Hired!

So, for those of you who haven't been following this whole blog, or who don't know me personally, upon completion of flight training, I did some glider instructing for the summer with the local cadet Region Gliding School. Since then I have been watching all the online job postings, and slowly working on my resume, not with much motivation cause I hadn't found anything that I was interested in applying on. Until one day, while browsing avcanada's job postings I came across a Cessna 208 FO position. So the times posted were reasonable for somebody who has never held a flying job before, and it was based out of Halifax Robert Stanfield International Airport, in my home city! So that was my motivation to finish up the cover letter, and get that sent in! I applied on the job Thursday, and Friday evening I received a phone call from the Chief Pilot and the job offer after a small change in there aircraft lineup for the winter, and I was now gonna be flying a Piper Navajo.

Training began the following Tuesday with a couple days of intensive ground school on type specific information. That was followed by a rather unusual problem, although problems themselves aren't that unusual when flying a aircraft as old as the Navajo. We went to test the hydraulic pressure in the gear system during start up, and all we got was the gear warning horn going off in out ear, so by about eight o'clock that night, the problem was fixed and we got airborne the next day. 3 flights later, and 3 days later I had successfully completed a PCC on type, and was ready to start flying the line. Training finished Sunday, and Monday morning was the first day at work.

Completion of Training

As many of you already know, I am home from Manitoba. I completed my training approximately a month ago, leaving me with my Commercial Pilots license, my Multi Engine rating (Self explanatory) and my IFR rating (Instrument Flight Rules- So I can fly in less then ideal weather). Now the most common question is "So you can fly for like Air Canada now?" or "Who do you want to fly for?" so I'm gonna explain how this works a little.

NO I can't fly for Air Canada yet! My Commercial License gives me the opportunity to fly for hire now, so I can technically work as a pilot, BUT coming straight out of flight school, I only have about 270 hrs and not alot of experience as far as most companies are concerned, which is pretty true. So the next step for me is to find a small charter operation, or a company that does remote area transportation of food, goods, etc. The key to these companies is, if your not carrying passengers, the insurance company doesn't mind them throwing a rookie in the left seat and letting them fly, which is how somebody in my position is going to get there first 1000 hrs. The first 1000 hrs as mentioned previous, is like the magic number in which companies like to see as a minimum when they hire a pilot. Quite often when you start out with a company you don't even start right in the airplane, you will start out as a rampy (Somebody working the ramp, loading, refueling, cleaning the aircraft, etc) and from there eventually earn your way up in the company which will hopefully result in a seat in the cockpit at some point. So right now I am still working on my resume which I plan to start sending out in the near future.

I am also heading back to Debert again this summer, to instruct on the Glider Pilot Scholarship that is held for those cadets who are interested in learning to fly! So that will be the majority of my summer, and immediately after my return from there I am hoping to be heading out to Calgary to compete in a competition that names the Top Amateur Pilot in the country (The Webster Memorial Trophy Competition). I find out the end of this month if I made the finals, I will keep you posted!

That is all for now, seeing as how this blog was started for my flight training, and that is over, I will keep writing whenever I get a chance, and it will end being more of my story as an entry level pilot, and all the experiences that will occur along the way!

Last Post Fixed

Previous Post Fixed!!

You should now be able to see the previous post, I lost internet when I was writing it, so I saved it into Microsoft word, and when i copied it back to hear it stayed as black text which was invisible on the black background!!

Pilots stuck on the ground, its like a fish out of water!

After returning since christmas break, it has been all out doing preparation for the flight test!! Well this past Monday, all the work payed off with a 90% percent pass on my Commercial Flight Test! It was a great feeling to have that done and out of the way, especially since we had planned on leaving Tuesday night for Calgary, then Vancouver. Seeing as how I am sitting at my computer writing this right now, its obvious we have not made it to Vancouver, and have called the trip off, due to 3 days of us not being able to make it even as far as Regina, and due to our limited booking of the aircraft, and our instructor only being able to get so much time off, this morning when the no go decision was made for today, we decided to cancel all together. The weather does not appear to be ending any time soon as we are forecasted to receive about 10 cm of snow this weekend.

