Things are coming together

Finally starting to understand this aircraft. And starting to feel much more comfortable. We've had a couple of great flights dealing with all sorts of emergencies.

Think of the worst things that could ever happen to you on a flight and then add some extra stuff, and that's what you have when we take off in that simulator.

Jet aircraft like the one I'm going to be flying are certified to take off on ONE engine with the other totally inoperative after you've reached a certain speed on the take off roll. For example, as we roll down the runway if we were to have an engine malfunction or some sort of major catastrophe we would abort the takeoff up to a certain speed (around 170 km/hr usually). After that, no matter what, we take off (usually around 190-210 km/hr) and deal with the problem in the air. The aircraft can get up to a safe altitude and we can then run through the appropriate checklist to secure the aircraft and get things ready to come around and land again at the airport. It would be unsafe to try and abort a take off past that safety speed as it would likely result in an over run off the end of the runway at a high rate of speed.

So this is the kind of stuff that gets lots of attention in the simulator. Failing various systems at the most crucial periods of flight. Today we also practiced emergency descents going the full nine yards and getting the oxygen masks on and dive bombing down at a very alarming rate! Glad to see it is affective.

Here are some pics of the simulator units. In our area of the building there are 4 sims all next to each other. They run all hours of the day. I tried to get a picture showing the graphics inside but it was very dark, so it's pretty blurry, but if you look hard you can kind of see the runway off to the left.

Dallas is HOT

Holy smokes.. these are the hottest temps that I've ever had to put up with for an extended period of time!

We arrived last Monday early in the morning at it was already 32 degrees. Most days end up hitting 40 degrees and likely hotter with the humidex and the fact that there is lots of concrete around to radiate it all back at us!

Today is the first day that I've got a bit of breathing room. The first day (Tuesday) we were right into class. A full day of class each day of the week. This goes on for the first week and then we head to the simulator in the second week. It is a very intense program. Lots and lots of information gets covered and each night is spent reviewing all the information and preparing for the next days class.

Just to explain a bit, pilot training for specific aircraft is incredibly detailed. We are pretty much taught everything about the aircraft, not just how to fly it. Which makes complete sense. And this is how it has been done for all the aircraft I've flown before as well, but this is the largest, fastest and most complicated aircraft I have flown yet. As they teach you about the systems of the aircraft they not only teach you what buttons to press and when, but also what exactly happens when you press the button. Everything from electronic schematics showing which relays and busses are activated and then what hydraulic systems they might trip into action. Then exactly how that system then produces the hydraulic pressure to push actuators and jack screws to lower the flaps for instance. Here's an excerpt from one of the phone book sized manuals I now have:

"In GEN, regulation, protection, and Feed bus connection are automatic through the GCU; the generator connects to its Feed bus once the generator reaches operating speed and begins supplying power at the correct voltage. The center OFF position disconnects a generator from its Feed bus without de-exciting it by opening its power relay. The momentary RESET position resets a generator field relay that tripped from overvoltage, feeder fault, or ENG FIRE switch actuation. Positioning the switch to RESET also may be necessary following a windmilling restart"

Pretty exciting stuff eh? Haha, it's not that bad, but it is a lot of information. We are expected to know how each system operates and why. This comes in very handy if/when various systems have problems in flight. If we have the knowledge to know what's effecting each system it just further helps us in solving the problem.

The training thus far has been fantastic. These instructors really know the airplane well and are very very knowledgeable, friendly and genuinely make sure you understand if you have any questions. I'm very happy with the program.

The hotel is very close by and the hotel shuttle takes us there every day and picks us up. They are also able to take us to restaurants and really anywhere else we need to go. So that is a big help, because there isn't a whole lot near the hotel and certainly nothing is worth walking to in this heat. We tried yesterday and I nearly died I kid you not! We lucked out and bumped into the shuttle driver at a local store and scored a ride back by pure fluke to the hotel! :)

The simulator is excellent. We did a quick familiarization in it yesterday and it is very much lifelike in every shape and form. We had the motion turned off, but the visuals were still so good that I felt like we were moving and I had to keep looking back at the open door behind us to prove to myself otherwise!

