Catching up on some Pics

With lots of time to do nothing while the Squirt is recuperating in the Hospital, I can catch up on some pics from the last few weeks. I don't have Internet at the house, so I'll take advantage of the net here at the hosp.



Jack and Mommy getting faces painted at Easter


My little Bomber Pilot



Squirt flying the plane

Jack and Daddy flying


Big Jack and Little Jack sitting on Grandpa's plane.

Sick little guy

Well as usual, things change. When I left for recurrent on Monday, Jack had what was called a Carbuncle. Its a nasty pus filled thing that kind of looks like a boil. His Dr. tried treating it with a high load of antibiotics and some TLC, but as the week progressed, his "owwweee" as Jack called it, got progressively worse. As we were taking a break in class yesterday, I noticed 4 missed calls, 2 voicemails and a text message. I had my phone on silent, so I didn't notice the calls for a few hours. I immediately know something was wrong and called Erin to find out what was up. Apparently his owwee had gotten swollen and more infected. It was so bad that she brought him in to the hospital. The Doctors decided that it was bad enough that they had to operate. Its the kind of call that nobody wants to hear, especially when you are 2000 miles away and cant be there for your family. As soon as I got off the phone with Erin, I walked over my boss's office and told him of the situation, the first words out of his mouth were "Go Home"! His second action was to immediately get on his computer and find me a flight that would get me home a.s.a.p. (M.M, I cant tell you enough how much I appreciate how you handled the situation.) The next problem we faced was what to do about class. Thankfully I had been studying for a few months and studied hard during the week so the class wasn't a complete waste. I asked if they could bump the checkride up to the next day, but they said they were not able to do that. I then asked if it would be alright for me to take the final right now and that way all I'd have to do is come back to do my sim. They agreed and gave me the test right then and there. I flew through the test in record speed and was on my way back home in less than 20 min.



Here is the owwweee the night before surgery.




Here's the Little Trooper and Mommy before heading to the cutting room.


After scorching through my final, I hustled out the door to grab my stuff from the hotel so I could make my flight home. My company had bought me a "cheap" ticket home on Air Tran, but that would have gotten me home at around 11:00pm. But I knew from experience that Midwest had a direct flight that would have gotten me home by 9:30. I took the gamble and decided to head over to the Midwest counter at DFW. Jumpseating is more of an art form with my company due to the fact that we are not in the CASS system and we only have 2 jumpseat agreements. But thanks to Larry O. and the great guys up front flying the trip back to MKE, they gave me a ride home. I couldn't have been more grateful.

Thankfully Jack pulled through the surgery with flying colors. Currently the fam is spending the night in the hospital while Jack recovers. Hopefully he'll be able to go home tomorrow and will quickly recover.

Things are gunna change.....

Once upon a time on a rowdy drunken rugby trip to middle of nowhere Iowa, there was a speech given on the bus by the man, the myth and the Legend, Mr. Paul "Hollywood" Green. Hollywood had earned his nickname from his hard nosed rugby and his brutal tackling. Well, maby not very hard nosed (he didn't like to get dirty), and I don't remember him ever making a tackle, but that's besides the point. But the one great thing about him that made him useful to the team was his ability to tell a good story and give a good laugh to all that surrounded him. On this particular bus trip, we had just lost a close game to our division rival. We spent the night in Des Moine and drowned our sorrows at the local bars. The next morning we had to take the long ride back to Milwaukee. It was on this ride that Hollywood gave his famed "Things are gunna change" speech. I don't remember too many specifics of the speech, just some of the finer points, but the punch line was "things are gunna change". It had the bus rolling with laughter. I believe my partner in crime Sands even had beer come flying out of his nose because he was laughing so hard. From then on, "things are gunna change" became Hollywood's mantra. I thought about it the other night when I was thinking about my current situation with my company. Thankfully things have started to change.

For the first time in a long, long time, positive things have started coming from the company. The first of the positive things came in the form of a decent pay raise and bonus for all pilots. I think this was very needed because pilot morale had hit bottom. The most popular thing to talk about amongst ourselves was what jobs we were looking at. Nobody liked our current schedule and the company basically told us we could take our complaints and shove em. Everybody wanted to leave. We even had guys that had been with the company for a long time, quit to take less paying jobs. So the pay raise took a little bit of the edge off our unhappiness, but didn't really satisfy our main complaint of the schedule. So finally after 7 months of a brutal 5 on 2 off, 12 on 2 off schedule, we got our much needed schedule change. We now have a bid system in place so we can bid for lines that we want and we will now all have 10-11 days off a month instead of just 6. Personally, I'm optimistic that its going to work out well. Gone are the brutal 12 and 2's and in comes more time at home!!

