Monday, September 16, 2013

You Know You're A Pilot When #3

You know you're a pilot when...
  • You feel a pang of "uh oh" when, 45 minutes out you realize you forgot to study the STARs, approach plates, and airport taxi diagram for your airport of intended landing, and you are sitting in row 14!
  • You automatically visualize a little miniature runway aligned to the appropriate magnetic headings when you hear 28-10 (and if you hear 28L-10R you visualize two parallel runways). 
  • You say 28 as "two eight" instead of "twenty eight".
  • You mentally compare the pitch or climb angle of the roads you drive with bank and pitch angles of the plane you fly.
  • You can't remember which type of plane you are in, but you sure know the call sign and can hear that call sign no matter how busy the chatter is.
  • You know when you see three people standing by a particular location they must be a flight instructor and family waiting for someone as they do their first student solo. 
  • Any time you see a picture with clouds in it you automatically think about the relative stability of the air that created the cloud and how smooth or turbulent you would expect the air to be in and near that cloud.
  • You find yourself mentally calculating the crosswind component for any wind reported by ATIS on approach as a reflex. 
  • Your daughter catches you walking around the living room holding a trekking pole up in front of you to represent the wings and cowling of a plane as you walk through a chandelle. 
  • Any time you are outdoors you scan the skies looking for airplanes and smile whenever you see one.
  • You can't think of a better way to spend a Sunday evening than fly a friend over the city and bay at night. 

Bonus -
You know you've been studying for the Commercial Written test too long when...
  • You know what Figure 8 looks like and what the fuel burn rate is at 55% cruise power without looking at it.
  • You don't like dealing with Figures 16, 17 and 20 but are OK with Figure 18 and 19.
  • You finally have figured out how to answer all of the ADF and RMI questions. 
  • You know how much weight you will have to shift to the new station to get the desired new CG without even doing the calculation.
  • If given a bearing change and time for the change you can calculate time and distance to station in about 20 seconds, in 5 seconds if the bearing doubles.
  • You know the difference between advection, radiation and steam fog. 
  • You know how many positive G's a normal category aircraft is certificated to handle.
  • You don't need to look it up to know a plane at a 60 degree bank will experience a 2G load factor.
  • You can get through 200 random questions from the test bank in 2 hours with no wrong answers.

Oh it is fun to fly!

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