| "Contrails" Tales from the “Sales” Ramp By Mike Adamo |
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Monday morning 9:00AM, it was a rather simple question, “You wanna go flying Thursday?” Before the boss had a chance to blink I said YEAH SURE!! (Never pass up an opportunity to go for a plane ride if it presents itself.) I asked if there was any special reason for the flight and as it turns out, Wings Magazine (Canada) was sending their “top” photographer, Mr. Mike Reyno to do some air to air shots of our PC-12’s for an article running in the May edition.
For those of you not familiar with Mike’s work, flip through a Wings Magazine and 99% of all the air to air shots are his handy work. Well, when I heard this I just about had a heart attack. We get to fly around for a few hours while some guy hangs from another airplane taking pictures of our plane??!! “Fun huh?” was the answer I got back. Leaving the office on Wednesday I asked, “what time is wheels up?” “06:00AM” was the quick answer. “Be here at 5:00AM and we’ll do the walk around together. That means a 4:00AM wake up call!!!! Looks like I’m going to be the popular one in my house-hold Thursday morning. (We have a 2 yr. old and she wakes up if a pin drops.)
Beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, snort... grunt... oh God, 4:00AM comes around fast! I drag myself out of bed and into the shower. The only thing keeping me awake is the excitement of this morning’s activity. I dress comfortably, kiss my wife and little girl good-bye and drive to the airport. The (“early”) morning air is crisp and cool and it’s extremely clear. Great morning for flying. I off-load my bags and non-essential flight items and make my way to the ramp.
We meet up with the photographers and go through a quick pre-photo/flight check. All the gear is in place and so it’s time for the walk around. I take all the “remove before flight” tags off and stow them away and then follow the Captain as we go through the visual inspection. On a plane the size of a PC-12, it goes quick and we get on-board for our quick flight to Springbank to meet our “chase plane”. Now, for you non-Albertans, the runway we’re planning on arriving on at in Springbank is only 3,400 feet. Great for a light piston single but, interesting for a big PC-12. (big in relation to the traffic around Springbank). The 4 minute flight was too long for my taste but hey, you can ‘t have everything your way! We land and make the taxiway “Alpha” exit. The taxiways are very narrow for the size of aircraft we have and trying to turn around on those asphalt taxiways is next to impossible. No problem, where there’s no taxiway, make your own. We bounce along on the grass till we’ve turned around and shut everything down to go and meet up with the Cessna 182 pilot (now known as “Chase Plane”).
After a 25-minute formation-flying briefing, it’s time to fire up the engines and begin our “work” (snicker, snicker). The plan is to head to the foothills of the Rocky Mountains and if the weather cooperates, we’ll go a little further into the Rocky Mountain range. Taxi to runway 25 was fun and passing by little 152’s and Katana’s made us look like a 747 among 320’s. The Chase Plane took off first and after 5 minutes it was our turn. Full throttle, 90Kts, rotate, positive rate, gear up. 400 feet, flaps up. 1,000 feet set climb speed, uh... wait... isn’t that the chase plane right in front of us??? Oh boy he’s going slow. Seeing as we’re gaining pretty fast on the Chase Plane, some “S” turns were executed to slow us down and to help build a bigger gap till we were over our photo area. (I nearly lost my muffin with all the twisting and turning ;-) As we get closer to the Chase Plane, we slow (as best we can) to 120kts and extend the flaps to 15. With the flaps out, we slow to around 110 and that’s pretty much where we keep it for the entire hour and a half photo session.
Well, the time has arrived. Our PC-12 Captain flying us today is an ex-Canadian Forces F-18 pilot so he’s comfortable being 6 feet away from another aircraft. Me on the other hand, am not used to being so close to another aircraft in flight that I find myself fidgeting and sweating. Hmmm, must be the cabin heat! So now the photographer basically takes over. He gives us hand signals to move closer, further away, up, down left, right etc,,,, This goes on for what seems like an eternity all the while we’re being bounced a bit by the air flowing over the mountains and our average air speed was 120kts. I have a new found respect for the PC-12!!
I noticed after my 3rd bottle of water and 12th roll-aids (how appropriate – “roll-aids” get it??) that the flaps were being retracted and we were picking up speed. I peeked into the cockpit and asked “Awww, we done already?” (trying hard to hide my joy). “Nope” came the answer from the boss. “Now we’re heading to do some shots over the city”. Hehe... hehe... he... great... hehe! Look forward to it. Pop another water, rip open another pack of roll-aids, buckle up and give myself a good talking too for answering a question without knowing all the facts first. Formation flying! “Sound fun huh???” Once I finished giving myself a boat load of “crow” I notice we’re slowing and the flaps are coming down... again. Prepare for the roller coaster ride from hell.
ATC gave us a tiny bit of airspace which means that the turns are going to be tighter and the ride is going to be allot more fun (so says the Captain). Not only do we have to keep an eye out on the Chase Plane, but, for the commercial airliners whose space we’re playing pretty close to. No, no, don’t worry, we were never at risk of causing any problems to our big, passenger carrying brothers. Round and round and round and... (oh, just thinking about it is making me queasy.) round we went until the photographer said to break off as it wasn’t working out the way he would have liked it to. Thanks to our ATC friends anyway for giving us some leeway. Up came the flaps, up went the speed and we were off back to Springbank.
Upon touching down we noticed several of the helicopter flight schools were out practicing their hovering on the taxiways but, what was even funnier was to see them scatter when we turned on the taxiway ;-) We ended up parking ourselves right on the corner of taxiway “Charlie” right at the bend to runway 25. The looks on the faces of the instructors and student pilots as we taxied past was priceless. I think nothing bigger than a 182 visits Springbank so I’m sure some people will be talking about this for a few days.
The trip back to Calgary was uneventful but the view was spectacular and I only wish “I” had a camera. For those of you from Canada, if you pick up the May issue of Wings Magazine, the article on Fractional Ownership is on us (AirSprint) and all the photo’s of the aircraft (blue top with white belly) were taken with yours truly on-board.
So there you have it. This is just a small example of what a day on the “Sales” ramp is like working for a PC-12 Charter/Fractional Ownership company. Having said that, opportunities for me to hitch a ride are few and far between as the aircraft are always flying our customers to far off (warmer) places so have sympathy will ya... NOT!
See you again soon!
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