Of maps and giant planes

One tactic I use to calm myself on commercial flights is to remove my watch so that I can’t see how much longer I’ve got to put up with this stuff. If I’m flying with RTH then he actively lies to me about how much longer the flight is. I’m fine with this.

As I’m getting a little better with this being a passenger stuff I allowed myself the luxury of having the inflight map up on my screen. This is also an attempt to improve my North American geography.

Trouble is, I appear to be in a giant airplane. It currently spans three states according to the screen.

I still have no idea where we actually are!

 

The guys at the pointy end

Yet again I find myself in the wrong bit of the plane. I hate being in the back end. Still it was snowing when I left Toronto and I’m writing this after taking a walk along the beach in Florida, so I’m not expecting much in the way of sympathy!

I can’t help wondering about the guys in the pointy end – BTW the first officer sounds about 12!

Do they feel the same way I do every time I take off? Even after 30 hours and more takeoffs and landings tan I can remember, I still get that “Holy Sh#t- we’re airborne!”* feeling every time.

How long before that feeling wears off? How long before it just becomes a normal job?

I NEVER want to lose that feeling.

 

*Incidentally, the first words uttered by WMAP when given control of FJES! Thus starting the long precedent of profanity in the cockpit!

Taxing Taxiing

Actually not so much today. Despite the plane being in a reasonably tight space I got it out without hitting anything! Even with my constant “how am I your side?” line of questioning, the truth was I had it under control. Ikept up a good pace and reasonable directional control right up to the run-upspot. Considering I was on runway 08 which doesn’t really have a discernible run-up area like 26 does. I found a good spot to tuck it into and face around into the wind. I even managed to swing it round correctly to line up facing thetraffic at the hold short line.

Still need to work on the control inputs to compensate for the windwhile taxiing but I’m a lot happier manoeuvring the thing on the ground than Iever have been before.

Just fly the damn plane

Surprisingly enough* this actually is the key to getting it right. Today was tense even before I got to the airport, nothing to do with flying initially, some of my other fears manifesting themselves and turning me into a sweating wreck. Hey! They don’t call me WMAP for nothing!

Still I gave it a go, and had actually settled myself down reasonably well before taking off. One good thing about flying is the extensive checklists and stuff you have to go through before you can even move the plane means that I focus my mind on them rather than my fear, which instantly has a calming effect.

Conditions were challenging, cloud base was low, air was marginally bumpy (certainly not super smooth) and I was a bit on edge. On the first approach I lost patience with myself and said out loud “For F@#ks sake just fly the plane.” You know what? Turns out that kinda works! I was a bit sideways for a while but got it on the runway for a reasonable touch and go.

We only managed two circuits due to the weather. My second circuit was still a little fraught but again by following the aforementioned mantra in my head, even if not out loud**. I managed a very respectable full stop. Even though my height was a bit all over the place on final.

So just fly the plane and stop sweating the small stuff. Somehow the landings are still working despite my best efforts to talk myself into failure!

 

* Yeah, I know most people have this figured by now!

** I believe what came out of my mouth was “F#@kity, F#@kity, F#@k, F#@k, F#@k.” – I can be quite poetic in my profanity sometimes!

Pushing my limits

When it comes to flying I am ultra conservative, probably too much to be honest. If I waited for what I consider to be ideal flying conditions then I’d fly approximately once a year. At the same time though, I really like flying so I’m constantly torn between the old “are the conditions actually conducive to flying or am I just saying they are because I want to fly?” dilemma.

Today was an excellent example, I haven’t flown in a couple of weeks and really wanted to but wasn’t sure weather wise. The cloud base was low-ish but the winds were ok. The snow that we’d had looked to be over but there was still a lot of moisture in the air, with vague threats of freezing drizzle.

Bob and I agreed to look at the weather first thing in the morning and judge it from there. I woke up, looked out the window and figured that we probably wouldn’t be flying. RTH helpfully pulled up a GFA chart and showed me the nice icing and turbulence reports on it. I was mildly surprised to get a text from Bob saying that he was good to go. I didn’t want to second guess him but I did point out the icing stuff.

