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.

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?

A few days rest.

I've got a few days on my hands now. The airplane is down for inspections. It should be back up sometime next week and we have to go pick it up then. But until then, I've got a time on my hands again.

As for all the upheaval that's rolling across the continent... Well, it ain't here so much. You'll notice that it's mostly centered on countries that are predominently muslim. Angola is outside of that belt. That isn't to say it can't happen here, just that it hasn't. Yet.

Right now, northern Africa is a lot like central Africa a decade or two ago. Enter at your own risk.

Blogging is...

expected to be light and sporadic for the next 3 days. I'm off on a goat rope around the eastern seaboard. On the plus side, I'm hitting the D.C. area saturday and if I can get ahold of Old_NFO, I plan on having a good nosh and chat.

Voting Dilemma

Okay, here's the sitch.

As of yesterday, I wasn't on the schedule till after my off days. This morning, I suddenly find myself out on the road from Sunday thru, yeap you guessed it, Tuesday. After the polls close.

Now, early voting in Oklahoma only runs Friday, Saturday and Monday before election day. Just those three days. Prior to this you could absentee ballot though. And for some reason, these early voting days are still called absentee voting even though you have to do it in person. Sort of an absentee in person vote. I'd say that was ironic, but the .gov is made up of oxymorons... and regular morons even.

So, tonight, I'm going to download the voting records of my local, state and national candidates. As well as the NRA's grading of each. I ignore NRA questionaire grading and only go off of voting record grading. And tomorrow, with my picks jotted down on a convenient something, I'm going to preform one of the most important duties of a citizen there is.

By the way, for Tulsa County, early voting can be done at:

Tulsa County Election Board
555 N. Denver Ave.,
Tulsa, 74103

The hours are:
Friday - 8am to 6pm
Saturday - 8am to 1pm
Monday - 8am to 6pm

There, that's my little public service anouncement for anybody who happens to read me from Tulsa. And I hope it's also my last politics blog for a while. Although I might join Rachel Lucas in some election day drinking. And when there's whiskey involved, there may be some incoherent badly typed posts. I'm just sayin.



Edit: I changed the title because Tam's already got one up today with that title. And since I'm no where near her league in blogging. I thought it best not to be confusing.

The world's longest Saturday of a charter pilot.

As I mentioned below, I had an air ambulance trip starting yesterday morning.

Well, at the last minute, and I do mean last minute, they added another trip to the front of the day. They literally called 10 minutes before we were going to start prepping for the trip and added the new legs and told us to leave an hour earlier. That just wasn't going to happen. What with the converting the interior to med, getting the flight paramedics, nurses, equipment loaded etc. we took off right on time... for the original trip. Well, with the new legs, we started out an hour and a half late and just never were able to make it up.

The remoteness of the place we were picking the patient up, transportation delays, ground power problems, communications problems, it all just added to the time deficit. We ended up landing back in MO with half an hour of duty left and still needing to get the patient transported and settled.

The day originally had been tight on the time, and sneaking the extra trip in just blew that all to hell.

Anyway, we land in MO and dispatch calls and says we're staying there. Of course, they knew this before we took off on that last leg, but do you think they arranged a hotel, or a taxi or anything during the 3 hours we were flying? Nope. We finally cleared the airport at 10:30.

Add the hour in the morning to get up, get dressed, and get to the airport, and the hour after we left the airport to get to the hotel, checked in and to the room and we had ourselves an 18 hour day with 7 hours of flying. Doesn't sound like much but when you're stuffed in a Lear cockpit, it gets to wearing.

The guy whose brilliant idea it was to stuff an extra trip into this day is known for doing this and continuously busting duty and flight time regulations. And blaming the crew and medics when it goes pear shaped. Nice guy. A real diamond.

Right, back to the trip. After minimum rest we're back at the airport this morning. The only fuel available is self service. That slowed us down a bit more. We finally got back home at 10:30 this morning.

