With nothing else to do because I STILL don’t know when the Navajo I’m supposed to take to Bangkok will be ready, I’ve been going over the route I’m taking. With the trip being delayed so long I’m running up against the start of skydiving season, although the 6 inches of snow we got overnight gives me a few more days. Either way when I finally get the Navajo in the air I’m going to be trying to get to Thailand as fast as I can. The problem is that it will be very difficult to do more than 2 legs a day due to the fact that I’ll be going east and losing an hour or two every day due to the time change.
A typical day goes something like this:
Get up early and grab a taxi to the airport, no breakfast because nothing is open yet. Try to get in the air before sunrise but but because of delays in paying landing and parking fees , checking weather and filing a flight plan you’re at least an hour late. 7:00am local.
Fly 4-5 hours, land and try to get fuel, check weather, pay fees’ and file flight plan as fast as possible, which can be as little as 1 hour in the US and Canada and as long as 4 in Europe, middle east and Asia. Land at 12:00-1:00 local. Back in the air around 3:00pm.
Fly 4-5 more hours. By the time you land the local time is between 8:00-10:00 pm and you still have to fuel up for the next day’s flight get a taxi to some hotel, grab a quick dinner and get some sleep.
That’s a worst case scenario, at some airports I can get in the air very early but still not much before 6:00 am. Do this for 8 days in a row and you will start to get just a little bit tired, especially flying into the rising sun first thing in the morning. The crushing desire for just a few minutes of sleep can very powerful and dangerous. “But why don’t you just take a day off and rest up?” Non-ferry pilots ask. Because we get paid to fly not sleep. Hotels, food and other costs dictate that you keep going, no matter what. Over the years I’ve struggled to stay awake by singing, pinching my inner thigh, shadow boxing and doing isometrics. But sometimes if you could just get a few minutes of sleep it would make all the difference in the world. The problem is keeping your cat nap to just a few minutes and not a few hours. I can usually close my eyes for a minute or two and wake myself up but it’s always scary. I know of pilots who have fallen asleep and not woken up for hours. In the old days I tried putting my watch inside my headset with its alarm set for 5 minutes but it wasn’t loud enough. I sometimes tune in one of the radios to the automated airport frequency and crank up the volume hoping that when I get close enough to receive the signal it will wake me up, not a great option. Yesterday I hit upon what I think will be my salvation. I have a Bose noise cancelling headset that not only does a great job of filtering out airplane noise but also has a headphone port that allows me to plug in my iPod and listen to great quality music while I’m flying. When I was thinking about the problem I realized that I could also plug in my iPad to the headset and use the alarm clock app set to as little as 1 minute to wake me up. I tried it out at home and the alarm comes through loud and clear. I could set it for 5 minutes, wake up and check the engine instruments, hit the snooze button and catch a few more zz’s. I almost can’t wait to be really tired on my next trip
To force yourself to sleep, you can try Melatonin which is “natural” and seems to be used by a lot of pilots who fly across a lot of timezones. To help stay awake (because it could save your life) you might want to check what the university students are doing these days when they want to cram for an exam (hint: it’s not AC/DC).
To force yourself to sleep, you can try Melatonin which is “natural” and seems to be used by a lot of pilots who fly across a lot of timezones. To help stay awake (because it could save your life) you might want to check what the university students are doing these days when they want to cram for an exam (hint: it’s not AC/DC).