The Pasture Pilot’s Log

Sleigh bells ring, are you listening? On the Ramp, Type IV is glistening. A beautiful sight, on fire tonight, flying in a winter wonderland…

So there we were, on the runway at KABE, Allentown, PA. The visibility was 1/4 mile in moderate snow and the runway was contaminated. Not recently plowed and now navigable, but contaminated. Braking action poor.

APU deferred.

Sometimes it pays to be a first officer. All this was in the sim, and tonight I had a change in the training pace.

Up till now, I’ve trained with Dean, a former Marine. We’re both first officers in training; we had to swap seats halfway through the lesson so we could each get some time in the proper seat.

Last week, my body battled a midnight-4 a.m. schedule and lost. A hint of a previous sinus infection resurfaced and invaded my ears… not a pleasant situation. I took a week of gorilla medicine and got better, but now I’m back in the sims with a new sim partner. Michael is an upgrading captain who got blindsided by the flu earlier this month.

So there we were, on the runway. We had to do an unpressurized takeoff (all the bleed air from the engines focused on the wing and cowl anti ice, couldn’t spare any for passenger comfort) but the first one was an abort - the left thrust reverser came unstowed. Then we got off the ground, and the right engine rolled back to idle and died. We ran the checklists and got it running again, just in time to have the right wing overheat. We had to lose the wing anti-ice, and we were faced with a decision - what to do? Land at Allentown? Divert to Harrisburg?

Yeah, we decided to go to harrisburg. The instrucor said good choice — but to go land at Allentown anyhow. The instructor said if we landed there, we’d get an appreciation for contaminated runways.

We did. I appreciated the extra 80 feet of runway we didn’t use.

Then we swapped seats. It got ugly. Then it got better.. and all worked out in the wash.

I swear, though.. if the sims were any reasonable protrayal of the real CRJ, I wouldn’t let my mortal enemies even set foot in one.

My captain died.

We landed.

My captain rose from the dead. We took off again. The engine blew up. I did a single engine Localizer. We lived.

I love the challenge so far.. but if I make it to the line, I’m gonna be breathing a sigh of relief when I push the power up on my first takeoff.. knowing the engine probably won’t quit - - but that I’ll be prepared for it, just in case.

Bedtime. Tomrrow’s another day.

Alright, it’s hard for me to write a sad story about flying without someone dying. But.. yeah.

I just got out of my first simulator lesson. I swear, if the training doesn’t get me, my body will. I’m in the simulator from midnight till 4 a.m. for the next two weeks - this is the first time I’ve worked the back side of the clock. This morning, I looked at the syllabus for tonight’s lesson and thought it was a cake walk. Tonight, halfway through my turn flying, I was ready to quit… just kill the motion, drop the gang plank so I can walk out, get in my car and go home. I’d return to a life of living from paycheck to paycheck as a mechanic or maybe as a pilot with some shadetree outfit.

Cropdusting. Pipelines. Fisheries. Banners. Anything would be an improvement over this.

The fault is mine, there’s no arguing it. I was almost asleep this afternoon and the phone rang. Couldn’t go back to sleep. I’ll turn my phone back on sometime next month after my checkride… I guess.

Anyway. I missed callouts when monitoring, missed stuff right and left when flying. we got slammed with stuff left and right. Stalls: Approach, cruise, departure; landings: Ils/Flight director, ILS/raw data, Visual; all sorts of stuff I’d walked through, but in the sim, I was simply a wreck. Cockpit flows I memorized and had cold in the paper tiger, were a struggle in the plane. Checks that should have taken seconds took full minutes; it took us 45 minutes to get the plane ready to go from the gate.

It’ll get better. It has to.. for now, though, I gotta get some sleep.

WSJ.com

Hard to believe it’s been 5 years; this last flight was 24 October 2003… What a remarkable aircraft.

I was just riding the elevator down to the hotel lobby for a cup of coffee and ran into Roosterville, one of my friends from indoc class. Roosterville is in his fifties and has a lot on his plate: in addition to the training we’re working through, he’s got a son headed to Iraq.

As I stepped off the elevator, I saw him and we talked for a minute. He’s headed home, to Missouri, and leaving the company. He’s got a lot of family issues to deal with, and the training had him stretched way too far.

Roosterville is the first of our group to pack it up and go home. He’s good people and I hope things work out well for him. He deserves a break.

