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.

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....

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.

Uzi Money

Here's what happened today. And just to head off the wild rumors, no I did not buy an uzi.

The traffic leaving the airport is always bad. I mean an hour to get 1/2 a mile bad. So, we decided to try going the opposite direction and see if it was any quicker. (In crash investigations, this is referred to as link one in the chain that led to the badness).

It looked like a fairly easy navigation (for Luanda) problem. Basically 3 roads, all listed in yellow on the maps. (That means they're 4 lanes, divided, PAVED and at least marginally free of the pot holes that swallow elephants.) Link 2.

Somewhere before we even got to the second road, we got lost. I mean we probably took the wrong exit out of one of the roundabouts. Link 3. The road very quickly stopped being 4 lanes, stopped being divided. Hell, stopped being paved, and don't even ask about the pot holes.

We found ourselves driving through that unique style of shanty town that is 75% of Luanda. It was a rough neighborhood. So we stopped using any sort of map and just kept prominent landmarks at the same relative bearing to us and followed were most of the traffic was heading. Hey, they've got to be going "out of here" eventually. Link 4.

About half an hour after starting this bounce between ruts and pot holes we come upon a traffic jam. Only about a dozen cars bottle necked at an "intersection". We don't know if someone hit someone, a car broke down or what. But there are cops on the scene. Not a good thing in this country. There is no "To Protect and To Serve" motto on the police cars here. If the cops are here, someone's getting beaten, thrown in jail, sent away, or any combination of the three that the cops take a whim to.

After about 15 minutes, (no time at all in Luanda) the traffic starts moving again. Right past the cops. Now, we're two white guys, in civvies, in a part of town that two white guys in a Hyundai Getz should NOT be in. The traffic snakes it way past the cops and the bigger meaner of the two takes that chance to cut in front of us to get across the dirt rut that's the road. Johnny is sitting next to me saying, "Just go, JUST GO" out of the side of his mouth and I'm doing my damnedest to not look the cop in the eyes while mentally levitating all the other obstacles out of my way. Just as the cop gets to the other side of our car, he looks in, sees said white guys and the following flashes across his face.

1. Surprise, because hell, two white guys here, just ain’t possible.


2. Anger, what the fuck are two white guys doing here!


3. And whatever someone’s face looks like when they realize they’re about to get to beat two white guys in a part of town that they ain’t supposed to be.

At which point I gunned the engine and moved with alacrity away from the scene.

Pucker factor, about 6.5 Cops carry uzi’s here, or AK’s if they’re feeling bad.

People back in the states laughed when I told them that I keep a bunch of hundred dollar bills in my wallet as “Uzi Money”. (No, I’m not gonna tell you exactly how much, but there are more than 3 figures to the left of the decimal point.) When someone sticks an uzi in my face on this continent I’m gonna shove hundreds at him till he goes away. That is what uzi money is.

Observations.

In a surprising hollywood got it right moment.

Women here actually do carry everything in baskets balanced on their heads. I read somewhere they can carry up to 10 times their own body weight.

Here we are.

Or me rather. I'm sitting in a hotel in Luanda, Angola now. Waiting to hear from the new job. My thoughts on Africa so far. South Africa was a strange mish mash of England, America and something all their own. But that may be because I was in a casino for the 4 days I was there. Angola is seriously under construction. There are buildings going up everywhere. Most of the money appears to be coming from China. At least that's what all the electronics and other machines are labeled in. Someone told me that China put 5 billion into Angola last year alone. But that's not surprising when you consider how much untapped resources Angola has. If I were a country bent on massive development like China, I'd put a lock on all the resources I could for at least the next 25-50 years. Oil, minerals, diamonds, Angola has it all.

Talking with the other pilot I came over with, the dollar is crashing bad against all foreign currency. Not surprising, given the way they've been treating the printing presses back home.

