The movie was pretty good. Stressful, but good. Is stressful not a good adjective to use when describing movies/TV shows? I often describe stuff as stressful, and people go, "What do you mean?" - It really cant be that hard to understand what I mean when you watch a show like Breaking Bad right? It's just a stressful show. It captures your attention, pulls you in, and makes you wanna go sit in a hot tub for a while afterwards.
Which is exactly what I just did. And then I came back to write my blog and sit by the pool. 'Cause it's warm and humid in here, and that reminds me of the beautiful island paradise I used to live on. Saaaaipan.
I really do miss Saipan. I miss all the cool things I could do there. I've been looking back at all the amazing photos I took scuba diving, spear fishing, flying, and just being with the awesome people I met there. I miss it. I really did go there at an unfortunate time. My first week there, I had major car issues with were unfortunate. During the next few weeks there, the fiber optic cable that connected Saipan to the internet from Hawaii was crushed by an underwater bolder. The internet was reduced to dial-up speeds for a month. "ohhh nooo, dial-up speeds? What ever did you do?" Yeah, it was actually kind of nice to not have the constant nagging of Facebook etc. and addiction to technology for a while. But it also sucked because I was trying to FaceTime my parents and girlfriend to tell them how everything was going, but couldn't.
I laughed so hard when I saw this photo/headline on the front page.
There were several headlines claiming when the ship would arrive.
As it turns out, I was giving island tours when I saw the repair ship finally show up.
I was so excited, and I knew the control tower guys would be too, so I got on the radio and said, "Saipan tower, three three foxtrot, I believe I've just spotted the internet repair ship in the bay"
They replied, "Roger three three foxtrot, here's to hoping Netflix is back up in the next week or two."
So, from the time the internet went down, it took nearly a month and a half to get it back up to regular internet speeds. It was around a week after the ship arrived that it came back to life.
Shortly thereafter, Typhoon Soudelor essentially decimated the island of Saipan. (A Typhoon is a hurricane. It's just called a typhoon because of the region of the world in which it originated). It was a stronnnng typhoon. The entire island lost power, and there were hundreds of homes destroyed. It was really quite something to witness.
The worst of it was during the middle of the night, and my roommate Tim, slept through it. My island-cat (Eeva) and I were wide awake in the apartment, watching the sliding glass door bow inward and outward from the wind.
My air traffic control friend was actually stuck up in the control tower that night with another controller. He snapped this picture of the weather reporting screen, moments before it stopped reporting the weather.
For those of you not in aviation, that top row indicates the wind. It says the wind is from 290 degrees (northwest) at 60 knots, gusting to 105 knots. In mph, that's wind from the northwest at 69mph gusting 121mph. The temperature C is noted below and then the dewpoint in C, as well as the barometric pressure. The standard pressure for sea level is 29.92" of mercury. This is indicating 28.16" - that's much lower pressure, meaning the air is acting as dense as it would at 1,760' feet above sea-level, rather than being actually at sea-level.
This is what our apartment complex lobby looked like afterwards.
Here's an airplane that was tied down at the airport.
Here's a car that was upright.
Here's a building that used to have a roof.
So yeah, a lot of stuff wasn't working after that. Luckily our apartment complex had a generator, which supplied electricity from 8am - 10am, 1pm - 3pm, and 5pm - 10pm... or something like that. I dunno. It was enough to keep the food in the fridge cool throughout the day, so that was nice.
The most surreal thing was continuing the island tours afterwards. I couldn't believe that these tourists still wanted to see the island after such an event. I suppose some of them had no real way of knowing how bad it was if they had only just arrived... But from the air, the island did not look like the tropical paradise it did before.
Brown. Very brown. Much less foliage than there was previously.
Nonetheless, the tourists enjoyed our tour flights. They probably liked the experience of flying in a small airplane and being able to actually fly it themselves more than the views of the island... but it just didn't seem as good to most of the pilots than it did before.