Quick clean the airplane, taxi it over to the hanger. Jump out, jump in a Baron and fly up to Wichita to get one of our other Lears out of the factory and down to home.

Paper work, paper work...

I got home just before 4 p.m.

My Saturday lasted 34 hours.

If I could just get the fun days to last that long.

Overnighting in MO turned out to be a blessing of a sort. If we'd come home last night, they would have flown us up to ICT then to bring the other Lear back. That would have been fun... er.

On a completely unrelated note, I've had this Friday's mind game song running through my head all weekend. It's driving me nuts. There may be a flaw in my master plan to rule the world. Hmmmm.

Woohoo!!!

Y'all! I'm finally finished with company recurrent crap! Woohoo!

Beer me! NOW!

That is all.

My apologies

I've been sparce on blogs this week. My flight schedule has been hectic, to say the least. My off week starts tuesday, I'll get some blogs I've had stewing out then.

Experience, Shmeerience.

A while back, a co-worker of mine sent me an email saying she'd been "let go". So, drop my dinner and grab the phone. To try to keep the situation concise... The company handed down a "wage adjustment" that basically didn't even meet the inflation rate for the last couple of years. The problem with doing that to my co-workers department is that they see all the raises that everyone else gets. Can you guess which department she is in? So, after seeing $10 and $15 thousand dollar raises for management and then getting slapped in the face for making these managers look good, she went into her bosses office and said as much. Although, she probably put it nicer than I would have been able to. At which point her boss says she was planning on having my co-worker train in her replacement anyway, and if she felt the way she did, maybe she should be looking to move on anyway.

After taking to her, it occurred to me that it's become a rather common story. Some fresh out of MBA school bean-counter somewhere figured out that having a work staff that was all on initial hire pay was much cheaper than having a work force that had been with the company any length of time. Also, the shorter the average worker's been with the company, when you cut back on company insurance and benefits, the less likely they're gonna know what they've lost.

Eff-in brilliant, right?

This way companies don't have to even attempt to keep up a satisfying work place environment. Hell, they don't care. They don't want you around longer than a year or two anyway. Six months to train you, 1 year to figure out how bad the place is, and 6 months for you to train in your replacement. That means they won't have to do more than one raise and then it's back to cheap labor again.

The problem, I see, is one of experience. There are careers out there that the more experience you have at the job, the better you'll be able to do it. Call it seasoning, picking up some intuition, familiarity, whatever. What it boils down to, is there are some jobs that the more experience you have, the more efficient you'll be, the cheaper you'll be able to perform the job.

Take background checks, something that has to be done on every employee hired. An experienced person could, to pick a random number, do the check in 2 working days. A new person might take twice as long or longer doing the same thing. Just from having to look up the procedure or who to call to do the job, whatever. So, say your HR department has to hire 150 employee's per year. That's 300 man-days of work for one experienced employee, according to my example, and even if it only takes half again as long for an inexperienced one, that's 450 man-days for a new person. But wait, there's only 365 days a year, total. That means I'm using half of next year to hire the people I need this year. So, you, brilliant manager that you are, think "I'll hire 2 people to do the job and get it done in half the time. There done in 225 real days". Quicker than my mythical experienced person, you scoff.

But wait, it gets better.

If we both hire our people (I'm naming mine Mabel) at the same starting wage ($30,000) and we both do, for example, a 5% yearly raise. After 5 years, I'm paying Mabel roughly $38,300 per annum. While you're still paying $30,000 for yours. Oops. my poor lonely Mabel is doing the same job that you're paying 2 people to do. So, you're wage costs are actually 60,000 to my 40,000 for that year. No, you can't have my Mabel. She knows her job and, in fact, I can afford to bump her salary come review time by 10% for doing such a bang up job and still have lower overhead than you. And I like her lemon bars she brings in on occasion.

So, my company's widgets are cheaper than yours because my work force, while individually paid more, is more efficient. Creating my widgets in less time and cheaper per unit than you. Eat my widget making dust.

I didn't say who it got better for.

