Viva Las Vegas!

Well, it was bound to happen again. Today I was in some recurrent company training classes and got an email from another pilot.

It simply read "VEGAS!"

Right then and there I knew that I had a trip to Vegas with him in the very near future. Little did I know it would be tomorrow! So yup, off to Vegas for a 3 night layover beginning Tuesday night and I'll be back in Calgary late Friday night. Woo hoo.

Time to party it up in Sin City. Hopefully we don't get called back for other trips 'cause it's looking to be a very nice few days with temps in the low 20's during the day! Current weather right now in Calgary.. snowing like a banshee! So I'll be happy to get out of the white stuff and into some nice desert heat (although it does cool off quite quickly in the evenings to around 5 degrees).

So yeah, c'ya later!

Pucker factor 10

And of course by puker factor 10 I'm referring to a scenario in which my ass is puckered to a very high degree. Stop trying to visualize.

Ok, so a couple of days ago while I'm in Portland OR I get my trip information for a flight on the 27th, and the only info on the airport I had at that point was it was to the CYXT airport. I mistook this initially for the Medicine Hat AB airport which has the identifier CYXH. CYXT is Terrace BC.

What's so special about Terrace? Well it's located in a tight box canyon valley on the west coast of BC. And it is easily one of the most difficult and unforgiving instrument approaches in Canada. Remember me talking about that approach I did around New Years into Kenora? Well that was a tricky approach because the weather was so bad. But it wasn't nearly as challenging as this one. Sure Kenora is difficult, but you just have to be on the ball. With Terrace, you have to make sure everything is set up properly or quite simply - you die.

Yes, you read correctly. Death. The appraoch into Terrace has claimed many aircraft and many lives. Some of you might recall a recent accident in Terrace where an MU-2 cargo aircraft operated by Navair crashed there shortly after take off last month. So what makes this airport so difficult? Well I already mentioned the unforgiving terrain in the area, and that combined with unforgiving weather and forces of nature make this approach a 10 on the pucker factor.

Click on this picture to see the full instrument approach procedure into Terrace. This is what we use to set up the aircraft's instruments properly to follow the approach in safely. You'll notice contour lines of all the peaks in the area and altitudes listed for "safe operations" within the area. I'll just say this, they're extremely high because of all the high terrain. The weather was bad with the cloud ceilings around 1000' above sea level, with icing conditions in the clouds and it was getting dark. Also, because the temperature was so close to zero we have to add extra altitude to the published information to allow for cold temperature corrections to our altitude sensing equipment in the plane. That by itself is a killing factor with many aircraft crashing into terrain because they did not adequtely adjust their altitdues to account for the cold temperature factors.



We approached from the east and intercepted the approach at 12,000 feet over the waypoint "DAVED", then flew down a glideslope and localizer right down to the airport. It is quite nerve racking when you're flying into the valley, without seeing anything around you but snow and precipitation being lit up by the aircraft's landing lights. Also knowing that terrain is all around you!

We land safely and offload our passengers. I then proceeded to "borrow" Air Canada's baggage cart to take all the luggage into the main terminal for our passengers. When doing this unfortunately we slightly "broke" said baggage cart when we accidently rammed it into a giant stuffed polar bear in the main lobby! It wasn't all my fault, it was a tight fit throught the terminal doors and my spotter on one side wasn't quite paying enough attention (read: drunk off his ass) and neglected to see the huge polar bear incased in a glass case infront of us. Well, we only slightly moved the polar bear display, but the top part of the baggage cart broke off... it appeared however it wasn't the first time it had happened by some duct tape remenants on it. So I didn't feel too bad. :)

Now we had to get the heck out of this valley and back up to a nice safe altitdue to get home. So the departure procedure is quite complicated but is essentially the reverse of how we landed. This time it was dark and snowing quite heavily. So the second we took off we no longer had any reference to the outside world and back to relying 100% on our instruments. I climbed that machine as fast as it was go up without stalling out of the sky so we could gain the required altitude as quickly as possible. Pucker factor 10 was finally reduced as we climbed through 12,000 feet and I knew we were clear of all the peaks. The flight home was uneventful and we took advantage of some very nice tailwinds at our cruising altitude of 27,000 feet and made it back in record time.