Meanwhile, we’re slogging through training. Systems class was, for me, frustrating. It is a two week ordeal, and the information was not terribly well-organized. The systems book (a three-ring folder that’s about 4 inches thick) didn’t jibe with the computer-based training (the CBT featured a simulator module, which had me excited until I realized it was an animation, not a simulation - - i.e. push this button, then push that button, then press this button as opposed to “alright, she’s all yours for the next hour. Figure out how she works and report back to me”)

The whole computer program was written by french-speakers and the narration on it wasn’t that great, either. I fired the narrator on day 4 and plugged my headphones into my ipod instead of the computer. I turned on some classical music really quiet-like and my quiz scores went up… go figure.

Now I’m half through Cockpit Procedures Training, and it’s interesting to say the least. I did get 10 minutes in the simulator last night, long enough to take off, climb out and have a Stab Trim runaway. Then.. had to let the other guys have the same failure. Then we got to see all manner of failures. This CRJ may be the most problematic airplane I’ve flown other than the Apache. Wait.. it could be that they’re the two airplanes I’ve done the most intensive training in… nah..

Anyhoo.. time to hit the books and get smart on this stuff before it bites me in the butt.

Man, it sure would have been helpful if Rob could have squawked 7600 in the concourse this morning. Unbeknownst to me, his cell phone was safely… with his wife.

See, a couple days ago, Rob told me to tag along for an out-and-back trip or two with him. I’m about to start systems class, and he said it might help my understanding of how all the little parts came together. This morning, I got up, ate breakfast and left the hotel at 7:45. I went to flight safety and picked up my Jepp revisions, then rode to ATL. I paid my $50 to cover my year’s worth of non-rev benefits. Then, I picked up my SIDA badge and figured it was time to find Rob.

I remembered one of Rob’s flights was to Fayetteville, NC.. the train got me to our councourse at 9:20. I looked on the boards, and the only Fayetteville flight was about ready to go: 10 minutes till departure.

I jogged down to the end of the concourse in time to hear the announcement, “Ladies and gentlemen, I’ve been informed the 9:35 flight to Fayetteville is delayed. We should be ready to depart at 9:45.”

I still wasn’t sure this was Rob’s flight, so I walked up to the gate agent and asked the agent if Rob was the captain on this flight. “We can’t disclose that information,” she told me.

So.. I hunkered down by a window and watched. Rob walked up to the plane.. Score! I ran back to the agent.. but she was gone. I tracked down another agent, who bent over backwards to get me on the flight. First, his computer’s printer jammed up and wouldn’t print a ticket, then we went to another computer - which was locked - and to another agent’s counter - which we borrowed to get me a jumpseat pass printed. I had to duck under the barrier (already blocked off the gate) and I scurried out to the plane.

The adventure begins.

So I walked up on the plane, passport, pilot certificate and jumpseat pass in hand, and approached the flight deck. The flight attendant glanced at my credentials and waved me forward.

Rob glanced up at me and asked to see my credentials. He scoured them over, and just as he finished up, the first officer looked up at me.

“This is Jeremy King, from the standards department,” Rob said, introducing me to the his first officer. I caught on quickly.

“There were complaints,” I said.

We all all laughed.

“Unless I’m bleeding or on the news, I’m not going to write up anyone,” Rob said.

We went through the checks, pushed back and started to taxi out.

You have to understand. It’s 60 yards from the hangar to the departure end of the runway at the farm. It’s not a complex process. This airline stuff is a little different. Call company. call ramp control and beg for a push. “Push straight back, mains on the line,” ramp says. Tug man pushes us back. We fire up number two, and he disconnects.

Ramp sends us down ramp four, to the south. We get to the end of the ramp, number one for the taxiway, and a tug scoots across in front of us. hArTsfieLd’s ramp speed limit is 15 M.P.H.; I think this guy was confused. He was moving. His fire extinguisher, however, wasn’t too fond of its perch. It fell off right in front of us, and exploded. Poof. White cloud billowing in front of us, and we’re stuck. A Delta truck drove right past it, rubbernecking at the carcass of the fire bottle as he passed.

The rest of the flight to Fayetteville was uneventful - but I learned a ton. At fayetteville, I relisted for the jumpseat, and we came on back.

Lessons learned: SAT and TAT are different creatures. One is the actual temperature at altitude, the other is the temperature the airplane feels at that altitude - based on friction and pressure gradients immediately around the airplane. There is a whole extra layer beneath the concourses most folks see. It’s a world apart.

And airline pilots take no shame in ordering kids meals from Moe’s Southwest Grill. For less than 5 bucks, one can have a mega burrito, chips, cookie and drink.

Ran into a delta pilot I know on the airport train.. It’s a small world.

We’re having fun now. It is starting to make sense.

