Wasting $$

This week on the road I've gotten the chance to take some more pictures of interesting stuff I've seen while flying. I got to ride in a De-Icing truck bucket for the first time. Saw my first flying Eclipse Jet outside of EAA Oshkosh and heard some funny stories from the Captain I'm flying with. The best story of the week was about how a company loves to save money, yet wastes money in the pursuit of cost savings. So here goes.

A pilot at a company (that shall remain nameless) was having a meeting with the CP (Chief Pilot). Somehow they got on the topic of how the company tries to save money. The CP had a little demonstration to show the pilot how the company likes to go about saving money. He pulls out a quarter and a $100 bill from his pocket. He tosses the quarter of the floor and puts the $100 bill in front of the quarter. The CP then takes his foot and stomps on the $100 bill while reaching over to pick up the quarter. I nearly fell out of my seat because I was laughing so hard when I heard that. It is so true. Case in point, this week we were airlined to a plane that had been previously grounded for mechanical reasons. The company sent a mechanic that supposedly fixed everything. The company sold a trip on the aircraft before checking with the mechanics to see if everything had been fixed. We get to the plane and while looking over the paperwork for the maintenance that had been done, we notice that an MEL'd item had expired and had not been fixed. Long story short, trip cancelled, plane still grounded, waste of a lot of money to airline us to a broken plane. Definitely not the first time this has happened.

Here is the Eclipse Jet that I saw. Apparently this was the first time the controller had seen one as well because he asked the pilot what type of aircraft it was.


We got a kick out of seeing this parked in front of a Museum. That is exactly where that hunk of flying junk belongs.

Memorial Trust for Hughes and Patty Families

A trust has been set up for the families of my fellow freight dawgs. Please donate what you can. Any little bit will help.

The trust has been set up and is ready for your donations. Please write your checks out to:

“Dan Hughes and Terry Patty Memorial Trust”
The checks should be mailed to:
Dan Hughes and Terry Patty Memorial Trust
c/o Viewpoint Bank
4560 Beltline Road, Suite 100 Addison, TX 75001

Alternatively, Stacy Muth is collecting checks and will hold them for Dan to pick up next week.
Thank you again for all of your support, donations, prayers, etc!
If you haven’t already emailed Dan Morgan to advise that you are donating, please do so. He wants to keep a list for Autumn and Elizabeth.
If you have any questions, please send Dan an email to skydan5@yahoo.com

Part 3 Analog vs Glass

This brings me to part 3 of the series, differences between freight dawgin it and flying nicely equipped aircraft. The picture you see above is out of an ERJ. I will be using generalizations when talking about glass cockpits because for the most part, they have the same basic lay out. There are major differences between the manufacturers (Honeywell, Collins Pro Line, ect.), but when it comes to the PFD (primary flight display) the information is pretty standard.

The instrument scan is an important part of instrument flying. A good scan is crucial to your ability to fly the aircraft. With the analog instruments you need to constantly keep a good scan going of up to 6 separate instruments. This means you need to develop a pattern that will cover all the instruments quickly and efficiently while trying to minimize eye movements. As you can see from the earlier posts, the analog instruments are all individual and separate. A glass cockpit screen will compress the standard 6 pack in analog cockpits into one screen. This compression greatly reduces the amount of looking around the instrument panel. In addition to the benefit of a smaller scan, the glass screen can overlay additional information that is not available to analog instruments.

The screen on the left is the PFD. Starting on the left of the screen you see the airspeed indicator. It is a tape indicator that is way more advanced than the old round gauge I use. For example you can set all your V speeds instead of just V1 for PNF (pilot not flying) and V2 for PF (pilot flying) because we only have one little triangle per indicator to set the speed with. I think the most helpful tool that the airspeed indicator has is the trend indicator. The airspeed indicator has a little magenta line that will overlay on the indicator to show a trend of where the aircrafts speed will be in the next 10 seconds (time may vary depending on manufacturer). This is a tremendous help and greatly reduces instrument scanning especially during an approach. For me it would completely negate having to look over at the N1 gauge to set my power on approach. When I was doing my initial in the Falcon, we flew a glass cockpit version of the sim. I got used to setting power without looking at N1. When I hopped in the plane the first few times, my scan was all messed up due to the fact I had to get used to looking away from my instruments for a few seconds to set power. The Lear is very touchy when it comes to setting power. Looking over at the N1 gauge is time consuming because you need to be precise with your power adjustments. A 1% N1 change is usually sufficient to make the airspeed change you need. You cant set the power without looking at it because if you are off by more than 1% your speed is going to get away from you.

The AI in the glass cockpit is a "good AI" from one of our aircraft on steroids. It has the same information that the good AI has plus some additional stuff. What I like about the glass AI is that you can overlay several pieces of information which would reduce your scan even further due to the fact that you can omit looking down at the HSI (I know, I know, a good pilot will never omit looking at anything, but I'm just saying this to emphasize the reduction in scan).

