Mountain Meanderings
Wednesday, April 10, 2013
Sharing my passion with family and friends.
My boyfriend and I after taking his father up for a ride! What a happy day. The Next photo is myself and my 88 year old granny, followed by my favorite flight of all time, with my roommate, boyfriend and friend to Texada Island.
From a child to a woman.
As long as I have lived, I have always been defined by a self-created identity of "a child." Not a child as defined by age or in comparison to my parents, but I have always felt as though I was on the younger side of the population. Now, at age 25, I have recently had experiences which challenge this notion.
It started in 2011, when surprising everyone, even myself, when I truly get down to it, I left my partner of just over 10 years, and in the space of 8 hours, packed most of my earthly belongings into my rusty little ford and drove off, tears filling my eyes, to a destination which I could not myself clearly formulate. I ended up in a spare room of my friend, staring at the peeling wallpaper at the corner of the ceiling until the birds started singing and the sun cautiously began to rise. I think, at that moment, I moved beyond being a child. Even though I had lived independently from my father for almost 2 years, now finally alone, the true nature and challenge of the world, and the consequences of what I had created, began to register. It was exactly this time when I began to fly. I therefore have a deep connection between the end of my childhood and the beginning of my adventures in flight.
My correlation between my identity as a child and flight takes yet another form: that of an uncanny role reversal. When I passed my flight test last June and became a private pilot, I took a road trip to Tofino the next weekend. On the drive, I had much time to think, as majestic spruce and grey raindrops whizzed past. I was in complete awe that I could now rent a plane, and just fly away, going wherever I wanted, taking whoever I wanted with me. It was an amazing jolt of freedom, but also a healthy dose of responsibility. When I first began taking friends as passengers aboard, I was nervous but not daunted. As peers, I knew that they would be respectful and mostly in awe, experiencing their flight without judgement. My first passenger as a private pilot was my boyfriend, a man who had supported me and watched me in awe from both afar and near over the last six months as I worked towards my exams and flight test. I was overjoyed to finally include him in the experience in a tangible and sentimental way. My second crew was a group of work friends, who though I strove to impress, I didn't have to focus too much energy on doing so. They were in awe regardless. But when it came time to include my family in the experience, I found that I had never felt as nervous or small.
My mother and grandma were both decently acquainted with the world of general aviation, my mother having been married to my father, an air traffic controller, for 25 years. Since their divorce she still remained curious and relatively informed about flying. My grandma spent most of her life in small Canadian northern communities, relying on regional air transport. Their familiarity, however, meant nothing when I had them settled in as passengers one pleasant sunlit summer evening. As I went through my checklist, words stuck in my throat and I fumbled with steps I normally ran through fluidly. When I lined up for takeoff, my heart was pounding and I was acutely aware of the whirring of my mom's little camcorder. As we lifted off, my hyper awareness remained, I was vigilant of airspeed, my departure route, the squelch on the radio, every little thing seemed heightened and not quite right. After five minutes or so, however, that beautiful calm and flow of the pattern and tasks of flight calmed my mind. My heart slowed. My hands loosened their grip on the control column. I smiled as I watched my grandma stare at the ground below in rapt attention. It was beautiful. I realized what made me so much more nervous and aware. It was the unsettling feeling of a strange role reversal. I was the child, the grandchild. I had once been wrapped in a bundle small enough to cradle to the bosom, my very existence and survival had once depended on my family. I had once heard my mother's words as law, I had once needed my mother's hand in mine to guide me. Now it was me upon whom they depended for survival, me alone up here that they trusted. It was a beautiful ad humbling feeling.
Last week I was blessed to experience this feeling again. My boyfriend, a native of England, is rarely able to see his parents, and his father had just arrived for a visit. United in adventurous spirit, both men shared the adorable quality of enthusiasm and ability to be up for anything, the more adventurous the better. Therefore my boyfriend thought it would be exciting for his father to go flying. I waited and waited for the perfect day, and finally one came. On a crisp and sunny spring morning we made our way to the flying club. The familiar waves of nervousness and hyper vigilance came crashing upon me again on route to the airport. This time my wings were weighed by something even heavier. Although most would argue that when I landed in the field last summer with my boyfriend on board, I saved his life by quick and unwavering decision making and avoiding a worse future problem, but I still battled with guilt. When I met his father, my initial impression, before happiness to finally meet him or pleasure at seeing father and son reunite, was "your son could be gone from you and it would have been thanks to me." The thought caused me to break into sweat and almost squirm with remorse. As an only child myself, I will never forget the look in my own father's eyes when he saw me in the hospital bed for the first time after the ambulance had evacuated us from the field. In his eyes was a haunted look for the child, the light in his life that was almost extinguished. I couldn't imagine what my boyfriend's parents had felt when they heard the news of the forced landing from the other side of the world. Despite my guilt and fears, I was too pervaded by a feeling of positivity and optimism. A feeling Of being eager to share my love of flight with Others, which had become more frequent after my float rating, also made me excited. Although I still stumbled, I had come so far from nights of laying awake, worries and flashbacks that interrupted my life, and moved to a place of confidence and happiness in my flying again. I was overjoyed when my boyfriend had suggested taking his dad for a flight when he heard he was coming to visit. I had too many people believing in me now to let my success be undermined by my own fears and insecurities.
As we took off that day, father and son on board, there was no fear. There was heightened awareness, there was vigilance, there was caution and scrupulousness, but no energy was wasted on fretting or contemplating the past. The feeling of role reversal was still strange to me, but pleasantly so. The pilot that day was no longer a child. She was a woman, with clarity, passion, growing confidence, and pride. No longer a child, yet grinning into the cloudless sky as if she had been given a handful of candy and toys, her eager craft tumbling and playing in the skies.
It started in 2011, when surprising everyone, even myself, when I truly get down to it, I left my partner of just over 10 years, and in the space of 8 hours, packed most of my earthly belongings into my rusty little ford and drove off, tears filling my eyes, to a destination which I could not myself clearly formulate. I ended up in a spare room of my friend, staring at the peeling wallpaper at the corner of the ceiling until the birds started singing and the sun cautiously began to rise. I think, at that moment, I moved beyond being a child. Even though I had lived independently from my father for almost 2 years, now finally alone, the true nature and challenge of the world, and the consequences of what I had created, began to register. It was exactly this time when I began to fly. I therefore have a deep connection between the end of my childhood and the beginning of my adventures in flight.
My correlation between my identity as a child and flight takes yet another form: that of an uncanny role reversal. When I passed my flight test last June and became a private pilot, I took a road trip to Tofino the next weekend. On the drive, I had much time to think, as majestic spruce and grey raindrops whizzed past. I was in complete awe that I could now rent a plane, and just fly away, going wherever I wanted, taking whoever I wanted with me. It was an amazing jolt of freedom, but also a healthy dose of responsibility. When I first began taking friends as passengers aboard, I was nervous but not daunted. As peers, I knew that they would be respectful and mostly in awe, experiencing their flight without judgement. My first passenger as a private pilot was my boyfriend, a man who had supported me and watched me in awe from both afar and near over the last six months as I worked towards my exams and flight test. I was overjoyed to finally include him in the experience in a tangible and sentimental way. My second crew was a group of work friends, who though I strove to impress, I didn't have to focus too much energy on doing so. They were in awe regardless. But when it came time to include my family in the experience, I found that I had never felt as nervous or small.
