I had three flights today. I was going to have only 2, but the other pilot took the day off, so I got the one flight he was going to do. I'm not complaining, bring it on.
The day started out quite nice, somewhat warm, for the time of year at least, and only a harmless overcast layer which had all but broken up by my second flight. My third flight up the coast was an entirely different story however. All seemed well until about 20 miles south of my destination, where I could see a long line of dark clouds on the horizon. Wow that moved in fast, there was nothing like that visible on my last run, less than 2 hours ago. As I got closer things started to look worse and worse; there was a solid line of heavy rain moving in. I couldn't yet tell if it was still north of the field, or if the field was already drowned in it. My wondering was answered when the town came into view, ahead of line of heavy showers. The heavy stuff hadn't yet made it to where I was landing, but I was already starting to fly through spats of rain, the kind where the raindrops make a big splat on the window.
I turned final with the line only a couple miles off my right wing. It was apparent I was definitely going to get wet unloading the plane. Oh well, last flight of the day anyways, no big deal. FLASH! A big bolt of lightning struck the ground out my left window about a mile to the south of the field. Well that was... unexpected... but there wasn't much I could do at that point because I was already on final. I landed, and taxied in, and then the heavens just opened up. It POURED.
I only had my zip-up hoodie sweatshirt with me, so I put that on with the hopes that it would provide some sort of rain shield. We unloaded the airplane as fast as we could, but it didn't do much good, I was completely soaked through and standing in a 1 inch puddle before we even got the truck backed up.
There was also rumbling thunder and lightning flashing every few seconds while we were unloading, it was quite the storm actually, and I wondered how long I'd be stuck here, soaking wet, waiting for it to move off.
As our luck would have it though, the rain stopped just as soon as we finished unloading the airplane. The driver remarked in disdain that of course the rain would stop as soon as we were done unloading. I chuckled, but it was good news for me. I might be able to get out of here afterall. Once I was ready to go, I took a look to the north in the direction of where the storm came from, it didn't look like there was any more coming at least in the next couple minutes. I also looked to the south towards the stuff that had just passed us, and also in the direction I needed to go. As bad as the rain we got on the ground was, it looked like we even missed the worst of it, and there was an opening of sunlight that I could see, so I decided to give it a shot.
I took off and made a break for the patch of hope. On both my left and right were two storm cells with so much rain, it couldn't have been more then 1 or 2 miles visibility inside. I could also see the occasional lightning strike flash inside as well. I'm definitely staying out of those, but between them was a brilliant glimmer of bright blue sky. What I wouldn't do for a stormscope right now! The company bought a second Cherokee 6 back in June, which still isn't ready to go yet (waiting for the engine, but it should be any day now), but its equipped with a stormscope. Its a WX-8, which is a slightly different model than the one I have in my Twin Comanche (a WX-10), so I've been itching to try it out, and today would have been perfect. I doubt that there will be any more summer storms by the time the new Cherokee is online though.
Five minutes later I was out of the worst it, so I could relax, and another 5 minutes after that I was back in the sun, as if it had always been a beautiful day! I filed a PIREP of the weather conditions with the radio service when I approached home. It wasn't a busy day today, so I was likely the first/only aircraft to have encountered the conditions, and of course there aren't any weather stations other than the airport I'm based out of. In a way I actually enjoy that part of my job up here. Flying down south there are weather stations all over the place, so before you take off you can know with a fair degree of accuracy the weather that you're going to encounter along the way, but up here, except for our GFA charts (a regional weather map, which depicts likely conditions), which are often vague, or downright wrong, there's nothing. So when we take off for a trip to the north its very much flying into unknown conditions. Quite exciting, and it gives me that little taste of "frontier bush pilot". I'd love to do some of the winter ski trips into the bush with the Cessna 206, but I haven't had the opportunity yet, since I've only been up here since April, which was when the bush trips were just finishing up.
Saturday, September 26, 2009
Saturday, September 19, 2009
Bad Day for Passengers
Things are still going strong coming into the second half of September, which has been totally unexpected. I was under the impression at the beginning of the month that the busy time would be wrapping up, but apparently thats not the case.
