ummmmm

I have an angry post festering inside of me, but I just haven't had the time to type it.  SOMEDAY it will come out.

Nothing new is going on around here lately... I started PT this week. It's horrible. I'd almost rather continue living in pain than have someone jamming their fingers into my neck and spine 2 times a week.

and this post's WTFLOL comes courtesy of a Mercury pilot. My coworker MS was working clearance delivery.  Mercury had an assigned squawk of 6666, so MS said "Squawk 6666... if you want a new code I can get you one." The pilot came back and said "no, the squawk is fine, but I could use a new goat"
HUH?

Also a few weeks ago some wise guy departed one of the satellite airports and my coworker said "cessna 123, say on course heading". To which he responded "Cessna 123, on course heading!"

Ooooh, pilots. you make the day go by so fast.

little update

I'm home from OKC (hooray!). I made the trip Thursday in a little over 11 hours.  Not too bad. Yesterday was a complete waste, I spent lots of quality time sprawled on my couch napping after not sleeping much for the previous 3 days. 

Today I was in the Indy Labor day parade.  It was kinda cool, but there were only about 50 spectators.  That was weird to me, back home parades were a big deal, the streets would be packed and you'd have to go hours early to stake out a spot.  Here there were entire blocks completely empty.  Oh well.  I did get a tshirt though! I love tshirts!!

I go back to work tomorrow.  I have to be re-certified after being gone for a month.  Actually, I'm not even sure if I have a medical clearance (long, dumb story).  I hope I do or it's gonna be a looooong weekend, and I don't wanna miss out on Sunday AND holiday pay :-p

okay

I haven't posted in a looooong time, and I only feel compelled to post now because I got some comments on my blog and feel guilty that I've been slacking.

But it's not my fault! I have had nothing to blog about...

I have been in Oklahoma City for the past 3 weeks learning to vector aircraft.  I didn't think it looked easy when I walked through the TRACON, and now I think it's even LESS easy.  The faux airport ("Academy") is the like O'Hare busy.  And despite having 3 runways, there's only one ILS and the weather is almost entirely IFR.  So you have C172s and BE35s trying to land in with GLF4, B767, F16s.  Come on. IND is certainly not like that.  Also, despite being solid IFR, there are anywhere from 5-35 VFR popups, which also tends not to happen in real life. At least not where I'm at.  What I don't understand is we have the same (actually slightly better) simulators at IND that they have down here at OKC. I don't know why they are paying us an extra $90+/day per diem when we could just stay home and learn specifically what to do, instead of making us come down here, sweat to death and learn procedures, frequencies and airspace at a fake airport.  Oh well...

I brought Ken and the foster Dylan with me, and it's definitely been an exercise in patience.  It's been 100+ almost every day I've been down here and neither the dogs or I have wanted to walk any more than is required for them to do their business.  Therefore, they're wound up constantly, trying to eat each other's heads, whining, pacing... agh.  Dylan escaped the apartment last Saturday and my coworker friend and I spent the better part of an hour circling the apartment complex (at midnight nonetheless!) looking for him.  He ended up being on my neighbor's back patio eating cat food. Then 2 days later he darted away while I was trying to throw away the dog poo bag and yanked the leash right out of my hand.  Luckily I caught him quickly that time.

I have been in contact with an ATC applicant and he's been asking me a lot of good questions about the hiring process and the job.  I plan on using those questions as blog fodder once I get back to Indy.

video-y goodness.

if air traffic controllers could speak their minds.

Luckily most of the pilots I've worked have had it more together than this!!!

Sorry for the lack of posting lately, I'm in OKC for training, working 3:30-midnight and it's got my sleep schedule all out of whack.

we have a new supervisor at work...

he's rather scary.

llllliar.

apparently WTHR ran a story about yesterday's radar outage.

