Aviator90 Episode 23

[music]

Man 1: [0:31] Welcome to another episode of Aviator 90 from Angle of
Attack. I am Chris Palmer, again, still in my aircraft and today we
are going to be talking about the familiarity with your airport,
with your performance, with your flight and also the unplannable,
what you can not familiarize yourself with.
[0:56] So, first let’s talk about familiarity, what’s important. So
generally when you have your own aircraft or one that you fly at
your flight school most often, one that you’re very familiar with,
you know what that aircraft can and can not do.

[1:17] You know its basic weight and balance parameter, you know
that you can’t … or what weight you can put on, now you should
always do a weight imbalance calculation. But you know what sort of
runways it can handle and what sort of hot days or cold days it can
handle or can’t handle. So, you know basically what it can do.

[1:43] Now, if you’re not familiar with the aircraft or its
performance or it’s in question. Say you are landing or taking off
on a runway that’s much shorter than you’re used to, then it’s very
important that you get what’s called a Pilot Operating Handbook.
Now, this isn’t something that’s totally available within Flight
Simulator but I’ve noticed that with the greater or the better pay
or add-ons, they do have an operating handbook and it has a lot of
performance data.

[2:16] So, you can actually get the performance stuff out of it.
Whether or not it matches real world parameters, I found that it’s
usually pretty unrealistic, to be honest. A couple of weeks ago or
[clears throat] in one of the episodes I was filming, I tried to
climb a 172 up to 10, 000 or something and it just couldn’t get
there, it kept stalling which I know is impossible because I’ve
taken 172′s to those altitudes in those sorts of temperatures
before.

[2:48] So, it’s not always realistic but it is something to watch
out for, to familiarize yourself with the performance of the area.
Now, that gets way more intense and way more important once you
start getting into instrument stuff but even as an aviator going up
in the skies and just putting around and having fun, going for a
$100 hamburger, it’s still essential that you are familiar with
your performance but also familiar with the airport.

[3:21] So, if you’re familiar with your performance and what you
can expect from the airports you’re going to, then you’re not going
to have to worry necessarily about … one feeds off the other is
what I’m saying. So, they go hand in hand if you familiarize
yourself.

[3:40] Now, [clears throat] another thing that is prevalent in the
real world, and I’ve seen a bit of it within Flight Simulator, is
Notems. So, notice to airmen, what’s going on, what the problems
are. I’ve noticed situations where there are issues with [coughs] I
don’t know, ILS frequencies where you’ll do an instrument landing
to some add-on scenery and it won’t work.

[4:10] So, generally the governing body for a country will issue
the notems through different sources but in Flight Simulator your
notems are almost forums and different add-on stuff, so you should
know what’s going on based on kind of that stuff. I’m not saying go
and check the forums just to make sure your performance is correct
and there’s not an issue with the airport.

[4:33] Honestly, there’s no consequences if you go out and do it as
a virtual aviator and you’re probably going to OK anyway. It’s, you
know, I don’t know. It’s not a huge deal to go out and try that
stuff but … because there’s not a lot that can go wrong within
Flight Simulator. It’s basically either stuff that Microsoft or X-
plane kind of screwed up or it’s stuff that an add-on developer
kind of screwed up and it’s kind of fixed.

[5:05] Now, in the real world things change a lot. They’re building
this hotel over here and there’s a crane, they have to notify you
about height, high objects like that, so those will be in the
notems. They’ll close their runways for maintenance, you just don’t
get that kind of stuff within Flight Simulator.

[5:21] So, that aspect is not necessarily useless but I guess the
thing you can take away from this is that it’s important to know
what’s going on. And it’s important to know what your aircraft can
do.

[5:35] Another big part of familiarizing yourself with, perhaps one
of the biggest parts, is weather. And that’s one thing that Flight
Simulator actually does pretty well. You’ve got companies like
Active Sky and Real Environment X that do great weather generation.
And even the weather generation within Flight Simulator itself, the
real world, what’s going on in this area right now, what am I
flying in. Even that stuff is pretty damn good, even for default
Flight Simulator.

[6:04] So, know what you can and can’t do. If you’re not used to
scanning the instruments, know that if you go up in the clouds then
you’re probably going to get turned upside down and you’ll really
start to screw things up. But what I’ve noticed is, that as virtual
pilots, a lot of us are actually pretty damn good at at least
keeping the aircraft in a pretty stable attitude within the clouds
because that’s really the only thing we have to rely on in Flight
Simulator, is our instruments.