My mother and grandma were both decently acquainted with the world of general aviation, my mother having been married to my father, an air traffic controller, for 25 years. Since their divorce she still remained curious and relatively informed about flying. My grandma spent most of her life in small Canadian northern communities, relying on regional air transport. Their familiarity, however, meant nothing when I had them settled in as passengers one pleasant sunlit summer evening. As I went through my checklist, words stuck in my throat and I fumbled with steps I normally ran through fluidly. When I lined up for takeoff, my heart was pounding and I was acutely aware of the whirring of my mom's little camcorder. As we lifted off, my hyper awareness remained, I was vigilant of airspeed, my departure route, the squelch on the radio, every little thing seemed heightened and not quite right. After five minutes or so, however, that beautiful calm and flow of the pattern and tasks of flight calmed my mind. My heart slowed. My hands loosened their grip on the control column. I smiled as I watched my grandma stare at the ground below in rapt attention. It was beautiful. I realized what made me so much more nervous and aware. It was the unsettling feeling of a strange role reversal. I was the child, the grandchild. I had once been wrapped in a bundle small enough to cradle to the bosom, my very existence and survival had once depended on my family. I had once heard my mother's words as law, I had once needed my mother's hand in mine to guide me. Now it was me upon whom they depended for survival, me alone up here that they trusted. It was a beautiful ad humbling feeling.
Last week I was blessed to experience this feeling again. My boyfriend, a native of England, is rarely able to see his parents, and his father had just arrived for a visit. United in adventurous spirit, both men shared the adorable quality of enthusiasm and ability to be up for anything, the more adventurous the better. Therefore my boyfriend thought it would be exciting for his father to go flying. I waited and waited for the perfect day, and finally one came. On a crisp and sunny spring morning we made our way to the flying club. The familiar waves of nervousness and hyper vigilance came crashing upon me again on route to the airport. This time my wings were weighed by something even heavier. Although most would argue that when I landed in the field last summer with my boyfriend on board, I saved his life by quick and unwavering decision making and avoiding a worse future problem, but I still battled with guilt. When I met his father, my initial impression, before happiness to finally meet him or pleasure at seeing father and son reunite, was "your son could be gone from you and it would have been thanks to me." The thought caused me to break into sweat and almost squirm with remorse. As an only child myself, I will never forget the look in my own father's eyes when he saw me in the hospital bed for the first time after the ambulance had evacuated us from the field. In his eyes was a haunted look for the child, the light in his life that was almost extinguished. I couldn't imagine what my boyfriend's parents had felt when they heard the news of the forced landing from the other side of the world. Despite my guilt and fears, I was too pervaded by a feeling of positivity and optimism. A feeling Of being eager to share my love of flight with Others, which had become more frequent after my float rating, also made me excited. Although I still stumbled, I had come so far from nights of laying awake, worries and flashbacks that interrupted my life, and moved to a place of confidence and happiness in my flying again. I was overjoyed when my boyfriend had suggested taking his dad for a flight when he heard he was coming to visit. I had too many people believing in me now to let my success be undermined by my own fears and insecurities.
As we took off that day, father and son on board, there was no fear. There was heightened awareness, there was vigilance, there was caution and scrupulousness, but no energy was wasted on fretting or contemplating the past. The feeling of role reversal was still strange to me, but pleasantly so. The pilot that day was no longer a child. She was a woman, with clarity, passion, growing confidence, and pride. No longer a child, yet grinning into the cloudless sky as if she had been given a handful of candy and toys, her eager craft tumbling and playing in the skies.
Friday, March 15, 2013
Secrets of the Skies
I overheard someone a couple weeks ago starting a conversation with a friend in a coffee shop with "I had one of those dreams last night where i was flying..."
Sometimes it overwhelms me, but the things some people can only dream about, i am blessed to be able to do. Have you ever noticed how many sayings hail flight as the ultimate expression of ecstasy? "Reach the sky", "flying high"...i'm sure there are many more. I had a moment like that today, as i flew with my new instructor, and the club's CFI *Grant for the second lesson in my Multi Engine Rating today.
From the ground the day was grey, overcast, dull, and drizzly. When Grant and i roared the powerful little Piper Seminole to life and taxied down the runway, i could have never imagined the beauty awaiting us up above. We took off and climbed, feeling the addictive and powerful thrust of the two engines purring beside me for only the second time ever. I worked, admittedly behind the airplane, to set the throttles to 2500 RPM and the Manifold Pressure to 25 inches to the climb, simultaniously worrying about putting the gear up, then retracting the flaps. It all happened so fast, in this new airplane, that i was stunned and pleasantly surprised to look up from my instruments as i began my level-off checklist to see that we had broken through patchy layers of cloud into glorious spring sunshine. I have been flight training for 15 months, with almost 150 hours, and many views like this under my belt, but it never ceases to fill me with joy when i see the city and the ocean below, looking like toys, as i level off and take in the sights around me. From up here, everything seems so simple. Everything on the ground, all the worries, the to-do lists, the conflicts, the errands, the obligations, the challenges, the regrets, the dramas, the indecision, the pain that the bonds of the earth's surface hold, all melt away into the whisps of feathery cloud, and the healing enveloping blue around me. Between 2500 - 4000 feet today, held promises of challenge, learning, improvement, and a certain release from everything below.
These are the secrets of the skies. It is a place to come, for most, as a necessity . To travel somewhere. To get to that important business meeting, to that family reunion, or if we are lucky, on that much needed vacation. For those privileged individuals who make the skies their office, it is a place to come to keep people safe, and make a living doing so. However, those pilots were all once in my position, a student with an open heart, an open mind, and perhaps knack for losing about 100 feet every time they attempt a right-hand steep turn (grr!) The sky even has the magic to make even the most seasoned and trucker-mouthed pilots a little soft at heart. Today, my gruff, crass yet gentle instructor referred to synching the props as "making two hearts beat as one". Hahaha!!! He quickly went on to laugh abruptly, clear his throat, and tell me never to repeat that to anyone!!!
My multi engine rating so far has been full of mind boggling multitasking and memory jarring checklists, but it continues to awake the passion for flight in me to a new level. Today, even though we practiced slow flight and stalls, dirty and clean, i found that i was not as nervous as i used to be. Every day and every tiny success opens up a new door in my heart and in the slow progression to my dream career. I found, with great excitement, that my instructor noticed the improvements i felt that i had made since my float rating. "You can tell you're a real float pilot! I can see it's all in your feet!" Wow, what an unbelievable thing to hear him say.
My second really cool moment today came when i decided to mention to Grant, as we climbed that I "had a secret."
From the corner of my eye i could see his intrigue, as he urged me to go on."
"After i made the forced landing this summer, lots of things kind of scare me now." I squeaked in a little mouselike voice. I cleared my throat, attempting to sound more pilot-ey.
"So, uh....sorry if sometimes i'm a bit of a pussy."
I could almost hear Grant thinking into his mouthpiece. There was a pause.
"That's no worry at all." He finally replied.
"I had a near death experience in the airplane once too. It changed me forever. I'll tell you more about it someday."
It was cryptic, but i instantly felt a deeper affinity with the man. Few pilots have, or would hope to have, an experience in which their fate would be determined, based upon their actions. We, sitting side by side, climbing into the pure spring sunlight, were two.
However, in this moment, filled with the joy of seeing the city from above, with the adrenaline of flying this new, powerful aircraft, another more prominent feeling had already overtaken me. And i had chosen to let this feeling be the one that would change my fate. This was the feeling that i was on the right path. That i had found my place in the world, by being up above the surface of it. It was a feeling of true passion.
So, as we climbed and descended, turned and painted our nose across the horizon, i let this feeling instead be the one that would forever rule my fate.
Sometimes it overwhelms me, but the things some people can only dream about, i am blessed to be able to do. Have you ever noticed how many sayings hail flight as the ultimate expression of ecstasy? "Reach the sky", "flying high"...i'm sure there are many more. I had a moment like that today, as i flew with my new instructor, and the club's CFI *Grant for the second lesson in my Multi Engine Rating today.