Next up, to the right of the AI is the altimeter. Again it has more information available than just a standard altimeter. You can set several altitude bugs for such things as DH, MDA and Missed approach Alt. The altimeter also has a vertical trend indicator that will help you out when determining when to level off.

Directly below that is the VSI. As you can see by the picture, the indicator only goes up to 3,000fpm for the ERJ. On climbouts in the Lear that would be pegged at the top of the indicator until we got above 20,000ft.

To the left of the VSI is the HSI. Again its a HSI on steroids due to the fact that you can overlay several modes on to the screen. These planes all have several modes of navigation available and the HSI can overlay each type. So you can have one pilot using the FMS mode while the other backs that up using land navigation aids on the other screen. To the left of the HSI are more information aids. You can easily see your course, DME, what color each navaid is being displayed is using and what heading your heading bug is set to. In our planes, this information is all over the place. I'd spend several seconds looking around the cockpit gathering all this information while in the glass cockpit, its all right there on one screen.

To the right of the PFD is the MFD (multi function display). These are amazing due to the wealth of information that they have. I'm not going to get into differences because we don't have anything even close to as cool as these. These displays can do everything, but what has the most relevance to this blog is how it helps pilots maintain situational awareness. On the compass rose page you can overlay your entire route and have an overhead view of what it looks like. In addition you can overlay weather, terrain, traffic and other information that will greatly improve situational awareness. We have nothing even close to this. If we want to see our route, we look at a map, weather, we turn on the radar, terrain, we look at a map and figure out where we are and where we are going, traffic, we use our eyes.

Glass cockpits are awesome. They have a tremendous amount of information available to the pilots that is not available to those with analog gauges. In addition to the extra information, the current information is presented in a format that is easy to use and scan. This reduces cockpit workload and makes flying easier. I am certainly looking forward to the days when I'll be flying glass, but I am enjoying the flying I am doing now. This will probably be the last job where I hand fly everything except cruise. Its hard flying, but its great for the stick and rudder skills. I think I'd get bored using the autopilot and flight director for everything. There are times when I'd like to use these things (bad wx), but I'm used to doing everything raw data and that's fine by me.

Analog flying part 2

Picking up where I left off yesterday. This is a pic of the "good" attitude indicator I was referring to. On it you will see the flight director. Those 2 little yellow bars drop down when you activate the system. Currently it is showing a turn to the left. If you were to line up the little orange triangle inside the yellow triangles, you would be following the flight director. This makes flying a lot easier because you can cut down on your instrument scan. Instead of scanning between the AI, Altimeter and HSI, you can just look at the AI for all the information you need. It will make for easier and more concise flying. The good AI also has glideslope and localizer information on it as well. On the left side of the AI, covered under the red flag is the glideslope. At the bottom is a little indicator that looks like a runway, that is the localizer. Again, when flying an approach, all you really need to do is scan between the AI, altimeter and airspeed. Easy stuff. Now to what I do.

Here is a view of me cramming my head against the ceiling and moving to the right to get a decent view of the HSI. While flying an ILS in a Lear, the HSI is the primary instrument while airspeed and altimeter are secondary. It is more difficult than most planes I have flown because I am forced into an odd position to look at the instruments. I am constantly having to look around the yoke. It is a lot of work especially when there is turbulence and the plane is being squirrelly. If I am having to make power adjustments, my scan gets thrown out of whack because I have to look away from the instruments to set my power. Add in a high ref plane with the ref speeds in the 130 range and your zipping down the approach at 140 kts +. Everything is happening quickly and my scan needs to be in top form in order to stay on top of things. ILS approaches are supposed to be easy. In the Falcon, they are as simple as can be. The Lear will make you work for it if you don't get the aircraft set up and settled in to the groove of the approach. Now for the glass cockpit and how much easier it is to fly.

Analog flying part 1.

Thanks to my new camera and some surfing around on the net, I can get around to doing this post on flying the Lear and the differences in flying between what I do and what someone flying a glass cockpit does. Its going to be a multi part post starting off with a description of my cockpit and how I use certain things. It will progress into how I fly the plane and how it is different from what someone in a nicely equipped aircraft might do.

This first picture is of my exact view of the instrument panel as I see it. I put the camera as close to the exact point my eyes would be to take the picture. I'll start off in the top left and describe what things are and how I use them. At the top left is a vertical row of 4 round dials. The top one is my EPR or engine pressure ratio. This is one way we determine how much power/thrust the engine is producing. We us this primarily on take off to set "take off" power. Below that is the Exhaust temp gauge. This is also used to set power. We use this to set climb power and sometimes cruise power. Below that is our N1 gauge. Yet another way we can set power settings. This lets us know how fast the engine is rotating. We will use this as our primary way of setting power on approaches. The bottom dial is our oil pressure gauge. Not used for much besides checking pressures on the take off roll. Directly below the column of dials is a six pack of little gauges that house all of the electrical gauges. Continuing down there are two rows of switches. Those control the outside light, inverters, stall warnings, igniters, bleed air and anti skid. [The problem with this set up is that there is no constancy between aircraft in where these switches are located. They are in all different positions depending on what plane you are flying. I have to spend a minute or two searching the cockpit for switches and instruments every time I get in another plane.] The throttle quadrant is at the very bottom left of the picture and you don't see much of it. Moving back to the top of the picture, directly to the right of the dials you'll see the numbers 896.0 Thats the ADF, a.k.a the trip number holder. Its supposed to be used for navigation, but that mode of navigation is pretty out-dated and hardly used any more. Again, its one of those things that's never in the same place in any of our planes.

