A Merry Christmas for somebody.

Yesterday was a great day! I got the chance to make somebody's Christmas a very happy one. Yesterday was my first "Lifeguard" flight. We were tasked with flying a liver from S.C to my childhood hometown of Rochester, NY. There was an extra sense of urgency with this flight. I felt like we couldn't get there fast enough. It felt good that I was actually doing something important with my flying. By bringing this much needed organ to a recipient, in a round-a-bout way we are helping prolong somebody's life. With this being the Christmas season, what better way to celebrate than with a new lease on life with a new liver.
As a bonus, I got to spend a little time with the parents once I arrived in ROC. When I found out that I was heading their way, I called them to see if they wanted to do dinner. They were very excited and were waiting for my arrival at the FBO when I got there. I was really looking forward to seeing them as well because due to my terrible schedule, I'm not going to make it home for x-mas this year. This would be the only time I'd get to see them. Besides, they are always good for a free meal ;) But in typical fashion, as soon as we get on the ground, deliver the liver and call in, we have another trip leaving immediately. Dispatch will not let us go eat. They want us to quick turn and get flying again a.s.a.p. We were all disappointed, but at least I got to show them the plane and what I do to get everything ready for a flight. It was great to see them, if only for a short time. As an added bonus, mom brought a plate of x-mas cookies. Thanks mom, they were gone by the end of the next leg.

Abort Abort!!!

Had my first aborted takeoff yesterday as well as my first heavy and high takeoff. It was an interesting day. The abort came on the first take off of the day. It was my leg and my takeoff. As we took the runway, everything was normal. We ran our runway items checklist and the captain handed off control of the aircraft to me. As we were cleared for take off, I advanced the power levers to take off power and released the brakes. We started accelerating normally and just after the captain called "airspeeds alive" (around 60 kts or so) I heard him say "Abort Abort!!!". It took me a second or so to react to the abort call, its not something you hear very often. I reduced the power levers to idle and deployed the airbrakes and started braking as per the memory items checklist. We had plenty of runway ahead of us and we were not going that fast, so it was pretty much a non-event. Turns out the captains attitude indicator inop flag appeared. So after taxiing clear of the runway, we brought it back to the hangar for the mechanics to take a look at. Turns out the number 1 inverter had tripped off line and we were going to have to MEL it to continue on the trip. We took care of the associated paperwork and reviewed the procedures and blasted off again about an hour later.

The second interesting occurrence of the day took place in Qeretaro, Mexico. This was to be my first no flaps take off in a Falcon. The airport is at a very high altitude of 6400ft above sea level. This high altitude seriously degrades performance. At these altitudes, the aircraft does not perform nearly as well as it would at sea level. So there are different techniques that are applied to flying the plane as well as some performance penalties that we must adhere to. There are several factors that we had going in our favor last night that allowed us to complete the flight with all cargo on board. First, the runway was 11,300 feet long. Second, the temperature was not warm. Had it been a few degrees C warmer, we would have had to leave some freight behind. After loading up 3,300 pounds of freight and a splash of fuel, we were sitting at our max take off weight for the current conditions. According to the books, we were to do a flaps zero take off with a V1 of 139, we would need 10,500 ft of runway and 29 seconds to 100kts. (A typical V1 is in the low 120's, usually we wont need more than 6000 ft of runway and 15-20 seconds to 100kts) It was the captains leg so he was flying. We did a static run (bring the engines to full power before releasing the brakes a.k.a short field t.o.) and released the brakes. The usual kick in the pants was noticeably absent and the fat heavy bird slowly started to accelerate. After what seemed like an eternity, there was the 80kts cross check call out. Then after a few more seconds the 100kts clear panel call. A quick glance of my timer showed 27 seconds to 100 kts. (This tells me the plane is making sufficient power to make it to V1 and rotation) After 10 very long seconds and almost 3/4 of the 11,300 ft runway behind us, I made the V1 call. At this point we are going, no matter what. I call V1, VR, Rotate, V2 in succession. They were all within a knot or so. The captain started to rotate. The plane was definitely not itself. It seemed to squat on the runway and not want to become airborne. By this time the yellow lights on the runway were whizzing by and we were running out of runway fast. The fat bird finally lifted off the runway and began its slow climb away from terra firma. I sat there stunned for a second because I was amazed at how poorly the plane was performing. I quickly snapped out of it and continued with the after take off checklist. What a day. I learned a lot.

