Owner: Sulako's Blog URL:http://sulako.blogspot.com Join Date: Mon, 12 Feb 2007 20:24:43 -0600 Rating:0 Site Description: Existential angst, with airplanes! Site statistics:Click here
When I flew medevacs on the MU-2 and we had an esp... 1970-01-01 00:59:59 When I flew medevacs on the MU-2 and we had an especially gooey, infectious patient, we would have to wear the gown, gloves and mask while flying. During the SARS scare of Summer 2003 in Ontario, we had to suit up for all our patients. If a patient had a weak immune system, sometimes we'd have to get suited up to protect them from our germs.It might not look like it, but that gown is really, really hot. My shirt and pants would frequently be soaked through with sweat; I can remember running my finger down my arm and watching an actual stream of sweat drip from my arm hair onto the aircraft seats. I'll leave you to imagine the smell of the plane after a 15-hour duty day.During the SARS scare I was based in Thunder Bay. We would fly to Winnipeg on a regular basis, and the FBO there banned us from coming inside while wearing our gowns as it totally freaked out the 'normal' people who were sitting inside, waiting for their own aircraft to arrive.Try putting a surgical mask on and
Part of the cockpit panel of an MU-2 I used to fly... 1970-01-01 00:59:59 Part of the cockpit panel of an MU-2 I used to fly. Pressure to do a flight is pretty common in aviation. When you are working for a charter company, if you don't do the flight, you don't get paid. I am incredibly fortunate that my current situation as a corporate pilot allows me to focus on safety more than some other jobs might, and I have had absolutely zero pressure to complete flights when anything indicates that it might not be safe to do so. The people at my parent company who board my jet really 'get', at a fundamental level, that there are no situations where it's acceptable to risk safety to complete a trip in bad weather or with a broken airplane. Meetings can be rescheduled, and the weather will usually be better in a day or two.But in some niches of aviation, some flights can actually be life-and-death. If a person is really sick and stuck in a northern community with no road access, the stakes are a little higher for them, and the pressure increases on the flig
Scroll down below this post for today's 'real' pos... 1970-01-01 00:59:59 Scroll down below this post for today's 'real' post...Sully's Top Songs Of The Moment, with streaming goodness. Special thanks to my friend MagicMaker for turning me on to Radioblog, which is a pretty cool site indeed - type in the name of an artist or song you like, and it will hook you up with similar artists, which is a great way to discover new tunes. Radioblog will let me make up an entire playlist and embed it, but I chose to split the songs up individually.Tool - Lateralus, from the album by the same name. Tool is like math-metal, but what really gets me is Maynard James Keenan's voice. Simply amazing.Skinny Puppy - Testure, from the album VIVIsectVI. Based in Vancouver, they are among the godfathers of Industrial / Gothic music. At least they were until one of the keyboard players overdosed in his parents bathroom a decade ago. Still my fav band; I have tattoos of their artwork.Consolidated - The Sexual Politics of Meat. Consolidated were a hip-hop group composed o Read more:Scroll
This is a boring story, but it's what we did today... 1970-01-01 00:59:59 This is a boringstory
, but it's what we did today.We have hired a new pilot for our flight operation, and he completed his Citation 550 training course last Friday at FlightSafety in Toledo. His ride went well, thank Jebus, and the Transport inspector who conducted it said he was very impressed with our new pilot. however, as it's his first jet type rating, Transport said we had to do some training in the actual airplane before they would sign off on his PPC. So that's what we did this morning, and it was pretty cool. Our Transport inspector expressed an interest in riding along for the airborne training, so the three of us hopped aboard one of our jets and got ready to blast off for an airport 40 miles away. I sat in the right seat, our new pilot sat in the left, and our Transport guy sat on the divan just behind us, with a headset splitter so we could all chat. I showed the new guy some of my techniques, like using the thrust reversers to slow the jet while taxiing rather
Check out this hi-res video of a Cessna 182 accide... 1970-01-01 00:59:59 Check out this hi-res video
of a Cessna
