Run ragged

Just landed from a looong flight. Good stuff but I am totally exhausted. I feel like I’ve run a marathon or done 10 rounds with a heavy weight boxer. Am barely capable of stringing two words together coherently at the moment, let alone a blog post. More later.

A rant to all Americans who think they are the centre of the known Universe

·         Please don’t leave me a voicemail telling me you are from xxxx school district – I have no idea where that is, or indeed what you expect me to do about it.

·         Linked to the above – if you don’t tell me a location don’t get p!ssed at me when I can’t figure out what time zone you are in and return your call at an inconvenient time

·         If you insist on paying by cheque* then please for the love of god tell me the goddam name of the person you are paying for. I’m dealing with hundreds of registrations here. I don’t have time to do the detective work to match this crap up.

·         Also linked to the above quoting my own account number back at me on the cheque, in lieu of an invoice is not helpful. At all.

·         Finally; and this really is THE most important thing in the universe, ever. I hold a special place in hell for people who write professional correspondence in Comic Sans font. I seriously want to hurt you. Very badly.

Yes it has been a fun day at work!

* We have many ways of paying money now that don’t involve stupid pieces of paper. I give you many many options on my carefully orchestrated website. So if you are going to insist on using technology from the 18^th Century then at least spell the bloody word right!

OK so the law prevents me from….

... Operating a cellphone while driving a car , but you expect me to be able to map read ,operate the radio and use a flight computer whilst flying a plane?

Anyone else see a problem here?

Something that Bob can’t teach me.

Between them Bob and RTH have taught me so much. More than I ever dreamt possible. Bob has somehow managed to take an uncoordinated hippo and have her fly a plane reasonably safely on her own, albeit lacking a little finesse sometimes. Between the two of them they’ve gotten me to a stage where I can actually formulate a plan of action when flying, whereas at the beginning Bob couldn’t get me to formulate two syllables. After our flight to Lindsay though, it has become readily apparent that I don’t have something that RTH does and I’m not sure if Bob can ever teach me this. It’s an unwavering belief in his own abilities.

I don’t mean that RTH is cocky or arrogant, just that he knows what he can do and therefore has no problem doing it. He’s never been to Lindsay before; never really done an uncontrolled airport like this either and yet it didn’t bother him unduly. He took a quick glance at the chart. It seems (to him) reasonably easy to get to (peninsular in lake points pretty much at it). The weather was pretty sweet. So no problem. I don’t mean that he’s complacent. He checked the info he needed to, quick glance to make sure no NOTAMS etc. and as far as he was concerned off we go.

I’m thinking over logistics like “where will we park the plane?” and RTH is sure we will figure out something when we get there.  Even on approach when we overflew the field to come back round for our descent to join mid downwind, I admitted to him that I lost site of the airport in our turn, “yeah so have I,” he admitted, “it’s around here somewhere though.”

I will NEVER ever have that degree of casual confidence, confidence in my own abilities, confidence that it’ll all be alright somehow. I envy RTH that; it makes him a strong, steady presence in the cockpit and a joy to fly with. I think I will always be an awkward sweaty mess. I just don’t think that this is a lesson that Bob can teach me.

 

 

Managing my space.

Mentally I’m a very organised person. I have a very logical mindset. It took me a while in my working life to realise that many people don’t work the same way that I do, that they don’t see the immediate logical path that I do.

Notice that I said “mentally”, when it comes to physical organisation not so good to be perfectly honest. My desk at work looks like a paper factory spewed up over it, much to the disgust of those who work with me, I can still instantly find anything on it. I think I use a chronological filing system. The older the piece of paper, the further down the heap it’ll be.

Consequently organising myself in the cockpit has been a challenge. There’s a reasonable amount of stuff that you need ready access to and, quite frankly, not a lot of space to play with.  It has taken me a long time to come up with a method that even comes close to working. I’ve had numerous false starts, there was the infamous “clipboard on the instrument panel” incident for example. I’ve tried with a knee board (on either leg), without a kneeboard. I’ve tried utilising the pockets in the plane (tricky because some of the planes don’t have front pockets). I’ve tried the “here hold this” method but I’ve discovered that instructors often wish to play a more active role in the flight than merely being mobile storage devices!

It hasn’t help that because of my short stature and general use of cushions, I need to be careful that my kneeboard doesn’t interfere with the full movement of the control column. I think though that last lesson I may have found a combination that appears to work. I managed to attach my chart to the yoke clip and wear my kneeboard in such a way that I could access the clipboard bit to write on and use the chart pocket as a kind of “drop stuff in here and grab it when needed” section. I wasn’t floundering too much for items. As I mentioned before I managed to grab a pencil and ruler and use it to draw a straight line on my chart. Something I have never achieved before.

Sometimes it’s the small things that make me happy!

“I know you”

Not always the words you want to hear, quite frankly, so I was more than a little worried when those words were spoken at me during the latest ground school session.

During a brief break we were chatting amongst ourselves, as you do, when suddenly one guy looked at me and said those words.

I gave a fairly non-committal response (wondering if he’s someone I’ve tussled for space with on the TTC or something, can’t be an angry parent, it’s usually the mother’s I deal with). You fly SAR, right? I hear you on the radio all the time.

Oh! Yeah it’s kind of hard to hide with a distinctive accent like mine. Guess I’m all kinds of famous now!

 

If in doubt, ask.

Lindsay is a very different airport to City that’s for sure. Technically it is an uncontrolled airport with a UNICOM frequency. Those of you who don’t fly have no idea what that means so I’ll do my best to explain. City airport (CYTZ) has an air traffic controller, they issue clearances and instructions, and although the final responsibility still lies with the VFR pilot, they do their very best not to smash you into something or someone (allegedly).  When you enter their zone they give you joining instructions and generally plot your approach for you. They may issue restrictions (occasionally they forget to cancel them, leading you to wonder just how you are meant to land and yet not go below 2000ft!). The main difference is that you talk to ATC, ATC talks to you and that’s it. No chit chat between planes whatsoever.

At an uncontrolled airport like Lindsay, everyone broadcasts on the common frequency. You make position reports; you negotiate for spacing and even the runway, a little bit like the practice area but with higher stakes. So you talk amongst yourselves and it is a lot more casual. It’s not uncommon to hear things like “Hey Mike, is that you out there, how’s it going?”
 
I know that people who learn at uncontrolled airports find places like City intimidating, for me it is the opposite. Even though I wasn’t flying the concept of such a free-for-all gave me a high degree of anxiety, in my mind it all had the potential to go horribly wrong. What I didn’t realise though is that the very casual nature of the set up works to your advantage. If you don’t know what the hell you are doing, you say so and ask what’s best to do.

A couple of examples from our flight, we landed, we backtracked but it was obvious that there were two planes lined up on the taxiway with no way past for us. So RTH asked “Hey guys, where can I pull in to let you take off?” People were only too happy to oblige with a suggestion that there was a small intersection that he could pull into. Same when we were wanting to prep for takeoff, there was no obvious run up area, so RTH wandered over and asked a group of people the best place to use.
Aviation people are a friendly bunch in general, all too happy to oblige if asked. An important lesson for me when I end up at these places on my own.