The video is a little long, almost ten minutes, but totally worth the time. With the technology available to the movie industry these days I have high hopes for the future of military flying movies.
Phenom Trip Day Seven Part II
When last we left our intrepid, daring, young, fearless and yes, devilishly hansom heroes they had just made a foolish mistake based on nothing more than their selfish desire not to spend the winter in Siberia.
The flight up the Kamchatka peninsula, yes the one in RISK, was beautiful but Marcio and I had a hard time enjoying it with the weather in Anadyr hanging over our heads. Thirty minutes after passing the point of no return we checked the weather again and were told that the ceilings had dropped another hundred feet. Neither Marcio or I reacted to the news, outwardly at least. We knew that the weather suddenly changing so quickly meant that the forecast was wrong. The low clouds and rain were early and we were screwed.
As we got closer to Anadyr the weather reports got worse while the sun sank lower. By the time we were with in twenty minutes of the airport the clouds were down to two hundred feet and the visibility was a dismal three quarters of a mile, right at minimums for the ILS approach and getting worse. Marcio was flying that leg so it would be my job to count down our altitude for the last thousand feet and watch out the windscreen for runway lights. We knew the weather was only going to get worse so our plan was to land on the first attempt, no matter what.
Then things got worse,
“November 777BF be advised that the runway lights will NOT be available.”
“Oh shit!” I said, as the radio call from the control tower came in. Without runway lights we would only have the landing lights to guide us in to the runway, at night, did I mention it was freaking DARK! Needless to say we made it clear to the tower that lights would be oh so helpful and would they be so kind as to endeavor to illuminate said strip of concrete so that we may make a landing without putting too big of a divot in the surface, please? Or something to that effect. I don’t know if they’d been trying to save electricity or what but they informed us that the lights were indeed lit.
As we began the approach tower informed us that the ceilings were variable below two hundred feet and the visibility at around half a mile and dropping. I really didn’t want to leave the clear late evening sky with the full moon shining on the mountain tops poking out from the clouds but that’s why they pay us the big bucks so down we went. Things got black in a hurry and as we dropped below one thousand feet in began counting down by hundreds.
900 800 700 600 500 400 300, I risked a quick glance out the windscreen but saw nothing but black, 200 feet missed approach point, still nothing, wait…
“I’ve got the runway.” I said as the green and yellow lights appeared out of the mist and rain. We were under one hundred fifty feet and I estimated the visibility at around one quarter mile. Piece of cake. The hardest part was trying to find the ramp and then some dinner. Afterwards over a bottle of Siberia’s finest wine and some microwaved non-microwaveable pizza Marcio asked me if I had been scared. I told him no and quoted him the old saying “If you can keep your head while all about you are losing theirs, it’s just possible you haven’t grasped the situation.”
Magic F-18 Ride
As with all frustrated fighter pilots I could watch videos like this all day, well not all day, Mrs. Scary still has a long honey do list that I’m doing my best to avoid, but I digress. We all wish someone would give us a multi-million dollar fighter to bust clouds and drop JDAMs with but the closest I’ve come to that playing with the clouds in a jump plane worth literally hundreds of dollars on the way down from dropping meat bombs. The Navy pilots have one other advantage over jump pilots, their bombs aren’t flying around in the pattern when they’re trying to land.
Ferry Flight Pic of The Day
Say Moose and Squirrel
This is Tanya our handler in Petropavlovsk. Tanya was a no nonsense woman who’s job it was to take care of all our needs, translate for us and generally get us in and out as quickly as possible. She didn’t take any crap from the fuel guys and barely put up with my attempts at humor. The look of impatient tolerance in the picture is as close as we could get to a smile. The women in Russia are the most beautiful women in the world. Walking down the street is defiantly a hazardous undertaking, what with all the tongue tripping that goes on. But they have one flaw, they never smile. Maybe it’s because they live in Siberia or maybe it’s because all the men dress like…like…well, Russians. I met a beautiful Russian woman in Reykjavik last year and I asked her about it and she said “What’s there to smile about? That’s the problem with you Americans. You are always smiling for no reason.” What she said of course made me smile.
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!
There must be some mistake! Check your records again! I’m a young man in the prime of my life! This can’t be happening! I can’t be half way to 100!
SKYDIVING IN A CAR
Phenom Trip Day Seven
The weather could technically be called “shitty” when Marcio and I departed Khabarovsk. We were in the clouds and icing almost immediately after takeoff. The published departure called for a left hand turn after take off and I was following the procedure when ATC called and asked what in the hell I was doing. When I informed them that I was following the departure the controller screamed at me to reverse my turn because I was supposed to turn right after takeoff. Not wanting to argue with the man while in the clouds I dutifully reversed my turn and held my tongue. It wasn’t twenty seconds later when the controller came back on and again asked what in the hell I was doing? He said I was supposed to make a LEFT turn after takeoff, did I not know the proper procedure?! At this point I was starting to get just a bit miffed but was suddenly too busy to care because just then the pressurization system failed again and Marcio told me to put my O2 mask on while he tried to fix the problem. I put the mask on, finished the turn and engaged the auto pilot. Hell of a way to start the day.