182 accidentally landing with the gear up.I saw this on FL350 and contacted the videographer, Paul Wingo, to get written permission to upload it to YouTube as FL350 doesn't allow video embedding and they have all sorts of scary warnings about how they'll sue the pants off anyone who uploads videos from their site to Youtube or Myspace etc. I repeat, I have written permission from the author, Paul Wingo, to upload this.This is what Paul said about the flight:"There was a snow storm approaching in about an hour and we were doing a check ride. Because of possible ice, we had been flying with the gear down the entire time. We started doing touch and goes after a while. Habit when you take off is to raise the gear. This is what happened. So, when we come around, they were conversing and what not and simply forgot the gear was up."I'm not gonna criticize the pilots at all, because if I do, I am guaranteeing that I'll forget to put the gear down on Read more:Check
The mile high club evokes a certain something-s... 1970-01-01 00:59:59 The mile high clubevokes
a certainsomething
-something. Most pilots have attempted to join the club at one time or other, but I suspect that most have found that the reality is a lot less glamorous and a lot more clumsy than the movies suggest. The founder of the mile high club is considered to be Lawrence Sperry. Notice the last name? That's right, he's the same guy who invented the aircraft autopilot in 1914. It's a hell of a coincidence eh ;) He put his autopilot to 'practical' use pretty soon after he invented it, but before (pardon the pun) all the kinks were worked out; in 1916 he reportedly was having sex with a woman aboard his flying boat over New York when the airplane flew into the water. Fortunately neither him nor his guest were injured, and they lived to fly another day.Unfortunately, joining the club can be deadly if you insist on sitting up front.A fatal accident occured in Florida in 1991, and an excerpt from the NTSB report clues us into what was going on
I'd like to welcome Jennifer and kitsch:in:sync to... 1970-01-01 00:59:59 I'd like to welcome Jennifer and kitsch:in:sync to the blog; they have graciously accepted my invitations to post here any time they wish. I am excited to share in their flying experiences and their thoughts and opinions on aviation and life.I'll leave it to them to talk further about their backgrounds if they so choose.
A really cool video of the Space Shuttle Mission S... 1970-01-01 00:59:59 A really cool video
of the SpaceShuttleMission
STS-116, landing on Dec 22, 2006.The last couple of minutes are the most interesting to me - you can see the heads-up display that the shuttle pilot is using. On the left side, you see airspeed, and on the right side you see altitude, measured in thousands of feet. Watch how fast the altitude unwinds; I count about 1,000 feet descent every 6 seconds, which works out to 10,000 fpm in the descent. The shuttle doesn't have jet engines, so on re-entry it is a glider with no chance of a go-around if the pilot screws up the approach.
the events of a previous post related from the new... 1970-01-01 00:59:59 the events
of a previous post related
from the newbie's perspective..."Why are we going so slow?" The question is rhetorical. There is no gear or flap hanging off the wings, nor is there any speed-robbing ice covering our airframe. I pretend not to have heard Sully's question. "What?" I reply hoping to buy myself some time to fumble around for an answer for my new boss. Considering this is the fastest I've ever flown while commanding an aircraft I don't really have a good answer. The question bounces around my brain like a grain of hail in a thunderstorm picking up more and more and more ice until it finally flies out of the cloud under the inertia of its own weight. "Why are we going so slow?" The hail dribbles out miserably… "Uhh, sorry...old habits" I grab a handful of power levers and advance them precisely one metric micron. We are presently a mile over the earth's surface hurtling towards our destination airport at a frighteni
Things have been quiet on the blogosphere for me l... 1970-01-01 00:59:59 Things have been quiet on the blogosphere for me lately - we have 3 audits coming up in the next 3 weeks. We want to make a good impression on our inspectors, so Kitsch and I are polishing up our office desks, chroming our flight envelopes, buffing and waxing our approach charts and so forth.Every Tuesday night, a pile of pilots from the corporate / charter niche in Toronto meet a pub by Pearson to swap stories and gossip. Last night was such an evening, and it was a good time as always. If you happen to be on an overnight in Toronto on a Tuesday, drop me an email and I'd be happy to provide specifics. Anyone is welcome as long as you don't mind sitting with a bunch of people who drink beer and talk about airplanes all night long.Some interesting and good (as opposed to interesting and bad, like discovering that the strange rash you got yesterday has doubled in size) developments are coming up soon also; I'm trying to figure out how to post about them without revealing any possib
