I cast my line out, up stream into the river. The hook and bait make a splash, barely perceptible amongst the ripples in the water. My eyes follow the line as it is carried downstream,... they say patience and persistence are the essence of fishing. I slowly reel my line back in, pick off the weeds it has collected and cast it out once again. To be perfectly honest, the fish themselves are only part of the reason I have come down to the river at 7 pm on a Saturday evening. In a world of instant messaging and instant gratification, it is nice to come to a place where impatience is very rarely rewarded.
A friend of mine, and fellow pilot who has come along today breaks the silence,
"At some point in time I guess we have to ask ourselves what we are doing this for?"
While he very easily could have been referring to the distinct lack of fish, or at least the lack of fish interested in our bait, perhaps the conversation which had preceded this comment would allow for a little more context.
This friend of mine, like myself, had been hired as a king air copilot during a period where the aviation industry could not find enough pilots to fill the front seats of their airplanes. As with anyone else who moved up or into the industry during that time would know, we were all very fortunate to be at the right place at the right time. Unfortunately, just as it has happened in the past, this period of good fortune for pilots and the aviation industry as a whole would run its course, and with time, the industry began to slow down as it had done before. For many pilots this meant a reduction in hours, downgrading, or a loss of position altogether. My friend was one of those who fell into the latter group. Left jobless with a current ppc, he went off in search of a flying position, although at that point in time, any positions that were worth applying to were long gone. Undeterred, he continued knocking on doors until his persistence was rewarded, albeit with a position that was a step backwards from the position he had held previously.
"What are we doing this for?"
The question that my friend had asked was one that I was not unfamiliar with. There had been times during my career where I had asked myself the same question. Days where, despite having just put in 14 hours at work, I felt further behind at the end of the day then I did at the beginning. Aviation can be a demanding occupation, that from time to time takes all that you can give, and offers little in return. There are plenty of pilots who, after years of service with their airlines, show up to work to find that their pensions have been cut in half, or worse yet, no longer exist, who are a testament to this.
For all of the negative aspects inherent in the aviation industry, there are a few pluses that pop up from time to time to counter the hardships. This morning as I climbed through a grey overcast layer of cloud into a sparkling sunlit world above I experienced one of those pluses.
In my time flying I have seen and experienced some incredible things that if I were to try to explain to those who do not fly, would fall on deaf ears. Tales of brilliant sunrises from 23000 feet, of Northern lights so close it seemed as though they could be touched, the magic of St Elmo's fire dancing on the windshield.
I think of my friend's question as I cast my line out into the river again. While there are certainly a number of pilots who have understandably thrown in the towel after enduring some of the worst that this industry can dish out, I still hold a great respect for those who continue to press on against the hardships towards a potentially nonexistent light at the end of the tunnel. Those like my friend, who despite the setbacks, continue to show up and give their 100% if for no other reason than for the sake of a job well done. It is these individuals who make the industry what it is, and serve as an inspiration for the rest of us.
Tuesday, December 29, 2009
Monday, October 26, 2009
Flight Test
Flight tests are a bit of a strange exercise in pilot psychology; As pilots we will spend countless hours mastering the art of flying an aircraft, perpetually sharpening the skills we will use on every flight, and skills we may only use once during an entire career to the point where we would be able to manage most any eventuality which could occur while flying. Despite all of this preparation, flight tests, at least for myself, remain a source of apprehension. While sitting at the flight school where I took my private pilot license, I overheard a student ask one of the instructors what he though of pilots who got nervous before a flight test to which the instructor responded that if he knew on a given flight he would be faced with short field takeoff followed by a stall, a diversion due to weather and finally concluding with an engine failure, he would be nervous too. Flight tests typically consist of a little more than a dozen or so flight exercises that will require the pilot to use a broad spectrum of skills in order to pass. Our performance is graded on how closely we can maintain parameters of altitude, airspeed and heading, among others. To a certain degree, my own flight test apprehension, has been not so much a product of the exercises themselves, but rather of the unknowns. Even while you can know a given exercise inside and out, the behaviour of weather, of particular aircraft and of examiners will only be found out at the time of the test itself.
At one point in time, it was steep turns that was cause for a sleepless night before a flight test. I saw the steep turn as one of the few exercises where my performance, during the minute the exercise would take to complete, would determine whether I passed or failed. One slip beyond 100 feet, or 10 knots or 10 degrees of heading and it would all be over.
Knowing that I had not gone outside of flight test standards since my first steep turns did little to quell the fear that the possibility existed that it may happen on a flight test. While there were other exercises which would be challenging, the success of most other items on the flight test would not come down to my performance during a few key minutes, but rather my performance during the entire exercise itself. With time I became comfortable enough with steep turns that, even when considering the unknowns of a flight test, they were no longer a cause for worry.
I read once that one of the many marks of a good pilot is the ability to keep a level head and exercise sound judgement, regardless of how sweaty their hands, or how tight their grip on the controls got. Some would argue that flight tests are good preparation for dealing with the stressful situations with which pilots can sometimes be faced in the real world outside of training.
At one point in time, it was steep turns that was cause for a sleepless night before a flight test. I saw the steep turn as one of the few exercises where my performance, during the minute the exercise would take to complete, would determine whether I passed or failed. One slip beyond 100 feet, or 10 knots or 10 degrees of heading and it would all be over.
Knowing that I had not gone outside of flight test standards since my first steep turns did little to quell the fear that the possibility existed that it may happen on a flight test. While there were other exercises which would be challenging, the success of most other items on the flight test would not come down to my performance during a few key minutes, but rather my performance during the entire exercise itself. With time I became comfortable enough with steep turns that, even when considering the unknowns of a flight test, they were no longer a cause for worry.
I read once that one of the many marks of a good pilot is the ability to keep a level head and exercise sound judgement, regardless of how sweaty their hands, or how tight their grip on the controls got. Some would argue that flight tests are good preparation for dealing with the stressful situations with which pilots can sometimes be faced in the real world outside of training.
Unfortunately with flying as with life outside of flying, intellectual knowledge of what causes apprehension does not always go very far towards eliminating it. A fact that I am revisiting again on the evening prior to the flight for the upgrade to captain. After having studied emergency procedures and performance charts, airspeeds and operating procedures, I lay in bed wondering if there wasn't some i I had left undotted, a t left uncrossed. Eventually after some period of reciting engine failure drills in my head, sleep finally overcame me early enough in the night to allow for a decent sleep. In the morning I awoke early to check the weather and prepare a bit of breakfast before heading in to the hangar. Even while the evening prior had me reviewing anything that could be of use for the flight test, today I put that aside; now was not the time for studying.
I arrived at the hangar a half an hour early to get the plane set up for the ride. After talking with the examiner about our route and where we would conduct the upper airwork, I looked at the weather once again to see if anything had changed, typed up and filed our flight plan, and figured out the performance numbers I would soon be asked for. From here the test followed a fairly routine pattern; Aircraft systems and IFR procedures questions, hypothetical situations followed by a briefing of the flight test itself and what would be expected of us as a crew. Once in the plane, it simply became a matter of doing what I had been doing since learning to fly a number of years ago, flying the airplane.
Touching down after the last approach of the flight test, I felt a simultaneous rush of relief, pride and fatigue. I taxied the plane in to the hangar, careful not to let the flood of emotions get in the way of the task at hand; I was not finished yet. Setting the park brake in front of the hangar, I paused for a second before bringing the condition levers back, shutting down the engines. As the engines spooled down I felt a hand on my shoulder, "Congratulations, gather your things and I'll meet you two inside". I sat there, for a few minutes after the pilot who had been flying right seat and the examiner deplaned, alone in the cockpit, trying to take everything that had transpired in the past 5 hours. All that had come before it, the months of preparation, the studying, the reading, the worry, everything leading up to this moment, in an instant, all worthwhile.
"I owned the world that hour as I rode over it. Free of the earth, free of the mountains, free of the clouds, but how inseparably I was bound to them." Charles Lindbergh
Friday, October 16, 2009
Upgrade
The past months have kept me quite well occupied; work has picked up slightly since the summer in addition to training, which for me comes due in the fall. So as to not get caught with a great deal of reviewing to do in a short span of time, I had begun looking over IFR procedures and regulations in the early summer in preparation for fall training. This would leave me with enough time to study King Air procedures and systems after returning from vacation in August, and with any luck a month or so of time between King Air training and Beech 1900 training to refresh on 1900 related material. With whatever time was left in between, I would fit in dangerous goods, aircraft surface contamination, and minimum equipment list training, among the other various courses which would need to be completed over the course of the fall.
Returning from vacation in late August I was told by one of our training captains to prepare for left seat training which would begin in the coming weeks. While flying an aircraft from the left seat requires the same basic flying skills as flying one from the right, the judgement and decision making skills required and ultimately the responsibility were far from the same. As a result, being trained to fly from the left seat would be not so much an exercise in learning to fly like a captain, as much as an exercise in making decisions like one. Over the course of the training, I was presented with countless hypothetical situations designed to test systems and regulations knowledge from a practical standpoint;
"So Josh, you are in the descent to the City, and arrival reports the visibility at 3/8's of a mile, what are you going to do?"
"Well, assuming we are flying the ILS into the city, 3/8's is sufficient so as to not impose an approach ban, but the city doesn't have RVOP, so until the visibility comes up to at least 1/2 mile, we would either have to hold, or look at what the weather was like at the international, and plan to divert there to wait for the weather to improve."
"OK, lets say you now have an engine fire on the right, how will that change your plan?"
"Ahh, well, with an engine fire we would first run through the memory actions and checklist for engine fire in flight, and upon completing those, I would declare an emergency and request direct to the approach fix for the the ILS in use at the international. They have RVOP there, so as long as the weather doesn't drop below 3/8 we can fly the approach, and they have firefighting equipment there as well, should we need it. "
Returning from vacation in late August I was told by one of our training captains to prepare for left seat training which would begin in the coming weeks. While flying an aircraft from the left seat requires the same basic flying skills as flying one from the right, the judgement and decision making skills required and ultimately the responsibility were far from the same. As a result, being trained to fly from the left seat would be not so much an exercise in learning to fly like a captain, as much as an exercise in making decisions like one. Over the course of the training, I was presented with countless hypothetical situations designed to test systems and regulations knowledge from a practical standpoint;
"So Josh, you are in the descent to the City, and arrival reports the visibility at 3/8's of a mile, what are you going to do?"
"Well, assuming we are flying the ILS into the city, 3/8's is sufficient so as to not impose an approach ban, but the city doesn't have RVOP, so until the visibility comes up to at least 1/2 mile, we would either have to hold, or look at what the weather was like at the international, and plan to divert there to wait for the weather to improve."
"OK, lets say you now have an engine fire on the right, how will that change your plan?"
"Ahh, well, with an engine fire we would first run through the memory actions and checklist for engine fire in flight, and upon completing those, I would declare an emergency and request direct to the approach fix for the the ILS in use at the international. They have RVOP there, so as long as the weather doesn't drop below 3/8 we can fly the approach, and they have firefighting equipment there as well, should we need it. "
The hypothetical questions continued until the training captain ran out of questions, or until I could convince him that I knew what I was talking about. While there are numerous situations in almost every phase of flight that can occur which would test a pilots skill, most are confined within the phases of flight that are inherently demanding to begin with; take-off and landing. This is where training captains will tend to focus their attention, and for good reason. An engine failure which occurs shortly after lifting off from the runway will require precise flying, and for memory actions to completed expediently and efficiently in order to achieve a favorable outcome. If the engine were to fail while in cruise, the crew would have the luxury of time and altitude to sort through the problem. Moreover, if a given crew can successfully deal with an engine failure shortly after taking off, dealing with one during a less demanding phase of flight should not pose a problem.
While I did not find flying from the left seat to be any more demanding than flying a particular procedure from the right, landing from the left certainly did not feel as intuitive. When landing an aircraft, whether it be from the right or left hand side, visual references are used to compare the alignment of the aircraft relative to the runway. When learning to land the king air from the right, my brain formed a mental picture of how the runway should look in relation to the top of the instrument panel when the plane and runway were aligned. Attempting to superimpose this mental picture I had formed from my time in the right seat, to use during my landings from the left, resulted in a handful of landings that were not as straight as they could have been. With each successive landing I refined my mental picture to account for the new vantage point. With that refined metal picture firmly planted in mind, landings became, as one would expect, a fair bit easier.
Sandwiched in between training flights and normal line flying, I would sit in the plane on free evenings and run through emergency checklists to be able to accomplish memory actions without hesitation. I repeated the actions to be completed in the event of engine failures and fires, electrical malfunctions, smoke or fire in the cabin, and loss of pressurisation over and again until they were seeded deep within my brain alongside other bits of information I hope to keep stored in my memory for sometime. While pure memorisation certainly does help to keep items like emergency procedures available for when I may need them, I have found that understanding why you are accomplishing a certain task on a checklist goes a long way towards helping you to remember that task when it counts.
