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
A few random things today:
1. Check out this blog... 2007-05-12 13:39:00 A few random things
today:1. Check
out this blog, Pilot's Wife. It's written by a young woman living in London, UK who is married to an airline pilot. She writes about a lot of things that are recurring themes in my relationship with Lisa, and if you are a pilot I bet your significant other has also brought those same issues to your attention, too. It's a good look at how our lives as pilots affect those who love us. B. Kitsch and I overheard the following yesterday, on departure from New York:"Center, this is United **** heavy. We have a medical emergency on board and would like to return to JFK. We are going to need the long runway""Roger United, what is the nature of your emergency?""We have a passenger on board who has had a seizure of some kind, and we would rather return to JFK than to continue on to Moscow with the passenger in this condition"The controller and the crew worked out the best routing to enable the plane to dump fuel while returning for landing, and it se
I'll spoil the ending for you: the person doesn't... 2007-05-17 13:01:00 I'll spoil the ending for you: the person
doesn't crash. But it's close. Listen as the airshow announcer pauses for a second, in obvious expectation of the "kaboom"A 'real' post is coming up later on today.Plane Nearly Crashes During Air Show - Watch more free videos
It's Spring, and that means nesting season is ... 2007-05-17 21:47:00 It's Spring
, and that means nesting season is upon us. I was in Goderich last weekend and took a quick visit to the airport early one morning. There is a large aircraft paint shop there, and I wandered over to one of their latest projects, an old Dash 8 100 series.This video is boring. I am unapologetic for that, but I'm sorry for the parts where the camera is looking at the sun and it goes all wonky. It's kind of sad to watch the airport decline; I spent nearly 5 years there and Goderich was pretty busy, but apparently the only traffic they get now is Skyharbor Aircraft customers.The airport fuel tanks are old and they didn't meet the proper environmental standards any more, so they got ripped out. The thing is, the town doesn't want to pay for new fuel tanks so they haven't been replaced. That does not bode well for the future of this place. Oh, and on a completely different note, we celebrated an addition to our family. No, Lisa isn't pregnant but she did buy a new ca
The past few days have been great; enjoying time o... 2007-05-20 16:28:00 The past few days have been great; enjoying time off with Lisa, and getting ready for mom's visit. That's right, my mom is coming to town and I'll be spending Tuesday with her, showing her my world. So today I cleaned and vacuumed in an effort to create the illusion that we live in less squalor and filth than we actually do. I found a family of raccoons in my laundry hamper and I know that would have freaked her out, so my efforts have already been worth it.Next week is all about our recurrent training and PPC rides; we'll be heading to FlightSafety for some sweat-time in the simulators, then a Transport Canada inspector will be supervising our checkrides. No stress, right? :)I have a surprise for tomorrow, but until then check out this video. It's sort of cool; the refresh rate of the video camera is the same as the rotor frequency on the helicopter.
See that box on stilts? That's where I have bee... 2007-05-24 21:02:00 See that box on stilts? That's where I have been living for the past while.I am at FlightSafety right now, and have just finished my second day of recurrent training. I have another day tomorrow, then a checkride on Saturday.A checkride with a Transport Canada Inspector. I spend a couple of hours with a man I have never met, a man who hasn't seen me fly before, and I have to convince him that I don't suck at being a pilot based on a few semi-random, semi-scripted events. Oh, by the way, this man from Transport Canada can take my license away if he thinks I suck at pilotage. No stress, right?A PPC ride is such an artificial situation. When we fly under Instrument Flight Rules (IFR) we are not supposed to make any turns with more than 30 degrees angle of bank. When we do a checkride, one of the first things we do after we get airborne is to do 45-degree banked turns. Then we do an instrument approach to an airport, then miss the approach and immediately set up for an approach
