Any Mouse, Ridin’ the Gypsy Wind.

The kid asked, as kids will do, the question requiring a straight face and a kind answer: What’s “any mouse?”

Well what do you mean? Give it to me in a sentence.

Like when there’s a quote, and the person who said it is listed as “any mouse.”

Any mouse, indeed. Who isn’t? How funny is that really? Don’t think about it too long, but it’s not only who you are, but where you’re going–and who’s taking you there.

And getting there is a rat race:

Big Skinner box, the cheese is at the gate, then on-board, a seat. You take it on faith: though you’re “any mouse” here–even though to the security guy looking at you naked on a screen you’re really anything but–regardless, you’ll be more than that there. And there is wherever and whomever you valued (and vice versa) enough to justify the faceless gauntlet between here and there.

And where is there? Where you’re going–where they know you, value you beyond the quantitative “you” of weight and price and carbon composition. As you.

Well kinda sorta you–more quantitatively, as that cryptic bar code that lists stuff about  (destination, bags, connections, weight, number) rather than the flesh-and-blood qualitatively you most appreciated there–or you wouldn’t be going, right? You won’t be just any mouse when you get there.

That’s worth launching into the stratosphere for, you’d have to hope. You paid your pound of flesh, endured the hauling (bags weigh a ton!), the purging (that won’t go through security!), the prep. Boarding is that moment that divides the waiting from the going.

And who is it that makes the going happen? Well, any mouse, once again. Don’t know if you’re blind and I’m invisible or vice versa, but either way works just fine. You might as well be asleep as in surgery, because you won’t see me anyway, if I can help it. Flying is what I do, but you’re why I do it. We don’t really need to meet, do we? Just need to get it done.

I love being any mouse, because while what I do is because of where you want to go, it’s most importantly, a large part of who I am. Let’s be any mouse then, shall we?

Sometimes you overhear stuff going on beyond a wall and you know, yup–they’re there.

Sneak preview, yeah, we are. We have a lot of similar stuff front and back, don’t we? Not a lot of extra space either place.

Which is the reality of putting a bullet into the sky, you have to know, where weight and size are critical. Nobody has a lot of elbow room. Kind of bought the ride but not the space, you know? And you have screens in back to help you forget where we are and what we’re doing

while I have a bunch of them to keep me engaged in what you’re trying not to notice.

Silent partners, aren’t we? You divert, I engage. You ride, I fly. Together, we drag a knife across the sky and leave a puffy rumply scar that heals quickly nonetheless.

You can’t see that? Sideways ain’t always the best view. Are you even looking? No? Because you’re looking here:

Aren’t you? Good. Then I can get on with what I do. Getting there is my reason for being here–but being “there” means little to me. I’m not staying anyway and if you asked me later where I was, I probably could even tell you. It doesn’t matter to me.

Rather, I’m all about the fire.

A thousand degrees, fifty thousand pounds of thrust, let’s roll. Every minute, every vertical foot, every thousand miles one at a time, I’m on it–so you don’t have to be. Climb, climb, cruise, climb; lather, rinse, repeat. Route, reroute; guess-timate–call on your years of appraising the sky and what it might hold–outsmart it; the sky doesn’t care. But I do.

All the while, I’ve got eyeballs out watching the sunset giving the horizon a fat lip.

Rumpled sky having trouble getting settled into night. A thousand miles later, off the nose, the moon just punched the night sky in the face, rising bloody red at first but then that alabaster gleamy mottled ball that won’t shut up. No excuses for bad landings tonight.

I keep an eye above, thinking of the far-off jewels flung across the sky; cirrus like a gauzy scarf dressing up old pals like Cassipoea and Orion. But I still find ’em, think about jewels, priceless, and as far away as that. That’s something to savor and not forget.

Keep your window shades drawn because it’s about time for the feature film–it actually varies with the compass direction of the flight (did you know that?) in the Main Cabin. Miles, courses, frequencies, fuel burn, oxygen, generators–I’ve got it figured down to a rat’s ass:

I’ll take care of time and tide for you–fuel’s a’burning, I’m keeping count, ticking off the miles, sweeping 600 miles of sky ahead looking for trouble to avoid.