Yesterday was cold, wet and miserable however. There was a strange layer of mist blanketing the entire route of flight, giving a vertical visibility of 1000-1500 ft and forward vis of around 3-5 miles. The temperature on the ground stayed between 4-6 degrees C for the better part of the day, but a high pressure system was forecast to move in from the north and push the bad weather away. On my first flight I took off with two passengers onboard and initially climbed to 1000 ft into a headwind. It was pretty turbulent as well as wet and rainy underneath the cloud layer, but I could see the sun and just a tint of blue sky above me, so it looked like this mist/cloud layer was pretty thin. One of my passengers was really not enjoying the ride, she was very nervous, tapping her knee and wringing her hands. The longer we flew the more nervous she got, eventually to the point where she was shivering out of nervousness. I figured for the sake of my passengers I'd pop up another thousand feet or so to get on top of the cloud layer, where we'd see the sun and hopefully the turbulence would taper off a bit as well.
Once at 2000 however I looked up again but it still looked the same, I could still just barely see a bit of blue sky and the sun piercing through the mist, but now I was flying on instruments as the ground had long disappeared. The layer didn't look like it was this thick, but oh well, it can't be more then another few hundred feet before pop out the top. At 3000 ft nothing had changed. We were still in the layer of mist - it was such a strange phenomenon. Here I was 2000 ft higher than I was initially yet looking up still looked exactly the same. It looked like just a thin layer of mist above me. I considered continuing the climb even further, but the temperature was very close to zero degrees as it was, so I didn't want to get any higher and start picking up ice, and we were flying into a headwind, so I didn't want to fight too strong of winds either, so I conceded defeat and started a descent back down to where I could see the ground. Conditions were the same all the way up the coast, so we spent the remainder of the flight bouncing around in the rain and mist at 1000 ft.
Once we landed and unloaded my passengers, I had 5 more waiting ready to come back with me. We got all loaded up and ready to start up when one of the ladies on board said, "No, I can't do it". Can't do it? She was a little larger so I assumed the leg room wasn't enough or something and asked if she wanted to sit in the front where there's a little more leg room. Her friend explained that she was too nervous because of the weather. Oh, not much I could do about that. I could see how it was a bit of an indimidating day to fly - like I said it was cold, rainy, and the winds were quite gusty. In the end we departed with only 3 of the 5 passengers back southbound. The way back was bumpy, but eneventful and quick as we caught a stiff tailwind for the return leg.
My second trip was the same thing. I decided not to experiment with the cloud layer this time however and just stayed at 1000. A Navajo from the other local carrier that departed about the same time I did for the same destination decided to try to get on top however. They advised they were climbing to 3500 ft. I wondered if I missed the cloud tops by a mere couple hundred feet, since I only climbed to 3000. A few minutes later they radioed an advisory that they were now at 4500 ft and level. They had been fooled by the illusion as well, and ended up having to go higher.
The pilots for that carrier are regulars in the area like me, so we're on pretty familiar terms and usually all recognize each other's voices, so I keyed the mic, "Did you manage to find the top of that mist?"
"Ya we popped out at about 4200 ft."
I remarked that I tried that on my last flight but gave up at 3000.
"Hey Chad have you been to **** already today?"
"Yep."
"What are the winds like?"
I tried to remember exactly how the windsock looked. I tend to have a short-term memory and forget entirely what the conditions were at the airport on my last visit, but I managed to pull the mental image of the windsock out of the back of my brain.
"Ahh, gusting about 12-15 knots, pretty much 90 degrees [to the runway direction]."
"Alllll-riiiiighhht."
I smiled to myself. I guess I'm not the only one who likes crosswind landings - they keep life interesting.
