No good deed…

…goes unpunished. So here I am the very model of a cooperative student pilot.  I’ve made my radio calls at the right time; I’m ignoring the other idiots on frequency and am doing exactly what ATC have told me to do. And I’m doing it quietly. Despite the fact I’m fairly certain ATC have further instructions for me.

And how do I get repaid for this? Do I get a pat on the head? Do I get a luxury, priority approach to the runway which has somehow been paved in gold?

No such luck.

What I get instead is the person landing in front of me getting a flat tire at the most awkward point it would be physically possible to get a flat tire. Thus tying up the main runway and the secondary but more into the wind runway.

ATC issue the instruction for me to “pull up and overshoot”. Initially I get a little confused as technically I’m above circuit altitude at this point. Once I figure out that she just wants me to overfly the runway, I’m fine.

I politely decline the offer of orbiting over the city as I don’t think my arms can take another wrestling match. I orbit in the downwind as instructed, Bob reminding me to drop some RPM and flaps to avoid chasing my own tail. I’m offered runway 24, I’m momentarily confused; I know that 26 is kind of on the limits crosswind wise.24’s going to be nasty.

Bob confirms my thoughts “110 degree crosswind”

Again I’m having trouble processing that. I think we call that a tail wind. I’m not happy taking a tailwind on 26, 24 is shorter and the approach is ickier. No thank you

I orbit for a while, and then I kind of remember I have someone in the back. I smile and cheerfully inquire as to how he’s doing, trying to reassure him that this is completely normal and I do this kind of thing every flight. I get the impression that he’d prefer we were in the ground sooner rather than later.

ATC inform me that the wind has dropped to a mere 8 knots. I decide to give it a go. It’s not the prettiest landing I’ve ever pulled off but the video looks better than the memory in my head.

And at least, taxiing my way back to the apron, I succeed in following the taxiway and don’t take a stupid wrong turn, unlike the last time I landed on 24!

My kind of chaos.

Coming back into City’s zone was chaos. Initially it was tough to get a word in edgeways; obviously the traffic had built up a bit. No worries. I wait patiently and get my initial call in. It takes her a while to get back to me. I’m not concerned. I can hear traffic in the circuit that she’s dealing with so I’m fairly confident that I’ve not been forgotten about. I get the return call but someone jumps in before I can reply.

Once again I’m patient, this is not unfamiliar territory, been here done that. I can hear the barely controlled chaos unfolding around me. There’s Commercial traffic, students in the circuit, helicopter tours and one irritating guy who is stepping on everyone’s calls. Wincing against the feedback, I remind myself that I’ve been that person before and try not to judge them too harshly.

Momentarily I panic, I’m not 100% sure I’ve been given clearance into the zone. I mean we’ve established two way communications but that’s not enough for the Class C around city. I need permission. Just as I’m contemplating the nuances of this and discussing them with Bob she gets back to me and the instructions given could legitimately be considered a “clearance”. I have enough time to fire back a response before Mr. Irritating jumps in on frequency again.

While the ATC pandemonium continues, I quietly fly my plane over the city, hoping that my passenger is enjoying the view, despite the rough ride. The bumps and jolts are bothering me more than the radio racket. The plane is fighting me more and more and I’ve lost the ability to gently guide her, we are engaged in a full blown wrestling match now and I have a suspicion that i'm not exactly winning. I daren’t talk to my passenger in case I miss out on a radio call directed to me. I have a suspicion that ATC are trying to talk to me but Mr. Irritating is blundering his way across everyone’s comms yet again.

I decide that there is nothing I can do; flying the plane against the turbulence is taking up a large portion of my attention and comms ranks as number three on my priority list. I make a conscious decision that I’m just going to follow my previous instructions until ATC tell me otherwise. Secretly I’m hoping to get brownie points for being the quiet unassuming plane that isn’t causing any hassles .Maybe I’ll get landing priority or something.

Ha!!!! No such luck but that’s for another post.

Despite my previous post where I’m majorly concerned about my navigational skills, I’m taking a great deal of comfort from the fact that I wasn’t in the slightest bit bothered by this situation. It may have been barely controlled chaos but it was my kind of chaos. 

This I know how to handle. 

Must do better.

Ok negative or not, there are some things that I seriously need to get sorted out before I can even think of doing this cross country stuff on my own.

While superficially it would seem that the flight was a success, I got the three of us there and back with no collateral damage after all. Some things still really scare me.

On the way back, I lost my way. Not in a “OMG I have no idea where I am” kind of way. No in a way that actually I consider to be a lot more dangerous.

The fact is I knew I was off track, whether it was because I wasn’t maintaining my heading or if my calculations were off or the winds had changed, I don’t know but it soon became obvious that I wasn’t where I was meant to be.

Bob, in his infinite patience, tried to talk me through the process of reorienting myself and re-establishing a new heading but I was stubborn. I did something that probably would have seen me bust some serious airspace if I was on my own.

The trouble is when I get lost or disoriented or whatever you want to call it, I get flustered. When I get flustered my brain sees what it wants to see.  I knew that the next checkpoint I was looking for was Uxbridge village, so I alter my course slightly and sure enough there’s a built up area. Uxbridge, excellent, sorted.

Except really my brain knows that this Uxbridge doesn’t look quite the same as the one going out did. But it would be soooo handy if this was Uxbridge, so let’s convince our self that it is. Despite Bob’s prompting I’m not picking upon the visual clues that I’m really not where I should be. It takes a blatantly obvious landmark like Frenchman’s Bay, and the realisation that I’m waaaaay further west than I should be to finally convince me.

I’m further west and further south than I thought. Continuing on this course would have seen me in Buttonville’s airspace before I knew it. As it is, I’m too high really. I need to get down before I’m in Terminal’s airspace. I put the plane in an ear-popping descent to avoid any nasty repercussions, mindful of the fact that it might not be so comfortable for my passenger but I’m too flustered to explain to them what’s going on.