So things are going well. Today we are going to go and sit in a fake cockpit of the plane to just run through checklists to help get our familiarization of the cockpit and where all the switches are down solid. It will also give us a chance to practice all the proper SOPs (Standard Operating Procedures) which are developed so that it doesn't matter who you fly with, everybody within the company knows the same procedures as everyone else. The jet is new to me and the company is new to the other pilot I'm down here with. So this will be good practice for the both of us.

Tomorrow is the last day of ground classes and the rest of the week will be spent in the simulator.

I'll take some pictures within the next couple of days and post them up. It's a nice facility and so far the weather has been great, aside from being hotter than the surface of the sun!

It's Jet time!

Tomorrow I head off on my American Airlines flight direct to Dallas Texas. I'll be spending the next 20 days there "on course" for the Cessna Citation Excel business jet.

I'll be attending a facility called Simuflite where they provide ground school and simulator training for the jet. At the end of it all, we meet with a Transport Canada flight examiner (who gets flown out from somewhere in Canada) to give us our flight test. If all things go well, I shall return to Calgary on July 29th a fully licensed jet pilot.

I'm currently in the process of packing up my bags for such an extended stay. I'll be staying in the Embassy Suites, so I'll have some breathing room and won't be too cramped in a little hotel room. I'm also a big fan of their full service free breakfast in the morning and then complimentary drinks and snacks at night. :)

So thankfully I'll be spending most of my time indoors while down in Dallas as they are calling for some rather warm temperatures for my entire stay. Somewhere in the vicinity of 35 degrees the whole time during the day! HOT.

Well, back to packing. First time I'll actually have to bring an extra bag to help handle all the extras!

Calgary Stampede!!!

Well it's that time of the year. When the whole town goes crazy for a couple of weeks as we host our annual rootin tootin good cowboy times at the infamous Calgary Stampede!

Anybody that is anybody in these here parts knows what good fun Stampede is. It's just one big party with some western flavor and good all around craziness. Just south of downtown in the Stampede grounds there's all sorts of good stuff to check out. It's similar to PNE for you west coasters and CNE for you east coasters - but better! If anyone knows how to throw a party... it's Calgary! People travel from all over the country and even from the states to come and check out the festivities. The whole town gets involved and for these couple of weeks people will be walking around in cowboy boots and hats having a good 'ol time.

Last night at work we had a huge Stampede BBQ for everyone. It was good times all around with management at the BBQ cooking up hot dogs and hamburgers and buckets full of ice cold beer. But the real party started at about 7:30pm when a bus rolled into the parking lot to take us all to a downtown bar to finish the night off! The bus was hilarious. It was an old converted school bus and was called "The Party Machine". We were dropped off in style with music blaring the whole way there.

We went to a bar called The Roadhouse. I had actually never been there before. It was more of a country style bar, but holy heck was it a good time. All sorts of people two stepping and having fun. We all got 2 free drink tickets at the door and those were quickly consumed. And then the boss kept walking around and giving out more and more drink tickets. I can't even recall how many drinks I had last night but what I do recall is that I didn't pay for a single one! That's one good thing about this company. A couple times per year (usually Xmas and Stampede) they party it up right and usually it's a open tab at the bar for the employees!

After about 5 hours of drunken partying myself and 4 others all crammed into a cab and made our way back into my neighborhood where at least 10 employees of AirSprint live! So that worked out well. I slept not too bad, took a little extra force to remove me from bed, but overall I didn't get too f'ed up.

Can't wait for the xmas party... :)

Gettin Somethin' for Nothin'

I'm not sure why I haven't played a bigger part in this before now, but I've recently done what many pilots have been doing within the company for a long time.

Rewards programs.

We frequent hotels on a weekly basis and many of these hotels we stay in have some sort of rewards programs. Many of them can be set up to earn you flat out Aeroplan miles at the same time. Now while in the past I've shunned the idea of signing up for these miniscule little programs, I'm now seeing the errors in my ways when I hear of pilots getting huge gift cards or even flights off of the rewards programs.