Initially, it was with the intention of preparing for the flight test that I studied IFR and emergency procedures, aircraft systems and performance charts. However, the reality is that while preparing for the flight test is important the flight test is but one day, it will be the flying which follows the flight test that will be the real test.
Thursday, August 27, 2009
Pilot Error
During the cruise portion of a fairly recent flight, with our destination still an hour and a half away, the Captain and I spoke of how our respective summers were going between fuel checks and periodic radio calls to centre. As it often does, the conversation turned to work. On longer flights where even long conversations will burn themselves down to coals, work is one area where there always seems to be more than enough to talk about. While to some these conversations are simply a way to wile away the miles between point a and b, the lessons I have learned while talking with those more seasoned rival the value of any textbook I have come across to date. The value of these conversations is a testament to the willingness of most captains to pass along hard won lessons that they have picked up over the course of their careers. For all of the good that these work conversations can bring about, they can be equally destructive.
After having talked about our summers and work for sometime on the above-mentioned recent flight, an error made by a coworker a few days prior came up in conversation. The Captain after having finished his story, concluded that the coworker in question was an idiot. In talking about errors made by others, I am hesitant to cast the first stone or really any stone at all, knowing that, being human, I have likely made errors for which I could be considered an idiot. The question remains, if I were to resort to labeling those who have erred while in the cockpit as idiots, what good would this accomplish? At the end of such conversations, those listening could conclude that the error made was largely due to the perpetrator's lack of intelligence and not for other reasons. While this may seem innocent enough, such a statement limits the asking of how this particular mistake was made, and more importantly, what can be done from preventing it from occurring again.
That is not to say that I do not believe the mistakes of others should not be talked about, quite the opposite really. There is a great deal of good that can come of mulling over the mistakes made not only of others, but also those that we ourselves commit if for no other reason than to pass along and learn about how these errors came about. The perceived intelligence or lack there-of and identity of those who have committed the mistake however, is of no concern to me. Including these bits of information accomplishes a number of things, none of which are really productive. In the best case scenario, the next time a crew member flies with someone whose past error has made its way into the rumour mill, they may watch the supposed perpetrator a little more closely. In the worst case scenario, the supposed perpetrator is assigned to the idiot list without any thought as to why they made the mistake that earned them a spot on such a list.
After having talked about our summers and work for sometime on the above-mentioned recent flight, an error made by a coworker a few days prior came up in conversation. The Captain after having finished his story, concluded that the coworker in question was an idiot. In talking about errors made by others, I am hesitant to cast the first stone or really any stone at all, knowing that, being human, I have likely made errors for which I could be considered an idiot. The question remains, if I were to resort to labeling those who have erred while in the cockpit as idiots, what good would this accomplish? At the end of such conversations, those listening could conclude that the error made was largely due to the perpetrator's lack of intelligence and not for other reasons. While this may seem innocent enough, such a statement limits the asking of how this particular mistake was made, and more importantly, what can be done from preventing it from occurring again.
That is not to say that I do not believe the mistakes of others should not be talked about, quite the opposite really. There is a great deal of good that can come of mulling over the mistakes made not only of others, but also those that we ourselves commit if for no other reason than to pass along and learn about how these errors came about. The perceived intelligence or lack there-of and identity of those who have committed the mistake however, is of no concern to me. Including these bits of information accomplishes a number of things, none of which are really productive. In the best case scenario, the next time a crew member flies with someone whose past error has made its way into the rumour mill, they may watch the supposed perpetrator a little more closely. In the worst case scenario, the supposed perpetrator is assigned to the idiot list without any thought as to why they made the mistake that earned them a spot on such a list.
Wednesday, August 5, 2009
Mental Math
Taking a look around at the world around us, one would would be hard pressed to find an area of our daily lives that has not been touched in some way by technology. We can be accessible to anyone at nearly any time, have access to a nearly unlimited supply of information from the comfort of our homes, and can be guided from point A to B without ever having looked at a city map. These advances have all been designed to make our modern lives easier and more convenient. Aviation has also seen huge advances in systems designed to allow pilots to operate the aircraft more safely, efficiently and economically. Systems such as GPS have taken much of the guesswork and mental math out of flying an aircraft, in much the same way they have allowed motorists to confidently navigate city streets with which they are not familiar, without having to look at a map. With the prevalence of technology it would be easy to be led to the point of being convinced that conducting these tasks manually are needless skills, antiquated relics of a bygone era.
For one summer while saving money for flight school I worked at a tree farm at which, among other tasks, I delivered trees. In a time prior to economical GPS systems, we navigated the city using our eyes, and maps. While initially I became quite adept at doing U-turns in our two ton delivery truck, with time I acquired the ability to get around efficiently in areas I did not know well. While it took some time to get to the point of being able to get around easily in unfamiliar areas, this skill has remained with me to this day, and has prevented me from getting lost more times than I can count.
Most of the aircraft in which I learned how to fly had yet to be equipped with reliable GPS systems, and those that did possess these systems were of little use beyond mild amusement from watching their blinking lights. As a result, those who learned how to fly and navigate at that time, did so by reference to maps, the ground below us, airspeed and heading, and by using our head. Inevitably there would be times where we would become unsure of our position, and have to draw upon our training, and the resources around us in order to safely get to our destination. Like learning how to navigate in the city, it took some time and was not always easy, although the benefits of such skills far outweighed the time and effort spent on learning and refining them.
When I started flying commercially, the goal became to navigate from A to B as efficiently as safely possible. This typically means using GPS extensively to allow the crew to proceed directly from point A to B, as opposed to using older NDB and VOR airways which do not always run directly between the point of departure and destination. As a result, VOR and NDBs are used mostly as a means to confirm position while enroute and to serve as a backup in the case of a GPS failure. Even while VOR and NDB navigation has taken a backseat to GPS which can tell you at a glance exactly where you were above the earth and what speed you were traveling over it, VOR and NDB remain the primary means of navigation on many non-precision approaches, although this too is changing. In addition to being able to tell a pilot their position and speed, many units also provide features such as turn anticipation, which tell a pilot when to turn in order to correctly intercept the next leg of their flight. GPS has made it easier to be constantly aware of ones position, has allowed for big steps forward in situational awareness, and has made precise navigation accessible, intuitive and reliable.One can not help but admire the cold precision that modern autopilots can maintain while tracking routes programmed into navigation systems capable of guiding aircraft from gear up right to touchdown. However, just as with other tools that have been designed to make our lives easier, the technology found in many of today's cockpits are not without a downside. The moment that these systems are used in place of, and not to complement the skills that we as pilots have worked hard to earn, we will find ourselves on a slippery slope where easier does not always mean better.
While at first, the mental math required to come up with some of the figures that avionics can give us may seem daunting, in reality they are no more complex than any of the other mental math we use while flying. As an example, lets take a flight from Edmonton to Fort Mcmurray flying the Beech 1900. While the numbers will differ with aircraft, the principal upon which the calculations are based, remain the same.
Now as we are proceeding inbound on the localizer as we wait to intercept the glideslope from below, we can calculate roughly what rate of descent will keep us on the 3 degree slope down to the runway. To compute this number we only need to divide our groundspeed by 2, and add a 0 on to the answer. So for our 160 knot groundspeed, divided by 2 gives us 80, to which we will add a zero to the end to give us a figure of 800. At this speed, in order to follow a 3 degree slope downward, we will need a 800 feet per minute descent rate.
For one summer while saving money for flight school I worked at a tree farm at which, among other tasks, I delivered trees. In a time prior to economical GPS systems, we navigated the city using our eyes, and maps. While initially I became quite adept at doing U-turns in our two ton delivery truck, with time I acquired the ability to get around efficiently in areas I did not know well. While it took some time to get to the point of being able to get around easily in unfamiliar areas, this skill has remained with me to this day, and has prevented me from getting lost more times than I can count.
Most of the aircraft in which I learned how to fly had yet to be equipped with reliable GPS systems, and those that did possess these systems were of little use beyond mild amusement from watching their blinking lights. As a result, those who learned how to fly and navigate at that time, did so by reference to maps, the ground below us, airspeed and heading, and by using our head. Inevitably there would be times where we would become unsure of our position, and have to draw upon our training, and the resources around us in order to safely get to our destination. Like learning how to navigate in the city, it took some time and was not always easy, although the benefits of such skills far outweighed the time and effort spent on learning and refining them.When I started flying commercially, the goal became to navigate from A to B as efficiently as safely possible. This typically means using GPS extensively to allow the crew to proceed directly from point A to B, as opposed to using older NDB and VOR airways which do not always run directly between the point of departure and destination. As a result, VOR and NDBs are used mostly as a means to confirm position while enroute and to serve as a backup in the case of a GPS failure. Even while VOR and NDB navigation has taken a backseat to GPS which can tell you at a glance exactly where you were above the earth and what speed you were traveling over it, VOR and NDB remain the primary means of navigation on many non-precision approaches, although this too is changing. In addition to being able to tell a pilot their position and speed, many units also provide features such as turn anticipation, which tell a pilot when to turn in order to correctly intercept the next leg of their flight. GPS has made it easier to be constantly aware of ones position, has allowed for big steps forward in situational awareness, and has made precise navigation accessible, intuitive and reliable.One can not help but admire the cold precision that modern autopilots can maintain while tracking routes programmed into navigation systems capable of guiding aircraft from gear up right to touchdown. However, just as with other tools that have been designed to make our lives easier, the technology found in many of today's cockpits are not without a downside. The moment that these systems are used in place of, and not to complement the skills that we as pilots have worked hard to earn, we will find ourselves on a slippery slope where easier does not always mean better.
The ability to work out calculations of time, distance and speed has been one of the first to fall victim to these advanced systems in some cockpits.
While at first, the mental math required to come up with some of the figures that avionics can give us may seem daunting, in reality they are no more complex than any of the other mental math we use while flying. As an example, lets take a flight from Edmonton to Fort Mcmurray flying the Beech 1900. While the numbers will differ with aircraft, the principal upon which the calculations are based, remain the same.Upon getting into the airplane, initially there will be little in the way of calculations that haven't already been done on the flight plan. For example, the rough track to be flown as well as the time enroute will have already been computed, and when briefing passengers, one needs only to quickly glance at the flight plan to give them an idea how long they will be aboard. After take-off, on the departure from the airport area, it is important to know not only the distance to the destination, but also how many miles are between you and the departure airport. This information becomes increasingly important when departing out of uncontrolled airports where it is the responsibility of the pilot for traffic separation, at least initially.
For example when departing an airport such as Rainbow Lake over which the airspace is uncontrolled to 18'000 feet, if an inbound flight calls that they are 8 miles southeast of the airport, heading northwest, you must be able to quickly determine your distance from the airport and the inbound aircraft to confirm that your paths will not cross at the same time and altitude.
On departure, we maintain a speed of 180 knots in the Beech 1900 as we climb to our cruising altitude. This is a convenient number as 180 knots works out to 3 miles traveled every minute. Glance at your watch when you turn enroute, and know that you are already about a half a mile to a mile from the airport when you do so, and you only need to glance at your watch again to get your distance from the airport. If it has been 2 minutes since turning enroute, you are somewhere around 6-7 miles from the airport. If you have to do a 180 degree turn to head to your destination after taking off, then you simply look at your watch as you are passing the airport after turning towards your destination and note the time.
On the climb-out out of Edmonton through 8000 feet, Edmonton Centre asks whether we can be at or above FL 190, (19000 Feet) in 10 minutes in order to accommodate arriving traffic from the north. We are currently climbing at about 1400 feet per minute, though this will slowly decrease as we climb into the thinner air above. With a nearly full load on a standard climb profile we can average about a 1000 foot per minute climb rate to our cruise altitude. Given that we have 11'000 feet to gain in order to comply with Edmonton Centres' request, with an average climb rate of 1000 feet per minute, it will take us 11 minutes to get above FL 190. With this information in hand we can now either inform Centre that we are unable to comply, or we could climb more aggressively in order to meet the climb requirement.
Enroute, once we have leveled off at our cruise altitude of FL 250, we are told, again by Edmonton Centre, to cross the LEXON intersection, one of the points in our flight plan, at a time of 1645. Like the climb requirement we have just dealt with, crossing time restrictions are a relatively rare occurrence, typically only found on the arrival into busier centres.
It is currently 1625, so now we have to figure out what speed we will have to fly in order to arrive over LEXON in 20 minutes. Looking at the distance readout to LEXON shows that we have 70 miles to go. First lets note that 20 minutes is one third of an hour. With that information in mind, we know that the distance we will travel in 20 minutes will be one third of our groundspeed. So if we are currently cruising at our flight planned speed of 270 knots, in 20 minutes we will have traveled one third of that figure, or 90 miles. We can also use this calculation in reverse for our particular situation; If we multiply the 70 miles we have to go to LEXON, by three, we get a required speed of 210 knots in order to meet our crossing time.