EDIT 7/4/10:  I removed my post about what a CF the radar outage was after one of my coworkers went on and on in our crew briefing about how the media should not know about what happened because then that information might fall into the hands of terrorists and whatnot.  I felt paranoid that he had gone home and read my blog so I have removed that post. not like anyone ever reads this thing anyway, and not like I had any juicy details, I'm just a nervous nelly.

coasting

Not much new to report at work (or otherwise).  I have just been coasting, waiting to go back to OKC for more training... Some people call it seasoning, I call it a vacation.  Not having to train (aka get yelled at for breathing the wrong way) or any of that crap that made me dread going to work on a daily basis.  Now, I don't mind. I know no matter what, it won't be as bad as what I went through the past 8 months! I also no longer feel like I have been dragged behind a semi for 150 miles when I get home after work.

My mom and brother (N8dog) came out for a few days this week.  It was good to see them! I hadn't seen them since I left home to go to training in OKC at the end of March 09.  They were shocked how much weight I've lost (close to 50#) We had a wicked thunderstorm Monday night, it was very lightning-y (yes, that is a meteorological term, I just coined it right now, haha.)  Here are some pics:

I have been watching a documentary, "When We Left Earth".  It is about the history of the US space program.  I am in love with it.  I've been watching it on Netflix watch instantly, but I may have to go out and buy it!  As a side note: I did not own a TV until this week (happy birthday from my mom! :)) for the whole time I've lived here.  Instead, I would watch anything I could on Netflix, DVD or Hulu, or I'd read, do puzzles, sew things...  It was a rough year, but I made it through.  Now I feel like I have to watch TV nonstop to make up for all the time I missed out! Well, not really, but I do find myself being sucked into the gravitational pull of the TV.

hm

I would expect this story to somehow involve Air Tran or American (they'd be the bumpee, I'm not sure who would be the bumper).

what is fun:

day 3 of being certified on local control... my trainer sends me 2 planes on final (we are on 5s).  First one a Flagship RJ, doing maybe 170 kts, came in over MIE, so it came in on the downwind with a turn to final.  Second plane a COA 737, straight in from the south (PXV) at 240 kts.  I could hardly believe my eyes as FLG turned onto final a mere 5 miles ahead of the COA, who had a 70kt overtake.  So, I say to myself "WHAT. EVER." and continue working as the gap closes to TWO GD MILES.  argh. I wanted nothing more than to send COA around and back to him, but that's not fair to COA.  So with 10 minutes left in my shift I am working my ass off to get these 2 pried apart.  I somehow managed to do it!  COA didn't have to go around (it was pretty close though!) and I got it to work even though at first the CIC was all "this is never gonna work".  Well.  I made it.   However, had I done something like that during training I would've gotten a "don't be stupid" or "work smarter not harder".

K then.

media galore!

I do not know if I can attach MP3s here, and I did not want to make a youtube vid out of it, so here's a link to a pared-down recording of my first time working local control by myself.  I edited out all the dead air and 1.5 hours of work = about 10 mins of actual talking.  I think I sound dumb.  I hate my voice, haha

Now! Here are more pics from the FBO.  It's hard to get decent shots while tooling around on a golf cart!

F18!

F18

 

another F18!

someone's GLF5 (hint: not mine.)

someone else's GLF4 (Still not mine, but ever so slightly closer to my price range)

 A Verizon GLF5

Dassault Falcon 900

Well, that is all for now. 

OH WAIT.  Lies, it's not.  Here are some pics of my new foster dog.  He is nameless, but an absolute sweetheart.  I am bad at picking names.  So.... Suggestions are welcome!

idklol

I went to work today kind of dreading it.  Today was the Indy 500 and all everyone talks about is how horrible it is to work all the planes and helicopters.  I was assuming I wouldn't have my CTO certificate til Thursday since there were no office people around during the weekend or Monday (Memorial Day) so I thought I wouldn't get it til my first day back after my weekend.  Well first of all I was wrong about that, turns out supervisors can do it, so SURPRISE, I got my CTO today and got to work local control all by myself.

Double surprise, I was working again when the flight of F18s went out for the flyby at the track.  Other than that, there wasn't a horrible amount of traffic OR helicopters.

Yesterday the F18 pilots had stopped by the TRACON and told us we could go over to the FBO and get a closer look at them (the planes, not the pilots, unfortunately).  So today two of my coworkers and I did that.  It was pretty awesome riding around on a golf cart surrounded by GLF5s and Global Expresses and Falcons and shit.  The manager took us around personally.  Awesome.  And he invited us back on a day when it wasn't so busy for a full tour.   I hope the tour includes cookies. :)

here are some aero-planes on the ramp at Million Air.