Our company foots the bill for all of our hotels and they have no interest in these rewards programs, so us pilots when checking in simply give the front desk our program account number (The blackberry is very handy for holding all sorts of information just like this) and then it gets entered into their system and we are credited the points for the stay. I know of one pilot that has 15 different rewards programs in current use - crazy!

I've decided to just go for the main 2, plus an extra one that's going to add up big time for me in the very near future.

Best Western's Gold Crown Club program is a very common one, as we stay there quite often. They offer 250 Aeroplan miles per stay. Not too shabby, because these add up over time quite quickly.

Trip Rewards is a very large program that is shared by many hotels that we frequent (Travelodge, Days Inn, Super 8, Wingate, Ramada, Howard Johnson.. etc).

And finally I've signed up for Hilton Honors which is for obviously Hilton's and their counterparts like Embassy Suites (which is where I'll be staying while in Dallas for 20 nights).

So for the 20 nights in Dallas I will earn 25,000 Hilton Honor points PLUS 2,500 Aeroplan miles. That's nothing to snub a nose at! And considering in the past few months I've been spending more than 10, sometimes 15 nights in hotels, it won't take long to start racking them up.

I also have a fuel rewards program that is from a US based program that gives points whenever you fill up with an associated fuelling company. There are a few airports that we go to all the time in the states where these points can quickly add up (Scottsdale AZ, Palm Springs CA, Spokane WA and many many more). Every 5000 points and I get a cheque in the mail for $50. Once I start flying the jet, simply 2 stops in Scottsdale will put me at 6000 points, so I'm looking forward to some extra spending cash.

All of these programs should net me somewhere in the vicinity of $500 worth of free stuff per year at the bare minimum. So.. not too bad for having to do nothing at all.

Happy belated Canada Day!

I spent this past holiday in North Bay, ON. Which is in the very eastern chunk of Ontario. The trip started on the Friday when we took some folks to Kenora, ON and then continued on to North Bay to spend a couple of nights in preparation for a trip back on Sunday afternoon.

It was almost 3hrs to Kenora. And Ontario is so big, that it was another 2hrs and 22 mins to get to North Bay.

I had never been to North Bay and was interested to see the area. Well, it took all of about 30 mins of driving around in our rental car and we discovered that there was absolutely nothing there worth checking out! We came up with the plan to go and visit Quebec the next day, as we were very close to the border.

So bright and early on Canada Day we hoped in our rental POS (Chevy Cobalt) and we were off for the land of the frenchies. It was only about a 30min drive east and we crossed over the Ottawa river and entered Quebec at the town of Temiscaming. It was a quaint little town that had primarily been created around a large mill on the river. It was neat to see the little town and we took a hike and found some neat waterfalls and scenic viewpoints around the area. We even took a turn down a gravel road at one point and just kept driving. Right up until the point where the car could barely fit on the road anymore. :)

There was supposed to be fireworks that night down by the lake, but thunderstorms rolled into town that night and quashed those plans.

2 nights in North Bay was certainly enough. On Sunday afternoon we departed for Edmonton with a fuel stop in Winnipeg. We were fighting headwinds associated with the Jet Stream the entire flight back. It took 7hrs to make the trip to Edmonton. Luckily my iPod held up for the majority of the flight back or I would have been quite bored. The weather was great for the return flight except for our fuel stop in Winnipeg. It was very thunderstormy, and we barely got in and out.

I am now spending the next few days preparing to go away for the majority of July for my Jet training in Dallas. So it's quite the scramble right now to tie down many loose ends. I leave on Monday and will spend pretty much everyday up until then doing some sort of preparations. More on all the jet stuff in another post.

Here are a couple of photos, just raw from the camera from my North Bay weekend. I just don't have time to make them shine with photoshop other than for resizing and this is just but a couple of the 300 pictures I did take. :)

On the tarmac in North Bay, ON (CYYB)

Temiscaming QC!

