Rumbled!

It's minus 38 degrees  here with wind chill this morning and my instructor is sick, so I've got the day off.  The cut off temperature for flying is -35, and everybody is sitting, waiting for a thaw.  The mercury was down at 35  yesterday while I was doing my pre-flight inspection and it didn't take long for the familiar face freeze to set in.  It was my fourth flight and for the first time I was starting to feel ahead of the plane, with the exception of a few blunders and an ensuing "rumbling".  Things happen fairly quickly and it's easy to get behind if you're not on top of things.  For example, on initial climb after take off at 150 ft above the ground landing gear is retracted, at 90 knots the flaps come up, 100 knots engine oil pressure, RPM and temperature check, prop set for 2400 RPM and at 600 feet above ground level, turn out is commenced where a certain land mark (a bridge) has to be picked out and headed for directly, all the while climbing at 100 knots.  All of this needs to be done while keeping the plane under control and before reaching 1900 feet, where level off takes place due to an altitude restriction.  There isn't a lot of time for bumbling asking oneself  "hmm, now what comes after, flaps again, and where's that bridge I need to head to head to?"  Procedures need to unfold like clock work in order to stay ahead of things and yesterday I felt like I was getting closer to where I need to be.  

There's a guy down the hall I practice with every night.  We sit in his chair and supervise each other making airplane noises like we're a couple of 5 year olds playing the airplane game, visualizing, imagining, sharpening procedures, "1500 ft gear up ka clunk flaps up vvrrrrr". His name is Pierre-Olivier and he is the most obsessed guy I've ever met.  He's from Quebec and his English is decent, but he still cannot put into words what a magazine picture of a helicopter does to him, or the sound of an approaching Griffon makes him feel.  We were in the student lounge yesterday and he was flipping through the latest edition of Vertical magazine, which he has been a subscriber to since he was 9.  He beamingly showed me a picture of some new helicopter from Europe, "Oh Jiff, I can't teel u phwew, ow much I loffff dis masheen".  Like a 16 year old groupie who'd just spotted the Beatles he was frantically rubbing his hand up and down his arm.  I think he was trying to convey to me the picture was giving him the shivers.  Next time I went into his room, sure enough the centre fold picture of the A-Star was pinned up on his cork board.  

I mentioned the infamous "Rumble Book" in a previous post which is the place where all the blunders from the course are both shamefully and humorously  recorded.  There is a guy from Nova Scotia who has been paired with the gruffest, most intense instructor in the school.  I think the man wrestles buffalo and wins with his stare alone.  The other day he left Shawn alone to do his pre-flight inspection while he walked over to put the engine cover in a bin.  It was quite windy and as Shawn was crouching down to check tire inflation all the papers in his flight suit pocket fell out and started blowing to the other side of the plane and towards the runway.  Terrified of being seen, and quicker than Billy Be-Darn Shawn scampers like a cat to the other side of the plane and tries to collect the papers which are being strewn erratically down the taxi-way.  His instructor still had his back to him, but was almost at the bin and ready to do a 180 and return his watch-full eye.  Shawn had to get back to the other side of the aircraft so as not to raise suspicions in his instructors over suspicious mind.  So he bolted and made it back to where he should have been by the time his instructor turned around; entry number one in the rumble book.

I made an entry of my own yesterday.  There are two radios in the Grob and a toggle switch which must be pressed to switch back and forth between the two.  It's kind of like having two cell phones in one where you simply press a button to talk on one or the other.  Before take-off the dispatcher in our hangar needs to be notified with the following blurb: "Grob ops, Shotgun 12 departing".  I managed to flawlessly pull that radio call off.  After making it however, I was distracted by something else and forgot to switch to control tower frequency, where take-off clearance must be obtained.  So a few minutes later as we were taxiing up to the runway hold line, I confidently and calmly stated: "Southport Tower Shotgun 12, takeoff".  The reply, a woman's voice, "Shotgun 12 you are still on Ops frequency".  IDIOT Ahhhh, what a dumb thing to do.  Rumbled!  The funniest part was when I got back down and asked by one of the guys how my flight went.   I sheepishly replied "pretty good except for a little radio issue".  I explained to him what I did, he looked at me, snickered and told me he did the exact same thing.  Rumble number 3, at least I'm not the only doofus!

