The Coolest Guy

The arrow pointing to The Coolest Guy

This little panel is technically called the guidance controller.

 

It is used to arm the "upper modes" or preselected altitudes, tracks, runway approaches, navigational modes and various other autopilot functions for hands-off flying.

 

A closer look at the panel, just above the captain's finger will reveal a button etched as PFD with a little green backlit arrow. In the picture, the arrow is backlit in the direction of the right-hand seated pilot or the aircraft captain. Jabbing the button will change the backlit arrow to the left-hand seated pilot, moi. Jab it again and the reversion occurs. Simply speaking, the arrow indicates which pilot's Primary Flight Display's references are being used to arm and capture the autopilot parameters for automated flight, navigation and corrections thereto.

 

In our offshore world, we take turns flying the aircraft. If the captain flies outbound to the rigs or barges as the flight detail for the day may be, then the co-pilot customarily gets to fly inbound and executes the approach to the heliport. This builds proficiency and hands-on hours for the co-pilot, as well as provides for a fair distribution of the workload.

Clockwise from bottom left: Clarity Aloft, David Clarke, Bose and Zulu Lightspeed. Courtesy of the web, and moi.

It was my first flight with an Argentinian Captain, Alfredo. He is husky voiced, and bears his own style in the cockpit, wearing the Clarity Aloft headset instead of the company-issued David Clark or the status symbols of Bose or Zulu Lightspeed, and graduated Ray Bans, making him look as if he were not wearing a headset at all. He works out religiously, attested to by the veins popping out of his biceps, showcased by his tight jeans and S sized company Polo T-shirt. As Goldmember would say, "Yesh. Toight. Like a toiger." Captain Alfredo is cool. You get it.

 

We flew outbound, with light banter and my headset filled with an accent akin to a male version of Sofia Vergara. 20 miles before the rig location I made the all-stations descent call and requested for the local weather at the rig. It was all clockwork, all routine. The aircraft seemed to be amicably cooperative.

 

On the rig, the nice Captain volunteered to get on the deck and supervise the passenger disembarkation and embarkation. Customarily, when it is the Captain's landing at the deck, he also does the take-off because the visible obstacles such as cranes or flues or masts, are on his side. As such, the co-pilot would have to get on deck and do the work. Some nice lads, such as Captain Alfredo is, take it upon themselves to get on deck, as they see that even though it is the Captain's take-off, there will be an in-flight handover to the co-pilot to fly home.

 

While Captain Alfredo was on deck, I did the paperwork. I calculated the take-off weight, entered the flight times and prepared the Flight Management System and navigation inputs for the ride home. With all the homebound passengers on board, the Captain hopped in and we lifted off uneventfully. As the aircraft was climbing steadily to 4000 feet, he confirmed that I was ready to assume control of the aircraft, and he jabbed the PFD button.

 

Now who's the Coolest Guy?

The green arrow pointed my way for all of half a second and then it jumped back to point towards the right. We looked at each other for a minute. Then he raised his index finger at me to gesture "Un minuto" and depressed the PFD button again to effect the PFD switchover to my side. Again, the left green arrow only engaged for a second before the right green arrow resumed referring to the Captain's PFD.

 

Captain Alfredo took an audibly deep breath which fed through his Clarity Alofts into my David-Clarks.

 

"Jeffrey, what does that green arrow indicate?"

 

"It indicates that the guidance controller has been handed over to me for autopilot selections sir."

 

Captain Alfredo turned in his harness to face me fully. "That is not correct. Try again. What does that green arrow indicate?"

 

I was wondering what technical language to use. "It indicates that both FMS systems feed the on-side pilot's PFD for autopilot purposes?"

 

With his graduated lenses hiding all emotion, Captain Alfredo shook his head and pouted his disapproval. "One last chance Jeffrey. Tell me the truth. Either you know or you don't know the correct answer."

 

I decided to play along and admitted my ignorance.

"Since you do not know the correct answer, listen carefully to me and never forget this." I nodded compliantly. "The green arrow indicates the location of the coolest guy in the cockpit. Flying out here I was the coolest guy. I thought that flying back, I would let you be the coolest guy, but somehow it cannot happen. You cannot be the coolest guy. I tried hard, but I am sorry, I just am the coolest guy all the time."

I digested this slowly and deliberately. I knew he had set me up for this, dismissing the actual answer to dub himself as The Coolest Guy.

Actually, there is a much deeper implication to this than the premise thus presented.

The Captain can only remain The Coolest Guy with a malfunctioning aircraft.
 

Oxfords Not Brogues

Eggsy, this country is going to SHITE!!!!!!!!

