The road to my wings
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| Date | 29-11-2009 |
| Location |  |
| Message | (Sunday 1935) I'm on for two flights tomorrow. First it's CH21 and then right afterwards I have CH21A which is the first solo flight in a long time. It's funny to think about the different cultures when you're out travelling. Every time we went to a hotel to check in at the US, people always came up to us to shake our hands and thank us for serving the country. Some noticed that we didn't have a US flag on our shoulder but that didn't bother them. They thanked us for serving our own country. It feels good to feel appreciated. After all, what we do isn't for fun, even though most of the time we have alot of fun doing it. This afternoon I took my little boy to the Spa downtown and we met this Korean-Canadian immigrant who lives in Regina. He was rather open and chatted like crazy. I always enjoy talking to new people especially on an occasion like today, meeting someone from a country that I know very little of. /GEA |
| Date | 28-11-2009 |
| Location | |
| Message | (Saturday 1210) I didn't have much of a day off yesterday. First I went in to get our course photo taken and afterwards us Danes had the yearly union meeting. After that it was finally time to chill as we had our Christmas dinner at the Dane bar. We ate lots of traditional Danish food and drank a "few" snaps. They taste like crap and they're terribly strong but it's all part of the tradition. This monrning we woke up to a white landscape. There's somthing calming about snow. Everything is so quiet and serene when there's just been snowfall. The sky is bright blue and there's no wind. Really nice to wake up to. I'm on the sched for another CH flight on Monday. Let's hope the weather stays like this. /GEA |
| Date | 26-11-2009 |
| Location | |
| Message | (Thursday 1730) I flew CH20 today and considering that my last CH flight was just over four months ago, it went ok. I did a few new manoevrs, PFL (Practise forced landings) from the traffic pattern and an AoA approach. On top of that I started off with some repetitions by doing a spin, a few basic aerobatics and a slow flight and stall. Tomorrow's my crew-rest day so I basically have the day off apart from a yearly meeting about our union with the other Danes at 1400. After that we have the Christmas dinner at the Dane bar. I'm not in the Christmas spirit quite yet but I guess tomorrow's event will help me on the way. Today hamster and myself told the other guys about an experience we had in Salt Lake. We were standing outside a mall in civilian clothes when this Mexican immigrant came over and asked us if we knew anyone who could offer him a job. We mentioned that we're from out of town and chatted along. Then he said: "Well, it's hard for a guy like me to get a job, being a fellon and all. I'm on parole and people don't want to hire me. I'm not a sexual offender or anything like that, I just have this thing about beating people up at work when we disagree. But now I'm 42 and I finally realized that you cannot resolve everything with violence." Then he looked at us and could see us backing up and said: "Oh don't worry, I won't beat you up!" We wished him good luck with finding a job and went our seperate ways. /GEA |
| Date | 25-11-2009 |
| Location | |
| Message | (Wednesday 1915) Back home in Moose Jaw. As anticipated, the winds enroute were very strong today. According to our planning, the wind was supposed to be bad on the first half of the leg or so and then get weaker along while getting closer to base. However, as we were cruising along I did several fuel checks and altered my cruising speed in order to reduce the fuel flow and things were just not adding up. It was looking tight, and by the looks of it we would land at Moose Jaw with only the necessary reserves of fuel. So I could either cruise along and see whether the wind would calm down as predicted or take a desicion to divert to another airport and refuel before it was too late. I'm not much of a gambler and wasn't willing to find out whether winds would change or not so we decided to divert to Glasgow, Montana. I flew the NDB approach there just for practise, landed, refuelled and before long both planes were airborne again heading for the remainder of the leg home. Back home I did a hold at FL200 and a high approach transition, where you descend from that altitude down to 4000 feet in just under 5 minutes. From that transition I made a PAR and that was it. During this cross country I did basically every kind of IFR approach at a good diversity of airports. From a VOR A at Moab, which aligns you accross the runway and requires you to circle to land to a GPS approach near the Grand Canyon and ILS approach at Salt Lake City International at night in between the very big birds. This morning just before I stepped into the plane at Rapid City I finally saw the B1s at Ellesworth AFB. They look pretty sweet in the air. The runway at Ellesworth is huge too. They have a 15,000 foot runway which is also 300 feet wide. I'm on the schedule for the first CH flight of 2B tomorrow so I better open the books and find my puke bags and get ready for some hardcore aerobatics. Just as I opened the door at home today, my boy greeted me and looked surprized to see me. I looked at him and mentioned that I had just landed. The first thing he said was: "Was it a good landing, dada?" That's my boy! /GEA |
| Date | 24-11-2009 |
| Location |  |