Below that you will see 5 little squares with the letters AP CPLD, ALT, HDG, NAV LOC and APPR. These 5 buttons control the flight director. At my company we almost never use them either in the Falcon or the Lear. 99% of our flying is raw data. Meaning we use information directly from our 6 pack. [Airspeed, Attitude Indicator (A.I), Altimeter, VSI (vertical speed), HSI, and RMI. The flight director is a great little tool that displays information directly on the AI. You can use it to fly the airplane. If your hand flying, all you do is keep it lined up and you'll fly a perfect approach, make a perfect turn, fly straight and level, climb or descend at a specific pitch attitude, ect. It can be used in almost every phase of flight. I'd say pilots with glass cockpits will use a flight director 95% or the time. Coupled with the auto pilot, it'll fly the plane for you. It makes flying so much easier. At my company, not a single one of our Lears has a flight director on my side. 100% of my flying in a Lear is raw data.

Back to the cockpit. Below the 5 flight director buttons is the GPS. We use just basic units that are extremely old and out dated. Those Tom Tom's you see on TV are way more advanced than what we have. Again, these are never in the same place. Below the GPS is Comm 1 and below that covered by the yoke are the flap position indicator and the engine start/gen switches, battery master switches and gear handle. Back to the top of the picture you will see 3 little round dials. Those are the oxygen and hydraulic pressure gauges. Below that is the TAWS or terrain awareness warning system and next to that is the angle of attack indicator. Directly below that is my standard 6 pack.

These 6 instruments are how I fly the plane. Working clockwise from the top left of the pack your see my very basic airspeed indicator. Those little triangles in there are how I set my V speeds. On the right is my attitude indicator. As you can see very very basic. The Falcons all have the good A.I's. Lears all suck. Next to that is the RVSM altimeter, very cool. Directly below that covered by the yoke is the VSI. Now we get to my little problem in the Lear. As I said in an earlier post, I have trouble getting a good look at the HSI from a normal sitting position. Now you can see exactly what I do. As you can see, most of it is covered by the yoke. This creates a problem when attempting to fly an approach because I have to sit straight up and cram my head to the right in order to see around the yoke. Not fun when flying in turbulence because my head smacks against the window. The glideslope is covered the most, so that is the most difficult part of the HSI to see.

I'm tired, time to go to bed. Part 2 will cover approaches and that'll come at a later date.

Aircraft down.

Today is a very sad day. I just found out that 2 lives have been lost during an approach in Mexico. They were flying an Ameristar Lear 24 into Guadalajara, Mexico. I knew both of the pilots and knew the Captain well. He was one of my favorite Captains to fly with. Both men will be sorely missed by their friends and loved ones left behind. Both men leave behind wives and children who will miss them the most.


This is the first time in my career that I've known someone that has perished on the job. Our profession is not easy. Especially the type of flying we do at our company. We fly poorly equipped, very high performance jets into unknown airports, in mountainous terrain, in bad weather, in the dead of night. It just does not get any tougher than that unless you are being shot at. I take pride in the fact that not all pilots are cut out to do this type of flying. It is hard.

My eyes have opened a little bit to see that it is also dangerous. There is a tremendous amount of risk in doing what we do. People that have office jobs or jobs sitting behind a desk have virtually zero risk in their work environment. Pilots are sitting in the front of heavy tubes of aluminum, screaming through the atmosphere at speeds god never intended our frail human bodies to endure. At 45,000ft above the earth, we are flying at 80% the speed of sound in an environment that would render us unconscious in 8 seconds and dead in less than 60 seconds with out pressurized oxygen being forced into our lungs. And this is just during cruise. During take off and landing we are flying that same heavy tube of aluminum at speeds over 150 m.p.h in very close proximity to terra firma which is unforgiving to say the least. This profession of mine is filled with risk.

With the risk comes reward. I cant think of doing anything else with my life other than flying. Even if I won the lottery and never had to worry about money again, I'd still fly. I'd start my own non-profit air ambulance service and continue to "fly for a living".

Godspeed to Dan Hughes and Terry Patty, I am going to miss both of you. Blue skies and tailwinds fellas.

Holiday fun time.

I've been at home for the last few weeks, hence no posting. Christmas was busy with lots of family time. Jack made out like a bandit with loads of new toys. His favorites were the Christmas train that ran around the tree and his new ball pit. I got a new digital camera, so there will be more pics in my postings from now on. Erin did a great job decorating the house and had fun seeing her family over the holidays. It was nice to be home. Here some pics from my new camera.