Dead Reckoning

The taxi ride from the hotel in Vladivostok to the airport in the morning was by far the most dangerous part of the trip up to that point.  We saw no less than three accidents on the highway wide dirt road, one of which was probably fatal.  At one point a Russian jet fighter went roaring past us and I said to Marcio “Hey look, a Mig!” at which point our cab driver leaned forward and looked out the windshield and proclaimed it to be a Sukhoi.  Although I was embarrassed by my miss-identification of former Soviet aircraft I was more concerned with the fact that the driver wasn’t watching the road and didn’t see the dump truck that had pulled out in front of us.  Not to worry though, I drew his attention to the situation by screaming like a girl.

      After Marcio and I finished scraping the ice off the Phenom’s wings with our credit cards, which  still took less time than it took customs to finish interrogating our camera man, we finally rolled down the pot hole filled taxiway and took off.  With just three people aboard the Phenom climb’s like a raped ape in cold dry Siberian air and it wasn’t long before we were passing sixteen thousand feet.  Suddenly my ears started popping like mad.  Marcio yelled that the pressurization system was malfunctioning and that I should put my oxygen mask on.  I”m sure I beat the eight seconds it took me to put the mask on when Marcio tested me on the system the first day of flying the Phenom, gotta love adrenalin!   I leveled off while Marcio tried to get the pressure equalized in the cabin., my ears were really hurting as the air pressure built up.  Air traffic control then started squawking about the mountains in front of us and demanding that we continue our climb.  I tried to explain our problem but I didn’t want to go so far as to declare an emergency and deal with whatever passed for the FAA in Russia.  We were unable to fix the automatic system but were able to stabilize the cabin pressure in manual mode, take the mask’s off and continue our climb to altitude.  For the rest of the day the pressurization needed constant attention and then started working just before landing.    Just another day on the road.

  After landing in Khabarovsk Marcio called Embraer and the engineers there told us that the rough taxiway in Vladivostok probably was the cause of the malfunction and that we could still fly the Phenom in manual mode and be legal.  That was good news because we were going to keep going anyway.

Any idiot can fly a plane, I’m living proof of that fact, it’s really learning to make the right decisions that will keep a pilot from bending the expensive metal he rides in.  Weather or not, pun intended, to even make a trip is the most important skill, and it is a skill, a pilot needs to learn if he wants to have a long flying career.  But even the most Conservative pilot can get caught by surprise when the weather changes quickly.

Just a few days ago a very experienced balloon pilot in Georgia got caught by a fast building storm while he was flying a load of skydivers.  Apparently the storm came up so quickly that he was unable to land before the storm hit.  The pilot told the jumpers to leave just before he was sucked up to eighteen thousand feet by powerful updrafts.  He was in radio contact with his ground crew and described the whole event, including counting down his altitude as he made his final descent.  I can’t imagine how terrifying it must have been when the balloon collapsed and began the eighty second fall back to earth.  One of the skydivers said that if he’d known how bad the situation was he would’ve strapped the pilot to him when he jumped.  That would have been difficult but not impossible, he could have used some of the rope balloons always have on board and figured something out.  The landing would have been rough with all that weight but survivable.  According to the surviving skydivers the weather at the time of takeoff showed no signs of the approaching storm.

We had the same thing happen to us at Skydive Twin Cities last year.  A thunderstorm came barreling down on us out of nowhere while a load of skydivers was in the air.  The first half of the load landed safely but the last two tandems got caught by a gust front that pushed them far off the drop zone and slightly injured one of the passengers on landing.  The sky like the sea can be an unforgiving and harsh mistress.

As many of you know the i pad has and is still in the process of revolutionizing aviation.  The ability to electronically store all of the maps and approach plates in the world has definitely made my life as a ferry pilot WAY easier.  In the olden days I would have to bring a stack of paper maps and approach plates that weighed literally POUNDS!  Now all I bring is my i Pad.  The latest gizmo I’ve found is the i HUD.  The i HUD is a virtual heads up display that in the event of the loss of your vacuum pump, followed shortly by your artificial horizon, can give you attitude information for up to eight hours.  You do need to buy the sending unit that costs about $800 but in my opinion if this thing works would be worth it.  The app also claims to give you synthetic vision that, again if works as advertised, would be a great tool when shooting low IFR approaches.  The future is here people and technology is making flying so easy even I can do it.

http://aviation.levil.com/AHRS_mini.htm 

Sunset from a Cirrus coming into Chang Mi Thailand.  Gotta remember to clean the windows more often.

                    I should have read this more carefully before trying to board the plane with my catapult.   #8