Runways and Layovers

Thursday was another long day of flying. I had a bunch of pax (passenger) trips and a couple freight runs as well. Most of the day was uneventful with blue skies and light winds. There was however one semi-exciting landing I had at one of the reserve's up the coast during one of my freight runs.

I was on short final and three coyete's ran out onto the runway. The runway, though gravel, is nice and long and wide to accomodate the small airline service that comes in there, so it wasn't a huge deal to add a bit of power fly over the coyete's and land long. A little further up ahead however there was also a flock of seagulls milling about on the runway, blocking the runway from the middle over to the right. Because of the coyete distraction I didn't notice this obstacle until after I had touched down, and was rolling at still a fairly high speed towards them. Nonetheless I managed to swerve the airplane, slightly violenty to the left and avoid the seagulls. Talk about an obstacle course... good thing I didn't have passengers!

On another note the Cherokee has timed out and is due for inspection, so I'm taking it down to our maintenance base tommorrow. The AMO who does our maintenance apparently has their own grass strip that we fly into, which is 1600 ft long with power lines/trees on either side and a valley in the middle, at least that's how I understand it. I'm quite looking forward to the challenge. This will officially be the shortest runway I've ever landed on. Technically speaking there may have been some runways around this length in Sarnia that I used to take the C-150 into, but I never knew their exact lengths, and certainly none of them had obstacles on either end. Its a bit of a deja vu from the Comanche annual inspection last year, as the AME I had do it also had his own short grass strip. His however was 2200 ft long, with power lines on one end, and trees about 400 ft past the other end. I am proud of the fact that so far to my knowledge, I am the only pilot who has successfully flown a light twin into that runway (one other has tried, but he chickened out after shooting a couple approaches).

This one tommorrow is however essentially 1000 ft shorter then my AME's down south. The Cherokee is a much slower flying bird, and gets off the ground much sooner as well, which makes it possible here. I won't be the first to fly the Cherokee into this strip, which takes away bragging rights, but it also takes away a little bit of the unknowns, which adds to safety. It will be a first for me however, and I look forward to the challenge.

On another entirely different note, for me there have always been a number of things, prerequisites that I have to do in order to consider myself a "real" pilot. Every time I check one thing off on that list I tend to unconsciously invent another to put on it, so that I never seem to actually complete the list making me a full fledged, legit, REAL professional pilot. When I first accepted this job, seeing as how I finally completed the BIG thing, which is have a full time job with the word "pilot" in it, I invented this new requirement - the layover. REAL pilots go on layovers and have overnight trips. So far I've only had day trips with my job, however tomorrow that changes. I get a layover! The maintenance that has to be done is going to take more then a day, which means I have to stay down with the airplane. I'm fully aware that its not going to be nearly as exciting as I think (is that a paradoxical statement?), but it does mean I get to check off the "layerover" item on my real pilot checklist. It also means I'll get to go tool around a different for a day, just because I've got time to kill. I was going to say real town, but this place by some has been called the "A**hole of the World", so its still not really a real town. Hopefully I can get some internet at the hotel I stay at (we're still in Northern Ontario here don't get your hopes up). If that's the case it won't be any worse then staying at my house here.

So tomorrow is an exciting day, I'll take some pictures of the runway once I get there so you can have a visual. I also have other pictures which I promised I'd upload, I'm just too lazy right now and its getting late. Also stay tuned for another piece of news regarding tomorrow. I'd write about it now , but like I said, its getting late, this blog is getting long, and I can't write about too many topics in one blog, because this post already has too many topics as it is.