My Tardiness

Final for 08R in Vancouver

Most of my friends and family would probably agree that I'm not the most punctual person in the world. However, when it comes to flying, I really do my best to keep ahead of schedule. There are many good reasons for this. First off, it's my job, and I really like my job, so I would like to keep it. People fly because they need to get from A to B quickly, usually because they've got plans at their destination, or they're going home, and nobody wants to waste time heading home. So being late, usually messes with folk's plans, and that has a negative effect on their attitude, which, in turn, has a negative effect on my day. The final reason is selfish, the quicker you finish your day of flying, the quicker you can join your friends for a cold pint and talk about flying.

Lear 25 C-FPUB and Lear 35 C-GBFP parked at the Million Air

Being on time in aviation usually isn't too, too tough. Sometimes though, in spite of your best efforts, the world seems out to make a mockery of your schedule. When you do fall behind, the first reaction of course is to try and catch up. Call ahead on the radio and make sure the fuel truck is waiting when you land, huff bags a little quicker. Sometimes this works, and you catch up. Sometimes, nothing you can do gets you closer to sched, in fact, it seems that, with each stop, you fall further behind. When you find yourself in the latter situation, it's very easy to become stressed about it, but the best thing to do is just accept it. When it comes to flying, I wouldn't recommend rushing around stressed out, it could lead to missing something important.

Cruising back to Vancouver in the moonlight

So this past week, I had one night where being on time just wasn't happening. It all started with dinner. The lovely Holly, room mate Kirsten, her Father Doug, and myself, decided to have dinner at our favorite establishment here in Prince George, Grillin n' Chillin (their motto is "Eat here, or else we'll both starve"). Grillin has great food, huge portions and good prices. They're usually quite good when it comes to getting the food out in a timely manner. So we went for dinner at 7pm, with me having to check in at work at 9pm. For whatever reason, the food didn't come out quite as fast, and we found ourselves leaving the restaurant at 8:30. I rushed home, quickly switched into my flight suit, gathered my flying stuff and ran out the door, It's coming up 9 and I've got a 15-20 minute drive to the airport yet, I'm running late. Car pooling, I picked up the first officer on the way out there and we arrive at the airport at 9:15. This is still 45 minutes prior to our scheduled departure time, which is still, usually, lots of time to get ready. The mail is already waiting so we quickly load it up in the hanger and I get to doing the walk around. The fresh snow and ice is causing problems getting the hanger doors open, so we work with the maintenance guys trying to get that open. When we finally do, we tow the aircraft out into the snowfall. It's not snowing heavily but the airplane just came out from a heated hanger so the snow is melting when it hits the wings and then freezing. So we had to now lather the critical surfaces in glycol to make sure their is no snow or ice adhering. Start-up, after start checklist, grab the IFR clearance, and we taxi to depart PG's runway 15. The gear comes up into the wells at 1024, 24 minutes after our sched departure. At this point the schedule is still salvageable. However, to our dismay, we notice that our ground speed is actually slower then our indicated 160 knots in the climb. This is not a good start to making up time. We level off at flight level 190, as the pilot flying, I let the speed build up as much as it will and I call for cruise power and cruise checks. The f/o pulls back the power to our cruise setting, limited by an engine ITT of 700. We're cruising at a true airspeed of around 260 knots, but a ground speed of just over 200 knots. To add to our now longer leg to Vancouver, the center calls up to tell us of moderate to severe icing reported on the Keinn arrival, our normal route from BC's North into YVR. He clears us direct to Booth for the Booth six arrival, adding an extra 30 - 40 miles onto our trip (but keeping us out of the icing, which, although it's going to delay us, I'm quite happy about).



