About that curtailed purchasing...

Okay, so I really didn't curtail it that much. But I did... a bit... honest... I can quit anytime I want. Stop laughing! I can quit!

Anyway, I started saving up for a major purchase a ways back. I mentioned it in this post back in May.

The following are pics of my brand new to me, FBI Thompson M1928A1 with original case, manual and drum magazines.

Except it looks a lot like a helicopter.

It's still in transit. The gentleman transporting it from Florida to me is being kind enough to store it temporarily till I can find a hanger here for it.  There's no way I'm going to even risk a chance of hail damage to it. I'm not saying I'm all school girl, jumping around, clapping, squealing excited right now... All those years flying fixed wing and jets and I still wanted to do this. Well, I'm gonna and mom and dad can't stop me now. If they ask, I'll just tell them I'm playing piano at a whore house.

I've lined up an instructor and contacts with several other owners in the area. So, the support network is starting at least.  Having time off is an issue.

Trust me, I was never really gone.

Okay, aside from some stray thoughts I haven't posted here in a long time.

Trust me, I was never really gone.  Life just got really really busy for a while.  But that's soon to change, it should get even more so now.

Anyway, back in May, having had enough of Columbus and Ohio. I sought out a job in more polite climes.  I found one in Dallas fairly quickly and that's the short answer.

I'm a captain on a Falcon now.

The last month(s) I've been in indoc. training and then Flight Safety at DFW getting the type rating and then, finally, yesterday was the line check/299 checkride.  Sounds pretty simple, huh.

Not really.

The Falcon type I got is on a design that predates pretty much all of modern aviation's innovations, dark cockpit concept, ergonomics, standardization of instrumentation, etc. etc.  It was pretty much the first corporate jet on the market and as the saying goes, if you've seen one Falcon jet, you've seen one Falcon jet.

That being said, it's a very tough bird that'll take lots of abuse and aside from being underpowered (for a jet) it's really easy to fly.

Other than that, the 2 week initial type rating course that we were supposed to take at FS, turned into a 5 week exercise in hurry up and wait.  About the 3rd day of classroom of the 7 "book larnin'" days we were informed that the sim's visuals had broken and they were trying to fix it.  They'd know more soon and they would keep us updated as they learned it.  Apparently what happened was the Mylar screen that the visuals are projected onto had torn.  Well, the screen is vacuum formed to a curved frame and is kept that way by a constant vacuum action.  Then we find out that only Rockwell Collins, the original manufacturer of this screen system, had the ability to fix it, and they'd be a week getting a team together and getting down to Dallas to fix it.  So, we do our first two days of sim sitting in front of a poster on a wall pretending to flip switches and punch buttons.  Fun.

When that was finished they told us that there was a vibration that was causing the tears in the first place and they needed FAA approval to change the software to remove the vibration and fix the problem.  At this point we were going day by day as to when the sim would be back up.  The FAA being, well the FAA, it took them a week to shuffle the paperwork.

BUT....

By that time, they'd found "structural faults" in the hydraulic legs the sim rode on.  These legs move the entire sim around to simulate aircraft motion.  Now, FS was telling us we'd be week by week instead of day by day.  Hey, paid time off!  Except, part of my paycheck was on hold till I'd finished my line checks.  So, basically, FS cut my pay by 1/3 for a month.

Finally, replacement parts were in, paperwork was shuffled, stamped, folded, spindled and mutilated by as many levels of bureaucracy as possible and 21 days after the last time I showed my face at the DFW training center, I was back for 7 straight days of sim sessions and my type checkride.  Which was 28 days after the training started and 14 days after it was supposed to have finished.  So, 7 days of motion sickness, H'Ray!  You see, even though the sim gets close to what you'd feel flying the actual airplane, it's still not reality and the balance portion of your ears are still telling you one thing while what's actually happening is another.

Anyway, yesterday we finished up with the checkride and I now have 3 full fledged type ratings on my pilots license. Learjet, which allows me to fly the Lear 20 series, the Lear 30 series and the Lear 55. Lr-40/45 which covers two more Lear airframes and basically means the only Lear I can't fly right now is the 60.  And the Falcon.  But I know guys who have half a dozen or more type on their licenses so 3 isn't such a big thing.

Oh, as an aside, under my license's limitations section, it now says English Proficiency.  I would never have known that being proficient in the English language would be a limitation.  I guess if you would ask the French, they'd say it was.

Of course, right after the checkride, we sped over to the airport to get our line checks and what we refer to as our 299 ride done.  Basically it was all the portions of the checkride that FS couldn't do, because they were either company specific or required to be performed in an actual airplane, not a sim.

That was fun, motion sick and all.  It basically turned yesterday into a 16 hour marathon.

On the bright side, my pay jumped by a 1/3 yesterday, so H'Ray for disposable income!

Oh! The move. That was... fun.

My friend Phlegm Fatale coordinates and schedules moves for a national freight company.  I'd used her before to move from Tulsa to Columbus and she/They were both cheap and very good at doing it.  So I contacted them for the move to Texas.  The same relocube cost me 3 times the Tulsa to Columbus price! OUCH! So, I went to UHaul to try to save some money.  The price they quoted me for buying and installing a hitch and electric connector on my Jeep, the trailer and packing boxes and materials was going to keep the move under a grand even including gas, hotels and food on the move.  Except they wont rent trailers to soft top Jeeps.  Which, if you ask me, is Jeepist on their part and we should picket them for being all jeepaphobes and jeepist.  Anyway, they would have ended up costing me half again as much as said national freight company quote for a truck, car trailer, etc. etc. so I went back to national freight company and had them do it.

You know, pretty much every line item that I budgeted for the move ended up costing about a grand more than I planned.

Part of the reason it was so much more expensive to move to Texas than to Ohio is all the jobs are down here and everyone is moving here.  So all the equipment ends up in the south.  The moving companies practically have to pay people to get their equipment up to the north.

While I'm at it, I really need to send out huge thanks to my friends in Texas for letting me couch surf while trying to find an apartment that I could afford and was within my insanely short response time of the airport. Lawdog, Phlegmmy, daniels, Desi, Thank You all so very much.