| Message | (Tuesday 1810) Last night on the road. We're at Rapid City in South Dakota, about 40 minute drive from Mount Rushmore. I actually saw the sculpture as I was flying on for the approach here. I only just saw it by coincidence and from the air it looks rather small. Unfortunately I didn't get any pictures as I saw it just before we flew over it so I didn't have time to pull the camera out. Just North of this airfield is a USAF base with a bunch of B1 bombers. I hope to meet them in the air when we depart from here tomorrow as I've never seen one airborne. I won't stay up too late tonight as we plan to leave early tomorrow morning. We have to be in Moose Jaw by 1030 and considering that we're an hour behind here due to the time zones we have to gain an hour plus fly against a strong head wind which doesn't leave us with any options other than leaving very early in the morning. The wind is forecast to be between 88 and 120kt right on our nose, so it's also going to be scetchy with regards to fuel, even though the trip is only 400 miles. It's been an awesome adventure, however I do look forward to get back home. I miss my little boy like crazy. I'll upload a bunch of pictures and videos when I get back and have sorted them all out. If I recall correctly, it was H.C. Andersen who said: "When you're at home, you dream of adventure and when you're on adventure, you dream of home." That's it for now. Probably my last update from the States for this trip. /GEA |
| Date | 24-11-2009 |
| Location | |
| Message | (Tuesday 1100) It's been a while because I've been pretty busy. We're in Salt Lake city right now. Got here last night from Reno, Nevada. Before that we were in Las Vegas and Sedona. I'll write again later when I have time. Right now we're busy planning the next leg, and the weather ahead isn't making it any easier to plan... /GEA |
| Date | 22-11-2009 |
| Location | |
| Message | (Sunday 0715) Last night we had a few beers and then went to bed relatively early in order to get up early this morning. I was very tired but I still got up at about 0400 and couldn't fall asleep again because I was so excited about the whole thing. So I started doing flight planning in the middle of the night for the next two flights. I planned from here (Great Junction, Colorado) South to Sedona for a touch and go and then further South to Phoenix, Arizona where I planned for the huge international airport for lunch. There are no IFR approaches in Sedona, only visual procedures but it should be worth seeing. From what I've heard it's in a valley that narrows down as you get closer to the runway. They warn of turbulence during the approach on the charts so I'll be cautious about it. Then from there we should depart to Las Vegas international airport and hopefully be there early afternoon, where we'll spend the afternoon and night. Should be fun! That's it for now. I'll get some breakfast and then it's back to the airport and brief the other guys of my plans. /GEA |
| Date | 21-11-2009 |
| Location | |
| Message | (Saturday 1825) This morning we flew out of Casper in very windy conditions. Fortunately the wind was almost down the pipe but still right on the limts. One of the other planes broke down in Casper and another didn't make it out in time before the winds went out of limits so they had to delay their departure by a few hours. We flew to Moab, which is an airfield situated in the canyons of Utah and I did a VOR approach which puts you right accross the runway and then you have to circle into position to land. It was great fun. After the missed approach we continued enroute to Grand Junction which is where I am now. I did a LDA/DME approach to land, we got some food and drinks and decided to stay here in order to wait for the other guys to arrive. So we agreed to do a formation flight here in Grand Junction. There were also 8 Harvarad II's from the USAF and they were all watching us so I had a great responsibility to do a proper formation take off and keep the Canadian dignity...and I did! It was awesome fun. Then doing the formation stuff over this landscape at dusk was just spectacular. We'll be staying here for the night and tomorrow we'll probably head off to Las Vegas or Phoenix. We'll see. Whatever we decide, it's going to be great. /GEA |
| Date | 20-11-2009 |
| Location | |
| Message | (Friday 1940) Just landed at our first stop, which is Casper in the state of Wyoming. The trip here was good and I flew a VOR/DME approach for the nicely lit runway 21 here in Casper. We left from home late in the afternoon so by the time we got here it was dark. We still haven't decided where to go tomorrow but what's definite is that we'll go to the hotel, check in, take a quick shower and change into some civilian clothes and then head off to this steak house that we've heard about. Then after that we'll probably have a few beers and start planning for tomorrow's flight. That's it for now. I'll update again tomorrow. /GEA |
| Date | 19-11-2009 |
| Location | |
| Message | (Thursday 1800) I had my "weekend" for this week today. I got a bunch of stuff done and I'm almost ready for tomorrow. We depart at 1100, the destination depending on what the weather conditions are like. We're going to be four ships in all, and hopefully we'll do some formation flying during our trip too. It's going to be COM, JØR, Hamster and myself with our instructors. Tomorrow morning we'll be in at about 0730 so that we have enough time to prepare flight planning and get all set. I'll update when I have the chance along the trip. /GEA |
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