From the ground the day was grey, overcast, dull, and drizzly. When Grant and i roared the powerful little Piper Seminole to life and taxied down the runway, i could have never imagined the beauty awaiting us up above. We took off and climbed, feeling the addictive and powerful thrust of the two engines purring beside me for only the second time ever. I worked, admittedly behind the airplane, to set the throttles to 2500 RPM and the Manifold Pressure to 25 inches to the climb, simultaniously worrying about putting the gear up, then retracting the flaps. It all happened so fast, in this new airplane, that i was stunned and pleasantly surprised to look up from my instruments as i began my level-off checklist to see that we had broken through patchy layers of cloud into glorious spring sunshine. I have been flight training for 15 months, with almost 150 hours, and many views like this under my belt, but it never ceases to fill me with joy when i see the city and the ocean below, looking like toys, as i level off and take in the sights around me. From up here, everything seems so simple. Everything on the ground, all the worries, the to-do lists, the conflicts, the errands, the obligations, the challenges, the regrets, the dramas, the indecision, the pain that the bonds of the earth's surface hold, all melt away into the whisps of feathery cloud, and the healing enveloping blue around me. Between 2500 - 4000 feet today, held promises of challenge, learning, improvement, and a certain release from everything below.
These are the secrets of the skies. It is a place to come, for most, as a necessity . To travel somewhere. To get to that important business meeting, to that family reunion, or if we are lucky, on that much needed vacation. For those privileged individuals who make the skies their office, it is a place to come to keep people safe, and make a living doing so. However, those pilots were all once in my position, a student with an open heart, an open mind, and perhaps knack for losing about 100 feet every time they attempt a right-hand steep turn (grr!) The sky even has the magic to make even the most seasoned and trucker-mouthed pilots a little soft at heart. Today, my gruff, crass yet gentle instructor referred to synching the props as "making two hearts beat as one". Hahaha!!! He quickly went on to laugh abruptly, clear his throat, and tell me never to repeat that to anyone!!!
My multi engine rating so far has been full of mind boggling multitasking and memory jarring checklists, but it continues to awake the passion for flight in me to a new level. Today, even though we practiced slow flight and stalls, dirty and clean, i found that i was not as nervous as i used to be. Every day and every tiny success opens up a new door in my heart and in the slow progression to my dream career. I found, with great excitement, that my instructor noticed the improvements i felt that i had made since my float rating. "You can tell you're a real float pilot! I can see it's all in your feet!" Wow, what an unbelievable thing to hear him say.
My second really cool moment today came when i decided to mention to Grant, as we climbed that I "had a secret."
From the corner of my eye i could see his intrigue, as he urged me to go on."
"After i made the forced landing this summer, lots of things kind of scare me now." I squeaked in a little mouselike voice. I cleared my throat, attempting to sound more pilot-ey.
"So, uh....sorry if sometimes i'm a bit of a pussy."
I could almost hear Grant thinking into his mouthpiece. There was a pause.
"That's no worry at all." He finally replied.
"I had a near death experience in the airplane once too. It changed me forever. I'll tell you more about it someday."
It was cryptic, but i instantly felt a deeper affinity with the man. Few pilots have, or would hope to have, an experience in which their fate would be determined, based upon their actions. We, sitting side by side, climbing into the pure spring sunlight, were two.
However, in this moment, filled with the joy of seeing the city from above, with the adrenaline of flying this new, powerful aircraft, another more prominent feeling had already overtaken me. And i had chosen to let this feeling be the one that would change my fate. This was the feeling that i was on the right path. That i had found my place in the world, by being up above the surface of it. It was a feeling of true passion.
So, as we climbed and descended, turned and painted our nose across the horizon, i let this feeling instead be the one that would forever rule my fate.
Saturday, March 9, 2013
My Float Rating: In the key of Awesome.
I woke up yesterday morning feeling as though it was going to be a very lazy day. Having just worked the last 4 early morning shifts, i peeked out from under the covers at 8 and decided to dive back in and close my eyes for as long as i felt like it on my day off. I had nothing planned and was in the mood for a relaxing day. I didn't know that so much more was in store for me!
I hadn't flown the float plane since February 19, the day of my last post. My instructor said the wind had to be less than 5 knots, and it had been a steady 2 weeks of windy days, complimented by me working longer horus and heading up to the local ski hill for a weekend trip. My one day off, my intructor was too fully booked to accomodate me, so i was resigned to a lazy day of sleeping in. I awoke rudely at the early hour of 11 (hah!) to a text message from my instructor. "Pulled some strings. Can you do 1:00 today?" I was instantly stoked and wracked with nerves all at the same time. My confidence is a little shaky on the best of days in the airplane, and i knew that the goal was the get my 5 solo takeoffs and landings done as soon as possible. There was just something about an empty co-pilot seat in that float plane that gave me the jitters. Worst case scenarios about flaring too low and catching my tips, sending myself catapaulting over, raced through my mind. I had been trying to work through these worries for weeks by running through Pedro's words in my mind, that he would never send me solo, risking hmy life, his livelihood if he did not deem me ready. However i drove out to the airport with absolutley no expectations, as it had been about 2 weeks since my last flight in the float plane.
When i hopped out of the car into the sunshine to see Pedro's smiling face at the launch, I was nervous all over again. What were his expectations? How would i fly today after so long off and with a head cold? I could barely remember the power settings, which were blending together in my mind with those from the Piper Seminole, which i had just begun training in on Wednesday. (More on that in another post!)
Pedro and i engaged in our usual banter and chatting as we set the plane up, and i jumped in the pilot's seat and fumbled around trying to relocate where all the switches and dials were on this particular model. I nervously fumbled with the seatbelt and jangled my headset cords around. I basically looked like a 25 hour pilot.
But as I worked together with Pedro, smoothly applying full power and pulling aft, and the little beauty gained speed, bumping through the waves to pop magestically aloft them and then 3-2-1 becoming unstuck from the watery grasps of the waves, all my knowledge trickled back to me. We flew towards Shawnigan lake, the place where Pedro takes all his students to solo. I fought to keep my palms from sweating on the yoke. We arrived at Shawnigan the water looked perfect. A gentle ripple of wind on the surface which gives the water definition, yet not too much as to create a bumpy landing. He eased me into my first landing, guiding me through with his hand gently bracing the controls just in case. It was a seamless landing. A smile broke out over my face. With the water rudders still up, we chatted for a moment before i smoothly applied full power again, counteracting the yaw with hard right rudder. The plane did not fishtail around on the surface like it had in my early lessons, it held its heading under the firm pressure of my foot as we gained speed. As we levelled off i found i remembered my level-off checklist perfectl, and as we turned base i could gently and confidently execute speed control as i slowed her down to a purring 70 knots and regulated my alititude with power settings. The early spring sun shone into our eyes and i felt happy, excited and confident!
We did about 5 circuits and my arm began to feel that familiar ache of good solid stick and rudder flying, before Pedro announced something surprising.
"I'm going to show you a few emergency procedures now."
I knew what that meant! he had told me that on solo day he would show me a few emergency maneuvers, and then set me free! I instantly felt alert and surreal. First he showed me engine failure on take-off, which frankly freaked the crap out of me. Taking control, he rotated and climbed about 40 feet before pulling the power and jamming down on the yoke into a steep dive. My stomach lifted out of my body and i let out a little yelp, flinging my hands into the air.
"it's ok!" he soothed, grabbing my arm to calm me before gently levelling and flaring, making the perfect landing. "When the engine fails, you need to do the opposite of what you think you need to do. Peopel always want to pull aft to climb. But you have no power! You'll go into slow flight and maybe even stall. push down to gain enough airspeed for an approaqch. get 70 knots, then level off, float, sink, then flare. Make a nice eay landing. Just don't try and pull up to get it to climb. You have no power, so you need to gain speed by nosing down."
After locating my dignity somewhere in the back seat where i had tossed it with my little shriek, i practiced engine failure in flight (turn for the lake, get 70 knots and land where appropriate) and overshoot (kind of the same as a land overshoot).
After a circuit made up of these procedures, Pedro sat in silence for an entire circuit, looking bored. The tight mountainous landscape that had once scared me at the beginning of this day was familiar and my maneuvers within in were methodical. I was flying without overthinking, and with an even mixture of alertness and calm. After a nice landing, Pedro told me to taxi to the dock and let him out! I was more nervous about pumping the floats into the dock than flying at that point!
