So You are a pilot?

Invariably when meeting somebody for the first time the question "What do you do?" comes up. The real meaning being what do you do for a living, to pay the bills and sadly that ends up most of the time being a definition of who you are. Generally not taking into account that most people were alive for at least twenty years before embarking on their careers and of course there are other things we do like eat, sleep etc... Having been out of employment for a while I dislike this question as there is more to who we are than our formal employment. That said let me get to the thrust of this post- see what I did there? Which is a little bit of a primer or FAQ if you will of my current profession. Ever since time immemorial man has been enchanted buy flight wishing to be free as the birds  something attested by the tragic tale of Icarus and finally realised when science caught up with our dreams. In our country we are not to many so once one introduces themselves as one some common questions with some assumptions frequently come up. Here we go...

So you're a pilot- which airline?

Not all pilots work for airlines. Some are students, others have a private licence for recreational purposes and then there are those with a commercial licence who are still looking for work which is very common. For those fortunate enough to be employed there are many places one could be for instance a flight instructor which is a common route for building hours, military, a charter pilot . A lot of those who work in General Aviation work in charters for business, tours, humanitarian work, surveying, carrying miraa(khat) etc and those are not formal airlines. At Wilson airport in Nairobi this is most likely what you will find as there are only a couple of airlines based there. Also there are those who are simply building hours in the bush without pay.

If one happens to answer the previous on in the affirmative what comes up next is- Which routes?

Another assumption made is that we fly a certain set of routes but that is not exactly how it works. There are many different models of aircraft and one needs a specific qualification to fly each which is termed a rating. The size and capabilities of the aircraft you fly then determine which routes you do. In a scheduled airline with more than one aircraft type there is an entry fleet usually the lightest aircraft which does short routes and as one gains experience they move on to bigger ones and fly further. So a better question  to ask is "which aircraft do you fly? "

Another one- Since you use autopilot you just sit there, right?

Naturally it is assumed that the autopilot does all the work and pilots just sit there drinking coffee and flirting with the air hostesses. That picture is not accurate. Granted the autopilot greatly reduces the workload but it is still the human in charge. The human is the one who programs it and ensures that the instructions entered are followed. The pilot tells it when to turn, climb and at what speed. Also the pilot has to keep a check on the aircraft systems to make sure they are performing as required and also make changes as dictated by the external environment or instructions by air traffic control. In any case the reason people are there is for when things do not go as expected and that is the focus of pilot training and the numerous emergency drills that are done and evaluated at frequent intervals. So in essence the presence of the autopilot does not mean zero work.

You must get a lot of girls right? Pilots are players

This is an assumption. Anybody can be a player whether you are Pilot, doctor, teacher or sell sweets along Uhuru Highway. Getting a Commercial pilot licence does not automatically give one game. You wither had it before or you didn't. Then again it all boils down to one's character.

There ends my brief FAQ which I hope has answered some basic questions and common misconceptions about flying. The comments section is open for more ...

The Artful dodgers

My good Friend Mr Charlie Bravo

In Flight school one of the exercises we're taught is called precautionary inspections. A technique to be used in case of bad weather and you have to put the plane down on a surface you're unsure of. Pretty much one of those things you do academically and hope that you won't get to do in real life. If you're operating in and out of well equipped airports with tarmac runways you needn't worry too much. The instrument facilities will help you get through the bad stuff. Now when you're flying in the bush it's a totally different matter and you have to do it free style.

Luckily for us this past Sunday the rain falling at the destination was light though it got heavy very close to touchdown. The cloud base was really low but the flat topography was a plus as there was no high ground to worry about. That was at Pochala right at the border of Ethiopia and the plane got a nice baptism in the mud you'd think it was one of the cars from the old fashioned Safari rally. That went pretty well.

Now the next leg to Boma was a little more interesting as Boma is at the base of some hills and what's more there were a couple of thunderstorms nearby. The clouds looked really dark and ominous, when you see a cumulonimbus ( or CB in short also known more affectionately as a Charlie Bravo) cloud en route it's a cause for concern, I've heard enough stories about them and one of the cardinal rules of flying is never to fly into a thunderstorm. Good thing is some geniuses created a device called weather radar which indicates areas of precipitation and helps to avoid those dreaded storms. After consulting it a bit we found that it was clear over the destination and manoeuvred around the rain. However that particular strip is really nasty when wet and we had to give it a look before committing to land. Getting in is easy but the mud would make departure difficult. So the plan was to fly over and assess the surface. First time spotted some water on it and me being a member of the cowards club said we give it a miss but the captain wanted a closer look so we came round again. His assessment was that it was do able and when we came in a third time it worked out fine and he was satisfied with the surface. When I got out I realised that gum boots are not such a bad idea for shoes, was crazy muddy! All that time passangers were very quiet and when we landed they told us about how they wondered about was happening.