I’ll let you down easy, slow you down, deal with the thousands of foot-pounds of kinetic energy we owe now because we opened the double-cans of whupass on the runway hours back:

Ah, love those two, the way they bite the air and rocket us forward and up. But no worries downline, fellow mouse, I’ll land you there, wherever that is for you, and you can get off.

Me? Always another “there” to fly to, an excuse to light the fires and climb as far above this world as possible. There? Not so much, but you go ahead.

Getting there, flying–that’s my thing.  Looking for me? Keep an eye out for any mouse, riding that gypsy wind. That’s not just what I do, it’s who I am.

Mach Speed Tumbleweed

A battle rages in silence. You don’t want to get involved–but you are, you realize slowly.

Exactly where is it 5am?

You don’t want to know.

No, I do. The sinking feeling. It’s not home, is it?

Told you you didn’t want to know.

Damn. Reno?

No, that was last night.

Montreal?

The night before.

Palm Beach. Not home. Home got away–again.

How many miles from here to home? Not distance–I get that–flown, I mean? How many more? Flight hours like matchsticks: light ’em off one by one, watch them burn down, then out. Slowly, in the glow, you get it: midway through a four day. Just what you didn’t want to wake to. But do.

So, that was last night: late, always, bone tired too from hotel sleep somewhere else.

That’s here, middle of the night here, before you messed it up. Spartan. Antiseptic. Do not disturb. A trail of clothes from the door to the bed–worry about everything else tomorrow.

Sleep, and it’s that dream again: you can find the gate, find the plane, but there’s no door from the gate to the plane. Which is the way home, of course. No way home–just the waiting place, halls of marked time and any old place.

Gertrude Stein nailed it: “there’s no there there,” in that space between places, the waiting–the island between going and getting there. Or getting home. There’s the irony: for those who make their living going, and carrying others who are on the way too, the idyll would be staying, not going, being home. No door.

So wake up then. Going to need goggles and a snorkel to wade through this one. Not the stuff you’ll think about later–the weather, the jet, the fuel. Rather, another day not home.

Good dog–you’re ready to swim in the deep blue.  People will ask you questions, like “What’s it like to be a trained dog working in the blue every day?” Or maybe they’ll have something equally inane more for each other than for you, like “we’ll let him on” or “we need him” as you try to slip by them going to the office. Funny stuff, right? More likely, though, they have to go to the bathroom; they want to share that with you, assuming you have a constant awareness of toilets and locations, like you do with bailout airfields and low fuel contingencies in flight, right? Funny stuff.

Just put all the pieces back together; everything back into the suitcase like the crammed heap that sprang out twelve hours ago. Kind of like behind the scenes Disney: Mickey puts on his fiberglass head with the permanent smile–then out he goes. Down to the lobby, out to the curb: vantastic! Off to whatever aeropuerto in whatever city.

Just get me to the gig. Snake through the masses herding across the wide-open plains, grazing, mooing; hoofbeats at a shuffle.

The ants go marching out again, hurrah. Step around, mind the Mickey head. Wind your way through; heft the bags, schlep the bags, onward to the gate. Show your ID: yeah, it’s Mickey. Let him on board.

Nothing purtier than precious metal, all eighty tons of her:

She’s your big ol’ dance partner, every song, every leg, and just like you: all about the getting there–but not staying. Folks trundle off, more trundle on; makes no difference. We do our same dance steps, carefully and deliberately without art. Over and over–same old song. You know the words:

We say Mass for the Earth, the litany of escape–then we leave, but everyone still in their pews, seatbelts on and tray tables stowed. Then the aluminum conga line–every-buddy-CON-ga– to the runway. This:

In this:

Into the blue, the higher the better: the sky is denim, comfy as jeans. Good for hanging out, soft, simple, warm, comfortable. The good feel when you put them on.

Unpressed and rumpled–doesn’t matter; a little faded, all the better. That’s cruising, ain’t it? It’s like Saturday against your skin. That’s the jailbreak from the suitcase–off with the polyester, and Mickey’s head; jeans, amen.

Soft and comfy as the sky and nearly as distant: nobody knows you without the Mickey head on, and that’s the best. You’re a ghost, anywhere, everywhere–somewhere where no one knows you, and in the middle of the night you won’t remember where anyway.

You just know what it’s not–home; and where it’s not–HOME. And just close your eyes because soon enough, once again: another passage. Sleep.