When we landed in Petropavlovsk on the Kamchatka peninsula fours later I couldn’t take pictures fast enough. Along both sides of the runway were hundreds of Russian military aircraft of every design. Weird looking transports, helicopters and fighters were parked along side hardened camouflaged hangers. I couldn’t help but remember that just a few short years ago when I was in the ARMY I probably would have been shot as a spy if I’d landed there.
We went up to the control tower to check weather while the Phenom was being fueled and got some bad news. The controller told us that the weather in Anadyr was marginal and was forecast to get worse. The forecast called for very low ceilings and visibility to close down the airport in six hours and would probably remain that way for up to a week. We had a big decision to make. Anadyr is located far north on the Bearing sea and there are no other airports anywhere near it to divert to in the event that we couldn’t get in. If we elected to go we would be committed once we passed the point of no return. But if we stayed we could be stuck in Petropavlovsk for god knows how long. We decided to give it a shot. Our plan was to call for a weather update when we approached the point of no return. If the weather was good we would press on, if not, it would be back to Petropavlovsk and some of that wonderful Russian vodka.
A neat thing about the Phenom is the range circle on the Navigation display. The computer factors in winds aloft, airspeed, fuel burn and fuel on board to display a max range circle on the moving map that lets you know just how far you can fly before running out of fuel. It was really helpful to see the range circle expand when you throttled back to the max range setting. With the range circle showing us approaching the point of no return Marcio called for a weather update. The report was exactly what we didn’t want to hear. The clouds were down to four hundred feet and three miles visibility. The trend was for the weather getting worse but it so far we could still get in. I would rather it was complete dog shit or beautiful sky, not this maybe stuff. Neither Marcio or I said anything for a few minutes, both of us thinking about the ramifications of turning back or pushing on. In our favor was the fact that even if we wouldn’t have enough fuel to divert to another airfield if the weather got bad we would have enough for three or four landing attempts before things got quiet. Not wanting to be stuck in Siberia for two weeks and trusting the Phenom Marcio and I decided to press on, after all what could possibly go wrong?
TO BE CONTINUED…
Brian Regan on Flying
I hate flying, well not all flying just airline flying, which technically isn’t really flying more like riding or being transformed into human cargo. On Monday coming back from spring break with my family we were sitting in some soulless metal tube when the captain came on the intercom and announced that there was a small mechanical problem with the plane, not to worry something minor, but it would need to be addressed and the proper log book entry made before we could depart. This was not good news because the plane had already been delayed almost an hour and we only had an hour and twenty minutes in New york to make our connection. So we sat, and sat until finally a mechanic boarded the aircraft and performed the life saving maintenance that would keep the hundreds of people on board safe. He took out a roll of duct tape and taped, taped an overhead bin shut and then put a DO NOT OPEN sticker on it. We missed our flight home and had to spend the night in NYC but it was worth it, I mean, hey, safety first.
You know you’re a pilot when…
You know you’re a pilot when…
-
you say “correction” instead of “eehhhh”, “affrim” and “negative” instead of “yes” and “no”, answer requests with “roger” or “wilco” and say “stand-by” if you need some time to find an answer and “say again” if you don’t understand the request
-
you spell everything using the ICAO alphabet
-
you pull back on the steering wheel in your car when the road is climbing, pull the handbrake thinking you extend flaps to slow down or brake / accelerate while trying to drive a coordinated turn, or use both feet to brake at a red light
-
you call “Airspeed is alive, engine instruments normal” when accelerating with your car
-
you see a UFO and think, “What a beautiful standing lenticular cloud!”
-
the first thing you do in the morning is to check local METARs and TAFs, and repeat them when someone asks you how weather is in your area
-
you’ve had either an accident or an incident with a lamp post or another obstruction because you were looking at a plane in the sky
-
you have aviation charts assembled together covering your wall like if it was one big chart
-
you know the airway system in your area better than the highway system
-
your non-aviation friends don’t want to sit at the same table if there is another pilot with you and are confused because your watch is set to zulu time but call you each time there’s an aviation accident because they think you know all about it
-
you call all cities by the ICAO code of their airport
-
have the phone number of local airports and ATIS programmed in your phone’s memory
-
you know the frequency and location of all AM transmitters and tune NDBs on your car radio receiver
-
you have a license plate frame that says “My Other Vehicle Is An Airplane”
-
when buying a house a nearby airport is a must
-
your headset is in the top three most expensive things you own
-
your camera is full of airplanes; many of which are several shots of the same aircraft, just different angles and your desktop background is a picture form airliners.net
-
when you sign a document, you add your license number and expiration date
-
you know what a $100 hamburger is and have had them on many occasions
-
you notice that all the ships on Star Trek actually have Nav Lights on them and get upset during TV shows and movies showing airplane scenes because they just can’t do it right
-
the back seat of your car is littered with weight and balance sheets, aviation charts, flight computers, and other flying stuff and you write your shopping list on old approach plates
But the real proof that you’re a pilot is that you read through all this long list, laughed because half of these things apply to you and the other half could as well!