By the time I was southbound again for the second time the High Pressure system was starting to work its magic you could see it starting to clear up in the north, but it was still pretty turbulent. About 10 minutes from landing one of my passengers tapped me on the shoulder and asked if I had a tissue. "Sorry no I don't." I turned around to see their young son leaning into a sick bag that his mother was holding for him. Poor guy. Not a good day for my passengers apparently. One terrified flyer, another one that cancelled out of panic, and now a sick kid. I haven't yet had an adult puke in the airplane, but that would make my 3rd child, all probably under 5 that haven't been able to hold it in on the bumpy days. All in a day's work of a pilot I guess.
Yesterday was cold, wet and miserable however. There was a strange layer of mist blanketing the entire route of flight, giving a vertical visibility of 1000-1500 ft and forward vis of around 3-5 miles. The temperature on the ground stayed between 4-6 degrees C for the better part of the day, but a high pressure system was forecast to move in from the north and push the bad weather away. On my first flight I took off with two passengers onboard and initially climbed to 1000 ft into a headwind. It was pretty turbulent as well as wet and rainy underneath the cloud layer, but I could see the sun and just a tint of blue sky above me, so it looked like this mist/cloud layer was pretty thin. One of my passengers was really not enjoying the ride, she was very nervous, tapping her knee and wringing her hands. The longer we flew the more nervous she got, eventually to the point where she was shivering out of nervousness. I figured for the sake of my passengers I'd pop up another thousand feet or so to get on top of the cloud layer, where we'd see the sun and hopefully the turbulence would taper off a bit as well.
Once at 2000 however I looked up again but it still looked the same, I could still just barely see a bit of blue sky and the sun piercing through the mist, but now I was flying on instruments as the ground had long disappeared. The layer didn't look like it was this thick, but oh well, it can't be more then another few hundred feet before pop out the top. At 3000 ft nothing had changed. We were still in the layer of mist - it was such a strange phenomenon. Here I was 2000 ft higher than I was initially yet looking up still looked exactly the same. It looked like just a thin layer of mist above me. I considered continuing the climb even further, but the temperature was very close to zero degrees as it was, so I didn't want to get any higher and start picking up ice, and we were flying into a headwind, so I didn't want to fight too strong of winds either, so I conceded defeat and started a descent back down to where I could see the ground. Conditions were the same all the way up the coast, so we spent the remainder of the flight bouncing around in the rain and mist at 1000 ft.
Once we landed and unloaded my passengers, I had 5 more waiting ready to come back with me. We got all loaded up and ready to start up when one of the ladies on board said, "No, I can't do it". Can't do it? She was a little larger so I assumed the leg room wasn't enough or something and asked if she wanted to sit in the front where there's a little more leg room. Her friend explained that she was too nervous because of the weather. Oh, not much I could do about that. I could see how it was a bit of an indimidating day to fly - like I said it was cold, rainy, and the winds were quite gusty. In the end we departed with only 3 of the 5 passengers back southbound. The way back was bumpy, but eneventful and quick as we caught a stiff tailwind for the return leg.
My second trip was the same thing. I decided not to experiment with the cloud layer this time however and just stayed at 1000. A Navajo from the other local carrier that departed about the same time I did for the same destination decided to try to get on top however. They advised they were climbing to 3500 ft. I wondered if I missed the cloud tops by a mere couple hundred feet, since I only climbed to 3000. A few minutes later they radioed an advisory that they were now at 4500 ft and level. They had been fooled by the illusion as well, and ended up having to go higher.
The pilots for that carrier are regulars in the area like me, so we're on pretty familiar terms and usually all recognize each other's voices, so I keyed the mic, "Did you manage to find the top of that mist?"
"Ya we popped out at about 4200 ft."
I remarked that I tried that on my last flight but gave up at 3000.
"Hey Chad have you been to **** already today?"
"Yep."
"What are the winds like?"
I tried to remember exactly how the windsock looked. I tend to have a short-term memory and forget entirely what the conditions were at the airport on my last visit, but I managed to pull the mental image of the windsock out of the back of my brain.
"Ahh, gusting about 12-15 knots, pretty much 90 degrees [to the runway direction]."
"Alllll-riiiiighhht."
I smiled to myself. I guess I'm not the only one who likes crosswind landings - they keep life interesting.