As he hopped out, Pedro smiled at me and gave me a thumbs up. "How you feeling?" he asked.
"Nervous!" i replied quietly.
"Don't worry, there hasn't been a pilot, with the exception of maybe one of two fearless 18 year old, who wasn't nervous on their float solo. Just remember, you're flying well! You are a licensed pilot already! This is just like any other flight. You're going to do great. Now have fun! Let's see a smile!"
I smiled unconvincingly and he laughed.
"Go have fun out there!"
I turned on the master and started her up, putting away from the dock. I looked over my shoulder, past the empty seat beside me to Pedro waving from the dock. This was it.
Out in the open water, i second guessed where i should take off. I got on the radio. "Should i wait until after this signpost?" I asked Pedro feebly
"Go ahead there if you feel right." He replied. A clear message that if i looked inside myself to find my true confidence, i knew what i was doing and would find the asnwers. This part was about engaging my inner pilot in command and beleiving her!
I looked at the mountains acorss the lake, and swept my hand across the cockpit in a pre-takeoff check. I reached down to pull the water rudder, applied left rudder and gently pushed the throttle in to full power. As I gained speed, a strange relief rolled through me like rain down a windowpaine. I realised that it was getting here that was so hard for me. Convincing myself to let go and trust my skills, sit proudly in the left seat and let my training take over. Getting over my fear of the float solo and forcing myself into my seat, letting my instructor get out, i discovered that the challenge and the fear was all in my mind, and now that i had gotten here, it was time to have fun and let my skills keep me safe and help me achieve and strive forward. I thought about a little card called a "wisdom card" that i had pulled out of a basket from my yoga instructor after class the day before. "It is time to let go of things no longer serving you. it is only then that you will move forward." It had said. It was not serving me to worry about this moment. The moment was now, and it was time to live it and choose to engage and excel within it!
As i lifted off, i was filled with a burning in my throat of adrenaline, and a smile burst out across my face. I raised the flaps to 10 degrees, and set power and manifold pressure to 21" and 2450 rpm. I climbed past the sunlit spruce and toward the mountains at the end of the lake, filled with excitement. I turned crosswind and levelled off at 950 feet, setting the power to 17" and 2300 at 1000 ft. On my downwind leg i did a downwing checklist and then sat in awe, riding the gently rolling currents of air and listening to the engine purr. My mind was not worrying and anticipating the future. It was not stuck revisitng the past. If only i could live every moment of my life like i live it in the pilot's seat! in a total state of being in the now.
Abeam the little island i made my base turn, reducing to 15" and adding 20 of flap. I used power to help my descent and pitched to slow her gently to 75 knots in the turn, then to 70 on the approach. I was vauguely aware of Pedro's figure on the dock in the distance, but was too focused on my runway and my airspeed to give it much energy. As i softly came down, i let my senses guide me into the moment at which i levelled off. When i felt the familiar sinking feeling, i flared and held my nose across the horizon, waiting for the sensation when my floats met the water's surface. It came gently and with a satisfying "whoooooosh", and Pedro got on the radio from the dock immediately, saying an encouraging "WOW!" I had made my first solo landing! and it was a greaser!
Throughout the next 4 circuits I enjoyed the ride. On one i hit some daytime heating turbulence, on another i landed a little hard due to excessive sink rate from a little lack of power. Overall, it was a perfect day, and my flying and my accomplishment felt surreal, even as i was completing it. After my last landing i could not beleive it. I stared in awe at the glimmering lake's surface as i putted back to the dock. In my traditional way, i had to do a little left seat happy dance! My float rating was done! This day had truly been living proof that having no expectations and freeing the mind of hang-ups on the past will get you far.
And what was the first thing i did, as a newly rated float plane pilot?
I peed in the bushes!
haha! it had been over 2 hours of flying and i had drank a grande latte on the drive to the airport! Like a true and strong BC girl, i jumped from the left seat, gave my instructor a hug, and then raced inexplicably into the bushes to find a secret place to pee. He was both baffled and amused.
It turned out that I had finished my rating in less than the required hours, so we had some time to burn! Pedro had a surprise in store. He navigated me up and out of Shawnigan and to the West atop a hill about 10 miles away. There he showed me a tiny hidden mountain lake caleld Grant lake, with nothing but a lone wooden cabin and a logging road that lead there. He demonstrated for me a glassy-water short field landing on the tiny isolated lake. I felt like we were the only two people in the universe, that feeling brought to me only by wandering the wild on camping trips or getting up early on the beach to see the sun rise. This is why we fly floats! To find the world's last little isolated paradises :)
Though i may not have it in my future cards to fly loggers up north, or businessmen to Vancouver on a twin otter, flying floats awoke the raw and bold pilot in me. I was living what John Magee described when he "danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;" Float flying was the closest flying comes to dancing. I will take forward with me into my next, often more structured and methodical ratings, a sense of creativity, adventure, dexterity and fluidity that float flying has taught me. If flying can be broken down into types of music, then floats are definitey playing jazz. And i will remember this tune fondly all my life long :)
Tuesday, February 19, 2013
That's a pretty Impressive 180 you've got down there...
Float Flying! They say that it's the most fun you can have with your clothes on. Eating cotton candy and Snowboarding aside, i could not agree more. I actually feel like a superhero in a float plane. What other type of transportation can go on land, air and sea!? Absolutely unreal.
I first met Pedro* (The dude's name isn't actually Pedro, FYI, i just try and be anonymous, and i just noticed that in books and magazines with names which have been changed for protection, no one is ever renamed Pedro. so i have decided to start a trend.) in October before i went travelling in South America for three weeks. My ex-but not-ex-because-we-were-never-officially-a-couple-it's-complicated,the airline pilot, had done his float training with Pedro years ago. Ex-But-Not-Ex had referred to Pedro as "quirky. you'll see why." Again, i couldn;'t agree more, but in an awesome way.
You see, Pedro was the person who convinced me to go to South America in the first place. Allthough it seems odd to have to convince someone to go somewhere as awesome as Peru, i had a bad case of "My progress should be Moving Faster" guilt, and i thought that going away would lose me three weeks of valuable flying time. True as it may be, going away also gained me a lifetime of confidence which could be applied to flying, or to anything else, for that matter! After the accident and my expereinces over the past year, i was reassembling my life slowly. South America shocked me alive again, instilling bravery, confidence, sass, creativity, freedom, a sense of being loose and malleable to experiences which i had lost when i had coccooned myself in fear and doubt. I took one float lesson with Pedro on October 26th, and it set me free to travel to South America and discover all thsi once again. As the fall leaves turned over Cowichan bay, Pedro asked me that great old question.
"So, are there any pilots in your family? Is that why you want to be a pilot"
again, i pondered how i would formulate my answer.
"No, life circumstances lead me to flying, and when i tried it, i was totally hooked."
"Oh, so it was about a guy?"
Sigh. Funny but true. Yes, Pedro, it was about a guy. But as he could see by my enthusiasm over months of emails and phone calls which lead to our meeting, and my shining eyes as we cruised around islands and over mountains to reach our destination, it was now about so much more. I loved his blunteness and his sense of humour, and the encouragement he gave me. When i told him i was thinking of going to South America with my friends but was unsure, he seemed shocked.
"How could you NOT go! You're young! You have years to build your hours and you'll have other times to fly! Go experience things! Have fun! You will come back refreshed."
There are few gifts in life someone can give you as valuable as their own truth. That's what i love about Pedro. He is very willing to give it you, and you can rest assured that it has not been filtered, and is probably accurate.
Almost three months later, after my colorful, whirlwind voyage to peru and the completion on my Night rating, i was back in the airplane with the same enigmatic and quirky man.
Our first flight together, we had a less than desireable day. It was broken 1200 and the ceiling dropped fast once we had made it out past the islands to begin our circuits. However, we made the most of it, and i finally got to feel what that good ole "stick n' rudder" felt like!