Me with the Ottawa river behind

Taking the Cobalt offroad and finally coming to a point where we had to back up out of!

Snap happy

Well I've had the new camera since Friday and have been snapping away ever since. So many features and options though it is quite overwhelming. It'll be a long time before I'll have learned half of the things this camera is capable of.

So far I'm quite pleased with it in all regards. It has a very fast shutter rate, accurate auto focus, quick function changes on the go and some incredibly fancy features I have yet to even use!

Here's a sampling of some of the better shots that have come out of the camera. I have a lot to learn yet, including some fancy post editing with programs like Photoshop to truly get the most out of each picture.

Click on the picture for a larger view.

Some flowers in the backyard.

Westjet departing out of Calgary at dusk.

The WRX at dusk on a dirt road.

My roommate Mike's new car - Acura RSX-S.

A coworker (Geoff) caught on the Jet staircase shot through a chainlink fence zoomed in.

I'll likely have more pics on the blog from now on as a result of the new camera. I'll want to try all sorts of different techniques and I'll post 'em all up for critique and Oooo's and Ahhh's.. :)

So what do ya all think?

I've joined the Digital SLR Camera craze

Well after MUCH deliberation. I finally decided I'd head to a recommended camera store in town and ask them flat out what they had to say between the 3 cameras I was trying to decide on.

The 3 were in order of personal preference from my own reviews:

Olympus E500 2 lens kit
Nikon D50 body only with separate purchased lenses
Canon Digital Rebel XT with separate purchased lenses

The salesman at The Camera Store here in downtown Calgary was very informative. Explaining that while the Canon and Nikon's had good groundwork, the lenses that came with them were crap. Mainly constructed from cheap plastics and not really a good choice. So if I were to go that route, it was suggested that the body should be purchased and then spring for a better lens (which was going to put me a few hundred dollars out of my price range).

Then he started talking to me about the Olympus and the more and more he looked into the camera the more and more he was impressed over what it had to offer with the 2 lens kit. He explained that the lenses were actually very decent for what I was planning to use the camera for and far superior to the Canon and Nikon counterparts. Not only that, but the package deal has a rebate of $100 right now as well. So this was my selling feature and I was sold.

Almost. Haha, unfortunately they couldn't find the 1 box they had somewhere in the store but they have more on order. So I'm waiting for a phone call in the next few days to tell me my new toy has arrived. Can't wait to start snapping.

A full review on the camera can be found here from this very informative camera and accessory review site: Olympus E500 Review

Here's a pic of the camera with it's lenses:

Are the friendly skies really that friendly?

**Updated with new articles**

A few newspapers from Ontario have been doing a series on Aviation safety over the past couple of weeks. Some of it is very informative. Some of it is a little exaggerated, as can be expected from the Media. But for the most part, it is a well done series.

The articles touch on everything from maintenance practices, to pilot work schedules and overcrowded skies. If you're an avid flier, you might find some of the information surprising. It's definitely worth a read to better educate yourself with aviation safety and regulations within the Canadian Aviation system and how we compare to other countries.

Too Close for Comfort

Collision Course

Air taxi tragedy points to industry flaws

Canadian Pilots battle fatigue

Economics trumps safety: Jazz staff

Judge calls for review of `sliding' air safety

Airline suspends mechanics

Lax air rules blamed for risky landings

Jetsgo problems ignored

As they continue their series, I'll update with more of the articles. But some of the information may be quite surprising. It's true in many situations, but extremely so in Aviation - ignorance is bliss.

My opinion - I'm happy to be at a company which does not imply any pressure to get the job done. We don't cut corners to save a buck or to save time. Our passengers are our clients, and they certainly don't want to risk anything anymore than we do! But there are companies out there that will put pressure on it's young and inexperienced crews (pilots/mechanics) to get the job done. It still exists to some extent as high up as Air Canada. The aviation industry in it's entirety is not well understood by John Q Public. Perhaps that is best, but many are surprised by what actually happens behind the scenes... I know I am.

