Thanksgiving Shakedown

Fall air is definitely here. I can smell that crispness in the air, and I'm starting to have to bundle up as well. I always bring more sweaters/coats then I have to because you never know how cold it might be 150 miles north, and it wouldn't hurt to have an extra layer of clothes handy if I end up on an unplanned night of camping in the middle of nowhere.

A few days ago I took the Twin Comanche up for some circuits. Its been a few weeks now since the engines have been fired up, and I had a bit of a craving for some twin flying. I just went up for 3 circuits, about a half hour flight which satisfied my fix and gave the engines a good workout. At one point there was a Dash-8 inbound and the radio service advised them that there was a "Cherokee 6" in the circuit. I almost felt like correcting them, but it was my last circuit, and in the big picture my airplane type didn't matter a whole lot in that situation. In the past they've also advised other traffic of a "Twin Comanche" when I've been flying the Cherokee. Its obvious they've made the connection that its the same pilot that flies the two different airplanes, and they key on the sound of my voice I suppose.

Today is the Thanksgiving Monday, and I had a couple flights today, so I didn't get a turkey dinner. Not that I would have if I didn't fly. To be honest its getting a little tiresome living up here being away from friends and family, and not having much to do other than rotate between watching TV, reading, and playing on the computer in my days off. I'm still really enjoying the flying, and I'm going to miss it over the winter, but despite that I'm counting the days on when I'll be home for the winter. I will get my fix of flying over the winter though in the form of IFR training. This winter I REALLY have to finish up my Instrument Rating. If I don't, my INRAT exam will expire and I'll be back to square one with that. I also want to have a shot at a twin-ifr job as well. I have almost 1200 hrs total time now, most of that being PIC time, with almost 200 of that being multi-PIC time as well, so I think I've got a pretty good shot at finding something half decent - hopefully. I'm sure how much good another year of single-engine VFR flying will do career-wise for me. I guess we'll see how it all plays out. Hopefully the industry gets a bit more momentum that it got this last spring.

My first flight today was a couple passengers to the usual destination up the coast. The weather was pretty good with only a broken-scattered layer at around 3500 ft, so enroute it was smooth sailing. When we were loading the airplane my boss mentioned with a bit of a wink in his eye that they didn't seem to have much stuff. Usually passengers load the airplane up stuffed to gross weight to get the most out of what they're paying for the charter. If they don't stuff the airplane, its sometimes a hint that the cargo they do have onboard MIGHT just be helping to pay for the trip in the form of contraband liquor. A couple weeks ago I took one passenger up the coast to the community across the river from the one I was going to today, and this one passenger only took with him 4 boxes and 1 50 lb bag of potatoes. Unfortunately for him, his daughter who was supposed to meet him at the airport didn't show up, so he took off to go hunt her down, and in the meantime, the local police showed up and searched the airplane. Turned out ALL of his boxes were nothing bud bottles of hard liquor. By the time they were finished all he had left that wasn't confiscated was his sack of potatoes. It was hilarious. In that case it was ridiculously obvious that he was trying to smuggle liquor. No one legitimately chartering an airplane only brings 5 small pieces of luggage and themselves with them, it just doesn't make financial sense. One of the officers there mentioned that catching that load before it got distributed meant avoiding lots of headaches. He said that 70% of the violence and trouble they have to deal with up there is a direct result of alchohol.

In the case today, there were two people going up, and they didn't have a ton of stuff, but they did have more than a few pieces, so I didn't think anything of it. Apparently my boss picked up on it though, since he made that comment. When we pulled into the ramp after landing sure enough there was a whole convey of vehicles waiting for us. There was a local police truck, an OPP SUV, and my passengers ride waiting for them. This was only the third time since I've been up here that the police in this town have shown up to search a suspected bootlegger flight, usually the local police don't seem to be that hardcore about searches, not in this community at least. The OPP are pretty hardcore though, you know that if they show up something is going down.

So we unloaded the airplane while all the vehicles surrounded the airplane and they all went to work at opening up the bins and boxes and rustling through the stuff. They also searched the passengers themselves, and I looked over laughed and shook my head when I saw one of the passengers with their foot up on the horizontal stab with her pantlegs pulled up and a bottle of vodka taped to her shins. Where am I. Actually they found quite a bit. By the end of it I counted around 14 bottles of vodka, and another 25 or so bottles of some sort of low-alchohol content cooler-type beverage. Quite the load. I figured the street value of all of that would probably be around $2000. So much for the profits they were hoping for, haha. Usually the cops just confiscate the alchohol and drive away, but this time in addition to the liquor, they also apparently found baggies of weed. Now they were in trouble. Long story short in addition to having the contraband confiscated, they also both got arrested. Well, sucks to be them, lol. Good thing this time we got paid for the flight before we took off. Once all the commotion had finished and the vehicles and people were safely away from the airplane, I started up and I was off heading back home for my next flight.