The road to my wings
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| Date | 29-12-2008 |
| Location |  |
| Message | (Tuesday 0000) Today we went to a ski resort called Fort Qu'Appelle, which is about 2 hours drive from here. My little boy cannot snow ski of course and unfortunately they don't allow sledges on the resort so we just drove to a nearby hill and made our own "resort." It was fun but after a while the little one got cold so my wife took him to the car. I went up and down the hill a few times until I got bored. When I arrived back near the car, one of the locals, a native Canadian called me over and said: "Just made it down, huh?" I didn't know what he meant so he explained about the wolf that he'd just seen near the hill. I hadn't seen it until he mentioned it. It was actually quite close to me. "But they don't attack people, do they?" I asked. "Oh yes they would, especially in winter when food is hard to find!" I asked him how he could be sure that it was a wolf and he said that it's too big to be a Coyote. The guy said he was ready to grab his gun - and all that time I had no idea the wolf was there. I realized that I don't have enough respect for the wildlife here. Back home we're not used to dangerous animals of any kind. If I had seen it when I was on the hill I would have probably stayed there to take a good look. I would have never imagined in my wildest dreams that it would attack me...and fortunately it never got close enough for me to find out. Happy new year, guys! /GEA |
| Date | 25-12-2008 |
| Location | |
| Message | (Thursday 1210) Just want to wish a Merry Christmas to all who read this. Best regards GEA |
| Date | 19-12-2008 |
| Location | |
| Message | (Friday 1405) It's Christmas holidays from now until next year. Yesterday we had the Christmas dinner at the Officer's mess. We had a good time. The highlight of the dinner is the annual draw (lottery) where people buy tickets and all the money is spent on prizes. This year there were prizes for over $13,000. Some of the guys bought several hundred tickets. Myself I bought about 30 but didn't win anything. One of the Dnaish instructors, on the other hand, bought two tickets and won a prize. That's what I call beating the odds! The biggest prize was a 52" flat screen TV. I've become good friends with the Italian guys since I got here. They enjoy having someone to chat with in Italian and they're always good for a laugh. I had expected them to be bad at the English language but they're actually all very good at it. Tonight I promised Len (a Candian friend) to drive him to the airport as he'll be going home to Ontario to see his family. It's funny how big Canada is. It takes him half the time as it would take us to fly to Denmark for him to get home. Canada is really massive. I finally got my car done. Apparently it had a faulty battery so I got it replaced yesterday. The warranty still covers so it was free. No wonder Ford are going bankrupt! I look forward to my next flight on the Harvard II. The deputy flight commander told me yesterday that when we get flying we'll be doing at least two trips a day in order to finish the course in time. 2009's gonna get busy! /GEA |
| Date | 19-12-2008 |
| Location | |
| Message | (Friday 0930) It finally happened yesterday. The weather was awesome but things didn't look good when my slot was approaching. Because of the cold weather and no-wind conditions, the aircraft departing were leaving contrails behind them so the airfield fogged in and we had to go to Stand-by programme. It was really frustrating to see clear blue skies and the sun shining everywhere except right on the airfield. So when the programme got back to VFR again, they decided to leave the Hawks grounded as they were the ones leaving the big contrails over the runway. So I got my turn, did the walk around, started the plane up and taxied out with the help of my instructor. He did the take off. The plane accelerates really quickly and flies so smoothly. It almost feels like you don't have a propeller up front. There was a cloud layer in the work area so we did our work above the layer. It was basically airspeed changes, 30, 45 and 60 degree bank turns and different attitudes to get a feel for the plane. It was good fun but the helmet was killing me above my ears as it was too tight. On the way back we had to do an IFR cloud break down as we didn't have ground visibility. When we got below the clouds we continued visually. It's hard to find the references on the ground as everything is covered in snow and it all looks the same. Even the lakes are frozen and covered in snow. Now I can go to the holidays with a taste of the Harvard II. Nice! /GEA |
| Date | 17-12-2008 |
| Location | |
| Message | (Wednesday 1930) Same shit as always. Need I write more? At least JØR got his flight today, which makes me the only Dane who hasn't flown yet. Tomorrow's the last chance before the holidays so the weather better be good when it's my turn to fly. This is SO depressing. Hopefully 2009 will be a better flying year. This really exceeded my worst expectations. /GEA |