Don't like that example? Think about this every time you climb on board that regional airline. They're hiring those guys, right now, at 600 hours total flight time because their older pilots are moving on as quickly as possible to better paying jobs. The guy in the left seat might have upgraded to that seat in as little as 6 months. Depending on where they did their training, they might have 2 years flying experience when they hire on. That's just 2 cycles of seeing what the weather, controllers, airports, runway conditions can do. And most of that will have been in small single or twin piston engined trainer airplanes. Every time I climb on board one of those jets, I quite probably have more time flying turbine engined airplanes alone than they have total flying combined. Don't misunderstand me. The airlines train their pilots to the highest of standards. But, no matter how good the simulator, there's still a world of difference between shooting an approach to a weathered in airport with an inch of packed snow and ice on the runway and simulating it. I've done it, real world, more times than I like to remember. I can't say the same for the guys on that RJ. If you're stuck on that airplane having to do that, who would you like to try it? What's your safety worth?

Okay, I'm done ranting. And I'm not saying that all industries are like that. There are some, many really, that know the value of experience. Cops never send out rookies on their own. They pair them up with an experienced training officer and then a veteran officer first. Air traffic controllers are required to be mentored, reviewed, and monitored by more experienced shift managers constantly. These are guys who are controllers themselves, not some johnny-snot-nose who got an MBA straight out of high school before seeing a real job. There's just some company men out there that don't look far enough into the situation to see it's cheaper in the long run to keep you employees and keep them happy, than look at some number on a spreadsheet showing "wages paid" at the end of the year.

The lemon bars are a bonus.

Return of Life of a Charter Pilot

Sorry for the light posting. Starting from Wednesday, the 2nd, my life has been.

Tulsa
Addison, TX
Kalispell, MT (Glacier Natl Park)
Denver, CO
Sleep
Dayton, OH
St. Louis, MO
Sleep
Fireworks
Sleep
Panama City, FL
Naples, FL
Sleep
Memphis, TN
Tulsa.

That's home on Sunday, in case you got confused. I'm lucky to be conscious. I'll blog, actually blog, when I get home. To tide you over, here's some of the weather we've been flying around so far. With a shot of our radar display for the stuff after the sun set.

Bride of Life of a Charter Pilot

If you all haven't already guessed, these posts tend to be more whinging than anything else. If you don't like that, then... I don't know, you won't like it, I guess.

Anyhoo. Here's the company line. For any flight, the standard is a hour and a half show. So, say the flight launches at noon. That means we're there by 10:30 and the airplane is prepped and ready to go no later than 11. Simple. Ahh, but there is a catch. You see, we're federally regulated to a duty day no longer than 14 hours. So, that automatically leaves 12 and a half hours for the flight. Most of our regular passenger understand this and they will work with us to keep from putting our licenses and livelihoods on the chopping block. Not so much the management, but that's for a different discussion. There are some passengers, thank the great ceiling cat that it's only some, that for some reason don't understand that if we bust the 14 hour duty day we're in possibly serious trouble. So, they say they want to take off at noon, but don't show up till four and a half hours later, and then get confused when we say that they have to be back in time for us to finish back home by the 14 hour point from the original show time. Folks, the regulations are very specific about this. We can't be sitting at the airport and still be considered to be "in rest". The second our feet hit the airport, the duty clock is ticking. I'm sorry if that's not convenient for your world, but do you really want a couple of overly tired guys trying to move you along at 450 mph at 43,000 feet, possibly asleep at the controls? Or worse, yet how about landing when you're falling asleep. Trust me, you don't want that. If you don't want to worry about it, buy you're own airplane and crew and you can fly to your hearts content without worrying about the regs. Of course, just because there aren't any regs there, doesn't mean people don't get fatigued. I'm just saying.

Now, I haven't worked for a company yet that doesn't push the duty regs to the breaking point. The paradigm there is the company only cares about making a buck and getting it into the pocket of the company, not the pilots, the company owners and management. If that means sacrificing little things like safety to do it, then so be it. It sometimes becomes a tug of war between the pilots and the company. The company pulling and pulling with veiled threats about your job on one end and the pilots on the other trying really hard to get home alive and in one piece at the end of the day. Fun, ain't it.