If we had to cross LEXON in 10 minutes, which is 1/6th of an hour, we would multiply our current distance to LEXON by 6 in order to determine the required groundspeed.
As we get closer to LEXON, we are told by Centre that our crossing restriction is canceled and we can now proceed direct to OTRIL, which is the final approach fix for the ILS onto Runway 25 at Fort McMurray. We are coming up on 100 miles from the field, which is the point at which we aim to have a plan established and the briefing on the descent and approach completed. First we must determine at what point we must begin the descent. Turboprop aircraft, like the Beech 1900, will typically travel 3 miles forward, for every thousand feet lost during the descent. This afternoon, we are cruising at 25'000 feet and Fort McMurray has an elevation of around 1200 feet, which for the sake of easy math, we will round down to 1000 feet. Thus we have 24'000 feet to lose, and will travel 3 miles for each 1000 feet, so by multiplying 24, which is the thousands of feet we must lose, by 3, we come up with a figure of 72 miles. Given that we will also have to slow the aircraft down as we approach the McMurray area, we will add somewhere between 3 to 5 miles to our descent figure in order to accomplish this. Now we will be starting our descent 77 miles back from the airport, in order to get down, and as we get closer, slow down. The only problem that we have left to solve is that we are not heading directly to the airport, but rather to the final approach fix, OTRIL. Looking at the approach plate for Runway 25, we determine OTRIL to be about 14 miles from the airport.
Subtracting 14 from our calculated distance to descend of 77, puts the top of descent at 63 miles from OTRIL.
Arriving into Fort McMurray from the south for Runway 25 can be challenging when the weather is low enough to require flying an instrument approach. The typical track flown inbound to OTRIL will have us approaching the runway at about a 110 degree angle. If a crew were to wait until the localizer, which gives the degrees of deviation off of runway center-line, started to move to begin the turn towards the runway, they would be well north of the approach path by the time they were pointed in the right direction. While being a sloppy way to start the approach, this also increases the possibility for a destabilized approach all the way down to landing. The alternative is to calculate how much distance the aircraft will require to turn 110 degrees, and start turning that distance back from OTRIL so that when we roll our wings level on the inbound track, we should be sitting very close to the extended runway center-line.
To arrive at this number we first must know what speed we will be intercepting the localizer at, which in the 1900 is 160 knots. We take 1% of that speed, or put another way, divide it by 100, which in our case works out to 1.6. We now take that 1.6 and divide it by 2 to give us a distance of .8 from OTRIL to start the turn. This would work if we were intercepting at an angle of 90 degrees, but since we have a larger turn to make, tacking on an additional .3 or .4 of a mile for that extra 20 degrees we need to turn should get us at least in the ballpark.
To make the above mental math come out right, the turn made must be rate one. While a few of the aircraft at that I fly still do have a turn and bank, or turn coordinator to indicate whether we are turning at rate one, (3 degrees per second) most do not. So along with the speed we will be intercepting the localizer at, we must also determine the angle of bank required. To do this we take 10 % of our airspeed and add 7. So for our 160 knot intercept speed, we divide by 10 to give us 16, to which we add 7, to come up with an angle of bank of 23 degrees. This method is not exact, but it will get you to within a degree or so of rate one at typical approach speeds up to about 200 knots.
Now as we are proceeding inbound on the localizer as we wait to intercept the glideslope from below, we can calculate roughly what rate of descent will keep us on the 3 degree slope down to the runway. To compute this number we only need to divide our groundspeed by 2, and add a 0 on to the answer. So for our 160 knot groundspeed, divided by 2 gives us 80, to which we will add a zero to the end to give us a figure of 800. At this speed, in order to follow a 3 degree slope downward, we will need a 800 feet per minute descent rate.
Finally we break out of the cloud bases to see the runway out the windshield, shortly afterward, touching down. As we exit the runway and finish the after landing checklist we prepare the airplane, and ourselves for the next departure. Now, aside from figuring out how long we were in the air and calculating our fuel load for the next leg, we can give our mind a rest.
"I believe any good pilot has a certain skepticism. If he or she isn't a skeptic, they are headed for trouble. This seems especially true with the computer -- and when I say computer I include FMS, autopilot and all. Being skeptical means a pilot refers to raw data to be certain the FMS etc., is doing its thing correctly. This is not always easy because as the computer develops it makes raw data more difficult to see, find and use." -Robert Buck
Wednesday, July 29, 2009
One Week
"To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield" - Alfred Lord Tennyson (Ulysses)
A few weeks ago I rented a movie entitled "One Week" which tells the story of a man in his mid-twenties who is diagnosed with cancer and given the news that he may have as little as one week to live. Being presented with this news, the man buys a motorcycle, sheds the safety and security of his established life and embarks upon a trip west in search of something bigger. The closing minutes of the film ask aloud the question upon which the movie is based; what would you do if you knew you only had one day, one week, one month to live?
A few weeks ago I rented a movie entitled "One Week" which tells the story of a man in his mid-twenties who is diagnosed with cancer and given the news that he may have as little as one week to live. Being presented with this news, the man buys a motorcycle, sheds the safety and security of his established life and embarks upon a trip west in search of something bigger. The closing minutes of the film ask aloud the question upon which the movie is based; what would you do if you knew you only had one day, one week, one month to live?
Even while I am not faced with any life threatening diseases, as the credits scrolled down the tv I could not help but try to answer that question. What things in life would take on greater importance? Which things would matter less? Watching one week unearthed questions that I have asked myself for sometime, questions to which, to the best of my knowledge, there exists no one right answer. Playing in the backyard as a kid after supper during a long summer evening, I looked up from the game we were playing at that time to catch a glimpse of the last moments of the sunset. The sun, following its westward path, dipped below the horizon leaving me staring at the red sky it had left behind. I can remember thinking as I sat staring at the western horizon where the sun had just been, that you can never go back. The sunset that I had just witnessed was now gone, a moment in time that could not be returned to, swept away by the incessant forward march of time. While to most adults this is an accepted fact of life, to the younger me this simple realization would forever change how I viewed the world around me. Walking away from that sunset left me with a sense of urgency, I had to make the most of every given moment before it was gone. Even simple things like driving to the local convenience store for candy took on a new importance. I feared that if I failed to make the most of each trip to the store, each afternoon at the beach, each day in general, they would quietly slip into the past, never being experiencing to their full potential, like the sunsets that I had taken for granted prior to that point.
As the years past, and more time was stacked between me and that sunset, the urgency that I felt then was largely forgotten, pushed to the back of my mind by the routine of daily life. Shutting off the tv after having finished watching one week, I again felt that familiar urgency I first experienced as a kid. This time though, the feeling of urgency was accompanied by a feeling of not knowing what to do with it. I had direction, but not destination. For a few days after returning one week to the video store, I analysed each day as it came and went; had I made the best of today? Some days I was unsure, worried that perhaps I hadn't. The thing about worrying however is that while it does focus our attention on the traps in life that we can all fall victim to, it does little to help us avoid them. I have a clipping from a magazine that I keep on top of my dresser that reads- "Your position in relation to other objects in the universe directly affects your perception of the universe. If things haven't been going your way recently, maybe you should try a different view" It would seem that while I was in search of my elusive "days lived to the fullest" the problem lay not so much in how I lived the days themselves, but rather, in how I viewed them.
"Don't be afraid your life will end; be afraid that it will never begin." - Grace Hansen
Sunday, July 12, 2009
Masters of the Sky
I close the door quietly behind me, trying not to wake my parents who were sleeping down the hall. The cool night air greets me as I jump off the back step, it's scent a mixture of that of freshly cut grass and salt air carried by a north wind from the bay. It is quiet tonight, the road empty of the traffic typical of summer weekend evenings. I head east to the neighbour's garage beside which our community's mailboxes sit and with a quick look around to confirm the coast clear, I hoist myself on top of the mailboxes, and pull myself up onto the roof of the adjacent garage. From here you can see the lights on the other side of the bay, blinking in the distance. I lay my head back on the peak of the roof of the garage and focus my gaze upwards. Somewhere above the low rumble of a jet engine cuts through the silence. It's blinking strobe lights give the eastbound flight's position away against the backdrop of a starry sky.
I imagined the crew of this particular flight, sitting in the dim light of the cockpit, guiding their aircraft toward some destination on the other side of the Atlantic. In my mind I had built those who fly these aircraft up to be almost superhuman in their abilities. All knowing and unerring; they were the masters of the sky.
Upon moving west to learn how to fly, it was this benchmark that I figured the crew of the eastbound flight sat upon, and that I set out to achieve for myself. There were the inevitable setbacks and strokes of luck that mark the progression of many pilots and looking back now I admit that I was anything but a natural. While there were many examples around me of those who seemed happy to settle for average, I was fortunate to have a select few who pushed themselves, and sometimes unknowingly, me with them, to a higher standard. They were instructors and students, co-workers, captains and first officers. Their reasons for striving for perfection may have been quite different from my own, but that was of little consequence.
One such captain recently told me that a well rounded pilot is a combination of skill, knowledge and attitude, brought together in the correct proportions. Like the loaf of bread mom baked during my childhood that could have saw a productive life as something more adept at scrubbing dishes than being eaten, missing an ingredient, or adding a particular one in incorrect proportions can make all the difference. Fortunately for those who do not come standard equipped with these key ingredients, as it has been said in the past, it is in the trying that we get there.
I imagined the crew of this particular flight, sitting in the dim light of the cockpit, guiding their aircraft toward some destination on the other side of the Atlantic. In my mind I had built those who fly these aircraft up to be almost superhuman in their abilities. All knowing and unerring; they were the masters of the sky.
Upon moving west to learn how to fly, it was this benchmark that I figured the crew of the eastbound flight sat upon, and that I set out to achieve for myself. There were the inevitable setbacks and strokes of luck that mark the progression of many pilots and looking back now I admit that I was anything but a natural. While there were many examples around me of those who seemed happy to settle for average, I was fortunate to have a select few who pushed themselves, and sometimes unknowingly, me with them, to a higher standard. They were instructors and students, co-workers, captains and first officers. Their reasons for striving for perfection may have been quite different from my own, but that was of little consequence.
One such captain recently told me that a well rounded pilot is a combination of skill, knowledge and attitude, brought together in the correct proportions. Like the loaf of bread mom baked during my childhood that could have saw a productive life as something more adept at scrubbing dishes than being eaten, missing an ingredient, or adding a particular one in incorrect proportions can make all the difference. Fortunately for those who do not come standard equipped with these key ingredients, as it has been said in the past, it is in the trying that we get there.
Thursday, July 9, 2009
City Airport Slated to Close
"If you're in a bad situation, don't worry it'll change. If you're in a good situation, don't worry it'll change" - John A. Simone Sr.
In a decision made yesterday, city council voted 10 to 3 in favor of a gradual closure of the City Centre Airport, starting with the dismantling of Runway 16/34 which could begin as early as next year. The remaining Runway 12/30 and the infrastructure located on the west side of the airport would see a similar fate at a later date to be determined by city council. According to the motion, the final closing date of the airport would be set at a time when council requires the land in order to meet its development goals.
"Eventually, we'll have to set an end date," said Mayor Stephen Mandel. "It's not an immediate closure. It's not going to happen in the morning."
In response to the decision, Councillor Tony Caterina, one of the three councillors who voted against closing the airport, voiced concerns on the decision itself, and the means by which the airport is planned to be closed;
"It leaves a lot of people hanging on both sides, which is exactly what we didn't want to do and I think the most critical part about this is that we've sent a message .... Edmonton council has sent a message to the rest of Alberta and into the Territories that we are not concerned about their concerns," Caterina said Wednesday.
Those who operate out of the east side of the airport, among them the Alberta Government, Transport Canada, Airco and the RCMP, would be the first to feel the impact of the closure of Runway 16/34 and the accompanying infrastructure. Some may choose to relocate to the west side of the airport for the remainder of time which it will remain open, although, with the seeming inevitability of a complete airport closure, one could only guess that east-side airport tenants would be cool to the idea of moving to the west side, only to have to move again at a later date.
Aside from the uncertainty this decision has created for the company which I fly for and the implications it makes of the fate of my co-workers and myself, I find the rush to develop the land occupied by the airport while undeveloped lots sit empty in the area surrounding the downtown, disappointing. With both sides having put out their share of propaganda, now that the decision has been made we can only hope that the benefits of closing the airport that, to some, looked enticing on paper match evenly the reality we will all soon be faced with and that those benefits will serve Edmonton as a whole, not just those who sit on City Council.
In a decision made yesterday, city council voted 10 to 3 in favor of a gradual closure of the City Centre Airport, starting with the dismantling of Runway 16/34 which could begin as early as next year. The remaining Runway 12/30 and the infrastructure located on the west side of the airport would see a similar fate at a later date to be determined by city council. According to the motion, the final closing date of the airport would be set at a time when council requires the land in order to meet its development goals.
