Decisions decisions.

Well its the end of June and overall its been a pretty good month. I flew a lot. Made some really good money and notched another 100 hours in the logbook. The only downside is spending so much time away from the family. If things were like this year round, I'd be a much happier pilot. But as things go, months like May and June are few and far between. In fact the most hours I had flown in any month prior to May was 103 and that was last June. 68 was my high for the 11 month span between big paychecks.

Freight has been decent to me as far as pay goes. Its the QOL (quality of life) that really takes a beating. If I stay on and upgrade my pay will go up quite a bit, but the QOL will still suffer. Just how much is turbo jet PIC worth? Is it worth a $36,000 base salary? Is it worth living my life tied to a pager? Is it worth only seeing my family for several days a month? I keep telling myself that my next job will be better, but will it? If we (Erin, Jack and I) tough it out for another 18 months at my current company, is it really going to be worth it in the end? Am I going to be able to land a job that will significantly increase my QOL to make up for lost time? Is turbo jet PIC really worth that much? I don't know. I thought I could do it no problem, but lately it gets harder and harder to look at my pager on Sundays and realize I'm not going to see my family for another week or two. Now Jack is able to say " I miss you Daddy" and "Come home soon" and its hard to hear when I'm 1,000 miles away sitting in some dump hotel waiting for my pager to go off so I can go build hours for that better job. Is turbo jet PIC worth that? I don't think so.
As much as I like money, its not the most important thing in life. If we can be happier with me making less, but home more, then that's what needs to be done. My career is important, but my family comes first.

Vintage freight dog planes.

You'll see here pics of an actual flying Convair 440. This plane is still doggin it for a company in Laredo, TX. Special thanks go out to Robert from Barker's for letting me check out his planes.
Thats a whole lotta knobs and switches to throw.
This slow 440 has a better GPS than our jets.

I don't even think I could start the beast. That's more levers than I've ever seen. Notice how the Copilots throttle quadrant has very little wear. Whats that tell ya?



Ahhh, the powerful Pratt and Whitney R-2800 Double Wasp. I'd love to hear the 2000 horse power engines rumbling down the runway.

More pics

HAZMAT: Its too dangerous for the travelling public, but its OK for freight dawggers.
Since its OK for Dawggers, Lets just load up the whole plane with the stuff and bring it to Mexico.
I just love how my seat is duct taped together. Oh, wait sorry, "Cargo pit Taped". A fancy FAA approved duct tape.
Another nice clean plane.
A pretty sweet Cosair sitting on the ramp at IWA. I could have gotten a better shot, but our cargo truck parked in the way.

The Coolest plane in the world!!!!

If I ever won the lottery, this would be my project!!!! I saw this sitting out on the ramp in ELP a few months ago and finally got the chance to see it up close. I think its the most badass plane I've ever seen. It looks like a mini B-58 Hustler. I've done a little research on it and haven't come up with much. All I know is that its old and hasn't flown in a very long time, but from the looks of it, its a screamer. Those 4 pure turbo jets sitting under the wing turn old dinosaurs into a lot of noise in a hurry. I'm guessing that it'll cruise in the Mach .90+ range. I would love to fly it! Drinks on me for whoever can guess what type of plane it is.

The Powerful Garmin 496

For the last few weeks I have had the privilege of flying with a powerful tool that greatly enhances my safety of flight. Its the only piece of "glass cockpit" that I have available to me and I love it. I just wish I had one of my own. Sadly I'll be returning it to my Dad next week because it is his. I've just been using it for a few weeks while he's been on vacation and not flying a lot.

The Garmin 496 is the coolest thing since sliced bread! It has so many useful features that I don't even know where to begin. It is far superior to anything we have on board our aircraft in terms of situational awareness. In the following pictures I'll describe how the Garmin helps.



Above you'll see a picture of a nasty line of thunderstorms that were heading towards our original destination of Memphis. The Garmin was the only picture of the radar we had available to us prior to departure due to the fact we were picking up our cargo on a cargo ramp and there were no weather computers that we could use to check weather. Our only weather we get is in text form that comes out with our flight plan. The TAF for MEM was ugly, calling for heavy rain and thunderstorms at the time of our arrival. As usual, our dispatcher gave us no heads up about the weather and tried to rush us to get airborne. He could have cared less about trying to send us to an airport that was about to get slammed with brutal thunderstorms. All he wanted was for us to get in the air and figure things out later. Thankfully I had the Garmin handy so the captain and I could take a good look at the Nexrad radar. The really cool feature of the GPS is the ability to overlay the radar with your flight route. This way you can see exactly where the storms are in relation to our flight path.

So instead of going to MEM, we changed our destination to LIT because the storms had already passed and there was no ground stop holding us back. Enroute we were flying at FL410 and could see several hundred mile ahead of us. Looking ahead we could use our eyes to see the part of the storms that were higher than us. Usually any time a storm is above our flight level, we try and steer well clear because they tend to be the hail and tornado producing type of storms. During the day its pretty easy to steer clear, but at night, its not so easy to pick out where exactly the cells are sitting. The Garmin will let out know exactly where they are.