Son of Life of a Charter Pilot

I'm in Rochester MN for the next couple of days. I'm also 8 bottles into a six pack of beer at the hotel bar. Do not expect erudite blogging at this point. I'll blog you all when I sober up... a little.

Same Planet, Different World

I'm not saying there's anything wrong with being flush with moola. But there is a definite difference in thought patterns. Take for instance the trip earlier today. Mind you, this was scheduled in a Learjet. Something designed to fly high, preferable above 40,000 ft., and fast, something closer to Mach .80. That's 8/10ths the speed of sound. Something designed to save a person time.

So, where do these people want to go? LA? Orlando? Chicago? Nope. They want to fly from Tulsa to Rogers AR. That's an incredible 77 miles as the crow flies. If you drove it. It's 115. Now, I know there's a mystic of being able to charter a jet and fly around, but let's break this down.

The flight would take something close to 17 minutes wheels up to wheels down. We wouldn't be able to climb to any altitude to get a good fuel economy. And the crew prep time would take longer than the entire trip there and back combined. So, there you have it. A trip that cost them 2000 dollars for a savings of maybe an hour and a half of driving. Of course when you factor in the driving to the airport, renting a car when you get there and driving into town, it's a wash.

Like I said, same planet, different worlds.

Why a seagull.

I guess this is something I've never explained. I chose the seagull for my blog title not because I'm a seaplane pilot, or live on the coast. I've never gotten my seaplane rating and I grew up in Minnesota. It's because of that elusive perfect landing.

You see, as the saying goes, a pilot is only as good as his last landing. So, if you have a good one, you're Chuck Yeager or Wiley Post. Bounce it and you're Wrong Way Corrigan all over again. When I fly not only am I monitoring the airplane and it's systems, I'm monitoring myself. I'm trying to look for all those little thing that will improve me as a pilot. That's nothing special. We all do it in our chosen professions. The only time flying get tricky really, is on take off and landing. Take offs because you're going from an unstable 3 wheeled ungainly lump to a thing on grace and speed, hopefully without running off either side or the far end of a relatively thin strip of concrete.

Landings on the other hand are 10 times worse. I'm going to stick with airplane here, helicopters are a different story and can be dealt with some other time. A well designed airplane wants to fly. Hell, even a relatively less well (less well?) designed one wants to stay in the air. So, you've got to take this thing and make it do something that it really doesn't want to do. Namely stop flying. So, you're trying to slow the airplane down, descend and maneuver to a point on the earth. Easy right? Well, slowing down wouldn't be a problem, except that descending is using gravity to speed you up. And slowing down really isn't friends with maneuvering. Anyone who's sailed understands this. The slower you go the less steerage way you have. Not enough speed and the sailboat won't do what you just tried to do with tiller and jib. So, basically, you're trying to combine 3 things that don't want to be combined.

And finally, when you've juggled all that successfully and you're right there, just a couple of feet off the ground, physics gets in the way. When the airplane gets within, generally, half a wingspan of the ground, something called ground effect comes into play. This is a situation where the ability of the airplane to continue to fly is greatly enhanced. It's a thing with reduced drag due to interrupted airflow yada yada yada. Really, it just means that the airplane will continue to fly with much less needed power. There are some pretty neat flying machines that take advantage of this effect. Google them. The Russians created the incredible Ekranoplan using this bit of physics. Great. Now, you've got to deal with this. So, if you're unlucky the bird floats and then whoop, sits down on the runway, with varying degrees of comfort.

So, a perfect landing, one where the passengers hardly know you've landed is something of a holy grail for me. I'm forever seeking it. It always seems to be just out of reach though. If you've ever watched a seagull or gooney bird launch and land, I have to imagine they feel the same way. Graceful in the air. The laughing stock of the bird club on takeoff and landing.