Cool Impreza Model Car

Looks like a pretty neat model car of the Subaru Rally Impreza eh?


And the really cool thing about this model... wait for it... wait for it... It's all constructed from paper!!!

There's a 38 page PDF file on the webpage at the bottom of this post which you can print off on a photo high quality paper and create your own masterpiece. Pretty darn cool. But I'm not sure I have the patience and talent to construct it. If anybody does, let me know how it goes! :)

Here's the webpage: Subaru World Rally Car Paper Model

I worked myself ill

I've been going absolutely non-stop over the past month, barely getting enough time in my days off to catch up on normal life events such as shopping for groceries or doing laundry. And most of the time has been spent away from home.

Yesterday it finally reached it's breaking point when after a couple days of continuous flying, and difficult flying at that (weather issues all over the place), I found myself throwing up for the first time in a long time! And to top it all off, it was inbetween flights. They had to quickly call in another pilot to finish off the rest of my flying.. it's a good thing we were back in Calgary at the time. So I've got today off and am on my way to getting tomorrow off as well so that I can recover. I think it's just been a combo of lack of sleep, crazy eating schedules and crappy food at that, with difficult flying conditions that finally packed it in for me.

I'll then spend the next couple of days flying and will be on days off so that I can recover even more. Ahh the gongshow. Well, back to bed for me.

Westjet's retirement of the 737-200 series

Most of you are familiar that Westjet has got a great brand new fleet with the fancy leather seats and satellite tv in for everyone. Those 737's are the nice new models classifed as the 737-700, 737-800 and 737-600 series. The jist of all those numbers just means that they are slightly different in total size, so more or less passengers.

The airline started with only 3 planes though, and these were pretty old 737-200 series aircraft. But Westjet was a smart cookie and owned the planes outright, that's part of the contributing factor to the whole Westjet success story. Well, those planes were old and noisy and not as technilogically robust as the newer aircraft these days. So once they got the whole airline up and running smoothly, they started to phase out the 200 series. Here's a little video that's quite neat that shows the party they threw to retire the last one. It's neat to see the plane doing something that you don't always associate with a medium sized commercial transport aircraft!

35/949 - Placed in the $$$

So I've finally taken a big step in the large poker tourneys, and placed well within the money.

The event was a $200,000 prize pool $200+15 entry fee, no limit hold-em tourney. At the end of the registration process 949 others had entered. This was by far the biggest tourney at this level of play, that I have been a part of. Top 100 finishers took home the cash. The range in payouts was from 100th paying $300, all the way to 1st which paid out a very nice $45,000 US!

Just to recap, I won my entry by winning a smaller satellite tourney which I paid $21 to play in. Some might say that I should just take the $215 that I won from that tourney and run, but I still have not given up my ambitions to place high in one of these large tourneys.

The game started well and at the first break I had managed to double up. I was quite pleased with my process. I also managed to hit pocket rockets (AA) 3 times in that hour! The second hour was not my friend. My chip stack dwindled and only 2 very successful all ins saved my butt to keep me a contender at the end of that second hour. I had a close call with AA later in the game when I was all in and my opponent was all in as well. He had TT and a 10 hit on the flop! Then the turn card hit and it was thankfully an Ace! Narrowly avoided death on that hit. My next hand was JJ and I took down another decent sized pot. Now I was sitting pretty to coast into the final 100 and at least guarantee myself a $300 pay out. Well I managed to steal a few blinds here and there and outbet some opponents to keep me alive into top 50! Things were looking good as the payouts were now in the $700 range. I was only going to be playing premium hands and play them strong. And that's what happened when my fateful last hand came up. I had AQs and pushed after a weaker opponent limped with what turned out to be JJ. No Ace or Queen came to save my bacon. It was all over, and 35th place was mine.

I'm not too upset. I probably could have coasted into the next payout range, but was happy with my play overall. A couple of stupid moves earlier in the game, but some better ones to also help me get as far as I did.

