Don’t mind me

It is a well-established fact that the more time Bob spends faffing around with charts, bits of paper and other accoutrements during my taxi and run up checks, the worse things are going to be for me.

When he starts messing around with the VORs and other Nav aids, then I know I’m really in trouble.

Join the club

As advertised, the Waterloo flight was tricky. There was a time when multitasking meant trying to work the yoke and throttle at the same time and maybe making a radio call. Now I’m trying to hold altitude, heading, map read and navigate all at the same time. As well as making coherent radio calls.

So guess who, when entering what was obviously a really busy control zone around Waterloo, managed to step on someone else’s transmission (despite the fact that I always listen before pressing the trigger to make sure that I don’t do that) and then put the icing on the cake by accidentally hitting the “standby” button on the transponder when asked to squawk ident. Thus ensuring that I wiped out my transponder code!

Cue one slightly tetchy ATC person. She was obviously unimpressed with my entire time in her airspace and let me know it. Her tone varied between talking  v e r y s l o w l y , like to a small child or scolding me like a school teacher would. To be fair I was probably deserving of her ire. I wasn’t exactly a smooth operator and she obviously had her hands full but it has been a long time since I managed to annoy ATC like that.

I guess I can add Waterloo tower to the list of people whom I’ve p!ssed off in the air.

The list is long but distinguished!

Having faith

A couple of conversations I had this weekend have left me in a different frame of mind with regard to my upcoming cross country flight and the seemingly endless cancellations.

The first was with one of the new instructors at the school (there seems to be a whole lot of them at the moment), we were chatting about flying in general and the fact that I’d just called a no-go on my cross country. “winds?” He asked. “Ceilings,” I replied “2500 and below.”

“That’s doable.” He replied. “You can do that trip at 2000ft”

Technically he’s right, there’s even a name for it. We call it “scud running.” Flying low level over the terrain to avoid cloud and weather. It can be fun, it can be deadly.

The next conversation was with a new person manning the dispatch desk. Recent turnover seems to include dispatch. I was making polite conversation about their flying plans. They are working towards their PPL. I caught myself before asking the hated “how many hours?” question.

Turns out they haven’t started flying yet. They explained that they were waiting for the summer so that they could get as much flying in as possible and thus get their PPL in minimum hours. I have my own opinions on that as a learning methodology but refrained from commenting.

But it got me thinking. Why am I doing this? The person above sees getting their PPL as a means to an end. Something to be gotten out of the way ASAP.

That's not my motivation at all. But what is?

It’s not to conquer fear anymore. I’m no longer afraid of flying. Even with the recent massive-workload-I’m-totally-out-of-my-depth-and-making-lots-of-stupid-mistakes flight to Waterloo, I wasn’t scared. I found it a little bit humerous in places to be honest.

I’m doing this for FUN.

And scud running in high winds isn’t fun.

So I can afford to wait until it is going to be fun. I don’t need to accept marginal conditions. Especially when Bob is doing his very best to keep it fresh and enjoyable while I’m waiting out the weather.

I need to have faith.

Faith that the weather will cooperate eventually.

Faith that Bob will keep it challenging and interesting.

Faith that I’m making the right decisions for ME.

Cunning plan

In his never ending and unfailing quest to outwit me at every turn, Bob has yet another cunning plan.

Regular readers may (or may not) have realised that I’ve been strangely quiet about my efforts to get the written exam out of the way. In fact the more astute of you may realise that I’m actually approaching the year anniversary of obediently agreeing that I’d be ready to sit it “soon”.

Yes, well I am the very epitome of procrastination and it would seem that Bob has had enough. You see he has an instructor rating exam that he needs to sit soon, so he has a plan. He’s “suggested” that we sit our exams at the same time.

It turns out that we both have exactly the same time off at Christmas, so he intends to book us both in over that time period. That’s just under a month away, close enough that I don’t have time to procrastinate over it any more but far enough away that I have time to study.

I wonder if he spends his spare time thinking of ways to out fox me? If so he really needs a hobby!

Oh wait! I think I am his hobby.

Damn.

Go West

Bob and I had agreed that I’d still fly despite the cancelled cross country. I was expecting a “usual deal flight”. Go east, do some instrument work, a diversion or two, at some point my engine would mysteriously fail and then some more instrument stuff on the way back.

I was mildly surprised to receive a text saying “we’ll plan for a dual flight, hint look up the entry for CYKF.”