So if there are any questions on that instrument approach procedure just let me know, I'd be happy to answer any questions and maybe help shed some light on the whole subject for anyone that would like to understand it more.

Poker.. uggh...

If you've been keeping track of my "Poker Tracker" on the right side of the screen you might have noticed it has frozen at $314.00 for a couple of days. This is because I've hit a wall it seems.

I can't break it. I can't make any more than a couple of dollars, or nothing at all. I've been down and up and it's become quite painful and taking way too long to attempt to reach my goal of $15 USD per day. This was no problem for the first half of the month, things were going swimmingly. So I might have to re-evaluate. It will be too much work to continue to try this. I will keep going until I have a full months worth of results. Then I'll see how much effort was required to make that $$$.

It was a great idea, that likely will work for the most part. But these past couple of days have not been great. I have to walk away from the tables today as I've gotten too frustated with bad beats and stupid players. Bah!

Flames

As most of you know I'm still an avid Canucks fan, so don't get the wrong impression that I'm starting a blog with the title of "Flames".

I was waiting to go on a flight a couple of days ago and standing in the passenger lounge of our executive terminal when all of these guys in suits and some with toques and hats on kept walking through. I looked outside and saw a chartered Air Canada airbus parked outside and they were all walking up and boarding. It took a little while but we finally figured out that it was the entire Calgary Flames team getting ready to head up to Edmonton for the game they played there last night.

I only recognized one player and he was the last to board - Jerome Iginla. Pretty recognizable. Other people in the lobby where talking to them as they walked past, "good luck guys" and one guy shouted out "hey Jerome!" to which he did say "hey" back.

Too bad it wasn't the 'nucks!

24 - Jack Bauer is back!

So after watching the season opener for the Fox show "24" I must say... "WOW".

I have been a fan of the show in the past and tried to keep up with the storylines as much as possible. That will be no different for the now 5th season of 24. It started with a bang and keeps on going.

I've always referred to this show series as mirco movies, they've got it all in each episode. This season looks to be the best as they've really hit it off with a punch.

I prefer to download the episodes after they've aired. That way I can either watch them on my laptop in widescreen HD or on my roomates tv, which has all the inputs and a nice bose sound system that really brings out the best in the show... something that my standard cable and TV just can't quite do. Although it took me a long time to download these first few episodes that they've just aired. Sounds like Shaw is filtering out bit torrents more aggressively here in Calgary now. Grrrrrr...

So, any other 24 watchers out there?

Poker Tracker

Well, it's been a while since I've posted on anything poker related. Mainly because I have not been playing much and therefore there hasn't been much to report on. I have not been playing at the higher stakes like I was last year as I found the fluctuations were beginning to be too extreme. So I took my profits and ran! Well, not quite.

I withdrew most of the money out of my poker account into a US account for travel into the states and also for some US investing. I left some in my online poker account though because I wanted to keep the poker going, but at much smaller limits. I haven't found this to be anything profitable, but definatly entertaining.

Earlier this month I decided to start out on a theory after playing a few heads up winner take all tourneys. For a very small risk of $5.25 per player where $5 goes into the prize pot and the $.25 goes to the house. So if you win, you take home $10 or after you factor in the $.25 and your buy in, it's a $4.75 profit. I found that I would win far more than I would lose. With this information I decided to try a little experiment. Worst case the system would fail and I'd be out a couple of dollars, best case scenario is that I'd have a constant stream of income (albeit quite small, but free money nonetheless).