And that's pretty much what I've been up to in a nutshell for the last several weeks.  And aside from some minor stuff like internet for my apartment and buying new furniture, things are starting to settle down.  Although I still don't know if they'll give me time off for blogorado this year.

Helicopter Training.

More of the same today, pick ups, set downs, patterns and approaches, hover autorotations.

The big difference today is my phone got stolen while I was out flying.  So, I'm experiencing a little experiment in Keynesian economics.  Since my old old phone had died back in December, I had to play full price for this replacement.  So, $750 bucks there after the case and screen protector.  So, H'Ray for Apple and the case producer and the screen protector maker. They made money. So, Obmama and his Keynesian zombies are applauding.  Except... That $750 had to come from somewhere.  In this case, it's coming straight out of my helicopter training fund. 

So, boo. 

Basically, that's 2 hours of training that I can't afford to do now.  Which is that much in instruction pay out of my flight instructors pocket, that much in lost fuel sales for both my Jeep, and the helicopter. So, the airport looses out there and the .gov loose out on the lost tax revenue from everything.  That much in rental fees that the flight school looses. Then there's the mechanic at the airport, etc.  The list goes on. 

Plus the first thing I did was have both Apple and AT&T wipe that stolen phone.  So, it'll never work again.  And if they change the sim card and try to get Apple to reauthorize it, it'll come up as stolen.  Plus I had them rig it so it'll give whoever stole it a nasty rash on their face that will cause small children to scream in terror and adults to vomit at the sight of it.  So, have fun with that.

p.s. You think I'm kidding about the rash?  Guess again.

What I've been up to... More of The Grind

More of the same today.  I am seeing improvement in pick ups, hovering, and approaches.  So, H'Ray.

The one new thing today was hover autorotations. Which are interesting.

Basically, just roll the power out from a stable hover around 5 ft. then it's pedal, pause, pull.

Done right, its really a sort of non-event.  So, some day.

What I've been up to... The Grind

More of the same today.  Concentrating on stable approaches.  I say stable, which in helicopters mean a constantly changing dynamic situation.

I'm still fighting my fixed wing habits.  I consistently ending up too fast at the end. Which means I end up having too much aft cyclic which translates into having to pull too much collective and rolling in too much power at the end, which means huge amounts of pedal too.  It's all pretty ugly.

The ideal is once turning final and setting that initial back cyclic, it's a steady deceleration from 60 to the hover right over the landing spot.  Which would mean, a more gentle collective at the end when you translate from flight to hover which would help slow down the helicopter more, which would require forward cyclic to keep from stopping, keeping a more level attitude, less required collective and power and anti-torque at the end.

I'm at that point in training where it's gonna be the same stuff over and over till I can actually do it.

What I've been up to... some more.

More of the same today.  Hover, pedal turns, hover taxi (forward and left and right), patterns.  I'm trying to tighten up the hover stuff, now more bobbling around, keep it in the 3 to 5 ft. high realm, nice walking pace, stuff like that.

Patterns, more of the same.  Trying to get that pace on approach down, more coordination on collective/throttle, cyclic/pedals.  It's getting there, but I'm still pretty loose on that stuff.

At this point, I've been introduced and demonstrated all the basic stuff.  It's just a matter of polishing up the skills.  Not anything exciting, but it's stuff I have to master.

Oh! p.s.  My instructor, the suicidal maniac, is letting me hover taxi the helicopter more and closer to the helicopter stand that the bird normally rests on.  So, either I am getting better or his life is taking a turn for the worse.  I've taken to searching the flight school office for crumpled up half written "Goodbye, Cruel World" notes.

What I've been up to.... again.

Much to the wailing of my fixed wing friends (cough, Wing, cough).  I'm continuing my helicopter training.

Nice day today.  Light winds out of the north, cool, no clouds.  Basically a beautiful day to fly. Or in the case of helicopters, make the air my bitch.

We did the usual hover work, pick ups, set downs, then we did some more flying.  Just figuring out what cruise power setting are for different airspeeds.  How to do constant airspeed climbs and descents.  Then we got back into the pattern and worked the pattern and something new, the helicopter approach.

Okay, I'm just writing this up so I'll remember it, you can skip the next paragraph if you want.

The standard approach path in helicopters is about 10 degrees. That's a bit different from a fixed wing approach.  That's usually a 3 to 3.5 degrees.  So, we were trying to turn final at about 300 ft. above ground
and at a point that puts the landing spot at that 10 degree descent path.  Then an initial slight reduction in power/collective and back on the cyclic to start the approach.  The idea being that you're doing a constant deceleration and descent to the spot.  So, all things being perfect, you start the final at 60mph (this helicopter's airspeed indicator is calibrated in mph) and you use collective to control the descent and the cyclic to control, this is the different bit, the apparent speed across the ground.  So, at 300 ft. you look like your moving at a walk, the same at 200, as 100, etc.  This means as the ground gets closer, you're going to be decelerating to keep that same apparent pace.  Seems okay, right? It's just that as a fixed wing pilot I have trained and trained and flown and flown to set up a constant descent but a constant airspeed as well.  So, all my flying life, I'm watching the runway numbers pass underneath at whatever is the landing speed of what I'm flying.  so, 30-35 in a Cessna up to 120-130 in a Lear.  So, here I am, constantly fighting my tendency to push the nose over to gain airspeed again rather than keeping the nose up and letting the airspeed bleed off. 

And that's basically it today.  Aside from a couple of beeps on the collective and the throttle, I had the controls alone the entire time.  So, I must be getting better.  I think.  maybe.... who knows...

I still think my instructor is using me in some sort of convoluted suicide/insurance scam thing.

What I've been up to.

So, the reason behind the whole contract trip from hell and missing all my friends in St. Louis is this.  I'm finally putting my money where my mouth is and getting my rotory pilots license.  My planning guess-timated that I'd need about $10,000 for my private, another 15k for my commercial and after that, basically chump change to add it to my ATP.

Why, no. It ain't cheap.

So, this week I started.  I'm driving about 90 miles one way to the flight school everyday and back.  Which is a royal pain in the ass, but I've driven longer for flight training before.  It works out to an extra 45 dollars a day in gas, but if I can find a hotel down there for that, I'll just commute once for the week from now on.

