What to do?

I’m in a bit of a quandary about what to do with this blog. I created the persona of WMAP, the World’s Most Anxious Person. A scared-beyond-belief student pilot who was fairly convinced that she’d never ever be able to do this. That at some point I’d hit the metaphorical wall and we’d all politely agree to call it a day.

I started documenting my thoughts and LocalFlightEast the blog was born.

LocalFlightEast was a student pilot’s blog.

I’m not a student anymore. Believe it or not I’m now a fully qualified, calm, competent and dare I say it, confident, Private Pilot.

Honestly, I am! I’ve taken passengers and everything. I made good, solid decisions and ended up with at least one passenger who was less nervous at the end than the start.

So while I have every intention of carrying on with the blogging. I’m unsure where to go from here.

Do I…

• Leave everything as it is, despite the fact that my profile and the intro blurb says I’m a nervous student
• Revamp the look of LFE, changing the intro and my profile description
• Start a new blog with my adventures as a freshly qualified PPL
• Or something else

Thoughts anyone?

Seeking advice and the fine line

I have no problem is seeking advice from others. Especially when they have more experience and knowledge than me (for that read pretty much anybody!). So when the previous flyer of JES returned the keys back to dispatch I took a moment to ask them about the current conditions out East.

His take on the weather confirmed my suspicions that the conditions were slightly worse than the forecast would have me believe. Mentally I had already cancelled our planned trip around Lake Skugog and was weighing up our options for a different sightseeing route.

Good solid advice there and well worth listening to.

And then he said something a little odd. He suspected that the ASI was reading high. Now planes do have quirks and little irritants. It might be that the Heading Indicator drifts more than you’d like or one mag shows a little more rpm drop than the other, but an off ASI was not something I’d ever come across.

He claimed that at 2200rpm it was showing 120 KIAS in cruise. We both agreed that was very optimistic for the R model who usually pootles along quite happily at 110 KIAS at that setting. He reckoned it was reading about 10 knots too high.

I puzzled over this, not saying much as I mentally processed the implications of this. “Yeah, just don’t get too slow….” he tailed off.

I nodded and turned back to my passengers, flashing them a smile to show that all was well. I still didn’t know what to do with that info. If he really thought it was that off, he should have snagged it. I parked the info away and decided I’d just keep a careful eye on it and not do anything different.

Sure enough she rotated at the expected speed, gave me best rate of climb at the expected 79 knots, the “best rate” not being that great with three passengers and 30 gallons of fuel on board.

And at cruise, she was trimmed and steady at a constant 110 KIAS, exactly what I’d expect. I shrugged it off. Maybe JES was being a bit naughty for him, or maybe he was mistaken. I don’t know.

I just know that it would have been very easy for me to take his word as gospel and knock 10 knots off all my standard speeds. Given the slightly blowy conditions on landing, well that could have gotten a little more than sporty.

As a new pilot you are very vulnerable to the opinions of experts, it really is a fine line between hanging on every word you are told and not seeking advice at all.

I guess you find the balance eventually.

  

Still trying to fight the good fight

Read this

And promise me, you will NEVER, EVER buy this book for your kid

EVER.


edited to add this site has just been drawn to my attention: http://www.themarysue.com/feminist-hacker-barbie-site/

please feel free to share your creations

Ignorance is bliss

For your passengers at least.

We are on our way back from our somewhat shortened flight but everyone appears to be having a good time, pilot included.

But now it’s time for the fun part, the part they are going to remember.

The landing.

The winds have gotten up to the 20 knot mark, about 20 degrees off the runway. I’ve certainly done worse but it is getting up to the “sporty” end of my comfort level.

Still, it has to be done. I put all my attention into getting on a nice stable approach, my passengers mercifully responding well to my “I’m about to get a little busy here” and contenting themselves with much taking of photos.

I’m obviously giving this my full attention but once again I’m trying hard not to communicate any stress to my passengers, that’s not how I want them to remember this flight. I’m actually on a pretty sweet approach. I don’t normally pay much attention to the PAPI lights but I see white over red. I’ll take that for sure. A touch of power sees me right as I hit the inevitable gust of wind from Yonge Street, a local phenomenon that I’ve become all too familiar with.

I’m actually going to pull this off. I even have enough capacity to inform my passengers that the fact the engine is at full idle is normal. I’ve powered back, it hasn’t quit on us.

We land, remarkably within sight of the centreline!

My passengers are reasonably impressed, although completely ignorant of the fact that I’ve just completed an amazing shortfield landing without even trying. I could have been completely stationary by Charlie and I certainly didn’t need to drag it in under power.

Then again they are also ignorant of the fact that I flared a little early and a little high and brought her down just a little firmer than I’d like.

It all balances out I guess!

Calm and confident

Confidence is everything, especially when you have passengers. I realised very quickly that passengers take their cues from you. If you are calm and confident, then they are relaxed.

Knowing my own little quirks I’d already told K and M that if I went quiet it wasn’t anything to be concerned about. I was just busy flying the plane. I assured them that if anything was wrong I would definitely tell them, as I’d need their cooperation. In the same vein, if I swore to myself it was probably because I hadn’t done something as well as I could have, nothing dangerous; just a little mental kick.

The thing is though; I didn’t actually have to fake the confidence. I really did feel it. This was a routine flight, covering ground I’d been over a hundred times before. Yes the weather was a potential concern but I was confident in my preparedness, I knew where it was coming from and I knew what my “escape route” was.

I hope I projected that. A couple of times K was asking me questions along the line of “how comfortable are you now with the conditions?”