After we made the no go decision and today, we went to the hangar to unpack our stuff from the airplane, and end up sitting around in the hangar/on the wing of the airplane for a while having a good conversation about options, flying, whatever pilots talk about when they are on the ground, and sad cause they can't go flying! While we were sitting around talking, we kept being teased by the mechanics as they would walk by, about certains sights, and sounds we would be hearing if we had of been having out conversation on an apron in Vancouver somewhere. " Hey guys, aren't those those some large evergreen trees, Oh look at that bald eagle". It was pretty funny, but after finding out that there are flowers blossoming in Vancouver, it was a little more heart breaking to think that thats where we should have been at that moment instead of sitting inside a big hanger which was probly colder then outside in Vancouver!

After we stopped thinking about Vancouver, and finished our conversation, we found out there was a Manitoba Moose game happening at the MTS center tonight, so we got online checked availability, and ticket prices, and proceeded to purchase tickets, and thats where our evening was spent, watching the Manitoba Moose, play the San Antonio Rampage. While at the game, we found out that winnipeg is hosting a Pre-Olympic mens hockey game, this coming Tuesday with Switzerland vs Belarus, and for $14 could not pass up the opportunity, so we will be back at the MTS center Tuesday evening for another hockey game.

As for the training side of things, I am now studying the POH (Pilot Operating Handbook) for the twin engine airplane I will be flying next, and will be starting to study for the written exam of my Instrument rating in the very near future. Upon completion of my multi engine rating and IR (Instrument Rating) it will be back home, and the job search will commence!

I think this is everything new since my last post, so I will write again soon! Keep checking in for new updates and pictures!!!

Flight Test Week

So as many of you have probly assumed by now, I haven't forgotten about my blog. After being harrassed at christmas that I hadn't posted anything in a really long time, I came back and jumped right into preparing for my Commercial Flight Test and haven't had time to write anything until now. the flight test is scheduled for Saturday, but the weather since Monday has been cloudy with snow, poor visibility etc. So I got up this early this morning hoping to actually get my Pre-Flight test done with my instructor, and as forecasted the weather was bad! So the most productive thing I can do today is spend an hour in the simulator later!

So i figured I would spend a couple minutes updating you all on here. There hasn't been to much happening since my return to Steinbach. The temperatures are much nicer now then before I came home, don't think I have seen anything colder then -11 since being back. Myself and a couple of guys have been out playing a fair amount of hockey. The local arena has an outdoor rink that they flood every morning, and admission is free, so we have spent some quality time playing some hockey with the locals, or just by ourselves!

I have attached a few pictures below of the results of fog at sub zero temperatures. We woke up Tuesday morning to seeing everything covered in frost, but it appeared so heavy that some people were speculating about freezing rain. It was actually freezing fog!!

This it what it looks like up close! This is the tip of the propeller!!

Big Three Days!!!....continued

So sorry I have been so long getting the rest of this posted up here, it has been a busy last couple of days here for me, and if my posts seem to drop of here in the coming three weeks, its because I am studying for the written exam for my Commercial License. I am writing in tentitivly on the 20th of Nov.

So the day after our trip to Duluth, I took the warrior, which i had just gotten checked out on during the trip to Duluth, and decided to familiarize myself with it a little more, seeing as how i was taking it on a 7 hour journey the next day ( being the third big day!! ) So I headed in over Winnipeg city, and circled there for about 15 minutes getting some pictures of the city from overhead. A few of which I have attached below.

This third day, myself and one of the guys living the the trailer with me, embarked on a cross country to The Pas. If you have never heard of it, its okay, because its about 300 Nautical Miles ( 555 KM ) north of Winnipeg. This flight was to fulfill another criteria of the commercial license, which is a 300NM cross country from the point of departure, with a minimum of three stops on route. So we departed Steinbach at about 9:10, and flew direct to Easterville, about a 2hr and 15 min flight. Now easterville is a tiny little fishing community up north, so you can only assume, they don't have much of an airport. You can see for yourself via the pictures below, that that assumption is 100% percent correct. ( its the picture that more or less looks like i'm parked in the middle of no where ) As you can see, the "runway" is about 15 feet wide, and gravel, and actually turns into a road that goes into the little town if you backtrack to far with the airplane!! So upon getting our wheels up in easterville, we were then enroute to The Pas, which was about another 55min flight further north. We landed in The Pas no problem, until we got insdie the terminal by pushing a little red button, and then could not get back out to our airplane, because there was a number pad on the inside that we didn't know the code for! So after trying a couple of phone numbers that were supposedly the "Call for Fuel" numbers on a pay phone that was charging 50cents for each local call, we ventured over to a Environment Canada weather reporting station, in which the guy working inside called up the fuel truck for us, and within about 20 minutes, our airplane as filled up and ready to go. We finish having a little snack we had brought with us, because there is no food within 30 miles of the airport, and then headed back down south! Upon leaving The Pas, we were headed for Gimli, made famous by the Gimli glider in 1983 when an Air Canada flight made an emergency landing there. Upon landing in Gimli we were met by nothing other then some very nice old DC-3 airplanes owned by a company that use to fly cargo to the north, until Transport Canada shut them down. Other then that, the airport was very quiet. From Gimli, we ere headed on our last leg of our 7 hour trip, to St Andrews, Harvs Air's other campus, where the Warrior is based out of. We landed at St. Andrews at 5:45 making for a rather long and enjoyable day of flying! We were then picked up by one of the dispatchers from Steinbach, and driven back to Steinbach.