It's been a long long time since I have been here.

My absence has not been due to idleness. Nor was it a demise on anyone's part....unless it is my faith in leadership of course.

 

Last month, some ninety days after I submitted the answers to a questionnaire, the training captain finally had the time to peruse my answer and in exasperation that I could not yet understand, withdrew my line proficiency status. Well, the grapevine had it that the clients were curious about our landing fuel state and wondered why we had ample fuel consistently after every return to base. I became the first experiment to identify the prevailing fuel calculation by way of a scenario pop quiz to be written and submitted, and I had in a spell of blind-sidedness, under duress from tinnitus owing to a profanity-spewing menopausal right-hand-seat fellow screaming at me during my FAMs, inversed the formula and then glory be!! did they come down hard on me. As the scramble to identify whose fault it was that a non-novice to offshore flying could miscalculate so gloriously grew in urgency, I was placed on the training managers' remedies. It wasn't pretty, but I pulled through. Hence my absence.

 

And in the meantime, we have had to suffer indignity after indignity of failed leadership in media exposes amidst a personal scuffle between a former and serving Prime Minister.

 

The worst precipitation of this leadership event-horizon came in the form of the Low Yatt Plaza brawl and its attendant copycat crimes buoyant in its wake. I am appalled that any social experiment or mobilisation exercise would be at the cost of blood upon the fabric of our society. What makes it worse, is the disregard for humanity that such sleight of hand incurs. This isn't the first nor will it be the last time for flashpoints, as hate crimes have been with us a while now. The impunity thereof, is telling. If I were to place my trust in social media alone, I am worried that the hatemongers have outbred the peacemakers. There are so many of them under the employment of ill-intended NGOs, and my beef is that our taxes are funding such hatred. What a bunch of masochists we must be that we pay so much to be flogged with regular social scourges such as this.

 

I cannot harbour this rivalry of Cain. I am a racist of sorts, most assuredly, but I am a racist in humour. There are racial and cultural stereotypes that form a lose and disputable ethnic set of properties for each one of us, at which we can learn to laugh at ourselves with the next bloke in a massive icebreaker, or carry it as an indelible insult like a permanent chip on our shoulders.

Just as we love picking the least sonorous amongst us to be semi-permanently assigned the karaoke microphone for comic relief, I have been dragged in kicking and screaming to represent my squadron in the annual heated sepak takraw tournament, kononnya Cina tak boleh main sepak takraw la tu. And while it was in my case evidently true judging from the resounding laughter at my martial-arts kicks in the court, I will never forget the supportive cheering each time I kicked the rattan ball across the net, and the wild congratulations when my team actually won. Heck, way back, my Non-Commissioned Officers who tortured me well and good in the Royal Military College would yell all forms of racial slurs at me and my other friends till we weren't sure whether we should just surrender and laugh out loud to our peril, or surrender to the desire to hurl what horrid breakfasts we had as we floundered out of breath at the obstacle course.

 

"Woi Melayu pemalas, panjat tali pun tak boleh ke?!!!" they would erroneously bellow at me, themselves being Malay seeming to be irrelevant to their agenda.

 

"Saya Cina staf!!!!"

 

"Busuk punya Cina, berak tak basuh! Cepat panjat tali, jangan buang masa jurulatih ni. Bukan adik adik saya kamu ni semua!"

 

And then as they whipped us with their whistle lanyards to hasten us, all my upper body strength faltered as I struggled to contain my laughter and shimmy up the rope at the same time.

 

But the days where our racial tendencies were merely for a good neighbourly laugh have suffered a tragic demise. We have lost the openness of being able to call each other by race with a lame insult and walk home together arms across the other's shoulder with no bitterness. The loss of being able to be secure in our collective inadequacies, is to be disabled towards fortifying each other. Repeatedly, the contra-rotating seeds of suspicion and entitlement have been sown to deeply fragment our society, and create the perception of the haves and have-nots along lines where they do not exist, to blind us to the actual areas where the haves stand apart from the have-nots. Add to this tinderbox the agents of anarchy, and there we get 13 July 2015. 

With this disquieting aura veiling the passing week, I proceeded offshore on Hari Raya pertama to FSO Bunga Kertas, then to Tinggi Alpha with a final pick up from Bekok Charlie. The ship was festive, with every light on the deck, the masts, the exhaust stack and the helideck turned up to full brightness, while the rigs looked for all the world like oil lamps. The Helideck Landing Officers handed us doggie bags of my favourite goodies: lemang with serunding, saffron rice with chicken and beef rendang. In all these, were glimmers of hope.