By the time I was southbound again for the second time the High Pressure system was starting to work its magic you could see it starting to clear up in the north, but it was still pretty turbulent. About 10 minutes from landing one of my passengers tapped me on the shoulder and asked if I had a tissue. "Sorry no I don't." I turned around to see their young son leaning into a sick bag that his mother was holding for him. Poor guy. Not a good day for my passengers apparently. One terrified flyer, another one that cancelled out of panic, and now a sick kid. I haven't yet had an adult puke in the airplane, but that would make my 3rd child, all probably under 5 that haven't been able to hold it in on the bumpy days. All in a day's work of a pilot I guess.
Tuesday, September 8, 2009
London and Back Again
Just got back from a visit back down in London. I was lucky enough to get to go home on a long weekend, when all of my friends were free/home as well, and it was awesome weather.
We took off Friday morning in the Twin Comanche, first bound for North Bay, as I was dropping a friend off there for the weekend so she could visit her friends as well. I've decided that I don't like North Bay. Its such a huge airport (that I'm not really familiar with), and there's no control tower to tell you what to do. There's only a radio service, which means its up to you to find out where you need to go and how to get there to take-off or park after you've landed. Its strange taxi-ing around such a huge airport without the reasurring clearances issued by the controllers. It makes me feel like I'm doing something wrong.
After I dropped my friend off I started back up again and picked my way through the taxi-ways back to the active runway.
I had a great weekend. Went camping for a night, then canoeing, spent a day at the beach playing volleyball, played some tennis with my Dad, and helped out with some farm chores. All in all a pretty full weekend. Good times. Today it was time to head back up and back to work. I was planning to leave around 9:30 in the morning but London was fogged in, and didn't get away until around noon to head back up to North Bay again for the first stop. It was a relaxing flight. I only had about a 5 knot headwind, and it was pretty smooth above the clouds at 7500 ft. I had the airplane cruising on autopilot and managed to read a couple chapters of one of the books I borrowed.
When we got back we gathered all our stuff and parked the airplane and by that time the fuel truck showed up with the Ops Manager and the other pilot - we each had one freight flight up the coast, so off I go to the races.
The flight up the coast was fairly uneventful, the flight on the way back started to get interesting about 20 miles from the field. I was just about to key the mic and call the radio service to advise I was 20 miles and about 9 minutes out when a big Hawker freight plane beat me to it. He also called inbound and although he was still behind me estimated the field about 45 seconds before me. The other pilot in the C-206 was also about 3 miles behind me, so we were all planning on landing within the span of about 2 minutes. Could get interesting. We were all instructed to report 10 miles out, and there were a few minutes until that point where none of us were entirely sure how it was all going to pan out. I watched the mileage to go tick down on the GPS and tried to find the Hawker coming up behind me. He stayed at a higher altitude then me so I wasn't worried of a risk of collision, but more so whether he was going to pass me in time to make his descent and land before I started my approach. We all planned to the use the runway that allowed a straight in approach.
At 10 miles back I called the radio service again and advised my position and also made the suggestion that if the C-206 behind me had me visual I could slow down a bit to give the Hawker more time to get in front of me. So that was the plan. By the time I spotted the Hawker I realized even with me slowed WAY down it still didn't give him enough time to pass me, so I advised that I'd join the circuit on a left base instead of final. I watched as I crept closer and closer to the airport dragging the airplane along at 90 mph while the Hawker rumbled along its approach on final parallel to my flight path. I could slowed down further, but I also didn't want to push my luck with the C-206 following behind me. Even adding a base leg into my circuit left me fairly close behind the Hawker. As I was turning short final he was just starting to clear the runway. The Hawker is a big airplane, bigger then a Dash-8-100, so I was concerned a little bit about the possible wake turbulence. I made a mental note of where the Hawker touched down, and made sure to keep my approach higher and land beyond it. I must have just grazed the wake turbulence area on short final because for a quick second the airplane waggled and shuddered before smoothing out again. I touched down without incident and rolled to the end of the runway to quickly clear for the last of the three of us landing.