| Date | 16-12-2008 |
| Location | |
| Message | (Tuesday 2005) I was on today's schedule again but only as decortaion, since I was number four in priority and there were only three aircraft available. Somehow some miracle happened in the last minute so there was an aircraft available for me too. So I quickly found my instructor, we made a quick recap of the briefing, as we had briefed the flight before, and headed down to duty ops. We both put all our gear on and as soon as we got down to duty ops, the ops officer said that we shouldnøt get too excited as a plane had just broke down, and guess what: We got cancelled. Just call me naive, but I still think that I'll get a flight before the holidays. We'll see tomorrow, I guess. /GEA |
| Date | 15-12-2008 |
| Location | |
| Message | (Monday 1050) The weather is beautiful today, but still too cold to fly in. The sun is shining brightly but all weekend we've had a wind chill of -44C and it is not forecasted to get better within the next 48 hours. So everyone is standing by. So I took the opportunity to get my monthly Egress trainer done in the mock cockpit. The rule is to wear the clothing of the day and since it's very cold I had to put all the gear on for the practise. That means warm underwear including long jones, flight suit, the big bunny pants (you have to see them to believe them!) and winter jacket. Then of course you have the torso harness and the helmet & mask on...and two pairs of gloves! It took me a good five-ten minutes to get strapped into the cockpit. I cannot explain how cold it is here. The first thing that happens when you go outside is that all the humid stuff in your nose freezes and it feels really strange in there. Then if you get into the wind, tears come out of your eyes and freeze instantly. I hope that it gets warmer tomorrow - not so much for the sake of it but more because I'm tired of not flying. It's the end of this work month soon, so I have some paper work I need to get done. Later... /GEA |
| Date | 12-12-2008 |
| Location | |
| Message | (Friday 2145) I got ungrounded this morning and I'm already on Monday's schedule for a flight and a sim. I really believe it'll happen this time. The weather forecast is good, however a bit on the cold side. Both Monday and Tuesday are forecasted at -30C and sunshine, however Tuesday will have a windchill of -46C which is below the -39C limit, so flying will cease. All the Danes except myself had sent a leave application for next week to the Flight commander as we thought that we wouldn't be on the flying programme before the next year. That's probably what put us on the priority list for flying next week. Have a nice weekend...and stay indoors! /GEA |
| Date | 10-12-2008 |
| Location | |
| Message | (Wednesday 2235) I went to the doctor this morning, as planned, but did not get ungrounded as I still can't clear my ears. Hopefully I'll get ungrounded on Friday. Otherwise there is a bit of good news too. Three of the Danes got their first flight today and the one I've spoken to since, said that it was awesome. I'm really happy on their behalf and hope that it won't be too long before it's my turn. So now it's only JØR and myself who haven't been up yet. I have a bit more hope of getting a flight before the Christmas holidays now that the other dudes got their flight. I don't know if I've mentioned this but one of the reasons that there are no aircraft available at the moment is a problem with the engines. After a certain amount of flying hours, the engines get sent to Pratt & Whitney (the maker) to get serviced and rebuilt. The school has experienced problems with the rebuilt engines so most of the school's aircraft are in the hangar just sitting there without an engine, waiting for a solution to be found. The engine has a ferronous metal detector inside and if there are any metal pieces in the oil system, they get magnetically attracted to the detector and you get a "chip light" in the cockpit. This tells you that there are probably two metal objects grinding against eachother, causing the metal chips in the oil system, and will probably result in an engine failure, so you don't want to take any chances with that. Stay warm. /GEA |
| Date | 09-12-2008 |
| Location | |
| Message | (Tuesday 1510) The Met exam went ok, but it's really frustrating when the other Danes get 100% and I get 98%. It really doesn't matter but being a competitive minded person it annoys me. Apparently quite a few Canadian senior students in Bandit flight have been reading my only diary and parts of it will be used as an article for the school magazine. It's all sober stuff and I got to read it first and censor anything that I didn't think was appropriate. But there wasn't really any stuff of that kind. Tomorrow, all we have is a swimming lesson at 0700 and then we have no ground school the rest of the week. With a bit of luck I'll get ungrounded tomorrow and get a flight on Thursday and another one on Friday - right! /GEA |
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