This was taken during a STOL contest at the May Day Flyin in Valdez, Alaska. STOL is pilot-geek for Short Takeoff Or Landing, so the aim is to get airborne in the shortest distance after applying power, or stopping in the shortest distance after touching down.

The aircraft featured are generally used to get in and out of small unimproved places in the bush, like sand bars or teeny clearings.

Take a close look at the little yellow plane at 1:30 into the video for a gentle little prop strike right at the start of his takeoff roll. I'm amused / horrified that the pilot chose to continue the takeoff despite kissing the runway, but maybe I'm getting cowardly in my old age.

The video ends in pretty much the way I expected it to.

Ps: We just got back from the lawyer's office where we signed the final paperwork on our new (to us) house. We take possession in only 2 more sleeps!

This is the jet I flew westward the other day while Kitsch was taking our jet eastward. Just to be clear, I'm NOT cheating on my regular plane; I may hang out with other airplanes from time to time for business purposes, but our jet will always have my heart.

Apologies for the seizure-inducing flashing on the EFIS instruments - the refresh rate of the video cam is some harmonic of the refresh rate on the EFIS screens, thus the flashes. In real life the images are totally smooth.

Oh, and in non-aviation-related stuff, we move into our new (to us) house in 5 days! I'm nearly barfing with excitement! Predictably a flight just came up for that day, but Kitsch has generously agreed to cover it while Lisa and I (and her parents, bless them) move all our heavy, sharp furniture from our old place to our new one. I got the certified cheque for our closing costs done up this morning and I think I worried the bank teller a little bit when I stared at it and giggled for a solid minute. I explained why and she visibly brightened - I think she was worried from the way I was acting that I was about to blow it all on crack. No way, my drug of choice at the moment is called 'house' and it sure is a hell of a rush.

I got a shout-out on the radio from a controller yesterday! Unfortunately I wasn't in the airplane at the time, but Kitsch passed it on to me via phone last night, so thanks for that :)

I was actually headed west in a different aircraft yesterday, and that's the subject of today's post.

Suppose another operator (who we are pals with) needs a crew member on a jet that Kitsch and I are qualified to fly, but only for for a few days per month. Also suppose "In these harsh economic times blah blah" our flight department could use an extra few thousand bucks a month for vodka and bingo cards and whatnot.

A flashbulb went off in my head: For a monthly fee, Kitsch and I can make ourselves available to fly that particular jet for a set number of days per month. It lets Kitsch and I fly a different airplane from time to time, the other operator gets crew coverage for the few days a month they need it, and the company I work for gets to offset part of our operating cost with the monthly fee we charge the other operator for our pilot services.

See, it's a stroke of genius! Really, it's win-win and it only bites us if both jets need to fly on the same day. That never happens. Well, practically never. Well, what I mean by 'practically never' is 'It happened yesterday'.

Fortunately we had a few days heads-up on the scheduling conflict, so we made a few phone calls and arranged for an outside pilot to come in and save the day for us. The outside pilot is already checked out on our jet, so Kitsch took the outside pilot eastward in our jet, while I went westward in the other jet with the other operator.

Anyway, long story short, that's why I missed my Air Traffic Controller shout-out yesterday - I wasn't in the jet I normally fly. Kitsch assured me that I would have felt like a rock star had I been on board, so that's cool.

I still had an interesting trip yesterday though - the FBO we used at our destination is owned by Wal-Mart, and every employee there is actually a Wal-Mart employee. I asked the line guys to do the Wal-Mart song, but they were strangely shy. I'll have more on that when I upload the vids to Youtube later today :)

Lisa allowed me to record this, it's her take on being hitched to a pilot.

We got up crazy early last week and headed west, taking some people to do some things, likely involving money. That part is normal, but after we landed I saw an airplane type I had never seen before, so I got the video camera out. I bet Aviatrix would have more info on some of the unique features I observed on the aircraft. Strange little bird! I mean the plane, not Aviatrix ;)

Go full-screen and click on the red HD button in the video player for hi-def yumminess.



The aircraft certainly has a 'unique' look (I'm being kind) but looks aren't everything and as it turns out this airplane has some pretty good performance figures, considering what it was designed to do.

