Our Dumb Blog

I’ve got a solid line. Apparently I figured out how to work PBS (our new, preferential bidding system, because it did a pretty decent job. The most important thing was that I get the 14-17th off to go to Sydney’s graduation, and I got that. In addition, I got a couple other saturdays off. I only have 4-day trips, which was what I wanted. If I had 1 or 2-day trips, I’d have to drive to the airport way too often. A rough sketch of the overnights is on my google calendar (DEN means I’m working, but I’m done when I get back home), as well as all the details on facebook.

Anyway, this new bidding system is a very good thing. If it didn’t work out for some reason, I’d have been on reserve all next month because I missed the cutoff date for rosters. I hope I continue to have reasonably decent lines as more people get furloughed and the base goes more junior. For now, I’m pretty darned happy.

In addition to going to New York, it looks like Jonah and I are going to be able to go to Hawaii next week for a couple of days. The Sunday after next we’re going to see Vienna Teng in Boulder. (I just happened to get that day off by chance–I didn’t bid for it because I didn’t know about the concert until after I bid).

The downside is that I’m making a lot less money. Ahh well.

I did not get the FAA job in Anchorage I applied for. This doesn’t surprise me. What does surprise me is that I didn’t get it because I’m not a retired, disabled veteran. I can understand veteran’s preference. What I can’t understand is that as long as a qualified disabled veteran applies, no one else is even considered. Had I realized that, I’m not sure I’d have bothered apply.

‘Thank you for applying on our external vacancy announcement, AAC-NOE-09-AJW334B-113303, Airspace System Inspection Pilot, FV-2181-H. Qualified 10-point preference eligibles who have a compensable, service-connected disability of 10 percent or more were referred to the selecting official. Other 10-point preference eligibles, 5-point preference eligibles and non-preference eligibles may not be selected as long as two or more qualified preference eligibles in the highest priority group are still available and interested. I am sorry to inform you that, at this time, your application was not included in the group that was referred. Additional information on veterans’ preference in hiring can be located at http://opm.gov/veterans/html/vetguide.asp. Please feel free to contacty me if you have any questions at [email protected]..

I finished up IOE with 21 hours (the FAA minimum required for a turbo-prop is 20 hours) on Friday. I wasn’t sure what my schedule would be like, but I knew that weekends off in the future were somewhat unlikely. Neal was free Friday evening, so I cooked elk bolognese with the remainder of the elk that Nathan gave us and we had a fine dinner. I managed to stay up pretty late considering that I’d gotten up at 4am that morning and flown in from Casper, WY.

Crew tracking called that night to tell me that I would be on reserve at noon the next day, and that furthermore, I’d be on ready reserve. We all slept in until about 11am, Jonah made us some Belgian Waffles from Liege and I headed to the airport in the snow. When I got up, I checked my schedule and they’d already assigned me a flight to Jackson Hole. Because it was reasonably warm, the roads were mostly just wet, but the visibility was terrible. I didn’t make it to work at 1:30pm like I was supposed to, but it didn’t really matter because our flight was delayed.

About the time our plane arrived from Durango, dispatch gave our plane to the 10:30am Jackson Hole departure which still hadn’t left because their plane was broken, and left us with the broken plane. The standby electric hydraulic pump was broken, but they assured us that it’d be fixed soon.

We eventually left around 5pm and got halfway to Aspen when I saw something flash. It was the L GEAR UNAFE warning light. I asked my captain if he saw it. He said, “You saw it too? It did it 5 minutes ago and I thought maybe I was seeing things.”

We called dispatch on the radio who patched us to maintenance who told us to return to Denver, primarily because there’s no mechanics in Jackson Hole. So we came back.

The mechanics fiddled with this and that, but weren’t really sure what to do, and about then the plane that went to Jackson Hole (the one we were supposed to take the first time) came back, so they moved our passengers to that plane.

It turns out that this was the 4th attempt for many of these passengers to get to Jackson Hole. Most of them were on a late-night flight out of Denver on Friday night, and after hours of waiting for deicing, the ramp crew in Jackson Hole gave up and went home. So the flight canceled.

We finally got to Jackson hole at about 10pm last night, and I had to get up at 5am this morning for an early flight back. The skies completely cleared up overnight and the flight back was beautiful.

By the time I left for Jackson Hole last night, my schedule said that after coming back in the morning, I’d be working the last flight to Jackson hole tonight, with 13 hours in between of doing nothing. My schedule changed several times since then.

The latest is that I’m supposed to go to Aspen and back in an hour or so, then go to Casper and back, and then I get to go home for the evening. I come back in the morning at about 10am to go to Grand Junction, then overnight in Casper.

I’m dead tired, but seriously enjoying it. Life is so much simpler now that I’m based out of Denver. I don’t have to stay at a crash pad, or spend hours riding trains to get to Kelsey or Sydney’s apartment in New York. When I get a couple days off, I can drive home, and don’t have to hope there’s room on a plane to get me home, and I can drive to work in the morning instead of flying in the night before.

If I were commuting, I’d be seriously annoyed that my overnight was canceled tonight. Since I live here, it means an extra night in my bed.

I’m hoping the rest of this trip is pretty easy. The weather in Denver had been pretty rough. When I landed Friday morning, the control tower was in the clouds and we didn’t break out of the clouds until just above the point at which we have to go around.

Instrument approaches still fascinate me, even after a year of flying for the airlines. I can fly a plane by staring at some needles and dials, and then, as if by magic, the runway magically appears right below us as we break out of the clouds. As fun as that is, I’d still rather be able to look at the mountains I’m flying over rather than staring into the white murk for hours on end.

I’m getting a little better at flying the Dash. Fortunately, I’m nowhere near as bad as I was when I first started flying the jet.

Durango is shaping up to be another excellent overnight. It looks like we stay right downtown in walking distance of all kinds of things, including a brewery. Unfortunately, we got in too late tonight for me to go exploring, and we leave pretty early in the morning. But I’m sure I’ll be back with a decent overnight eventually.

The flight in tonight was interesting in that the weather was being reported as high enough that we didn’t need to shoot an instrument approach, but because of terrain, ATC wouldn’t descend us low enough to break out of the clouds until we were pretty much over the airport.

I was flying, and just flew a full traffic pattern to land on runway 21. My third IOE instructor coached me through it a little bit, and I managed an acceptable approach and landing. I did get slow at one point, and my pitch control was, perhaps, a bit erratic. But I’m confident I’ll get the hang of it eventually.

A quick round trip Aspen turn tomorrow, then I’m home in the afternoon and get to spend the night at home before going back to work on Thursday. So incredibly nice to be able to drive home…