After having endured all of these issues in Saipan, it just didn't seem like the best place to stay. The company I worked for lost several pilots, and the rest of us were expected to pick up the slack. It became tiring and unsafe. I decided to leave.
I had a free ticket home for my brothers' wedding, and it really seemed like the opportune moment to leave. I don't regret having gone there, and I don't regret leaving, but I really do miss the island way of life. I miss my friends there. I miss my island-cat.
Eeva, my island kitten who kept me entertained during the times of no internet/power.
If I have the chance to go back there, working for this company, I think I'd like to go. My friend that volunteered to take my kitten sends me pictures of her daily, and she has some strange power to stay in touch with me despite me having moved to Cape Cod.
There are tons of stories and things that happened in Saipan that I could go on and on about. But I'd probably have to write a short book about it, so I won't do that now.
Instead, I'll just write a bit more about what happened today, and then that'll be it for tonight.
Today, I was in the simulator for my 3rd lesson. The lesson was supposed to entail just going over the memorized checklists from the previous lesson, which was in front of the paper photo of the cockpit. I was paired up with another person that had completed the prior lesson and was moved on to the next one. Since the other person and I are both training to be first officers, we have to train from the right seat of the aircraft, opposed to the left seat where the captain sits. It's a strange feeling being back in the right seat. I've had plenty of time in that seat as a flight instructor, and as a "first officer" at the last company I worked for... but it's just odd to have to look across the cockpit to the left side from the right to see the instruments.
The $1,000,000 Simulator
Pretty darn realistic. They get their money's worth with it though! It flew nine hours today.
Nine hours in the actual airplane would be $1,500 worth of fuel alone.
A year of training in actual airplanes instead of the sim would cost around $500,000 in fuel - so yeah. Good investment on their part. It's also powered by solar panels that they had installed on the roof. Another good investment.
It was good to get a feel for how the flows actually go when flying the airplane (sim) real-time. For instance, the takeoff/climb-out flows have to be done much more quickly when you're actually flying the airplane (sim) - and you also have a lot more to pay attention to while you do them.
Our instructor made a very good point in our pre-briefing today:
"When you're in the front seat - especially when you're the pilot flying, your work-load is higher than anyone else's. You have to fly the airplane, think about doing flows, checklists, anticipate what's going to happen next, work with the GPS, focus on what air traffic control wants you to do, and even when you have a first officer, you have figure out what you want to delegate to him/her while at the same time paying attention to everything they're doing to double check everything is going smoothly. As the first officer, when you aren't the pilot flying, your work-load is a lot less. If you're the FAA examiner sitting in the second row, well heck, you have a work-load close to zero. And you know what happens as your work-load goes down like that? You have all the time in the world to think about every action the pilot-flying is making and critique them. You notice when they make mistakes because you aren't the one performing the actual task. You don't have all that pressure on you. The further you are from the front seats, the easier your life is."
It's so true. Every single time that I've acted as the PM (pilot monitoring) - or pilot not flying (PNF) - I've been able to so easily point out mistakes that the pilot flying makes. Everything seems so much easier when you're not the one flying the airplane. Flying the airplane takes a lot of work!
Aviate, navigate, communicate. Flying the airplane always comes first. It's hard to remember that when there are so many other things to be looking at, listening to, and doing. First thing is first. Fly the airplane.
Once you've got the airplane flying how you want it, then work on other things.
As pilots, we have all these tools to help us reduce our work-load:
Autopilot
Instruments (radar, nav radios, etc)
GPS
First officer
Company
Dispatch
etc.
It's really important to be able to recognize all those things that are there to help you, and be able to use them. However, it's equally important to be able to look outside and just fly the airplane when all of those resources start becoming distractions, rather than tools.
That's a fairly good summary of what I took away from my lesson today, and I look forward to my next scheduled simulator lesson on Friday.
I'm bummed I couldn't make it home for Thanksgiving, but I'm really going to shoot for getting this check-ride done before Christmas so I can make it home for that!