A quick online search shows the aircraft is a PAC 750XL. It was initially designed for skydiving - the website says it can take off in less than a thousand feet, climb to 13,000', chuck the jumpers out and land, all in 16 minutes. Actually, the performance figures on the plane are pretty impressive - it only weights 3,100 lbs and can carry a load of 4,400 lbs, more than twice the empty weight. Not many aircraft have that capability. For comparison, even though we have a high-gross-weight takeoff kit installed on our jet, our baby jet's empty weight is 8840 lbs, leaving us a useful load of about 6,000 lbs. On a regular Citation II the useful load is more like 4,800 lbs with about a 8700 lb empty weight.

Anyhoo, Google also tells me that UTS Geophysics is owned by a Canadian company called Aeroquest International Ltd. I wonder why it came over from New Zealand and where it's going? That must have been a series of pretty interesting flights.

I started flying when I was 16, and have held a flying license for 22 years now. If I was to retire at 60, that means I have another 22 years to go. I mean, I would like to retire tomorrow, but I think 60 is a little more realistic. Actually, the Canadian courts recently found that an Air Canada Captain's civil rights had been violated when he was forced to retire at 60, and it looks like the age will be bumped up to at least 65. While I respect a person's decision to continue to work as long as they can/want to, there are some pretty serious consequences to that decision.

If I retire at 60, I will likely live to be 77 or so, at least according to the latest data. However, if I retire at 65 I will likely live to be only 68 or so, which would put a serious crimp on my plan to sit on the beaches in Jamaica for twenty years, drinking pina coladas and tending to my hemp farms.

Dr. Ephrem Cheng did an actuarial study of life span vs. age at retirement, based on pension cheques sent to employees of Boeing Aerospace. Yeah I understand that only a small chunk of the employees were actually pilots, but that also tells me the stats likely hold true for everyone, not just flying guys. I swiped one of the tables from the study to show you:



See what I mean? For people who retired at the age of 50, their average life span is 86; whereas for people retired at the age of 65, their average life span is only 66.8! If you do the math according to the actuarial tables, you lose about 2 years of life expectancy for every year you work after age 55.

The Boeing experience is that employees retiring at age of 65 receive pension checks for only 18 months, on average, prior to death. Similarly, the Lockheed experience is that employees retiring at age of 65 receive pension checks for only 17 months, on average, prior to death. Dr. David T. Chai indicated that the Bell Labs experience is similar to those of Boeing and Lockheed based on the casual observation from the Newsletters of Bell Lab retirees. A retiree from Ford Motor told Dr. Paul Tien-Lin Ho that the experience from Ford Motor is also similar to those in Boeing and Lockheed.

I understand that there are many varied and complex reasons for this: People who retire early tend to be more wealthy with more access to high-end healthcare, while people who retire later tend to do so either because they need the money (which could be stressful) or they just need to work all the time (which is also hard on the body).

In my case, I'm hoping that careful investment coupled with Lisa eventually taking over the world (she has a particularly keen business sense) will give us the financial ability to depart the working world while we (mostly me, as I'm 13 years old than her) are still young enough to enjoy retirement.

Alright, I'm off to go check my RRSP balance and plan for July 2031 :)

Someone asked me yesterday what the worst part of my job is. Honestly I'd have to go with "wearing a tie". Maybe it was my free-spirit upbringing, but when I wear a tie it feels like I'm being insincere or perhaps even fraudulent. It's not a huge deal in that we mostly don't dress up - for company flights we wear golf shirts and dress pants, but for charters we do the full meal deal with the pilot shirt and epaulets and Captain's bars and whatnot. I guess the theory is that our passengers will assume we are competent and professional if we wear a fabric stripe down the front of our shirts and have a few stripes on our shoulders. Funny how appearances mean so much.

Click the red "HD" button for large-screen video goodness.



It got me thinking though. I'm gonna ask Lisa what the best and worst part of my job is from her perspective and I'll post a little interview with her shortly; I'm interested to hear her take on what it's like to be married to a pilot-type-guy.

For those of you who are dealing with the heartbreak, stigma and shame of having a pilot in your family, what differences do you notice in your family life compared to your non-aviating friends?

To the jackass(es) who were shining laser pointers into the cockpit of arriving traffic into Pearson one night last week, you should probably see a doctor to confirm whether or not you are mentally retarded. My money is on "yup".