Another captain had told me about his experience with that particular field. A couple of years back he was landing there and the brakes decided to go on holiday. What's more at the end of the runway there was a grass thatched hut one of those that's all too common over here. Oh and top that the hut was right next to the hot exhaust, so you can guess what happened next... Oh and did I mention that the fuel tanks are on the wing tips? Now that tight there was a recipe for disaster! Thanks to some quick evacuation from the crew fortunately there were no casualties though one of the pilots got burns. Part of one of the wings is still there as evidence of that sad event...

Boma with a nice hill in the background. Ethiopia lies beyond

For our stay there the weather always looked threatening. You have to pardon a pilot's obsession with the weather. So as expected on our way back we met a few more of our friend Charlie Bravo. However this time the weather radar decided to start misbehaving on us! So we had to rely on our eyes. Up ahead things were not looking too good but right behind us were sunny skies. An instrument rated pilot needn't be afraid of clouds but when you have a thunderstorm ahead with no idea what's inside you've got to make the decision to look for plan B. So once again the artful dodgers were at it again taking a round trip around the storm. After a little while we saw some sunshine- hallelujah! We were home free so we reoriented ourselves and were back in business! A little rain here and there but nothing we couldn't handle. So far so good until we were about 50 miles from our destination and we see some really heavy rain right on our track to Bor our intended destination, clearly our celebrations were premature. As we got closer we could feel the turbulence beginning to build up and we were already weighing our options. We could easily have decided to go to Juba our home base but the airport there closes at 4. Since we had enough fuel it we decided to go around the edge and see if it's good. Even considered giving a guy on the ground a call to find out what the weather was like.

As we got closer we saw the Nile – a good sign then the roofs of the town, Hallelujah once again- sweat wiped from brow! Fortunately for us the rain hadn't quite reached Bor, so we wasted no time in landing there and getting ourselves to the hotel for some rest and relaxation after an interesting day in the air- what flying is all about!

Riding Shotgun

Juba International 

The newest nation in the world, a land that has been ravaged by years of war and is trying to get to get back on it's own two feet. Yeah you guessed it, Southern Sudan, yet to know what they'll call themselves on their official day of independence coming up on July 9th 2011. Haven't been here very long but there's a few things that I've observed in my first week here.

First thing that hits you- literally when you touch down is the heat, was a nice 'cool' 29 degrees when I got here, I'm told I came at a good time during the rainy season when the temperatures are a bit mild otherwise I'd be toasting somewhere around the forties. Hmm perhaps this sun explains the dark complexion that is so prevalent here- by the way there are some who are light skinned and I'm not talking about foreigners, was actually surprised!

Another thing is that is the land is flat and not like the plains we have back home in Kenya. In Juba there are a number of hills around but in some places you look all around and there's not so much as a mound in sight. Probably why the White Nile meanders lazily around the countryside- another thing contrary to what I expected there's a lot of greenery, naturally around the river but even inland it's not a total desert.

The people I've met are pretty friendly though quite a number have war experience so you've got to be careful lest you get yourself in a brawl. Oh and many have been to Kenya to school so it's easy to find people to speak Kiswahili with. About the way experience there's this guy who was telling us how he learnt to use an AK- 47 as a child and how they would shoot each other jokingly not knowing the finality of the bullet. They thought the person shot would come back shock on them when he didn't. There's a lot of evidence of war in crashed aeroplanes near airstrips, wrecked vehicles etc but though it's peaceful right now there are some areas with some tension in the especially in the Northern parts near the border.

On my second night here got the privilege to spent some time in the wilderness at Kauda near the Nuba mountains, one of the places where there could be some tension. When I asked if there are any wild animals about the answer was no, all that bombardment during the way pretty much scared them away. The wilderness experience was pretty interesting particularly showering under the stars expressed to the elements. Also managed to scale a nearby hill with my captain to get a wider view and discovered not only a breathtaking view but how unfit I was! One of the local officials managed to get us some accommodation with Samaritan's purse a relief organisation in that area. Their camp was pretty nice with creature comforts like internet and electricity but unfortunately the net was down when we got there but hey not too bad to be unplugged from the matrix.

Sunset over the Nuba Mountains from atop the hill

Traditional huts in Kauda

Samaritan's Purse at Kauda our gracious hosts

A typical scene this one was at Yuai

When there I got to learn a little nugget, the origin of the phrase 'riding shotgun'. Back in the 'old west' in America the horse driven coaches would have somebody would sit at the front with the driver- if that's the correct term and you guessed it he'd have a shotgun to deal with any miscreants they'd meet on the way be it bandits or disgruntled locals. Well you learn something new every day! After my little adventure it was back to riding shotgun in the Cessna Caravan!

