Recently I’ve been getting to know two programmers from another country. They bought my ebook, “The CRJ200 Quicknotes Study Guide” to help them develop their videos for the CRJ200. They want it to be as accurate as possible. Since then, we’ve been going back and forth with emails for the last couple days as we talk about the different systems on the airplane. I have to admit, some of the questions were over my head though. After all, I’m just a pilot.
Anyway, Javier and Anton sent me a link of one of their most recent creations. I was TOTALLY impressed with it that I sat down and wrote this little blog entry. Truly there are people out there with great talent that can create impressive videos like this one for our benefit. I’m not one of them!
I hope you will take a look at it and make a comment on their YouTubepage, share it on FaceBook, or Tweet it, if you like it! I know you will!
Today we were in Redmond, Oregon, sitting in the airplane at 6 am boarding passengers when then the skies opened up and it poured down snow. It was literally blowing horizontally. The main cabin door was right in the “line-of-fire” of the snow and there was no way to stop the snow from coming in the airplane.
There was snow and water everywhere.
Then, when we finally got around to closing the door and de-icing the airplane, they couldn’t do it fast enough with the way it was snowing. We reached out holdover time (HOT) before they finished de-icing. (The HOT is the time when the de-icing fluid becomes ineffective and won’t absorb the snow. When and if that happens, you have to go back to the ramp to de-ice the airplane again. Period.) Unfortunately, RDM only has “Type I” de-icing fluid which has a very short HOT compared to “Type IV” de-icing fluid. Besides, de-icing again would have been a waste of time anyway because now the runway was contaminated with 1/2″ of snow.
With the summer coming to a close and with the days getting shorter it is time to start thinking about what you are going to do if an engine fails while on a night flight, especially if you are in single-engine airplane.
I was reminded of this recently when I was flying from San Francisco (KSFO) to Victoria, B.C., Canada (CYYJ). It was the first night flight I’d flown in awhile and as I was looking out my window watching the sun set when I happened to glance down and notice that the terrain was quite inhospitable and it was getting dark and I wondered to myself, what would I do if we lost one of the engines.
If you have been flying a single-engine airplane for any amount of time you probably have a well developed right leg. If you remember from your ground school days about single-engine airplanes, you will recall that when a single-engine airplane climbs, the descending blade, on a right turning propeller, has a larger angle-of-attack, which pushes more air and causes the airplane to want to turn to the left. You then have to apply more right rudder to compensate for this left-turning tendency or P-factor.
When I was a new pilot flying around Florida building time, I was doing a VFR flight from Daytona Beach to Vero Beach, Florida. I was young and cocky and I thought, “Hey, I don’t need a flight plan,” and set off on my way. That was that a big mistake! It should have been an easy trip. It is practically a straight line from Daytona Beach to Vero Beach along the coast line. Though nothing terrible happened, I did get disorientated a little when I was above the clouds (where it was cooler) and had to ask for help from a controller to get me on my way. I decided right then that I would ALWAYS have a flight plan with me so that I never got myself in that situation again. I decided that I would be absolutely certain about my location at all times, have an alternate airport along my route that I knew I could fly to if the weather went bad even on a VFR day or if I need fuel or was having engine trouble.
So we will talk about a these things in today’s entry so you will be more ready than me and I think you will find it useful and if nothing else, a good reminder.
Recently I’ve been getting to know two programmers from another country. They bought my ebook, “The CRJ200 Quicknotes Study Guide” to help them develop their videos for the CRJ200. They want it to be as accurate as possible. Since then, we’ve been going back and forth with emails for the last couple days as we talk about the different systems on the airplane. I have to admit, some of the questions were over my head though. After all, I’m just a pilot.
Today we were in Redmond, Oregon, sitting in the airplane at 6 am boarding passengers when then the skies opened up and it poured down snow. It was literally blowing horizontally. The main cabin door was right in the “line-of-fire” of the snow and there was no way to stop the snow from coming in the airplane. 
