Tis frisjes

Okay, starting off I must say that I’ve never ever done a block entry before, so I’m new with this. At the moment I’m sitting in a Boeing 767 owned, or I guess leased by United Airlines. Destination Honolulu. Honeymoon…

I got lucky, met a crazy Swedish sweetie in St. Andrews, Manitoba at work, became friends, dance partners and before we knew we figured that we might as well just marry so here we are at Flight Level 360, destination Aloha.

Why starting a blog, I don’t know. I guess it’s fun to write away while feeling mighty at this altitude. If often wonder if I still get excited about being a passenger on an airplane. The seating isn’t all that great, fellow passengers are sometimes grumpy, or are just stressed about moving themselves to a higher level and I don’t get to see what’s up front. But there is bonus points to being a passenger too. You don’t have to look out for traffic, or bother about keeping an eye on the instrument scan of the student, or rather keeping the plane in the air.
This morning was interesting, we picked up a healthy amount of ice during the descend to Denver and this was in an CRJ. Never seen that before. ’So jets DO actually collect ice’. I was under the impression that jets fly around like hot tea pots preventing ice to adhere to the critical surfaces When we departed from Denver we had the luxury to listen to the ATC-tranmissions on the radio. The weather was somewhat crappy, a downgoing RVR of 5000 ft and one of those crappy IFR days; -2 C, low visibility and lot’s of icing out there.

Before I move on, I should just quick tell a littlebit about myself. Well, I’m David. 24 years old and I’m Dutch. Which means I’m from Holland, or the Netherlands. A tiny over populated country between the UK, France and Germany. In 2004 I moved to Winnipeg, Manitoba to start flight training. I was able to complete my Private, Commmercial, Multi-IFR and Class 4 Instructor rating in about 7 months, excluding a little excursion back to Holland. The school was so friendly to offer me a job which got me enrolled to become a permanent resident here. This process takes forever, so I’m still waiting for this as we speak.
I worked here for just under 2 years and moved up to a local airline company where I instruct on the Beech Travelar; the best light twin ever build according to my boss, but I confess that he’s totally right. Within a couple months (preferably asap) I hope to move on to the flying mosquito, a.k.a the Metroliner. Another awesome aeroplane which I’d love to add in to my personal diary, ehm logbook. Flying is my passion, has always been, and most likely, will always be. The industry in Canada offers great potential and it’s great to be a part of it.
I was quickly gonna introduce myself so I better stop here since it becomes a bit on the long side.

On our way to the sun…
Last week I had an experience which made me think a littlebit. As part of the training we do a cross country. I’ve done this trip a number of times, and it’s a great opportunity to show students how it kindda goes on a typical IFR flight to another airport. Getting airborne, heading select on good old George, level off at TOC, cruise checks, chit chat, plan the approach, check in with Center and talk about the future to your fellow aviator in the right seat, meanwhile cheating by ckecking the GPS for a favourable groundspeed. It all looks like a ritual, something which soon becomes boring. True!! Though things can go wrong, and the same applied on this particular trip. We took off behind behind a Purolator 727. Everything looked fine, anticipated maybe a slight chop because of the wake of that beautiful bird 5 miles ahead of us and looked forward to a nice IFR trip in VMC conditions. Climbing through 3500, cleared to 4000… BANG…. and a strong cold flow of wind entered the cabin. We had a passenger in the back and it was good she was dressed for survival. I had to grap the door preventing it from opening further. Okay, what are the options, well closing the door was somewhat challenging, so we had no choice but returning back. Piece of cake you would say and everything seemed fine. Called Departure Control, let them know we requested vectors for a return. Said a firm ’negative’ to if we wanted to declare and emergency or required priority (don’t like the paperwork ;). We cancelled the IFR and joined a base and landed without too many problem. I was happy my student had a multi rating under his belt so he dealt fine with the 6 kts crosswind. Returned to the ramp and so much for our little trip. Anyways, we went the next day and it worked out great since we had the runway in sight 2 mile final which is great for the students experience, and mine… But…
Winnipeg is somewhat cold in the winters, and eventhough Winnipeggers like to brag about their scientifically unproven windchills my hands and face were far from comfortable after this little experience. Tempratures at altitude were around the -14 value but with 150 mph on the airspeed indicator if feels ’slightly’ colder. Interesting to see how the airspeed dropped pretty much right away to 120 mph, just because of this door and my student admitted that it felt like an engine failure.
So reflecting on this mishap I’m greatful for a couple things. First is that my student was perfectly able to control the aircraft himself without too much assistance, second we were in screaming VFR conditions third we were only a couple miles from the airport, fourth, because of the VFR conditions icing was not a factor and given the fact that the opening door reduced our airspeed by 30 miles we should be happy about that fact too. It could have been a lot worse if one of the above conditions were different, and it’s rather interesting to see how a small thing like an opening door in flight can distract you from the operation of the aircraft, so I learned a lot.

Still at 36000 feet, somewhere over the Pacific. Doors here are all nicely sealed, wouldn’t wanna have one open on me now. I’ll talk to you later