Some of you might remember my bafflement regarding the use of “knots” as a unit of measuring airspeed (and waterspeed). Well, my old friend Tom from the workplace back in KC sent me this explanation. And I believe him because A) he’s just the kind of guy who would know this kind of trivia, and B) he’s a huge Patrick O’Brien fan. Remember that Russell Crowe movie Master and Commander? Napoleonic maritime warfare stuff? O’Brien’s the guy that wrote that book. He knows his shite.
In the old sailing days they would have a wheel attached to the ship and a rope knotted every so far tied to a board of a certain length, then they would throw the board overboard and time it for so many seconds using a small hour glass. When the time was up they would stop the wheel, pull the rope in and count the knots. It was approximately the same set up on each ship, an approximate measurement of speed across the water. This could vary, depending upon how clean the hull of the boat was, how many sails were down, how hard the wind was blowing, if you wet the sails slightly they catch just a little more wind and the ship would go a little faster. So twenty knots in sailing days was a very relative term, until the advent of modern clocks and taking precise measurements of where the ship is and figuring an average of how far it went over a particular period of time the knot has really firmed up as a nautical measurement over time.
Pretty cool, eh? Tom’s full of stuff like this. Because of him I also know the basis for the phrase “cold enough to freeze the balls off a brass monkey.”
It’s so much nicer than the private training. Most of what I’ll be doing now involves cross-country flying, and a lot more solo time. And finally, it’s relaxing. I don’t think I’ve actually had a relaxing flight before a couple days ago. There was always pressure to improve some maneuver and perform up to standards, alongside the time pressure of getting myself ready in time for the school’s progress checks and the big checkride. Don’t get me wrong, there’s still plenty of pressure to get a lot of stuff done, and I’ll have a lot of work do to on maneuvers. I passed my check, but there was/is plenty of room for improvement. The maneuvers I didn’t do so hot on during the checkride will have to be brought up to much higher standards if I’m to pass the commercial checkride.
But until then, I’ve got about 40 or so hours of cross-country flying to get done. That’ll be nice. Lots of new country I haven’t seen before. And at some point Andy and I will do what they call an Extended Cross-Country. We’ll have the copter for about eight hours. That’s gonna be sweet. I’m planning on flying up to Astoria, which is the furthest northwest part of Oregon, then following the coastline south for about 200 miles to Newport, then making our way back to Hillsboro. I’m planning on doing a lot of flying to the coast in the next few weeks because that’s where I want to take my Lady J. I just learned the other night that our favorite beach, Pacific City, has a little airstrip we can land on so we can walk to the beach and have us a little picnic before flying back. You might be asking why don’t I just go and land on the beach itself, or wherever I want, for that matter? Well, school rules. It’s perfectly possible and reasonably safe for me to land the thing basically wherever I want to, but the company has a rule against renter pilots making off-airport landings. But still, I can fly wherever I want to.
I’ll be showing off a lot more pictures now, too. With all the cross-country work I’ll be doing, there’s gonna be plenty of cool scenery to shoot. And Andy’s always plenty happy to fly while I take pictures since he hardly ever gets the chance to actually be the pilot. This first bunch is from yesterday’s flight up to Kelso, WA. It’s not all that far; the round trip took about an hour and a half. It was a beautiful day though, you could see for miles and miles. There’s one shot with Mt. St. Helens in the background, but the pic doesn’t do it justice. The day was so clear that St. Helen’s looked only about 20 minutes away, it was huge. It more likely would’ve taken about an hour just to get near it.
A view from Charlie pattern, the main practice pattern for students:
Another view from charlie, this time of the airport. You can see the main runway and juuust make out the tower way over on the left above the runway.
Lady J took the next few (side note: i just realized my wife’s new nickname is lady j, it’s perfect cuz she’s such a ninja. fans of g.i. joe will understand, everyone else…well, just roll with it.)
gettin’ my Blue Thunder on…
And this one, well, Lady J took me to the Portland City Grill. 30th floor. It was a fine, fine time celebrating my successful checkride. At one point, seeing that now I’m also a pilot as well as being a geek, I found myself trying to determine, purely by eyeballing it, how far above the ground we were.
Well. Today’s Friday. I passed my final stage check today.
And what does this mean??
Monday, from 9am to 1pm, (pacific time, don’t call me early to wish me luck, cuz yall back east will get the time wrong and wake me up at 5am.) I’ll be taking my FAA checkride.
Yup.
Later that day, I plan on having my first Guiness as a licensed pilot.
…and lo, I sayeth it shall be like mana from the heavens.