"Eventually, we'll have to set an end date," said Mayor Stephen Mandel. "It's not an immediate closure. It's not going to happen in the morning."
In response to the decision, Councillor Tony Caterina, one of the three councillors who voted against closing the airport, voiced concerns on the decision itself, and the means by which the airport is planned to be closed;
"It leaves a lot of people hanging on both sides, which is exactly what we didn't want to do and I think the most critical part about this is that we've sent a message .... Edmonton council has sent a message to the rest of Alberta and into the Territories that we are not concerned about their concerns," Caterina said Wednesday.
Those who operate out of the east side of the airport, among them the Alberta Government, Transport Canada, Airco and the RCMP, would be the first to feel the impact of the closure of Runway 16/34 and the accompanying infrastructure. Some may choose to relocate to the west side of the airport for the remainder of time which it will remain open, although, with the seeming inevitability of a complete airport closure, one could only guess that east-side airport tenants would be cool to the idea of moving to the west side, only to have to move again at a later date.
Aside from the uncertainty this decision has created for the company which I fly for and the implications it makes of the fate of my co-workers and myself, I find the rush to develop the land occupied by the airport while undeveloped lots sit empty in the area surrounding the downtown, disappointing. With both sides having put out their share of propaganda, now that the decision has been made we can only hope that the benefits of closing the airport that, to some, looked enticing on paper match evenly the reality we will all soon be faced with and that those benefits will serve Edmonton as a whole, not just those who sit on City Council.
Friday, May 29, 2009
Holes in the Swiss Cheese
In 1990, James T Reason, a British psychologist, put forward a model of human systems and the means by which these systems could break down, causing an accident. Often referred to as the Swiss cheese accident causation model, Reason explains that in a given human system, aviation related or otherwise, an accident is usually caused, not by one catastrophic failure, but rather by a series of failures within the system itself. Like the holes in Swiss cheese, the flaws in the different levels of the system, by themselves, typically would not lead to an accident. Bring about the circumstances which would allow the holes in a system to align though, and the possibility of an accident occurring greatly increases. Reason defines the four layers which contribute to an accident within a system as being; Organizational influences, unsafe supervision, preconditions for unsafe acts, and the unsafe acts themselves.
Looking at the crash of Colgan Flight 3407 through the perspective of Reasons model, it no longer becomes just a simple case of pilot error, but rather an intricate failure of the entire system itself. In this particular case, there were numerous holes in the cheese which were all contributing causes. Some likely existed for quite some time prior to the accident itself; small insidious flaws which by themselves were not enough to overcome the redundancies of the system, but together, they created an opportunity for an accident to occur.
Shortly after 10:00 pm, the Crew of Colgan 3407, initiated a descent from their cruising altitude of 16'000 feet to their cleared altitude of 11'000. The exact time at which this descent was initiated is unclear as the crew did not call that they were leaving 16'000 feet for 11'000 as would be expected in a multi-crew cockpit, nor did they run through the descent checklist, which under normal circumstances would have been completed prior to descent. At this stage in the flight, Captain Renslow and First Officer Shaw are talking about their past flying experiences. Renslow spoke of an air traffic controller which he dealt with in Texas whose demeanour and sense of humour were in stark contrast to the controllers who worked the more congested, complex airspace of the north east. The conversation that continued as the crew conducted their descent into the Buffalo area was not unlike conversations between crews on any other given flight. It was not so much the conversation itself, but rather the time and place in which that conversation took place that posed a problem.
Two Perspectives of The Regionals
Looking at the crash of Colgan Flight 3407 through the perspective of Reasons model, it no longer becomes just a simple case of pilot error, but rather an intricate failure of the entire system itself. In this particular case, there were numerous holes in the cheese which were all contributing causes. Some likely existed for quite some time prior to the accident itself; small insidious flaws which by themselves were not enough to overcome the redundancies of the system, but together, they created an opportunity for an accident to occur.
Shortly after 10:00 pm, the Crew of Colgan 3407, initiated a descent from their cruising altitude of 16'000 feet to their cleared altitude of 11'000. The exact time at which this descent was initiated is unclear as the crew did not call that they were leaving 16'000 feet for 11'000 as would be expected in a multi-crew cockpit, nor did they run through the descent checklist, which under normal circumstances would have been completed prior to descent. At this stage in the flight, Captain Renslow and First Officer Shaw are talking about their past flying experiences. Renslow spoke of an air traffic controller which he dealt with in Texas whose demeanour and sense of humour were in stark contrast to the controllers who worked the more congested, complex airspace of the north east. The conversation that continued as the crew conducted their descent into the Buffalo area was not unlike conversations between crews on any other given flight. It was not so much the conversation itself, but rather the time and place in which that conversation took place that posed a problem.
Many companies have standard operating procedures that prohibit non flight related conversation below 10'000 feet allowing the flight crew to focus their attention on the operation of the aircraft during the periods of time in which their work loads tend to be the highest; during the departure and approach. On the arrival in to the airport area, the In Range or approach checklist, which is completed upon descending through 10'000 feet, typically signals the point at which conversations are put on hold and the crew's collective attention is turned to the business of flying an aircraft. While being a seemingly benign slip in procedure, in continuing their conversation below 10'000 feet, Captain Renslow and First Officer Shaw increased the possibility of becoming distracted during the approach that was to follow. While keeping up a conversation below 10'000 feet was against Colgan's standard operating procedures, and did increase the risk of distraction at a point in the flight where even small distractions could prove deadly, one would be hard pressed to find a pilot who has not experienced a violation of a sterile cockpit below 10'000 feet at some point. Some pilots will politely point at the altimeter, or simply stop talking altogether as the aircraft descends through 10'000 feet, reminding a talkative crew member that it is time to put the conversation away until they are on the ground. Others may allow the conversation to continue unimpeded not wanting to offend, or cut a good story short.
Given the number of times that the crew of Colgan 3407 yawned during the flight to Buffalo, one could quite safely guess that they were, at least to some degree, tired. Both had been up early that morning and due to a cancelled trip had spent the day in the crew room prior to their flight to Buffalo. While to an outsider it may seem as though remaining in a crew room for the better part of the day prior to departing for Buffalo would have allowed both Shaw and Renslow to get some rest in preparation for their flight that evening, Colgan lacked facilities which would have allowed the crew to get a restful sleep, in addition to the fact that sleeping in the crew lounge was prohibited. Shaw had commuted across the country, from Seattle to Newark, the day prior to her getting into the front right seat of flight 3407, which likely would have only added to her fatigue. Add on top of that a departure time of 9:18 in the evening, a point in the day when most peoples bodies and minds begin to spool down for the night, and it becomes easier to imagine how the crew may have been feeling that evening. While the regulations do make it clear that a pilot is responsible for removing themselves from duty if they suspect that fatigue will impair their ability to act as part of the flight crew, the reality is that at some companies calling in tired results not only in annoyed dispatchers, but also in the potential for disciplinary action.
I have experienced times in the past where accepting a flight, or series of flights becomes a call of common sense as much as a call of regulation. On a last minute call out this February past for a flight to Vancouver, our dispatcher asked whether we would be able to take another trip that had come up upon arriving back into Edmonton. With our planned arrival time of 1:30 am back into the city we could have accepted the second trip while still remaining within our 14 hour duty day although after already having been up since 8:00 am the previous day, we would have been fooling only ourselves if we were to believe that fatigue would have not been an issue had we decided to take the second flight. Ultimately we agreed that it only made sense to decline the flight as the only place we would be fit to be heading after arriving home to Edmonton was bed.
In addition to the long day that Shaw had already endured at the time of departure, she was also fighting a head cold which the crew discuss briefly during the descent into the Buffalo area. Much like the case of fatigue, pilots are required to remove themselves from duty if illness will adversely impact their performance while at work. At the time of the Flight 3407 crash, Colgan had a system in place in which it would take a newly hired first officer 9 months to accumulate a sufficient amount of sick time to cover a 4 day trip. The alternative of calling in sick and missing a few days pay, which although would not affect most people adversely, would have a proportionally sizable impact on Shaw's already low salary of $16,200 a year.
Given the details that are emerging in the Colgan Flight 3407 hearings, it would easy to simply shift a good deal of the blame from the pilots to the company itself. While many of the practices at Colgan seem to be unjustifiably flawed, and the pay disproportionally low, if accidents such as these are to be prevented in the future there are many changes that must take place not just in the way we as pilots make decisions or in the way that Colgan is managed, but in the way that the regional airline industry as a whole is operated. Until the time that those changes are made, it will remain the responsibility of the pilots to maintain their discipline in and outside of the cockpit, and when required, stand up for the safety of the crew, the flight and it's passengers, however difficult, financially and professionally that may sometimes be.
Two Perspectives of The Regionals
Thursday, May 21, 2009
Colgan 3407
48 Seconds. A span of time this short could easily get lost in the minutes and hours of a normal flight. Enough time to complete about half of a landing checklist, fly 3/4 of a leg in a hold, or on occasion for a flight to proceed from normal to unrecoverable. In the latter situation, what would normally be otherwise insignificant moments in time become turning points where decisions made define the outcome of a flight, good or bad. Such was the case with Colgan Flight 3407.
At 22:16 and 4 seconds, the crew of Colgan Flight 3407 were turning to intercept the localizer for the ILS approach into Buffalo, while at the same time lowering the landing gear. The flight up to this point was proceeding, in most respects, quite normally. At 22:16 and 52 seconds the end of the CVR recording is marked by a scream from First Officer Rebecca Shaw immediately prior to the flights impact with a house underlying the approach path. These 48 seconds have been highly scrutinised since the recovery of the CVR and FDR from the wreckage of 3407, and will likely continue to be. While 22:16:04 marks the point at which the sequence of events began to deviate from what would be a normal flight, it was during the previous 30 minutes which preceded those fateful 48 seconds that the stage was set for the accident that would follow.
At 21:52:57 the crew picked up the ATIS for Buffalo which called the visibility at 3 miles in snow and mist, with the winds 250 degrees 15 knots gusting to 23. At 21:57:10 the flight is cleared to descend to 11'000. At the turn of the hour, the conversation in the cockpit turns to the crews' experiences with controllers and the past flying experiences of the Shaw while she was based out of the midwest. Neither crew member calls leaving their cruising altitude of 16'000, although at 22:03:41 a sound similar to the altitude alerter is picked up by the cockpit area microphone which could indicate that the aircraft was approaching their cleared altitude of 11'000.
At 22:04:12 Captain Marvin Renslow spends 38 seconds on a partial approach brief for the ILS to Runway 23 into Buffalo. Shortly afterward the flight is cleared to descend to 6000 by Buffalo Approach while the crew discusses an operating procedure used in the flying the Saab, one of the other aircraft types operated by Colgan. At 22:05:29 Captain Renslow finishes the approach brief started a minute earlier. At 22:08:41 the flight is cleared down to 5000, followed by a clearance down to 4000 36 seconds later at 22:09:15. Upon being cleared to 4000, the captain questions the first officer about how her ears were doing to which she replied they were "stuffy".
At 22:09:35 the crew makes mention of ice build-up which is starting to show on the windshield. With this discovery of the ice accumulation the first officer makes mention of her lack of exposure to icing conditions while flying out of Phoenix and that she is grateful for a winters worth of experience as a first officer prior to getting upgraded to captain on the Saab. At 22:12:17 the flight is cleared down to 2300, and shortly afterward is given a heading of 330 Degrees to fly for vectors for the ILS Runway 23. At 22:13:24 the Captain calls for the descent checklist, approximately 10 minutes after the crew had commenced the descent. 10 Seconds later the captain also calls for the approach checklist. In the period immediately before and after the descent and approach checklists are called for and for most of the remainder of the flight, the conversation is centered around the first officers inexperience with flight in icing conditions. At 22:15:06 the Captain calls for and the First Officer sets flaps 5. The flight is then given a heading of 260 degrees by Buffalo Approach to intercept the localizer for the ILS Runway 23. At 22:15:59 the cockpit microphone picked up a sound similar to a decrease in engine power and 17 seconds later the captain called the localizer alive and for gear down. At 22:16:14 the first officer confirmed the landing gear was down, after which the captain called for flaps 15 to be set and the landing checks. At 22:16:27 the sound of the stick shaker, which warns of an impending stall, activates.
Look at the Flight Data recorder information for the same period of time, and it becomes quickly clear what was happening behind the scenes that the CVR only hints to. At 22:16:00 Captain Renslow reduces the power to flight idle to slow for the approach. He then calls "gear down, loc's alive", and in response to this First Officer Shaw lowers the landing gear and moves the condition levers to their maximum position which gave a prop rpm of 1020. The action of both extending the gear and bringing the condition levers forward, while being a normal procedure, introduces a considerable amount of drag from the gear entering the airflow and the props moving to a fine pitch. These two actions, coupled with the engines being at flight idle, allowed the airspeed to decrease from 170 to 149 knots over the course of the next 10 seconds.