On our first circuit, he explained to me that he was going to have a number of power settings for the cirdcuit, which would generate the exact same results for each leg of the circuit if performed correctly. No more flying by "why feels or sounds about right." We were going to be sticky and very exact.
On the water, he had me gently apply full power, counting to five as i did so. Once the surf broke around the floats we pitched back at an alarming attitude, and i felt as though i was going to slide into the back seat, as we gained speed he had me slowly release my aft position on the control column to a nice flare just at the horizon. The next sensation was a great one, i could almost feel the floats peeeeeeeling themselves off the water and 3-2-1, we were up! I relaxed my position in the flare and gently reached down to go to flap 10. He had me adjust power to 23 inches and 2450 and climb to 450 feet. At 450 i reduced to 17 and 23 and made my crosswind turn. The downwind leg with pedro was an interesting one. First he had me relax for a moment, because "if you're stressing all the time doing things you're going to wear yourself out! Look at th ewind direction on the water! Are some whales leaping downt there? Did you do the laundry yesterday?" Of course he wouldn't have me get distracted to the point of losing awareness, but i liked his technique of easing a learner into a series of new and complicated steps slowly and gently.
Preparing for the base leg, he had me reduce to 15 and add 20 of flap, and exectute a base turn. then i was to ask myself, "am i high or am i low?" and adjust with power. "Am i fast or am i slow" and adjust with pitch. Then he had me do "The final check to go." which consisted of pushing the prop to full fine. Form here on out, my only job was to land the thing on the water.
The first thing to know about landing a float plane, is after spending the entire rest of my 140 odd hours avoiding the ocean, it feels really damn weird to fly right AT IT. However, i tried my best to relax and invision a magical water runway, where flipping fish were glinting centreline lights, and little waves in the water were blades of grass wiggling in the breeze. At first, to make sure that i was landing in a safely nose-high configuration, he counted me in for when i was supposed to roll level, at about 20 feet above the water. As we progressed, however, i can now judge that myself. He then had me wait for the "sink" feeling, and begin my flare not above the horizon. the important thing in this flare, was to be ever so patientas i held a consistant flare angle, and not to pitch back to make it happen quicker. Then magically, i felt my first little "thud!" and we were down. i pulled the power to idle and pulled aft as we decelerated, and i did an internal happy dance for my first water landing!
Of course, this was only the beginning. Much more fun was to be had. It was the end of day two, and i had done 9 or 10 circuits. As i rotated at full power, i reached down to adjust from 20 to 10 of flap. As i depressed the manual flap lever, my grip slackened, and i let it go all the way from 20 degrees to nothing in one awkward "flop". reacting quickly but certainly not wisely, i reached down, above the water by only 75 feet or so, to grab the lever to put my flap back on. bad move.
"UH UHH!" blurted Pedro, as he took control as the plane lurched downwards along with my gaze and downstretched arm, pushing the control column down.
"If you try to take off flap and it all goes, leave it. Gain a bit more altitude, and then put it back on. Not while you're so low off the water."
Then came a classic piece of advice:
"Do you know when you're driving, and you're putting on lipstick, and it falls on the floor?
(First, OMG! DO I EVER KNOW! Second, how does HE know!?)
"Well, you don't look down from driving and grab it, do you? You wait until the stop sign! It's jut slike that with flap!"
Seeing my look of amused bewliderment, he finished.
"Honey, i have four sisters."
Aha, msytery solved :)
My second and even more epic tale came when we were finsihed on day three and on the way back to the dock. The water aerodrome is right underneath of the approach for runway 09 at the international airport. As we were skimming in at around 300 feet, the tower advised us of RJ traffic on approach for 09. Seeing them, Pedro annouced that we were going to keep the speed up and stay low to avoid his wing tip vortices. We descended to 150 feet and were absolutely ripping along over the ocean at 110 knots. I peekd out my window and up-, and it looked like we were in a vertical race with the RJ! Suddenly on the frequency came a gravelly, low voice with a heavy Southern Twang
"Uhhhhh, that's a pretty impressive little 180 you've got down there!"
Pedro and i both burst out laughing! Amazing. the two pilots high up above, power and prestige at thier disposal, were impressed by us ripping playfully along below.
Even the tower laughed. "ah, don't worry about him!" joked the controller. "He's just a floater!"
Four and a half hours and god knows how many circuits later, i am on the eve of my solo flight. If all goes well tomorrow and if the weather is our friend, i will get to become one with the impressive little 180 and take her out on a date solo to complete my float rating. It has been a playful, raw, and thrilling experience that i will surely miss once it is over. Allthough i have my usual case of performance nerves and anxiety about tomorrow. An email from Pedro tonight eased my racing mind. " I know you're concerned about the solo portion of your flight test...don't worry. I'll only let you go in the right weather and once you're feeling good about it. You should be, you're flying well!"
i am so happy that my enjoyment is showing in my progress, and so blessed to have the experience to leap and play like a little flying fish on the gorgeous west coast as the spring blossums. Flying Floats is an adventure i will never forget, and one that i would recommend to any lover of the skies!
I first met Pedro* (The dude's name isn't actually Pedro, FYI, i just try and be anonymous, and i just noticed that in books and magazines with names which have been changed for protection, no one is ever renamed Pedro. so i have decided to start a trend.) in October before i went travelling in South America for three weeks. My ex-but not-ex-because-we-were-never-officially-a-couple-it's-complicated,the airline pilot, had done his float training with Pedro years ago. Ex-But-Not-Ex had referred to Pedro as "quirky. you'll see why." Again, i couldn;'t agree more, but in an awesome way.
You see, Pedro was the person who convinced me to go to South America in the first place. Allthough it seems odd to have to convince someone to go somewhere as awesome as Peru, i had a bad case of "My progress should be Moving Faster" guilt, and i thought that going away would lose me three weeks of valuable flying time. True as it may be, going away also gained me a lifetime of confidence which could be applied to flying, or to anything else, for that matter! After the accident and my expereinces over the past year, i was reassembling my life slowly. South America shocked me alive again, instilling bravery, confidence, sass, creativity, freedom, a sense of being loose and malleable to experiences which i had lost when i had coccooned myself in fear and doubt. I took one float lesson with Pedro on October 26th, and it set me free to travel to South America and discover all thsi once again. As the fall leaves turned over Cowichan bay, Pedro asked me that great old question.
"So, are there any pilots in your family? Is that why you want to be a pilot"
again, i pondered how i would formulate my answer.
"No, life circumstances lead me to flying, and when i tried it, i was totally hooked."
"Oh, so it was about a guy?"
Sigh. Funny but true. Yes, Pedro, it was about a guy. But as he could see by my enthusiasm over months of emails and phone calls which lead to our meeting, and my shining eyes as we cruised around islands and over mountains to reach our destination, it was now about so much more. I loved his blunteness and his sense of humour, and the encouragement he gave me. When i told him i was thinking of going to South America with my friends but was unsure, he seemed shocked.
"How could you NOT go! You're young! You have years to build your hours and you'll have other times to fly! Go experience things! Have fun! You will come back refreshed."
There are few gifts in life someone can give you as valuable as their own truth. That's what i love about Pedro. He is very willing to give it you, and you can rest assured that it has not been filtered, and is probably accurate.
Almost three months later, after my colorful, whirlwind voyage to peru and the completion on my Night rating, i was back in the airplane with the same enigmatic and quirky man.
Our first flight together, we had a less than desireable day. It was broken 1200 and the ceiling dropped fast once we had made it out past the islands to begin our circuits. However, we made the most of it, and i finally got to feel what that good ole "stick n' rudder" felt like!
On our first circuit, he explained to me that he was going to have a number of power settings for the cirdcuit, which would generate the exact same results for each leg of the circuit if performed correctly. No more flying by "why feels or sounds about right." We were going to be sticky and very exact.
