The road to my wings
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| Date | 10-01-2010 |
| Location |  |
| Message | (Sunday 1155) As you probably know the next olympic games will take place in Vancouver, which is on the West coast of Canada. So as part of the PR campaign for the big event, the olympic torch has been travelling from the East coast of Canada (73 days of travelling so far!) and will arrive at the West coast in time for the games. Today it went through Moose Jaw. To be exact it went right outside my house, then through the base and finished the local trip at the Snowbirds hangar. At school they had encouraged us to put our uniforms on and go out on the streets to show our support and make some PR for the Canadian Forces. I had almost forgotten all about it until I got up and was eating breakfast with my little boy when I heard alot of noise outside and could see people and cars parked all over the place. Oh yes, the torch! So I quickly put my flight suit on and went outside to join all the other onlookers. I took a Danish flag with me of course as everyone else was waving Canadian flags. So the torch went by and with it apparently it brought some warm weather too. Right now it's +6C outside. That's right, it's above freezing!You gotta enjoy it while it lasts so I'll try to do some outdoor activities with my boy today because before you know it, it's -30C again... Have a good Sunday. /GEA |
| Date | 09-01-2010 |
| Location | |
| Message | (Saturday 1925) I did a formation flight this morning and I'm actually quite tired now after a six day week. The flight was good. I was really turned on and I asked the IP to step up the bank angle during the wing work, just for the fun of it. So we flew formation at over 90 degrees of bank instead of the usual 60 degrees. It's a bit more challenging but also alot more fun. As you probably figured out you cannot fly level with 90 degrees of bank as you have no lift from the wings so what you do is actually kind of wing overs so you're climbing and descending all the time and the speed is constantly changing. And obviously you're pulling more g's. It all went well and the IP never touched the stick so it was all safe and I managed to keep it relatively tight at the same time. Next time I'll ask for the famous "120 & 3." Basically it's where you do the wing overs with up to 120 degrees of bank and pulling over 3g's during the turns. It should be even more fun than the 90 degree bank turns. Tomorrow's my day off so I plan on working abit more on the T6 model. Then Monday it's back to business with another two formation flights. The first one is a solo formation which I really look forward to. Now it's time to get some late supper and then relax in front of the TV abit before I head to bed. /GEA |
| Date | 08-01-2010 |
| Location | |
| Message | (Friday 1550) Finally I got a couple of flights done today. This morning I had a formation flight and this afternoon a CH one. I'm quite dizzy right now to be honest. My head is spinning after all those aerobatics. This morning, shortly after we got airborne, my lead starting turning away and gave me the "You have the lead" hand signal. He also started slowing down at the same time so I thought he had an engine problem and that's not what you want to have right after takeoff. The problem was that one of his gear doors was unlocked, or so it seemed from the cockpit. He was getting a red light for one of them so handled it accordingly. We took TAC lead but moved in behind him to do a visual inspection and the door seemed to be closed. After about a minute the red light went out. I guess the switch was partially frozen - like everything else in this terrible winter. Believe it or not the temperature is warming up rapidly and tomorrow we should have close to zero! That's a temperature change of over 30 degrees in just one day. Most countries don't have that big of a change between summer and winter, let alone within a day. That's that for today. The count now stands on 11 flights to go...and then it's on to the Hawk. It's gonna be great! /GEA |
| Date | 07-01-2010 |
| Location | |
| Message | (Thursday 2205) I didn't get to fly today. The temperature warmed up a bit it wasn't enough to get me airborne. Anyway, the plan is that I'll get two flights done tomorrow. I uploaded the video that I made about the cross country trip. If you want to download it you can find it on this link: http://www.jetfighters.dk/videos/Cross%20country.wmv It's almost 300Mb so it's quite a big file. Depending on the speed of your connection it should take about 5-10 minutes to download. I hope that you enjoy watching it as much as I enjoyed recording it. This evening I went shopping and it was bitterly cold. The van had "square" tires so it humped along for the first few km. The engine simply wouldn't warm up to normal temperature either. The guague just got slightly above the "Cold" line and stayed there. I get surprized every time as to how cold it can get. Imagine this: A deep freezer, not the freezer that you have on your refrigerator, but one of those purpose built deep freezers, is normally set at -18C. Now think about what it's like when it's double as cold; and then add a nasty wind so that it feels like it's -40C or -50C. You cannot really imagine it until you've tried it. I don't understand how the settlers managed to stay here in the winters back in the days. They came here with their horse and wagon and didn't have insulated houses and warm clothing like today. I understand if they came here during the summer and liked it - but then after the first winter I personally would have migrated South, WAY South. Stay warm! /GEA |
| Date | 07-01-2010 |
| Location | |
| Message | (Thursday 1120) It's a beautiful day out there with clear blue skies. However nobody's flying as the tower started the day with a windchill warning of windchill below -40C. There's almost no wind but the little wind that we have is enough to put it out of limits. So we're waiting patiently for the warning to get cancelled so that we can start flying. To be honest I don't eexpect to get more than one flight in today because by the time we land from the first flight it would be approaching the end of the flying day. On the other hand, all Danes are on the sched for two flights this Saturday. It sucks to have to work half of the weekend, but on the other hand, getting another two X's in the book will be sweet too... /GEA |