This is a bit complicated.  You see, I get 5 hard days off a month.  5 days when they can't call me and put me on a charter trip.  5 days when I don't have to be within 30 minutes of my airport. 5 days when they can't call me at 2 am to go to wherever ASAP. 5 days when I can have a beer without calling 3 people to get it okayed. So, I have to cram as much helicopter training as I can into those 5 days and then let the skills rot for a month till I can get the next 5 days off.  Anyone who's taking flying lessons can tell you, that isn't the best way to do it, but it's the way I'm stuck with.

Anyway, Monday.  First hour. Sort of a combination discovery flight, first lesson.  We went off and did the 4 basics of flying.  Climbs, turns, descents and straight and level.  All flying is basically some combination of those 4.  At least for fixed wing aircraft. We then went to a big wide empty field next to the runway and I proceeded to make myself airsick.  My instructor, great guy by the way, sets up a hover and then give me the pedals.  My only job is to maintain a heading.  Keep the nose pointed at a big white pole just outside of this acre and a half field that we're in the middle of.  Not too bad.  Then he gave me the collective, throttle and pedals.  Now, I'm supposed to maintain heading and height.  A little worse, but okay.  I'm only bouncing up and down maybe 10 ft. and swinging back and forth maybe 30 degrees. Then he says he's gonna take back the collective, throttle and pedals and he's gonna give me just the cyclic. At this point I KNOW this man is insane and suicidal.

Oh, by the way, before this he'd just say, "Okay, you take the pedals now and hold heading.", or, "Take the collective too now."

Now he's like, "Okay, the cyclic is yours in three... two... one..." Right about the time he got to 'two', he had me wondering what the hell I was in for.

The first time, for about the first 3 seconds everything was fine.  Then it went... wonky.  You see the rotor on a helicopter is about the only thing that's really flying, everything else is just hanging underneath like a pendulum. And that's exactly how it went after those three seconds. I was making too large a control inputs and the lag in the pendulum that is the 'airframe' of the helicopter just got worse and worse.  So, he'd take the controls back, re stabilize, or as I was referring to it at this point, performing his voodoo/black magic on the infernal machine, and then, "Okay, take the cyclic in three... two... (for the love of god, I want to live, NO) one..." and we do it all over again.  This goes on for a good half hour. At the end of which, I'm turning green, trying to get as much air to blow across my face as I can and concentrating on non-throwup-y thoughts. 

End of my first lesson.  Looking back, I suppose each time he gave me the controls, the grace period between fine and wonky got a little longer.

Second lesson. We immediately hop over to that field and he proceeds to give me the pedals, then the collective/throttle, the the bastard give me ALL of them. pedals, collective, throttle and cyclic. and I try to hover.  I will say I managed to hover... in a field a good acre and a half on a side.  Then he has me do set downs, pick ups to hover and pedal turns.  Again, I managed to stay inside that acre and a half.  And I didn't get airsick.  All in all a good day. But, I'm still thinking of reporting my instructor to the mental health people at the local hospital.  He needs to be on a 72 hour suicide watch at the very least.

Third lesson. We discuss some of the forces acting on the helicopter and the rotor. Different types of rotors and some other stuff out of the FAA's FAA-H-8083-21 Rotorcraft Flying Handbook.  Part of me is thinking he's trying to distract me from my impending doom.

Part of me is right.

Today, he gets the helicopter off of the trailer/pad and then gives me the controls and tells me to hover taxi over to the compass rose.  This is a 15 ft. circle with the cardinal compass points painted on it.  It's a way for airplanes to swing their compasses and make sure they're accurate.

I get it there in mostly a straight line and then we do pick ups, 120 degree pedal turns and let downs for 45 minutes. All while trying to stay inside this 15ft. circle.  He basically made me stay on the controls alone the entire time.

Honestly. I figured we'd go from an acre and a half field, to an acre to 3/4 of an acre... you know, work me down to something less than a football field in nice easy steps.  Nope.

And to be honest.  My hovering skills are getting better.  As long as I remember to keep my control inputs small, smooth, and relatively slow, I can hover inside a 15ft circle and within 3 to 5 ft. of the ground.  Then we went out and looked at power/collective settings for 60 kt cruise, 80 kt cruise, and climbs and descents at both air speeds as well.  Then did an approach back to the airport to a spot landing, then he hovered over to the trailer and end of lesson.  I still think he's suicidal and I'm pretty sure now that I can take the helicopter with me when I crash, rather than somehow killing myself as I walk up to the machine.

If the weather holds, I'll have 2 more lessons this week before it's back to work for me.

By the way, the place I'm training at, Vertical Aviation in Lebanon, OH, uses Enstrom F28's for training.  The big difference between Enstroms and the more common Robinsons or Hughes 300's is no governor.  You see, Robinsons and Hughes both have engine governors that keep the engine rpm's in the green for any given collective setting.  Not the Enstroms.  You change collective, you adjust throttle, and vice verse. You move the pedals, you adjust the throttle, you move the collective and vice verse.  You move the cyclic... well, you get the idea. So, I actually set out and made learning helicopters harder than I could have.

Yes, I'm kicking myself over that. No, I don't need your help there.

Actually, I did that on purpose. I figured if I can learn to fly helicopters without the governors. Actually manipulating 4 controls to fly rather than just 3, I should be a better pilot in the end.  At least that's my story and I'm sticking to it.

Anyway, so far, 3 hours of training, so good. Another 30 or 35 hours to go. I'll post updates as I fly. 

Oh, and as for the question, why am I learning to fly helicopters?  Well aside from the obvious coming zombie apocalypse.  It's just plain old fun.

A Day in the Life of a Charter Pilot, or Repo Wrap Up

Okay, finally found how to get the old interface back.  Yeah, blogger is free and you get what you pay for.  Remember when free software was unsupported and would stay the same, never changing.  Now, I guess free means, "lets fuck with it till it pisses everybody off."

Anyway, as promised, my contract trip wrap up.