Heather has been doing some research for me on how to deal with stress, how the body responds to it and strategies for minimizing it.  My understanding of the process is when we are stressed, certain hormones are released in our bodies such as cortizol,which helps in the fight or flight (ie run away) routine that our ancestors used.  Regular exercise reduces stress by up to 30 percent, but even more effective is laughter, smiling and social interaction.  It is quite interesting that smiling alone relaxes our stomach and releases relaxation chemicals.  It's so nice to know other guys are screwing up too!  I'm off to the pool.  Take care, thanks for reading.     

Winnipeg

I must say it's been a bit tough getting my head back in the game this Monday morning after spending a nice weekend in balmy, dynamic, romantic Winnipeg.  I'm being somewhat sarcastic, but it really was a fun time and turning out to be a neat city.  Heather came out for a visit and following the Friday night Bengal Beer-Cal/initiation night for the new class, we headed down the road 45 minutes for a Winterpeg winter getaway.  It was fantastic being on the non-initiation end of the beer call and having Heather here to witness the shenanigans.  The highlight of the night for me was the social experiment we decided to conduct on this one guy by putting lime juice, ground up Cheetos and water in his shot-glasses instead of booze.  The jury is still out and the results are a little skewed I think due to his excessively high blood alcohol levels at placebo commencement.  Regardless, I'm sure his liver was thanking us the next day despite the mashed up Cheetos that some genius decided to start adding.  He really didn't seem to notice anyways.

We had a good time in Winnipeg and spent a large part of the day at The Forks, which is the part of the city where the Assiniboine and Red Rivers meet.  There is a 6 mile skating track on the river and three full size hockey rinks, so we laced them up and went for a rip.  There was a pretty sharp wind, so by about kilometer 3 I was slurring my words worse than Cheeto Placebo Man due to a frozen face.  I'm still not sure my feet are completely thawed out, so at least now Ihave an excuse for not being able to fly straight (for those who don't know airplanes are steered on the ground by the rudder pedals on the floor, which is also used for directional control in the air).  

Since it was a Winnipeg weekend we continued on with the theme and rented the movie/documentary "My Winnipeg" made by a local guy.  Being a Canadian production I had my seatbelt fastened for a weird and wacky over artistic, hard to understand, Canadian movie experience.  It didn't dissapoint on the whacky front and I'm still left wondering what was fact and what was fiction.  Did you know:  Winnipeg is the coldest city on earth.  It has ten times the rate of sleep walking of all cities in the world.  There is a civic law stating that no street signage can be destroyed and there is a sign graveyard somewhere in the area.    Cree legend has it that beneath The Forks of the Assiboine and Red Rivers, lies a subterranean meeting of two rivers which leads to the underworld.  For hundreds of years they would burn their dead there, at the confluence of this underworld.  The Arington street bridge which is one the major bridges in the city, was designed and built to span the Nile and be sold to Egypt.  Somebody screwed up and it ended up not fitting, so the city of Winnipeg bought it at a discounted rate.  "Garbage Hill", the only land mass remotely resembling a hill by BC standards, is composed of over half a century of the city's trash.  It's not uncommon for for thrill seeking toboganning children to impale themselves on old car bumpers, frost heaved and sticking above the surface.  The city's Legislature building is the biggest Masonic construction in the world.  Apparently, when it was built in the early 1900s, the Premier and all his cabinet members were Free Masons, so it was the Masons who did the building.  Winnipeg is home to the scorer of the fastest hat trick in NHL history in an eclipsing time of 21 seconds.  It was also the home of the first Canadian hockey team to win Olympic gold, which took place in Antwerp in 1920 and was considered the capital of international hockey in the 20s and 30s, hosting some the the initial Soviet-Canadian duels.  And last, but not least, the city was the site of "If Day".  In 1942, 5000 Rotary members volunteered to dress up as Nazi storm troopers and rain simulated terror on the city.  The disturbance was a campaign to promote the purchase of war victory bonds.  I'm still not sure how much of all this is really true.  I'm going to research it as it's all quite interesting.  I recommend the movie as well.

The winds are up today and clear hood 4 is approaches and landings.  Needless to say, conditions need to be almost perfectly calm to make learning productive, so I've got the day off to study.  My class is starting what is called a "Rumble Book", tradition and a place where everyone records the blunders and or stupid things they've done in the airplane so far.  My third flight last week was a tough one, so I am ready for a little group therapy.  More to follow on that...take care.   

