Fire!


by Jonah

Well, something exciting finally happened at work today. And I wasn’t even clocked in yet.

We had a bunch of stuff that we listed on E-Bay last Wednesday because they were having a ten cent listing special. So, of course, all the auctions ended last night. We grossed over $200, which is better than we expected. Anyway, Berck had a pile of packages ready to go out in the mail this morning, so I took them, since he’s got to be at the flight school for flight instructing ground school early all week. I’m always anally worried about being late to work, so I left an extra 20 minutes early to stop by the post office.

That put me getting to work 20 minutes early. Oh, well. I have a book I read during breaks, so I got myself a cup of coffee and started reading.

Just then the fire alarm went off. Our fire alarm is so loud and obnoxious that it MAKES you want to leave the building as soon as possible. So I put my book away in my locker, grabbed my coffee, and headed out the door with all the corporate people fleeing the terrible sound. Out in the parking lot, I heard sirens and saw two firetrucks heading around the corner toward our building’s entrance. Wow, that was fast. And that proves this is not a drill.

The warehouse people came out next. It takes them longer to make their way outside because they have to walk so far. The rest of my moving crew started showing up. One of them was text messaging someone down at the Hobby Lobby end of the warehouse where the firetrucks had ended up. She reported that there actually was real fire. Later we heard that a transformer blew in or near Hobby Lobby’s accounting department. The whole warehouse was going to be without power for the rest of the day.

So Barry sent us all home with instructions to call his answering machine to find out if we’re coming in tomorrow. We’re all supposed to come in at 7 a.m. and pull all day. He told the moving crew not to come in at all.

So I get the day off. Yay! Of course, this may mean I’m going to have to work Saturday.

This is my team leader’s last day before leaving on vacation for a week, and she was supposed to go over with me all my responsibilities while she’s gone. But she told me how to get to a computer document where she wrote up detailed instructions for me. I already know it all anyway, but that’s okay. I had to drive her home because her husband was supposed to swap cars with her, and she didn’t have the keys. (She wasn’t going to need them till that night.) She lives just around the corner from the warehouse.

I’m “helping” Berck pack up E-Bay stuff to ship today. He’s trying to get as much stuff done as he can before his lesson this afternoon. We’ve got to go to Sam’s and get padded envelopes to mail out all the political buttons we sold.

Anyone want an “America Needs Nixon” pinback button?

Actual Fact: Which Western European country has the lowest population growth in terms of births-per-person? The Vatican.

Posted in Nonclassified Nonsense | 2 Comments

Moving…Stuff


by Jonah

Well, Bishop wants to know how work is going. So here goes…

Every day I rack my brain for something interesting to tell my husband about my day. And his usual response is, “That’s the most boring thing I’ve ever heard.”

The most interesting thing that happened this week was moving big rows of warehouse scaffolding-like shelves together. These are metal racks 16 feet high and half the warehouse-width long. They’re big. We wanted to move two of them together to make three narrow aisles into two wide aisles. How do you do this? Well, you take 2×4’s and put them under the cross pieces, then put pallet jacks under the 2×4’s. I think we had about seven pallet jacks going. Then everyone pushes, and the whole thing moves. Sorta. We also try not to scrape up the floor (it’s concrete but painted smooth so carts and stuff will glide along nicely). I still don’t believe the scheme worked. Then the warehouse people come and drill bolts into the concrete to anchor the shelving in place…so it won’t go wandering off, I guess.

There are three of us fulltime people who shepherd a bunch of college students hired for the summer. Apparently, we’re going to move everything, not just the stuff that has to empty out of the aisles on one side and into the aisles at the other end. And we have to move stuff when the pullers aren’t pulling. So we build shelves in the morning, then when the pullers are through with the section we need, we start moving things. But we can only move for so long because new tags have to be printed and stuck onto the product in the new location…otherwise the pullers won’t know where to go to get their stuff the next day. And in the case of the actual shelves we moved, we had to move stuff off of them to a temporary location, take all the particle board off them, put the particle board back on, and move everything back.

Anyway, flying in circles has got to be a lot more interesting than reading about this. In any case, work is going well. It’s getting hot, but at least I’m not timed like I was pulling.

Posted in Warehouse Blues | 2 Comments

And now it’s hot.


by Berck

It’s summer here, now. Fortunately, it took its time getting here. It’s currently 96.8F. I’d really hoped that I’d be gone before it got hot, oh well. Yesterday was warm enough I finally hard to turn the air conditioner on. And now it will run until September, or we move out, never cooling below 75 degrees. This is the part about Oklahoma I don’t like.