First off, the plan was originally, this:
Get to India on Thursday, spend the day and night in the hotel and get an easy start around midday Friday.  There were 7 planned stops. Kolkata to Fujairah, then to Luxor, then Majorca, then Santa Maria, St. John's Bay, Green Bay, WI, and finally Grand Junction Co.  With planned overnights in Majorca with friends and good seafood, and possibly St. John's Bay to rest up after the crossing.  The ferry company, of course arranged handlers, factors, landing permissions, fuel contracts and everything in all these places before hand.  It was, as contracts go, an easy show up, fly the plane, go home situation. 5 days, Wednesday to Sunday. Easy.

But as many military commanders will tell you, a plan never survives contact with the enemy.  The enemy in this case is Bureaucracy, with a capital B.

First, it suddenly became a "DO IT NOW!" situation.  So, instead of mailing my Indian visa paperwork in to the consulate and getting them back 3 to 5 business days later by mail, I found myself on an airline to New York on Tuesday at OMG in the morning to hand walk them through the agency that India outsourced their Visa process to. I had done the online stuff then night before and had everything printed out and ready to go in a nice neat folder sitting by the door, so I wouldn't forget it in the morning. You see where this is going, don't you.

Okay, on a side note, seriously, India has outsourced it Visa application department to a company with 4 offices around the country in the US.  India is where WE outsource everything to! How recursive do we need to get?

I realize I've forgotten my all important paperwork and 2x2 passport sized photos in my nice neat folder by the door where I wouldn't forget it just after checking in at the ticket counter, but not before going through security theater.

I have an hour till the plane closes its doors and leaves.  My car is on the other side of the airport at the FBO where my plane is. (Hey, I park free there.)  So, I run back out to the White-zone-is-for-loading-and-unloading-only. Grab a cab, through the guy in there out, in a panicked voice explain to the driver that I have to get home and back to the airport in basically 20 minutes. We did it in 24.  I cleared security theater in 15 and I was NOT the last person on the airplane.  But not by a lot.

Seeing as how there were no guarantees that the visa would be issued, but it usually was, it was a fretful day, to say the least.  But at 5:30, they called my name and handed me back my passport with a freshly minted 6 month tourist visa to India.  Big BIG Kudos to the people who work at their NY office.  These guys and gals from the security guard at the street door to the process clerks to the managers made this process as smooth and painless as possible.  You guys RAWKED.

Then it's run back to the airport, grab a flight to Chicago, because that's where my Air India flight is leaving from on Wednesday.

End Day One.

Day Two starts with me meeting up with Vincent, the lead contractor on this ferry at the hotel.  We finish some paperwork, make sure everything is packed and hop the shuttle to the airport with plenty of time.  At which point I realize I've left my phone at the hotel.  No big deal.  We planned on 2 hours to clear Security Theater, so Vin gets off at the international terminal and I just ride the shuttle around back to the hotel and there's my phone at the front desk. 

Thank you thank you thank you.  You don't realize how much of your life is on your phone till you lose it.

I get back on the next shuttle to the airport and call Vin to tell him I have my phone and the day's panic is over.  At which point Vin tells me he's left his visa back at home in Kansas.  You see, his visa is in his OLD passport. He remembered his NEW passport.

Airlines will not let you one their airplane without a visa.  They're liable for HUGE fines and sundry if they do, not to mention the sundries that the foreign country has waiting for you.

No way around it, his visa will get to him no sooner than Thursday.  And since international flights tend to run once a day.  He won't be able to get to India before Friday.  We decide I'll go ahead and go over the airplane and books to make sure there isn't anything that will keep us from launching as soon as Vin gets there.  So, off I go.

I will not get into the flight.  Anybody who's flown internationally on any airline knows what it's like.  Everybody else just couldn't understand.

I land in Delhi around three-ish, India time, with an expected 7pm flight to Kolkata.  Of course the Kolkata flight is late, by 2 hours. And I should have known that was the norm, not the exception.

By the way, when and why did they change the name of Calcutta to Kolkata?

I meet my factor at the airport and he gets me to my hotel with no problems.  By the way, I have to send out electronic Kudos to Dipankar, my factor, Swissotel Kolkata and it's staff.  These guys made the stay as easy and painless as possible.  Are you getting that painless was becoming the goal of this trip?

Anyway, after much shuffling, hemming, hawing and a couple of sticky fingers I finally got a pass to get onto the airport to inspect the airplane, logbooks and paperwork.  Normally, India won't let crews onto the airport till 2 hours prior to flight.  This wasn't going to do, since I needed to be there early enough to get whatever passed for a maintenance facility to fix anything I found wrong.  They coughed up the pass about 4 pm local. Luckily, the maintenance guys were there till 5.

All this time, Vin is either flying to Delhi or waiting on his Kolkata connection.

The airplane was, with some minor and one major exception, immaculate.  I got in contact with the old captain on the plane. (He's in Florida now) and He explained why that was.  Basically, he wouldn't let anyone in Kolkata touch the thing. All maintenance was done at Bombardier's facility in Delhi by factory mechanics and engineers. H'Ray for first world maintenance!  The minor exceptions were your basic electronic ghosts and all airplanes seem to have, they were know, were trying to be traced and weren't going to keep the airplane from flying.

Ah, but the major exception...

You see, this was a repossession on a Lr-40XR.  And we were told that the XR models all had the larger fuel tanks.  The original 40's had a max fuel load of 5375lbs.  This is enough for 3 and a half hours with reserve.  An option for a larger 6060lb fuel tank was introduced with the BR models.  This works out to a 4.5 hour range with reserve.  And we'd done all our leg calculations with that 4.5 hour range in mind.  But, whoever originally spec'd this airplane out must have thought that 3.5 hours will get you anywhere in India comfortably.  There's no need for a larger tank.  That sound you hear was the original plan finally dying.

Even climbing as high as possible and using most economical long range cruise there were gonna be at least 3 legs of the original plan that would have required an hour of glider time. Jets suck as gliders.  I mean they're better than a backpack with an anvil, just ask Wiley E. Coyote.  But still.

So, where are we? Oh yeah, the airplane doesn't have the range, Vin is stuck in Delhi waiting on a flight that's gonna be at least 2 hours late, our overflight clearances are all for Friday and we're rapidly running out of Fridayness.

I do what I can.  I make sure the airplane is fueled. I play loose and fast with Friday and get our flight plans pushed back to 23:55 India time. (Still technically Friday). And I get power on the plane and make sure all the lights light and bells bell and whistles whistle.  Gotta love glass cockpits. I also get as much of the bribery as I can out of the way with what money Vin gave me for that.  The rest will just have to wait for Vin, who gets into Kolkata at 23:30.