It should be obvious that it's illegal in Canada to shine lights at aircraft in an attempt to make them crash and everybody on board die, but the max penalty is a surprisingly lenient 5 years in prison and/or $100,000 in fines.

That hasn't prevented morons from doing it though, and unfortunately the incidents are on the rise: In 2006 there were 3 reported incidents, in 2007 there were 25 and in 2008 there were nearly 60 incidents reported.

Sadly only one person so far has been convicted of this offence - some doorknob in Calgary in 2008, who sat on his apartment balcony and lased a Westjet 737 cockpit on takeoff and then lased the police helicopter sent to investigate. He later said he was sorry, was fined a thousand bucks and had his pointer confiscated.

Seriously, that scares the hell out of me - not only the worst-case scenario of losing control of the aircraft during landing and crashing, but also the thought of more extended suffering - having permanent retinal damage and losing my pilot medical and going blind and being helpless.

I see precious little difference between pointing a laser at an aircraft cockpit and pointing a stinger missile at an aircraft cockpit, and I hope that the seriousness of the situation is fully impressed upon whomever gets caught for this pointless and dangerous 'hobby'.

Multimedia Frenzy time! Here's a bunch of random pics and videos from a trip we did to Texas and Arizona recently. I'm still getting the hang of my new camera, but the initial results are a lot better than my old one. I'm mostly happy that the speaker on the new camera doesn't freak out every time there's ambient noise.




My baby in Fort Huachuca (Waa-chew-ka) AZ. Half the airport is a military base and the other half is civilian. They launch unmanned predator drones here to patrol the border, and the base is primarily military intelligence. We saw some pretty crazy aircraft coming and going - King Airs with tip-tanks and bristling with literally dozens of antennas. I didn't take pics because I don't wanna wind up in Gitmo.






Watching an airliner pass a thousand feet above us while in cruise. We approached each other at about a thousand miles an hour, so it's a fast clip :)



The flight school in Nogales AZ offers maps, headsets and energy drinks. That's actually pretty smart marketing, I wonder why more pilot stores don't have cases of Red Bull in stock.



Departing Goodyear, AZ. Without irrigation this place would look like the surface of the moon. It was +43c when we took off - normally our plane takes about 2000-3000 feet of runway to take off, but hot temperatures really suck the performance out of the plane, and it took us 5,110 feet before we got airborne.




Gratuitous cloud shot! Note the thunderstorms in the distance. They will become more relevant shortly.



Our onboard XM weather system is the cat's ass. In the pic, the pink triangle is us, heading east. You can see Albuquerque and Las Vegas NM to our south. See all those pink/purple dots by KTAD? (Trinidad, Colorado) The dots are lightning strikes emanating from a storm cell. This one was impressive, but we saw some truly amazing storms a little further down the line.



This is what the storm cell looks like out our window. The top rises at least twenty thousand feet above us. Not many aircraft can climb that high, so we plan to avoid it laterally by a fair distance. Thunderstorms like this have more than enough energy to remove the wings from our aircraft, which I respect on a fundamental level. On the left hand side of the storm cell, see the cloud shelf coming from the main mass and extending to the left? The overhang might look clear but that's where storm cells spit hail out, so we never fly under the overhangs. An acquaintance of mine got suckered into flying under a similar overhang a few weeks ago and the resulting hail damage to the wing skins of his aircraft cost just under 250k to fix. He didn't tell me how much it cost to clean the pilot seats after that flight.



Eventually the lunar landscape gave way to the prairies of Kansas.





We made our way past that storm and then found ourselves paralleling a truly spectacular one. This was in Kansas, just between Oklahoma City and Wichita. This one was still building while we flew past it - you'll see the video I took shortly that shows it was up to 65,000 feet, but it eventually built to 70,000 feet up. Storms like this can have more energy than a small nuke.



Here's a video showing the uber-badass thunderstorm.



Another video showing some clouds, some traffic above us, and an added bonus at the end!



After a while we passed the evil thunderstorms and were left to happily cruise between some cloud layers.



After a while it got dark and the sky turned silver and blue.



Passing by Chicago on our way home. It is duly noted that my new camera sucks at night shots :)



We made it back to Toronto after 5 hours of flying, tired but happy to be home.