One thing that struck me as I came in were all the crashed Migs that were still scattered around the airport and I'm told there are still hulks of tanks left over from the war with South Africa down south in Angola. I'm told there was a very large tank battle in Angola. I'll have to do the research on that and read up on it.

Ripples in a pond.

Yesterday, evening to be more specific, after the place I work at closed, the owner took his own life.

He suffocated himself in his car behind one of the 100m carbine bays.

No one can make sense of what happened. I suspect that no one will.

We gathered today to discuss what happened and what little facts were available.

It is not for me to make judgements or conjecture about the act or the reasons behind it. My thoughts and prayers go out to those he left behind, both at home and at work.

Offpilot

is off.

There's a park southeast of me that I want to check out. It has a nice hiking loop.

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 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.

Off week

Off pilot is off!

Weehee!

I'm Home!

Sort of.

The checkride went smoothly. Really, during the checkride, the guy flying has it easy. It's the guy sitting right seat that has it hard. Checklists were flying everywhere. Anyway, it went without a hitch. That came after we climbed out of the sim. My little day trip tomorrow morphed into a 6 day trip. So, by next thursday I'll have spent 12 of the last 12 days on the road. Our boss being the giving soul that he is has decreed that recurrent doesn't count as road time. Because, you know the whole away from home in a hotel flying everyday after sitting in a classroom all morning really isn't flying because... umm...

Like I said he's a giving soul. He has no problem giving away our time. Company policy is anything over 16 days on the road per month is considered 'overtime', and we get a little stipend for it. And before you see dollar signs cha-ching before your eyes, it's little. By not counting recurrent time, he gets an extra week out of us. It's a win/____ situation. But enought griping. I've got to finish laundry, get my uniforms ironed and repack.

T-t-t-t-training Day Four.

Actually, day last. The only thing left for us is the checkride tomorrow morning. In class today we finished up all the other systems we hadn't covered in the last 3 days. Things like Ice & Rain Protection, Oxygen, Landing Gear, Drag Chute, Hydraulics. Then we had the mandatory test of everything we've covered over the last four days. Multiple choice, open book, but still a test all the same.

Sim was sort of the same thing. We covered the last bits of our training syllabus; Emergency Descents, Fuel Emergencies, Overspeed, Evacuation, Inadvertent Thrust Reverser Deployment, Fire and the Circle-to-Land approach.

Don't blink, a circle to land approach at night, in bad weather will kill you deader than shit if you're not on the ball. And having a thrust reverser hanging out when your trying to fly, well, think of it as one engine pushing you forward and the other pushing in the opposite direction. Fun.

My instructor continued to be the magnificent sadist. I had a fuel pressure warning light come on AS I'm blasting through 25,000 ft. It would sort of be like trying to suck a can of pop through a straw from 2 stories up. A failed engine inside the final approach fix on a precision approach. Yes, I know it's called the outer marker, but we're not all pilots reading this, are we. Not one, not two, but 3 reverser deploys are various phases of flight. The worst being just micro seconds after starting my rotation on take off. Try maintaining directional control when everything goes wonky like that in a transitory phase. What else... Oh yeah, I had a runaway engine followed by the other engine catching on fire on an ILS set to 1800 RVR. "Let it burn, it's the only thing that's get us to the runway." But say it calmly. It's a nasty situation. We train to pull a burning engine. But if you've already shut the other one down.... You have to think BEFORE you react to the pretty flashing red lights.

Like I said tomorrow is the checkride, then I get to drive several hours home, repack and catch a plane up to pick up another one coming out of maintenance the next day. Because you know, getting some time off after a recurrent pressure cooker is really ridiculous.

T-t-t-t-training Day Three.

More of the same. Classroom was Fuel Systems (What's that smell?), Powerplant (What's that noise?), Fire Protection (What's that smoke?), Pneumatics and Air Conditioning (What's that stench?), and Pressurization (What's that Payne Stewart thing?). All pretty interesting in a new and interesting way to die sort of way.