On the water, he had me gently apply full power, counting to five as i did so. Once the surf broke around the floats we pitched back at an alarming attitude, and i felt as though i was going to slide into the back seat, as we gained speed he had me slowly release my aft position on the control column to a nice flare just at the horizon. The next sensation was a great one, i could almost feel the floats peeeeeeeling themselves off the water and 3-2-1, we were up! I relaxed my position in the flare and gently reached down to go to flap 10. He had me adjust power to 23 inches and 2450 and climb to 450 feet. At 450 i reduced to 17 and 23 and made my crosswind turn. The downwind leg with pedro was an interesting one. First he had me relax for a moment, because "if you're stressing all the time doing things you're going to wear yourself out! Look at th ewind direction on the water! Are some whales leaping downt there? Did you do the laundry yesterday?" Of course he wouldn't have me get distracted to the point of losing awareness, but i liked his technique of easing a learner into a series of new and complicated steps slowly and gently.
Preparing for the base leg, he had me reduce to 15 and add 20 of flap, and exectute a base turn. then i was to ask myself, "am i high or am i low?" and adjust with power. "Am i fast or am i slow" and adjust with pitch. Then he had me do "The final check to go." which consisted of pushing the prop to full fine. Form here on out, my only job was to land the thing on the water.
The first thing to know about landing a float plane, is after spending the entire rest of my 140 odd hours avoiding the ocean, it feels really damn weird to fly right AT IT. However, i tried my best to relax and invision a magical water runway, where flipping fish were glinting centreline lights, and little waves in the water were blades of grass wiggling in the breeze. At first, to make sure that i was landing in a safely nose-high configuration, he counted me in for when i was supposed to roll level, at about 20 feet above the water. As we progressed, however, i can now judge that myself. He then had me wait for the "sink" feeling, and begin my flare not above the horizon. the important thing in this flare, was to be ever so patientas i held a consistant flare angle, and not to pitch back to make it happen quicker. Then magically, i felt my first little "thud!" and we were down. i pulled the power to idle and pulled aft as we decelerated, and i did an internal happy dance for my first water landing!
Of course, this was only the beginning. Much more fun was to be had. It was the end of day two, and i had done 9 or 10 circuits. As i rotated at full power, i reached down to adjust from 20 to 10 of flap. As i depressed the manual flap lever, my grip slackened, and i let it go all the way from 20 degrees to nothing in one awkward "flop". reacting quickly but certainly not wisely, i reached down, above the water by only 75 feet or so, to grab the lever to put my flap back on. bad move.
"UH UHH!" blurted Pedro, as he took control as the plane lurched downwards along with my gaze and downstretched arm, pushing the control column down.
"If you try to take off flap and it all goes, leave it. Gain a bit more altitude, and then put it back on. Not while you're so low off the water."
Then came a classic piece of advice:
"Do you know when you're driving, and you're putting on lipstick, and it falls on the floor?
(First, OMG! DO I EVER KNOW! Second, how does HE know!?)
"Well, you don't look down from driving and grab it, do you? You wait until the stop sign! It's jut slike that with flap!"
Seeing my look of amused bewliderment, he finished.
"Honey, i have four sisters."
Aha, msytery solved :)
My second and even more epic tale came when we were finsihed on day three and on the way back to the dock. The water aerodrome is right underneath of the approach for runway 09 at the international airport. As we were skimming in at around 300 feet, the tower advised us of RJ traffic on approach for 09. Seeing them, Pedro annouced that we were going to keep the speed up and stay low to avoid his wing tip vortices. We descended to 150 feet and were absolutely ripping along over the ocean at 110 knots. I peekd out my window and up-, and it looked like we were in a vertical race with the RJ! Suddenly on the frequency came a gravelly, low voice with a heavy Southern Twang
"Uhhhhh, that's a pretty impressive little 180 you've got down there!"
Pedro and i both burst out laughing! Amazing. the two pilots high up above, power and prestige at thier disposal, were impressed by us ripping playfully along below.
Even the tower laughed. "ah, don't worry about him!" joked the controller. "He's just a floater!"
Four and a half hours and god knows how many circuits later, i am on the eve of my solo flight. If all goes well tomorrow and if the weather is our friend, i will get to become one with the impressive little 180 and take her out on a date solo to complete my float rating. It has been a playful, raw, and thrilling experience that i will surely miss once it is over. Allthough i have my usual case of performance nerves and anxiety about tomorrow. An email from Pedro tonight eased my racing mind. " I know you're concerned about the solo portion of your flight test...don't worry. I'll only let you go in the right weather and once you're feeling good about it. You should be, you're flying well!"
i am so happy that my enjoyment is showing in my progress, and so blessed to have the experience to leap and play like a little flying fish on the gorgeous west coast as the spring blossums. Flying Floats is an adventure i will never forget, and one that i would recommend to any lover of the skies!
Sunday, February 10, 2013
Rockin' the Box Office
Check it out, here's an all-female crew on this Lockheed c-5 Galaxy!
Love seeing women in aviation, and it's especially inspiring to see an entire crew of female pilots transporting american soldiers to Afghanistan. That is one huge plane and 4 awesome ladies in charge of keeping everyone on board safe and taking them where they need to go.
Way to go girls :)
Sunday, January 27, 2013
Ticking the Boxes
It was a calm Friday night, the sun creeping across the horizon to its rest. The sky was a vivid display of oranges and pinks, and cotton ball clouds drifted aimlessly. I drove out to the airport after work, hoping that this would be the day i finally got to finish my night rating!
I had begun new record of cancelled flights, for eight days straight i'd had a booking at 17:00 to squeeze in my last 0.6 of solo circuits. Our seaside city had been experiencing one of the longest periods of heavy fog in years, no doubt due to an inversion. The cool, stable air mass had been trapped beneath the warm air mass for days, and even my non- aviation type friends were actually discussing the unusual weather over beers or at the climbing gym.
The classifications of fog have always sort of befuddled me. It may be that unlike some types of meteorological phenonmenia, i find fog kind of boring. There is nothing dynamic, mysterious, or exciting about a low lying, stable cloud deck. From what i can understand, the ingredients to the bland, grey, tasteless soup called fog are a relative humidity near 100%, and some type of condensation nuclei (molecules of crap floating in the air for condensation to cling to, such as air pollution, dust, sea salt). Trap these thrilling ingredients together close to the ground (such as underneath a warm air mass) and take away motion of air from areas of lower pressure to those of high(wind)and you get...spectacular fog!
Fog can form suddenly, and can dissipate just as rapidly, depending what side of the dew point the temperature is on. This phenomenon is known as flash fog. (i use the word phenomenon very loosely here... i would sooner refer to "how the egyptians built the pyramids!" "why do i always wait to sit down in the bathroom and do my business before i realise i have run out of toilet paper!" and "How is Bradley Cooper single again!" as phenomenons.) A surprise attack of flash fog eight days earlier had cut short what was supposed to be my last hour of solo circuits, forcing me to land, and frankly scaring the shit out of me. Come this friday, however, the conditions finally seemed favorable again!
I had booked one of the club's fanciest planes, leather seats, Garmin 430, not 30 years old, the whole works! Only problem was, this was one of the was fuel injected 172 S models, which the last time i flew, i managed to flood it on startup. This was totally embarassing and caused me to run back into the club and grab a shop guy to help me get it going again. This most likely happened because i left the boost pump on for too long, when in reality i should have attemoted a hot start because someone had already flown the aircraft earlier in the day. Within the first 20 to 30 minutes after shutdown of the previous flight, the fuel manifold is adequately primed and the empty injector nozzle lines will fill before the engine dies. However, after approximately 30 minutes, the vaporized fuel in the manifold will have nearly dissipated and some slight “priming” could be required to refill the nozzle lines and keep the engine running after the initial start. Starting a hot engine is facilitated by advancing the mixture control promptly to 1/3 open when the engine starts, and then smoothly to full rich as power develps. This is like a weird little panicky dance in which i'm trying to simultaniously crank the magnetos and slide the mixture to full rich, and i'm always freaked out that i'm not doing both actions in equal proportion to teh other. If i'm cranking for too long, i feel like i'm going to hurt the poor thing, but if i scoot the mixture to rich too fast, i feel like i'm going to drown it. Needless to say, allthough i love actually flying this plane because it handles like a dream, the process of getting it started in the first place is so daunting that i rarely actually rent it.
