radio service which handles the traffic. There are essentially three levels of traffic control in Canada. The lowest level, which the vast majority of airports in Canada use, is called an ATF, or Aerodrome Traffic Frequency. My hometown, Sarnia, has this. Essentially it is just a standard frequency that's designated for all aircraft in the area to use. There's no controller, all the airplanes taking off and landing from that airport state their intentions and actions on that frequency, and if there is a conflict with another aircraft, that other aircraft, which is monitoring the same radio freqency, will hear it and the two airplanes can work it out between the two of them. Its entirely optional to monitor the ATF within the vicinity of an airport that has one, although highly recommended. This allows NORAD (aircraft with NO RADio) to use the airport. The next level up uses a Radio Service, more on that in a second. The highest level of traffic control an airport can have is a control tower. Most people before they learn otherwise assume that all airports have a control tower. This is not so, in fact I can list on two hands the airports in Ontario that have one. Usually it has to be pretty busy. A control tower is essentially in charge of the traffic on and around the airport. They must issue you a clearance to land, takeoff, join the circuit, taxi, and go to the bathroom. Its actually quite nice. For some newer pilots, if they haven't had much experience flying within airspace with a control tower, it can be quite intimidating. Since I did all of my initial flight training in Sarnia with no control tower, I was terrified of flying into places with one, and avoided them until I got more practice flying in them with an instructor.

After you get the hang of it, it can actually become quite the security blanket, because you have someone holding your hand telling you what to do and pointing out traffic for you. The middle level of traffic control, like at the home base where I'm working now, is like I said a Radio Service, which is somewhere in between an ATF and a control tower. A Radio Service is not really air traffic control in that they can't tell you what to do and when to do, but they are someone who is monitoring the frequency and keeping track of all the airplanes in the area. All airplanes within the designated zone must be talking to the Radio Service, however the Radio Service provides advisory information only. Sometimes these Radio Services are located directly on the field and are equipped with radar and everything, other times, like here, they are off somewhere in a different town listenning in.

So far up here I have counted three different voices who monitor the Radio Service. There's two males and one female. And they all have different styles. When I say styles I simply mean their tone of voice really. Everything is so standardized with phrases and procedure there's not much room for style in how you handle traffic, but there is in how you treat it. I like the female controller here the best. She's the friendliess and most professional. That is in contrast to my opinion of the controllers down in London. In London I think there were at lease four, 3 males and one female. One controller in London sounds Australian and is quite friendly, he was my favourite to talk to there. The female controller however is often times less then friendly. I've heard her snap on other pilots for mistakes they've made, both major and minor, including me, and chewed them out. Its always an embarrasing moment for a pilot to get chewed or "talked down to" by a controller over the radio.

Anyways my next trip was eastbound to pick up a family I dropped off last week, and on departure I was talking to the female controller. I made a mental note that she was my favourite of the three, which is why I just told the above story. When I landed at destination it was a gusty 15-18 knot direct crosswind to the runway, and it was a bit of a struggle to bring the airplane down nicely, but I enjoyed every second of it. The runway is gravel, and afterwards I decided that I actually like landing on gravel.

In a crosswind landing, there's two difficult parts to the landing. The first is actually making sure the wheels touch down aligned in the direction of motion to prevent premature wear of the tires, and more importantly, to stop from shooting off the side of the runway. The next difficult part is keeping the airplane travelling straight down the runway after touchdown. Airplanes have a tendency to do what's called weathervaning in a crosswind. That when an airplane's nose wants to turn into the wind. This is because the vertical stabilizer is at the back of the airplane, so if the wind pushes the v-stab downwind, then the nose turns upwind just like a weathervane. This isn't a problem with flying, but when you're rolling on the ground it can make it difficult to keep the airplane running straight without weathervaning and rolling off the upwind side of the runway. I decided I like gravel because there's less traction then pavement. This means I can let the airplane weathervane and "skid" sideways a bit after I've touched down during my deceleration which makes things a little easier since the airplane doesn't feel so much like shooting off to one side. At any rate we are trying to prevent any skidding motion, because I imagine on gravel its still hard on the tires, but it does take the edge off landing rollouts in a stiff crosswind.

I knew from dropping the family off last week that it was the wife's first time on an airplane, and she was pretty nervous from what I heard. Last week she had a perfectly smooth day, but today was far from it. Considering that and the turbulence today and gusty crosswind I had today I let everyone know when we were strapping in to takeoff that it would be a bit bumpy today. I felt a bit bad for the wife, because it was a pretty wild takeoff and climbout until we got up a little higher to the smoother air, but she seemed ok since she was prepared for it.

The rest of the flights were uneventful. Today I logged almost 10 hrs of flight time in total, and I'm quite tired and hungry, but it was a good day.