The fact that I can now navigate by familiarity is eclipsed by the fact that we are now low and in dirty air. I make a note to figure out a new descriptor, we left “sporty” behind a while back and “feisty” isn’t even beginning to cover this.

Although I eventually got us back on track, I’ll be honest; this kind of stuff really scares me.  Getting lost is one thing but the easy way I can convince myself that I’m elsewhere is a major red flag as far as I’m concerned.

Not sure how to move on from this. I simply have to do better.

A sporty ride.

I knew it was going to be bad, upper winds a whopping 30 knots from the north. My groundspeed calculated to be 70 odd knots on the way out but 130ish on the way back. My fears were confirmed by flight services who, while reassuring me that the ceilings and general weather were going to stay good, it was going to be by their words “a bumpy ride”

Funnily enough, this didn’t bother me unduly. I wasn’t going to be attempting any fancy airwork, I just needed to keep the plane pointing in a straight line. I even had a little bit of altitude to play with, once I was outside the practice area and away from Terminal’s control zone, I could fly at either 3500 or 5500 to find some clean air.

Sure enough she was a little sporty on the way out, right through 3500. Beyond that, as I hoped we found some smoother air, the strong winds working in my favour as our 70 knot ground speed meant that I had ample time to figure out where I was and navigate accordingly.

A few initial hiccups aside I was amazed that I actually managed to spot Muskoka airport from quite a ways out. Initially I was very excited about this fact, then I dialled it back a little, suddenly conscious of the fact that a pilot being excited about spotting an airport might not be exactly reassuring to the passenger in the back. A passenger who was a little quiet by this point!

The approach to the runway itself became a little more than sporty, maybe even upgraded to “feisty” but I was completely unconcerned from a flying perspective, Muskoka’s runway is massive, almost twice as long as what I’m used to. I had plenty of room to sort it all out.

The runway was slightly snow covered, just enough that I couldn’t really see the centreline. Not bothered at all, with no visual centreline I didn’t I have to worry about Bob bitchin’ when I missed it!

Plane down, first time. No bouncing, no worries. I brake, backtrack and report clear of the runway.

We park up and I breathe a long sigh of relief. There and down in one piece.

The trip back, not so much fun though.

Next time.

My first passenger.

It is kind of fitting that my brother was my first passenger. When he learnt to drive I was the first passenger in his souped up Talbot Sunbeam*. That car was fun, I recall it being quite “sporty”, we’ll come back to that phrase in a moment.

My brother was quite fascinated with the amount of preparation that went in before the flight, even then he didn’t see all of it because I got up about 3 hours before we needed to leave in order to do the last minute course stuff, plugging in the current winds and so on.

A few days before I sat at our table plugging numbers into the weight and balance sheet. Technically I have a spreadsheet I can use for this, but like anything at the moment, I’m getting as much practice as I can doing everything by hand. I showed him the various weights and the fact that they act at different parts of the plane, so you need to check if the centre of gravity is within limits.

I’d never carried passengers or stuff in the back before so I needed to carefully figure out just how much fuel we could take. I’d already realised that we were going to need one of the S models, with their extra 100 pound or so capacity.

Numbers crunched, I worked out that at ¾ tanks we would be good from a weight limit and a take off COG limit too.

“So, all good then?” My brother enquired.

“Not exactly, I’ve calculated that we are fine to take off, Now I’ve got to figure some fuel burn and see if we are ok to land!”

We both agreed that landing at some point would be nice!

On the day, we trundled down to the airport, picnic bag in hand. My brother clutching the spare headset I the manner of someone who really doesn’t know what he’s meant to do with it.

I’d already had a brief chat with him about how he could talk to me, and no ATC wouldn’t be able to hear him, but when someone was talking on the radio, I needed him to be quiet. I also explained that there would probably be times where I wouldn’t be able to talk to him, like on takeoff and landing.

There are a few things that I would have liked to have done differently from a passenger perspective. I would have liked to explain the walkround a little more but the plane was outside, it was minus twenty odd, so the walkround became a little brisk, pace wise. I think my brother was still getting over the fact that we just pushed open a door and wandered onto the apron.

I honestly don’t know what he thought of the amount of checks and stuff we have to do on the ground before we takeoff, and I don’t think I really spent a lot of time beforehand explaining it all to him. It’s a lot for a non pilot to take in to be honest but before we knew it, I was lined up on my favourite runway, had the crosswind corrections in and we were airborne.

The rest is for another post. 

*I think I've got the make right, I'm sure he'll correct me if I'm wrong!

Just don’t

My head hurts.

Last night in a spectacular fashion I nearly cracked my skull open while attempting to help an old lady pick up her spilled groceries.

Today I have managed to glue my own eyelashes together with sticky tack

Don’t ask.

Just don’t.

If it’s not one thing…

 So I’ve had enforced breaks in flying due to weather and work and now I’m looking at another weekend with no flying.

Don’t really want to complain, this one is of my own choice. We have a friend visiting from the UK and want to show them the sights as it were, so the weekend is calling for a ROAD TRIP!!* 

Although I’m not going to get flying I’m looking forward to it, we still haven’t worked out our itinerary yet but I’m relishing the break. By the time Friday gets here I’ll have worked 12 days straight without a break. 

I’m already in danger of dozing off at my desk and I’m forgetting important details, like my name and phone extension. I picked up the phone to answer a coworkers call and struggled with forming a coherent sentence, instead of my usual “Good morning, WMAP speaking”, I managed “Good morning, um yeah it’s me speaking”

* Has to be said with an obligatory “WHOOOOP!” at the end, at least if you want to annoy your husband!