Happy Turkey Day

My public has spoken I have listened. Having been properly chastised about not putting up a post in a couple weeks I shall endeavor to correct this problem. As I write this I am slowly coming out from the tryptophan and Grandma's Chex mix induced comma. It was great to get to go home for Thanksgiving this year. It is always nice to see the family, but considering the adventure ahead this was really nice. I have a charmed career in that I have yet to miss Thanksgiving or Christmas at home (a streak which will be broken next year).

When we last left our hero he was just finishing up the initial C-12 training in picturesque Dothan, Al. Now to fully understand my next steps you must understand that the plane I was flying was kind of old and pretty much bare bones. It had the requisite parts: two engines and two wings and all that, but the gauges were the classic gauges you will find in pretty much any plane. It also had all the normal navigation aides (NAVAID) that are found in airplanes these days. The way pilots navigate when flying in the clouds and/or at high altitude when you can't see the ground is by radio signals from ground based stations. The NAVAID sends a signal and the box in the plane decodes it to tell us where we are in relation to that station. Since we know via charts where the stations are we can fly from place to place. This is all basic aviation that pilots learn in flight school.

So while the planes I was flying in Dothan were pretty basic, the ones I will fly in Pakistan have been updated with new toys. Specifically, the powers that be have installed a Flight Management System (FMS) and Electronic Flight Instrument System (EFIS) in the Pakistani birds. FMS is a NAVAID management system that can take inputs from all the available NAVAIDs as well as from GPS to help navigate. It has a gigantic database that you can create a flight plan from and, in conjunction with the autopilot that the plane has, can pretty much fly from just after take off to just before landing (if they purchased a better autopilot it could fly the whole thing). The EFIS takes a lot of the gauges illustrated above and replaces them with a little TV screen. The big difference is that airspeed and altitude are displayed differently in this system than in the other gauges and it takes some time to get used to where to look to get the information you are looking for. Also, you can manipulate the display to bring up different things like weather radar. As you might expect they kind of want those of us who are going to use these systems to know how they work.

To that end I rolled out to Tucson, Az to take a three day class on the FMS system. Tucson was nice in that the weather was in the 70's all three days (summer may be hotter the hell, but winter isn't too bad). I took a bit of a driving tour of the city the weekend I got there. I saw the mountain with the "A" on it, the Persidio and the University of Arizona. But my favorite thing in Tucson was the casino. I had some good luck until the last day where I managed to give back all the money that they had given me over the first couple days, but since I was playing with their money I figured it was ok. The only problem I had was I had difficulty finding restaurants. As you all know I am big on eating. There just wasn't a whole bunch around the airport which is where I was staying.

Having been educated on the capabilities of the FMS, I flew back to Washington DC to receive training on the EFIS system. It was as I was getting ready for one of my flights here that we all figured out that I had not received the required physiology training and should not have been doing any of the flying I had done over the last month. This was rather annoying since I asked the question back in Dothan and they told me I was good to go.

You see the military requires all pilots to receive physiology training so we understand the factors that are affecting us as we fly. Those that fly above 10,000 feet have to do extra training in a pressure chamber because of the effects of low oxygen levels at such high altitudes which can cause hypoxia among other things. As a helicopter pilot this has never been an issue because we are not allowed to fly that high, but the C-12 regularly flies around 25,000 feet and can go as high as 31,000 feet. So my flight on Tuesday got canceled and we had to get on the phone and go shopping for someone who could fit me into a physiology class ASAP. Fortunately, there was a class the next day that they could fit me in so I am now back in an up status and ready to get back into the aircraft.

Well that pretty much brings everyone up to date. As it is I am sitting in the living room of my friend ET in Washington DC watching football (Boomer Sooner). I hope everyone has had a great Thanksgiving with the people they love. If you are one of my friends who are out at the pointy end of the spear defending our nation remember you are not forgotten and the ones that you you are thinking of you. Until next time, be good or be good at it.