Here's a copy of the ride report for the recurrent... 2007-05-29 14:39:00 Here's a copy of the ride report
for the recurrent ride I did on Saturday. Click on it to make it bigger.According to the Transport Canada scale, a "4" on an item is perfection. A "3" is normal proficiency, maybe a few slight errors that don't affect safety of flight. A "2" means something happened that might eventually affect safety, and that you'll get your ass chewed by the inspector. A "1" means a serious error that jeopardized the safety of flight, and if it had happened in the real airplane there's a good chance you would have wound up in a field somewhere.If you get a "1" on any item, you fail the entire checkride.As you can see, I got a fair whack of "4"s and "3"s, but I also got a "2" on an emergency, which was Engine Fire. I'll be focusing on that part of my ride in this post.Continued from 2 days ago:My First Officer said "Engine Failure" in a calm and collected tone of voice.I rotated the nose of the airplane to around 8 degrees nose-up and we started to climb out
I'm working on a nice long post about the rest of ... 2007-05-28 14:53:00 I'm working
on a nice long post about the rest of my checkride, and that's up on deck shortly.But for now...As I worked my ass off last Saturday, I took the day off today and dragged Lisa to Canada's Wonderland. It's an amusement park located just north of Toronto.She hadn't been on a roller-coaster before, so I figured we'd start off on the Top Gun coaster, one of the most intense in the park. It's unusual in that we hang from it, with our feet dangling out the bottom.If I could do it over again, I'd start her off on the "happy bunny kiddie koaster" or something a little less severe. I live and learn.Til then, enjoy the video of us shrieking like howler monkeys. I'm the one on the right ;)
I did 3 1/2 Pilot Proficiency Checkrides yesterday... 2007-05-27 15:30:00 I did 3 1/2 PilotProficiency
Checkrides yesterday. Let me tell you all about it.Last week, two company pilots and I went down to a FlightSafety training center in the United States to undergo recurrent training, leading up to a checkride which renews our certification on the jets we fly. I talked a bit about the actual recurrent training in my last post - it consists of groundschool and lots of training in a full-motion simulator, which is a fairly accurate computer-driven model of our cockpit, complete with fancy graphics projected through the cockpit windows to give the illusion that we are actually flying our jet, but without any risk of dying if we screw things up.I have taken the Company Check Pilot course, which will eventually see me certified to conduct checkrides on our company pilots, but I still have some additional training to do before that all goes through, so I had to arrange for a Transport Canada inspector to conduct our recurrent checkrides.In our company, we are a
Tegucigalpa Honduras seems to be the successor to ... 2007-05-31 19:56:00 Tegucigalpa Honduras
seems to be the successor to the legendary "checkerboard approach" at Hong Kong's decomissioned Kai Tak airport.Listen to the audio and you'll hear one of the people tell the camera operator "Don't be afraid". I'd disregard that advice if I was there.Major props to the flight crew for their obvious skill in landing safely. It looks like the final approach is down a hill.Insane Landing In Honduras - Watch more free videosI'm flying this weekend, then next week we are heading east for a couple of days. I'll be a-bringin' the camera.Oh, just to get the gossip juices flowing, we are anticipating some welcome developments in the near future. I'll post more about that stuff after I get permission to make it public.
We head 090 degrees for a thousand miles today, ma... 2007-06-04 06:52:00 We head 090 degrees for a thousand miles today, making a tour of the east coast. It's a wet one, with low ceilings and visibilities forecast at every place we go. Tonight, I stay at the scenic **** Lake Motel. They rate themselves a conservative 3 stars, and now offer air conditioning and telephones in every room! I looked at the nearby tourist attractions and was rewarded with an insectarium only one kilometer away, so tonight I'll have to take some pictures of blackflies as big as dogs.