“. . . life is a watch or a vision

Between a sleep and a sleep.”

–Algernon Swinburne

Silver Wings Then other Things: Part 4.

This is the final installment of a 4 part series putting you in the captain’s seat of an airliner.

Want to start at the beginning? Click here.

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It’s the top of descent. You just kind of get the feel, just know we’re getting to that point, if you’ve been engaged in the flight, where the natural rhythm of things is to start descent.

Used to have different cues that signaled the top of descent point before we had the precision of dual Inertial and multiple GPS systems tied to multiple flight guidance computers figuring descent rates and distances down to a gnat’s ass. One that was nearly infallible:

No, they didn’t call up front and suggest descent. They went into the First Class lav near the cockpit and unleashed a cloud of hairspray and fu-fu to get ready to look great in the terminal between flights. They always somehow just knew it was about time to touch up the war paint and big hair–which was our clue up front that “hey, must be time to start down.”

 

"Uh, Center, we're ready for descent."

The descent is fairly standard, an exercise in Euclidian geometry (want more details? click here) that takes into account altitude, distance, speed and fuel flow. But the approach and landing planning started before take-off.

Driving in to the airport, I have in mind the basics of the destination airport (or airports, on most days). At this point in my flying career, there are few airports in our domestic route system that I haven’t already landed a jet on, so I go back over what I know: airport altitude, terrain, runway length, runway surface approach types, traffic conflicts and a few other details.

I like to use Mexico City as an extreme example, because it shows that there’s really no “one size fits all” with those factors above: MEX has a 12,000 runway, but the airport elevation is 7,300 feet. So despite the long runway length,  aircraft performance and maneuverability are reduced by the high pressure altitude–not a good thing when flying slow and dirty as you must to land–the higher true airspeeds at altitude have you touching down with a hell of a ground speed, making this long runway a challenge for stopping nonetheless.

And that’s on a runway that is neither crowned nor grooved, which means any rain will likely pool and stand, screwing your brake effectiveness, and the mix of moisture and reverted rubber, which you know from experience seldom gets cleaned off south of the border, will make stopping a real challenge.

Meanwhile, Santa Ana “Orange County” Airport is at sea level, with a crowned and grooved runway–but it’s only 5,700 feet long. As a comparison, the take-off runway at DFW is 13,000 feet long. Stopping the jet at Orange County is as dicey as it is at Mexico City.

Most airports fall somewhere in between, but runway length and airport pressure altitude aren’t the only factors to consider. The wild cards are always the weather and the runway surface condition: all 13,000 feet at DFW are about as useful as the 5,700 at SNA if the runway is slick from rain, sleet, snow, or ice. There’s no free ride on landing.

Plus, add this, would-be Captain: you don’t know what you don’t know.

There are those who think because a runway is long, clean and dry that stopping can or should be a leisurely affair: some copilots have actually pre-briefed “I’m going to use minimum braking or reverse and let it roll.”

The hell you say.

No matter what runway you land on, there is a certain landing distance required due to the kinetic energy the brakes must absorb to stop the tons of metal, fuel, bones and blood still thundering forward at flying speed. Whether that distance is 3,000 feet or 8,000 feet, it makes the most sense to take care of the kinetic energy right away.  Once it’s absorbed and the jet decelerated, you can do whatever you want with the runway remaining.

Remember the basic lesson of flight, and the number one item listed as useless to a pilot:

“Runway behind you!” It’s useless, wasted, history, toast. If you’re still rolling without braking properly, you’re toast if anything goes wrong after touchdown.

And there ain’t no ‘splaining it to the FAA after you don’t stop on the runway.

Same goes for the knuckleheads who float a thousand feet or so down the runway fishing for a smooth landing: heretics!

Here is what God has told us about landings:

No floating, easing it down. On speed–neither too fast (more kinetic energy) nor too slow (high nose angle, possible tail strike) and within the zone Moses above is stressing–even though aircraft were for him still a couple thousand years down the road.

Look, can we speak frankly as pilots here? Who the heck cares what the passengers say as they deplane? They have no idea what a good landing is and even if they did, from where they’re sitting, they really have no way to tell if you’re on speed and at the right point. I’ve seen them get off saying, “Good landing” when I know the actual landing was too far down the runway and not on speed.

