Coolness ... in the moment

Those 2 aspects of flying keep coming back. Helicopter pilots
really are a different breed. Trouble can come in many ways at any time and reaction time is limited. Accidents usually happen when the mind wanders.
So those 2 items are high on my things to focus on. Studying still fills a big part of my day and I hope to be finishing the biggest part of it somewhere next months, which gives me room to study other subjects necessary for my job, but which aren't part of the curriculum here.

As far as flying goes, things are progressing nicely and we started practicing autorotations this week (translation: engine failures). A lot of stuff happening in the cockpit in a very short time. The ground shows up, fast! Our descent rate usually lies around 1500 feet per minute. From 800ft (+/- 250 meters) you're down in approximately 30-40 seconds.

Other than that, now that I have a car, I'll be going to downtown Vancouver tomorrow. The weather is supposed to be dry. It will give me some time to relax, do some shopping, enjoy the sights and hopefully I'll finish it all off with a nice steak with french fries.

Just posted a batch of new pictures, look for more next week.

Monday and Tuesday

No flying monday. Went out and looked for a car Sunday. Found one. Had it inspected by a 3rd party service today. Turns out to be a good decision. Tires needed replacing and cooling fluid needed to be checked. Had them replace the tires and realign the tires at their own cost. Waiting for those to be put on today and if everything goes as planned I'll be the proud owner of a '94 Ford Taurus GL Wagon (3.8L V6 engine, automatic transmission). Look for pictures soon.

Flying is going well and the circuits (takeoff, circuit around the airport, approach and land) are improving. Well, I'm improving. Focus and coolness is the key. There is no room for not having your head focused solely at the task your doing right now. This is not like driving a car, one can not just step out when something goes wrong.

Stay tuned for more to come.

Weekend coming up

This week was quite productive. If it weren't for the weather we would have done circuits (also known as traffic patterns)to, as my instructor put it today 'put everything together'. Today the ceiling was too low (800ft) so we just did hover turns, hover taxi and takeoff and landing. By takeoff and landing I mean going up and down over a vertical distance of maybe 10ft (3m) or so.
Forecast shows us lots of rain, but as long as the visibility and cloud base is good (meaning, I can fly), who cares ? Sure, a nice day with sunshine wouldn't hurt, but it's the flying I'm here for.
Weekend is coming up, maybe I'll take a nice long bike trip (weather permitting).

In closing, here's a nice saying/quote I read a while back:

"Experience is not what happens to you, it's when you think about something that happens to you".

Food for thought.
Stay tuned.

Mo-Tue-Wed

Enjoyed my flight this week. Starting to feel a little bit more comfortable behind the controls. Right now we are doing hover practice (and turn)work, landings & takeoffs (just working on getting the helicopter in the air smoothly and vice versa) and climbs, descents and turns in upper air. Coming up on 10 flight hours this week. Feels like I have been here longer though.
Still studying all day, trying to dive in 1-2 subjects at a time and learn everything I can about those, before moving on.
Uploaded a second flickr blog (new!) for more recent photos. Hope you enjoy them.

Rest of the week

A lot of studying, some flying. Went up to Fort Langley and Golden Ears provincial park today.
Another full week of flying next week. A lot of pictures uploaded on flickr.

Tuesday - Thursday

Got to fly again this week! The second flight of the week was the most exciting one as we concentrated almost exclusively on hover practice and it's variations.
Managed to get the hover down (mind you, I'm not sticking it yet), hover turns too. A bit more difficult is sideways flight, that not up to par yet.
On another exciting note, we went to check out a shiny helicopter that just landed on one of the helipads. We come up from a distance and see this mafia-lookalike get out (ponytail, dark suit, dark glasses) along with a small entourage.
As we come in for a closer look the mafia-lookalike turns out to be an impressive (6' 5") Steven Seagal. Seriously. Turns out he's doing a movie in the area. No pictures allowed though. Check flickr for pictures of his chartered helicopter soon.
p.s.: My apologies for all you daily blog checkers, haven't had the time to post daily. Don't know if that's going to change any time soon.