When Captain Renslow calls for "Flaps 15, before landing checklist." First Officer Shaw pauses for a few seconds, and when she does move the flap handle, positions it at Flaps 10 instead of the called for Flaps 15. Immediately after selecting Flaps 10, First Officer Shaw utters "uhhhh"
which may have been in response to the decaying airspeed which was decreasing through 130 knots at that point. At 22:16:27, the moment at which the stick shaker activated, the airspeed was at 126 knots and the flaps were moving through 6.7 degrees. The activation of the stick shaker disconnected the autopilot, which had been on up until that point in the approach.
The cockpit would have not been a place of calm and quiet at this stage in the flight. The stick shaker would have been aggressively shaking the controls to warn of an impending stall, while the autopilot disconnect horn blared in the background. Amid the chaos of the cockpit warnings, the crew exchanged no words, no acknowledgement of the stick shaker or the autopilot disconnect, nothing but silence for the next 10 seconds.
In response to the activation of the stick shaker, Captain Renslow almost immediately applies nearly 30 lbs of back pressure to the controls and brings the power levers forward to about 80% power. The action of applying back pressure on the controls resulted in the aircraft pitching up to around 30 degrees nose up, and with the applied increase in power the aircraft began to turn left, a normal tendency of prop driven aircraft. By the top of its short lived climb which peaked at 2600, the aircraft was banked 45 degrees to the left.
Shortly there afterward, the stick pusher, which is a last defense safety mechanism designed to help prevent a stall, begins to apply forward pressure to the controls. The Captain counters this with a 40 pound application of back pressure. At this point in time the airspeed is fluctuating around 100 knots and the angle of attack 23 degrees. The aircraft then begins to simultaneously pitch down and roll rapidly to the right, rolling from a left bank through wings level to a 110 degree bank to the right in the matter of seconds. "Jesus Christ" is all Captain Renslow responds with. As the aircraft was rolling right, First Officer Shaw, without being prompted to do so, selects Flaps Up, which she announces to Renslow shortly afterward.
Using full left rudder and aileron deflection, Renslow is able to roll the aircraft back to near wings level. For a moment the stick pusher stops and as it does the backpressure increases to 60 lbs. The Stick pusher activates once again, and again the Captain overrides it for the remaining 12 seconds of the flight with backpressure ranging from 80 to 120 lbs of force. As a result of these control inputs, the aircraft rolls rapidly again to around 90 angle of bank to the right and the nose falls to 45 degrees nose down.
First Officer Shaw asks "Should the gear up?"
"Gear up, ..ohh #" Responds Captain Renslow
While the crew did manage to get the angle of bank to around 30 degrees and the nose up to -25 degrees, the aircraft had developed a 10'000 foot per minute rate of descent from which there was little, if any, possibility of recovering. The scream emitted by Shaw at 22:16:52 makes it chillingly clear what would occur next.
At 22:16 and 4 seconds, the crew of Colgan Flight 3407 were turning to intercept the localizer for the ILS approach into Buffalo, while at the same time lowering the landing gear. The flight up to this point was proceeding, in most respects, quite normally. At 22:16 and 52 seconds the end of the CVR recording is marked by a scream from First Officer Rebecca Shaw immediately prior to the flights impact with a house underlying the approach path. These 48 seconds have been highly scrutinised since the recovery of the CVR and FDR from the wreckage of 3407, and will likely continue to be. While 22:16:04 marks the point at which the sequence of events began to deviate from what would be a normal flight, it was during the previous 30 minutes which preceded those fateful 48 seconds that the stage was set for the accident that would follow.
At 21:52:57 the crew picked up the ATIS for Buffalo which called the visibility at 3 miles in snow and mist, with the winds 250 degrees 15 knots gusting to 23. At 21:57:10 the flight is cleared to descend to 11'000. At the turn of the hour, the conversation in the cockpit turns to the crews' experiences with controllers and the past flying experiences of the Shaw while she was based out of the midwest. Neither crew member calls leaving their cruising altitude of 16'000, although at 22:03:41 a sound similar to the altitude alerter is picked up by the cockpit area microphone which could indicate that the aircraft was approaching their cleared altitude of 11'000.
At 22:04:12 Captain Marvin Renslow spends 38 seconds on a partial approach brief for the ILS to Runway 23 into Buffalo. Shortly afterward the flight is cleared to descend to 6000 by Buffalo Approach while the crew discusses an operating procedure used in the flying the Saab, one of the other aircraft types operated by Colgan. At 22:05:29 Captain Renslow finishes the approach brief started a minute earlier. At 22:08:41 the flight is cleared down to 5000, followed by a clearance down to 4000 36 seconds later at 22:09:15. Upon being cleared to 4000, the captain questions the first officer about how her ears were doing to which she replied they were "stuffy".
At 22:09:35 the crew makes mention of ice build-up which is starting to show on the windshield. With this discovery of the ice accumulation the first officer makes mention of her lack of exposure to icing conditions while flying out of Phoenix and that she is grateful for a winters worth of experience as a first officer prior to getting upgraded to captain on the Saab. At 22:12:17 the flight is cleared down to 2300, and shortly afterward is given a heading of 330 Degrees to fly for vectors for the ILS Runway 23. At 22:13:24 the Captain calls for the descent checklist, approximately 10 minutes after the crew had commenced the descent. 10 Seconds later the captain also calls for the approach checklist. In the period immediately before and after the descent and approach checklists are called for and for most of the remainder of the flight, the conversation is centered around the first officers inexperience with flight in icing conditions. At 22:15:06 the Captain calls for and the First Officer sets flaps 5. The flight is then given a heading of 260 degrees by Buffalo Approach to intercept the localizer for the ILS Runway 23. At 22:15:59 the cockpit microphone picked up a sound similar to a decrease in engine power and 17 seconds later the captain called the localizer alive and for gear down. At 22:16:14 the first officer confirmed the landing gear was down, after which the captain called for flaps 15 to be set and the landing checks. At 22:16:27 the sound of the stick shaker, which warns of an impending stall, activates.
Look at the Flight Data recorder information for the same period of time, and it becomes quickly clear what was happening behind the scenes that the CVR only hints to. At 22:16:00 Captain Renslow reduces the power to flight idle to slow for the approach. He then calls "gear down, loc's alive", and in response to this First Officer Shaw lowers the landing gear and moves the condition levers to their maximum position which gave a prop rpm of 1020. The action of both extending the gear and bringing the condition levers forward, while being a normal procedure, introduces a considerable amount of drag from the gear entering the airflow and the props moving to a fine pitch. These two actions, coupled with the engines being at flight idle, allowed the airspeed to decrease from 170 to 149 knots over the course of the next 10 seconds.
When Captain Renslow calls for "Flaps 15, before landing checklist." First Officer Shaw pauses for a few seconds, and when she does move the flap handle, positions it at Flaps 10 instead of the called for Flaps 15. Immediately after selecting Flaps 10, First Officer Shaw utters "uhhhh"
which may have been in response to the decaying airspeed which was decreasing through 130 knots at that point. At 22:16:27, the moment at which the stick shaker activated, the airspeed was at 126 knots and the flaps were moving through 6.7 degrees. The activation of the stick shaker disconnected the autopilot, which had been on up until that point in the approach.
The cockpit would have not been a place of calm and quiet at this stage in the flight. The stick shaker would have been aggressively shaking the controls to warn of an impending stall, while the autopilot disconnect horn blared in the background. Amid the chaos of the cockpit warnings, the crew exchanged no words, no acknowledgement of the stick shaker or the autopilot disconnect, nothing but silence for the next 10 seconds.
In response to the activation of the stick shaker, Captain Renslow almost immediately applies nearly 30 lbs of back pressure to the controls and brings the power levers forward to about 80% power. The action of applying back pressure on the controls resulted in the aircraft pitching up to around 30 degrees nose up, and with the applied increase in power the aircraft began to turn left, a normal tendency of prop driven aircraft. By the top of its short lived climb which peaked at 2600, the aircraft was banked 45 degrees to the left.
Shortly there afterward, the stick pusher, which is a last defense safety mechanism designed to help prevent a stall, begins to apply forward pressure to the controls. The Captain counters this with a 40 pound application of back pressure. At this point in time the airspeed is fluctuating around 100 knots and the angle of attack 23 degrees. The aircraft then begins to simultaneously pitch down and roll rapidly to the right, rolling from a left bank through wings level to a 110 degree bank to the right in the matter of seconds. "Jesus Christ" is all Captain Renslow responds with. As the aircraft was rolling right, First Officer Shaw, without being prompted to do so, selects Flaps Up, which she announces to Renslow shortly afterward.
Using full left rudder and aileron deflection, Renslow is able to roll the aircraft back to near wings level. For a moment the stick pusher stops and as it does the backpressure increases to 60 lbs. The Stick pusher activates once again, and again the Captain overrides it for the remaining 12 seconds of the flight with backpressure ranging from 80 to 120 lbs of force. As a result of these control inputs, the aircraft rolls rapidly again to around 90 angle of bank to the right and the nose falls to 45 degrees nose down.
First Officer Shaw asks "Should the gear up?"
"Gear up, ..ohh #" Responds Captain Renslow
While the crew did manage to get the angle of bank to around 30 degrees and the nose up to -25 degrees, the aircraft had developed a 10'000 foot per minute rate of descent from which there was little, if any, possibility of recovering. The scream emitted by Shaw at 22:16:52 makes it chillingly clear what would occur next.
Tuesday, May 19, 2009
Spring Ice
Pausing in position I look out the rain smeared view of the forward windscreen. The visibility off the departure end of the runway appears grim this morning, the city skyline barely visible through the mist. The tower breaks the silence of the cockpit;
- "Air189,. Pilot reports indicate moderate ice from the surface to seven thousand feet on departure, Departure is 119.5 airborne, cleared for takeoff runway 12"
-"Departure 119.5 airborne, cleared takeoff runway 12, check remarks, good morning, Air189"
As the noise increases within the cockpit as the engines begin to spool up, I rest my hand beneath the power levers in preparation for the takeoff
- "Props governing" I call, while I wonder how much ice the clouds ahead have in store for us.
- "Set take-off power" responds the captain
- "Take-off power set, in the green, 80 knots, 100 knots rotate, positive rate", comes the well rehearsed list of calls of a normal take-off
- He replies with a simple- "gear up"
With the landing gear safely stowed in their respective wheel wells I turn my attention to the slowly increasing altimeter, waiting for 400 feet.
-"Top of Second"
-"Flaps up, set climb power, after Take-off Checks" is the laconic reply out of the left seat
-"Departure Good Morning, Air 189 is off of Runway 12 at the City, through 3200' for 7000".
- "Air 189, Morning, left turn direct VIPVA climb and maintain Flight Level 190"
- "Left turn direct VIPVA, maintain Flight Level 190, Air 189"
The ground had long since disappeared into the murk below, and looking out the side window of the cockpit as I complete the after take-off checks, I can only see the dim interior of the overcast layer that is currently sitting over the southern half of the province. A look at the graphical area forecast before departure this morning showed an upper warm front moving in from the south, bringing with it an extensive area of cloud, snow and freezing drizzle. Pilot reports of flights that had already traversed this route earlier in the morning indicated that we would likely find moderate ice in the climb to 19'000 feet. With a near full load of 9 passengers sitting in the back, the aircraft seemed hesitant to climb already, the vertical speed reading akin to what one would expect in the small single engined Cessnas in which I did my training. Climbing north past the unseen northern edge of the city below, an accumulation of ice was beginning to make itself visible on the leading edge of the wing. I turned to look at the windshield wipers, which tend to accumulate ice before any other portion of the aircraft visible from the cockpit, to find a half an inch of ice clinging to their sturdy black frame.
Inflating the de-ice boots dislodged most of the ice from the wing, the airflow prying it from the leading edge and carrying it back over the wing. Glancing at the altimeter as we climb through 8000', I begin to think that unless we find the cloud tops soon, we will stand little chance of climbing the aircraft, and the ice we have acquired, to 19'000.
- "Edmonton Centre, Air 189 is requesting 15'000 for final"
- " Air 189, Edmonton Centre, Maintain 15'000"
- "Maintain 15'000, Air 189"
Climbing through 9'000 feet, the thick veil of grey cloud which has enveloped us since departure begins to lighten. Looking upwards I can begin to see the faint outline of the sun above, I sigh, hopefully the tops are not far off.
We continue the now familiar routine of inflating the boots, watching the ice crack and shed off, followed finally by waiting for more ice to collect to begin the process over again.
Climbing through the last few thousand feet to the tops the ice begins to collect more quickly, like a last chance effort on the part of Mother Nature to prevent us from climbing above the clouds. Moments later, we finally break through the tops into the sun lit world above.