Stuck microphones can be hilarious, or they can be... 2007-03-02 00:54:00 Stuck microphones can be hilarious
, or they can be awful. I guess it depends on which end you're on.The following stories have mild expletives, so if that offends you, tune in tomorrow for a different post.---------------------------------------------It was 1999 and we were flying flying back from Hamilton to Goderich in our Baron, C-GPAA. I forget who was in the left seat, but Scurvydog was aboard and we were chatting about various gross things like guys tend to do. Our standard route was direct from Hamilton to Goderich at 6,000', and we were heading straight home when we got an unexpected 30 degree vector for oncoming traffic. We turned to the left and continued talking about some things that had occured when I flew in Northern Saskatchewan - messy things, things that aren't mentioned in mixed company, things that might make people mistakenly think I'm a total pig. We had been chatting for about 5 minutes when I noticed that our air traffic controller hadn't cleared us back Read more:Stuck
This is a Dornier Alpha jet that showed up on the ... 2007-03-04 13:03:00 This is a Dornier Alpha
jet that showed up on the ramp on Friday. It's absolutely tiny - I'm taller than the wings are. It's pretty cool looking though.It's owned by a Quebec-based company that offers combat support services to our armed forces (the site doesn't work in Firefox, I had to use IE)In my video I say "old-school avionics", which is only partially correct. The main cockpit instrumentation is old, but the owner operates 8 of these jets to help teach electronic warfare to our troops, so I'm guessing it has some pretty sophisticated stuff on board too, probably out of sight of a casual passerby like myself. My bad.
Nice google video of why it might be a good idea t... 2007-03-06 16:53:00 Nice google video
of why it might be a good idea to wear a parachute if you happen to be pushing the physical limits of your airplane. "Kevin Eldridge Bails out of the Super Corsair at the first annual Phoenix Air races. Notice he turns the plane away from the airshow crowd and points the plane at the ground before bailing out. You can bet his butt was getting really hot judging from the intense flames. The Super Corsair exploded upon impact, a sad loss. Kevin had minor injuries, but he is fine today. Announcer is Sandy Sanders"
Responsibility. What the hell is that? That mean... 2007-03-06 02:10:00 Responsibility. What the hell is that? That means it's my fault when stuff goes sideways, or when stuff doesn't get done. Most of the time my official title is a convenient one, a way to explain to the random pilots I meet on the road that I do paperwork as well as fly. During audit time, it means a whole lot more, and less. It means it's my fault if our pilots don't fill out their paperwork. It means it's my fault if a pilot under my care and control requests a long landing and ends up off the end of the runway. It's my fault if the catering is late to arrive, and it happens to also be my fault if there's a lunar eclipse and it somehow results in departure delays of thirty-five minutes on a charter. Just to clarify, and in case our insurance broker is reading this, none of this stuff has actually happened - it's just a way to illustrate my point. And the funny part is I'm just this guy. I work hard, and I have a brain, but it's not like I was bestowed supernatural Read more:Responsibility
Random memories about flying commercial when I was... 2007-03-08 00:56:00 Random memories
about flying commercial when I was young and small. When I was young and small I traveled a lot with my parents and some of my earliest memories are aviation-related.The sound of a pop can opening does it for me. I guess the first times I heard it must have been on board an airliner, because it always makes me think of a flight attendant opening a can of Coke for a passenger. The passenger is reading a magazine on a long-haul flight to Europe, the cabin is dimmed and "Heaven Can Wait" is playing on the in-flight movie. The Coke has been poured into a small plastic cup, and there is a maraschino cherry impaled on a little plastic sword also sitting in the cup. A couple of airplane ice cubes and a napkin, maybe a couple of shortbread cookies completes the scene.The smell of lit jet fuel has also seeped into my brain - it brings back the memory of flying to Dublin on a Wardair 747, listening to David Bowie's "Let's Dance" on my Sony Walkman tape player and reading c Read more:Random
