Blue Balls

I am getting impatient. It's bad enough that sleep is such an elusive bedfellow when one is preparing for exams, and worse when I have no reason for interrupted sleep after being a licensed pilot for nigh a year now.

My nightmares or dreams have borderlined on the bizzare.

I believe that I am suffering from some form of sickness, like bends, except that my version is from having been on the ground for too long. I am impatient to fly again, and the closer I get to my reporting date to Sabah Air, the less my patience holds. Part of this insomniac infestation is because I cannot imagine what it is like to fly the Bell, a throttled collective helicopter, and I have been told that my conversion will not take more than 5 hours to complete. That builds some anxiety, as I can't imagine anything, or foresee the conversion process, thereby disallowing my control freak need to always have my eye on the future.

Therefore my dreams are like those wet dreams where you can't see your quick shag's face, with exceedingly higher levels of frustration.

A few nights ago, I dreamt I was in the Nuri cockpit, doing a ground run before taxy for a sortie. In that dream I felt that the copilot was going through the challenge-and-response checklist with me up to taxy time. But of course!! The Nuri start-up procedure and rotor engagement requires a complete crew complement.

Then as I lined up for take off, suddenly I realised that the copilot's seat was empty. I was nonplussed. Where the hell did he go to? I was hard pressed to expedite the takeoff as an aircraft had been cleared for a landing behind me, so I did what I usually do when with an incompetent copilot: manage both throttles from the speed trim switches on the collective. With the throttles at full, I eased the cyclic forward and began a running take off. I broke ground contact and was airborne to 200 feet, when the utter illegality of the entire sortie hit me and I aborted the take-off, kicked the pedals for a taildrop turnback, and faced head-on the Boeing 737 on a landing run swerving on its brakes to avoid ingesting a Nuri.

I woke up, memories of other hair-raising manouvres flooding back to me, and I sighed in relief that this one more was merely a nightmare safely turning over in the graveyard of unfulfilled dreams.

Damn!!

 I need to get off.

The ground I mean.