Now Bob has waaaay more experience than me in judging weather conditions and I trust him implicitly not to put me in danger but there comes a time where if you’re uncertain you should speak up. I often employ the mindset of “what would you say at an accident investigation?*” How would you justify your decision?

What sounds better from a person who is meant to be training to be Pilot-In-Command, “my instructor told me we could fly, so I did­­” or “I looked at all the weather data available to me, I was still unsure if it was safe to fly, so I asked his opinion and he explained to me why it was safe for us to go and what special precautions we’d need to take to remain safe”?

In this case we kept a careful eye on the cloud base, waited until a flight that was due back arrived and got a PIREP from the instructor. We also discussed the fact that I’d have to fly a lower than usual circuit in order to remain VFR. There was also a C-152 right in front of us so we could keep an eye on what it was doing.

As it turned out I only managed to get a couple of circuits in before the cloud descended to the point where we needed to come back in. The visibility was not good. Bob said to me “we can call it a day if you like.” I was about to say that we`d keep it up for another circuit, but then I noticed that a) the C-152 in front of us had called it quits and b) I could no longer distinguish between the lake and the sky off to my left. It was time to land.

I`m still glad we took it up for a spin though. It was a good lesson in weather interpretation, deciding your personal limits, pushing your comfort zones and generally making good decisions. While I might not choose to fly in the conditions we had today. It`s good to know that I can keep my head and land in them.




* it may sound melodramatic but it is generally good life advice. If you are unsure if you are making the right call, explain your decision  to someone else. If it sounds wrong out loud, you are about to do something stupid!

Toronto, we have a problem!

After months of procrastination, I’m trying to do something about my woeful lack of meteorological knowledge.  I think it got rammed home tome today, how little I actually know or even pay attention to, with regards to weather and flying.

I was listening to ATC while at my desk*, CYYZ tower to be exact and heard pilots giving icing reports. Ah, its winter now and while I have theoretical knowledge of the different types of icing, how it forms and what it means**. I’m not sure it really occurred to me that it was something I needed to check for before flying. I mean I’m used to pulling up the METAR/TAF on my phone and giving the wind speed and direction a quick once over and maybe checking out the cloud base to make the fly or no fly decision. Although to be honest I’m more likely just to take a peek outside and see if there are any other light aircraft taking off.

Right, well I recognize the need to do something about this and I have vague recollections of RTH showing me charts with weather type information stuff on them. So let us see what we can find.

 A quick Google search led me to NavCanada’s weather services. I played around with a few options and eventually discovered a chart which looked like this.

 

 OK I have a problem. An embarrassing one. One which I am loath to admit to the blogosphere, but here goes.

I can’t understand this chart/map. At all!

No it isn’t a case of needing to look at the key to ascertain what the symbols mean. I mean that geographically I have no idea where I am meant to be looking. Yep, thats right I'm suffering from a failure to locate where I live.

This is an immigrant problem, the stuff you grew up with as kids (like recognizing the outline of your own country/province) never made it into my brain. Give me a map of the UK any size, any scale and I can quickly locate my home town and most major cities. But Canada hasn’t imprinted itself on me in the same way. I can’t see a single reference point on that chart which makes any sense to me. My brain can’t unclutter the image enough for me to work out what is land and what is water, let alone where Toronto might be.

I love Canada. I love my life here but being an immigrant makes me feel really really stupid at times L

*yes Mega-geek, I know

** BAD thing, VERY BAD thing

 

 

Normal service will be resumed…

I realise that not many of my posts are strictly flying related at the moment. Transitioning into winter means cruddy conditions and not much in the way of flying.

I’ll continue posting pretty much every day but the flying content might be a bit thin on the ground. Hopefully once the weather stabilises I’ll be in the air more.

In the meantime I’m spending a few days in Florida courtesy of work, so I’ll at least be in a plane even if they won’t let me fly it!