I think we finally took off at 1954Z, that's 0124 local. India is +5.5 hour from GMT.  Right?

Now the hard part.  You see the first of those hour glider legs was this first one to Fujairah, UAE. We are not gonna do it.  Scratch scratch, mumble mumble, shuffle shuffle and we decide that as soon as we clear Indian airspace we're gonna call and make a technical stop in Karachi, Pakistan.

Of course we haven't arranged prior permission to do so.  But hey, it's a technical stop.  That's like a Get Out of Jail Free card, isn't it? Right? Guys?!?

We land, they have us follow the follow-me jeep to an appropriately remote and foreboding customs pad and they drop off a guard and take Vin to the airport authorities to arrange fuel and clearances to continue.

The guard was a good guy.  He has very little English, and I have absolutely no Farsi or Arabic or Urdu (thank you google).  So, we discussed the philosophical import of the current global climate orbiting around the international impact of the information super highway and way to improve X25 packet transmissions.

Seriously, we talked families and life.

Aside from a 15 minute period where he went off to do his morning prayers, we hung out at the airplane and watched the sun finally rise.  And yes, he is Muslim and no, he wasn't trying to blow me up or chop my head off.  Which sort of lends credence to all Muslims are not fanatic jihadist theories.

Fuel arrived after a while and Vin came back a while after that.  Our middle eastern handlers in UAE finally contacted someone in Pakistan to act as our factor and all the necessary paperwork was fill out, stamped, folded, spindled and mutilated.

We landed in Karachi at 2312Z and finally took off at 0202Z.  By the by, we landed there after a 3 hour and 17  minute flight with 1200lbs of fuel left on board.  That's 45 minutes of fuel if you squint just right, but not too hard.

Karachi to Fujairah was easy, 1 hour 45 minutes.  Refuel, barely on the ground an hour and off again to Luxor. 

By this point we KNOW we won't make our original fuel stops so we've rerouted from Luxor to Crete to Luxembourg to Keflavik to Goose Bay, then back on plan.

Fujairah to Luxor is a 3:31 flight, Luxor to Crete is 2:10, Crete to Luxembourg is 3:02. We finally landed in Luxembourg at 1537Z which I think was 5:37pm local.  I think Lux is +2, but it might be +1.  It's all sort of fuzzy at this point.  We crawl to the hotel, shower, change, get to the bar for a beer or two and then bed.  I was spent, and I'd burned through 5 of my 6, 5 hour energy shots.  I remember thinking as my head hit the pillow, "I wonder if I'll be abzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz"

By they way, all this westward flying meant we were actually sort of making our days longer.  Aside from the first leg, all the flying was done in daylight.  And we ended up with a 28 hour Saturday.

Sunday was supposed to be painless.

We took off from Lux at 0558Z, which I think is either 7am or 8am. local.  Three hours, nineteen minutes later we landed at Keflavik, Iceland 20 minutes after we took off, local time. Quick hour on the ground and 3:16 to Goose Bay, Canada.  At which point we find out that whoever was supposed to arrange Customs at Green Bay and forgot to make the phone call and we weren't gonna be able to fly into the US.  We make some frantic phone calls and on a SUNDAY, customs get someone to Bangor, ME for us with literally zero notice. 

Yes, I am impressed.

No big deal, instead of Green Bay, we clear in Bangor. Hour and a half flight to Bangor, Custom guy inspects us, and our paperwork with a Geiger Counter, I swear to ghu, and 2 hours later were in the US flying to Akron, OH for fuel and then Grand Junction, CO. 1:44 to Akron, 3:17 to Grand Junction.  We landed in Grand Junction 10 minutes late.  From the ORIGINAL plan.  We'd said we'd get the airplane there by 5:30 Sunday, that was with 3 days to fly and 5 days total road days.  Instead, we had 2 days to fly and we still did it.  We got into Grand Junction at 2339Z which is 5:39pm local.  Of course we were zombified.

The hardest part of the entire trip was Monday's airlining back to home. 3 legs, 2 hubs and 12 hours in airports.  I really hate airlines.

Here are some pics snapped from my crappy phone camera:

This is all I saw of Dehli, India

The airplane and our handler in Fujairah, UAE.

These next two are the glaciers in Iceland.  I think we were either at 47,000 ft. or 51,000 ft.

This is on approach in to Keflavik. The Bahamas of Iceland.

Goose Bay.  That's just a pile of snow behind the FBO there.  Did I mention that this was mid-April?

Finally, the airplane on the ramp in Grand Junction.

And the view out my window at the hotel in Grand Junction.  Seriously, I could live there.  Love the country, nice folks, no oxygen though.

And that's all I have to say about that.

A Day in the Life of and Nothing is Going Right.

So....

Turns out the airplane doesn't have the long range tanks that we thought it did.   Which mean that half the planned legs were about 60 minutes too long.  Which wouldn't be a problem, except for the whole glider that used to be a jet thing.

The original plan became, Kolkata to Karachi, Pakistan. 3 hours clearing all the paperwork there, then flying on to Fajairah, an hour there. Then Luxor, Egypt.  Then Crete, and finally Luxembourg.  Worked out to about a dozen hours of flying and nearly 36 hours awake.  The weird bit is, since we were moving westward as fast as we could, Saturday April 14th, 2012 has lasted nearly 30 hours.

Tomorrow should see us and the airplane back in the states and over to the inspector for inspections, paint and repair.

So much fun, so little time.

Other things that have gone wrong with this trip.
I nearly lost my iPhone twice now.
The guy I'm flying the plane back lost his Indian Visa and ended up a day behind me.
Just about every airport we've stopped in has tried to delay us or throw us in jail.
Route clearances aren't, fuel releases haven't.
The winds have conspired against us to ensure the worst possible head winds
And tomorrow we go trans-Atlantic!

My eyes are so tired, the double images I'm seeing hurt.

A Day in the Life of a Charter Pilot.

It's a pretty common title I use for these posts, I know.  But, it fits and it implies a little bit of the resignation to this life and the excitement too.