Today I went for coffee with a person I used to wo... 2007-06-03 19:34:00 Today I went for coffee with a person
I used to work with when I flew medevacs on the MU-2. We talked about the cool people we had met through the job, and about the various stresses associated with medevac flying. And I heard a story I hadn't known about until today.For me, the biggest single stress of medevac flying was living on the pager and having to drop everything and be at the airport within 20 minutes of being paged, ready to fly a 15-hour day. I frequently said the pager was killing me.I was exaggerating, and I was lucky.One of the people who worked at the company at the same time as me was a flight paramedic. We had never worked together, but I knew her by name. About a year after I left the company, she was sitting at home, waiting for the pager to go off. It went off, and startled her. She had a heart attack and died right there. As her partner was performing CPR on her, the company dispatch called their home phone, demanding to know why she hadn't answered her p Read more:Today
I'm in Teterboro, New Jersey today. It's the corp... 2007-06-02 16:02:00 I'm in Teterboro, New Jersey
today. It's the corporate jet airport that services New York, and is a lot less busy than La Guardia or New York's JFK airports. Our clients can hop into a limo and be in downtown Manhattan in 25 minutes, which is definitely more convenient than the major airports, even though they are geographically closer to Manhattan than we are. We arrived at 10am and checked into our hotel rooms to get our mandatory crew rest before our 9pm departure back to Pearson tonight. I had a long nap which was delicious, especially as I didn't sleep very well last night. Sometimes the brain refuses to shut down and relax, and last night was one of those. I had a recent kick in the ass that I'll be dwelling on for the next day or two. It isn't a shot to the engine room or anything - I'm not losing my job, and I'm not losing Lisa, but damn, do I ever hate stress that I can't do anything about.Now I'm contemplating which restaurant to have supper at, and watching Read more:New Jersey
I made some friends just before we departed Deer L... 2007-06-05 16:43:00 I made some friends just before we departed Deer Lake.Blackflies AND snow - it just ain't fair! Enroute, lots of heavy jets passed beneath us. They have about 100 knots on us, and were soon out of sight.We dodged some pretty serious thunderstorms around Montreal and landed uneventfully back home. The pictures don't do them justice - we were at FL390 (wrongway) and were just barely above the smaller ones. The bigger ones towered past us up to 50,000' - we went around those.Once home, my landlord dropped by with some presents. He flies long-haul for a major air carrier and was in Beijing yesterday, where he picked these up.Best.Typo.Evar.Now we are off to a Skinny Puppy concert. Skinny Puppy? Who the hell are they? My most favoritest band when I was a young pup. Heck, 2 of my tattoos are Skinny Puppy artwork. Yeah, I have 'issues' :)
As we were flying to our destination here in Newfo... 2007-06-05 06:02:00 As we were flying to our destination here in Newfoundland, we saw vast areas all around our destination that have snow on the ground. It was +24 when we left Toronto, and my passengers were all wearing golf shirts, so it was funny watching them try to divide up our spare windbreaker and jacket between the 4 of them.The airport here is quite beautiful, so that was cool. Too bad the FBO people didn't stick around to let us in the building; we arrived 10 minutes before they officially closed, but the place was abandoned so we trudged across the ramp to the main passenger terminal to get our rental cars. It kind of sucks; everything else went perfectly, but I know what my passengers will remember most is having to walk across the big ramp with their heavy bags.I tried to watch the hockey game last night, but the tv in my room didn't work and the local pub was closed, so I ended up playing the nickel slot machines in the lobby. I put in a dollar and won six bucks on my first press of
I'm having a lazy weekend, so it's video time in b... 2007-06-10 13:31:00 I'm having a lazy weekend, so it's video
time in between 'real' posts :)This is one I haven't seen before; the ending isn't as bad as you'd initially assume, but it's bad in a different way.Here's a unique take on the soft field landing. I didn't know it was possible to tail-strike a 152, but I learn something new every day.Here's another good one. I can't tell if the tail strikes or not.This one reminds me of the Honduras ones I posted last week. In this case, it's Culebra, a small island off the east coast of Puerto Rico.I found this interesting. It's a balked landing where the ac touches down during the go-around.One final one, a landing at Hong Kong's old Kai Tak airport that they salvage at the last second. Sort of. Nothing to see here folks, move along...