Ahhh... The freight delay.

It is not uncommon for us freight dawggers to have long delays waiting on freight. The company will page us out for a trip and tell us "Get there as fast as you can, freight is waiting!". Only to get to the airport and find that there's a freight delay. Today the delay is coming from the shipper. Apparently we are to be shipping some Hazmat material, but the containers that the shipment are in are not legal for shipping by air. So while the Capt. and I hustled to get down to the pick up airport, it was all for nothing. We could have taken our sweet time and gotten here with plenty of time to spare.

Some delays are short, some extremely long. Depending on the airport and the facilities, the delay can be tolerable or excruciating. Today's delay, not so bad. The airport has a nice FBO with internet, a nice pilots lounge, a crew car and food nearby. The other end of the spectrum is when we go to the big airports and have to go to the cargo ramps. IAH and EWR come to mind. When we go to those airports, we usually go to the cargo ramp. At these places there is usually no pilot lounge, internet, food or crew car. Last week, I had a 6 hour freight delay in IAH at one of these places. After leaving the aircraft and going inside, they didn't have chairs for us to sit on. We had to go outside and sit in the grass. After a few hours of that, I had had enough and made them escort me back out to the plane. I'd rather go sit in the plane for a few hours than sit in the grass. In a Falcon you can make a comfortable little bed to lay on by putting the engine covers on the floor and laying on them. I've spend many an hour laying down that way. Well, freight is supposedly on its way. I'm off.

Hi! I'm with the FAA! How may I assist you?

The title of this post sounds pleasant, doesn't it? It'd be nice if I thought that was the real intention of the FAA inspector who ramp checked my plane yesterday, but I don't think that was on his agenda. Yesterday we were paged out as soon as we went green (had our FAA required 10 hours of rest). Our trip would take us from where we were on the Texas/Mexico border, through our base in TX, then on up to CT. At our TX base, while I was doing my FO duty of checking the oil on the engines, a man with a brown leather coat, FAA badge and a little notebook came up to me and said "I'm with the FAA, I'm here to inspect your aircraft". This was going to be my first ramp check. I have never had the pleasure of dealing with one before, so naturally I was a little concerned. I had heard horror stories of FAA inspectors taking away pilot licenses and grounding airmen while finding errors during ramp checks. I certainly didn't want that to happen to me. I quickly racked my brain to make sure I had done all the paperwork, crossed all my T's and dotted my I's. I did. The inspector asked to see the flight log, where we were coming from and going, wanted to see the registration and if we had any write ups on the aircraft. I was nice and polite and showed him everything he wanted to see and answered all his questions. He wanted to see the cockpit and the inside of the plane. We ran into a problem when a company mechanic came out to the plane to work on one of our navigational instruments. During a previous flight, the CDI needle (course deviation needle, shows us if we are left or right of course) on the captains side seemed to have developed a twitch. We did not write it up in the book because we were at a base and were going to have a mechanic look at it. The inspector didn't like what he saw. He wanted to see the captain, but he was inside doing paperwork and was nowhere to be found. The inspector wanted to know why the mechanic was working on our plane while there was no write up in the book. Thankfully the quick thinking mechanic wrote it up for us. That seemed to satisfy the inspector.
Overall, I think it went well. He did notice the the fire extinguisher wasn't latched down well enough for his tastes and that there were missing numbers on our flight log???? But that was about it. As soon as he walked away from the plane, I ducked into the office and hung out until our freight got there.