My theory is this, I play enough of these $5.25 games (each game can take anywhere from a couple minutes to as long as 15 or 20 in extreme cases - I'd say 5 mins on average) to take in at least $15 per day. Simply play everyday (if possible) and it should equal roughly $100US per week, $400US per month and $4,800 per year. Little bits add up! After a little while I can quite simply also increase the limits to the $10.50 games and then take all those numbers and double 'em.

So I'm right on track now after 9 days of making on average of $15/day. You can keep track of how my poker system works or fails just above the destination tracker to the right. =============>>>>>>

The hardest thing to do is stop after making the $15, but for my experiment I can't get greedy... need to stay consistant! I recommend this system to anyone and everyone! I call it little risk with nearly guaranteed results.. well.. in my case at least.. "your results may vary!" ...had to throw in the disclaimer there. ;)

Frequent Flyer Miles

If only I could get some sort of Frequent Flyer Miles while working. Unfortunately that is not the case. But the other day I was updating my flying hours and statistics. Since working for AirSprint I have accumulated approx 241,000kms while flying all over North America - from the Arctic Circle Down to Los Cabos, over to Florida and up to Ottawa.

Turns out that stastically speaking, I've flown around the world an equivilant of 6 times exactly! Cool eh?

Everying in the career of a pilot is based off of their flight experience. So the amount of hours in the airplane is what will determine your progression in the industry. And more importantly it's the type of flying accumulated in different aircraft, different types of flying and different locations.

Here are some rough figures to give you an idea of various stages of hour accumulation and what they're good for.

Private Pilot's License - 55 hrs
Commercial Pilot's License - 200 hrs
Airline Transport Pilot's License - 1500 hrs

Those are just the main milestones, each requiring more specific requirements and various other additional ratings.

I'm currently floating around 1300 hrs, 500 of which has been accumulated here at AirSprint. The most a pilot can legally fly in one year is 1200 hrs, but within my company pilots tend to fly around 500-700hrs a year. A career pilot can expect to end their careers with around 20-25,000hrs. So.. I'm on my way!

I'm in trouble

No I haven't gotten some girl knocked up... err.. hope not at least! ;)

I took the WRX in for the 42,000km scheduled maintenance and I wanted to check out the new 2006 models because they've done quite a bit of changes to it, the most noticeably being the new improved 2.5L engine as opposed to the 2.0L engine in my WRX. This helps to get rid of the horrible turbo lag that my car has (takes time for the turbo to spool up leaving a dead band of power when you first start out).

Well.. it took all of 2 mins on a test drive for me to realize how smooth and great this new engine is. So I say again - I'm in trouble!

I even went as far as to see how much my WRX would get for a trade-in and it essentially would be 2 years more of car payments and that would take care of the difference and I'd have a brand new car. My current car payments are getting close to being finished.. So I like the idea of having no more car payments... but I also like the idea of having a brand new WRX that has the whole turbo lag thing licked.

Woe is me.

SNL - "Lazy Sunday" skit

I laughed and laughed and laughed. Check out this "digital short" video that Saturday Night Live did a couple of weeks ago. This has got to be some of the funniest stuff that has been on SNL in the past decade!

SNL - "Lazy Sunday" Click me

Blog format updated

I wanted to change the format of the blog a bit. What do you guys think?

Happy New Year!

Holy cow, it's been a while since I last posted. Quite a few events have transpired since my last post and I figure I'd better get to it and place the updates into word format below!

The holidays were great. At 4:30am on December 23rd I awoke and got dressed in half zombie like fashion. I banged on the door of my roommate who the day before had agreed to take me to the airport prior to finding out what time my flight was.. sucker! So I arrive at the airport just before 5am for my 6am flight to Vancouver. The luggage check in went smoothly, but then I turned the corner to go through security. It was right then and there that I realized how much private travel can reduce one's stress in life. A lineup like nothing I'd seen before. It must have had a couple hundred people waiting and I ran to the end to start the process.

