2005-04-22 20:35 | fche blog flying Hope Air mission six
Today’s Hope Air mission was my longest day of flying yet.
I flew solo from Toronto (CYTZ) to Thunder Bay (CYQT), to pick up a charming young lady and bring her back home. Each leg should take three hours in GXRP under ideal conditions, but today’s weren’t ideal.
The outbound leg was uneventful, maybe even boring, except for crossing a weak cold front, and grossing a weak bladder. The former lasted for something like an hour, and involved ice and some turbulence. Just before going out of radio communication range with air traffic controllers, I remembered to ask for a discretionary range of lateral and vertical movement, so that I could go around the worst of the spots shown on the weather radar. The latter involved two separate TravelJohn units, which were effective (whew!) and nowhere as yucky as one might think.
The return leg was broken up into two halves, with a stop-over at Sault Ste. Marie (CYAM), on suspicion that bladder issues may come up with my passenger. And sure enough, she sprinted to the bathroom and a smoking spot at the Soo once we landed. The final homebound leg was pleasant, included a brief airplane control exercise for the lady, and finished off with a gently airplane-rinsing drizzle.
I was not exhausted after these 8.1 hours of consecutive flights. Maybe I have it in me to fly across the country after all, which should take only about twice this much time.
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I wasn’t exhausted after my eight-hour flight on Wednesday either — in fact, physically, I was flying much better at the end than at the beginning, I dealt with my icing encounter calmly and efficiently, and I ended up with a competent ILS approach in moderate turbulence followed by a circle-to-land.
I think that’s deceptive, though. I noticed, for example, that around hour 7 I could no longer remember the title (much less the words) of any song that I knew — it was as if part of my brain had been erased. I could calculate intercept angles and time and fuel remaining, but could not otherwise add simple numbers in my head. And I made a strange judgement call about routing, deciding not to ask for a diversion to the north that would have added only 15-20 minutes to the flight but would have kept me far clear of most icing risk (though I knew that I could always divert to the north if I needed to, as I ended up doing). And worst of all, when I did finally land, I made a competent, smooth landing, but I used flaps, which goes against one of the primary rules of safe flying: never, ever drop flaps if you’ve encountered ice during a flight (at least in a plane without boots).
So, over all, I do think that flying 8 hours in a day is reasonable, but it’s important to realize that at the end, you’re probably much more tired than you feel. David (URL) - 2005-04-23 07:45
Right. Regarding the flaps & icing though, if you fly into above-freezing air after an icing encounter, basically all of it will drop off within a couple of minutes. There’s no real danger of using flaps in this case. I was disappointed to see no ice at all left on the airplane yesterday after landing at CYAM, considering the near-inch buildup on the temperature probe twenty minutes earlier. Frank - 2005-04-23 09:06
I flew solo from Toronto (CYTZ) to Thunder Bay (CYQT), to pick up a charming young lady and bring her back home. Each leg should take three hours in GXRP under ideal conditions, but today’s weren’t ideal.