We took off Friday morning in the Twin Comanche, first bound for North Bay, as I was dropping a friend off there for the weekend so she could visit her friends as well. I've decided that I don't like North Bay. Its such a huge airport (that I'm not really familiar with), and there's no control tower to tell you what to do. There's only a radio service, which means its up to you to find out where you need to go and how to get there to take-off or park after you've landed. Its strange taxi-ing around such a huge airport without the reasurring clearances issued by the controllers. It makes me feel like I'm doing something wrong.
After I dropped my friend off I started back up again and picked my way through the taxi-ways back to the active runway.
I had a great weekend. Went camping for a night, then canoeing, spent a day at the beach playing volleyball, played some tennis with my Dad, and helped out with some farm chores. All in all a pretty full weekend. Good times. Today it was time to head back up and back to work. I was planning to leave around 9:30 in the morning but London was fogged in, and didn't get away until around noon to head back up to North Bay again for the first stop. It was a relaxing flight. I only had about a 5 knot headwind, and it was pretty smooth above the clouds at 7500 ft. I had the airplane cruising on autopilot and managed to read a couple chapters of one of the books I borrowed.
When we got back we gathered all our stuff and parked the airplane and by that time the fuel truck showed up with the Ops Manager and the other pilot - we each had one freight flight up the coast, so off I go to the races.
The flight up the coast was fairly uneventful, the flight on the way back started to get interesting about 20 miles from the field. I was just about to key the mic and call the radio service to advise I was 20 miles and about 9 minutes out when a big Hawker freight plane beat me to it. He also called inbound and although he was still behind me estimated the field about 45 seconds before me. The other pilot in the C-206 was also about 3 miles behind me, so we were all planning on landing within the span of about 2 minutes. Could get interesting. We were all instructed to report 10 miles out, and there were a few minutes until that point where none of us were entirely sure how it was all going to pan out. I watched the mileage to go tick down on the GPS and tried to find the Hawker coming up behind me. He stayed at a higher altitude then me so I wasn't worried of a risk of collision, but more so whether he was going to pass me in time to make his descent and land before I started my approach. We all planned to the use the runway that allowed a straight in approach.
At 10 miles back I called the radio service again and advised my position and also made the suggestion that if the C-206 behind me had me visual I could slow down a bit to give the Hawker more time to get in front of me. So that was the plan. By the time I spotted the Hawker I realized even with me slowed WAY down it still didn't give him enough time to pass me, so I advised that I'd join the circuit on a left base instead of final. I watched as I crept closer and closer to the airport dragging the airplane along at 90 mph while the Hawker rumbled along its approach on final parallel to my flight path. I could slowed down further, but I also didn't want to push my luck with the C-206 following behind me. Even adding a base leg into my circuit left me fairly close behind the Hawker. As I was turning short final he was just starting to clear the runway. The Hawker is a big airplane, bigger then a Dash-8-100, so I was concerned a little bit about the possible wake turbulence. I made a mental note of where the Hawker touched down, and made sure to keep my approach higher and land beyond it. I must have just grazed the wake turbulence area on short final because for a quick second the airplane waggled and shuddered before smoothing out again. I touched down without incident and rolled to the end of the runway to quickly clear for the last of the three of us landing.
Wednesday, September 2, 2009
Who wouldn't wanna be me?
Last night I found myself in an empty airplane on the last flight of the day westbound into a beautifully clear sky with the sun setting in front of me. I was in a good mood and was rocking out on my MP3 player to Keith Urban's "Who wouldn't wanna be me" song as I was flying and watching the sun set.
I always like to lock my gaze on the sun and witness the exact moment that the last sliver of the sun disappears below the horizon. I know I shouldn't look directly at the sun, but at least I was still wearing sunglasses. I usually forget to take them off when the evening light starts to fade, and inevitably end up wondering why the cockpit lighting doesn't seem to be as bright as I think it should be. That's when I remember that I'm still wearing sunglasses.
