Airport Hassles

I'm just coming off a rotation from flying the 206 for the last couple weeks, its been a whirlwind of small jobs and moving on to new places.  We completed the job in Gander, and since moved on the Wabush, finished that job in one flight, and we're now in Val-d'or (from henceforth to be known as Valdor since the proper spelling is incredibly annoying to type out).

Valdor is a much nicer airport to work out of compared to the last two we came from, which were both highly frustrating due to the security measures.  Gander did not have ground-side access to the FBO we were stationed at, so to get out to the plane we had to call ahead for an escort, and then wait with our car outside the gate for someone to come and let us in, and then escort us in our vehicle over to the FBO.

Wabush was equally as frustrating to get airside to the aircraft, as we had to notify security and then would go out and unlock the gate for us, but the problem was that security was never around when you needed them, we once waited for a half hour wondering if security would come back to their desk just to so we could ask them to open the gate and let us out to our airplane.  I'm glad both of those places were only very short surveys there.

Valdor is wonderful in comparison.  They have a real FBO with friendly people who are always there, a beautiful pilot lounge, and most of all private ramp separated from the security nonsense of the airline world.

I arrived a day before my operator was able to get here on an airline service (another reason why flying a personal aircraft beats the heck out of airline travel), so rather than wait for him to get here, I figured hey, I know how to operate the survey equipment, and I know how to fly the airplane, I might as well go up and try an FOM by myself!  It ended up paying off, the FOM result was a pass and by the time my operator arrived we were one step ahead of the game and all we had to do was set up our base station and we were good to survey.

Doing the job of two people in the aircraft was a little extra workload, I just had to take it slow and be deliberate in my actions to make sure I didn't miss any flying related tasks or any technical steps required to set the survey gear up for flying the FOM.  After the survey gear is set up, there's isn't much else for the operator to do during the actual manoeuvres, so I could purely focus on the flying aspect.

As for now, I'm on my way back home as I write this, flying home Air Canada.  The other pilot arrived yesterday, back from his vacation, so we spent the day getting him back up to speed before I handed over the airplane keys and wished them luck.