Today, I'm in Kolkata.  Formerly know as Calcutta. In India.  And when and why did they change the name anyway?  Kolkata used to be Calcutta. Mumbai used to be Bombay.  Which reminds me is Bombay Gin now Mumbai Gin?

I got in late yesterday after nearly 26 hours in airports.  I hate airlines, but it was that or several weeks on a boat.  Anyway, got in really late, like close to midnight, India time. We're picking up a Lr-40 and flying it back to the states.  It's a 4 year old Lr-40XR that's lease has run out here.

So, we fly it back. 

We were going to take the eastward route through Taiwan, Japan, Siberia, Alaska and down, but China wouldn't give us overflight privileges out of Taiwan, so it's the westward route for us. I was really hoping to circle the globe on this contract, but instead I get half way around and turn around and fly the same half back.

Right now, we're planning on Kolkata to Fujairah to Luxor to Majorca to Santa Maria to St. John's Bay to the states, but we may take the northern route across the Atlantic through Shannon and Reykjavik.  We'll see what the jet stream is doing first.  We're also picking routes to avoid airspaces like Iran's and as much of the more turbulent parts of the middle east as possible.

All this means that I'm going to miss all my friends in St,. Louis.  I really wish I could've been there to see everyone, but these days making money has to take priority. Y'all have fun this weekend and I'll be thinking of y'all.

A Banner Day

As some of you might know, and more of you may have guessed, flying charter is really just a sort of taxi service. 99.9% of the passengers are your basic mix of humanity.  No worse or better than everyone else out there.  No one really any more memorable than the last.

It's that 0.1% that make my day.

Today gave me one of those memorable personages.  No, it's wasn't a TV or movie star.  I haven't flown one yet who'd I'd consider of the caliber of Cary Grant or Jimmy Stewart or Humphrey Bogart.  And these people who are famous for being famous just baffle me.  But they seem to be able to support those half hour "entertainment" shows, so who am I to understand it.

Today, I flew a man that personally had a hand in a large chunk of the major political decisions of the US from the 60's through to today. 

Today I flew a man that escaped Nazi Germany with his parents only to serve in the Army from the Battle of the Bulge through to hunting down Nazi's in post WW2 Germany.

Today I flew a man that opened up China, defined détente. and was a proponent of Realpolitik.

Today I flew the man that was the National Security Advisor under Nixon and the Chief of Staff under Nixon and Ford.

Yes, he's a controversial figure. Yes, many may disagree with his decisions and recommendations while in the White House. 

But you have to acknowledge that this man has had a major affect on countries and the lives of people all over the planet. Not many people, even those in DC currently, can say that.

Life of a charter pilot...

(Yes, I know that title gets used a lot in my blog.)

My day.
Times in Eastern.

1:30 am.  Phone call from dispatch, possible ASAP pop up air ambulance trip.  Will know for sure by 3 am. Will call by then.  Just go back to sleep.

Yeah, right....

3:30-3:45 am.  Finally fall back asleep.  No phone call.

7:30  ASAP pop up trip, Home to Dayton, pick up, Peoria IL, drop. Come home. Promise you'll be back by 1:30.

Yeah, right.
Times in Central. from here on.

10:30  Land in Peoria, see passenger off.  Get call from dispatch.  Wait there to see if they can sell the airplane on a trip headed back towards home.  Will call one way or another in 2 hours.  This I foresaw.

Yeah, 2 hours, right.

2 pm. Call Dispatch, Ask why they haven't called.  Told to wait while they make a call to see what's going on.

2:30 Call Dispatch.  Told we could have launched for home "anytime".  Pay FBO for forehead shaped hole in wall.

106 knot tail wind, shaves 15 minutes off of flight.

Times back in Eastern.

4:15 pm.  Land back home.  tremors from caffeine make filling out logs... difficult...

5:15 Clear airport finally, Airplane cleaned, restocked, reset, Paperwork filled, filed and mutilated.

How was your day?

Life of a Charter Pilot....

Or, Thems the ways it goes...

So, the day after New Years, we're on a trip that takes us from home base, to Music City, to City of the Rising Dead Bird, then south of the border, WAY south, to Honduras, sit for a while and then bring them back.  Supposed to have been 8 days on the road, most of that outside of the US.

Except

We were flying the airplane into Music City tonight, the night before, so we could be ready for an early launch tomorrow.  And as we're descending into the approach we get a lovely CAS (caution and advisory system) message announcing the right engine chip detector has... detected.  Great.  It's a white message in the air, as opposed to amber or red, only because there's not a blasted thing we can do about it while we're flying.

Of course as soon as we touch down it goes all amber and chimes at us.

Now, rather than racking up nearly 15 hours of flight pay, we're possibly losing this trip and stuck here.

Dammit, I'm trying to bank enough in flight pay each month to pick up my rotary rating by the end of the summer.

And with that I'm done whining.

Too much.

Okay, Sotomayor, "Pro-life" nutjob murders doc in KS, what looks to be a 4 way war over who will be the rabid drooling GOP spokesman-of-doom for the dailykos'ers to rail over, the strange corelation of Clinton supporters and closings of GM dealerships. There's a lot going on out there. What got me this week was....

are you ready?....

The big 0 and his wife going to dinner and a play.

What?, you say.

Well, let's think about this. After the 0 accidentally the whole economy, he's done what?

Flown a pizza maker and his partner by private jet to meet him in a third city to make around 10-15 pies for him and his staff.

Completely freaked out 80% of the city of New York because the pic of Airforce One flying over Mt. Rushmore wasn't to his liking. You know Mt. Rushmore. That's the sculpture that has a bust of the other famous president from IL. (That may have been a sly move to bolster the psychiatric and psychological practices in the city.)

In his defense, he did scrap the proposed replacement to Marine One. That's the presidential helicopter. That'll save a couple of million... I'd hope.

No, this time the President took Airforce One and went to JFK airport so he and his wife could enjoy a nice 4 star dinner and then catch a play.

(No I will not make a crack about the Ford Theater here.)