Well just as soon as the sun went down, I remember reading Alan Cockrell's post on his blog http://alancockrell.blogspot.com/ about having the sun and moon on his "yo-yo string" and being able to make the sun or moon come back into the sky after it had already set by climbing. I imagined how that would be cool to see. I assumed you could only see that flying a jet aircraft that has the power to quickly climb into altitudes well above what little piston aircraft can do... or could you? Could my little Cherokee haul the sun back up to this side of the horizon? Nah... there's no way. I almost didn't try it. Then in a split second, now or never decision I pushed the mixture, prop, and power levers in and pulled back into the best climb the little Cherokee could muster. When I had finished converting my kinetic energy into altitude I pushed the nose back down into a more reasonable attitude and looked to where the sun had set. NO WAY! Sure enough, a mere 1000 ft climb had summoned about a quarter of that orange glowing disk back into the atmosphere. I broke out laughing hysterically in disbelief. What a sight!
Fantastic. Who wouldn't wanna be me?
I always like to lock my gaze on the sun and witness the exact moment that the last sliver of the sun disappears below the horizon. I know I shouldn't look directly at the sun, but at least I was still wearing sunglasses. I usually forget to take them off when the evening light starts to fade, and inevitably end up wondering why the cockpit lighting doesn't seem to be as bright as I think it should be. That's when I remember that I'm still wearing sunglasses.
Well just as soon as the sun went down, I remember reading Alan Cockrell's post on his blog http://alancockrell.blogspot.com/ about having the sun and moon on his "yo-yo string" and being able to make the sun or moon come back into the sky after it had already set by climbing. I imagined how that would be cool to see. I assumed you could only see that flying a jet aircraft that has the power to quickly climb into altitudes well above what little piston aircraft can do... or could you? Could my little Cherokee haul the sun back up to this side of the horizon? Nah... there's no way. I almost didn't try it. Then in a split second, now or never decision I pushed the mixture, prop, and power levers in and pulled back into the best climb the little Cherokee could muster. When I had finished converting my kinetic energy into altitude I pushed the nose back down into a more reasonable attitude and looked to where the sun had set. NO WAY! Sure enough, a mere 1000 ft climb had summoned about a quarter of that orange glowing disk back into the atmosphere. I broke out laughing hysterically in disbelief. What a sight!
Fantastic. Who wouldn't wanna be me?
Friday, August 28, 2009
Random Untold Stories
So in the past few months I've had a bunch of other interesting experiences/stories that I haven't yet blogged about mainly due to the reason that they're not big enough events to dedicate an entire blog entry to. They're still fun to mention though, so this blog entry is dedicated to all the short little random stories I have, explained in no particular order, with no particular continuity, nor with any particular point.
I transported a coffin up the coast once, complete with a body inside. The coffin arrived at the airport early however on the back of a pickup truck, and we couldn't take it until later in the morning. So the driver of the pickup ended up cruising around town doing his errands for 3 hrs with a casket and dead person riding around in the back. Yep, we're up north. When we unloaded it from the airplane we muscled it out of the airplane and loaded into the back of another pickup truck, and off they went.
I've also hauled gravestones on a different occasion, earlier in the summer. Those things are HEAVY!
A couple days ago I did another sightseeing flight, which is about 4 for me this summer. I like doing them, because my passengers have all been very appreciative which makes my day. I also haven't done so many that it becomes "just another flight" however. My latest tourists were a couple guys from North Bay, I think a father and middle aged son. They thanked me after we landed and said it was great. I also heard from our dispatcher afterwords (who gave them a ride back from the airport) that they also had lots great things to say about my aviating, how they could tell I was a really good pilot and the landing was very smooth. Complements like that always make my day and give me warm fuzzies. There was another older tourist lady I took up earlier in the summer, just by herself. It was a bumpy day, but she didn't care because she said she was determined to go for a "bush plane ride". She was so thrilled and thankful, and when we landed she told me her life was now complete.