After 4 years of University the love of my life, L... 2007-06-16 04:23:00 After 4 years of University
the love of my life, Lisa, graduated recently. She immediately got a job in the finance department of my parent company, making more than I ever made in aviation before this job. She had worked there last year, and they must have liked the fact that she's one of those driven people I read about and see on tv, the type of person that isn't happy unless they are active and productive. In a lot of ways we are very different people ;)I'll tell you the story of our meeting one day soon. And the story of my drive from Stony Rapids, SK to Goderich, ON. But not today. Today we are driving up north to visit some friends we haven't seen in a long time. Anyhoo, these are pics taken when she convocated. Here she is with her parents.I'm not sure what the big deal is; when I was a teenager I'm sure I convocated at least 6 times a day and I didn't get to go on stage for any of it. Hmm, I should get a more modern dictionary than the one from 1490 I have sitt
I have avoided making this post for quite sometime... 2007-06-14 14:34:00 I have avoided making
this post for quite sometime now, because I don't want to face the basic questions that I need to ask myself. Jet engines run on kerosene, which is basically the stuff that powers your old Coleman camping lantern. It provides a high energy output for a relatively small mass, and there are currently no approved substitutes for jet fuel.Airlines in the US burned 19.6 Billion (with a B) gallons of the stuff in 2006. A good estimate for the amount of carbon dioxide emitted is 19.6 lbs of CO2 for every gallon of gas burned. In our little baby jet, we average a burn of around 160 gallons per hour, so we add around 3,100 lbs of CO2 into the atmosphere for each and every hour we have the engines turning.Our exhaust is generally exhausted at high altitudes, so it goes into the upper atmosphere a lot more easily than auto emissions. Each hour I fly, my jet basically injects CO2 directly into the neck of mother nature.How can I justify the ecological toll that my job is
This was taken a week ago in the UK. Click on it ... 2007-06-20 07:59:00 This was taken a week ago in the UK. Click
on it to make it bigger. It shows a RV-7A landing with a failure of the nosegear, which resulted in the airplane flipping over. The people were okay. I think the timing of the shot is particularly amazing.I got the shot from airliners.net
Lots of stuff is going on right now, but unfortuna... 2007-06-19 20:18:00 Lots of stuff
is going on right now, but unfortunately it has a lot to do with the business side of the company I work for, and I can't really blog about it. Lots of meetings though. Who knew that trying to take over the world would require so much paperwork and interdepartmental coordination?I learned something new today. A hundred thousand dollars is also known as a 'honey' or 'hunny'. Earlier today, I heard a client say "I dropped three hunny without blinking", in this case meaning that he spent that much in the casino the previous weekend. And I thought damn, it must be nice to have such an intimate association with large sums that you make up pet names for them.I say this as I contemplate dropping a couple of dollar-inos on some ice cream for Lisa and myself. Today was a scorcher; actually it will be too hot to sleep until around 4am, so maybe I'll hold off on the trip to the 7-11 until later.That was my day; I left my camera at the airport and that's why I haven't p
I'm back after a week of slack. I won't do that a... 2007-06-27 19:37:00 I'm back after a week of slack
. I won't do that again. I have a few minor stories to tell, so let's get at it.This is a beautiful P-51 Mustang. I took this in Winnipeg last week; I only had the chance to take 1 pic before a line guy ran up to me and told me that no picture taking was allowed on the ramp for privacy reasons. I boggled him by asking if I was allowed to take a pic of my own plane; after a lot of internal debate, he told me I was allowed to take a pic of my own plane as long as I had permission. From myself, I guess.A couple of weeks ago I got to sit in the back of one of our jets. I took a video of the landing. Turn the sound down, 'cause the audio is obnoxious. I mostly like the landing rollout - it seems like we are doing a thousand miles per hour on touchdown.Now last but definitely not least, I took this short video last weekend in Toronto. At the Pride 2007 parade, which is the second-largest gay pride celebration in the world. Lisa and I had never been
This pic was taken in Hungary a couple of weeks ... 2007-06-29 15:03:00 This pic was taken in Hungary
a couple
of weeks ago. Pretty boring eh? Not so fast...these clouds have nothing to do with anything, except that the clouds are rare, special noctilucent clouds that form really high up in the northern hemisphere during Summer. How high? Well, normally clouds don't get up much higher than 30,000 feet or so. Thunderstorms can get up to 50 or 60,000 feet if they are really bad-ass. The noctilucent clouds in this picture are at 250,000 feet above sea level, or around 85 km straight up. Amazing.Anyway, on to my 'real' post for today...Past passed.I got my Private license in 1988, when I was 17. I passed it even though I set up for a downwind landing on a forced approach, and would have landed with a honkin' tailwind. The guy said that he would have failed me but because I did a decent job on everything else, he would settle for spanking me (figuratively) and sending me on my way.I passed my Commercial license in 1990. I passed it even though m
This is kind of intense. It's a video of an airli... 2007-06-28 23:12:00 This is kind of intense. It's a video
of an airliner making an emergency landing after an engine caught fire. The twist is that the video was shot by a passenger inside the plane.The voice you hear over and over again is a recording, saying "Brace brace, head down, stay down"According to the person who posted the video, this was Flight 3337 from Washington to Dallas made an emergency landing at Dulles airport. No mention is made of the actual airline.