So, after a couple of weeks studying regional jets and airline operations, Pilot_man, Brad and I rode down to Griffin yesterday to pick our way around the boneyard and to pick up a cub which several of my friend own.

I call it the Un-Cub. It has 90 horsepower, a battery, starter and a radio. That big old engine had given some problems and it was in the shop to have a cylinder repaired.

To start with, it’s wintertime here so we were short on daylight to start with. Brad’s flight 11:45 physical didn’t wrap up until 2, so it was nearly 4 when we got to Griffin. I arranged for the shop to push the Cub out, and we dashed for the boneyard.

We had fun. We’re looking at making a bar out of a learjet outer wing panel, some tables out of jet cowls and wheels, and who knows what else. But.. the sun was sinking the whole time. I ran into the office to figure out some prices, and we walked back into the shop to see.. Richard Collins’ P210 being dismantled. The famous aviation writer, whose plane was the centerpiece of many articles, decided to retire his plane, apparently, and wanted nobody else to have it.

Hmm..

Anyway.

Back to the Un-Cub.

We rode back to the ramp, and the mechanics sorta reminded me the sun was outpacing me.. and that they’d burned most of the gas out of the cub. Crap. I did a fast preflight, hopped in, fired it up and taxied to the fuel pump, which is decorated with a handwritten note. “Pump out of service. Use pump by FBO.”

Crap crap.

Taxied to the other pump. It read my card just fine, the pump started but for some reason it won’t dispense fuel.

crap crap crap.

I reset all the switches and whatnot and it worked. Pumped fuel so fast I topped the tank in a few seconds and capped it with a geyser of blue fuel out the top. Got my receipt, put the cap on the tank and hopped in.

The wonderful thing about cubs is they are the bare minimum of what’s required to fly an airplane. Before takeoff checklist? Yeah. Controls free and correct, runup, mag check, carb heat check. Trim to neutral.

No lights, no pumps, no propeller control, no mixture, no bleed air, no APU, no gyros, no autopilot. Other things a cub does not have: Electric trim, hydraulics, flaps, intercoolers, nav radios, retractable gear, or FMS.

I was angry enough at having left my handheld GPS at the room, but I figured Highway 16 would get me home.

We rolled out onto the runway centerline, and I laughed. In the RJ, there’s a whole profile for takeoff: Set power, power set, 80 knots, check, V1, Rotate, Positive rate, gear up, speed mode, nav mode, autopilot on, flaps up, after takeoff checklist.

In a cub, you line up on the runway (Or into the wind if it’s blowing that hard), cobb the throttle and keep her out of the weeds. At forty MPH, we just floated off the runway, and I picked up speed to climb at 60. We were high enough to turn crosswind in the pattern by the time we were halfway down the runway.

It’s 40 miles from Griffin to Whitesburg. As soon as I turned west, the powerplant stacks just a few miles south of the farm caught my eye. No stinking GPS needed here. Not even a map. This is what flying is all about.

I throttled back to 2300 RPM, the airspeed crept up to 90 MPH. The altimeter has one needle, and I think it indicates thousands of feet, with tick marks to give a rough idea of hundreds of feet. I let it hover a little above the 1 and trimmed for cruise. There are three instruments in a Cub I use and trust. Tachometer, oil pressure and the fuel gauge.

The fuel gauge is a bit of wire stuck into cork. It pokes through the cap of the fuel tank, and you gauge how much fuel is left by how much wire sticks out the cap. The only way it can fail is for the cork to become fuel saturated or to fall off the wire, in which case it indicates less fuel than is really on board.

The other gauges are all about the engine.

My eyes, ears and butt tell me most everything else needed to fly a cub. If the airplane is buffetting all over the place, I’m probably too slow. If the door starts to close itself, I’m really too slow. (the door folds down, at high angles of attack, the door swings open, forced by air squeezing between the fuselage and it.) If wind is blowing in through the door, it needs rudder. If wind blows in through the left window, it needs rudder.

Yellow light bathed the cockpit as the sun sank into the southwest. I passed north of Falcon Field, hoping the Pilot Factory students would be able to see the bright yellow box kite floating by. Once past Interstate 85, I eased lower. I followed the landmarks along a route I know well: Barns, ponds, sod farms, dirt roads and then rolling woodland. I didn’t have to descend much to do a low pass when I got to the farm. As I pulled up and to the right, I eased the power in to hold 60 MPH around the turn, and we flew a tight little traffic pattern. On downwind, I chopped the power and pointed the nose at the end of the runway, gliding down to a three-point landing. I added power, taxied to the departure end and looked up. Sure, there’s enough light left for one more. Power up, tail up, stick back, and I’m floating above the trees. Turn left, then right, chop the power, glide to earth again.