Today during my landing flare the nose cargo compartment door became unlatched and flew open and up. There was nothing in the compartment to fall out, so no harm done, but is awfully distracting when it happens. That's the 3rd time its happened in the last 2 months. The Last time was also during my flare just before touchdown, the other time was during my landing rollout after I touched down. Last inspection the AME's looked at it and ordered a new latch for it, and also in the meantime made an adjustment on the latching mechinism in the hopes that it would help. We're due for inspection in another couple days, so hopefully the new latch is in and it'll get changed out. Its kind of embarrasing when it happens and I have passengers onboard.
I've finally passed the 1000 hr mark. As of my writing this I'm at 1014 hrs total time. Pretty exciting.
I've encounterd some interesting things on the runways up here. One time a pack of some sort of canines crossed the runway just as I was coming in to land, so I just added a bit of power for a second to extend my touchdown point. After I touched down however, there was a large flock of seagulls milling about on the runway in front of me. So after making the effort to lengthen my landing I found myself having to brake quite heavily. All turned out ok. A few weeks ago there was someone on an ATV trucking down the side of the runway. Technically he wasn't on the runway, he was just on the other side of the row of lights, so I didn't see any harm in landing. He was trucking along at probably 40 km/hr in the same direction I was landing, and we bothed looked at each other as I cruised past him on my rollout after landing. It was an odd feeling. It felt exactly like that scene from Indiana Jones and the Last Cruisade where the Nazi pilot flies into the tunnel, rips off his wings, and goes sliding past Indy and his father as they're driving through the tunnel. Except lucky for me I still had my wings and landing gear.
I finally received my spiffy new Canadian Aviation Document pilots license. The new passport style booklets. They look much more professional then a tattered piece of blue paper, but the ratings on my license are no longer spelled out in english, but have been given a acronym code. "SMEL" doesn't sound nearly as impressive as "All single pilot non-high performance single and multi-engine land airplanes". Oh well.
I'm sure there are others that I have since forgotten about, but I'm gonna start making notes now and when I remember/aquire more mini-stories I'll compile another post like this.
I transported a coffin up the coast once, complete with a body inside. The coffin arrived at the airport early however on the back of a pickup truck, and we couldn't take it until later in the morning. So the driver of the pickup ended up cruising around town doing his errands for 3 hrs with a casket and dead person riding around in the back. Yep, we're up north. When we unloaded it from the airplane we muscled it out of the airplane and loaded into the back of another pickup truck, and off they went.
I've also hauled gravestones on a different occasion, earlier in the summer. Those things are HEAVY!
A couple days ago I did another sightseeing flight, which is about 4 for me this summer. I like doing them, because my passengers have all been very appreciative which makes my day. I also haven't done so many that it becomes "just another flight" however. My latest tourists were a couple guys from North Bay, I think a father and middle aged son. They thanked me after we landed and said it was great. I also heard from our dispatcher afterwords (who gave them a ride back from the airport) that they also had lots great things to say about my aviating, how they could tell I was a really good pilot and the landing was very smooth. Complements like that always make my day and give me warm fuzzies. There was another older tourist lady I took up earlier in the summer, just by herself. It was a bumpy day, but she didn't care because she said she was determined to go for a "bush plane ride". She was so thrilled and thankful, and when we landed she told me her life was now complete.
Today during my landing flare the nose cargo compartment door became unlatched and flew open and up. There was nothing in the compartment to fall out, so no harm done, but is awfully distracting when it happens. That's the 3rd time its happened in the last 2 months. The Last time was also during my flare just before touchdown, the other time was during my landing rollout after I touched down. Last inspection the AME's looked at it and ordered a new latch for it, and also in the meantime made an adjustment on the latching mechinism in the hopes that it would help. We're due for inspection in another couple days, so hopefully the new latch is in and it'll get changed out. Its kind of embarrasing when it happens and I have passengers onboard.
I've finally passed the 1000 hr mark. As of my writing this I'm at 1014 hrs total time. Pretty exciting.