Leveling at 15'000 I pause to think about the conditions we have flown through up to this point in the flight. The ice accumulations we have seen thus far in the flight exceed anything I have seen in my year and a half experience flying IFR in the typically dry air of the western prairies. The ice that is currently sitting out on the unprotected areas of the wings is likely more ice than I have encountered throughout all of the past winter's flights combined.
At the hotel after landing and securing the airplane, I am looking over the transcripts from the Cockpit Voice Recorder and Flight Data Recorder of Colgan Flight 3407 which crashed while on approach into Buffalo New York earlier this year. At the beginning of the approach the First Officer expressed concern over the icing they were experiencing, and her inexperience with dealing with icing conditions in general. While there were many other falling dominos which contributed to the Colgan accident in Buffalo, I could not help but wonder what part ice had played in the larger picture, and given my experience on the northbound flight this morning, what I may have done differently or the same compared to the ill fated crew if I were placed in their shoes. Having the benefit of hindsight and the ability to take ones time to think through the chain of events in which the crew of Colgan 3407 found themselves, it is easy to say that if put in their place, we would have made different decisions, possibly averting disaster. Unfortunately views such as these will only serve to allow the events which led to this accident to perpetuate. If anything useful is to be gained from the decisions and actions of this crew, we all must realize that as pilots that we are no less fallible, no less prone to error than the ill fated crew of Colgan 3407, and that their mistakes of today, if not looked at carefully, could well be our mistakes of tomorrow.
- "Air189,. Pilot reports indicate moderate ice from the surface to seven thousand feet on departure, Departure is 119.5 airborne, cleared for takeoff runway 12"
-"Departure 119.5 airborne, cleared takeoff runway 12, check remarks, good morning, Air189"
As the noise increases within the cockpit as the engines begin to spool up, I rest my hand beneath the power levers in preparation for the takeoff
- "Props governing" I call, while I wonder how much ice the clouds ahead have in store for us.
- "Set take-off power" responds the captain
- "Take-off power set, in the green, 80 knots, 100 knots rotate, positive rate", comes the well rehearsed list of calls of a normal take-off
- He replies with a simple- "gear up"
With the landing gear safely stowed in their respective wheel wells I turn my attention to the slowly increasing altimeter, waiting for 400 feet.
-"Top of Second"
-"Flaps up, set climb power, after Take-off Checks" is the laconic reply out of the left seat
-"Departure Good Morning, Air 189 is off of Runway 12 at the City, through 3200' for 7000".
- "Air 189, Morning, left turn direct VIPVA climb and maintain Flight Level 190"
- "Left turn direct VIPVA, maintain Flight Level 190, Air 189"
The ground had long since disappeared into the murk below, and looking out the side window of the cockpit as I complete the after take-off checks, I can only see the dim interior of the overcast layer that is currently sitting over the southern half of the province. A look at the graphical area forecast before departure this morning showed an upper warm front moving in from the south, bringing with it an extensive area of cloud, snow and freezing drizzle. Pilot reports of flights that had already traversed this route earlier in the morning indicated that we would likely find moderate ice in the climb to 19'000 feet. With a near full load of 9 passengers sitting in the back, the aircraft seemed hesitant to climb already, the vertical speed reading akin to what one would expect in the small single engined Cessnas in which I did my training. Climbing north past the unseen northern edge of the city below, an accumulation of ice was beginning to make itself visible on the leading edge of the wing. I turned to look at the windshield wipers, which tend to accumulate ice before any other portion of the aircraft visible from the cockpit, to find a half an inch of ice clinging to their sturdy black frame.
Inflating the de-ice boots dislodged most of the ice from the wing, the airflow prying it from the leading edge and carrying it back over the wing. Glancing at the altimeter as we climb through 8000', I begin to think that unless we find the cloud tops soon, we will stand little chance of climbing the aircraft, and the ice we have acquired, to 19'000.
- "Edmonton Centre, Air 189 is requesting 15'000 for final"
- " Air 189, Edmonton Centre, Maintain 15'000"
- "Maintain 15'000, Air 189"
Climbing through 9'000 feet, the thick veil of grey cloud which has enveloped us since departure begins to lighten. Looking upwards I can begin to see the faint outline of the sun above, I sigh, hopefully the tops are not far off.
We continue the now familiar routine of inflating the boots, watching the ice crack and shed off, followed finally by waiting for more ice to collect to begin the process over again.
Climbing through the last few thousand feet to the tops the ice begins to collect more quickly, like a last chance effort on the part of Mother Nature to prevent us from climbing above the clouds. Moments later, we finally break through the tops into the sun lit world above.
Leveling at 15'000 I pause to think about the conditions we have flown through up to this point in the flight. The ice accumulations we have seen thus far in the flight exceed anything I have seen in my year and a half experience flying IFR in the typically dry air of the western prairies. The ice that is currently sitting out on the unprotected areas of the wings is likely more ice than I have encountered throughout all of the past winter's flights combined.
At the hotel after landing and securing the airplane, I am looking over the transcripts from the Cockpit Voice Recorder and Flight Data Recorder of Colgan Flight 3407 which crashed while on approach into Buffalo New York earlier this year. At the beginning of the approach the First Officer expressed concern over the icing they were experiencing, and her inexperience with dealing with icing conditions in general. While there were many other falling dominos which contributed to the Colgan accident in Buffalo, I could not help but wonder what part ice had played in the larger picture, and given my experience on the northbound flight this morning, what I may have done differently or the same compared to the ill fated crew if I were placed in their shoes. Having the benefit of hindsight and the ability to take ones time to think through the chain of events in which the crew of Colgan 3407 found themselves, it is easy to say that if put in their place, we would have made different decisions, possibly averting disaster. Unfortunately views such as these will only serve to allow the events which led to this accident to perpetuate. If anything useful is to be gained from the decisions and actions of this crew, we all must realize that as pilots that we are no less fallible, no less prone to error than the ill fated crew of Colgan 3407, and that their mistakes of today, if not looked at carefully, could well be our mistakes of tomorrow.
Sunday, April 26, 2009
Rain Check
This morning dawned cold and wet. A glance at my watch confirmed what my body had been telling me for the past 20 minutes; it was time to get up. I poked my head between the bedroom window curtains to find light snow falling outside. The forecast called for a mix of rain and snow for the better part of the day, and it seemed as though, so far at least, the forecasters were spot on. With check marks already placed beside most of the items on the weekend to-do list, I had most of the morning to myself before having to get ready for dinner with family in the afternoon. As I make my way towards the kitchen to arrange some breakfast, my bike, gleaming in the dull light of the living room, catches my eye. For a second I entertain the thought of throwing on a few layers and going for a ride into the river valley, but a second glance at the now heavier snow falling outside allowed the less adventurous, some would say, more rational part of my mind to be convinced that finding something to do inside would probably be a better idea. Sitting down at the table to some toast and milk, I leafed through a mountain bike magazine left there from the previous evening. It's glossy pages told stories of everyday people, trails ridden and adventure found. In the days of my youth , I would live for mornings such as these. Logging trails entwined in the woods around my house with which I had become quite familiar, would take on new personalities under a thin blanket of spring snowfall like today's. I wondered what the 17 year old me would think of my sitting inside on a day like today.
On one of my early trips home after moving west I can remember while driving with my Mom, a country song which professed the benefits of living ones life as though they were dying, came over the radio. After the song finished, Mom nodded in agreement, and remarked that we could all do well to live our lives as though each day were our last. I have thought about this song a fair amount since that time. I don't completely agree with the statement that we should all "live as though we are dying". If this were truly the case, there would be a great number of people who would not go to work, pay the bills, or do the dishes and would end off the day with quite a bit less money in their savings account than they did at the start. In all likelihood though, they would wake up the next morning to find that they were not only still very much alive but that there were still dishes that needed to be washed, bills that should be paid and a job at which they would be expected to show up. I have since come to the conclusion that a more sustainable goal would be to live each day so that if you were so unfortunate as to pass away at the end of it, that you would pass away happy. I suppose in either case the root message is the same, and that is to simply make the best of each day. Looking at things from a bigger perspective, its odd that more often than not, it is death that motivates us to make the most of our days, and not a general desire to make the best of any given day. Maybe that's an oversimplification or maybe on some level, we all require that period at the end of our life's sentence in order to drive us to live our days to the fullest.
With that thought fresh in my mind, I finish the last bite of my toast and head to the closet where I pull on a long sleeved shirt and my snow pants. Pushing off from the front steps of the apartment building, the snow crunches underneath my tires as I pedal out to the street. I spin my way through the light Sunday traffic of the dozen blocks which lie between me and the river valley. The river valley is shrouded in a mist this morning, and as I begin my descent into the tree lined trails below, wet snow starts to collect on my glasses. With each successive flake collected, my view of the world ahead becomes progressively smaller. I navigate my way down through a maze of roots which are doing their best to throw me from my bike. I clamber my way up the next uphill section while my wheels become heavier with the mud that is now sticking to my tires. Building speed on the next downhill, the mud gradually losses its grip, and flings itself up unto anything that is in the immediate vicinity. I stop at the bottom of the hill cold, wet, covered in mud, and smiling. I am sure the 17 year old me would be proud.
Back at home, under the soothing heat of the shower, I again pause to think about this business of making the most of each day. Whether or not I have lived this particular day to the fullest so far could probably be debated, but whether or not it should be debated is another matter altogether. Helen Rowland once said that "The follies which a man regrets the most in his life are those which he didn't commit when he had the opportunity." Maybe we could all be so lucky as to only regret the dirt garnered when we have dared the cold, muddy, adventure laden trails and came back smiling and not the trails avoided for fear of coming home dirty.
On one of my early trips home after moving west I can remember while driving with my Mom, a country song which professed the benefits of living ones life as though they were dying, came over the radio. After the song finished, Mom nodded in agreement, and remarked that we could all do well to live our lives as though each day were our last. I have thought about this song a fair amount since that time. I don't completely agree with the statement that we should all "live as though we are dying". If this were truly the case, there would be a great number of people who would not go to work, pay the bills, or do the dishes and would end off the day with quite a bit less money in their savings account than they did at the start. In all likelihood though, they would wake up the next morning to find that they were not only still very much alive but that there were still dishes that needed to be washed, bills that should be paid and a job at which they would be expected to show up. I have since come to the conclusion that a more sustainable goal would be to live each day so that if you were so unfortunate as to pass away at the end of it, that you would pass away happy. I suppose in either case the root message is the same, and that is to simply make the best of each day. Looking at things from a bigger perspective, its odd that more often than not, it is death that motivates us to make the most of our days, and not a general desire to make the best of any given day. Maybe that's an oversimplification or maybe on some level, we all require that period at the end of our life's sentence in order to drive us to live our days to the fullest. 
With that thought fresh in my mind, I finish the last bite of my toast and head to the closet where I pull on a long sleeved shirt and my snow pants. Pushing off from the front steps of the apartment building, the snow crunches underneath my tires as I pedal out to the street. I spin my way through the light Sunday traffic of the dozen blocks which lie between me and the river valley. The river valley is shrouded in a mist this morning, and as I begin my descent into the tree lined trails below, wet snow starts to collect on my glasses. With each successive flake collected, my view of the world ahead becomes progressively smaller. I navigate my way down through a maze of roots which are doing their best to throw me from my bike. I clamber my way up the next uphill section while my wheels become heavier with the mud that is now sticking to my tires. Building speed on the next downhill, the mud gradually losses its grip, and flings itself up unto anything that is in the immediate vicinity. I stop at the bottom of the hill cold, wet, covered in mud, and smiling. I am sure the 17 year old me would be proud.
Back at home, under the soothing heat of the shower, I again pause to think about this business of making the most of each day. Whether or not I have lived this particular day to the fullest so far could probably be debated, but whether or not it should be debated is another matter altogether. Helen Rowland once said that "The follies which a man regrets the most in his life are those which he didn't commit when he had the opportunity." Maybe we could all be so lucky as to only regret the dirt garnered when we have dared the cold, muddy, adventure laden trails and came back smiling and not the trails avoided for fear of coming home dirty.
Monday, April 20, 2009
Something on Efficiency
Watching the fuel flow gauges the other day while enroute to north eastern BC, I wondered where, in a world where most everyone is becoming more environmentally conscious, the aircraft that I fly fit in. A glance at the flight plan showed that over the course of our day flying, we would burn approximately 2700 Lbs of fuel, or about 1500 litres. Compared with the typical car, those numbers seem to be disproportionally high. Relatively speaking, for every hour of operation, the Beech 1900 burns about enough gas to fill the tank of my Jetta 7 and a half times. Of course, trying to fit 19 passengers into my Jetta and then driving them 450 nm in an hour and a half, and I would find myself coming up a little short on a way to accomplish this. It makes sense then, that to make any useful comparison between the two, those numbers must be brought down to a common denominator. In reports on vehicle efficiency, it seems as though Litres of fuel consumed per passenger per kilometer is the favored common denominator for making comparisons of this type. For curiosity's sake I have also dug up the performance numbers for the Dash 8 200, CRJ 200, Boeing 777 200, 747 200, and the DC-10 30. Some of the numbers which I arrived at surprised me, others were much as I suspected.