It’s a ritual I’ve done since I was a kid, and each time, I still feel like I’m that kid, having a ball in the perfect airplane.

Yeah. Today Pilot_man and I loaded up and rode from ATL out to the wilds of Whitesburg to check things out at the farm. We tried to get in, but my super hidden key kinda only works on the deadbolt. I musta accidentally flipped the other lock on that door; I was getting nowhere fast. We ran into town for lunch with some friends and picked up a battery for the garage opener at Wally-World.

The farm is a former and future home for me.

Imagine the company’s reaction almost two decades ago when the Carrollton fishwrapper proudly proclaimed, “Delta Pilot Buys Drug Farm.”

Smisson field began as a hydroponic pot farm. The details are hazy, but basically, the hangar had a loft built into it above the top of the door frames. The second floor had plug-ins all along the roof/ceiling, and the electricity bills must have been enormous. The power company and the DEA traded notes, and a infared-eqiupped airplane flew over in january. There was a thermal mushroom over the hangar. The folks who owned the farm were packaging the stuff into cans of “motorcycle grease,” and selling it to their friends.

The rumors are they buried a ton of money somewhere on the 50 acres, but we’ve not found it. Yet.

Enter Valium. He was a Delta pilot, former USAF fighter jock, aerobatic competitor and airshow performer. When we were neck deep in the airshow stuff, Valium opened the doors to me, and when he died, I moved in for a while to help Mrs. Valium keep the place up. Huge house, 50 acres on rolling wooded land, runway, hangar, pool, lake. Paradise, for a pilot or someone not used to life in the city. Pure hell for a city girl. She held on for a while, and after I left, she bought a place in Carrollton.

It was a great social hub for pilots from the world over; sofa beds were present in nearly every room, and the house hosted many fly-in sleepovers when darkness set in while nobody paid attention. After being gutted in the estate sale, and sitting vacant for two years, the place is really kinda starting to look rough. I took classmate CBram there during indoc and it was pouring. One gutter was backed up in a downspout, water everywhere, splashing against the wall. No good. He’s in for a room, so is Pilot_man after today.

Today we tackled that gutter, and found that cleaning gutters in 20 degree weather, days after a heavy rainfall, is a good deal. The mud and leaves froze together and I simply reached in and pulled out frozen chunks. Perfect. I situated the gutter shield grate thingies back in place, and hopefully I won’t have to be back on that roof anytime soon. I’m scared as heck of heights.

Anyway.

We’re looking for roomates. Based in ATL? Love airplanes? Cool with a 45 minute drive into ATL? Need a crashpad or a room? Drop me a line.

So yesterday the Legman called me up with plans for a study break. Why not run down to Griffin and pick up the cub with him, then we’d fly it home? Sounded great to me.

Atlanta was marginally VFR, but as we neared Griffin it turned to crap. I called the AWOS there and found the weather 200 overcast and 2 miles visibility. No good. We rode over to the boneyard off the end of the runway to see what we could find. After an hour’s search, Kelly had a beech hydraulic prop blade, and I had a boeing hubcap. Well, by the time we finished negotiating, I had three hubcaps.

Kelly and I have considered doing some art-type stuff kinda like the moto-art guys. We decided to start small.. And I beat him to the punch. This is the first bit of av-art we’ll be turning out from Flyboy Aviation.

They’d been stripped to bare metal and I found just a trace of color.. so I broke out the paints and went to work. I’m pretty happy.

The 2004 air show season started back up for me in March, and the first show was in Panama City, Florida, the show we lost Chris at. As we flew over the top of Tyndall Air Force Base, I tried to pick out where he might have died. It had been a year, and of course there were no marks to tell me where he hit the ground. We were weaving back and forth as Buck and Dan observed the field to see where the crowd line would be, and what landmarks they would use as references. I missed the signal when they went into the break, a steep pull around to the downwind leg for landing. I was not expecting it, and didn’t even brace for the pull. I sank into my seat and slumped as I almost lost consciousness. I didn’t fight it.

The show went well. After the Saturday performances, Buck’s smoke system was acting up and he pondered how he could fix it. The pump was acting up, and I offered a suggestion: Didn’t he use an automotive fuel pump for the express reason of having a way out in case of a scenario just like this? There was an Auto Zone sitting a few miles away where I could get a pump, if he wanted to go that route.