Oh, and air conditioning isn't about blowing cold air on a hot August afternoon. You see (you can take a nap now) we tap air for pressurization off the engines. We tap it after the turbines but before the combustion chamber. Big deal you say. Well, physics being what it is and gas laws being the way they are, we're tapping air that's either 350-ish (degrees F) or close to 800 F. That's just from compressing the air from ambient. There's not fire going on yet. Well, even with losses in the system, we'd be pouring 130-150 F air into the cabin if we didn't run it through a heat exchange systems first. Thus we condition the air. See, Bob's your uncle.

The sim was a fun day. We did hot and heavy. Which is fun if you're on a date with someone of non-traditional ethics, but not so much when you're watching the end of a runway rolling up way too quickly. We sat down first, figured out the numbers to give us a V1 cut that was 40 feet shorter than the runway we were using and believe me, they got those performance numbers right. Then it was engine outs on takeoff, runaway trim , jammed stabilator (or I don't need to do arms in the gym today), hydraulics failure, no flap landing (which follows nicely from the hydraulics failure), wind shear and then a right seat pattern. And the sadist that is my sim instructor failed an engine on me in the right seat. Thanks for the warning, buddy.

No seriously, we've got one of the better instructors and surprising us with odd stuff like that makes me respect him even more.

On the other hand, the new sim schedules with shorter periods means we don't have any extra time in any of the sessions anymore. It used to be if you were on the ball and worked through the scheduled stuff you could do stuff you wanted to work on with any of the extra time. Stuff like what wind shear looks like on takeoff, what a lightning strike does, asymmetric flap or spoileron deployments, or how we would've fared in the USAir Hudson landing in the jet we're flying. Stuff that might not be on the company or feds lesson plan, but we individual pilots either worry about or would like to try. Yes, some of us ask to fly under the bridges at St. Louis, but really, where's the benefit to training there. Just a gripe on my part. I might mention it on the course critique. And these guys take those critique comments seriously. These guys do a helluva job as it is. I don't want to belittle that at all.

T-t-t-t-training Day Two.

Okay. I'm definitely getting more tired. Today was more classroom and sim. We finished up flight controls. Mostly the secondary flight controls, CRM, Electrical, Flight Planning and Performance, and Weight and Balance.

CRM (cockpit resource management) is funny, depressing or frightening. Depending on what your company is like. For me it's depressing.

Electrical is just a nightmare. The old story goes that Mr. Lear, being an electrical engineer, loved to go in and rewire the airplanes to meet any customer request. The end being that electrical diagrams are almost literally individual per serial number. Yeah, I get headaches too.

The sim was more of the same. 600 RVR taxi and takeoff, V1 cuts, air restart, DME Arc to a Localizer Back Course followed by a miss and hold, then a VOR or NDB approach, and then a raw data ILS. And no autopilot today. Weee?

Are ya bored silly yet?

T-t-t-t-training Day One.

Same old, same old. Basic housekeeping paperwork, Intro and Rules, then Limitations (Hey, I don't think the airplane does what you think it does...), Avionics (There are 4 different RVSM kits available for the airplane. How many do of them do you have in your fleet? Five.) and Flight Controls (H'Ray cables and pulleys). Forty Five minutes for lunch then into the sim for: Start Malfunctions, Taxi, Noise Abatement, Air Work (Steep Turns, Stalls, Slow Flight, and Dutch Rolls) Just in case you were wondering, that's not were some little blonde kid with his finger in a dyke mugs you at knife point. A precision approach coupled with the autopilot to low mins, missed approach and a engine failure in flight followed by a single engine approach to landing. All in an hour and a half. Yeah, I'm tired. I've said this before. It's like trying to fill a dixie cup with a fire hydrant.

T-t-t-t-training.

I'm up in recurrent training for the week. Early days and long ones. Well not so long actually. They revamped the sim sessions, so they're shorter. But we have more of them. So, same amount of time. I'll post if I get time. Maybe I'll try to document what exactly we cover each day. That should be immensely boring.