In case none of you got that, he flew into JFK. One of the busiest airports in the country. Also a major hub for international flights to Europe. So, standard security practice says that they shut down the airspace around the airport during the approach and arrival as well as departure of the big blue bird. Let's say they did it for the minimum I've ever seen. That would be 15 minutes PRIOR to the start of the arrival and would extend to 15 minutes after departure. Let's assume that JFK is like the other top 20 busiest airports and does an arrival every 2 minutes or so with departures in between. Okay, quick math, 30 minutes plus the let's call it 15 for the arrival, plus another 6 for the approach, plus a quick 5 for departure. That's roughly an hour of time that flights can't use the airport. That means just for the time Airforce One is in the area no less than 30 large jets had to be diverted or hold. Plus while the Prez. is on the property no one is allowed outside. Basically the people on the airport are on lock down. So, no planes are getting serviced. Thus no airplanes are departing. Just thinking about the jet fuel burned at 6 bucks a gallon by holding jumbo jets gets pricey. Stay classy 0.

And the fact that JFK is in the densest Class B airspace in the nation with no less than JFK, La Guardia, Tetterboro, Newark, Farmingday and Linden inside the standard 30 mile prohibited zone that goes up around an airport with Airforce One flying into it. That's 6 airports serving international, commercial, cargo, charter, corporate and general aviation that have operations disrupted because the 0 has been working so hard and wants a break. Spending 3 trillion in only 100 days is rough folks. Let me tell you.

Then let's factor in the cost of Airforce One, and the C-5 that goes with it (someone has to carry the bullet proof Suburbans), plus the chartered jet carrying all the press.

And thats just the tip of the iceberg. There were vettings and security sweeps going on for days before the actual trip. Plus, the great pumpkin know what else.

It's no surprise that the White House press secretary doesn't want to say how much the cost of the 0's little jaunt cost... well, us really. It's taxpayer's money after all. I mean, the 0 wouldn't never dream of taking money out of HIS pocket for anything. They're too deep into ours anyway.

And the press secretary's little comment that the 0 would have loved to have taken a commercial shuttle. Well, I'm pretty sure he was told in no uncertain terms that something like that would never happen while he was in office back in January. And, my personal opinion, he probably never even had that thought cross anywhere near his mind.

Again, opinion here, I wouldn't be surprised if the cost of his date didn't run well into the 6 or 7 figures. But hey, that's not even a drop in the bucket of the trillions (that's millions with a 't') he's spending on his supporters, oops I mean, economic stimulus.

Dinner and a play. It's the little things, really.

A Night in the Day in the Life of a Charter Pilot.

Okay, fun day Saturday. Saturday night/Sunday morning... not so much.

But first let me give you a basic lesson in meteorology. And believe me, any lessons from me will be about as basic as you get.

The life cycle of a thunderstorm, as we pilots learn, can be characterized into 3 stages. (This comes from AC 00-6A rev.1975)


LIFE CYCLE
A thunderstorm cell during its life cycle progresses through three stages - (1) the cumulus, (2) the mature, and (3) the dissipating.

The key feature of the cumulus stage is an updraft. The updraft varies in strength and extends from very near the surface to the cloud top. Growth rate of the cloud may exceed 3,000 feet per minute.

Precipitation beginning to fall from the cloud base is your signal that a downdraft has developed and a cell has entered the mature stage. Meanwhile, updrafts reach a maximum with speeds possibly exceeding 6,000 feet per minute. Updrafts and down drafts in close proximity create strong vertical shear and a very turbulent environment. All thunderstorm hazards reach their greatest intensity during the mature stage.

Downdrafts characterize the dissipating stage of the thunderstorm cell and the storm dies rapidly.

What, you may ask, does this have to do with my flight Saturday night? Well, let me tell you about my day.

Saturday started pretty early. I'd promised a friend that I would help him set up a table at the gun show and help out where I could. The gun show was fun and I got home around 6:30. I'd barely gotten seated to eat dinner when the phone call happened. Ah, the dreaded phone call. There's a pop up trip to Tampa Bay.

On a side note. When the weather is as bad as it was in Texas this last weekend, you can bet we'll get pop up trips. You see, the airlines won't be able to get in somewhere because the weather is too bad and the people who get bumped from the flight will invariably call the charter outfits to get them where they want to go. Because when the weather is so bad that a jumbo jet can't get through them, the much smaller corporate jets will... Umm, you see it's like this. A massive thunderstorm will take a larger passenger jet and really shake it up, so to speak, but a jet that's only a 10th the size of an airliner when it penetrates the storm will.... Okay, think about it this way. The turbulence in a large thunderstorm that's producing tornadoes will affect a small relatively light corporate jet differently than a larger airliner because... the small jet is safer because...

Yeah, I don't get it either. People, listen carefully. If the airlines can't make it somewhere because of the weather. There's a VERY good reason they can't. I can guaren-damn-tee you that that corporate jet is no safer. Some charter outfits will take your money and the loss of the airplane, the crew, you and your loved ones are just the price of doing business. Yes, it can be that cynical and cold with some of the outfits out there.

Anyway, we load up the guy, his wife and kids and plot a route that looks to be the safest and away we go.

We'd filed for 41,000 ft and we were slowly clawing our way up there. At about 39,000 ft, that's about 7 and a half miles straight up, we hit one of those updrafts I mentioned above. The vertical speed indicator shoots through 6000 ft/min and hits the peg. We blast through our assigned altitude and through the next thousand feet. We topped the updraft, or flew through it, around 42,500 feet and then the downdraft took over. We got sucked back down to under 40,000 feet with us doing everything we could to NOT get sucked into the thunderstorm proper. Ignitors on, throttles to max temp... We get 5 minutes of max temp before "bad" things happen to the engines, or at least that's what the engine manufacturer says. We get a block altitude of 39,000 to 43,000 feet and got our airspeed under control and continued on.

You see, we're experienced Lear pilots and we weren't scared at all. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

Oh, and 43,000 feet wasn't enough to get over the storms. It was just all that plane could do.

The rest of the trip was... uneventful. Till we got back from Tampa and had to descend through that shit again.

Fun times... fun times.

And I finally hit my pillow just after 5am.

A Weekend (sort of) in A Day in the Life of a Charter Pilot.

So I made it back, through (around rather) the storms last night to actually sleep in my own bed.

My weekend in sunny west coast climes was replaced with a totally different weekend jaunting around Wisconsin.