After a few minutes I realized that I was likely screwed and not going to make my flight. And then it happened, a holiday time miracle, gate agents came racing down the line asking if anyone was on a 6am flight. I immediately breathed a sigh of relief and started following the woman as she was going to wisk me and the other poor unfortunates to the front of the line to cut infront of all the other individuals who had shown up VERY early for their 7, 8 and even 9am flights! Yeesh!

So I get through security (us pilots use our security passes to help speed along the process.. when emptying pockets we just convieniently put them in our trays making sure the security people notice, that gives us a lot more credibility going through that line and less likely to be mistaken for the next Osama)

I walk swiftly all the way through the terminal and just barely make it on board the aircraft. I was crammed in the middle seat and the guy next to me had a baby, so it was a not so pleasant experience... the whole while I was once again thinking to myself how nice private travel is.

In Vancouver finally and I get picked up by my dad in the SMART car. Yup, in case some of you didn't know, my folks have a SMART car. Crazy eh?

I get home and quickly have a nap. Ahhh.. relaxing. My time at home is spent visiting friends and family. We had our big X-mas dinner on the night of the 24th because my sister had to work X-mas night. That was good, just like old times. I had a great time. I also managed to score another X-mas miracle through work by requesting an extra day off (Boxing Day) in order to fly home on one of our Jets that just happened to be heading back to Calgary from Vancouver empty that day! And success I was able to hop aboard! 2 other employees had the exact same idea and so we were all on board the plane with some family of one of the other pilots. Wow... now that is the way to travel! That jet is one smooth machine. We were back in Calgary in no time.

The next few days were spent flying to various places like Grande Prairie and Winnipeg. I was supposed to spend New Years in Ontario again like last year, but the flights all got switched around. I managed to avoid that gong show this year thankfully. For those of you keeping count that's 3 holiday miracles! :)

New Years was spent modestly at home with some beer and my roommate and one of his friends. Nothing too big. Nice and quiet, with copious amounts of booze consumed.

Yesterday I was in Ontario briefly. I did the pick-up for those folks that spent New Years in Kenora, ON just like last year. But this year the weather was looking to be something horrible!! All out in that area was forecasted crap and the weather we received for the Kenora airport as we approached was no good at all. The weather was calling for 300' cloud bases with remarks of "ragged" which means that it could be 200' in some areas and 400' in others. The best instrument approach we could conduct to get into the Kenora airport gets us down to 308' above the ground. You do the math, it's not looking good.

Well I'll tell you, that was some of the most challenging flying I've had to do in my entire career. Because the weather was so bad, our company procedures call for us to conduct a "Pilot Monitored Approach - PMA". This calls for the first officer (me) to fly the entire approach while the captain's only responsibility is to be looking outside of the aircraft towards where the runway should be and if he receives enough visual cues to safely land the airplane he then takes control of the aircraft and finishes the landing. This is because it would take too long for me to readjust my sights outside of the airplane instead of inside looking at all the instruments and that split second of adjustment could mean we would miss the runway and have to abort the landing.

So at exactly 0.5 miles from the airport and skimming the tree tops at 308' we found the runway and safely landed. Now that's flying! We certainly made our money on that leg. We then flew to Winnipeg to pick up one more person and the weather was just as bad there, but Winnipeg has a better instrument approach there and it's not as complicated as the "non-precision approach" we had just flown into Kenora. We then flew all the way home to Calgary after that where the weather was much nicer. It was quite a turbulent flight however due to the fact we were flying right next to the jet stream and the difference in the wind strength and direction when so close to it causes a lot of turbulence.

As for today, pretty laid back and relaxed. I went out in search of some specific synthetic oil for the WRX today but everywhere was either sold out or no longer caring it!? I was pretty shocked. The car goes in for service on Thursday so I've got one more day to try and track down some good oil for it.

And there you have it. A bit of updating if you were able to read through it all!