In the end the money breakdown was as follows:

Buy in fee: $ 21
35th place payout: $900
Profit: $879

Beating out all the pros who were also in this tourney... priceless. :)

Oh, and I forgot to mention that I'm also entered into a free invite only tourney as a result of my participation in this event. It's for a shot at winning a seat into the World Series of Poker. I believe that's on Wednesday, so who knows... I could be off to Vegas! :)

How much is your time worth?

This is a commonly used phrase surrounding the charter/fractional/ownership style of traveling that I'm deep within. It became even more evident on this past Wednesday when I traveled commercially with United down to Denver from Calgary for some security screening (fingerprinting).

I can easily say that I hate the commercial way of traveling, after experiencing what the private type of traveling has to offer.

Many of our clients view their time as quite valuable, and rightfully so. I'll now detail a couple of scenarios to help bring my point across.

Lets say my trip to Denver was that of a business nature. And lets say that I didn't have to go directly to Denver, but to another town nearby that's about an hour drive away from the closest International Airport. I need to be at a meeting with 5 of my associates by 12:30pm.

Commercial Travel time factoring:

Flight time to Denver: 2:00
Sedan and driver from Denver to town X: 1:00
Check in time/customs/security screening/grabbing bags: 2:30

Total time traveling: 5:30 requiring showing up at the airport at 7:00am.

Private Travel time factoring:

Flight time direct to town X (Jet fleet): 2:10
Customs/loading and unloading plane: 0:20

Total time traveling: 2:30 requiring showing up at the airport at 10:00am.

So now lets take into consideration some costs. 6 round trip tickets to Denver in business class $6-8,000. Sedan and driver to and from town X $500. Plus the likely hood of having to spend a night in a hotel in Denver for 6 people $1,000.

So we're roughly looking at total costs of approx $8,500. And total travel time of 30hrs. So our cost for each individual is $1,415 and 30 hrs worth of traveling.

Ok, so now lets look at the Private travel costs. 2:10 of flying in our jet at owner rates is roughly going to cost $5,000 each way, so $10,000 round trip. Per person we're looking at roughly $1,660 and total time of traveling at likely less than 10hrs! Starting to see some value in this way of traveling?

How about this then. Lets say we use the turboprop fleet instead. The travel time bumps up by 1hr each way, but the operating costs are significantly less. Total cost for the turboprop trip at owner rates would be about $2,500 each way for $5,000 round trip. Per person it's an amazing cost of $840 for lets say 12hrs of travel time!

This is why our business is thriving. We're able to take people from point A to point B and bypass 90% of the hassles of normal commercial flying. Not to mention that we can fly directly to mainy small airports and bypass all of the connecting flight mumbo jumbo. No taking your shoes off at the security line ups. Forget about waiting in huge lines that snake for miles in the terminal buildings. Customs will meet the airplane directly and are 'usually' a much more pleasant experience.

So for myself pretending to be the business executive, this service is invaluable. The time wasted running around airport terminals, unnecessary extra travel, being held up in hotel rooms... this could be time spent elsewhere and much more effectively.

We don't just fly business executives around though, we do a lot of personal flying for people that do have a fair bit of $$$ who are just fed up with all the hassles of commercial travel. And can you blame them?!

So, how much is your time worth?

Poker goodness!

Well I haven't really played any poker this past month. I've been so busy, having spent half my days in hotels and the other half flying, eating or sleeping!

Anywho, so the past couple of days I've played in 9 games. 2 of them were 10 seater mini tourney's and I placed 1st and 2nd in those. The other 6 were just heads up tourney's winner take all style, and I won all 6. Then today I also played in an entry chip tourney for Sunday's big game. I beat out 20 people for the prized spot of 1st, which paid the $215 entry fee for the game. And for some reason this will be a big game, and is going to be a prize pool of $200,000! Normally it's only $125,000 but I'm not complaining!

So on Sunday June 4th at 5pm EST I'll be playing on www.ultimatebet.com for my shot at a piece of the $200,000 prize pool. I imagine 1st place will get somewhere in the vicinity of $40,000. So load up the free software and come find me in the Scheduled tourney section.

Hopefully my poker luck will continue through.