We were alerted at the last minute, that due to a mechanical issue we'd be winging a well known celebrity to his concert dates in the great state of cheese and beer. When I got that call all it meant to me was a lot of back of the clock flying. Goodbye circadian rhythm.

Looking at the trip sheet though. It struck me that we actually had a block of time sitting in the home town of Lavern & Shirley. By block of time I mean roughly 30 hours. Hey, that's an eternity when you're flying charter.

And what would two enterprising men of legal age do with said time in said city? Right in one. We toured breweries. Yes, plural. First we went to the brewery where the "champagne of beers" is made and took their free tour with free beer at the end. And you can't beat free, let me tell you. Even if it was only 3 samples. I'm not an American Style Lager fan. Cold and tasteless is not a beer flavor, it's an abomination. But having said that, Leinenkugel's Sunset Wheat was a nice little fruity quaff. The amount of beer produced in that one place and the size of the warehouse (5 football fields) and how quickly it's filled and emptied (basically every 24 hours) really qualifies this place as a factory more than a brewery. But the tour was fun, the tour guide was cute and the beer was free.

On a side note, all through the tour and around the factory walls were US flags and signs thanking our servicemen. My friend pointed out that our company, with all of it's DOD contracts doesn't have one even tiny flag in any of it's hangers or offices. It spoke volumes about that type of people I work for. This brewery thought enough of our countrymen to show it's colors even though it's product can't go into the countries that our servicemen do. And my company, that's turning profits off of the very same institutions and people couldn't care less.

But enough soapboxing.

After that tour we drove a few miles down to the river and checked in at Lakefront Brewery for their tour/fish fry. Every Friday they have one. The price is good, 11 bucks gets you the tour and a 5 dollar off coupon for the fish fry.

The difference between Big Giant Beer Factory and these guys was amazing. Hand crafting instead of machine driven. Fermentation kegs named Moe, Larry and Curly (complete with portraits) instead of "Fermentation Vat #12"

First off, we were about an hour and a half early for the tour. The guy setting up the kegs in the beer tent said if we wanted to wait he'd be down to sell tickets about a half hour before the tour and here's a couple of cups, just be kind and tip and feel free to pour as much as you want taste test the ones he had on tap. And off he went. Being the conscientious men of good moral character that we were, we proceeded to tip heavily. In retrospect, I think that guy was one of the higher ups in the company, like owner. Anyway, after have a couple of very nice beers, an IPA, a stoutish type and a cherry one. The guy we were drinking with stood up and announced the tour would be commencing. You got to love a job where the REQUIREMENT is to drink.

Turns out he is one of the master brewers there. The tour consisted of 4 stops, all on the brewery floor. The first two were a quick primer on beer brewing and it's history. The last stop showed the bottling and kegging process. Is kegging a word? The third stop was, of course, another taste testing station. Because the buzz would have harshed if we'd gone the whole 30 minutes without a drink.

While the guy was no where near as good eye candy as the other tour guide, he was a whole lot funnier. While describing the kegging process he told us a story that became the battle cry for the night.

You see, there's a hole in kegs where they pour the beer in, and this hole is called, I kid you not, the bung hole. And after filling, the bung hole is stoppered with a bung. A sort of birch wood cork. Birch wood is used because it absorbs moisture and swells up better sealing the bung hole. Just regular birch, not old growth or anything like that. Well, one tour he had happened to have a very activist, very green lady on it and she asked what type of wood was used. He, being the good brewery tour guide he was, was none too sober and told her it was made out of the rare old growth bung wood. And sure enough, come Monday morning, he gets a call from the company president asking why there were eco-protester marching outside the brewery? And why were they screaming to save the Bung Tree? And for the rest of the night the toast rose up, Save the Bung Tree!

Trust me, it's funnier after a couple of beers.

And, for the record, Breweries are some of the greenest industries around. Everything is recycled or reused. From the used grains being dried and sold to local farms as feed, to the excess heat being sold back to the electric companies as power. It don't get much greener. If you care about stuff like that.

There's a reason I prefer micro-breweries products to Great Big Beer Factory. If you're ever in the land of beer and cheese get yourself a six pack of Lakefront's beers and try them. You will not be disappointed.

The fish fry was great. Some of the best fried fresh water fish I've had in a long time and they even had an oompah band playing. Folk's, it couldn't get much better than that.

It was a good day.

A Day in the Liffe of a Charter Pilot

Another trip has come and gone. This time we airlined out to the northwest coast yesterday to meet the airplane and finish a trip that ran over the 14 hour limit.

On the plus side we got to go to the Nike Employee Store and pick up a plethora of swooshed stuff at minimal cost. It was good.

On a side note, my butt is only good for about 3 hours in the cockpit. I'm just sayin.

You would not believe what a corporate hanger looks like. I mean all we needed was a choir singing praises to make the image complete.

That was fun.

"Quick" out and back tonight. Well, this afternoon and tonight. That's max duty day for those who care. Took off from home just after a Level 3/4-ish storm rolled through. Which was neat, in a hang on to your seat sort of way. Then climbed to FL410 (41,000 ft.) and skimmed across the tops of the storms all the way to Florida. Then a quick hop across the state, west to east, and turned as fast as possible to get home before the snow and ice got here. Of course the storms had built in the intervening hours and we clawed our way up to FL430 and still didn't clear the tops. Lots of electrical activity. Which is pilot speak for a fuck load of lighting all around us. The flight back was pretty much bouncing off the tops of one line of thunderstorms after another. I think we crossed 4 lines on the way back. With a descent into some moderate stuff as we got home. F-f-f-fun. And I was worried I'd have trouble staying awake on the leg back.

Light Blogging ahead.

Expect light bloggging for the next few days. I'm just getting back from an overnight. (It's 3:15 am) I'm out on 2 two day trips back to back. Then I'm off to chase a plane to who knows where for up to 8 days. Fun, fun, fun.

On a side note. I've noticed that I'm blogging more and more about politics and what the cerebrally challenged in D.C. are doing and less and less about flying and shooting. So, I'm going to try to flip that around. As stupid as some of our representatives-in-name-only can be, I'll let that be blogged by better writers than I. Which pretty much means everybody I read.

We'll see how long I last.