WATCH OUT NOW

I GOT CERTIFIED TODAY!!!!!!!
HAH-LAY-LOU-JER!!!!

What I had to deal with on my checkride:

• flight of five F18s doing practice flybys at Indy Motor Speedway.  Super annoying.  Had to stop departures like 3 times while they were doing it because CONVENIENTLY they built the airport such that the departure path for the 05s are less that 1 mile east of IMS. 
• flight of five F18s became flight of four because one decided he would rather land than keep flying. 
• gave a SkyWest pilot the thrill of his life by having the flight of four break over the top of him while he was holding in position.  He actually thanked me and said it was worth it to have held short of the runway for 10 minutes to get to have F18s do a carrier break overhead. 
• helicopters.  bleh. only 2 though and they were easy. 
• mostly just the F18s. 

I got done my skill check and was talking to one of my coworkers and she informed me that the F18 pilots had told her that we were welcome to go over to the FBO and check out the planes after work.  So I am going to do that tomorrow, cause I didn't have a camera today.   Expect pictures. 

Awesome.

mmmrrrph.

yesterday at work was pretty retar-culous. I don't think I've ever had my brain reduced to mush as fast as it was yesterday, even after 4 years of calculus, physics, chemistry and meteorology classes.  Within 5 minutes of plugging in, I was wishing I'd called in sick.  ugh.  It is a rare occurrence for me to have my ass kicked on ground control, but it did not take long for me to start swirling down the shitter.

please forgive my atrocious photoshop skills here for a moment:

on this radar image (which remained pretty much the same all afternoon) I have oh-so-kindly drawn the approximate location of our departure gates.  As you can see, pretty much every single one was cut off by death-storms.  The TRACON was not accepting anyone heading east (RID/DAY), south (DAWNN3 departure, OOM, PXV...), nor would they accept people heading north then east, unless they remained below 10,000', which of course no one wanted to do.  So I quickly ran out of places to park planes and pilots were getting snippy with me.  Hellllloooooo, meteorology degree + air traffic control does not equal weather controller, sorry!!!  I was trying my best to work things out to get them outta there, but there wasn't a whole lot I could do.  Also, it was way worse than normal, because this weekend is the INDY 500.  So traffic is way up.

Moving on, I get a mini-break to rest my brain before a skill check on Local control. It was not enough.  I needed like a day to recover from the shit-show on ground control. I was checked, and no skill was found.  What else is new?  I have been training for almost 8 months now.  My "I could've had a baby by now" joke is getting old.  It is torturous.  My supervisor says I am ready, so why not check me out?!  Getting one hour of training a week is not helping me AT ALL.  I cannot get any better at something only being exposed to it an hour a week.  I can handle the traffic (which is so unbelievably, unfunnily SLOW every day I am at work) so why not cut me loose?  Because there are THREE of us in the same position, and they're treating us as ONE person. One of us screws up something, we all get another week/month/year added to our training.  It's stupid.

Here are some more pics from later in the evening when we actually got some t-storm action at the airport. Sorry for the poor quality, blackberry has the worst cameraphone in the history of the world.

Here we had windshear over the whole airport.  My coworker says he has only seen this happen maybe once before. 

here's a black death-cloud over the fedex ramp. 

this looked a lot squirrelier in real life.

well

I can't stay away from photography long.  Not my best work, but not bad for a weak-ass storm.

losing it

photography has always been my main hobby.  I own a bunch of cameras (close to 10 I think...) and I almost always have at least one camera on me at all times.

lately I just haven't been feeling it.  it seems like I can't take a decent picture to save my life.  They all come out horribly over/underexposed, blurry, bad white balance, off center, cut off... I am so frustrated.  Going out and shooting a roll of film or some digital pics used to be so relaxing, now I just get so frustrated and upset that it's not even worth my time.  I even tried not taking pictures for a few weeks.  It didn't help.

