Hi Sean:
I am sure there are a lot more interesting people on this forum than me and with a lot of wonderful flying experiences they could share.
Just about everyone in our family including our own children are, have been or probably going to be Military Aviators with careers ending with Commercial Flying. I did have one uncle who was a Navy Captain and another who was a Major in the Armoured Corps. After thirty years service they both actually became teachers. We will not talk about them as they were the black sheep of the family (non aviators) ;D LOL.
As a military brat by the time I was ten years old and certainly not the oldest child I had more than one hundred hours in the air travelling as a family from location to location. Our father was rather high on the food chain in the RCAF and he would drag us on trips throughout the United States and Canada when we were not in school. I used to get a thrill sitting on a stack of flying manuals placed on the right seat so I could see out while holding onto the yoke of the Dakota (C47/DC3).
I did my first take off and landing in my dads own Tiger Moth at the ripe old age of fourteen. I had an older brother, the second oldest who beat me by several months prior to his fourteenth birthday. :P
My dad used to say if you can Box, Dance and pound out a tune on the Piano you can fly the Tiger Moth as they all have something in common. He was so right. :)
I will let you figure that one out.
My second log book, had to blow the dust off it for you, I was already flying Commercially and there was not much of interest on the first half dozen pages but I did find an entry when I was instructing on the Canso. (Catalina/PBY)
I was in the right seat checking out a new Captain and we were doing a water landing on Hudsons Bay abeam Great Whale. He was scheduled to do a trip and we were trying to get in a couple of water takeoffs and landings. He was doing a perfect approach and about fifty feet up when this whale surfaced right in front of us.
That cetacean mammal had all of Hudsons Bay but he had to surface right in front of us.
Oh we did not hit him but it was a close encounter. With miles and miles of empty water ahead of us we shot a missed approach. ;D
I found another entry about one third of the way into the log book that said "Fighter Pilots...make the worst passengers...Humbug".
Well I flew scheduled runs but on our time off we could keep our Float Endorsement current by flying for the other side of the company which did Bush Flying of all kinds.
I kept current on the DHC-3 "Otter" by flying it when not scheduled out.
This one particular trip I picked up a group of nine and three of them were former United States Air Force fighter pilots who flew the Century Series Fighters over Vietnam.
Well after bragging all about the "Otter" (who me ::)) we were airborne and just past the last lake for about ten miles and what happens, we blow a jug. Well I dropped her nose, we were about two thousand feet, turned the old girl 180 degrees in the same square footage as a small house and dropped her onto this lake about the size of a postage stamp.
When we settled onto the water I looked back and these guys were as white as ghosts and chanting something. I don't think it was "Off we go into the Wild Blue Yonder"...YUP...Fighter Pilots do make the worst passengers.
Okay that is it for me now, let's hear from a few others. :)
Cheers...Happy Landings...Doug
When you're nervous, and aside from turbulence, flying along in perfect VFR, time starts really dragging and you start looking for things to do.. else just worry about the fuel situation. I guess I was thinking that at least I'd have some advance warning reference from one tank, to apply to the other, on the looming, absolute fuel depletion ::) But even that wouldn't really change anything, as Newark was my ONLY option...
And I guess that the gauges might tell you something useful... although I try to avoid even thinking about those lousy gauges.