See you all in a few!

The Garden Route

Been a while since I did a photo post and this time I take you down south to the Eastern and Western Cape provinces. The Garden route has to be the most picturesque coastline I've seen so far, sampled our own flying coastwise from Mombasa to Malindi and it quite doesn't measure up to the time I had the privilege of flying coastwise from George to Port Elizabeth a couple of years back.

What's particularly breathtaking is that there are mountain ranges like the Tsitsikama right next to the coast and you get some high cliffs and gorgeous (pun intended) deep river cut valleys like Storms river with it's bridge. Even before you get there there's the Beautiful Knysna lagoon and Plettenberg bay to feast your eyes on. As they say a picture is worth a thousand words so let's go to the eye candy... click for a larger view...

The Beautiful Knysna lagoon

Stanley's Island, Plettenberg Bay

The famous Storms River bridge

Cape St. Francis Lighthouse

Van Stadens close to Port Elizabeth not really on the route but threw it in

Gotta Go!

Now as promised some stories

Almost immediately after I got my Private Pilot Licence it was time to do the long cross country flights. The First one we do is from Port Elizabeth to East London, on to Queenstown and back. I was initially scheduled to do it all on my own as my licence wasn't ready yet so I couldn't carry a passanger. Pretty daunting to go all that way alone first time but somehow it ended up being postponed and later on I could get somebody to go with me.

Took a while before the weather was good enough for me to on the flight, what's more it could only be done on a weekend as I was in class during the week. After a couple of postponements I got up early on a Sunday ready to go but yet again the weather was dodgy so I gave up and went for breakfast. Now as I was having my breakfast I was told that I had to for the flight, The big man had come that morning and said that all guys scheduled to fly should get on with it. I talked about him in my earlier post, old British guy with this Sean Connery voice thing going on. His theory was that the bad weather was only at the coast and on our way back once past the mountains all we had to do was descend below the clouds and we'll be all right. We had to take his word for it and off we went.

No sooner had we taken off than we met some clouds, could hardly see the horizon but fortunately for us it was just a small patch and further on things were ok. As we got closer to East London it was pretty clear. Now my passenger had decided to have a little too much juice that morning and you can imagine the side effects. Now a little physics lesson here, as you go lower the atmospheric pressure increases so you can imagine how his bladder was feeling as we descended to East London. As soon as we landed he couldn't take it any more, he Simply HAD TO GO! So he decided to relieve himself out the door as we were taxiing along. Hope nobody up there in the tower had binoculars...

So busy was he that he forgot to talk to tell me about the marshaller( who directs where to park) who I passed and went all the way to the end of the apron and asked the tower where the marshaller was and was told " but sir, you've just passed the marshaller!" Talk about embarassment. After that we did the necessary refuelling and stuff and went on with the rest of our trip. The rest was pretty much uneventful though it was pretty bumpy in the mountainous Queenstown area. We didn't hang around for long as we were told that the weather in PE was getting bad.

As we got closer to our destionation the clouds kept increasing and getting lower and lower and we had to keep on descending. Was pretty stressful but once we were past the mountains it worked pretty much as the old man had told us. It was getting worse as we went along and we arrived back at the school just in time as the clouds were rolling in at low altitude. 5 minutes later and we'd have been in trouble.

Phew it was finally over first experience, had doubts but what is amazing is how the old man had got it spot on about the weather, it's like he had a sixth sense or something. Truly experience is the best teacher. Yeah and I nkow better than to drink a lot before a long flight!

The Learning Curve

Hmm. I have so fallen into the trap that has caught many other bloggers.What with Facebook and twitter hogging my attention the blog has suffered. Seven months into the year and no post whatsoever. better late than never!

So Last time I was in the blogosphere I was on about my first experience as the Pilot in command. A lot has happened since then, logged many more solo hours and learnt a lot along the way. I eventually got my Private Pilot license and recently passed the 100 hour mark. There's a saying that goes at 100 hours a pilot thinks he knows everything, at 1000 he does know everything and at 10000 hours he realizes that he knows nothing! So you can see where I fall in all of this right now.

Flying is interesting, there's always something new to learn and I doubt there's any pilot who can say he knows everything. In my short aviation career I've had numerous lessons drilled into me, some with ease and others with difficulty. There's one lesson that really stuck as I'll explain.

Referreing to my previous post I had detailed how prior to my first solo I had gone on a check ride with the big man of the school and that he had taken some time to take me back to basics. The exercise he drilled me on was called control co-ordinaton, here's where I launch into some technical mumbo- jumbo so please bear with me. Let me explain, turning an aeroplane is a delicate art which invollve proper co-ordination of hands, eyes and feet. Naturally you would think that you bank( turn i.e) usign the control column alone but your feet have to move in tandem otherwise the result won't be so good to put it simply. Hope you get the picture. It's a pretty basic skill but at the time my handling of it was not to his satisfaction so I had to endure the embarassment of being taught again.