Seligi Alpha. Should we sing, "warm smell of pelitas, rising up through the air"?

Which brings me to a bone I have to pick with a certain sector of our populace who with smug perpetuity go mantric about how in their states exist inter-religious and inter-racial harmony so unlike what we have this side of the South China Sea. We should all be careful about speaking prematurely about racial and religious harmony. What you think is a reflection of idyllic harmony is but the sheen of the sea without ripples, the dead calm of a boat that has not faced the tempest.

You cannot afford such naivety to blindside you to the fact that there is a difference between tolerance untested and integration fought for. The apparition of a breakdown in racial harmony is on the other hand the struggle for sensibility and inclusivity. Amidst what many believe to be covertly state-acquiesced flashpoints, the true face of what Malaysians are comes forth. There will be the agents of evil squared off against the people who will not see their friends clobbered streetside just on the basis of their skin colour. This pays logic to the fact that peace is not simply the absence of conflict. Indeed we are awake to the sower of weeds amongst the wheat, and we toil that the wheat never gets choked by the evil planted amongst us.



Rowan Gorilla II jack-up rig alongside FOIS Tembikai and Rescue Boat

As regards the hatemongers they are a lot who are oblivious over how the Creator will call them away from this life, and are preparing for it to be a most unsavoury farewell. Of course, the Universal Law of Depravity sees to it that a disproportionate number of evildoers live far better lives, rife with temporal reward, than the lesser numbers of field workers, who endeavour toward and pay the price for peace. Yet, I believe that the least we could do before all eventualities are summed up and concluded, is to forge goodwill, so that should grand misfortune and celestial cock-up have it that our deaths be excruciating, remarks may be passed that we deserve better.

There is no good in allowing hatemongers take centre stage, even, nay, especially if they are state-sponsored. There are none of us who should count the bloodying of a face we know not, as a victory. We are all a part of this teeming social fabric. I rather we were a tapestry than crimson bandages.

Selamat Hari Raya Aidilfitri, maaf zahir dan batin.

From The Frying Pan Onto The Griddle



Capt Latt Armeda

Meet my friend, Capt Latt Armeda. He has flown in quite a few places, from Iraq to Bahrain after the United States, and is now amongst us in the company. We often talk at length when our rosters overlap, and it is good to see the United States through the eyes of someone who has served under the military in various parts of the world. As with anyone, from whichever country, who takes pains to step outside his comfort zone, psychologically as well as geographically, fences are dissolved when this happens, and our chats are always refreshing. He is a big fellow, and there are ample cartoon references when we are seen walking together.

 

Capt Abel Alvarez, with SFO Jay Kumar and Capt Latt

We also have Abel Alvarez, from Spain, who has taught me a few tricks on the aircraft, and we have had a few chats over the history of Spain, her wars with Britain and how she minimised the scourges of WWII.

Senior First Officer Ugo. Never call him Boss.

The new company is a place full of different faces. There are foreign pilots from America, Spain, Italy, the Emirates, Colombia and the UK amongst others. The conversation is always varied, and there are many conspiracy theories being trashed about at any one time over coffee. Then there is SFO Ugo from Italy. Yes, I have heard ribbings and jokes over this too, but cultural ignorance fatally mistaken for humour runs the risk of falling flat on the comedian's face because from each of these persons I have learned of individual struggles to travel anywhere to earn a buck and fend for a family in the carving of better opportunities and futures for their children. In the end, when the coffee cup has been drained, we are all simply tired daddies trying the best we can for the ones we love.

The contenders gathering at the starting line called Intersection Bravo

The regimen of flying in the new place is tighter than in the old place. I find keeping up my cycling programme ever the harder, as snatching time in the morning is just impossible when the first wave mustering is 0630H. You may land and be lucky to be on split duties and skip home for a nap or no mind-load to deal with till the next reporting time at 1400H, or be plain blessed and find that there is no second wave for you at 1400H. Routinely though, your second wave waits for you at 1045H even as you prepare the trim sheet and manifest load at 0630H. Yes, a 1045H second wave means you are back at 1400H or sorts, and the rest of the day is either standby or go home. Still, wait as I may till 1745H, I cannot muster the courage to try cycling under the relentlessly scorching heat of the past three months to date. My prayers are sometimes answered when I get a few days of consecutive mustering times at 0930H. I get to sleep an extra 45 minutes compared to most mornings by waking up at 0615H, starting the ride at 0715H to return by 0830H for a rushed shower before shooting off to work by 0900H.




