O.O.O

Thank you for your email. I am currently out of the office until January 5th. I will reply on my return, thank you and have a great day

LET THE DRINKING COMMENCE!

Confession from a dumb student pilot: let us never speak of this again

There aren’t many things that I did as a student pilot that I didn’t ‘fess up to on this blog. But this one was a little bit special, occurring as it did, straight after my first solo. I've made vague allusioins to it in passing as "the taxiing incident" but never really expanded on that. Here it is then:

So picture the scene, an incredibly nervous WMAP (as I was then), who has just completed her first solo flight, despite her best protests.

She’s feeling nothing but relief that a) she managed to get the plane back in one piece and b) she can now go to the washroom.

24 isn’t her favourite runway and isn’t used that much, she’s not that familiar with it despite having just completed some circuits with Bob on it. To be honest when they taxied in she was too busy arguing with the demons in her head than paying attention to where they were actually going.

She’s completed her post landing checks and is currently at the point marked with an X on the following picture.

Question is, how does she get to “Y”?

Those of you with any aviation knowledge or indeed any common sense will spot that she needs to take a path similar to the one marked in black here, along the taxi lines.

However, those of you who know me, well it’ll come as no great surprise to you that what I attempted to do was follow the yellow path marked here.

I would like to point out that at the time there were no planes parked there at the time.

Just two fuel trucks.

Parked about just-slightly-more-than-a-wingspan apart.

I got about as far as the yellow line before ATC realised what was going on and issued the “FJES, STOP Immediately” command.

Yeah, even as I was doing it, I knew I’d messed up but in a surprising burst of confidence, I was actually fairly sure I could get it through that gap.

ATC weren’t having any of this and instructed me to remain still while they sent out someone to deal with me.

Luckily for me, Bob had obviously spotted what was going on and raced over to guide me through himself. I couldn’t make eye contact the entire time.

I was mortified. I had visions of this being my first and last solo flight ever. It kind of tainted my joy to be honest.

Bob, bless him, never mentioned it ever again. I’ve made tentative jokes about my sense of direction on the ground and he’s never once taken the bait.

I’m not sure if he even remembers.

I do!

What’s your title?

Or Random Questions I get asked by coworkers.

Most of my coworkers are at the very least interested in my pilot type antics. To the extent that I’ve got kind of a waiting list of people who actually want to fly with me. Some of them may have ulterior motives, like our IT guy who lives in Bramptom, right next to the airport and feels that he should be able to charter me to fly him home. He is strangely quiet on the topic of funding my CPL though!

I was walking from the subway with one of my newer coworkers. Once people know what I do for a hobby inevitably I get asked “so, been flying recently?” as a conversation opener.

She had a new one though, she asked, “so what’s your title now?”

I must have looked confused “Are you called Captain?” she clarified.

I didn’t really know how to answer that one. I just laughed.

Think I might have a word with HR though, I quite like the idea of changing my name on all work stuff to Captain LFE.

Whatchya think?

Guilt free Christmas

I’m in my last week at work before the holidays and it has suddenly occurred to me: this will be the first Christmas in two years where I won’t have that little guilty pang in the back of my mind that what I really should be doing is studying for my PPL stuff.

I’ve not got the written exam to worry about and I don’t have any lessons to schedule, thus meaning I don’t have to worry about my alcohol intake and the 8 hour rule.

I won’t be stalking the weather like a crazy lady hoping to squeeze one last flight in before the snow storm hits or have to monitor the METARS looking for a break in the clouds.

I’ve got nothing really planned and a fully wine rack.

Good combo!

Threading the needle

Coming back from the trip with RTH, I dutifully dialed in and listened to the ATIS. Nothing much had changed, winds were reasonable, runway was still 08.

 I made my call and confirmed to ATC that I had indeed departed from City earlier. I swallowed hard as I read back my joining instructions….  “cleared left downwind for 08”

Ah crud, I’m not a student anymore. I don’t really have an excuse. It’s a low approach over the city for me.  Over the downtown core at 2000ft and below.

Eek.