But on friday, everything fell into place! I started her up, taxied out as the sun was setting, and took off as the only plane in the feild and had 3 pretty much uneventful circuits to finish off my night rating! I had one funny encounter with the controller, who was clearly suffering from a case of friday night boredom, where he had me and an a dash 8 set up to land on intersecting runways, in a sequence which clearly wasn't going to work. On about a half mile final, i was just about to mention something when he quickly blurted "uhhhhhh Sierra Delta Zulu! return to your downwind leg, i'll call your base." riiiiiight. I dutifully applied full power and turned back for my base leg, ending up doing an awkward kind of orbit, as he was ready for me by the time i finally reached my downwind leg again. Not the best controlling i have ever seen!
On my next ciruit, i only had .1 to go until i was finished my hours needed for the rating, and the tower noticed fog creeping in around the terminal, as the dewpoint and temperature became equal. i called a full stop, not wanting to be stuck in it again. As i rolled into my parking spot on the apron, i could see my instructor sprinting out to me, worried that the fog had yet again thwarted my efforts to finish the rating. But luckily i had rolled in just in time, nailing my solo time to the decimal point!
So ends my night rating adventures! I am so thrilled to be yet another step closer to my goal. During my first couple hours the task had seemed impossible, my fears far overriding my desires to finish. I remember sitting next to my instructor on the downwind, after yet another shaky night landing, thinking that i would probably never finish. I wondered how all my other pilot friends had gotten through this. I figured that the accident had hurt me too deeply, shaken my resolve, my power, and my confidence too close to the core to be salvaged. That would be the end of my flying career, not out with a bang, but with a whimper. Fear getting the best of me again. But i was wrong. So wrong. I honestly feel more than ever, that absolutely nothing is going to stop me from doing this. The night rating pushed me to the edge of my comfort zone in a good way, so that i feel i have new skills, and overcome new challenges. I actually have cravings to go flying again! Ticking yet another rating off the list of things i need to do on my way to my forever career feels amazing, and gives me even more momentum for my next endeavor...my Multi Engine endorsement.
stay tuned... ;)
Fog can form suddenly, and can dissipate just as rapidly, depending what side of the dew point the temperature is on. This phenomenon is known as flash fog. (i use the word phenomenon very loosely here... i would sooner refer to "how the egyptians built the pyramids!" "why do i always wait to sit down in the bathroom and do my business before i realise i have run out of toilet paper!" and "How is Bradley Cooper single again!" as phenomenons.) A surprise attack of flash fog eight days earlier had cut short what was supposed to be my last hour of solo circuits, forcing me to land, and frankly scaring the shit out of me. Come this friday, however, the conditions finally seemed favorable again!
I had booked one of the club's fanciest planes, leather seats, Garmin 430, not 30 years old, the whole works! Only problem was, this was one of the was fuel injected 172 S models, which the last time i flew, i managed to flood it on startup. This was totally embarassing and caused me to run back into the club and grab a shop guy to help me get it going again. This most likely happened because i left the boost pump on for too long, when in reality i should have attemoted a hot start because someone had already flown the aircraft earlier in the day. Within the first 20 to 30 minutes after shutdown of the previous flight, the fuel manifold is adequately primed and the empty injector nozzle lines will fill before the engine dies. However, after approximately 30 minutes, the vaporized fuel in the manifold will have nearly dissipated and some slight “priming” could be required to refill the nozzle lines and keep the engine running after the initial start. Starting a hot engine is facilitated by advancing the mixture control promptly to 1/3 open when the engine starts, and then smoothly to full rich as power develps. This is like a weird little panicky dance in which i'm trying to simultaniously crank the magnetos and slide the mixture to full rich, and i'm always freaked out that i'm not doing both actions in equal proportion to teh other. If i'm cranking for too long, i feel like i'm going to hurt the poor thing, but if i scoot the mixture to rich too fast, i feel like i'm going to drown it. Needless to say, allthough i love actually flying this plane because it handles like a dream, the process of getting it started in the first place is so daunting that i rarely actually rent it.
But on friday, everything fell into place! I started her up, taxied out as the sun was setting, and took off as the only plane in the feild and had 3 pretty much uneventful circuits to finish off my night rating! I had one funny encounter with the controller, who was clearly suffering from a case of friday night boredom, where he had me and an a dash 8 set up to land on intersecting runways, in a sequence which clearly wasn't going to work. On about a half mile final, i was just about to mention something when he quickly blurted "uhhhhhh Sierra Delta Zulu! return to your downwind leg, i'll call your base." riiiiiight. I dutifully applied full power and turned back for my base leg, ending up doing an awkward kind of orbit, as he was ready for me by the time i finally reached my downwind leg again. Not the best controlling i have ever seen!
On my next ciruit, i only had .1 to go until i was finished my hours needed for the rating, and the tower noticed fog creeping in around the terminal, as the dewpoint and temperature became equal. i called a full stop, not wanting to be stuck in it again. As i rolled into my parking spot on the apron, i could see my instructor sprinting out to me, worried that the fog had yet again thwarted my efforts to finish the rating. But luckily i had rolled in just in time, nailing my solo time to the decimal point!
So ends my night rating adventures! I am so thrilled to be yet another step closer to my goal. During my first couple hours the task had seemed impossible, my fears far overriding my desires to finish. I remember sitting next to my instructor on the downwind, after yet another shaky night landing, thinking that i would probably never finish. I wondered how all my other pilot friends had gotten through this. I figured that the accident had hurt me too deeply, shaken my resolve, my power, and my confidence too close to the core to be salvaged. That would be the end of my flying career, not out with a bang, but with a whimper. Fear getting the best of me again. But i was wrong. So wrong. I honestly feel more than ever, that absolutely nothing is going to stop me from doing this. The night rating pushed me to the edge of my comfort zone in a good way, so that i feel i have new skills, and overcome new challenges. I actually have cravings to go flying again! Ticking yet another rating off the list of things i need to do on my way to my forever career feels amazing, and gives me even more momentum for my next endeavor...my Multi Engine endorsement.
stay tuned... ;)
Monday, January 21, 2013
Sunday, January 20, 2013
The Power of Thought: Finding Calm During my Night Rating.
It's dark. It's really freaking dark.
It's funny how an activity which becomes mind-numbingly boring during private training can feel 100% different when the sun is on the other side of the planet!Flying the circuit at night felt very different, especially in my first several hours of training. The night rating is defined by Transport Canada as one which "allows a pilot to fly in VMC and navigate in visual reference to the ground, at night. This is different from instrument meteorological conditions (IMC) where the pilot flies and maintains situational awareness strictly by using instruments and avionics." The rating consists of 5 hours night, including 2 hours night cross-country, 10 hours instrument flight time, and 5 hours solo night, including at least 10 takeoffs, circuits and landings. At the flying club where i train, the solo time is administered in the form of circuits, as the area around the airport is very mountainous.
I have been working on my night rating for what feels like a zillion years. It's funny, for a rating which is normally pretty straightforward, getting night certified has been surprisingly challenging. The mental side of flying at night has been hard for me to wrap my head around...especially the most important part...landing.