Next 13.6 pounds per hour fuel burn is divided by the 4 passengers my car will hold, to come up with a figure of 3.4 Lbs. of fuel consumed every hour for each passenger on board. This is of course often not the case, as most of the time my car has a maximum of two people in it, but in order to determine the maximum efficiency my car could attain, I assumed a full car load. Next I divided the 3.4 Lbs. of fuel that the Jetta consumes for each passenger by the average speed which I drive, which works out to about 75 km/hour. Now we have a figure of .045 pounds of fuel, or .028 L consumed for every kilometer for each passenger in my car. Stacked against the aircraft I could find performance numbers on, the Jetta fared quite well when full. Take out three passengers though, and the Jetta's fuel burned per kilometer per passenger jumps up to .11L. Driving style has a huge impact on efficiency as well. With my mild mannered grandmother like driving, I can average about 550 km before my 55L fuel tank runs dry. Throw in a few afternoons worth of hard driving, and you can watch your mileage head south proportionally.
The Beech 1900 can hold 19 passengers, 21 people including the crew, will fly at 463 km/h, and burns about 750 pounds of fuel per hour for an average 400 nm trip. Longer flights will increase the efficiency as fuel flows at higher altitudes drop significantly. This helps to offset the fuel consumed to climb the aircraft up to the higher altitude. On shorter flights, often the fuel savings realised at higher altitudes does not justify the amount of fuel required to get the aircraft up to that given altitude. To get around the impact that flights of different lenghts or at altitudes can have on the overall fuel efficiency, I have simply used cruise fuel flows. For those who are interested in determining the efficiency of the overall flight, adding about 7% to enroute fuel burns for taxi, take-off, climb and approach seems to get you in the ballpark.
The CRJ-200 came in at the top of the list with .041 which works out to about the equivalent of 13 L/100km. That puts the RJ somewhere close to what a Ford F-150 will achieve on the highway.
To a certain degree, how efficient a vehicle is, is not only dependant on the vehicle design itself, but also on how it is operated. Much like refraining from racing from one set of lights to the next in a car, there are steps which can be taken to reduce fuel consumption in aircraft as well. In the wake of higher fuel prices last summer, many companies, including the one with which I am employed, implemented a reduced fuel burn program, where crews would reduce their cruise speed and correspondingly, reduce how much fuel was consumed on a given flight. The result gave us a average cruise speed which was reduced by 2%, while we saw a reduction in fuel consumption of 12.5%. Not a bad trade off really. A number of years ago several tests were conducted to find the "optimum speed" which would allow passenger cars to travel the furthest distance on the least quantity of fuel. It was discovered that somewhere around 90 km/hr most passenger cars efficiency peaked. Driving any faster, or slower than this speed, would result in more fuel being consumed for a given distance traveled. Environmentally speaking, the damage that may be caused to the world around us by going faster is really quite intangible. Even for those who are concerned about the effect of their actions on the environment, driving 110 on the highway instead of the more efficient 90 has no immediate impact that they can readily see aside from that they will arrive at their destination a few minutes earlier. Even climatologists cannot agree on what impact specifically consuming more fuel will have on the world around us.
On the highway, my Jetta burns on average about 7 L of fuel for every hour of driving. Commuting around the city, with it's inherent multiple starts and stops the fuel burns get pushed up to somewhere around 10 L for ever hour driven. To come up with a number that roughly averages out highway and city driving, I estimated 8.5 L of fuel consumed per hour. Since most aircraft performance numbers are cited in terms of fuel burned in pounds per hour, I converted my average Jetta fuel burn of 8.5 litres, to 13.6 pounds of fuel burned per hour.
Next 13.6 pounds per hour fuel burn is divided by the 4 passengers my car will hold, to come up with a figure of 3.4 Lbs. of fuel consumed every hour for each passenger on board. This is of course often not the case, as most of the time my car has a maximum of two people in it, but in order to determine the maximum efficiency my car could attain, I assumed a full car load. Next I divided the 3.4 Lbs. of fuel that the Jetta consumes for each passenger by the average speed which I drive, which works out to about 75 km/hour. Now we have a figure of .045 pounds of fuel, or .028 L consumed for every kilometer for each passenger in my car. Stacked against the aircraft I could find performance numbers on, the Jetta fared quite well when full. Take out three passengers though, and the Jetta's fuel burned per kilometer per passenger jumps up to .11L. Driving style has a huge impact on efficiency as well. With my mild mannered grandmother like driving, I can average about 550 km before my 55L fuel tank runs dry. Throw in a few afternoons worth of hard driving, and you can watch your mileage head south proportionally.
The Beech 1900 can hold 19 passengers, 21 people including the crew, will fly at 463 km/h, and burns about 750 pounds of fuel per hour for an average 400 nm trip. Longer flights will increase the efficiency as fuel flows at higher altitudes drop significantly. This helps to offset the fuel consumed to climb the aircraft up to the higher altitude. On shorter flights, often the fuel savings realised at higher altitudes does not justify the amount of fuel required to get the aircraft up to that given altitude. To get around the impact that flights of different lenghts or at altitudes can have on the overall fuel efficiency, I have simply used cruise fuel flows. For those who are interested in determining the efficiency of the overall flight, adding about 7% to enroute fuel burns for taxi, take-off, climb and approach seems to get you in the ballpark.
With a fuel flow of 700 pph, and 21 people on board, the 1900 is burning 33.3 pounds of fuel per hour per person. With a cruise speed of 463 km/h, we will be consuming .071 pounds or .039 L of fuel for each kilometer traveled, for every person on board. This puts the 1900 into the same fuel efficiency category as an Impala sized car in the city, or about 11L/100 km.
The Dash 8 200, DC-10-30 and 747-200 came in with .031, .034 and .037 litres of fuel burned per passenger per kilometer respectively, which would put them all into the realm of
somewhere around the efficiency of a mid-size car.
The CRJ-200 came in at the top of the list with .041 which works out to about the equivalent of 13 L/100km. That puts the RJ somewhere close to what a Ford F-150 will achieve on the highway.The Boeing 777-200 surprised me the most with it consuming .022 Litres of fuel/km/passenger. Put into automotive terms, it works out to about 6.7 L/100 km, which is almost exactly what a 2009 Toyota Corolla is advertised to achieve on the highway.
To a certain degree, how efficient a vehicle is, is not only dependant on the vehicle design itself, but also on how it is operated. Much like refraining from racing from one set of lights to the next in a car, there are steps which can be taken to reduce fuel consumption in aircraft as well. In the wake of higher fuel prices last summer, many companies, including the one with which I am employed, implemented a reduced fuel burn program, where crews would reduce their cruise speed and correspondingly, reduce how much fuel was consumed on a given flight. The result gave us a average cruise speed which was reduced by 2%, while we saw a reduction in fuel consumption of 12.5%. Not a bad trade off really. A number of years ago several tests were conducted to find the "optimum speed" which would allow passenger cars to travel the furthest distance on the least quantity of fuel. It was discovered that somewhere around 90 km/hr most passenger cars efficiency peaked. Driving any faster, or slower than this speed, would result in more fuel being consumed for a given distance traveled. Environmentally speaking, the damage that may be caused to the world around us by going faster is really quite intangible. Even for those who are concerned about the effect of their actions on the environment, driving 110 on the highway instead of the more efficient 90 has no immediate impact that they can readily see aside from that they will arrive at their destination a few minutes earlier. Even climatologists cannot agree on what impact specifically consuming more fuel will have on the world around us. At the end of the day, regardless of whether or not I am actually helping the environment, I will aim to drive my car, and while I am at work, fly planes in the most efficient and safest way I can. If it turns out that I helped out in some small way, all the better. If it is discovered that global warming was nothing more than an inevitable upward swing in the temperature of our planet's atmosphere, then at the very least I can smile in knowing that with each time I filled the fuel tank in my car, I saved about enough money to buy myself a popsicle. With the extra time it is going to take me to get to where ever I am heading to, I will also have a little extra time to savour it.
For those who have made it all the way through this post,.
For those who have made it all the way through this post,.
Sunday, April 19, 2009
Instructors and Students
Sometimes it can be a rather unique sort of relationship that forms between an instructor and their student. I am sure this fact is true with many teaching situations, but I'd be willing to guess that it is likely more prevalent in flight instructing. During my time as an instructor I found that with many of my students it was almost with a feeling of paternal pride that I would watch them progress from being a person who knew little of how to get a aircraft off the ground and back down safely, to someone who could fly safely off on their own. There were the obvious milestones which mark the progression of a typical student pilot that were cause for pause and a feeling of pride; the first solo, completion of cross countries, and ultimately the flight test. Sandwiched within those major milestones were moments where as an instructor I would sit back and smile to myself, as a student overcame a particular obstacle which had been holding them back, or came to fully understand a concept that had eluded them prior to that point. In many cases, after a student's training has been completed, the flight test usually marked the point where, like college kids moving out on their own, you would bid your students farewell and hope that all you have taught them has prepared them well for the real world which awaits.
Driving home yesterday evening after meeting with a former student to look over a flight manual of his own construction, I must admit, that even while it had been over a year and a half since we had flown together, the pride I felt in looking over his manual far surpassed any of the previous milestones which came before it. Perhaps it was the attention to detail which he paid to even the smallest bits of theory, or the broad scope in which he covered a great many topics, or perhaps it was the pursuit of knowledge, not to pass a test, but rather to be the most knowledgeable pilot possible, that was most impressive. Maybe though, it was those intangible things which cannot be either taught nor learned, namely a curiosity which drove him to ask questions and seek answers above and beyond what would ever be required on any exam, and a display of determination to perfect his craft that caused my heart to swell with the pride of a teacher whose student's knowledge came to surpass the collective total of lessons given.
You are a true Guru Andrew.
Driving home yesterday evening after meeting with a former student to look over a flight manual of his own construction, I must admit, that even while it had been over a year and a half since we had flown together, the pride I felt in looking over his manual far surpassed any of the previous milestones which came before it. Perhaps it was the attention to detail which he paid to even the smallest bits of theory, or the broad scope in which he covered a great many topics, or perhaps it was the pursuit of knowledge, not to pass a test, but rather to be the most knowledgeable pilot possible, that was most impressive. Maybe though, it was those intangible things which cannot be either taught nor learned, namely a curiosity which drove him to ask questions and seek answers above and beyond what would ever be required on any exam, and a display of determination to perfect his craft that caused my heart to swell with the pride of a teacher whose student's knowledge came to surpass the collective total of lessons given.
You are a true Guru Andrew.
Tuesday, April 7, 2009
City Centre Airport
It seems that the vultures are circling once again, their gaze focused intently on 144 acres of land that is home to 85 establishments employing approximately 1000 people.
Looking back out the side window of the plane this morning after a right turn on departure, I catch a quick glimpse of that controversial parcel of land, its 144 acres coming alive with the aircraft that call City Centre home. In recent months the future of the Muni has once again been called into question. Many are of the opinion that the airport should be closed, and the land made available for development while some make claims that access to northern communities and the medevac flights that service them are of greater importance than whatever development could potentially sprout from the land currently being occupied by the field. Being a pilot based out of the city, my opinion on the matter is undoubtedly quite biased in favor of keeping the airport open. It would be easy, as a pilot, to argue that the airport should remain open for no other reason than for a love of aircraft and the airports that they serve. Unfortunately sentiments such as these cannot be assigned a price tag as easily as the value of the land the airport rests upon.
The City Centre Airport is deeply routed in the history of Canadian aviation, and aside from the practical reasons for its continued existence, its historical significance is, to put it lightly, without peer. The Edmonton City Centre Airport first came into being in 1926 after the Edmonton and Northern Alberta Aero Club received a $400 grant to transform an area of farmland into the air harbour it would be designated as later that year. In 1929, after the City Council approved spending 35'000 on the then three year old airfield, Jimmy Bell's air harbour, as it had been known, was renamed after former Edmonton mayor, Keith Alexander Blatchford, and became Canada's first licensed airfield. Under it's new title, Blatchford Field saw many of western Canada's early aviation pioneers lift off of its sod runways and turn northbound for the uncharted territory which lie in wait. Among them, Wop May, whose aviation related endeavours included instructing, a tour as part of the RAF during WWI, and in 1928 amid much media attention, completion of an emergency flight to Fort Vermilion to deliver inoculations to the town, after a man who had fallen ill was discovered to have diphtheria. Over the course of the next 35 years, the airport would become a cornerstone of commercial and military aviation, not only in the Edmonton region, but for North America as a whole. In 1939, Blatchford field became the Royal Canadian Air Force flight training centre, while 4 years later the North American record was set when 860 aircraft passed through the the #2 Air Observer School, as the field had then come to be known.