Below you will see our radar. As you can see its painting a target off to our left. If you scroll between pictures, they are all from around the same time period. You can see what we are seeing out the windshield, on the Garmin and on our radar. I'll take the 496 over the other two.



And finally a picture of our all powerful, all knowing, super advanced, state of the art for 1989, Trimble 2000. As you can see, its a very, very basic GPS that does not off much in terms of situational awareness. In fact it is more of a hindrance than a help because they are never in the same place in any of our aircraft. Since they are our primary source of navigation, you are constantly scanning the entire cockpit to get your heading from the GPS. With the Garmin, I can plop it right in front on me on the glareshield and it drastically cuts down on how much time is spend looking all over the cockpit.





I've only scratched the surface of what this thing can do. I'll have more posts about some of the other features later. I'll sure be sad to give it back, but I'm glad to have had it while I did.

No good deed goes unpunished

There is a saying among us line pilots here at my company, No good deed goes unpunished. What we mean by that is usually every time we do dispatch a favor and help them out, they usually screw us on something else a short time later. For example, I did dispatch a huge favor and agreed to work a day off so they could get a trip done. Otherwise they would have had to scramble to find another pilot, plane or crew to do the trip and that would have been a big headache and probably cost the company a lot of money. When the dispatcher called to see if I would do the trip for him, he was practically begging. So being the nice guy that I am, I agreed to help them out. This meant I'd get paid my paltry extra day rate (half of what a regular contract pilot would charge) and I'd miss out on time at home with the family. I was scheduled for 3 days at home, so now I was down to 2. The way I see it, I did them a huge favor. Do they remember it a few days later? Hell no!
I know I'm just being paranoid, but it seems they like to punish you every time you do them a favor. They never reciprocate the favor. For example, after working my day off and spending reduced time at home with the family I get a page from dispatch saying they were airlining me to our base in the north and the flight was the first one out in the morning. They all know how much I hate going to base, yet they do it anyway. But what makes it worse is after I get to base, I call in let them know I'm sitting at the airport ready to go and to please find me a trip out of here. The dispatchers gives me the usual "Oh yeah, no problem, we'll see what we can do". So as I'm sitting around the crew lounge, in walks my buddy with all his traveling bags. After a little conversation he tells me he got paged for a trip that's going to Mexico and he's taking the last airplane at the base. Pissed off couldn't even describe how mad I was. Not only did dispatch airline me to base, but then once I got there, they passed me over for a good mileage trip and left me there with no plane to fly!!! This is what I mean by punished. I do them a huge favor over the weekend and they royally screw me when I come back on duty. So now I sit here at base burning money at the rate of $60 a day when I should be out on the road, flying and making money. The airlines are looking better every day. I'm getting sick of this shit.

The Devil I know, Part II

In my previous post I said I consider myself over qualified for a regional airline. Considering that several regional airlines have been advertising positions with my Alma Mater, I'd consider my time and experience level to be at or above most of the applicants for these positions. Honestly, I really never saw myself as a passenger guy, but given how things have gone in the past year or so, I'm actually considering flying pax. I've been looking at other jobs out there and one sticks out in my searches. It'd be for a regional, but this particular carrier is desperate for pilots. They are looking for guys like me that can upgrade really fast. I figure that if I were hired at this particular regional by the end of June, I'd make Captain by the end of the year. If it wasn't for the first year pay, I'd probably jump ship sooner rather than later. I'm going to weigh my options and see where I end up.

Pro's of going to this airline.
Better schedule
Better aircraft
More flying
121 time
Bases that I could easily commute to
I'd be home more
Better pay than my current job if/when I'd make Captain
No more Mexico with ratty equipment
Glass Cockpit time
The airline is in decent financial shape
I could potentially get my 1000 PIC turbine quicker than my current company
No more "On Demand" flying
No more backside of the clock flying, unless I bid for it.
No more sitting in hotels for days on end wondering when the next time I'm going to get a trip.
NO More Life tied to a Pager!!!!!!!!!!

Con's of making the switch
I'm still under contract with my current company.
I'd take a gigantic pay cut until I made Captain
I don't know if I could afford the pay cut.
Making captain in under a year is not a sure thing.
Did I mention the pay cut?
Sitting reserve for a long time before I'll have enough seniority to hold a line
I'd have to fly pax.
Training is long and I'd only get paid $400 a week
I'd still only get 10 days off a month
I'd be at the bottom of a seniority list
I'd have to wear the monkey suit and shave every day.
It'd cost me a lot of money I don't have to buy out of my contract
I'd start logging PIC turbine quicker here.
I kind of see it as a step backwards in the career chain. My current company was supposed to skip this step.
And yet again, the pay.

I'm sure there will be other things to add to both lists. Erin and I would have to sit down and have a really long discussion about our financial situation should I seriously consider doing this. Who knows whats going to happen. I just need to keep my options open and see what comes along.