Some pictures from this past week of flying

The week started out with the threat of some cold and snowy weather. And on Tuesday it arrived out here in the panhandle. The week began with beautiful weather in Guymon. Here's a picture of the Caravan I was flying early in the week parked at the Guymon airport along with a Citation and a C402. My Caravan looks huge!

The nice weather didn't last long. It was a major cold blast that came through. Guymon went from highs in the 50's to highs in the lower teens. Brrr.

There was a chance of snow on my route and most of that happened in the Tulsa area. In fact, on Wednesday night I spent most of the flight from Guymon to Enid in the clouds but not taking on much ice. After I left Enid, the ice situation changed. I began to pick up a continuous amount of light rime ice. There was a lot of snow at 7,000 ft but not much of it sticking. About 20 miles outside of Tulsa I was told by Kansas City Center that Tulsa International was going to be closed for at least 30 minutes for snow removal and I had a couple of options, hold in the clouds and ice or go somewhere else. After a call to the dispatcher, it was decided that I would hold. It was challenging, holding and removing the ice for the next 40 minutes. Finally, the snow was removed from the runway and I was cleared for the ILS approach. The pictures below are from Tulsa after I landed.


As you can see, there was some snow on the ground. Probably a couple of inches. The snow was extremely dry so it didn't stick to much. After a small wait in Tulsa for de-icing it was on to Dallas to pick up more freight. Didn't actually make it to Dallas that night, the airport was shut down due to the bad weather happening down there. After a return to Tulsa and a short wait it was back in the air headed torwards Oklahoma City to pick up the normal route back to Woodward and Guymon. The storm by 4 AM had passed the Tulsa area and it was clear along the rest of my route.

Stop 2: KWWR

Welcome to the heart of Oklahoma's "Red Carpet Country", a reference to the color ( red ) of the iron oxide rich soil in the northwest section of the state. You have just landed in Woodward, OK. It's been pointed out to me that people from this town call it " Wooderd " and calling it Woodward makes you kind of an idiot.

I'm guessing that Woodward has somewhere between 15 and 20,000 residents, which would make it a medium size city in Oklahoma. You know it's at least a medium sized city because it has a Super Wal-Mart not a standard one.

What drives the economy of Woodward? I have no idea. I assume that at one point it was oil and gas production, but that industry has all but disappeared in Oklahoma. Farming is probably the big thing, either that or fast food joints.

When flying to the West Woodward Airport ( KWWR ) just keep in mind that it's always windy. Towns all over Oklahoma will be reporting calm winds and KWWR will have a 20 knot crosswind. It makes for good landing practice.

Woodward is located next to some interesting geological sites. The Little Sahara State Park is just down the road. The Little Sahara State Park, as the name suggests, is a large area of sand. Also down the road is an area known as the Glass Mountains ( sometimes called the Gloss Mountains ). Picture below.

Amoung the notable history around Woodward is Ft Supply, OK ( about 10 miles northwest ), which started out as Camp Supply in the 1800's and was built to supply General Armstrong Custer's regiment during the frontier indian wars.

The Glass Mountains


For more info on Woodward, OK go to http://www.woodwardok.com/

Our next stop will be my hometown of Enid, OK. Until then, cheers.

Lets visit the stops along my route: KGUY

For the next several posts I'm going to describe the towns and cities that I stop during my normal route.

I'm back on my normal route this week, which starts and ends in beautiful Guymon, OK. If being able to see for miles around, without those pesky trees getting in the way, than Guymon is for you. It's a town of about ten thousand and , you guessed it, farming is the game around here. Pig farms are huge here and so is the associated pig farm smell. I think at one point oil and gas exploration was the going concern, but not so much nowadays.

Overall, it's a pretty pleasant place, the people are very nice and they seem to have a certain kind of pride that, I guess, comes from living here on a vast prairie. A vast prairie that can have, at times, very harsh weather. All of the massive thunderstorms that roll through Oklahoma are born out here in the panhandle. Winter can be pretty harsh here as well, not many trees to stop those north winds after a cold front passage.

The sky out here reminds me of Colorado, very clear and great visibility. In fact, it's not out of the question the see standing lenticular clouds ( a mountain wave cloud formation ) out here due to being within a couple of hundred miles of the Rocky Mountains.

When leaving here each evening I can clearly see towns in both Texas and Kansas, now that's some flat terrain. Okay our next stop will be Woodward, OK. I would be taking more pictures, but since the seanson and the time change, nearly my entire flight is in darkness, but I will try get some more shots like the one below.

