Pushing the Limits

The end is in sight. We figure we have about 12 hrs of flying left, two 3.5 hr flights on separate blocks, and then a long 5 hour flight to finish off the block we're currently working on.

We did a 5.1 hr flight yesterday, our longest flight yet, and man was my butt sore! I think that may actually pass as the longest time I've ever spent sitting in one place, let alone flying, lol. We're trying to push the flights as long as possible, because we're in a bit of a race against time to finish because our 100 hr inspection is coming up due, and its gonna be REALLY close whether we run out of air time or not. So the long flights cut down on unproductive ferry flying to and from the blocks. The one block we're currently working on is almost a 20 minute flight out, so if we can fly longer flights and reduce the number of times we have to fly out there, we might be able to pull off finishing the whole project before inspection. It looks like we'll make it so long as nothing drastic happens. It'd be a bummer to have an hour or so of flying left to do but having to fly the airplane south and wait around for two days of maintenance.

From what I hear my boss is really happy with my work. So far we've only had to re-fly one line due to not flying accurately enough, which is apparently pretty good for even seasoned survey flyers, and as far as quantity goes we're going to finish 20 days ahead of the time originally alotted for the project. My operator and I broke the company record a couple weeks ago for number of line kilometers flown in a single day, which was due in combination to long grid lines which mean less time-wasting turns, and flying our butts off. I heard through the grape vine that my boss mentioned he'd never seen somebody catch on so fast. So thats something I'm proud of, it looks like I may have found my niche.