Personal: Went to Bakersfield this weekend to Mom and Dad’s
house, even though they were visiting Paul (that punk-ass who got married and
didn’t tell anyone). A guy named Brent
Taylor took me up there on his way to Fresno to visit his family. It is amazing connecting with other pilots
who are in a similar position as you.
We talked about flying every minute we were in the car for hours and had
a great time. These are the types of
friendships I look forward to building in this new career. I feel I am truly among my own kind now.
Today we were back in class
after having finished our simulator sessions last week. Our morning discussion was about weather
theory and products. We spent quite a
bit of time going over local weather patterns in SoCal, which wasn’t very
helpful to me but still quite interesting.
The afternoon discussion
covered our operations manual and included our hazardous materials (HazMat)
training. Not looking forward to
carrying that stuff particularly, but at least now I know how to identify it,
handle it, and check to make sure it is properly and safely secured for
transport. To sum up the discussion
(and the day) the instructor told us to basically use our heads: “Don’t put
your sack lunch on top of the bubonic plague.”
One of the concerns I have
always had about this type of flying is that which is concerned with structural
icing. We went over some procedures
today and how to deal with it and I feel a bit better about operating in
it. Two things in particular helped me
out. First, all Ameriflight aircraft
that I will be flying have pneumatic de-icing boots to avoid buildup on the
leading edges, and those systems are in good shape and well-maintained. Second, these aircraft have considerably
more power available to climb out of icing conditions, which generally occur in
a fairly narrow band of air. It’s hard
to get that C-172 from 9000 to 14,000 feet to get into air cold enough where
ice doesn’t form, but a C-402 and PA31 shouldn’t have much problem there. Break out the oxygen!