Forget about them and their ignorance–you have a job to do: on speed, at the correct touchdown point and sometimes, firmly: if the runway is wet, we don’t flirt with hydroplaning. I don’t give a damn if to the passengers it feels like everyone in China just jumped off a chair–we plant it, stop it and taxi to the gate.

Okay, time out: are you easily bored? If so, skip down to below the math (I really hate math too). If not, read on.

Engineering data shows that hydroplaning is most likely at the speed that is 9 times the square root of the tire pressure. Our main tires are at around 205 PSI. So, 9 x 14.32 = 128.88 knots as the primary hydroplane zone.

So the smart money gets the plane slowed below that speed as soon as practicable, because whatever runway there is behind you is no help to you, and whatever runway there is ahead may have an added hydroplaning factor you could have avoided: a puddle, a slick of reverted rubber; whatever: stop now, play smooth pilot later.

That formula works for your car, too: 9 x 6 = 54 mph as your primary liability to hydroplaning–and like in a jet, don’t give up: once you get through that speed zone via smooth deceleration, you will get control back. Too many people on the highway and on the runway think that once hydroplaning starts–that’s it. Stay with it, you will slow and regain control. And that is today’s

Okay, we’re back. So God gave Moses this to help him:

Autobrakes: the greatest advancement in commercial aircraft since flight attendants gave up on big hair (breathe easy on top-of-descent). The “RTO” setting is for “Rejected Take Off,” or abort. We’ve talked about that recently. You don’t subscribe? That’s a shame.

Then the 1,2 and 3 settings provide graduated brake application depending on stopping distance. Then there’s “MAX,” which is an acronym for “Holy Shit.” I use “Holy Shit” on the ultra short runway, or the ultra-long like Toronto in a blizzard when the  tower says, “Cleared to land, you’re the first, it’s mostly plowed, let us know how the braking is.” Remember, there’s no “one size fits all.”

At any point, you can take over braking manually simply by pressing on the rudder pedals. But especially if you’re using differential rudder, it’s best to leave them on as they’re not prone to apply asymmetric braking as would be likely if you were pushing one rudder pedal more than the other for crosswind crab control. I usually override the autobrakes slowing through 100 knots as we near runway high-speed turn-off speed (80 knots). And if you use  the “Holy Shit” setting, you’ll need to add power to taxi off the runway. That’s a good thing.

Now, you’re fifteen miles out, maybe 5,000 feet high (okay, more math: a three degree glide slope allows a civilized descent rate of 700 to 1,000 feet per minute depending on the ground speed, so three times the altitude is a good distance to begin descent). Slow to below 200 so you can “throw all the shit out,” as one of my SWA pilot buddies says, referring to the gear and flaps. The flaps have a bunch of limiting speeds, and 190 is below most of ’em. Makes it simple.

If you’re the lucky guy in the left seat of a 737-800, you don’t even need to look inside from this point on, except to verify gear and flap positions before landing.

Now it’s a matter of guiding the jet down the glide path, touching down in the correct touchdown zone, then braking smartly and efficiently. Got it?

Enough blabber–want to watch it all come together?

This video was passed to me by a friend of mine a few years ago. He was killed last Spring in an ATV accident, but his memory lives on with those who knew him in the Air Force and afterward. The video was not shot from the aircraft type that I fly, but it’s an airport I’m very familiar with, and it has many of the complications we just talked about. A tip on the video: if an ad pops up, just click on the “x” in the right corner to get rid of it. And if you click on the triangle above and just right of the “360p,” you can choose a higher video quality.

Now, take all of the factors we’ve just gone over into consideration, then turn the approach and landing into a symphony. Please remain seated till the aircraft comes to a complete stop, and thanks for flying with us today.

Coming Soon:

What do the sixth graders of Miss Giulia’s class in Ottawa want to know about flying?

Cool stuff! Stay tuned . . .

Silver Wings Then Other Things: Part 3

This is Part 3 of the series putting you in the captain’s seat.

Want to start at the beginning? Click here.

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I love the smell of jet fuel in the morning.

Okay, maybe right before noon–I don’t bid early flights and since I’ve been here over 25 years, I don’t have to do the buttcrack of dawn flights anymore. But it all leads to the same place: ready for take-off.