I knew this really meant that she wasn’t sure about things and wanted some reassurance. Reassurance I could happily give because everything was totally fine. I wasn’t even worried about the dropping cloudbase in front of us. My preparation had been thorough, I was thoroughly briefed weatherwise and has spent 10 minutes or so before leaving home just looking at my chart. Despite being intimately familiar with the airspace I checked and double checked the local geography, the airspaces around me.

Even while my passengers were “ooh” and “ahhing” at the pretty crystals sparkling in the air around us, I was calmly evaluating the situation, casually glancing over at the wheels to check for any telltale signs of icing.

There was none to be seen and the snow was fairly light and patchy but I knew the forecast was only due to get worse, the winds were obviously stronger than forecast already. I knew it was time to go back and communicated this to my passengers.

Obviously I did it in such a way that didn’t alarm them in the slightest. K was more concerned that I was turning back because of her. I simply told them that the weather conditions were no longer conducive to a fun flight. Which was pretty much the truth.

The last text message I got from Bob before my flight test was “Confidence and calm”

It seems I finally got there!

The perils of passengers

The whole point of getting your PPL is to fly places and take people with you. Your training more than adequately covers the former activity but leaves you woefully unprepared for the latter.

Beyond telling you the legal points you need to cover in your safety briefing, no one mentions anything else beyond that.

Time for some willing victims, I mean volunteers. People who I can practice the fickle art of being a pilot on.

Cue K and M. Both inquisitive and intelligent and willing to provide honest feedback on how I performed from a passenger management point of view. Especially with K being a slightly nervous passenger, it was good practice for my being the kind and reassuring voice of reason.

After having the privilege of taking them on a flight, I now have time to review my performance.

Firstly, I’ve learnt that no matter how much you tell them to be careful on the apron, the second your back is turned, they will walk into your airplane (twice in M’s case!)

I also need to work on my passenger brief a little to make sure there is no ambiguity about what I’m talking about. I didn’t want to use the word “crash” or anything along those lines when talking about emergency landings, so I tend to use the phrase “If we need to land somewhere other than an airport” as a euphemism for a forced landing. K got a little confused when I described the procedure for covering your face and opening the door prior to touchdown. She thought I meant for any landing. I’ll work on that for sure.

Generally though they agreed that I got the balance between telling them enough to reassure and inform them without overloading them with too much info.

K mentioned that it was a little unnerving when it took me a few seconds of cranking to get the engine to catch. That’s a tough one, it was a cold day but the engine was warm, always tricky to decide between a hot and cold start. I don’t like to overprime as fuel injected engines can be prone to vapour lock.

One thing I did do that was kind of sneaky and I’m just a little bit proud of, is also kind of funny. K warned me that she doesn’t like takeoffs in particular. I knew exactly what she meant. It used to be my least favourite thing when travelling as a passenger with RTH.

K and I are very similar in some ways (we both have similar OCD rituals on the way to work for example). I was worried that she’d do what I’ve heard stories about some passengers doing, namely panicking and grabbing on to the first thing available. When you are in the front seat, that thing could be the control column.

That can’t happen. A diversion is needed. K needed a job. A very important one.

K became guardian of Bob (the bear, from this post). Sure enough, it kept her hands occupied, Bob spent the flight being firmly held in her lap or tucked under her arm. When things got a bit bumpy, he got a reassuring squeeze.

Funny but effective.

Looking back at the video (it’ll be on YouTube soon) I think I need to provide a little bit more commentary on the local area. I was a little quiet but K and M didn’t seem to complain. They were very good at stopping talking whenever anything was going on radiowise. I’d talked to them about this beforehand. Actually M seemed fairly interested in the radio chatter. He could barely comprehend how I managed to take in what was being thrown at me at such a rapid pace and understand it, let alone formulate a response.

I’d love to tell him that it was some special magical skill but we all know how much I struggled with this at the start. The truth is, it is purely practice. Nothing else.

All in all, it was a fantastic first passenger flight and has given me much to think about in regards to my next passengers.

I can’t wait to be up there again!

Good sports

The happy smiling couple you saw in the previous post are K and M. I used to work with K and about a year ago, she married M. The more cynical amongst you might point out that they are happy and smiling because they took the photo before getting in the plane!

But no, they were still happy and smiling once we’d completed our flight as well.

You have to realise just what good sports the pair of them are. K doesn’t actually like small aircraft and M has only met me once before. Quite frankly I was incredibly flattered that he’d even consider getting in the plane with me, but hey, apparently he did. He strikes me as a fairly pragmatic guy, his reasoning being that someone gave me a licence so I must be relatively safe.

K, well K is just incredible, self-confessed nervous before we even got in the plane. But also please bear in mind that K has been with me through out every hurdle in this epic journey. She’s heard firsthand accounts of every single problem I’ve encountered, every single thing I’ve f#cked up and every single thing that scared me. I honestly thought that would leave her extremely reluctant to set foot in a plane with me. I mean it hardly inspires confidence does it?

K has a slightly different and probably unique perspective on the situation though.  She said something along the lines of “if I get in a commercial plane, I’ve never met the pilot. I don’t know if they are having a bad day, if they have decided to cut corners because they are in a hurry or if they’ve just come straight from the bar. I know you. I know how much you’ve trained for this and all the emergency stuff you’ve had to practice. I can see what is going on”

Turns out that K has control issues just like me!

K and M were awesome to have as my first passengers. The right mix of keen and but realising subtle things like when I said “I’m about to get busy” I really needed them to be quiet.

Despite rating herself as “mildly terrified” at one point, we had barely touched down when K was enquiring as to when we might be able to go up again!

In return for the flight, K especially was very willing to provide useful feedback as to what passengers want or need to hear from their pilot.

Being a pilot isn’t just about flying a plane, it’s also about managing your passengers. And that’s a whole other blog post!

But anyway, thanks for being awesome passengers guys!