Kitsch and I are in Orlando, Florida. I tell you,... 2007-03-11 01:07:00 Kitsch and I are in Orlando
, Florida
. I tell you, this state is where IQ's go to die. It must be the heat.At least the flight down was nice - we had clear blue sky for the whole trip, and the air was smooth. The pax in the back were happy and content, and Kitsch's landing was of sufficient quality that we could use the airplane again afterwards, so it was all good. I mean, sure the controllers had us descending 200 miles out, and we watched our fuel burns double for the last half-hour, but hey, it's only money.We arrived around 1pm today, and taxied over to US Customs for clearance. The US Customs ramp in Orlando is funny - you can taxi the airplane there, but it also holds cars, so we pulled up right next to a Customs SUV and then shut down to await our officers.Customs has a special way of doing things here, a way that involves different forms and procedures than anywhere else I have ever been, and the 2 officers were very surprised to hear that not everywhere makes private f Read more:Kitsch
We got back from lunch to hear the howling of a th... 2007-03-16 18:26:00 We got back from lunch to hear the howling of a thousand angry vacuum cleaners. It was an MU-2, one of the actual planes I used to fly on medevacs a few years ago. My logbook tells me the last time I flew this plane it was from Sudbury to Moosonee to Kingston to North Bay to Timmins to Sudbury, logging nearly 8 hours flight time in the process. It says only 1.5 hours of the flying was at night, so I'm guessing the trip was scheduled for a decent hour and wasn't the dreaded 3am callout.Anyway, I spoke to the flight crew briefly - they are doing a drop-off and a pick-up, and about to head seriously north for the second-last leg of their day. I got the captain to show me his pager, which was the same make and model as the one I wore when I flew medevacs. He made it play the tone, and even though I was standing there watching him, and even though I haven't flown an MU-2 since 2004, I still got a jolt of adrenaline when I heard the pager tone. Pavlov pwns.I bumped into a medic I h
I took this pic yesterday morning just before head... 2007-03-18 15:17:00 I took this pic yesterday morning just before heading toward the airport, just to provide positive proof that there is a 3:44 of the am. The glamorous life of a pilot. Yeah the pic is blurry, but at 3:44am I'm fairly blurry too so it's an accurate image.Once airborne, I make sure my energy level remains high.A million square miles of earth below us, we soak up the sunshine as we head toward home.We are in cruise when we hear "Air Transat 923 TCAS descending"That means that a box in the Air Transat plane has told it that it has detected another plane on a collision course and the Air Transat plane needs to take evasive action, usually in the form of an immediate climb or descent. The Air Transat plane's magic box told it to descend, and when you use TCAS (the magic box), you are trained to follow its orders over the orders of air traffic control, so if the controller says to climb and your magic box says to descend, then you descend.And when your TCAS tells you to climb or descend
Whilst I'm blogging about arial hijinks, here's a ... 2007-03-20 01:03:00 Whilst I'm blogging about arial hijinks, here's a clip I found on Break.com that shows in-flight refueling gone wrong.Pilot Screws Up In Flight Refueling - Click Here for more great videos and pictures!
Highlights of our chopper wars, this video was tak... 2007-03-19 22:41:00 Highlights of our chopper wars, this video
was taken in my living room. Meet Superfly and J-rod, the two guys who live in my basement. They work for regional air carriers. Between the 3 of us we can get pretty stupid when it comes to radio controlled action.Funny / cool stuff at 1:20, 2:30, 2:55, 3:30 Read more:Highlights
I was at an office the other morning, and I was wa... 2007-03-20 15:26:00 I was at an office
the other morning, and I was walking down the hallway when I heard this:"Hey, do you like hash brownies?" - from one computer network guy to another."What?" - the astonished reply.Keep in mind that the office is open, so a yelled conversation is audible to most of the floor. "Would.you.like.my.hash.brownies?" - spoken slowly and condescendingly, and at volume.I walked over to the first guy's cubicle, saw the bag of McDonald's Breakfast Value Meal on the desk and had a good chuckle."Those are hash browns. Hash brownies are different.""Oh. Well do you want them or not? I don't like the grease."Hey, the guy is a whiz on the mainframe.