He looked like someone turned on a light bulb. I made record time driving to the store.
The guy behind the counter didn’t seem especially bright, until I told him I needed a Holley fuel pump. Then he blew me out of the water with a volley from nowhere.

“Hey, you’re with the air show, aren’t you?”

I had a Red Eagle shirt on and passes hanging from my neck. It was pretty obvious.

“Yeah, I am,” I said.

“I bet you’re using that to inject oil into the exhaust to make smoke.”
I couldn’t believe he would know that. I stopped just short of an offer for a job with us.

“How did you know that?”

“Well, he said, “there are a bunch of pilots around here that use them for that.”

People never cease to amaze me.

Back in September, I was doing my multi-engine commercial pilot training in Winter Haven, FL. The flight school paired me up with a particularly thorough examiner, and after a long oral, we walked out to find the florida weather pattern held true - the thunderstorms were rolling in rapidly.

“I think we can get the flight in,” she said, and we fired up to taxi out. The whole time I was sort of worried about the weather. We completed our run-up and I asked what schedule looked like for the next morning. Wide open. Good. Options. I went ahead and did the crew briefing for takeoff.

“What about the passenger briefing?”

“What about them?” I asked.

“You gotta tell them something!” she said. She was right. We’d missed that altogether.

“Tell you what. I don’t like this weather a bit,” I said. “Let’s go on back and get the airplane tied down before the weather hits. We’ll pick up in the morning and I’ll have a passenger brief that will water your eyes.”

Fair enough, she said.

That night, I scoured the Internet. I dug up vanilla passenger briefs that followed the rules, I dug up ones that would have passengers rolling in the aisles. I added some of my own material. When she showed up Sunday morning, I was ready.

Here goes:

•While walking around the airfield, be careful of spinning propellers and jet intakes. If somebody yells “Clear!” it means an engine will be starting very soon. Make sure you’re not near their engine. Jet intakes are similar to the Tasmanian Devil – they’re known to ingest aardvarks, antelopes, ants…. And people. Jet exhausts are dangerous for the opposite reason – their blast is powerful and hot – an easy way to get roasted, or go flying without wings. Propellers are like guillotines, and their blast is strong as well. As a general rule, stay close to me while walking out to the airplane, and you’ll be safe.

•You must have your seatbelt on during taxiing, takeoff, and landing. Ask me if you don’t know how to attach, tighten, loosen, or detach the seatbelt. I also recommend you wear the seatbelt throughout the flight in case we encounter unexpected turbulence.

•No smoking in the airplane. If you absolutely must smoke in flight, please step outside first.

•No alcohol consumption. I cannot allow you to board the aircraft if you’re already intoxicated, either.

•Keep the doors closed until I tell you it’s OK to open them.

•Note the location and operation of the normal and emergency exits. This airplane has no designated emergency exits but there are other exit options too, such as the baggage door and windows, all of which can be kicked open in a pinch.

•Don’t touch the controls without asking first, including the knobs, buttons, yoke,
pedals, and the push-to-talk button.

•In the unlikely event your seat should slip back as we take off, avoid grabbing
the yoke to drag it back.

•The airsickness bags are in the seat backs if you need them. Don’t hesitate. If you start to feel queasy tell me right away, look outside the plane, and open the nearest vent to blow air toward your face.

•Tell me if you spill a soft drink in the airplane. It happens, and I won’t be angry, but I need to know. The acids in soft drinks can attack the aluminum structure and I’ll need to do some cleaning when we land.

•If you see any other airplanes once we are off the ground please let me know. An extra pair of eyes always helps.

•For this flight, thee are restroom facilities installed at either end of the flight – at the airport. There are no toilets installed in this aircraft, so please use the facilities before departing.

•In the extremely unlikely event that we are forced to land anywhere other than an airport (and it will be obvious), I will tell you to open the door just a crack when we are 50 feet from the ground. The reason is that the forced landing may bend the aircraft and make opening the door impossible. So, you will open the door before we touch down.

•We have an intercom so that we can talk to each other through our headsets. When I push the button on the control yoke, and I’m talking to the tower or to other airplanes, anything you say will be broadcast, too. I have the ability to isolate myself from your conversation if Air Traffic Control demands my full attention – or if I’m sick of hearing who’s sleeping with whom on your favorite soap opera. If you need to talk to me and it appears obvious I’m not hearing you, a simple tap on my shoulder will get my attention.

•If you have any questions don’t hesitate to ask now or during the flight. The only time I can’t talk with you is during takeoff and landing.

She pitched a fit - and told the flight school to keep my brief in the plane as an example to other students. I passed.