I frowned a little, I do not recognise that airport code. At all. Not one of my usual haunts. Hmm, how to look up an airport whose name you don’t know? I  plug the 4 letter code into my airport weather app and am mildly surprised when it spits back Kitchener Waterloo as the result.

West. 

I’ve never been out west before (at least not as the pilot). Okay I guess this really is going to be a blind navigation exercise. You see recently I’ve started to suspect that my “map reading” out east is more the fact that I have a lot of the landmarks memorised. That ain’t going to work here for sure.

Bob’s really on to me and my “cheats”. No chance of following a convenient highway either. He’s going to instruct me to fly to a point and I have to draw it on my chart, figure out a heading and then fly us there. All the time checking that what I see in front of me matches what’s on the chart. All of this while trying to dodge Pearson’s airspace.

Yuck.

Still I’m up for the challenge and although I’m concerned about how I’m going to manage, I’m not scared per se. Just… …. Concerned I guess. Hard to explain but none of the soul sucking anxiety that pervaded my initial training.

As we head out to the plane to do the walk round, Bob drops the final bombshell “Just so you know, I’ve filed a flight plan for this flight, so we have to bear that in mind as well.”

I look at him in mild horror, gee thanks!

Shake rattle and roll

I had an unsettled night on Friday. My mind was still racing through the concept that I may well be attempting my cross country flight the next day. Little things about it make me nervous like phoning through the flight plan and actually crunching the numbers for my journey log, getting it all done in time.

Which explains why I’d set the alarm for stupid o’clock in the morning.

All throughout the night I could hear the winds picking up. When they blow from just the right direction it makes our air vents rattle violently, making the winds seem fiercer than they actually are.

All night I listened to the winds howl, the condo shake and the vents rattle. This was not going to be a good forecast in the morning. I slept fitfully, semi dreaming my way through a theoretical flight. So strong were the images that I had to check I hadn’t actually texted Bob that there was a 65 knot crosswind! I swear while asleep I’d actually dreamed that the winds were that strong. I had dreamt the entire process of getting up, pulling up the live runway data and texting Bob! 

Luckily I hadn’t.

Still I was up early and on the phone to flight services, obviously a no go for the cross country. I let Bob know. It obviously wasn't a surprise to him, because he’d already got something up his sleeve.

More next time.

Good question

Friday saw me with the evening to myself. I popped down to the flight school to sit the “pre solo cross country” quiz and trundled my way back home through the biting cold. I got home to the obligatory Friday night text from Bob; “what’s your take on the weather for tomorrow?” he asked.

I admitted that I was just home and a cup of tea and thawing out were the first things on my agenda and then I’d take a look. I pulled up the relevant TAFs and tried to make sense of the numbers, figuring out which airport had published what info and at what time. I took a quick glance and then decided that there was someone who could do a better job of this weather interpretation lark than me. Sat wrapped in my blanket on the couch I called flight services.

I got through to a nice and chatty guy, who talked me through the predicted weather. Basically OK at city with gusty-ish winds but he was concerned about a warm front moving down to Muskoka. Reckoned it was hard to judge the speed of it. If it slowed I’d be fine but otherwise I was cutting it a little fine, possibly being caught in 1-4 miles visibility and light snow. His recommendation was to call up again in the morning and see how it was progressing.

I thanked him for his time and dutifully reported back to Bob. I was happy to make the call in the morning.

Bob enquired as to whether there might be a “plan B”. I informed him that I was eager to fly and would be happy with a local east flight with some more diversion practice and instrument work (anything to avoid that bloody simulator!).

I was up early the next morning, knowing that I’d need plenty of time to get the rest of my flight planning done if I was going to head out on the “big one”. I called flight services at around 6:50am local time (11:50 UTC).

“Good morning,” I chirped, “I’d like a weather briefing for a flight from City to Muskoka and Peterborough departing today at 16:00 Zulu”

“Why are you up so early?” he laughingly asked. Half joking but maybe it had been a long night!

I laughed as well and said “student pilot, flight planning takes me a while!”

I didn’t add the fact that a lot of that time is spent recovering my E6b from wherever I’ve thrown it in disgust. Anyways the ceilings were looking marginal and we both agreed that although it may have been doable the low ceilings would have meant that I’d end up in the mechanical turbulence thrown up by the gusty winds. It was by no means an ideal day for a cross country flight, especially a first one.

I texted Bob to inform him I was calling a no-go.

Another cancelled cross country….. but never mind, Bob had a plan.