I first started my night rating in October, two months after the accident. The training started with some simple VOR work over the city in straight and level. However i was still constantly running my mind over everything that could go wrong, and could not get over the feeling of disorientation and a stange sense of instability. In the same airspace in which i first took the controls just over a year before, i felt like a novice again. When my instructor and i moved on to circuit training, the sensation got even worse. Every time we were on takeoff roll, i broke into sweat and my heart was in my throat. As we levelled off from the climb and made our crosswind turn, the pounding of blood in my ears was louder than the chatter on the radio and the thrumming of the engine combined. I did my best to attempt to comouflage that every time i made a downwind radio call, i began trembling. When it came to landing, i was also a wreck. There would be nothing wrong weith my approach, I would be on short final, and low and behold, the runway would suddenly become my enemy! The approach lights glared at me in menace as if to say "you're not going to come in line with the centre line of the runway!" the ground looked about a billion times harder that more definite than it did during the daytime, and once i was in ground effect, i had an overwhelming desire to be on the ground as soon as possible, which would lead to me slamming it down without bothering to be patient and flare until my main gear touched down gently with a whisper. My instructor informed me (later, over beers after a circuit practice full of terrible landings) that he was convinced i was actually out to kill him.
Not knowing what else to do about this intense and irrational feeling of fear, i turned to my hippy side, which has yet to fail me. I asked myself, "what will it take to make me a good pilot at night?" Two answers came to me: Confidence, and Peace. Both undeniably intertwined. Where was it in the world that i felt most at peace? As soon as i was on the ground, i was on my iphone, looking up the hours of my local yoga studio. I arrived at the mat the next day with an intention. Take the sense of unity, calm, and space that i discovered each time in my practice, and hold on to it, only to release it again in the cockpit. Many downward dogs and shavasana's later... I made my very first fear free takeoff at night. It was unreal. If i truly approached my circuits with thesense of peace that i cultivated on the mat, i was suddenly able to fly confidently, with deliberate and exact motions. My instructor didn't know what to make of my sudden transition. "Your landings are looking great!" he exclaimed one night. "What happened?" I smiled to myself, thinking how silly "Yoga!" would sound as a response to a fellow pilot, a breed who are constantly on the hunt to validate thier progress and decision-makng with hard facts, numbers, evidence and empircal knowledge. I smiled to myself again, "Practice, I guess!" Was my response.
That night he called a full stop and let me go for my first round of solo circuits, which i handled at first with jitters and a very heightened sense of awareness, slowly relaxing into process and calm focus. Since that first day of circuits i have had my fair share of taxing experienceat night. There was one runway change that left me totally disoriented, and left the tower guys chuckling on the radio and teasing me later. ("Zulu Mike Kilo is....um....sorry...I'm kind of confused!"- not a shining moment in my radio ettiquette!) and one night where i simultaniously entered a chunk of cloud, and lost the post light to my VSI and Tachometer at the same time! However, each time i encountered something more challenging at night, i was able to handle it with a tiny bit more of confidence, grace, and calm. It was, in many ways a small step towards the full renaissance of my "flying lady-balls!" (I can feel it coming!!!)
Last week we took a cross country trip to Abbotsford, Pitt Meadows, over downtown Vancouver Harbour, Nanaimo, and back home. It was beautiful and a complete reward for all the hours of training, both mentally and physically. The entire cityscape was alight and twinkling and humming with life down below, as we darted like a firefly high above the vast expanse of humanity. It was like looking at a galaxy on the ground, patterns and patchworks of sparkling beautiful lights dancing underneath us. Though this rating has been for me a challenging exercise, it has been a beautiful discovery of the power of thought in influencing attitude and performance. That in itself is worth searching the dark skies for...
It's funny how an activity which becomes mind-numbingly boring during private training can feel 100% different when the sun is on the other side of the planet!Flying the circuit at night felt very different, especially in my first several hours of training. The night rating is defined by Transport Canada as one which "allows a pilot to fly in VMC and navigate in visual reference to the ground, at night. This is different from instrument meteorological conditions (IMC) where the pilot flies and maintains situational awareness strictly by using instruments and avionics." The rating consists of 5 hours night, including 2 hours night cross-country, 10 hours instrument flight time, and 5 hours solo night, including at least 10 takeoffs, circuits and landings. At the flying club where i train, the solo time is administered in the form of circuits, as the area around the airport is very mountainous.
I have been working on my night rating for what feels like a zillion years. It's funny, for a rating which is normally pretty straightforward, getting night certified has been surprisingly challenging. The mental side of flying at night has been hard for me to wrap my head around...especially the most important part...landing.
I first started my night rating in October, two months after the accident. The training started with some simple VOR work over the city in straight and level. However i was still constantly running my mind over everything that could go wrong, and could not get over the feeling of disorientation and a stange sense of instability. In the same airspace in which i first took the controls just over a year before, i felt like a novice again. When my instructor and i moved on to circuit training, the sensation got even worse. Every time we were on takeoff roll, i broke into sweat and my heart was in my throat. As we levelled off from the climb and made our crosswind turn, the pounding of blood in my ears was louder than the chatter on the radio and the thrumming of the engine combined. I did my best to attempt to comouflage that every time i made a downwind radio call, i began trembling. When it came to landing, i was also a wreck. There would be nothing wrong weith my approach, I would be on short final, and low and behold, the runway would suddenly become my enemy! The approach lights glared at me in menace as if to say "you're not going to come in line with the centre line of the runway!" the ground looked about a billion times harder that more definite than it did during the daytime, and once i was in ground effect, i had an overwhelming desire to be on the ground as soon as possible, which would lead to me slamming it down without bothering to be patient and flare until my main gear touched down gently with a whisper. My instructor informed me (later, over beers after a circuit practice full of terrible landings) that he was convinced i was actually out to kill him.
Not knowing what else to do about this intense and irrational feeling of fear, i turned to my hippy side, which has yet to fail me. I asked myself, "what will it take to make me a good pilot at night?" Two answers came to me: Confidence, and Peace. Both undeniably intertwined. Where was it in the world that i felt most at peace? As soon as i was on the ground, i was on my iphone, looking up the hours of my local yoga studio. I arrived at the mat the next day with an intention. Take the sense of unity, calm, and space that i discovered each time in my practice, and hold on to it, only to release it again in the cockpit. Many downward dogs and shavasana's later... I made my very first fear free takeoff at night. It was unreal. If i truly approached my circuits with thesense of peace that i cultivated on the mat, i was suddenly able to fly confidently, with deliberate and exact motions. My instructor didn't know what to make of my sudden transition. "Your landings are looking great!" he exclaimed one night. "What happened?" I smiled to myself, thinking how silly "Yoga!" would sound as a response to a fellow pilot, a breed who are constantly on the hunt to validate thier progress and decision-makng with hard facts, numbers, evidence and empircal knowledge. I smiled to myself again, "Practice, I guess!" Was my response.
That night he called a full stop and let me go for my first round of solo circuits, which i handled at first with jitters and a very heightened sense of awareness, slowly relaxing into process and calm focus. Since that first day of circuits i have had my fair share of taxing experienceat night. There was one runway change that left me totally disoriented, and left the tower guys chuckling on the radio and teasing me later. ("Zulu Mike Kilo is....um....sorry...I'm kind of confused!"- not a shining moment in my radio ettiquette!) and one night where i simultaniously entered a chunk of cloud, and lost the post light to my VSI and Tachometer at the same time! However, each time i encountered something more challenging at night, i was able to handle it with a tiny bit more of confidence, grace, and calm. It was, in many ways a small step towards the full renaissance of my "flying lady-balls!" (I can feel it coming!!!)
Last week we took a cross country trip to Abbotsford, Pitt Meadows, over downtown Vancouver Harbour, Nanaimo, and back home. It was beautiful and a complete reward for all the hours of training, both mentally and physically. The entire cityscape was alight and twinkling and humming with life down below, as we darted like a firefly high above the vast expanse of humanity. It was like looking at a galaxy on the ground, patterns and patchworks of sparkling beautiful lights dancing underneath us. Though this rating has been for me a challenging exercise, it has been a beautiful discovery of the power of thought in influencing attitude and performance. That in itself is worth searching the dark skies for...
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