The vast flatness of the Oklahoma panhandle
See you next post.

For more information about Guymon, OK please visit http://www.guymonok.org/

Pictures coming soon

I have a digital camera on the way and I will be taking lots of pictures when it gets here. I will post some of the better shots.

Be A U Teeful Night

I think last nights flight was one of the best since I started this job. It was an exceptionally clear night, the winds were light on the surface and it seemed that I had a tailwind enroute each of my destinations, but maybe that was just my imagination. Also there was a meteor shower ( at least a lot of them coming down ) last night as well. It all made for an extremely nice flight. It's good to get those.

The visibility was incredible. I was at 8,000 ft after departing KDFW enroute to KOKC, I could see OKC's airport beacon from 86 NM's out. That sort of visibility was common place when I instructed in Colorado, but it's pretty freaky down here in Oklahoma.

It was a great flight and I really enjoyed it. Let's hope there's a few more like that before the return of winter and all the fun stuff associated with winter flying. Check you later. Cheers.

In Big D this week

I'm spending the week in the Dallas/Ft Worth area. I'm filling in for a standby pilot. I've been flying newpapers from the Dallas area out to West Texas all week. It's a fairly easy flight when the weather is good. Just one stop and fly back to Dallas empty. The weather at the beginning of the week was pretty awful, with those pesky West Texas thunderstorms firing up. Last night was so easy, no clouds, no wind, just a beautiful Texas sky and a sweet running Caravan.

Something did happen yesterday that has never happened to me before. I got stuck a hotel elevator for an hour and 1/2. It was an interesting time. I was stuck in the elevator with four strangers. During the ninety minute period, I saw the human animal in it's raw form. There was panic, stress, anger, happiness, revenge and pretty much every other emotion you can think of expressed in that very hot, very small container. My advice, take the stairs.

Okay got to get ready to deliver those papers. Later.

Baseball division series

Let me just say quickly... Go Yankees and Cardinals !

All is well

Well thankfully Hurricane Rita never made it up this way. With the exception of a pretty powerful low pressure at the end of the week, the weather has been pretty favorable.

In the next few weeks I will be adding pictures of my flying and destinations. For now I'm signing off.

Good for another 6 months

Passed my annual training and checkride and now I'm ready to take on the nasty weather that seems likely to enter north Texas next week. Sounds like Hurricane Rita will be progressing pretty far into Texas and effect much of my route. I'm probably looking at delays, turbulence, heavy rain, lightning, and of course more cursing. Nope, it doesn't sound fun.

Then again, once the bad weather passes, it's such a good feeling knowing that you've plowed ahead against some really bad stuff and accomplished the mission that you were given. Oh, I know my "mission" of delivering overnight air packages probably won't save the world, but it's my mission.

I'll update my travels through Rita as I encounter them. Until then, c-ya.

Back in the daily grind

It's Monday, which means that I will be departing from the Oklahoma panhandle in a few hours. The weather seems very docile today. I'll be headed for Tulsa, eventually ending up in Dallas before midnight. This week will be dominated by training and a checkride. Under FAR Part 135, I'm required to perform a proficiency check every 6 months. This will be the second "checkride" for me, so obviously I've been studying. That's one thing about Part 135 and 121, there are many checks and tests. Each one of them critical to your career. So if your career destination is a cargo or passenger airline, you better get used to checkrides.

Last week the weather was crazy. Low clouds and rain on one side of Oklahoma and massive thunderstorms on the other. It was super challenging last Wednesday and Thursday. Early Wednesday morning ( around 3:45 AM ) I could be found in my Caravan picking my way through rapidly building lines of level 4 and 5 storms. Yep, there was a lot of rain, lightning, turbulence and cursing going on. Good times. But hey, I'm alive and the freight got there on time. I did my job. Plus I relearned the lesson that large thunderstorms really suck to fly through.

Incidently, I did get a job offer from my last interview. I didn't take it. It would have required a mandatory relocation to the Baltimore/Washington D.C. area, which I was unwilling to make.

Until next time, cheers.

Traveling this week

Today I'm in North Carolina checking into another flying job. This one will be similar to the last one, only with a few other "options". It's not that I don't like my current job, this one I'm checking into offers a little more in the way of pay and advancement. I should be returning to Oklahoma on Friday. I will write an update if anything in my career changes. Otherwise, I will get back to a more regular posting schedule starting next week. Until then. Check ya later.