This is an angst post, so feel free to skip it if you aren't into that - I'll have fresh aviation stuff up soon.

Lisa and I have stopped trying not to have kids. That's exciting, and terrifying at the same time. Normally it's a good thing when her friend comes to visit and I suspect it will take a little while to make the mindset adjustment. I have been thinking about kids lately for a variety of reasons (incidentally what do you guys think about the name "Balthor" for a boy? He could carry a sword!) and it has made me reflect more about the nature of consciousness and the inevitable loneliness we all feel as we occupy ourselves during our brief time on the planet.

I read once that there are 5 unavoidable truths in life, 5 things that we will experience again and again during our tenure on planet earth.

1. Everything changes and ends
2. Things do not always go according to plan
3. Life is not always fair
4. Pain is a part of life
5. People are not loving and loyal all the time

I hope I can show my kids how to deal with the challenges they will inevitably face, and I hope I can show them that the single most important thing is life is love - who you love and who loves you.

The thing that I have to figure out is how to do that when I think that we are essentially alone in our minds - our consciousness is a solitary one.

I can share a fairly limited version of my thoughts and feelings with you, gentle reader, and I can share a much fuller version with close friends and family, but I'll never be able to show someone what I'm actually thinking, nor really know what they are.

It's like there's darkness and we are groping around, looking at shadows and hoping they are friendly. Sometimes we find people in the darkness and sometimes we huddle together to share a spark, but the darkness is always there and it inevitably overwhelms. Someone said that every relationship that doesn't end in divorce ends in death, which is depressing as hell, but also true. I can be close to people, I can even be inside someone, but I'm still essentially alone in my head. Will having kids change that? I don't think so, but maybe I'm hoping I can be in their minds for a little bit, before they strike out on their own and move into their own lives.

I know that's likely a good thing that we can't read each others thoughts - I'd hate for people to know what goes through my mind when I'm driving on highway 401 and some doorknob cuts me off, but it's can also be a lonely thing when you are trying to communicate and the darkness interferes.

Pets are generally honest as are small kids - you can usually tell what's on a dog's mind and if you ask a three-year-old what they are thinking you'll likely get a pretty direct reply, but beyond those, everything we hear from anyone is filtered though countless layers and sometimes it can be hard to tell what's real, what's valuable and what is just static. What if my kids don't believe me when I tell them I love them? What if they tell me they don't love me?

I'm looking forward to having kids, but sweet Jebus it's a hell of a responsibility. I want them to be healthy, happy and fulfilled, and I want them to know they can talk to me about anything, even if it makes them (or me) look bad. My parents did an absolutely fantastic job in this regard and I hope to continue that legacy.

I want to share a campfire with my kids, and I can only hope they trust me enough to sit with me for a while and share the warmth. I'm not sure why I'm saying this, but my gut tells me that it's important that I do.

I got a new video camera and this is my first official video on it. The compression youtube uses makes it look less nice than I'd prefer, but it's still okay. It records in hi-def so you can click on the red HQ button on the youtube video to see it in 720p glory. As an added bonus the microphone works great!

I took some flying videos this morning but the sun flare overwhelmed the camera (we were headed east) so I toasted them.

This is a video of the hotel we are in today 'cause I like taking videos of my hotel rooms.



The camera is a Kodak ZI-6 which I got from Newegg.ca for $170. Pretty nifty!

I was on vacation for most of July so that's why I didn't post for a month. Lisa and I did a tour of the interior of British Columbia in a camper van. We took about a thousand pics so I'll be sorting through those and posting the pretty ones shortly.

We have been flying a lot lately - I have flown 5 of the past 7 days. We have signed an agreement with another operator that uses the Citation 550, guaranteeing them an available pilot in exchange for a few thousand bucks a month. It saves them from having to replace the Captain they lost (he retired) and it helps us lower our overhead so it's win-win.

Oh, and our plane is painted and beautiful. I'll take some pics this afternoon and post them later.

As far as our house goes, we take possession on Sept 30th and it can't come fast enough - it's like we bought the coolest toy in the world (the house) but can't play with it for 6 more weeks.