Cruising along in a 60 knot headwind, we had much time to break out the Booth arrival chart, and prepare for that to take us onto an ILS for 08R, the normally active runway at night, in Vancouver. Nearing Booth, we're handed off to Vancouver Center on 125.95, the sector that lines up the arrivals for the approach controller. He advises us to expect the north runway, 08L in Vancouver. Apparently snow removal is taking place on the south runway. We take out the chart for the ILS 08L and brief that. Approach vectors us onto the localizer and hands us off to tower. We break out of the cloud and tower clears us to land 08L with an exit at taxiway Mike 5, almost all the way down to the end of the 10,000' runway. We land and taxi to Mike 5, right onto Mike and are told to hold short of Juliet, the taxiway that takes us around the main terminal to the south side. We wait for a big British Airways 747, sitting on juliet, to start his taxi. Right behind him, an Air Canada 767 pulls out of the Vancouver deice bays. They both taxi down Juliet and finally right on Lima to come back around to depart 08L. We finally get cleared to taxi to the South Apron and over to the Million Air. The Million air ramp is covered in about 3 inches of wet snow, making it very difficult, actually impossible, for the forklift that brings the big caged boxes of mail to maneuver around. Our plan then becomes to tow the aircraft so the cargo door is in the hanger. First though, the maintenance crew needs to move out the airplanes they've already worked on out and move some others into the hanger. Now, because of the snow, the aircraft tug, which is equipped with chains, is still having a hard time moving around. Needless to say, we spend over an hour on the ramp in Vancouver before we're ready to depart for Calgary. We finally call up Vancouver ground for taxi, and find they're still using 08L. So it's about a 15 minute taxi, topped off waiting for the airport authority to check the runway for contamination and an Air Canada Jazz Dash 8 to depart.

On Mike in Vancouver, waiting behind Air Canada Jazz to depart 08L

Enroute to Calgary, we're now over an hour behind schedule. At this point, I accept the fact we're going to finish late in the morning. We climb to Flight Level 230 and the First Officer enjoys a nice 344 knot ground speed to Calgary. We still arrive Calgary well behind schedule. We unload the Calgary bound mail, load up the Vancouver bound mail, climb back in the saddle, and depart Calgary's runway 34. Departure clears us direct to Varsy, an intersection off Point Grey in Vancouver, and to maintain 16,000'. Expecting a brutal headwind heading for Vancouver, we were pleasantly surprised to level off and get a 230 - 240 knot ground speed heading west. By the time we arrived back in Vancouver they were using the south runway 08R. At least we weren't getting an later. We arrive YVR at 0520 in the morning, rather then the 0330 we had enjoyed through the rest of the week.

Climb out of Vancouver for flight level 230

When I arrived home to get some breakfast and go to sleep, it was 0830 in the morning, about an hour and a half later then the rest of the week. Sometimes, no matter how hard you try, you just show up late.....

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My New Perspective

Holy smokes, it's been over two months since I last posted anything on my blog. I suppose, those of you who still check in with me are probably wondering just what I've been up to. Well, the last two months have been pretty exciting for me. In the month of September, I did my upgrade training and a PPC ride in the left seat of the Beech 1900. This was quickly followed by the writing of the two Transport Canada ATPL exams that I'm required to pass in order to receive my Air Transport Pilots License. Following that, the kind folks at TC studied my logbooks and satisfied themselves that I have completed all the necessary flight time in order to obtain the ATPL and I got my license. After a couple weeks of line - indoc I was cut loose as a captain on the Beech 1900 on October 14th. My first trip as captain left Vancouver early in the morning to go to Kelowna - Kemess - Prince George and then back to Vancouver. I did two more days out of Vancouver, which saw me fly to Smithers, Terrace, Bob Quinn Lake, and Dease Lake. Since I was upgraded, the majority of my flying has been on the 1900 and the Caravan, so I've seen lots of Williston Lake and Kemess.

The week before last I got a last minute charter to Grande Prairie, where I had yet to go. As we were driving out to the airport it began to snow. By the time we pulled the airplane out of the hanger to fuel it, the snow became fairly heavy. We spent a fair amount of time sweeping the wings and applying de-ice fluid to insure the wings stayed clean while the plane was fueled. Finally, after a good dose of fluid, we quickly jumped in the plane, fired up and taxied out. We taxied for runway 15, waited a a few minutes for an arriving 737 and Beech 1900. Cleared to taxi to position, we got the before take off checklist done, took a good look at the wing to make sure nothing was sticking and we were ready to go. Once airborne had a good tailwind going east ,so the flight was much shorter then I expected. We planned a straight in Localizer backcourse onto runway 12 in Grande Prairie but ended up with the airport in sight before turning to intercept the localizer. The city of Grande Prairie lit up the sky once we broke out. It's a much larger place then I expected, or at least the city lights made it look that way. We landed, taxied and parked infront of the Shell dealer on the field. We ended up waiting for almost an hour for our passengers. When they arrived, they didn't arrive all at once, which almost became somewhat of an issue. When the first group arrived, I turned on the battery and a bunch of lights so people could see as they boarded the airplane. My first officer and I went about loading their stuff, which turned out to be quite a lot. We would get one groups stuff loaded when another group showed up, so we stayed consistently busy. After we had most of the gear loaded and the stragglers were just tying up loose ends, it occurred to me that I've had the airplane's battery on powering a bunch of lights for the last 20 or 30 minutes......... Shoot.... I quickly ran inside to check the condition of the battery.... 23 volts, just enough for a battery start.. whew. So we loaded everyone else up with minimum lighting, and fired up the right side engine, brought the ride side generator online and recharged the battery for a couple minutes before starting the left side. Once all ready to go, we contacted Grande Prairie Radio for our IFR clearance and their advisory. We departed runway 12, turned south, south westbound, and headed for Voles (a fix on the ILS instrument approach for runway 15 in Prince George). My first officer flew an excellent ILS onto runway 15 in Prince George. We unloaded our passengers' gear, finished the paperwork, put the plane back in the hanger and we were done for the night.

