Archive for the ‘Flying’ Category

Here Berck talks about learning to fly, a topic that seems to interest more people than any of the other uninteresting things he has to ramble about.

Still haven’t learned much.


by Berck

Yesterday was the first day of class, so I didn’t expect to learn much. Fortunately, for once, we didn’t have do undergo drug testing and fill out endless reams of paperwork like I had to on my last 3 first days.

Instead we did a brief review of material in the General Operations Manual. This included things like, “How many hours after giving blood must you wait to serve as a required flight crew member?” (72) Or more complicated very-boring questions about required weather, derived alternate minimums, exemption 3585. Or the 7 conditions under which the Captain has to perform the takeoff if the first officer has less than 100 hours of part 121 experience in the airplane.

Today, we showed up expecting to start digging into systems. We’d gawked at the unfamiliar switches and gauges on our Dash 8 cockpit posters and were eager to start understanding the airplane. Unfortunately, in classic Mesa fashion, our books failed to arrive today, so we went home after some more boring GOM review.

I left my stack of CRJ books in the back of the classroom on day 1. They told me to bring them on Day 1 and didn’t ask for them, and I’m not hauling them around any more than necessary. Good riddance to the damn things. I should be able to carry around significantly fewer books for the Dash.

I’ve been intermittently memorizing new numbers for the airplane. Without systems books, it’s impossible to start understanding how the airplane works, but numbers are numbers and one must memorize new ones for every airplane one flies. When I started flying, there were several dozen numbers that could be memorized for a Cessna 172. Now that I’m flying airliners, there are hundreds of numbers to memorize. Fortunately, memorization isn’t hard, just boring.

The reason I changed my mind and went to Seattle after all is that on Friday afternoon, Jonah let me know that her employers have said that they are only going to be able to afford to employ her half time after the end of March. That means that we’re about to be very poor, and I couldn’t really justify driving to Phoenix when round trip gasoline would cost at least $120 or so. So, since I wouldn’t be driving to Phoenix, there seemed to be no reason not to go to Seattle since that’s free. I didn’t leave a blog because I decided to go about 20 minutes before Jonah came home for us to drive to the airport.

Anyway, this could prove to be a significant hardship for us. Flying the Dash 8 instead of the CRJ means that I took a 27% pay cut. It seemed worth it so that I could be at home, but now it doesn’t seem to make as much sense. Without this job, there’s not much reason for us to stay in Colorado Springs.

That said, we don’t have any immediate plans to move. Jonah’s hoping that her employers will change their minds, but that seems unlikely to me. I can’t change my mind about flying the Dash now, at least for quite some time.

I’m not at all sure how long my job is likely to be around. Mesa stock just gained 25% today. If that’s all I told you, it’d sound like things were looking up for Mesa, but it’s easy to lie with statistics. That 25% gain was a $0.01 gain. Mesa’s stock was at $0.04 yesterday, and went up to $0.05 today.

My living conditions are obnoxious. There are dead crickets all over the floors. I’m sleeping in a very uncomfortable twin bed that roams about the room when I roll over. There is almost no furniture in the house. The last house I stayed in at least had a desk and dresser in the rooms. My room has a twin bed and a night stand.

I’ll post some pictures.

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Frustration and Disappointment


by Berck

The plan was to get up at 5am, leave home at 6am in oder to get to Phoenix in time for a 7:30pm flight to Seattle. That didn’t happen.

It snowed last night. This made me somewhat apprehensive about setting off pre-dawn on summer tires. We’ve only got one set of snow tires (because we almost never absolutely need more than one car to drive in the snow, so I’ve been putting off the $400 expense of having another set of snow tires. The snow tires were on the red car, but Joanna wanted to drive the blue car while I was in Phoenix. Since I’m obviously not going to need snow tires in Phoenix, we swapped them around last night so that the blue car has snow tires and the red car has summer tires. I also pulled the hard top off of the red car since without air conditioning, I’m going to need to be able to put the top down in Phoenix.

I packed and got everything ready to go last night, but didn’t load the car.

This morning, I hauled my bags down the stairs, trudged through the snow, put my key in the trunk lock only to discover it wouldn’t go in. I tried two keys, tried to investigate the problem with a flashlight. I played with various tools, and eventually managed to get the key in the lock, but it wouldn’t turn. The lock is obviously broken in some fundamental way.

Google revealed how to open the trunk. Remove the license plate, drill a hole in the precise place described. Doing so reveals a rod that runs from the lock to the latch mechanism, which when pulled with a pair of needle-nose pliers through the hole opens the trunk nicely. I do, unfortunately, now have a hole behind my license plate, but you can’t see it, and I can plug with a rubber plug. I should have left it at that, but I proceded to disassemble the back of my car in order to remove the lock cylinder to determine if I could fix it. After removing it, I discovered that I could not fix it. I called the local Mazda dealer and they said they could order the part for me. $140 and they could have it by Thursday. That wasn’t much help. I called one of my friendly internet Mazda dealers, who sold me the lock for $64. It will ship Monday, and hopefully it’ll get here by the end of the week.