Fast forward to a few weeks later when I went on anothe check ride with another instructor. It was a mess of a flight could hardly get anything right and he ended up recommending that I repeat it. However there was one positive remark in all of it- "You can co-ordinate!" Still laugh when I remember that story, lesson learnt- the hard way!


More on my adventures and misadventures in the air shall be coming soon, stay tuned...

Up, Up and Away

It's been a while since I last posted as I've been quite busy getting the hang of flying so let me share a little experience that I had over the last few days that has been major.

By last week I had already done quite a number of hours and it was
about time for me to go solo so I was taken to a senior instructor who I flew with a couple times punctuated by a three day gap due to some lousy weather last week. However on Friday I was taken to the chief instructor who I had to stick with till he released me for my first solo. First flight on Friday went pretty well and he had some good encouraging words for me even telling me to believe in myself and I could do it.

The second flight on Saturday was a different story.I hadn't flown for 2 consecutive days for quite a while and those gaps tend to make you a bit rusty so I thought that this was my chance to get some good consistency. However after a relatively good start I made some of the same mistakes of the previous day and even some new ones. At one point I was given quite a dressing down in the cockpit and thought things had gone really bad. Afterward I was told that on Sunday morning I'd fly with the big boy himself, the owner of the school. He's quite an imposing figure a tall old man with a big grey beard who has a lot of experience under his belt so I knew the standards would be pretty high.

So on Sunday morning I woke up to another fine cloudless morning and I was surprised as the weather is hardly ever consistent. My flight was a little delayed as he was dealing with another student before me. When my time came he gave me a briefing first and looked at the comments from the previous flight and gave me some pointers on what to do. Soon after it was time to get going. Even when we were on the ground he had quite a number of comments to make on the things I was doing wrong and more when I got into the air. Probably due to nervousness I kept making some very silly mistakes which so got to him that he had to revise some of the basics with me in the air. This was really embarrassing for somebody who was already quite some way into the course. You can imagine how I felt after the de-briefing. I had really been brought down to earth or so to speak.After that I did quite a lot of thinking and praying, "have to pull up my socks" I kept telling myself. Fortunately on Monday I was scheduled to fly with the chief instructor so I was relieved.

Once again perfect weather on Monday morning, cloudless and only a slight hint of wind. This was truly amazing for me 4 days in a row of good weather was a first. I guess at this point you're probably thinking that I'm obsessed with the weather but it's part of the job! So as I was saying I was back with the CFI with a lot on my mind no doubt- "have to get to right this time, you can do it!" Went through the usual drill and he even expedited it so that we could get into the air much faster. Off we went into the sky, did a good flight and for the first time made a good landing, previously that had been my biggest problem. He went on to congratulate me for the good landing and of course there was the inevitable but- I had turned too early. Made the same mistake again and I was chastised but managed to fix it on the third try. I knew that what he was looking for was 3 good landings and that would be it. 1st one was good, misjudged the 2nd so
I didn't touch down but the next 3 were ok. On the last as I was about to get airborne again he took hold of the controls and just then I knew the moment I had been waiting for had finally arrived! A smile started forming on my face and I started psyching myself up. He asked
how I was doing whether I was ok and stuff and explained what I had to do next was to go up and do a circuit on my own.

Once he was through with the briefing he stepped out and it was time for me to do my thing. I gave him a thumbs up, put my hands on the controls, did my radio call and got going. The first thing that was really weird was the empty seat beside me and once I got airborne it felt really light and had to keep making adjustments. The flight went pretty well and it was definitely less stressful not having somebody there making comments every time you made a little mistake. Soon it was time for me to land and I was lined up on the final approach to the runway. Had to work on what was usually my weak point all on my own. This approach is particularly tricky as there are some trees just before the edge of the runway and so you have to be really careful so
that you don't end up perched on them. As I came in I noticed I was getting low and heading towards them. Naturally you would try to pull the plane up but this is a no-no as that would cause you to slow down and sink faster, I almost fell into this trap but I quickly increased the power and got over them and was back on course. Once Over them I was basically over the fence and went ahead to do a not so bad landing even if I do say so myself. It was finally done, the first solo, the first major milestone in my flying and 15th December 2008 shall remain permanently etched in my memory. After touching down I taxied back to the apron where the CFI was on hand to congratulate me and the other students were the to carry to the pool for a dip.

It's really hard to explain the feeling as I was really happy and at the same time relieved as it had taken me a while to get there as most of my colleagues had already gone before me. However I thank God for the way it went and the experience with the big boy which gave me a
wake up call.

Now it's on to the next stage.