The Williston Lake sched has proven interesting in last couple months. With fall bringing in changing weather, I've spent more then a few hours flying the Caravan through the snow going to Tsay Keh and Fort Ware. While the lake itself is not yet frozen over, the ground around it has been covered in snow for at least a month now. Twice we've had to get the people from Fort Ware to drive to Tsah Keh because we just couldn't make it to Fort Ware with the weather. Once we had to do the opposite, because their was close to a foot of fresh snow on the runway in Tsay Keh because the grader that plows it was broken. It all makes the day interesting.

The next two days I have off, then starting next week, I do one month of night flying. If you've been reading long enough, you'll remember this time last year I did a fair amount of time flying Canada Post mail out of Vancouver. This year I'll be flying the Canada Post run out of Prince George. Fours nights a week I'll leave Prince George around 2130 and fly to Vancouver, over to Calgary, back to Vancouver, and back to Prince George to arrive around 0600. Although not a huge fan of being up all night, I do look forward to the month. The schedule is great, I'll get about six hours a night, and flying in the night is different so it'll be a neat change. I'm also happy that my 1st twin turbine captain gig is to be quickly followed by my second. In the next two weeks I'll do upgrade training and a ride on the King Air 200 so come January I can relieve some of our current King Air 200 captains to allow them to do training on our new medevac machine, set to arrive in the new year.

So that's what's been keeping me busy. I hope to not leave the blog unattended for so long again. Thanks to everyone who still writes me and leaves comments.

Cheers.

Night Falls

As we expected, we arrived in Bella Bella on Monday morning without any troubles. Weather we picked up from Pacific Radio enroute was calling the ceiling 900' AGL, so we broke out the RNAV rwy 13 approach, expecting to have to break through the cloud at some point. On the descent we noticed that the cloud deck was broken up much more then we expected and didn't extend very much past the airport. As we flew down the Spiller channel, we elected to do a vfr approach, down the channel, under the cloud, across the Seaforth channel and onto Campbell Island. It worked out great. Twenty minutes later on departure, there were many holes to climb up through as we pointed the King Air Southeast for sunny, clear Vancouver.

The day previous was the first time in a while I had to turn on the panel lights in the King Air. Most days we're done our flying by 1900 local. However, every so often something important comes in just as we're wrapping up. Somebody in Smithers had hurt themselves bad and at 18:45 we got the call to go pick them up. We flew to Smithers via direct in the clear skies with the evening sun setting right in our faces. Even through the sun visor and sunglasses, that evening sun can sure make one squint. A quick VFR approach and luckily the sun became hidden behind Hudson Bay Mountain, making for a much easier landing. We waited at the airport for roughly an hour while the paramedics went in to assure the patient was ready for transfer. On departure we lifted off into a now moonlight sky, and flew through the darkness, 45 minutes back to Prince George.

The lights of Fraser Lake

King Air 200 panel

Blogging from the road

So using my Treo, I'm going to try to update my blog via email while I'm hanging out around airports waiting to get airborne again.

This morning I'm still in Prince George. We've been watching the weather in Bella Bella, waiting for it to improve. Often throughout the summer, airports on the coast of BC become shrouded in marine fog, which moves in from the ocean over night. Sometimes the fog hangs around so long that we might only have a few hours where the weather is good enough for us to get in before it closes up again.

Upon arrival at work this morning Bella Bella was 1 1/2 a mile and overcast at 400'. It's improved now to a visibility of 9 miles or better and has been flirting with the 500' ceiling that would be the minimum ceiling required for us to make it in. Feeling that the trend is upward, we're going to launch here in 30 minutes for the one hour flight, and we feel we'll have no problems making it in.