And whether that’s your first solo or your most recent take-off line-up, it’s the best part of the world ever: nose pointed down the line, strapped in tight, slight bend at the knees so as to have easy rudder throw in either direction, holding brake pressure on top of the rudder pedals, waiting for release.

Calm. All the engine instruments are flat-lined like a comatose patient, breathing; heartbeat but not much else. Idle RPM on both the giant fan and the turbine.

These new jet engines are mechanical and technological marvels, gi-normous Swiss watch-like machines: tolerances to the thousandth of an inch, spinning at 30-50,000 RPM for hours, tirelessly, core temps averaging blast furnace heat all the while. Each engine weighs over two tons, but puts out 27,000 pounds of thrust, so with both at full power, you have 26 tons of thrust at your fingertips for take-off or whenever you need it.

The pair of CFM-56 engines will gulp down nearly a thousand gallons of jet fuel between take-off and level off, but the marvel is, even heavy-weight we’ll climb to 38,000 feet in about fifteen minutes.  That’s also attributable to the Boeing wing: they were wise enough to increase the size of the wing as they stretched the airframe. Not so with Douglas jets like the DC-9–they just added length to the fuselage and kept the original wing.

I like the feel of the fat, swept and cambered-up Boeing wing, which as a result of the lengthening has a lighter wing-loading than the stretched Douglas.

It just feels more stable and reliable both in the low-speed regime and almost more importantly, at altitude. So on take-off, there’s just a confidence you can bank on with the Boeing: it has power and lift to spare.

“Cleared for take-off” are the words you’re waiting for. Once you gang-bar the exterior lights, the First officer will call, “Before take-off checklist complete.”

You stand the throttles up and immediately, the CRT displaying engine instruments springs to life. The computers below the flight deck measure the throttle position and project where the RPM of both the giant fan and the subsequent rotors will be in a matter of seconds. They stabilize at 40%, then the actual rotor speed catches up as the engines snarl to life. Satisfied at 40%, I punch the take-off power button on the throttles and they move to the position that the engine computers say matches the temperature and the other parameters we programmed and will produce the thrust we’re expecting. I double check that they are within 2% of what I expect, then turn my eyes to the runway stretched out ahead.

It’s best to cast your eyes way down the runway so as to have a good peripheral awareness: engine failures will be most obvious from the initial yaw, plus, directional control at over a hundred miles per hour is best judged with a long view.

Now I’m steering with the rudder pedals, trying to just nudge the nosewheel–stay off the centerline lights with their annoying thumping–until between forty and seventy knots when the forty-foot tall rudder takes a good enough bite of the air to become effective at aerodynamic control.

“Eighty knots,” is the first callout, and it comes fast at take-off power. That’s the abort dividing line: up till eighty, I can consider aborting for various systems problems. After eighty, the abort response is different and because of the kinetic energy built up in our 70-ton freight train, stopping is much more critical a maneuver with serious consequences in terms of brake energy.

Plus, it’s not wise to try to arbitrate at over a hundred miles per hour whether a system indication stems from a failure that would affect our ability to stop: brakes, anti-skid, hydraulics, electrics.

That’s why I’m relieved when the aircraft announces “V1.” That means we’re beyond abort speed–and I’m thinking only of flying, even on just one engine if need be.

Almost immediately, the First Officer calls,”Rotate” and I ease the yoke back gently. Have to let the 737 fly off  and get some tail clearance from the pavement before smoothly rotating the nose up to take-off pitch, which is shown in my heads-up display (HUD). Off we go.

When I see vertical velocity climbing in the HUD, plus increasing radio altitude numbers, I simultaneously give the hand signal  (flat open right palm moving up) and say, “Positive rate–gear up.” The hand signal is in case my voice is blocked by radio chatter or other extraneous noise.

The HUD’s also showing me the energy building on the wing, plus the speed trend. Call for the flaps up before the limit speed, engage vertical navigation (“V-Nav”) at 2500 feet. Track the departure outbound, centering up the radial. I sneak peaks down from the HUD to the Nav display so as to anticipate the turns ahead. Roll into the turns easy–the 737 flies really tight and responsive–and carve out a smooth arc.