     

Primarus Fuga

The conditions were finally just right today for my first flight.  It was a beautiful, clear, bright blue sky day with almost not a cloud in the sky.  I mentioned the horizon had to be almost perfect due to the skill that I needed to tackle.  It's called attitude flying which is where certain climb, bank and turn positions are set up based on the plane's orientation with the horizon as opposed to looking at the instruments inside the cockpit.  The point is to learn how to fly without having eyes inside so that collisions and other problems can be avoided.  Flying is tricky because it involves 3 dimensional movement as opposed to just 2 on the ground, so trying to remember an exact picture in front of you on the windscreen combined with keeping a level altitude and turning at a steady rate, while monitoring radio communication and keeping track of airspeed  is like a juggling act while trying to talk and chew gum.    I couldn't have asked for better conditions today and am amazed at the airplane I get to fly.   The Grob has been compared to a German sportscar and I now know why.  The Cessnas I learned to fly on are like old unresponsive 1972 pick-up trucks in comparison and I was amazed at how fast it climbed.  I had to double take a few times out of disbelief that I'm actually being paid to do this and really enjoyed the day.

Last week we had an interesting guest speaker come in to do a quick talk and conduct a bunch of research.  He was a psychologist named Dr. Terry Orlick who has done a bunch of work with elite level athletes and various other professions on how to train the mind to perform under pressure and how to reach and maintain excellence.  He's worked with a bunch of Olympic medalists over the last 25 years such as the speed skater Katrina Lemay Doan.  He just finished with a team of surgeons teaching them how to control their minds and manage stress during critical phases of surgery.  He's been contracted to figure out how to make better pilots and how to raise performance levels on an ongoing basis.  One of the things I found most interesting was his bit on "ongoing excellence".  He used an example of some of the pro golfers he works with and he talked about how in every round of golf played there is always a lesson to be learned or a weakness to be improved upon.  So for example, Tiger Woods may win a major tournament, but in that win realizes his short game is weak.  He said that it is easy to learn a lesson or identify a weakness, but what separates the elite performers from the mediocre performers is that the elite performers act on improving  and relentlessly work on that weakness until perfection is achieved as opposed to remaining idle after the lesson has been learned.  Tiger Woods for example can often be seen out on the driving range after a major win he explained, working on any imperfection he notices in his game.  

The other thing he talked about was the power of being in a moment when performance is critical and how the mind can be trained to block out the past and future in order to "flow" in the moment.  So on a flight test for example, distractions such as past screw ups, or fear of future events and or failure, detract from present-moment tasks.  He discussed a variety of techniques for mind blocking which are useful in a lot of situations in life.      

Alright, that's enough rambling for now.  I've gotta go hit the driving range.  

Weathered in...

I heard on the radio the other day that weather is the most talked about subject in the world.  So, I'll follow along with the masses and say that I never thought I would see a rainy February day in Manitoba.   The running joke today was "Hey, let's go play hockey in the parking lot".  Unfortunately it was freezing rain, which is never good when you are a student pilot.  If rain droplets hit the wing surface and freeze, the airflow gets disrupted which reduces lift and causes huge problems; all of a sudden gravity is not your friend.  Apparently the Grob has about 2 minutes in icing, so obviously all planes were grounded today.

In the morning weather brief today everyone dodged a bullet because they didn't have the "pick a victim emergency scenario".  Leading up to it I was calculating my odds of being chosen and figured it was around 10%.  With Murphy's Law in the mix I deduced it must have been in the high 90s.  If it was for a draw prize or one million dollars I would never be picked, but for something like this...call me a pessimist, but..  The bottom line is being ready for it I suppose and not minding being picked, which is where I will be tomorrow.  The worst part about being chosen is the fact there is a surly old captain that sits in the back of the room and turns up the heat big time on anyone who stutters, stumbles, stammers, or generally needs a good yelling at that day.  Like a hyena lurking in the tall grass he will scream "You are in a one G environment, what's the matter with you???  Sort yourself out or you are not going flying today!!!!!"  Well sir, Mother Nature sorted it out today and nobody is going flying anyway.

It is interesting seeing how the different personality types deal with being prepared for upcoming lessons and or being the "hyena in the grass bait" for the morning emergency exercise.  At about 8:30 last night I popped by my neighbors room and found him watching some bad Quebecois Comedy show.  "How's it goin Gaston, ya got your Red Pages down?"  I asked, "Hi know da feerst tree hemerrrgencies, but dat eez hall".  I reply, "hmmm, ya think you're going to have them by tomorrow?"  "Ho yiss, eets hall gooood Jfff".  I don't think he had them memorized this morning and I don't think he believes in Murphy's Law, or maybe 10

% odds are low enough.

There is another guy here who failed 3 years ago.  He went out, spent every penny to his name on a commercial licence and is back for a second crack at it.  I have never walked into his room and not seen him studying.  

I hope you are doing well, thanks for reading.