A very busy end to a busy summer

Again I must apologize for the length of time it's been since I added anything to my blog. The summer has been busy, and my free time has gone elsewhere so the blog has gone to the wayside. It has been a fun and interesting summer. Although I have been flying the Caravan now and then, my time has mostly been adding up flying the King Air 200 and the 1900.





The King Air 200 has been lots of fun. WXB takes me all over the province with a mission to deliver number nine stretchers to every corner. Most days doing medevacs fetch at least five hours in the log book, which is pretty much perfect. New to my BC Airports list are Sandspit, 108 mile, and Creston, all very neat for different reasons. This whole province is just full of cool places to see.




Now I find myself cracking out all sorts of books. I've had the time to get my ATPL for a few months now but have yet to write the exams (there's a lesson here folks so pay attention). It seems my free time this summer could've been better spent (as per usual), as that ATPL is required for the movement of my rearend from the right seat to the left, and that left seat ride is in two weeks.

Enjoy the Long Weekend!!

Happy Canada Day Everyone..Also a Happy Independence Day to those south of the border. Hopefully everybody is surrounded by friends and family, enjoying the warm sunshine, BBQ's and cold drinks..
Not much on the story front, but here's some photos to chew on. Cheers!

The Caravan parked at Minnerette strip. A logging camp up the Sustut river Northwest of Takla Lake. Apprarently the steelhead fishing hear is awesome. I can tell you the view is pretty amazing.

On the departure from YVR. Off runway 26 Left, on assigned heading 350, after the Vancouver 3 departure. Enroute to Prince George

A CF-18 posing with a Fat Boy. This jet rolled into town by itself. The pilot was a local who wanted to suprise his Dad for Fathers Day. The Harley is the baby of one of the Paramedics I fly with.Up in Fort St John. Parked in front of the Nav Canada Flight Service Facility (I'm not sure if we call it a station anymore) I was on the 200 this day but the Caravan came up to join us

We went to a sunny Prince Rupert twice in one day. I figured I would snap some shots of VIH's Bell 222

A New Mission

Although flying is fundamentally just getting from point A to point B, the purpose behind the flying (or, how we're paying for the gas) can have an interesting impact on the flight and your day at the office. There are numerous types of flying you can do to pay the bills. So far, in the almost 2300 hours I've been behind the controls, I've done scheduled, charter, cargo, searches (flying a grid pattern looking for lost hikers), and a couple aerial tours (companies wanting to look at their operations out in the bush). I'm likely going to miss out on stuff like forest fire suppression, flight instructing, crop spraying, aerial photography (I'm talking, up @ 30,000' with a camera mounted on the belly of the plane flying grids), float flying, and who knows what else. Some of these things I wish I could try, such as flying floats and water bombing, and who knows, maybe I will. This past month though, I've been able to cross one mission type of my list. Being the son of a paramedic, I've often wondered what flying a designated medevac machine would be like. Now, I'm getting to find out. Last month I received a rating on the Beechcraft King Air 200. NT Air operates only one King Air 200, out of Prince George, C-FWXB, and it is rigged specifically for medevacs.

As emergency health care differs from province to province, the way medevacs is done differs as well. Certain provinces have their own medevac aircraft, some simply license other carriers. Some have a dispatch center, where others do not. Each province also has their own criteria regarding equipment on board the aircraft (such as TCAS, twin engine, etc), minimum crew (almost always two pilots), and pilot qualifications. In Manitoba, Skyward had a medevac branch called Skycare. It consisted of three Cessna Conquest II 441s, a Cessna 421c, and a King Air 100 based in Thompson, Island Lake, Cross Lake, and Norway House. Skycare provided nurses and dispatched themselves. Nursing stations would call the dispatch station in Thompson and the dispatcher would send out the most appropriate aircraft they had. However, Manitoba also had (and still has) Perimeter, Fast Air, and Missinippi doing medevacs, on top of the Provinces own service, Lifeflight. So the competition for medevac flights was pretty cut throat.

In British Columbia, the medevacs are regulated by the BC Ambulance Service. They decide where medevac planes will be based and tender contracts which companies bid on. They also dispatch the flights centrally from a dispatch center in Victoria and provide paramedics for the aircraft. Currently, Helijet has two King Air 200s based in Vancouver, Carson Air has a King Air 350 based in Kelowna, Canadian Global Air Ambulance (which also does international medevac work) has a Learjet 35 based in Vancouver, and NT Air has a King Air 200 based in Prince George. The province wide system also includes three helicopters. Helijet has two Sikorsky S-76s based in Vancouver, and Vancouver Island Helicopters has a Bell 222 "The Sound of Life" (which looks like it could've been Airwolf) based in Prince Rupert.