Frustrated.  I wonder if the unreasonable strife in my life has something to do with it.

things that make me go LOL

these came off the strip printer a few mornings ago.  Cincy must've been distraught at the loss of their coffee pot :(  I cannot sympathize, though, we have to go down 300' to get to the nearest coffee pot!

and today training on Local...

me: SWA174, Indy tower, you ready to go?

SWA174: We're southwest! We're always ready to go!

me: (giggle) (takeoff clearance)

as they're puttering out onto the runway

SWA174: ehh, that's not what his wife says, he's never ready!!!

also this

is disgusting.

even more things!!!

Last Friday it was getting near the end of my shift.  I'd wandered up to the tower cause I was bored and I wanted to check if anyone wanted a break before I went home.  No one did, but I continued to sit up in the tower and shoot the shit with my coworkers.  A few minutes later, an aural alert went off, accompanied by a red EM on the radar scope. We were all like WTF?  so my coworker zoomed out on his scope and we saw a target way out of our airspace up near FWA at FL390 squawking 7700 (emergency!).  I wasn't working so I went to another scope and watched it (in horror).  With each scan, it dropped 4000' to 5000'.  In under 3 minutes it had dropped from FL390 to 10,000'.  I thought for sure it was going to KEEP descending, and I was feeling a little nauseous at the prospect. When it leveled off at 10,000 I breathed a sigh of relief and guessed there was some sort of pressurization problem.  I recalled something from the academy about unpressurized flight only occurring at or below 10,000'.  I'm so smart!!

Anyway, a few minutes later the phone rang, the plane was coming here to land (it was a pressurization problem after all).  So they made me work ground.  It'd been a hot minute since I'd worked an emergency on ground control, probably as far back as when I was still training (October-ish!).  So I muddled my way through that, and the plane landed without incident.  and I breathed several more sighs of relief.

Almost a week later and I'm still vomiting in my mouth a little thinking about that ridiculous descent rate.  Had I been on that plane I'd probably have been barfing everywhere.  Guess that's why I'm a controller, not a pilot!

(side note: squawking is a dumb word.  it requires way too much concentration to type/spell right.)

hmmm... what else?  Nothing, really.  Still keeping on keeping on in training.  the end may be in sight, but I don't want to jinx myself and end up with 8 MORE months of training :/  my new favorite thing to tell people is that I could've had a baby in the time it's taken me and my 2 RDO-mates to certify.

Also I had a man show up at my door today with a can full of ant-killer.  very exciting!  no more ants!  I even left some food crumbs out while I was at work and NO! NOT ONE ANT!  Hooray! :)

more things

training is still.... stagnant? at best.  We had some pretty freakin busy traffic associated with the NCAA Final Four which I thought I handled splendidly.  But I was later informed that the traffic was "too complex" and "ungradeable" and basically counted for nothing even though I was moving metal like someone at the ATL.  SPLENDID, like splenda (which may or may not cause tumors).

my apartment is still infested with ants.  They will go away for a few days and I will breathe a sigh of relief and think they're gone and come home to thirty billion ants INVOF my sink.  Gag.  I've pretty much given up eating anything here that requires preparation of any sort so I don't create dirty dishes or crumbs or anything.  Ant cups don't work, cinnamon doesn't work, cayenne pepper doesn't work (unless you want reddish brown spots all over your house).  Perhaps the orkin man will.  I've been hesitant to call because it says in my lease that "Pest control is the financial responsibility of the tenant" ugh.  bitch PLZ.

I got to see an F18 today.  It was the second time I'd seen one.  This one had its afterburner on.  It was pretty sexy, haha.  And I got to tell someone "Follow the F18 to runway 23 left" which gave me a weird little thrill. 

Other than that, everything's pretty much same-old, same-old.

Here are some pics from when I was still in classroom training.  One of my instructors has some friends at the "Paper Mill", so we got to go over there and sit in some bizjets.

here I am in a Hawker with LD.

This time you can actually see me!

Here I am with Josh, I think we were in the Citation.

I work up thurrr.

I drew this in class one day.  Who needs an expensive DSLR when you've got me around?! :p

and last but not least, HEEEEEEEERE'S KEEEENNNY

Well, I guess that's all for now...

ANTS and things.