By this time, it was, of course, impossible to get to Phoenix in time for my flight to Seattle, so this means I’ll be spending the weekend at home alone. Had I left shortly after actually getting the trunk open, I would have been able to make the flight, but I wasn’t thinking very clearly that early in the morning. Amusingly, I spent this morning in the shower thinking (in a rather Anathem influenced fashion) about my forthcoming trip to Phoenix and the narrative or world-track (a coherent timeline, or set of events) that I would be inhabiting later in the day. It seemed that going to Seattle or not going to Seattle presented a choice with a significant narrative fork. In other words, I had the feeling that something significant was bound to happen or not happen based on whether or not I decided to go to Seattle and drive to Phoenix. I tried to dream up significant scenarios resulting from this fork, and come up with things along the lines of sliding off an icy road on summer tires because I decided to go today. Without some sort of causal domain shear taking place, it’s hard to know what the most optimal choice is.

So it seemed awfully strange that a non-obvious and terribly inopportune mechanical failure occurred in order to force me down this narrative. I’m aware of traditional theological viewpoint, but that strikes me as narrow-minded and boring. When things like this happen I do find myself wondering why it seems like I’m being guided down one path rather than the other, but I have to admit that there’s no evidence of any guiding whatsoever. There’s still something fishy about these seemingly insignificant details that cause significant narrative forks. I’m certainly not the first one to think so.

I learned this morning that a Colgain Airlines Dash 8 flying under Continental colors crashed last night. In my foggy state, it felt like the plane didn’t crash until I found out about this morning–that in some way Dave’s mentioning it to me was equivalent to the event actually occurring. In some quantum theoretical sense this is probably true. For me, the plane didn’t crash until Dave crashed it for me.

I’m bothered by this one. It’s the first fatal airline crash since I’ve been an airline pilot. In fact, it’s the first one since the 2006 Comair crash at the Bluegrass Airport. It’s also in the type of aircraft I’m going to learn how to fly next week. Admittedly, it’s the new Dash 8 Q400, which is far bigger and more sophisticated than the Dash 8 200 series I’m going to fly, but it’s still the same basic airframe. I’ve flown the same approach (ILS RWY 23) into Buffalo many times myself.

The cause is, at this point, still entirely unknown. The media is speculating wildly about icing conditions. The impact suggests a high speed, fast descent rate from a point on the approach where the aircraft should have been able to make the runway easily. Furthermore, just prior to the crash there were relatively normal ATC communications and no distress calls suggest that the plane fell out of the sky, something that doesn’t happen often. That makes pilots think of a tail stall–something that generally only occurs in icing conditions. If it happens, it causes a violent nose-down pitching motion. If it happened at 2,300 feet (the last altitude Colgan 3407 was assigned), it might have been impossible to recover from, even if the pilot realized what was happening quickly enough. Unfortunately, while very unlikely in aircraft with anti-icing equipment that’s functioning correctly, it’s very difficult for pilots to figure out what’s happening. It’s not a scenario that we practice in the sim, and could be mistaken for a more-likely and often-practiced wing stall. The bad thing is that the corrective actions for a wing stall and a tail stall are exactly the opposite.

I listened to the Buffalo Approach/Tower air traffic control recording from LiveATC. It’s an amateur recording from a scanner, which is set for tower and approach, switching between them depending on whose talking when, so it’s possible there’s stuff missing. The last transmission from Colgan 3407 sounded normal, and they were handed off to tower. The recording doesn’t show them checking in with tower, and shortly after the handoff, approach tries to contact them again because they disappeared from the radar. It does not appear that they made a distress call at all. They went down 5 miles from the runway over the outer marker. From the sounds of the vectors they were given, at the outer marker, they would have intercepted the glideslope at 2,300 feet and started down, while configuring the aircraft for landing. If a tail stall did occur, the change in configuration (flaps, gear) and the beginning of a descent is a likely time for it.

As of yet, there’s no word of either the FDR (Flight Data Recorder) or CVR (Cockpit Voice Recorder) being recovered. The post-crash fire was intense and lasted for hours, so it’s entirely possible that the recorders did not survive. Without them, I’m not sure we’ll figure out what happened. There are reports of witnesses who said the plane sounded weird and that it was on fire prior to touchdown, but witnesses of airplane crashes are spectacularly unreliable. I’m sure it’ll be a very long time before the NTSB releases anything.

On a final note: this is very sad. It is not a tragedy. Even our well-educated president doesn’t even seem to know the meaning of the word tragedy. Or should we give up and let the popular meaning stand?

Update: Some of the newspapers are saying that “the flight data recorders were recovered.” There’s generally only one FDR and one CVR, so hopefully the plural in this case means that both survived.

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Last Jet Trip


by Berck

In a few minutes, I’m going to start my last Jet trip. I fly to Fort Wayne for tonight, back to ORD tomorrow and then a round trip to a city whose 3-letter code I do not recognize. Presumably I’ll have to figure it out before I get there.

Dash 8 training starts Monday. Sydney seems to think I’ve been less than clear on this. So there it is. It’s three weeks of ground school, then the rumor is that we’ll have a week off, then simulator training in Vancouver.