Sunday & Monday

Didn't do much Sunday, mainly did some studying, no party Saturday night, french guys weren't up to it.
Monday today, thanksgiving day. Having the turkey soon. Went down to Whiterock, which is the equivalent of the seaside in Belgium. Look for pictures on flickr soon.

P.S.: Yes, Langley and Vancouver tend to get a lot of rain down from the Pacific, but I'll live with it. No worries. Today was good though.

Friday & Saturday

Friday was a beautiful day (queue U2), to make it away.
Went up to Fort Langley & took some pictures (check Flickr blog later).
Friday night me and the french guys headed out to the Beluga for dinner and then down to Gaby's (local bar/ cabaret/danscafé).
The french guys just passed there final and most difficult test, the IFR exam. Needless to say they were ready to go crazy. Fortunately the population at the café was pretty diversified. So no trouble finding girls their age (35-45). Got home at 1 am. A bit early but, needless to say: good times, good stuff.
Same thing is planned for this evening and tomorrow (Sunday) we are planning on heading out to Vancouver, as they haven't seen the sights yet and want to get presents hpme to their wife & kid when they go back home (friday next week).
Will progressively (not everything at once) upload flickr with the pictures, so check it once in a while.

Thanksgiving weekend.

That's right. No school tomorrow, saturday and monday ! Probably am going to drink a couple of tall ones with the french guys at the Beluga (local restaurant) tomorrow. That's where (according to the spanish CHC guys) you come for the food, you stay for the waitresses ;-) We'll just see about that ... tomorrow.
No news from the boss at the hangar yet, although I should give it some more time.
Good news: I have a flight planned for every workday next week (so no flight Monday). That means 4 flights. That means that by the end of next week I'll have a total of 5 flight hours. Excellent.
That's it for today.
Check out flickr blog for some nice photos of floatplane, another scenic cloud photo and a play of light and shadow (tried messing around w/ incoming sunlight and it's reflection on things)

Focus. Determination.

That's the 2 things I was thinking about this morning. How can I improve what I'm doing now to give me an advantage/edge over the other just-graduates that I will be applying for jobs with ?
As it happens, I talked to a (female) pilot yesterday who already has a couple of years of experience in the industry. After a couple of questions it became clear that work experience was the key.
The pilot in question used to work for a company at the Langley airport.
After giving me her name and telling me that the boss always needs a helping hand in the hangar, I headed out to the company, introduced myself (as a volunteer) and gave them my (canadian) cell phone number.
After that, the boss gave me tour of the hangar, showing me the helicopters they had sitting there, waiting to be ferry flown to their destination.
I kind of understood it would be possible for me to join the above mentioned (female) pilot as a "co-pilot" (well, more of a passenger w/ flight control priveleges) on the next ferry flight. We would drop one helicopter off and come back with another one.
Needless to say, after all this... I'm stoked (or pumped, whatever you wanna call it).
I know I might not go on that flight, but I have taken the first steps in getting my foot in the door and getting my name out there.
I can only hope I get that call to come over to the hangar this (or another) week and do some work or who knows, maybe some 'passenger/co pilot work' !

P.S: Thanks for all the Bday wishes.
P.P.S: No, that's not my mustang in the flickr photo blog.
i'm working on getting a car, but it won't be for this month yet.
P.P.P.S: Flickr photo blog are some early morning pictures.

01/10

Start of the 3rd week. Time flies too, apparantly.
Went to the 'Safeway' today. Basically a huge supermarket with it's own pharmacy, an automated change register (comparable to what you get back from a coke vending machine), and clerks who wraps bags for you.
Did some more meteorology and rules & regs today.
They seem to be forecasting rain for the whole week, so I don't know if I'll be flying this week.
Check flickr photo blog for pictures of the safeway.