This and that

So I'm here at the Dallas/Ft Worth International Airport waiting for my aircraft to loaded with freight. I have some time to kill at 2 in the morning. I was thinking about a few things. (1) I hope that the space shuttle makes it back to Earth without trouble. I watched the repair of the underside of the shuttle today on CSPAN. I guess it was live. What a cool way to make a living. I don't care what anyone says, those guys and girls that fly in that thing are extremely brave, especially given that amount of problems that NASA has had lately.

The second thing (2) Iv'e been thinking about is baseball. I'm a huge baseball fan. Despite everything that they do, I love the Colorado Rockies ( yes, I know, worse team in baseball). I'm looking forward to the World Series ( I think that Houston will be in the big game ) . I'm afraid, however, that steriods are going to eat the game alive. I firmly believe that the new steroid rules are decent and just and if you are caught then you should have to pay. And Bud Selig should be forced to resign as commissioner. He was the head man in charge when all this stuff was commonplace, he should have to pay as well.

Okay, I know it's non aviation stuff tonight but that's how it goes. Well my aircraft is loaded and it's time for me to face an impending cold front. Cheers. Go Rockies!

Back at it

Hello from Dallas/Ft Worth International Airport. I'm back on the job for the week and the skies look to be fairly friendly for the next seven days. I had a little time off and I used them to go trout fishing. The fishing wasn't great but it was nice to do a little camping with a good friend. Camping is something that everyone should do once or twice a year. It's so nice just sitting around a campfire shooting the bull and listening to the sounds of nature. But I guess all good things come to an end. Now I'm sitting here listening to the sounds of 757's in the takeoff roll, that can be pretty cool too.
Well, that's all for now. Not really much to report on so far, but the work week is still young. Until next time, c-ya.

I'm back

It has been awhile since I have added anything to this blog. Last week's weather, although hot, was just fine for flying. I don't think I flew through a single cloud the entire week. It gave me a chance to look around a bit. Since the days are longer now I get to see what's underneath me as I fly. Okay, there's not a lot of stuff to look at between the panhandle of Oklahoma and Tulsa, but I'll take what I can get.
Before this last week the weather had been exceptionally crappy in the Oklahoma/Texas area. The first part of June was full of large lines of thunderstorms. The worst for me being in the Oklahoma City area. It seemed as though I was spending each and every night being tossed around in heavy rain and lightning. Nope not a lot of fun. But that's over, for the moment anyway.
Since I have procured a laptop my updates to this site will be more forthcoming as I will be able to post things when they are fresh in my mind. Until my next posting, cheers.

Returned from south Texas

Finally made it back from south Texas. Boy, it's hot down there...really hot. The day I was in Harlingen, TX the temperature was 103. It felt nice to climb up to 10,000 feet. The Caravan I fly doesn't have air conditioning, so the higher the better in the summer months.
I said the weather was late. Well it finally arrived here in Oklahoma. There has been a couple of nights with nasty lines of thunderstorms coming through the Tulsa area. Wind gust last night to 90 MPH in the greater Tulsa area.
I returned the other day from my south Texas trip on an unnamed major airline. Along the way the aircraft was having to go through and around some bad weather. This large aircraft was getting rocked! The Flight Attendants never made it out of their seats during all three legs of the flight. Everyone was having soft drink and peanut withdrawls. Only on an airline flight do you see people get downright nasty if they don't get a small package of peanuts. Nevermind that serving those peanuts would pose a danger to the Flight Attendants, just give us those nuts!
Next week it's off to my usual routine, flying from the panhandle of Oklahoma down to Dallas and back again. So until then, happy trails.

My last week

Last week was a hard one. There were thunderstorms each and every morning flying out of Oklahoma City ( KOKC ). It seems like the spring weather down here in " Tornado Alley" has moved in a little late. It used to be that the really bad weather was done by the last week of May or so, but that doesn't seen to be the case this year. Bring on the hot weather, boring weather I say. Well, I'll try to give you more details from my last trip in a few days. I leave at the end of this week for extreme south Texas. I will be there for a few days and I'll let you know how that went as well. Until then. Cheers.