Posted in Nonclassified Nonsense | 1 Comment

Duchess Lesson 3


by Berck

I was scheduled to fly at 10am this morning. The plane pulled up at about 9:45. I asked my instructor if we needed fuel, he said we didn’t. Because we didn’t, the fuel truck guy showed up instantly. He’s never there if you do need fuel. While he topped off the tanks, I checked the oil. After going through most of the rest of my preflight, waiting for the fuel to settle, I started sampling fuel. The Duchess has 8 fuel sump points. You have to drain each of them, looking for water. Four on each wing: One for the fuel tank, two for the cross-feed lines, and one on the engine itself. After sampling fuel from crossfeeds on the left side, I noticed that the tank sump was dripping. The valve is pretty simple- it’s spring loaded the closed position, you stick your fuel strainer in it and fuel comes out from the bottom of the tank. Since these tanks are 50 gallons each, the fuel on the tank drains comes out rather quickly. But they’re not supposed to leak. It was dripping fairly slowly, but steadily dripping. Both the director of operations and the chief flight isntructor were standing around outside, so I asked them what I should do about. “Operate it a couple of time and see if it doesn’t stop” I did, and the second time I pushed up on it, the flood gates opened. I pulled my fuel strainer out and it just kept pouring So I’m crawling around on the ground on my knees, and now fuel is POURING out of the tank, and all over me. I quickly remembered that this particular fuel drain has a feature which allows you to to twist it to an open position and drain fuel rapidly if you needed to. It looked like it wasn’t going to take an entire minute to lose the whole 50 gallons of fuel. That’s almost $150 worth of 100/LL:) Fortunately, I was able to use the phillips head end of my strainer to close the valve. The fuel stopped entirely. No more dripping even. And, I figured I’d probably gotten any water out of the tank as well:)

So, after my morning av-gas shower, I rounded up my instructor and set off to fly the pattern. Traffic pattern for the twin is 1500 AGL (instead of 1000 AGL in a single), but not really any bigger around. It also goes a whole lot more quickly. The first time around I had serious coaching, but did okay. There wasn’t much wind, which is always weird for me. Approach speed is 85 knots, which may not sound much faster than 65 knots, but makes a big difference in the way things look. to make it worse, something about the curve of the windshield, no engine in front of you, if I look at the nose, it looks like I’m pointed right. So if I point the nose down the runway, we’re actually going to land sideways. On several landings the sounds of “right rudder. More right rudder,” echoed in my headset. In addition, the pitch attitude is different. “Right here, hold it right here.” “But we’re nose-low!” “You’re not even close!” Every landing provided amazement that I wasn’t smacking the nose gear.

After a few of those, he had me do a few short field landings, which end up looking about the same but with slower airspeed.

After a little of that, he had me depart off to the south. While I was climbing he asked for traffic advisories, then changed his mind, and asked for the ILS 17R to Will Rogers. Whee. Uh-oh. I hadn’t flown an approach in forever, and while flying through the clouds on Wednesday was fun, I realized how rusty my instrument skills are.

As I was being verctored he said, “Let’s go a little faster.” I was set up for normal cruise– 20″ of manifold pressure, 2300rpm which ends up at about 120 knots. “Go to 2500rpm and full throttle.” At 4,000 feet, that’s about 24.5 inches of manifold pressure. I kept trimming the nose lower, and we kept accelerating. Eventually stabilized around 145 knots. Felt like we were screaming.

I ended up doing a relatively decent job of flying the approach with a little coaching. It had been so long.

As I set up for final to westheimer, he pulled my left engine. I went through the simulated feather procedure, rather slowly. I ended up high, and didn’t need any power all the way in, which made my first single-engine landing not too big a deal.

Next flight is mostly instrument work. First maneuvers, then approaches, and single-engine approaches as well as single-engine landings. Should be Monday.

In any case, I like flying this plane. I’m a little sad I’ve only got three more lessons plus a checkride.

Instructor ground school starts monday.

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The Duchess


by Berck

I just got back from my first flight in the Beechcraft Duchess. Much fun.

Unfortunately, I’ve only got a total of 5 more lessons followed by a check ride. Yes, I’m supposed to be able to learn to fly it in 6 lessons.

Mostly, I’ll be working on how to fly it on only one engine. Today was just basic familiarization with the airplane. There’s a bit to get used to with two engines. The big difference was getting used to a significantly bigger, heavier and faster airplane. It’s also the first low-wing airplane I’ve flown, and without an engine directly in front, it’s quite a different view. For example, when in the pattern on downwind, you can’t see the runway at all– the engine and wing cover it up.

But it’s much more stable and responsive. It’s not a rudder hog like the 172-RG, both because it’s got an adequately sized rudder and with two counter-rotating props so there’s no really obnoxious P-factor.

It was so different than flying a Cessna, I felt like I was a brand new pilot again. We did slow flight, steep turns, and stalls. Stalls in a twin are only done until they’re “immenent”, because there’s the fear that a full stall could develop in a spin. The FAA does not require twin engine aircraft to be spin-tested, and their spin recovery abilities are unknown and generally very poor. So it’s alltogether best if you avoid spinning one. Steep turns were amazingly easy. Slow flight requires a bit more attention to detail, but since the plane is so stable it’s not that hard.

So, in less than two weeks I should be multi-engine rated. I’m also starting flight instructor ground school on Monday. Sure would be nice if I could finish it all up in a month.

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