Chopper wars 2!! The hobby store is starting to l... 2007-03-20 10:32:00 Chopper wars 2!! The hobby store is starting to love us...It gets good around 40 seconds in, with the grand finale around 1:20.Airplane stuff coming up shortly. Read more:Chopper
The title of the article and the web-page are both... 2007-03-21 15:14:00 The title of the article and the web-page are both slightly inflammatory, no? Read the article for what actually happened.[warning: lots of popups so make sure your popup blocker is on]Delhi-Bangkok flight makes crash landing at Kolkata!!Delhi-Bangkok flight makes crash landing at KolkataAdd to Clippings21 Mar, 2007 1644hrsKOLKATA: A Delhi-Bangkok flight of Indian Airlines made an emergency landing at the Kolkata airport on Wednesday afternoon after a passenger reportedly claimed to be carrying explosives.The passenger, a foreign national, was arrested and handed over to the police after the flight landed here, Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose International Airport director V K Monga said.The plane was being checked for any explosives, said the official, adding that all passengers were safe.
Tomorrow we have a pop-up charter - heading 3 hour... 2007-03-23 01:18:00 Tomorrow we have a pop-up charter - heading 3 hours northwest then 2 hours southeast back home. Yeah, that's right; what will take us 2 hours and 57 minutes to get to will only take us 1 hour and 47 minutes to return home from. What causes this crazy difference in time? Let's blame it on the jetstream! Tomorrow, the jetstream is predicted to be directly along most of our route at around 140 miles per hour. What's the jetstream anyway? Well, first of all it's a mass of air around thirty thousand feet up. It's a relatively skinny airmass, like a ribbon, that usually moves from west to east at a hundred and fifty miles an hour in summer, and two hundred and fifty miles an hour in winter. That's great if you are going east, but not so good if you are going west. If we are going 400 mph heading west through the air but the air is doing 150 mph heading east, then we are only flying over the ground at 250mph, which means it takes us longer to cover the distance of a trip. Th
The charter flight went fine; the weather was perf... 2007-03-24 23:07:00 The charter flight went fine; the weather
was perfect and despite worries of freezing fog at our destination, nothing materialized and we landed under clear blue skies. It was +7 when we departed Toronto but considerably colder at our destination and I forgot to bring my warm winter jacket and I was a chilly willy in the outdoors.We gassed up, loaded our pax and headed home. I took some pics but they are all boring ones like this view of northern Ontario at 37,000':Waiting for our pax in the great white north.Shiny metal on the thrust revserers aids my egocentric natureOur pax showed up and we loaded up. We lit the fires and headed for home, the engines happily converting huge amounts of money into smaller amounts of forward thrust.One minor note is that one or more of the passengers must have recently had some internal tweaking, as over the course of our return flight both Kitsch and I were afforded the luxury of inhaling some odors that really should not exist. It wasn't bad en
It's an anniversary today, thought not a good o... 2007-03-27 16:28:00 It's an anniversary today, thought
not a good one.Today marks 30 years since the deadliest airplane accident ever in Tenerife, Canary Islands, Spain, where 583 people died and scores of others were injured.It's a prime example of links in the accident chain, and this accident is frequently quoted during cockpit resource management training, so let's take a quick look at it. This is just a blog post though, so it's kind of half-assed. For a full report on this, try Wikipedia,The two Boeing 747 jumbo jets involved were initially headed to Las Palmas airport in the Canary Islands, but it had been closed due to a terrorist attack, so both jets were sent to Los Rodeos airport in Tenerife, which was a small airport that wasn't easily able to accomodate large passenger jets.There was only 1 runway and 1 taxiway at the airport, and other diverted large jets were parked on the taxiway, so aircraft wanting to depart would have to go on the runway and taxi all the way down to the end befor
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