First milestone: ten thousand feet. Roll in some nose-down trim so as to accelerate beyond the 10,000′ limit of 250 knots. A quick check to be sure that the cabin is climbing and that fuel is flowing properly: above 10,000′ we can burn center tank fuel if we didn’t on take-off or if there was less than 5,000 pounds at take-off; less than 3,000 pounds now and you reach up and open the fuel crossfeed manifold and turn off the aft fuel boost pump.

Eyes back on the road. Trim. Smoothness. Coffee.

Before you know it, the chronometer says around 18 minutes elapsed time and the altimeter reads 40,000 feet. Trim it up, level and smooth, trim out any yaw, engage the number 1 autopilot. Check the fuel burn, the fuel flow and the quantity. Cabin pressure stable at the correct differential value. Nav tracking properly. Cool: we’re cruising.

So now, here’s you:

No, not just punching the time clock–counting fuel flow, measuring miles remaining against fuel and miles per minute. Print the uplink of the destination weather. Was your forecast correct? No, you didn’t do the weather forecast–you predicted what fuel you’d need on arrival for the approach in use. Kind of glad to have a little extra in the hip pocket, right? Conservative fuel planning.

Note the climb point and more importantly, the gross weight where that can occur. Pay attention; note when it arrives early and use it: tailwinds or headwinds shift the point, but track the weight.

Now it’s time for the P.A. Nobody cares or pays attention–especially the flight attendants who will ask “what’s our ETA” even though you just announced it. Whatever. It’s always partly cloudy, make up a temperature, read off the latest ETA, “glad to have you flying with us today; for now, sit back, relax” blah-blah blah, get ready for the approach.

Uplinked destination weather.

You know the arrival winds. You got the uplinked current weather and terminal information. Set up the approach in the course windows and frequency selectors. Yes, it can change while you’re enroute, but now is the time to set up the approach and get it straight in your head.

There’s the art in what you do: translate this schematic into three dimensional movement in pitch, bank and roll. Each approach has its own peculiarities–so start thinking it through now.

Meanwhile, however, just a constant flow of navigation, fuel flow and performance considerations. Keeping a fuel and navigation log, constant contact with Air Traffic Control:

That and maybe some of the catering from First Class provisioned as “Crew meals.”

The best catering of breads and desserts is out of Mexico and Canada, I think. But at any rate, it’s probably good to stay “calorized”  as a survival tool: time changes, sleep disruptions, long hours, extremes of climate and especially the prolonged hours in a low-humidity cabin–it all takes a toll, physically. And flight crews work in that realm week after week. At least you can buttress your health with the caloric energy you need. It’s not always available between flights.

Manage the fuel. Weather radar and traffic watch. Ride and wind reports, both from other aircraft and uplinked from our Ops center. navigation–course modifications, shortcuts, direct clearances, higher altitudes when we’ve burned off enough fuel.

So it goes for hours on end.

The nav systems are plotting a descent already. They have drawn an imaginary line from altitude to our destination and I can see constantly the angle and the rate of descent changing as we draw nearer. I’m going to induce the descent–with ATC clearance, of course–a little early, maybe fifteen miles or so depending on winds, to make the descent a little flatter and more comfortable in the cabin. Besides, the automation doesn’t account for ATC restrictions added to those already published. Let’s get ahead of the game.

HEFOE Check: Hydraulics, electrics, fuel, oxygen, engines; periodic checks, the mantra from the Air Force days–nostalgic, but appropriate still in an airliner at the top of descent. Which, I’ve decided in my mental picture of the descent angles, distances, speeds and times, is now.

“Tell them we’d like lower,” I say to the First Officer. He nods, instinctively aware that it’s about time to start our descent. This is where passengers in the cabin notice the slight decrease in engine noise and a bit of a nose-down tilt.

The shoulder harness come back on in the cockpit; headsets replace overhead speakers and boom mikes take over from the hand mikes. Approach plates are reviewed on more time; crossing altitudes and speeds, intercepts and radials. This is the fun part: translate the myriad of plotted out instructions into a graceful series of maneuvers culminating with a safe touchdown, then dissipating the kinetic energy of sixty tons thundering down the runway at about one hundred and sixty miles an hour, bringing the whole remarkable aircraft to walking speed, then to a gentle stop at the gate. Piece of cake.

Next week, Part 4: the approach and landing.