| Date | 06-01-2010 |
| Location | |
| Message | (Wednesday 1315) Finally I got a flight in. I had my formation review trip so now I should be good to go for the next form trip and the next X in the book. It was lots of fun and I was less rusty than I had expected. I was really satisfied with my wing work and I did alot of leading too which is coming along nicely. The weather was overcast at about 8000 feet so on the way back we got vectors for an ILS approach. All I had to do after I did my pre-descent checks and set my navigation kit up was just stay on lead's wing down through the clouds and all the way down until touchdown. It was bucket-loads of fun! The air was nice and smooth too so the conditions were almost ideal. The only thing was that it was friggin' cold out there, but once we got the plane started and then got above the clouds it heated up nicely. The temperature should drop further today and the wind should increase even more, which means that the windchill is predicted to be right on the limit. The meteorologists say it'll be at -38C windchill this afternoon. I have another formation flight scheduled at 1530 so we'll have to wait and see if we'll go or not. That's it for now. /GEA |
| Date | 05-01-2010 |
| Location | |
| Message | (Tuesday 1440) Yesterday's weather developed to the worse today and it's actually been snowing quite alot and should start to clear up by mid day tomorrow. So no flying again today. On the other hand I got alot of administrative stuff done. There's also been a journalist from FTK (Tactical flying command in Denmark) who needed to interview the upcoming fighter pilots. I was the only senior Danish student around as the rest come back from their holidays tomorrow. She didn't want to interview the new Danes either because they haven't started flying yet, so guess who drew the short straw. So she asked a bunch of questions about the training and took a gazillion pictures, both yeeterday and today. I actually look forward to seeing them as I think there are a few funny ones with all the terrible weather and all. That's it for now. They've gone to a cease flying programme and the tower has closed for the day so all that's left now is to go home. /GEA |
| Date | 04-01-2010 |
| Location | |
| Message | (Monday 0950) Back to business. I'm on the schedule for two flights today but the weather isn't looking good at all. They really want to get us done now so we'll get scheduled twice a day as much as possible until we're done. It's good to see most of the other guys again. The Danes from my course arrive back from Denmark tonight. Otherwise not much news from here other than that the new year was good and I did a bit more work on the T6 project. Hamster and four others started their Hawk course today. Lucky bastards! They're sitting in the classroom doing CBT's (Computer based training) where you basically teach yourself everything from your computer. Hamster still has one T6 flight left so he hopes he can get it done this afternoon so that he can forget the Harvard and start concentrating solely on the Hawk. That's it for now. I've got a bunch of practical things to get done and I don't intend to waste time... /GEA |
| Date | 30-12-2009 |
| Location | |
| Message | (Wednesday 2300) Yesterday I went to Regina to get some stuff done and I also stopped by the local hobby shop to buy some equipment for the T6 project. I finally started drawing out the parts on sheets of balsa and ply and tomorrow I plan on starting to cut some wood. This holiday's been pretty good so far. I've got a whole bunch done and I still managed to relax a great deal when I was in Mexico. I did a video about our trip to Mexico and one about my cross country to the States, which I unsuccesfully have been trying to upload on Facebook. Now I'm trying to upload the Cross country one on Youtube and see if that works out. The reason why I upload my family stuff on Facebook is simply because on Facebook you can choose who's allowed to see your stuff, whereas on Youtube it can be accessed by anyone. And as I know I want to do my best to protect my little boy so that's why you won't find anything of his in public locations. Oh well, that's it for now. If I don't write again tomorrow, have a great entry into 2010. See you next year! /GEA |
| Date | 26-12-2009 |
| Location | |
| Message | (Saturday 1620) Here I am back in the ice box. The holiday was really great but what a shock it was to get back to winter. When we left we had +33C in Mexico and when we got here it was -24C. That's almost a 60 degree change after a five hour flight. Everything here is quiet. Everyone's away for the holidays. We spent most of the day resting and relaxing. It's funny how you always need a holiday after a holiday. I must admit that the best part of the holiday was the company. When my kid went to bed every evening I always ended up hanging out at the bar with a few older couples, all in their sixties. All of them were Canadians and all were pretty relaxed and had a great sense of humor. One of them, Stan, was a retired doctor from the Canadian Air Force so we could chat along for hours talking about everything and nothing. However he backstabbed the rest of us at breakfast on Christmas morning when his wife mentioned that he had bought her marshmallows for Christmas, and thereby he made us other husbands look bad when he asked us what we had bought our wife. Then, to make matters worse, the wife asked him: "So what are we going to do today?" and he replied: "Whatever your heart desires, my dear." We all cracked up and asked him to say no more. The flight back home was boring as hell. When we landed in Regina, my kid shook his head, looked at me in disappointment and said: "Bad landing!" Some of the other passangers must have heard him and couldn't help smiling at him. /GEA |
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