On another note, I'm back at our base in the south for my annual re-current training. Its time to hit the books and brush up on things I haven't looked at in quite a while. I was mildly disappointed to find out that we only get a checkride in the sim and not several sim sessions, but I'm over it. It looks like I'll be done early Friday morning and hopefully will be home early that same afternoon. I'll post more about re-current at a later time.

The little things.

Its the little things in life that really matter. This goes for aviation as well. Sometimes the fine print can affect the outcome of a flight. Last night was just such an occasion. It all started out with the captain and I airlinin from a broken plane to a working plane at our base in the south. We were then to take the working plane to MMCU or "Chi-wah-wah" Mexico to pick up a load of the usual auto parts and from there proceed back to civilization to clear customs inbound and then we had 2 drops, one in Jackson, MS the other in Montgomery, AL. The weather was clear in Mexico, really nasty windy in our base in the west (28kts gusting to 40 with low level wind shear and blowing dust), crappy in Jackson and marginal in MGM.

On the leg to Hawkins/Jackson/Armpit of the south, the fine print will decide the outcome of the flight. The weather forecast for one hour prior to our arrival thru 1 hour after our arrival was calling for 500ft overcast ceilings and 3 miles visibility. Based on this weather, we are legal to launch because Hawkins has an ILS which requires 1/2 mile visibility to land. Since visibility is controlling, meaning the forested visibility is what we use to decide if the flight can go or not, we launch. Here is where we run into the fine print. if you take a look at the remarks section of the ILS approach in to HKS, you'll see the little words "glide slope is unusuable when control tower not in operation, only localizer minimums allowed during this period." Somehow this had slipped my mind as we were looking at the flight plan before we launched. It wasn't until we were in cruise that I noticed the fine print and brought it to the attention of the captain. This now brings the outcome of the flight into question. HKS was our original destination, JAN (Jackson) was our alternate. The weather at both destination and alternate were the same (they are only about 8 miles apart). But the ceiling for the Localizer approach into HKS was sitting right at minimums. This means that our flight went from being a sure thing to get into HKS, to not quite as easy as we'd thought.

Its a pretty long flight from our base in the west to HKS. Its 881nm or little over 2 hours normal flight time. Thankfully for us we had a monster tailwind that pushed us along at 550kts ground speed. That's about 80kts faster than normal and is the highest cruise ground speed I've ever seen in a Falcon. I kept the power in on the descent and hit my all time fastest speed in a big pig of 591kts or 681.9 miles per hour. As we got closer to HKS we picked up the asos or automated weather. The forecast was holding true at 500 ft ceilings and 3 miles vis. So we briefed the approach as if we were going to fly the Localizer (magical beam that guides us to the centerline of the runway) approach, but if we happen to receive the glide slope (magical beam that guides us to the ground) we would follow that down to the minimum descent altitude (the closest to the ground we can go without having the runway environment in sight) and hang out there(mda) until we see the runway or hit our missed approach point. At which time we would go missed and proceed over to JAN for an ILS approach.

The approach was textbook good. I'm pretty proud that I nailed everything despite it being 4am and I was dead tired. Center gave us vectors the put us about 5 miles outside the outer marker. I feel like I cheated because I used the autopilot until we were established on the localizer. But when he cleared us for the approach, I clicked off "Otto" and hand flew the rest of the way. As we arrived over the outer marker, the glide slope indicator was functioning normally so I flew the approach as if it were a normal ILS, following both the LOC and GS needles until I hit our MDA of 500ft above ground level. At which point I leveled off and we started to look outside the cockpit for the runway. We were in a ragged cloud base, so we were in and out of the bases for a few seconds, but we saw the runway and I managed to plop it down in the first 1/3 of the runway.

Had we not read the fine print, I'm sure the outcome would have been just the same. It just would not have been legal. Technically we were not supposed to use the glide slope at all, but I wasn't about to make my job harder by not using it. Had the ceilings been a few hundred feet lower, we never would have made it in, but missed approaches are for another story.

More important little things are spending time at home. Friday is Jack's 2nd birthday. I feel bad because I missed his first birthday last year because I was in Texas going to training, but I'm going to be there this year!!!!! I took Friday off so I can be home with the little guy on his big day. Next week is vacation for me, so there wont be any posts for a while, but I'll be back.

Night shift

Lately I've found myself flying what the pilots in my company call night shift. Typically anytime we duty on after about 5 in the afternoon, we end up being awake all night and don't get to sleep until the sun comes up the next morning. While I like flying at night, I'm not a big fan of night shift.