The Mighty Caravan

Sorry it took so long to post this. I wanted to explain the aircraft that I command through the air. It is the Cessna C-208B Caravan " Super Cargomaster". A very fun aircraft to fly. It is powered by a Pratt & Whitney PT6 Turbine Engine producing either 600 SHP ( Shaft Horsepower ) or 675 SHP depending on model ( I have flown both ). It has been said that the Caravan is just a big Cessna 172, I disagree. For one thing, the Caravan is huge and heavy for a single-engine aircraft. The Cessna 172 seats 4 but the Caravan can seat 14 in the right configuration. Secondly, try to fit 3000 lbs of cargo in the Cessna 172 ( good luck). I routinely fly with that much cargo on board plus enough Jet-A to allow me to fly for 3 1/2 hours. Granted, it does look like a big freaking 172 but that's about as close as the comparison gets for me.
The Caravan cruises at around 170 knots TAS, so it is fairly slow. But for handling large freight loads with one pilot, slow can be good. Also, the low landing speed and reverse range prop allows me to get into small fields with no problems. It's large enough to draw crowd of onlookers at the small airports and that's a cool plus. The mighty Caravan, it gets the job done.
Well tomorrow I depart on another week of overnight express package delivery. Talk to you when that's finished. Cheers.

Back on terra firma

Finally back from my week long excursion into the world of freight hauling. The previous week started with a bang. A cold front was sweeping through the area at the time of departure. The cold front brought cold air that was smashing into warm moist air from the Gulf of Mexico, and forcing the warm air to rise. That, of course, meant thunderstorms were in the area. This clash happens on a weekly basis in the Great Plains during the spring time. Some of us refer to it as the "mobile home relocation process" because the main threat here in the Great Plains is tornadoes. Oh sure there is hail and wind and such, but it's the tornadoes that get the attention.

So I had to navigate around these massive storms as I made my way south. I was able to stay in the clear as I went around them, which provided me the opportunity to see a spectacular light show. Some of the best lightning I've seen in several years, I witnessed on that first night. As the storms gathered strength they combined to form a nasty squall line. The lightning would seem to start in one cloud and end in another several miles ( 50 or more ) away. Nope, didn't want to be in the middle of that mess, but it sure was nice to look at.

The days went on to become mostly VFR for the next couple of days. Around Wednesday another cold front ushered in very cold air for this time of year. It snowed in Texas and Oklahoma at the end of the week, which is pretty rare for late April. As for my flight, all that cold air meant that I was flying in the clouds a lot. On Thursday morning I spent most of my flight in the soup. Flying without outside visual references is one of the coolest things that I do. It makes the flying intense and it can test your abilities. In short, it's challenging and beautiful. There's nothing like flying in and out of cloud layers and you make your way to the next destination.

I was going to discuss the aircraft I fly, but I will write about the mighty Cessna C-208B Caravan "Super Cargomaster"on the next posting.

Leaving for one week cargo run.

Well tomorrow I leave for a week long assignment in the southern Great Plains. The forecast for tomorrow is for rain in the morning and major storms in the evening. I always fly the freight at night which, for tomorrow, means some nasty flying conditions. There are pilots, especially freight dogs, that say that flying in and around thunderstorms are what they live for. They lie. Flying near large cumulonimbus clouds really kind of sucks, particularly when you fly single-pilot operations. All of my flying is of the single pilot variety. The air is extremely bumpy, with large ups and down drafts; the rain is heavy and comes in large waves; and at night you can't see anything past what your radar shows. Not to mention that the lightning can be intense and blinding. It's really no fun. But hey, those packages have got to be to their destinations on time or there's trouble to be had.
Just when you make it through a storm alive you're faced with the prospect of flying an approach down to minimums. All of this done at 3 in the morning and your dog tired. Ah, the life of a freight dog. Makes you wonder why we do it. Wait...why do we do it? That's a good question. A lot of us are trying to move on to bigger and better things, like perhaps an airplane with more than one pilot. Airlines are a major goal of freight dogs. Some think it's pretty cool to fly these big machines after flying the small aircraft at flight schools. Some would do just about anything to get away from instructing. And some are just plain sick in the head! For myself, I would love to get my hands on a jet, especially a Boeing 737.
Don't get me wrong, when the weather is good, it can be really fun and rewarding to fly your packages around from point A to point B. And it sounds like the weather after tomorrow will quiet down for a few days and I can experience some fun. When I return I will post some info about the aircraft I fly ( although the company I fly for will remain anonymous ) and I will fill you in on any interesting things that happened during my trip. Until then, cheers.

The Start

This is the first day of this blog. I am a cargo pilot and I will be devoting a lot of space to that part of my life. I also hope to spend time on other subjects outside of the aviation world. Things such as baseball, fly fishing, other such subjects are on my list. I will be adding content between flying gigs and I hope you enjoy it.