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Three Mile Island


by Berck

I just flew a totally acceptable tight visual approach into Harrisburg, PA. Because I flew a tight pattern, I went right over the cooling towers on Three Mile Island. There was quite the condensation cloud, and a substantial spot of turbulence in the thermals. It’s really hard to fly a visual pattern to the left from the right seat, because you can’t really see the runway until you’re halfway around the 180 degree turn, so you have to guess a bit. I was pleased with my work. That’s more than I can say about last night.

Last night was fairly uneventful until our flight from Dayton back to O’Hare. It was my leg, and I pushed the thrust levers forward as the Captain transferred the flight controls to me on the roll as we turned on to the runway. “Set thrust,” I called out, took my hand off the thrust levers. They’re the captain’s for the remainder of the takeoff roll. A few seconds later I heard, DING DING DING and looked inside to see my screens go black. I was trying to process what was going on as the Captain called, “Abort Abort,” pulled the thrust levers to idle. I started braking, and then transferred control of the aircraft to him. I told tower we were aborting on the runway, coordinated an exit, explained that we did not need any assistance, and immediately made a PA telling the passengers to remain seated and explained that we’d had a, “a minor mechanical malfunction” and asked that they remain patient while we sorted it out. I wondered, as I said it, how stupid that sounded. “Minor,” I said. How minor was it if we aborted the takeoff for it? Would I suggest that an engine failure was also a minor failure? After all, we have two of them!

What had happened was the right engine-powered generator temporarily went offline, then came back. In the process of AC Bus 2 switching to the APU generator for its power source and then back to Gen 2, my screens went blank and then came back. By the time we pulled off the runway, the only evidence something had gone wrong was a few lingering status messages about things like the Yaw Damper 2 and Mach Trim offline.

We went back to the gate, and a Mechanic came out and fixed the problem. Hah! What really happened was a mechanic came back and broke the plane even more. He deactivated Gen 2, signed some papers that said we were good to go without it.

We’re okay to go without one of the engine driven generators because we have an APU (Auxillary Power Unit) that also has a generator. We just have to leave the APU running for the whole flight. We usually shut it down after take off, but there’s no reason we can’t leave it running. That way, if one of the two remaining generators fails, there’s another ready to take up the slack. Even if both of them fail, we’re still okay because we’ve got an ADG (Air Driven Generator)–basically a little windmill that pops out of the side of the plane if we lose all AC power.

The rest of the flight ORD was uneventful. The Captain took the next leg, to Cedar Rapids, in the same plane with the inoperative generator. Shortly after takeoff, I went through my normal after takeoff flow. I turn off the manual override on the fuel crossflow, dis-arm both thrust reversers, switch the pressuration bleed air sources from the APU to the engine, tell the computer that we’re now climbing instead of taking off, and set the appropriate climb thrust. The final thing is to turn off the APU. I reached up and pushed the APU start-stop switchlight as I realized that we needed to leave the APU on, otherwise we’d be down to one generator.

I realized it as I was pushing the button in. It’s a “switchlight” because it’s a switch, and a light. It’s a two-position switch. You push it in, and it’s on. You push it in again, and when you let go, it pops out, and it’s off. I’d pushed it in, so the APU was still running. Until I took my finger off.

I didn’t take my finger off, because I realized my mistake. I did utter a few choice profanities.

“What’s up?” the captain asked.

“My finger is in the wrong place.” He looked up at my finger, on the lit-up APU switchlight. I watched a recognition of our situation as well as my stupidity come over his face.

“Well, you can’t very well stay like that for the whole flight,” he said.

I took my finger off the button. As the APU shut down, nothing too bad happened since the left engine generator picked up the load. Since it was Bus 2 that was affected, my screens once again went dark for a few seconds. Yaw Damp 2, and the Mach Trim kicked off. The only real down side to this is that the autopilot would have disconnected were it engaged, but fortunately, the Captain was hand flying at the time, so it was no big deal. I restarted the APU, re-engaged the yaw damper, the mach trim, and made sure everything else was fine. It was. I felt like an idiot.

Otherwise, it’s been a pretty good couple of days. I nearly hit a very large bird on takeoff from Cedar Rapids this morning, but fortunately we missed it. I’m sure my spastic right banked turn probably freaked out the passengers a little, though. I’m enjoying my last few flights in the jet. I’m sure I’ll miss it, but I bet the -8 is a ton of fun.

Speaking of which, my class was postponed a week. It now starts Feb 16th. Since I wasn’t able to bid for a schedule for the bid period starting Feb 9th, because I was supposed to be training, I don’t have a schedule.

So the training department called me and told me to pick up open time, otherwise scheduling would assign me whatever trips they wanted.

I was looking forward to having the week off. I’m not sure if they can force me to pick up open time, but I figured it was better to pick up a trip that I liked rather than wait to see what they assigned me. So I picked up a silly little 2-day that’s commutable. It’s right in the middle of the week, so hopefully they can’t do much else with me. I’m pretty sure they can’t make me sit reserve. Furthermore, since I picked up the trip from open time, I think they need to pay me on top of my guarantee for it. It’s only 6 hours, but that’s $174 over what I’d make otherwise.

There’s probably more to write, but it’s very much bed time.

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