I've encounterd some interesting things on the runways up here. One time a pack of some sort of canines crossed the runway just as I was coming in to land, so I just added a bit of power for a second to extend my touchdown point. After I touched down however, there was a large flock of seagulls milling about on the runway in front of me. So after making the effort to lengthen my landing I found myself having to brake quite heavily. All turned out ok. A few weeks ago there was someone on an ATV trucking down the side of the runway. Technically he wasn't on the runway, he was just on the other side of the row of lights, so I didn't see any harm in landing. He was trucking along at probably 40 km/hr in the same direction I was landing, and we bothed looked at each other as I cruised past him on my rollout after landing. It was an odd feeling. It felt exactly like that scene from Indiana Jones and the Last Cruisade where the Nazi pilot flies into the tunnel, rips off his wings, and goes sliding past Indy and his father as they're driving through the tunnel. Except lucky for me I still had my wings and landing gear.
I finally received my spiffy new Canadian Aviation Document pilots license. The new passport style booklets. They look much more professional then a tattered piece of blue paper, but the ratings on my license are no longer spelled out in english, but have been given a acronym code. "SMEL" doesn't sound nearly as impressive as "All single pilot non-high performance single and multi-engine land airplanes". Oh well.
I'm sure there are others that I have since forgotten about, but I'm gonna start making notes now and when I remember/aquire more mini-stories I'll compile another post like this.
Monday, August 24, 2009
A floatplane that struck a sandbar while landing in the river.Friday, August 21, 2009
You're in Luck
We had a bunch of freight flights today from off the train that we were supposed to take up, but the train doesn't come in until the afternoon, and we had some thunderstorms roll in.
So this morning I just had the one, a passenger flight to the east. I got my orders to head out to the airport, get the plane ready and my one passenger was going to meet me there. Usually passengers wait for us just on the groundside of the airport gate, which is in line of sight of where we park the Cherokee. After getting out there, fueling up and doing my preflight I still couldn't see anyone there, so I took the truck out and parked it just outside the gate in a conspicuous spot. As I was waiting there a man approached me asking about our rates.
I let him know our prices but told him I was just waiting to go on a flight, and the weather was already starting to look iffy.
Apparently he and his girlfriend had intended to fly on the sched service, but the plane was full and he was stuck waiting around on standby. It was the last flight until monday, and he had to be back to work by then, so the situation was starting to get stressful. Turned out he wanted to go to the same place I was taking the passenger I was waiting for. "Well, I'm actually waiting to take somewhere there right now. If you wanna hang around for a bit until she gets here you might be able to split the flight with her." His face just lit up. When my passenger showed up she was thrilled to split the cost of the charter. She had booked a charter with us for the same reason that the guy and his girlfriend couldn't get on the sched run - a wedding was the cause of the unusual amount of travellers.
It made my day to see the stress melt off of the man's face. He was so relieved and thankful, he was calling me an angel in disguise. Long story short, I made a couple people's day, which made my day.
So this morning I just had the one, a passenger flight to the east. I got my orders to head out to the airport, get the plane ready and my one passenger was going to meet me there. Usually passengers wait for us just on the groundside of the airport gate, which is in line of sight of where we park the Cherokee. After getting out there, fueling up and doing my preflight I still couldn't see anyone there, so I took the truck out and parked it just outside the gate in a conspicuous spot. As I was waiting there a man approached me asking about our rates.
I let him know our prices but told him I was just waiting to go on a flight, and the weather was already starting to look iffy.
Apparently he and his girlfriend had intended to fly on the sched service, but the plane was full and he was stuck waiting around on standby. It was the last flight until monday, and he had to be back to work by then, so the situation was starting to get stressful. Turned out he wanted to go to the same place I was taking the passenger I was waiting for. "Well, I'm actually waiting to take somewhere there right now. If you wanna hang around for a bit until she gets here you might be able to split the flight with her." His face just lit up. When my passenger showed up she was thrilled to split the cost of the charter. She had booked a charter with us for the same reason that the guy and his girlfriend couldn't get on the sched run - a wedding was the cause of the unusual amount of travellers.
It made my day to see the stress melt off of the man's face. He was so relieved and thankful, he was calling me an angel in disguise. Long story short, I made a couple people's day, which made my day.
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