Back in Calgary

So I'm back from my couple of days on the road.

Let me say that the laptop was a wise wise decision. I downloaded a storm up there and even got some movies to watch on the bus ride back to Calgary. (we landed in Edmonton, but the plane was to stay there and I needed to be back in Calgary)

So I download "Napoleon Dynamite" and of course what movie have they selected to play on the bus ride back?? You guessed it. Oh well, the bus ride was pretty good back, relaxed a bit.. played with the laptop for a little bit. Not too bad, much much better than a greyhound, it's like an executive coach.

So I got to fly the plane back into Invermere and my captain says to me just before starting the decent: "I think we should practice an emergency decent." I think I had said yes before he had even finished his sentence. What is this you might ask? Well... the result is getting the airplane down from altitude at the fastest rate safely possible. This would be the case in say the event of a cabin depressurization and we want to get to an altitude that we can safely breathe the oxygen without masks. Or for any other reason that would require us to get on the ground as soon as possible, perhaps a medical emergency. Well, in order to do this we can't just simply push the nose down and go screaming down, because we'll exceed the maximum speed of the aircraft very quickly. So, what this aircraft is designed for is that we can slow down enough that we can lower the landing gear (320km/hr or so) and once the gear is safely extended the aircraft can then increase it's speed to it's limit, but because there is so much drag caused from the lowered landing gear, we can get a much greater rate of decent. So, at about 12,000' over Invermere, we popped the gear down and I pushed that nose down and oh my god did that plane descend. We were going so quickly downwards that I didn't even go as fast as the aircraft could go in fear of not being able to safely pull it out of the dive. Because I was hand flying the aircraft at such a high rate of speed even the simple movement of the control wheel (yoke) required both hands and a lot of force. It was just a pure rush, we were down from that altitude in less than 2 mins, which is an incredible rate of descent, which is about 5 times faster than your average airliner would normally do. It was all safe and a great learning experience, so don't think we were reckless, but at the same time... boy oh boy was it a blast!

So yeah, a great couple of flights. The captain was quite impressed with my flying and was ready to sign a form saying that he approves of my flying and that would help me move along in the company, BUT the fact of the matter is that I'm still not supposed to be flying the aircraft in the manner we were and therefore it would have been incriminating to him! So I reminded him of that and he was thankful of that, but the fact he feels that way is a great feeling. Can't wait to get my takeoff/landing ban removed!

Ok... time to maybe play some poker.