First Aviation Job

[gibbo_335]

  OKIE DOKIE, quick update for ya 
Yesterday marked my 100th Parachute Drop Run  Which equates to nearly 300 people I've chucked out of da plane  (  4 who I know personally...sillys)
AND 72 hrs PIC in the Angry Bird ( C206 Turbo) WOO HOO!!!!!!

[Frank N. O.]

Congrats  Here's to the next 100

Frank

[TheSoccerMom]

Way to go, Gibbo!!!!!!!!

 

 

 

 

[Miikey]

Wowzer, congratz!

[Louis]

Congrats Gibbo!

My first flying job was fire and forest law enforcement patrol in a 172. Four weeks of flying to finish off the season as the guy had lost a pilot and needed someone yesterday. That was back in 2006. No fires, only found a handful of stolen cars.

Question: How do you manage descents with a TIO-540 so as not to trash the engine?

I'm a skydive pilot myself, but in what seems to be an exceptional situation I started on the 208B right away, so engine management is pretty simple: Power lever - Idle.
(Flew dual with the chief-pilot to get the 25 paradrop and 25 turbine our insurance required.)
The DZ I'm at barely flies the 182 anymore as we have two Caravans and I haven't been checked out on it.

Cultural question of interest: how do the beer rules work on Australian DZs?

Goodbye,

Louis

[gibbo_335]

Louis ... Thanks mate!!! 
  Actually today is the last day of my 8 week contract  , tomorrow will feel funny as it will be the 1st weekend I have had off since starting there 

WOW, I dream of flying 208 for drops!!!

TIO-540 management hey?  Well basically when we set on the 2Nm run in for the drop we set her up at 30"/2400rpm and 30Gal/hr cowls closed to try and keep the temps consistant....switch the EDM 700 to S.COOL and after the drop wind the mixture back to about 11Gal/hr, wind off 1" manifold/1000ft and keep the S.COOL between 0 and -15 all the way down, if she creeps up to above -24 level out, feed in the power a little until it's back and then push the nose over, start feeding the fuel back in half a turn/ 500 after 6500ft.... Juggling act,  VERY BUSY!!!! and all this while flying and talking to ATC!!!  Even with all that work, you can still descend at 180Kts and the needle hard up against 2000ft/min on the VSI  WOOOHOO!!!!

Beer management  (hee hee) basically everything is a carton of beer (24 beers)  , first solo drop run...carton, wrong drop site...carton, 100th drop run...carton, don;t get within 250 ft of the drop height...carton.... blow the engine up  ....truck full of cartons LOL!!!!

Gibbo

[Louis]

Thanks for the info, it does sound like quite the juggling act. I see you have an electronic engine monitor, good. The "Shock Cool" value, is that degrees Celsius?

I turn inbound for the run a bit closer than that, 1-1.5 NM usually. Today I even had to fly over the DZ and turn right away as ATC was making things complicated, luckily the greenlight was outbound so it was possible.

I understand the VSI is pegged, how many feet per minute down do you get roughly?
Doing the math it comes out to roughly 6000 fpm on the Caravan. I'm on the ground before the tandems.

The beer rules are pretty much the same.
Wrong drop site??? As in doing your jump run over the wrong location? Or having a bunch of off-site landings due to the jumpers picking out a bad run? There's no way a pilot is to pay beer for the latter.
Don't get within 250 ft of the drop height? I think you'll have to explain altimeter instrument error to your jumpers. (Theirs have the same issues as ours.) Is that because you messed up your climb planning? Throw in an extra turn or two and you've fixed it: inbound for the jump run you see you're not quite going to make it, turn 90° on one side, your heading is now perpendicular to your jump run, climb roughly half of what you're missing, 180° turn, back on the run.

Do you spot using the GPS?

[Louis]

Gibbo: I'd have liked an answer to that gps question...

[gibbo_335]

Whoops sorry mate, haven't check on here for a little while.

The S.COOL and the Cly Head and EG Temps are all set to Deg Fahrenheit
Yeap sure do use GPS to Spot, the plane has a GX55 and i have a 296 as a backup   We turn in bound before 3Nm
Yeah we have 5 drop sites all within 4 Nm of each other, a couple of pilots have flown the wrong drops, due cloud and input the wrong site in the GPS.  the 250 ft rule is hardly enforced  I haven't been under yet (ok... maybe on my first few drops  ) yeah i usually turn 90deg way and then come back in to reintercept just like you have mentioned if i find we are going to miss the planned drop height,AND sometimes ATC clear us UPTO FL140 so we stay at about 13500 for the drop

NO WAY would the 206 EVER get to the ground before the tandems  WOW 6000 ft/min thats awesome, i get between 2000 and 2500 ft/min MAX (  with no ATC interferance LOL)  Sometimes make me laugh when ATC issue "Cleared to descend through controlled airspace above the chutes"  LOL as if i'd get below them 

Here's a typical Saturday worth of tracks, only about half the track lines are saved...turn it off on the way down and on at about 4000ft to save the battery....the cig lighter power doesn't work in the plane  ,  from the Garmin 296 track save, overlayed on the Brisbane-Marroochydore VTC 

[TheSoccerMom]

Aw, COOL Gibbo!!!!!!!!   

Looks like the Spaghetti One Arrival....  !!!   

 

 

 

[gibbo_335]

HA HA HA  Spaghetti One Arrival .... WEEEEeeeeeee  FUNNY!!!! 

[Louis]

That seems like tricky airspace you're working around Gibbo. I have Montreal Terminal southwest and a couple of busy airways nearby, but a lot more room to work with north and west. My tracks don't look as much like spaghetti because of that. I'll usually do a little over half my climb outbound and (somewhat) into the wind, to account for higher winds and lower rate of climb on the later part of the climb. So if I do my job properly, once I've turned outbound after take-off, only two more turns to do my jump run.

The only situation where ATC would have me stay above the skydivers is if I do a CRW load for traffic spacing purposes. Otherwise I'd get away from the jump run and do my descent, sometimes they'll ask me to do it in one particular direction but that's all.

Not all ATCs are familiar with the parameters of skydiving and a little education could go a long way. We have a written agreement with Centre here that defines our climb areas and some procedures, do you have anything similar? Maybe an informal visit to the terminal you're working with could be of help.

Tips to save battery on the 296: turn off WAAS, and disable track saving entirely. (Thanks for posting that though) Use the power button to toggle the backlight between three default levels, you can turn the light off and leave the GPS running so it already has its satellites acquired. I always found it strange that you had to go back to the HSI page to set the OBS and that you couldn't do it from the moving map page as well. One airplane has a GNS 530W, the other a KLN 94B, both are coupled to the HSI, which I set to one mile scale usually.

Goodbye,

Louis

[gibbo_335]

Yeah the airsace is not too bad to working, we have a standing 5Nm from the site restriction above 4500.
Thanks for the 296 battery tips i'll give it a go tomorrow