I gotta check the weather now - there's a 40% probability that Toronto will be wiped off the face of the earth by thunderstorms this afternoon and that may affect our plans to return there this afternoon :)

My job is pretty cool sometimes. This is Snoop Dogg, one of Lisa's favorite performers of all time. We flew him to/from a concert. He was really laid back and polite, much more so than some of the businessmen and politicians I have flown. He called me Captain and we did the fist-bump thing where you make a fist and bump it against the other guy's fist. I think I'm in his posse now.

I lol'd.

Our first home! 4 bedrooms, 5 bathrooms, infinite cool.

It's an older house, redone. We paid just under 350k CDN for it, or at least the bank did on our behalf. I'm referencing the money because a) we are relatively poor and that's really cheap for the Toronto area and b) the place is so cool you might think we paid several billion dollars for it. We would have, but fortunately we got a deal :)


It's about 6 miles west of our current place, in the city of Burlington Ontario. We take possession Sept 30th. A really nice couple sold it to us after completely updating and renovating the place and putting countless hours of work and love into it. After their daughter heads to school this fall they are going to buy a place out in the country, so their loss is our considerable gain. You see, she's an artist and he's carpenter who fixes botched home renovations. Seriously, is there any better person to buy a home from? We did the home inspection last week and the inspector was nearly in tears "This is why I got into home inspection." and "If you don't buy this place, I will. There's nothing else like it. At all." and my favorite "Holy shi - sorry, I'll edit that out of the DVD I give you. I'm trying to be professional here, but there's just so much to look at".


We saw at least a couple of dozen homes before we found this one, and it's the only one that made me wanna barf with house-lust. Lisa was skeptical (the pics really don't do it justice) but once she saw the place in real life she fell in love with it as much as I did.

We immediately offered to pay their asking price, on the condition that they leave a whole bunch of cool stuff behind, like the stained glass, the dining room table (the husband made it himself and it's gorgeous), all the appliances and a bunch of the art and furniture. Basically we said "you may take the clothes in your closets but leave everything else". They are into the idea of de-cluttering their existence, so it worked out great!

I could hardly sleep this past week while waiting for our mortgage arrangements to solidify and for the home inspector to do his job, and being just generally buzzed on adrenaline at the idea of being in debt until 2 years after I retire :)

Oh, would you like some pics? Home, meet blog. Blog, meet home.

View of the front room. Note the textured walls. The front windows all open out completely - you could drive a car through if you wanted to.




Dining Room leading to front room. We have a 2-room kitchen, you can see one room on the left with a built-in stove. We have 2 ovens, good for entertaining :) Dining room table was handmade from old barn-board by the owner. All the woodwork in the entire place is shiny and flawless.



Different angle on the dining room. Note the stained glass - the house is full of it.



Some kitchen action. Note the gas fireplace in the kitchen, good for cold mornings :)



Off to the right you can see the main floor bathroom. We have one in the basement, one on the main floor and three more upstairs. The kitchen sink isn't stainless steel, it's this crazy brown smooth ceramic stuff.





Lets head upstairs for a few minutes and check out the master bedroom. Note the fireplace and the computer nook.



Note the awesome curved wall with major closet space behind. Off-camera to the right is the entrance to the ensuite bathroom, which is itself pretty insane.



More computer nookage and fireplaceage.




One of the basement rooms, which they use for tv. There's a bar on the right. The antlers kind of creeped me out but further inspection reveals they are paper mache and wire.



Off-camera to the right is the laundry room, art room and games room. They currently have the games room set up with fooseball, air hockey, a big vinyl collection and a regular table-top hockey game. Oh, and a whole pile of storage, along with a bathroom and some other stuff I forget now.




Let's head outside for a second to witness some real insanity. Our back yard is like a park, with 4 heated and insulated buildings with water and electrical service. All the smooth rocks in the pictures have faces carved into them.



This looks promising... the white framed-thing is more stained glass. It's seriously everywhere we look.



The inside of the gazebo, with water, electricity, bbq, tunes and a bar fridge.



From halfway down the back yard, facing toward the house. More buildings off-camera to the right.



My fingers are cramping from typing, so I'm off for a bit. More pics of the bedrooms, bathrooms and whatnot to come. They are all pretty wild - stuff like glass bricks in the shower and a complete bathroom in one of the bedrooms.

And don't even get me started about the staircase... :)

We can watch her online. I think the pics are quite beautiful.