With the warmer weather, several hundred tiny asshole ants have found their way to the 3rd floor to invade my apartment... Which is special, because they appear to be coming out of the wall... not like in the door or through some obvious gaping hole.  They are materializing through the wall and making me disgusted.

Training is still sucking.  I got about 15 hours this month... Horrible.  :(

I went to Chicago in the middle of the month for a few days.  It was pretty enjoyable, except for the needle rain and getting lost on the bus.

Here are some pics from the past few weeks.

at a bus stop somewhere in Chicago

some penguins at Shedd Aquarium

John Hancock Center obscured by the needle rain

LOOK! My veins! (yes, I know I put my left hand on top of the right hand outline. YOU try taking a digital pic left handed! haha)

more pics to come!

Frustrated.

I have now been at my facility 8 months. I am about one month shy of being off probation, and I cannot wait.  I am sick of walking on eggshells at work, trying not to swear, not to step on anyone's toes, not to sleep through alarms and be late to work (I've cut back from three alarms in the morning to just one).

In October, our Union negotiated a new contract (the Crimson Book), restoring pay to 2006 levels by 2012.  So our pay lags 6 years behind where it should be if it weren't for the White Book.  Not a huge deal, I'm happy to be making what I am (and will be) making.

What bothers me is that part of that contract included a part about developmentals bidding days off by seniority.  At my facility, they gang-hired people like crazy.  There are 21 developmentals and 30 FPLs. They brought 4 other people on board the same time as me. Therefore, there are 5 of us with the same seniority.  And naturally, we're all training on the same thing.   Before this new contract came out, we were all spread out on different days off. We never had to compete for training time, at least not like we do now.

Also, since we're lowest on the seniority totem pole, we all got moved to Tuesday/Wednesdays off.  Now, I don't really care what days off I have as long as I have at least 2 in a row, but T/W is the absolute WORST set of days off for training.  There's only enough traffic on Thursday/Friday nights to train on, and splitting an 8 hour shift up for 3-5 people to train results in about an hour of training.  Saturdays and Sundays my coworker and I have taken to cooking breakfast for everyone at work and also a good deal of movie-watching happens.  We work about 45 minutes, then get an hour or more off.  Today I had the last 2 hours of my shift off.   Mondays are pretty hit or miss as far as training goes.  Some Mondays are super busy, while others are as bad as weekend days.

I came from Sunday/Monday off, and I know most people are like "oh yeah, no wonder you're pissed, you don't have weekends off anymore".  Frankly, I could care less about that.  Sunday/Monday is the second best set of days off for training, there is always a lot of traffic, no matter what day it is. When I was on that set of days off, I led the facility in training hours, with about 50hrs/month of steady traffic.  (Last month I had about 20 hours of training on very light traffic.)  Not to mention, there was a much greater volume of traffic and other shit to deal with (helicopters, pipeline aircraft, VFRs, etc).  It was all around just a better opportunity.  We bid our schedules mid-December, effective January 1, 2010.  My trainer begged and pleaded for me to stay on Su/Mo off for only 2 more weeks to get me checked out by around mid-Jan.  Management would have none of that.

I was pretty set in my ways after logging 80 hours with the same trainer prior to Jan 1st, and to go to this new guy who trains me about an hour a week was a huge change, and now after having about 10-15 different trainers, I'm thoroughly confused! I know how I want to do things, but when you're in training, you have to please your trainer. If they want you to read the pilot the whole goddamn weather sequence along with their landing clearance, you better do it or else.  If they want me to say "Indy Tower, wind 030 at 12, runway 23 R, turn left heading 210, cleared for takeoff"  I better not say "Indy Tower, Runway 23R, wind 030 at 12, turn left heading 210, cleared for takeoff" or there will be hell to pay, a scathing training report, and I will be ratted out for not using THEIR phraseology.  Whiskey Tango Foxtrot?