[6:34] We don’t have that body senses that kind of mess with what’s
going on visually. So instrument stuff seems to come better to
those that have practiced fly simulator a lot and I’ve noticed that
even beginners are pretty doing good, at least keeping the level on
the files and everything. But if you are landing, it’s a different
story. I mean, if you’re trying to fly into an area with a fourth
mile visibility, a fourth statue mile visibility and you don’t have
an instrument experiences, there’s a very low, low chance that you
are going to actually find the runway and land on it.

[7:13] Alright, so to finish up this episode, let’s talk about the
unplannable. So, the unplannable is stuff that you’re not going to
get from your pilot operating handbook, you’re not going to get
from the forums, you’re not going to get from notes, you’re not
going to get it anywhere. And it’s kind of the wild card, it’s the
stuff you cannot plan for.

[7:37] So as a pilot, that’s where you’re decision making and
you’re situational awareness come in the play. That’s where you’ve
got to get yourself out of it. And no one can be there. There’s is
a little guy on your shoulders saying, ‘ hey, you know, do this,
fly it this way’ or ‘maybe you should land’. No one’s going to say
that for you. It’s you, you’ve got to make that decision and you
know, those moments are what make Aviators.

[8:12] Plenty of people screw up, like I said before, we make
mistakes and we’ve got to be willing to turn the tide in our favor
and get things fixed and make sure we’re flying safely and not
taking, taking great risks and all that stuff. It’s just that
you’ve got to be very, very diligent in handling the unplannable
because it’s bound to happen. It happens every flight, something
happens every flight that you didn’t plan for and you’ve got to,
you’ve got to take care of it.

[8:51] There was one particular instance for me. I was flying from
here Salt Lake City, Utah in the United States down to Phoenix,
Arizona and that route takes us over the Grand Canyon. So we we’re
just north of the Grand Canyon still in Utah and started to
experience some icing conditions. You know, something that wasn’t
actually forecasted and you know this particular aircraft can build
a little and be OK.

[9:22] It’s not like we’re in dire emergency if there is any frost
on the airplane. It’s not a situation like that but it was building
and it wasn’t stopping so I wanted to get out of it and basically
what you can do is you can get to an area where the temperature is
above freezing, where the ice cannot form anymore and then you can,
you can start to burn that off So means it just starts to melt
basically. And generally, how you do that is you descend to an
altitude where it’s warmer.

[9:57] So I called up air traffic control on an instrument flight,
I said, ‘hey, you know, basically we’re in the clouds and we’re
picking up a lot of ice. This isn’t a situation I want to be
anymore. We can’t go direct and I need to find an airway where we
can get lower and start to burn this ice off.’ And it’s very
awesome because the guys, they worked with me very well and they
found an area where I could get lower and I could get above the
freezing temperature and I could start to burn that ice off.

[10:28] And it was an instance where air traffic control was
pivotal in assisting me as a pilot, doing their job, just doing
exactly what they’re supposed to do. And I came out of it on top
but it’s something I didn’t plan for and it’s something that, you
know, I couldn’t just get out of manual and say what should I do in
this situation. It was a decision I had to make and it was just an
unplannable situation and you’ve got to deal with those things as
they come and you’ve got to choose the best course of action.

[11:00] There was another instance and it wasn’t exactly the same
but I was having a radio issue and I had to, I decided to divert to
another airport and the consequence of that was more personal than
it was to the actual flight because I chose to divert because I
felt that I was getting further into that domino affect and I just
needed to stop.

[11:26] The consequence was that I had to drive three hours instead
of fly forty minutes and I had to do it on Valentine’s Day. And
it’s something that, you know, it’s like get there it is we talked
about and it’s something I decided to just do. And do the safe
round and break the domino effect and just make sure that
everything was safe and we were good and it turned out, you know
the next day, after we’d landed and everything, when it was VFR
conditions, so the next day, it was VFR instead of clouds
everywhere which was why I didn’t continue – IFR, no radio, dumb
idea.

[12:13] So the next day I had to drive back down which was a very
long flight or a drive again, three and a half hours and then I had
to fly the aircraft back in VFR conditions where I can basically
work with that radio and make sure that I was safe but you know I
could also watch out further other aircraft and I could just be
safer and so it was a better situation. It all turned out OK.

[12:40] So anyway, the unplannable, it will happen to you and
you’ve got to be aware of your situation and you’ve got to make the
decision, it’s completely up to you. So that’s all I’m going to
harp on about this . I’d like you guys to discuss further with
comments, kind of ask questions, maybe, maybe give us some of your
own experiences, what you’ve experience within a virtual flight
world or the real flight world. We’d love to hear those stories and
I’m sure others would to. Just gives a better prospective on how
things can be done and how you can make great decisions when
unplannable things come up.

[13:17] So that’s it for this episode. And let’s see, let’s see
what we have next episode here. We have the free spirit so that
will be within our next episode and until then throttle on.

Transcription by CastingWords