As the 1950's ushered in an era of larger aircraft which would require longer runways, the search began for a site for a new field able to accommodate the new generation of aircraft which would serve the Edmonton region in the decades to come. In 1963, The Edmonton International Airport was completed, and with that completion, the City Centre airport was slated to close. Fortunately, political opposition saved the field, and over the course of the next 45 years, the airport would change names three times, and operate under several political mandates. In a 1995 referendum, 77 percent of Edmonton citizens voted in favor of consolidating scheduled air traffic to the International Airport, while the City Centre Airport would be kept open to serve general aviation and corporate traffic. By 1996, the consolidation process had been completed, and the City Airport settled into the role it would play until the present time. Under the results of this 1995 referendum, the City of Edmonton entered into a lease with Edmonton Airports on March 25, 1996 to have EA manage the City Centre Airport for a period of 56 years to 2052. In 2008, the City Airport once again fell under political scrutiny as the City Council and Executive Committee requested and heard several reports which "outlined the challenges and opportunities associated with the ECCA (Edmonton City Centre Airport) lands". The review of the Airport looked at the issue through various assessments ranging from economic and land impact, to historical impact. The results from these assessments are scheduled to be heard by the Executive Committee this June.
Those in favor of closing the City airport cite reasons that primarily centre around further development of the land around the airport. Not only would the land the airport currently occupies be available, but areas which are under a height restriction due to their proximity to approach paths could potentially see upward growth. NAIT, an airport neighbour to the east is reported to be currently operating at maximum capacity at its City Centre location, and could develop westward if the airport were to close. However, NAIT has obtained a 61 hectare site that could see development of a south campus south east of the Ellerslie/Hwy 2 Intersection. Perhaps due to a lack of funding, or a lack of students to fill such a facility, NAIT has yet to put forth plans to develop this south site. In a report released by the City in May 2008, four examples were given of projects that experienced constraints due to their proximity to approach paths, including expansion at the Royal Alexandra Hospital, The AMA building, and Aurora Development projects north of 105 Ave and west of 101 St. In each of these cases it was not a matter of projects that were proposed but were not permitted to pass due to approach path restrictions, but rather had to be changed to meet the demands of the area which they occupied. One would be hard pressed to find a building in the Edmonton area, or any urban area for that matter, that has not been affected in some way by zoning restrictions, just as the four examples given in the City report were.
Looking back out the side window of the plane this morning after a right turn on departure, I catch a quick glimpse of that controversial parcel of land, its 144 acres coming alive with the aircraft that call City Centre home. In recent months the future of the Muni has once again been called into question. Many are of the opinion that the airport should be closed, and the land made available for development while some make claims that access to northern communities and the medevac flights that service them are of greater importance than whatever development could potentially sprout from the land currently being occupied by the field. Being a pilot based out of the city, my opinion on the matter is undoubtedly quite biased in favor of keeping the airport open. It would be easy, as a pilot, to argue that the airport should remain open for no other reason than for a love of aircraft and the airports that they serve. Unfortunately sentiments such as these cannot be assigned a price tag as easily as the value of the land the airport rests upon.
The City Centre Airport is deeply routed in the history of Canadian aviation, and aside from the practical reasons for its continued existence, its historical significance is, to put it lightly, without peer. The Edmonton City Centre Airport first came into being in 1926 after the Edmonton and Northern Alberta Aero Club received a $400 grant to transform an area of farmland into the air harbour it would be designated as later that year. In 1929, after the City Council approved spending 35'000 on the then three year old airfield, Jimmy Bell's air harbour, as it had been known, was renamed after former Edmonton mayor, Keith Alexander Blatchford, and became Canada's first licensed airfield. Under it's new title, Blatchford Field saw many of western Canada's early aviation pioneers lift off of its sod runways and turn northbound for the uncharted territory which lie in wait. Among them, Wop May, whose aviation related endeavours included instructing, a tour as part of the RAF during WWI, and in 1928 amid much media attention, completion of an emergency flight to Fort Vermilion to deliver inoculations to the town, after a man who had fallen ill was discovered to have diphtheria. Over the course of the next 35 years, the airport would become a cornerstone of commercial and military aviation, not only in the Edmonton region, but for North America as a whole. In 1939, Blatchford field became the Royal Canadian Air Force flight training centre, while 4 years later the North American record was set when 860 aircraft passed through the the #2 Air Observer School, as the field had then come to be known.
As the 1950's ushered in an era of larger aircraft which would require longer runways, the search began for a site for a new field able to accommodate the new generation of aircraft which would serve the Edmonton region in the decades to come. In 1963, The Edmonton International Airport was completed, and with that completion, the City Centre airport was slated to close. Fortunately, political opposition saved the field, and over the course of the next 45 years, the airport would change names three times, and operate under several political mandates. In a 1995 referendum, 77 percent of Edmonton citizens voted in favor of consolidating scheduled air traffic to the International Airport, while the City Centre Airport would be kept open to serve general aviation and corporate traffic. By 1996, the consolidation process had been completed, and the City Airport settled into the role it would play until the present time. Under the results of this 1995 referendum, the City of Edmonton entered into a lease with Edmonton Airports on March 25, 1996 to have EA manage the City Centre Airport for a period of 56 years to 2052. In 2008, the City Airport once again fell under political scrutiny as the City Council and Executive Committee requested and heard several reports which "outlined the challenges and opportunities associated with the ECCA (Edmonton City Centre Airport) lands". The review of the Airport looked at the issue through various assessments ranging from economic and land impact, to historical impact. The results from these assessments are scheduled to be heard by the Executive Committee this June.
Those in favor of closing the City airport cite reasons that primarily centre around further development of the land around the airport. Not only would the land the airport currently occupies be available, but areas which are under a height restriction due to their proximity to approach paths could potentially see upward growth. NAIT, an airport neighbour to the east is reported to be currently operating at maximum capacity at its City Centre location, and could develop westward if the airport were to close. However, NAIT has obtained a 61 hectare site that could see development of a south campus south east of the Ellerslie/Hwy 2 Intersection. Perhaps due to a lack of funding, or a lack of students to fill such a facility, NAIT has yet to put forth plans to develop this south site. In a report released by the City in May 2008, four examples were given of projects that experienced constraints due to their proximity to approach paths, including expansion at the Royal Alexandra Hospital, The AMA building, and Aurora Development projects north of 105 Ave and west of 101 St. In each of these cases it was not a matter of projects that were proposed but were not permitted to pass due to approach path restrictions, but rather had to be changed to meet the demands of the area which they occupied. One would be hard pressed to find a building in the Edmonton area, or any urban area for that matter, that has not been affected in some way by zoning restrictions, just as the four examples given in the City report were.
Ultimately, many of the above arguments can and will be argued as valid reasons both for closing and keeping the airport open. Whichever way the decision finally does go, it will likely remain, until it's end, a battle of those who stand to gain, versus those who stand to lose. It is the unfortunate nature of decisions such as these, as with most decisions, that the height of the prospective gains, and depths of the losses will only be realised after that decision has been made.
Thursday, April 2, 2009
Mountains and Preseverence
It has been said that standing next to a mountain makes you feel small while standing on a mountain makes you feel big. For the past few months I have stood at the base of a mountain which I have been feeling rather small beside, and have been having trouble mustering the drive to climb. The mountains looming ahead are my Airline Transport exams; the climb the required studying. The excuses and distractions that I could potentially come up are quite plentiful, and I could probably even convince the skeptics that my excuses are valid. Unfortunately making excuses is much like trying a sip of your father's beer as a kid; finding that it tasted like something mom could have used as a substitute for the soap she used to clean your mouth, and nonetheless smiling like you are the greatest 5 year old in the history of five year olds. You may be able to convince those around you, but ultimately you know that your excuses are invalid, and that at five years old you thought beer tasted horrible.
I have never been much one for simply studying to pass an exam. For all of my training thus far, I have operated under the idea that one should study to understand the required subjects and in the process be able to pass the exam, as opposed to studying to pass an exam, and hopefully in the process gaining some understanding of what you are being tested on. Sometimes the disheartening thing about studying material though, is that it uncovers just how little you actually know and after two months of studying I am starting to find that I have more unanswered questions now then I did in the beginning. Confucius once said that "Real knowledge is to know the extent of one's ignorance" and if that is true, then perhaps it is only now that I am really learning. I suppose, just as with anything else, there are always multiple ways of looking at any given situation. I can look at my new found lists of questions to answer as a frustrating task or as an opportunity to learn. With each perspective, there is a corresponding, and fairly predictable outcome.
Do I clamber my way up the slope, grumbling but eager for the view held at the top, or do I realize that I am indeed lucky to be climbing this particular mountain and that the struggle to the top will be just as much the reward as reaching the summit?
More questions still, but maybe it will be in the continuing to ask questions that I will find the answers that I am looking for.
Here is one of the sources of my inspiration to continue to ask questions and seek their answers.
I have never been much one for simply studying to pass an exam. For all of my training thus far, I have operated under the idea that one should study to understand the required subjects and in the process be able to pass the exam, as opposed to studying to pass an exam, and hopefully in the process gaining some understanding of what you are being tested on. Sometimes the disheartening thing about studying material though, is that it uncovers just how little you actually know and after two months of studying I am starting to find that I have more unanswered questions now then I did in the beginning. Confucius once said that "Real knowledge is to know the extent of one's ignorance" and if that is true, then perhaps it is only now that I am really learning. I suppose, just as with anything else, there are always multiple ways of looking at any given situation. I can look at my new found lists of questions to answer as a frustrating task or as an opportunity to learn. With each perspective, there is a corresponding, and fairly predictable outcome.
Do I clamber my way up the slope, grumbling but eager for the view held at the top, or do I realize that I am indeed lucky to be climbing this particular mountain and that the struggle to the top will be just as much the reward as reaching the summit?
More questions still, but maybe it will be in the continuing to ask questions that I will find the answers that I am looking for.
Here is one of the sources of my inspiration to continue to ask questions and seek their answers.
Tuesday, March 31, 2009
And so it begins
In the days of my youth, the bicycle was the symbol of freedom, in my mind, holding a first place tie for one of mankinds greater acheivements along with the aircraft which wandered their way through the sky above my house. While it may have appeared to others as a pretty simplistic machine, that gleaming red frame with the white banana seat and pieces of plastic which made noise as they slid up and down the spokes may well have been the space shuttle to the four year old me who, before that time had only legs on which to get around. It was always with a certain degree of amazement that I found I could clumsily outsmart gravity in keeping both the bike and me on it, upright. The bike opened up places which, up to that point in my life were too far for my four year old legs to carry me. Like any good tool, that red velocycle was multipurpose, and fit well into many childhood applications. It served as a pickup truck, hauling acquired wood and bales of hay to construct houses in the woods, as a tug, towing makeshift aircraft designed and built jointly by the neighbours and myself to a speed we were sure was just below what would be required to attain flight, and much to my mothers dismay, as an efficient means to get water and mud from the ground, and onto my clothes without the bother of having crawling around in the dirt.
In more recent times, living in the city, my bike has become a place to think that is free of the numerous distractions often found in an urban environment. Pedaling my way through the river valley this morning my thoughts were consumed with the prospect of starting a blog. A month ago I came across the blog of a former student and friend that inspired me to put into writing some of the lessons I had acquired since beginning to learn to fly years ago. After e-mailing the first few pages that I had come up with to the above-mentioned friend, he suggested that I start a blog of my own so that my experiences would be available to anyone who cared to take the time to read. Being a fairly reserved guy, the thought of creating a collection of my musings which would be available to a good number of people was a daunting idea. While I guessed many people wouldn't garner much beyond mild amusement from my posts, the possibility that someone may take something from it that could help in some facet of their life provided enough incentive to try. At this stage of the game, I suppose even mild amusement is reason enough.
And so it begins,..
In more recent times, living in the city, my bike has become a place to think that is free of the numerous distractions often found in an urban environment. Pedaling my way through the river valley this morning my thoughts were consumed with the prospect of starting a blog. A month ago I came across the blog of a former student and friend that inspired me to put into writing some of the lessons I had acquired since beginning to learn to fly years ago. After e-mailing the first few pages that I had come up with to the above-mentioned friend, he suggested that I start a blog of my own so that my experiences would be available to anyone who cared to take the time to read. Being a fairly reserved guy, the thought of creating a collection of my musings which would be available to a good number of people was a daunting idea. While I guessed many people wouldn't garner much beyond mild amusement from my posts, the possibility that someone may take something from it that could help in some facet of their life provided enough incentive to try. At this stage of the game, I suppose even mild amusement is reason enough.
And so it begins,..
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