Thursday, January 25, 2007

We took our other jet to Montreal this morning.

It has a different avionics package, a Garmin 530 / 430 combo. They are nice little units, providing moving map, GPS, and airplane communication / navigation radios in each box.




The sun is shining, providing a nice little reflection off the other pilot's forehead. I know, I know - like I can talk :)



It's a beautiful day, but Montreal was -20c outside when we landed. Fortunately our planes use hot (600 degrees c) engine bleed air to heat our cabin so we remain warm until we have to open the door to deplane.



We have a split duty day thing going on today - we don't depart Montreal until very late tonight, so we got a couple of hotel rooms to get our mandated crew rest. In our operation we are only allowed to be on duty for 14 hours in a row without getting a rest period, so when we land, we check into a hotel and rest for the day so we'll be fresh for tonight's flight home.

The Sheraton here is a decent hotel. Our company policy is that each pilot gets their own hotel bonus points, and I got into a bit of a scrap with the front counter lady - the other pilot paid for both our hotel rooms, but I wanted half the points and she told me it was impossible, which sort of got my Irish up. We resolved it without bloodshed though, and I have my precious points. Hey, they really add up, so it's worth it to me to be pushy about that sort of thing. For example, I already have enough Marriott points for a week's free stay.



Le Bifteque is a decent steakhouse and we are going there for supper tonight, so I'm pretty stoked! Hopefully I don't meet any angry bulls asking why they were neutered (see yesterday's post for some background).

4 comments:

Flyin Dutchman said...

Hey Sully,

Just wondering if you use the DH set to 80 feet to help with the flare height ? Or are you just givener on the ILS approaches :)
Cheers

Sulako said...

Heh neither. I had turned on the radar altimeter, I just hadn't set it for arrival in Montreal yet. The weather was good coming in this morning, but on approach I set the rad alt to decision height on the ILS anyway, just as a backup.

Both planes have a female voice that calls out "five hundred" and then "fifty" on approach and landing as the rad alt counts down the distance between the plane and the ground.

When the pleasing synthesized voice says "five hundred", I'd better be about a mile and a half back from the threshold or it's time to go around :)

When we are right over the runway and I hear the "fifty" call, I pull both throttles back to flight idle and settle into ground effect with a relatively small flare at the end. Citation II's don't require a lot of flare, and we are taught to basically fly the airplane right down to the ground.

Anonymous said...

"...they must have High-speed internet" that was great

Flyin Dutchman said...

Good deal,

I wish we had a female voice for the 500. Our 500 foot call sounds like a 300 pound line backer sitting behind me.

On a positive note all the annunciator panel warnings call out in a British female voice, just wish she didn't sound so panicked when the engine fire light came on :)

Cheers,
FD