I’m not massively comfortable with this, Toronto is a city still in the middle of an economic upturn. New towers are popping up seemingly overnight. Even since I started learning the core has changed beyond recognition in places. So now I find myself confronted with having to thread my plane between the CN tower and the new Aura condo tower at College Park, all 78 storeys of it.

Gulp

RTH recognises the unhappy noises I’m emitting and reminds me “you can always request the right downwind if you want”

I consider it, it would make me feel more comfortable but no, I need to do this. I need to salvage something tangible from this flight. An achievement. And besides the city is kinda cool up from up here and one of the things I want to do is take friends up for the city tour, I need to get used to being this low over downtown.

I bite the bullet and thread the needle, fighting the inevitable turbulence thrown up by the highways and general urban terrain. I don’t have enough eyes for this. I need to monitor my airspeed and altitude for any deviations and fix them instantly, while at the same time keeping my head on the proverbial swivel for the other sightseeing traffic around.

Obviously I did an Okay job as RTH seemed more concerned with taking pictures than my proximity to the local landmarks!

Next post I’ll pull some of his pictures for you, they are incredible. I’m glad one of us was able to enjoy the view.

Mission aside I think my next flight is going to include a City tour, now that I’ve figured out how to thread the needle, I’m going to sew my name in the sky!

Inevitability

Forecast tonight is calling for 5cm of snow. The wet, sticky kind. Along with winds gusting up to 35 mph.

Yeti suit aside, it’s going to be a crappy trudge into work tomorrow  

I’m a better pilot….

RTH noticed that I was less than enthusiastic about my performance from our inaugural flight. He, himself was quite reassuring about the whole thing, whilst acknowledging that, yes things hadn’t gone to plan, he was quick to point out that all three of us (LFE, RTH and SAR) were all in one piece. I know he was trying to be supportive, perhaps concerned that a temporary setback would destroy my confidence and that I’d be hesitant to try again (a situation not without precedent).

I’ll admit, there was a lot going through my mind and I really wasn’t a happy bunny but I’ve had time to think and it may have taken me a couple of days to get my mind around it all. I think I’m there though.

Firstly I am still a little annoyed, as I said to RTH “I’m a better pilot than what I showed you today”

Secondly though I’ve come to terms with a few things. Probably obvious things to some people but, as usual, I’m late to the party.

Everyone touts your PPL as a “licence to learn” and I’ve tritely batted that phrase around myself and glibly claimed that I understood what it meant.

I didn’t, until now.

At the moment the only difference between pre PPL LFE and post PPL LFE is a shiny blue booklet and two hours of flight time. I didn’t know everything then and I don’t know everything now. I made mistakes then and I’m going to make mistakes now. It’s inevitable.

The problem comes if you don’t use those mistakes as a learning experience and believe me I’ve spent many a mental moment evaluating that flight and working out what I could have done instead.  A dangerous pilot isn’t necessarily one who doesn’t make mistakes, it is one who doesn’t evaluate and learn from them.

So we’ve got that part covered.

I’ll learn and move on.

The next phrase that struck home to me is from the internet* “Without the risk of failure, success is meaningless”

I set myself a near impossible goal to get my PPL. It was an epic struggle, at any point I could have stopped, the power on stalls could have gotten too scary, the wake turbulence incident shaken me up too much. I didn’t stop. I had failures on the way as well as successes. But I picked myself up, shook myself down and pressed on. I kept plugging away at it and eventually I succeeded. There was always a fear of failure but in the end the desire to succeed was just too strong.

My “Mission”, self-inflicted as it is, may turn out to be an equally epic struggle. Probably with as many bumps along the way as my PPL. So now that I’ve hit one of those bumps along the road, I have a choice. Just as I did with my PPL, either I learn from the experience and move on, or I quit.

Well I didn’t spend two and a half years and a stupid amount of money to stop that easily.

I’ll learn from the experience and carry on. It just sucks a little bit that this learning opportunity happened on my first bloody flight with RTH!

And while I didn’t show RTH the pilot that I wanted to that flight, next time it’ll be an even better pilot sat next to him.

* see useful stuff occasionally found here