Things continue to go well
in the new flying career. I have flown
more hours this week than any other with Ameriflight.
Monday through Wednesday I
had a dream schedule of showing up at the airport at 1130, flying for about
three hours, and returning by 1630.
Went home at 1800. The run (AMF
422A) goes Portland-Pendleton-Pasco-Yakima-Portland with no layover. Normally the run belongs to one of our very
senior pilots but since he was on vacation this week I got to fill in. You really can’t beat that schedule.
On Tuesday, I did a very
interesting ILS approach. You see, the
visibility was down to one mile, but not because of fog, clouds or
precipitation. The 40-knot winds over
at Pasco kicked up an awful dust storm that extended all the way up to 6000
feet, requiring an instrument descent and approach. I have never shot an approach into dust before. Wasn’t much different than usual except the
sky outside was brown instead of gray, and there was far more winds than
usually when you have low visibility conditions. The surface winds were strong the entire route, and when I took
off from Pendleton earlier in the day, the tower controller called and said it
looks like I could have taken off from the ramp since the winds were so
strong. I think I used less than 500
feet of runway.
Thursday and today I flew
AMF 413. This is a very long run than
goes Portland-Pendleton-La Grande-Baker-Ontario and return. The flight path spans three states and the
layover is in an entirely different time zone.
On Thursday I logged 5.4 hours, 2.8 of which was in actual instrument
conditions. I sure wish I could bid
this run, but the pilot who has it likes all the flight time so much that he
probably won’t let it go for a while.
Don’t believe it when people
tell you that learning NDB approaches is just for your instrument
checkride. At La Grande and Ontario, it
is our only option. I did the NDB approach
to La Grande twice yesterday, once in each direction.
Speaking of bidding routes,
I will find out what the next six weeks will hold either today when I get back
or on Monday. With no movement in the
pilot ranks, I expect another six weeks of fill-in flights. I don’t really mind it so much as I get a
great deal of variety, but it would be nice to have guaranteed flight
time. Still, I have flown nearly every
day for the entire bid period and don’t expect the next one would be any
different. I believe I have now flown
every Cessna 402 run that we have out of Portland except for two.
I’m flying the UPS run
AMF1964 tomorrow. Easy flight to
Pendleton and La Grande, and home by noon.
I like the Saturday flights and seem to be getting them every other week
– AMF 1964 is the only one that can be flown in a C402.. No time wasted – just fly the route and
immediately fly back home.
By the end of this week I
will have 140 hours with Ameriflight including 33 non-training approaches and
30 hours actual IFR – all in two months!