As a pilot, flying medevacs is interesting work. My day starts at the hanger in Prince George at 0800. The captain and I get the aircraft ready and phone the provincial dispatch to see what they have in store for us. Usually, we never know where we are headed next until the current flight we are on is finished. There are times, though it has yet to happen to me, where we are re-routed in flight and head off on a new assignment. All this adds a little excitement to the day as it makes the flight planning more interesting. Also, we service the entire province and regularly head off into Alberta, so we might see many different airports within a few days. If the paramedics or the dispatchers feel that time is of the essence, we get to attach the phrase "Medevac" to our callsign. Air traffic control, though they treat me pretty good on any given day, treats medevac flights great. Our ATC assigned routings are almost always as direct as possible and, coming into Vancouver, we are always given great priority handling resulting in a landing on the South runway, 26L/08R, for a short taxi to the apron and the awaiting ambulance.

In the month of June about half my flying is on the King Air doing medevacs. The other half still has me behind the right seat of the 1900, flying to Kemess (which just made the CFS), and driving the Caravan. All in all, I would have to say my flying is pretty rounded out. One day I find myself surrounded by mountain peaks guiding the Caravan to a gravel strip, the next I'm bombing down the Keinn 5 arrival into YVR at 270 knots. In May, I added 112 hours to my logbook. So far in June, I'm up to 81 hours with six days left to fly. To top it off, the battery for my camera I ordered on Ebay came and is working like a hot damn. What a great start to the summer.....

Parked at TerraceBacktracking to clear the runway at Bella Coola

Bella Coola

Back to Bronson

The battery on my Powershot G2 is no longer accepting a charge. In looking for a replacement, I wandered into Futureshop's and London Drug's websites. Both listed a replacement lithium - ion battery at well over $100. After calming from myself down from the initial shock, I decided to browse the internet even further to see if I could do better in the pricing dept, and better I found. It'll be my first purchase on Ebay, and hopefully it'll be here in a week or so. Until then however, any photos will have to come from my pda. Now, my pda, a Palm Treo 650, is a pretty neat unit, but the little camera that comes with it.....sucks.

So, flying, right..... This past weekend I took another trip up to Bronson Creek. The camp there has been quite full for the past little while so the diesel generators that supply the camp electricity have been sucking back a fair amount of dead dinosaurs. In order to replenish the diesel supply, I was to bring 34 45 gallon drums in from Bob Quinn, some 30ish miles up the river.

I left Prince George at 7:30 in the morning. Lucky for me, the forecast for Northern BC was for clear skies most of the day. A quick fuel stop in Smithers, then I was up and over the Coast Mountain range, passing by the Cambria icefields, over hwy 37A near Stewart BC, more mountains and glaciers, until I started my steep decent into Bronson. Descending down the Bronson Creek valley towards the strip I saw remnants of a once very active mining area. Way, way up in the alpine, above the tree line, was a full on exploration camp. Not just one or two wood huts like one would expect to see in the alpine, about 10 buildings that looked extremely out of place for where they were. The end of May, and they were still almost completely covered in snow. Further down the small valley was the Johnny Mountain Mine. This mine has a landing strip beside it that is about 4000' long, about 4000' up the mountain. This gold mine shut down in the mid 90's due to the high cost of operations (being in the middle of nowhere, halfway up a mountain), and the low cost of gold at the time. Most of the buildings are still there and the facility is owned by Skyline Gold Coporation. I'm not sure what they plan to do with it.

In the span of the day I flew 5 loads from Bob Quinn to Bronson Creek. Each time I flew back to Bob Quinn, the empty Caravan climbed with ease up above 5000' of mountain, direct from Bronson. However, fully loaded she didn't quite have it to climb up in time to get over the mountains, so it was down the Iskut river we went, offering a different look at the scenery.

The kind folks at Bronson offered to feed me and let me spend the night. However, hearing a rumour of rain in the forecast for the next day, I decided that, after the fuel was delivered, I would head off back to Prince George. At 17:30, I lifted off Bronson for the last time that day, up the Iskut River valley. Once I was overhead the surrounding peaks, It was a right turn on course, back over the Coast Mountains, inlets, and Glaciers, to fuel up in Smithers. I was home before daylight was out (not a hard task these days) at 2100.

Looking Southbound down the Bob Quinn Lake Strip

DOX parked at Bob Quinn Lake