So here I am, still slaving away at training with a trainer who doesn't seem to like me a whole hell of a lot.  He calls me stupid, says I'm never gonna make it... Just doesn't have a whole lot of nice things to say about me in general.  He never wants to train, so I'm always stuck training with a different random person every day who invariably tells me to do shit that contradicts what the last person told me to do.  I try to hit gaps with one trainer and have a plane at 180 kts on a 4 mile final and they'll be like NO ITS TOO TIGHT!!! but the next day I will be training with someone else and have a plane at 180kts on 4 mile final again and I will remember my last trainer telling me NOT to do it, so I don't. Then that trainer will be like "you should've hit that gap".  arghhhhhhh.

So basically, I train with this guy about 2 hours a week, sometimes a little more.  I always fuck up some little thing and he immediately gets on my case about not being smart enough, how I'm gonna wash out, blah blah blah.  I don't know if he is being a dick, or if he's trying to motivate me.  Hint: telling me I'm gonna lose my job is not a good motivator.  Telling me "good job" when I do a good job instead of just acting indifferent towards me is a good motivator.

It's just really disheartening to me.  2 months ago my first trainer was all ready to check me out.  Now this guy seems ready to wash me out because sometimes I tell someone to turn left off the runway when I really mean right. Sometimes I tell someone "clear to land" when they're holding in position... I always catch my mistakes and correct them, though.  I am not unsafe.  I am not slow.  I don't even ask questions anymore (that's a BIG deal, I was always second guessing myself, and I stopped doing that).  I've even schooled him a few times on some things.  None of that is good enough.  I have to be PERFECT.

I just can't vomit out enough words into this little box to convey how frustrated/irritated/sad/disheartened/upset I am with this whole situation.  I am not a dumb person, I don't like being called dumb, and I don't like being held back from things that I know I can do. I know I won't ever be perfect, no one is, but I think I'm good enough to handle working on my own.

about my dog

here is a picture of my dog, Ken.
He is a basset hound.  He is cranky, lazy and full of dog rage. When I moved to OKC for training, he tried to bite my landlord the first night in my new apartment.
He barks at everyone and makes lip-smacking noises when I'm trying to sleep.  If I leave the bathroom door open when I go to work, he will shred any piece of paper, toilet paper tube, or qtip that he can get his mouth on.
One night I got home from work and he had eaten a Sharpie and left a giant black stain on the carpet that took me 6 hours of scrubbing to get out.
He also whines non stop, and sometimes buries his slobbery, soggy dog food under my pillows and blankets.  Getting a handful of cold, soggy, half chewed dog food when you're half asleep isn't pleasant.
He is a spectacular pain in the ass, but he is always there for me, always happy to see me when I get home. His silly face cheers me up when I'm in a shitty mood (unless he's making the lip-smacking noise).

reason 297 why I'm glad I made this career change

I haven't posted anything in MONTHS cause I haven't had anything worth posting really.  Til today...
it was a shitty weather day here in Indy, so traffic was reaaaally slow. I was training on Local Control (clearing planes for takeoff and landing) and I had 2 planes taxiing out for departure, an Air Tran (callsign “Citrus”) in front of a US Airways regional jet (callsign “Brickyard”).  Air Tran was holding WAY short of the runway, and USAir had a release time.  It went a little something like this:

me: Citrus###, you ready to go?
pilot: uh… we’re… ummmm… we’re gonna need a couple minutes.  we have a passenger out of their seat… he’s… uhmmmmm… doin a number 2

I look at my trainer and we burst out laughing.  I’m pretty sure “doin a number 2” is not found anywhere in the 7110.65 or the AIM.  So I go back…

me: roger, hold short of the runway and advise when ready

couple minutes pass, I retell the story to everyone else in the tower who didn’t have the joy of hearing it… it’s getting close to the Brickyard’s release time so my trainer keys up

trainer: hey, citrus, maybe if you start moving, he’ll stop going!!

the pilot comes back and LOLs on the air and says something dumb, and another couple minutes pass while my coworkers and I make immature shit jokes. finally they call back

pilot: uhhh, hey tower, this is Citrus###, our passenger finally pinched it off, we’re ready for takeoff!


uhh, yes.  the pilot not only used the phrase “doin a number 2”, he topped it by saying “pinched it off”!!!  I always jokingly called Citrus “Shitrus”, cause I like to swear as much as possible, but today they really earned that nickname. probably the funniest thing that’s happened to me in my short career at the FAA.