We even got so see a Northern Lights show on our drive back!!! It was a first for me!

I will try to keep you up to date, on progress in and amongst my studying, but I have alot to

study, so we will see how things go!!

This is the Red River flowing through downtown Winnipeg!

This below is a picture of the Esplanade Riel Bridge, one of the few of

its kind in the world, and it even has a restaurant in the middle of it!

This building below is the Manitoba legislature building.

The is the desolate little runway in Easterville, yes, that little gravel path on the left is the runway!!

We were amazed how nice the water looked on our way back home!!

Looks almost like tropic water!

DC-3s in Gimli!!

Big Three Days!!!

So over the last three days, the events have well made up for the uneventful last little while!

Tuesday started at 4:00 am for myself, my instructor (Chris) and Matt Lehmann, another student here who is working on his instructor rating. We departed here at 5:45 after devouring some Tim Hortons that Chris brought for breakfast we jumped in the plane and headed for Baudette Minnesota, where we had to clear customs. Five minutes after landing customs was dealt with, we went inside to file a flight plan for the remainder of our trip to Duluth International. The sun had risen while we were on the ground in Baudette, which was a good thing, as we started to run into some weather as we got closer to Duluth. The ceilings just started forming above us, and basically just kept forcing us down, lower and lower all the way into Duluth. We ended up making the airport, after requesting special VFR ( Visual Flight Rules ) to get in. Upon landing we were marshalled to our parking spot, and had a carpet laid out so step on,upon exiting the plane. We then got on the bus, and they drove us across the apron, maybe 800 ft, to the terminal building!! Upon exiting the bus at the terminal building (FBO as its called) we saw 7 F-16 fighter jets taxi, and take off in front of us. We then went in, and got driving down the apron to the Cirrus factory! We went in, introduced ourselves, and let her know we were ready for the tour, as we were the only three getting a tour, and then she directed us upstairs to the customer lounge, where we helped ourselves to one of the many complimentary drinks in the fridge. We were then met by our tour guide, taken to a board room where he presented a little slide show on the history of the company, and a few specifications on the airplanes, and then took us to the factory, which was across the parking lot. The factory that is based in Duluth, it the final assembly factory, so the raw composite parts are produced at another facility in the U.S. and then shipped to Duluth where they are assembled and sold. We weren't aloud camera's inside the facility, but I do have several pictures of their aircraft from outside. After the tour of the factory, we went back to the FBO and signed our their courtesy car, and headed downtown to the city of Duluth. We were recommended to go try food from Grandma's Saloon. It is the name of a fairly popular chain restaurant in Duluth. We went and ate there, after noticing that there are alot of things name "Grandma's (something)" apparently Grandma was pretty popular. After lunch we headed back to the airport, grabbed a starbucks on the way, because Steinbach doesn't have one, and then went back to our airport. We waited for the weather to clear up to we could get back out of the airport, and headed to sky harbour from there. Sky Harbour ( photo attached) is a small little airport, on what looks to be a sandbar that was made as a wave break to protect the Duluth Harbour! We then headed back home, stopping only in Pinecreek to clear customs, the only ACTUAL international airport. It just so happens to have half the runway in Canada, and the other half in the U.S. Each customs office is also on its respective side of the border. This is only day one, but I have to run, so I will complete this post with the two days following soon.............

That is our plane the closest one to me, and that is about how far we got driven upon arrival to the FBO!!

This is the exterior of the Cirrus Factory, with several new planes sitting on the apron.

Brand New cirrus purchased by a Canadian, being polished up waiting for its new owner to come and pick it up, and fly it home!!

This is Sky Harbour.

This photo shows you how close the runway is to the water!! With a huge crosswind from the left!