There is no typical day when it comes to my schedule. A lot of time, night shift is not planned for and can catch you after you've been awake since early in the morning. If the pager goes off, you are expected to go fly. Even if you have been awake all day. Last week I had a prime example of not being prepared for night shift. We had flown in to our base in the south with a perfectly working airplane, only to see it taken by another crew to finish a trip. We were told that there were no working planes at our base nor were any scheduled to come in, so we were to be without a plane for the foreseeable future. We went into our FAA regulated 10 hours of rest around 6pm with a green time of 4am. (Green time is when the company can page me for a trip.) We had no plane, so we weren't in a hurry to get to bed. I got some decent sleep and get up in time for free breakfast at the hotel. I'm awake and out of bed by 8:30am. I call in to see the status of planes in maintenance, hoping one would be fixed so I could go fly. Dispatch tells me that there will be a plane available, but not until tomorrow. So I plan my day as if I had the day off. I go to the Y and work out, have lunch with friends, go running and pick up another company pilot at the airport and bring him to the hotel. So I've had a busy day. Around 5pm I feel the vibration and hear the familiar beeping coming from my pocket. I've got a page from dispatch saying I have a trip. I call in to find out whats going on and am told I have an ASAP trip going to Mexico then to Indy. The plane came out of maintenance earlier than expected, so they booked us a trip.

We grab our stuff from the hotel and hurry to the airport. We get there and start our duty at 5:30pm. This means we now have 14 hours of duty time left. Just wonderful considering I've already been awake for 9 hours and could potentially still be on duty after being awake for 23 hours. My body does not like being up for 24 hours and lets me know on a regular basis. I've found that my best fatigue fighter is Rockstar energy drink with its whopping 160mg of caffeine really do the trick. If you take a look at the site Rockstar is linked to, you'll see a drink called WiredX344, good God that's an insane amount of caffeine!! (I'll have to give it a try)

The trip went pretty smooth and we didn't encounter too many delays along the route, but we did end up flying until 4am. The weather at Indy was marginal with 1000ft ceilings and gusty winds out of the north at 30kts, but even though I had been awake for 19+ hours, I still shot a good approach and managed to grease the landing. After we off loaded our freight and the excitement of landing in gusty conditions subsided, the fatigue really started to set in. The main problem with that, is we still had 3 hours of duty time left and the guy in charge up in dispatch wont let us go to the hotels anymore. In the past, if we ended a trip at the crack of dawn after flying all night, the guys in dispatch would send us to bed right away even if we still had half our duty left. The guy in charge now hangs us out at the airport and wont let us go to the hotel until we are almost out of duty time. Its a real sore subject with all of us pilots. This guy is universally disliked by the entire pilot group for just that reason. Thankfully the FBO had a real nice pilot lounge so the captain and I could relax, but by this time, my eyes didn't want to stay open.

So after sitting at the airport until we had only an hour of duty left, we finally got permission to go to the hotel. By the time I checked in to the hotel, it was 7am, the sun was up and I had been awake for 22.5 hours. I was dead tired and went right to sleep as soon as my head hit the pillow. 10 hours later the pager went off to send me on my way for another night shift.

Part 2

So we blasted off from po-dunk IA on our way to our base in the south. The flight was uneventful and the plane flew just fine. After some minor re-routing from ATC due to storms along the FINGR.3 arrival, we landed just about the same time our freight arrived. We loaded up our cargo, topped off the tanks and again hustled into the sky. Going into Mexico is not fun. Add in night time in mountainous terrain and you have yourself an interesting flight. On the way over, I updated our Jepp plates and carefully reviewed the arrival and approach we could reasonably expect. We always put more emphasis on briefing approaches in Mexico due to the fact that they are usually always associated with some sort of DME ARC and/or are non precision approaches. A majority of the time we are arriving after approach controllers have gone home and are operating on limited ATC services. There are numerous step downs/altitudes to comply with along our approach, so the captain and I discuss our plan of attack. Its my leg, so I'll be doing the easy work while the captain is calling out the step downs, tuning the radios, talking to ATC and guiding me along the ARC to our inbound radial. Once we hit the inbound radial, I start my inbound turn to the VOR. I track the inbound radial and start stepping down my altitudes. As we get closer to the VOR the needles get more sensitive so I have to stay on top of things to keep the needles centered. As we pass over the station, we make a slight turn to the left for the final approach segment and start our descent to the MDA (minimum descent altitude). It just so happens that its a clear night so we saw the runway from 20 miles out, but we follow the approach path anyway. Accepting a visual approach at night in the mountains is a recipe for disaster. I make a decent landing and we taxi over to the cargo ramp. We off loaded our cargo(actually the Mexican ramp workers off loaded for us) and found out we had another trip waiting for us. We were to head back to Laredo, fuel up, clear customs and head back to another Mexican city to pick up freight. From there we were to fly to our base in the south west to clear customs again, fuel up and continue on to our base in the south for a crew change. Turns out the cargo was going to our base in the north, but we didn't have enough duty time left to complete the trip. Didn't break my heart that we couldn't finish the trip, but I was sad to see our plane go. It was one of our better Falcons. So after about 9 hours in the air and 13.5 duty hours, we ended our day and headed to the hotel for some much needed sleep.