The first airplane I ever flew was a Cessna 152, C... 2007-07-04 20:37:00 The first airplane I ever flew was a Cessna
152, C-GZCT. I was 16 years old and taking my Private License through Mitchinson Flying Service in Saskatoon. My dad paid $30 for an intro flight for me, and I went up with an instructor for about twenty minutes. The instructor told me we would do a quick tour of the city before returning for an uneventful landing. I told him that a fam flight was a formality, that I intended to become a commercial pilot, and that we should skip ahead to something interesting.He arched his eyebrow."Oh realllllly?"I did my first spin in Zulu Charlie Tango; the instructor took great pains to describe the whole process before we entered the spin, then asked me if I was comfortable continuing. I was like "Hell yeah, I am a total badass and I laugh in the face of danger and stuff".I still remember gripping his shoulder and saying "Ohhh shitttttt!" as we entered the first revolution. It was one of the few times I haven't been able to keep the little man in m
I'm at Lisa's parents house right now, hanging o... 2007-07-01 19:09:00 I'm at Lisa's parents house right now, hanging out with them for the Canada Day weekend. I actually flew to the small town they live in yesterday; there is an aircraft paint shop here and we coincidentally took one of our jets here to get some work done; Lisa drove here and met us when we landed.We saw this Citationjet on the ramp, waiting for paint. Now that's a hardcore IFR airplane, it doesn't even have windows ;) It was a grueling flight, and I was exhausted after we landed.Lisa saw my weakness and quickly moved in, pushing my carcass off the wing so she could sit and take some glamor shots.We are in a small town, but they had a fireworks display last night which we attended. The fireworks were loaded aboard a barge and towed out into the middle of the local harbour, with the whole town turning out along the shoreline to watch them. We lucked out; a guy I used to work with who goes by the name of Scurvy Dog lives here and he graciously invited us aboard his boat for the d
It's Summer, and that means thunderstorms.... 2007-07-08 08:23:00 It's Summer
, and that means thunderstorms. Thunderstorms are the only weather-related thing in aviation that really makes me sweat. I guess I'm still a little gun-shy.I took this video a couple of days ago, on the climbout to our destination. The lightning detector told us that the cel on the left would be a bad place to fly near, so we kept our distance. The bright sun made it impossible to see the lightning flashes, but they were there - the lightning detector showed dozens and dozens of strikes every 5 minutes. We skirted around it and landed uneventfully, cheating death again to fly another day ;)
This is my all-time favorite ride report. Click... 2007-07-05 15:16:00 This is my all-time favorite ride report
. Click
on it to make it bigger.I was going through my training files here, and I came upon an old copy of a PPC renewal ride I did, back when I flew a B-58 Baron for Western Air in Goderich. Wanna know why?Well, check out the only thing I got less than perfect on. It's item 7B, Crew Co-ordination. The comment on my ride report says "Needed to delegate more work (checklists, etc) to F/O". That means as a Captain, I should have involved the First Officer more during my ride, and delegated more tasks to the First Officer during emergencies rather than trying to do it all on my own.The thing is, this was a single-pilot ride and I was the only crew member. It even says in the comments section "Single-pilot authority demonstrated and approved". Incongruous much?I didn't get a copy of the ride report that day, otherwise I would have asked my Transport Inspector for further clarification. I did have a good laugh when it showed up in the mail t
Pretty damn cool Cat II ILS approach into London... 2007-07-11 18:05:00 Pretty damn cool Cat II ILS approach into London Heathrow. It's neat to hear the automated voice call out "five hundred" before they even enter the cloud layer. I'm not even going to touch the "retard" callout ;) Read more:Pretty
Flying home a couple of nights ago, we saw a par... 2007-07-10 12:40:00 Flying home a couple
of nights
ago, we saw a particularly spectacular light show, courtesy of some major thunderstorms. Thanks to Kitsch for the pic.We also got to deal with thunderstorms yesterday. Click on the pic to make it bigger and read my typing.Here's a little video of some stuff I went around yesterday. I tried to make it self-explanatory. Turn the sound down as my camera sucks at sound. It also sucks at video. I really need to get a better one. Clouds are fine when they behave. Here's a shot of some of the weather that was referenced in the previous pics of our radar system. Nasty stuff.Here's how they should look, when they are nice and calm: Read more:Flying
Contrails are cool. I took this yesterday... 2007-07-10 12:37:00 Contrails are cool. I took this yesterday morning, while flying southward at 36,000'. That plane was 2,000' above us, but it sure seemed closer when I looked at it.Turn the sound down, my camera can't handle any sort of noise level and it sounds all staticky.
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