The mega structured Guntung Delta complex

The past three months have been good months to fly with the prevailing North-Easterly winds giving me ample opportunity to sharpen my approaches using this aircraft. This week, the winds have died down, to pick up feebly from headings exceeding 100 degrees. The aircraft captains have taken over the approaches, and I get to kick back a little and catch up on other aspects of the aircraft, such as reading, which is subservient to Newton's first law of motion.


Angsi Alpha as viewed from the deck of the Tender 10 barge

I have settled down a bit more, in the cockpit, and have begun carrying coffee in a flask to sip between radio calls and entries into the navigation log. The door slots accommodate less than the EC225's but I will have to make do. While the cockpit doesn't feel particularly small, it really is compared to the old French bird, and you will find it to be so when you have things to carry with you. The door pocket will not take a David Clark headset bag; in fact it cannot take any regular bag. Relegating a bag behind the collective control also means it is not rapidly accessible in flight, but I have learned to make do with a smaller bag crammed into the door pocket and have maximised the creature comforts of a smaller cockpit by not taking the kitchen sink along with me.

Have I walked out of the frying pan into the fire?

Not entirely. All employees, and I suppose this applies to any profession, must concede that there is no such thing as a perfect company. Every single one of them has their own brand of politics, and the further the distance an employee keeps from this fatiguing embroilment, the lower the frustration floor. That is the first pillar of truth that must be swallowed. The second, invariably, is that HR is the virally malignant department of any company hell bent of fixing what isn't broken. By both extrapolating as well as interpolating between these pillars, we can either tie our hammocks for a rest or yank the roof upon ourselves as did Samson after his crew cut grew out.

I am just going to have to bite down here till captaincy comes, because I just can't hop companies again at my age. It is not easy absorbing bitch-screaming at maximum amplitude with my already strained tympanic membranes.

Je Ne Suis Pas Major Zaidi

I knew Major Zaidi as an unassuming young officer in Butterworth. I used to see him pop into the bar at the officers' mess to tapau chilled canned drinks on his way between places. Prior my event with the then Major Fajim Juffa, pilots not from my generation, more so the post-communism era fighter jocks, would not give me a second glance save to ascertain if I was worth being ragged, and upon perceiving my grey hair, would quickly move quietly on with their business. With the sight of the squadron insignia of a helicopter pilot on my flying suit sleeve, the fighter boys deemed me beneath worthiness of a conversation.
 

I therefore do not know enough about Major Zaidi to say anything enlightening about the unwarranted glare of the public eye his court martial has garnered. I cannot fathom what brought matters this far dragged out into the distance. It should not have happened, not to a fellow officer. And no longer being in service, I should not know. It is always a sad event when an officer, especially one whose rank would make him an Executive Officer of the squadron, a potential squadron commander and eligible for the rank of Leftenant Colonel in his youth when we chopper boys past our prime are trying to assassinate each other for that same rank, is faced with a court martial.
 

A court martial is a sign of shit having hit the fan. Either what was a minor offense was not met with admission of guilt on the part of the accused and he elected to prove a point via a court martial, or the offense was of such gravity that no summary dealing via trial by subordinate commander is allowed, so that sweeping the dust under the carpet cannot happen.
 

I am horrified to see that everyone on fb and the alternative media portals have resounded in such an obscene baying over how it is a crime to tell the truth in Malaysia because it will make you a victim of a corrupt government. If you really want to call a spade a spade, then what earth-shaking, ground-breaking or life-altering "truth" is it that Major Zaidi brought to the table that had not already been known and debated to death other than for getting a Division 1 military officer to flog this indelible ink dead horse? The self-righteous alternative media portray Major Zaidi as the hero that the country needs, and that we should all stand by him. In clichéd cyber trending, fb profile pictures now have been changed to bear the banner that reads Je Suis Major Zaidi. Yet, every rebuttal I have placed in alternative media to straighten the lopsided picture frames has not been published. Not that it matters to me, but it is telling about their selective treatment of how some truths are more truthful than others.
 

However, this is not about Major Zaidi. It is about ignoring the relevant items which would nullify the governmental-injustice-poster-boy aura that has been conjured to legitimise what in fact is little more than a red herring. It concerns the politicising of a court martial, which does not fall under the normal rules that civilians assume to understand. The vitriol splashed upon the pages of the alternative news portals has little to do with concern over injustice. Rather, it is the manifestation of a mass hysterical fist-shaking at the military establishment which is perceived, but not verified in any way, as being an extension of a government we feel, for whatever reason we breed and fester, as ill-deserving of the mandate to rule, corrupt to the core and impervious to whatever criticism we hurl at it.
 

The rules as of 31 years ago when I signed up for service were made clear, that under no circumstance could I organise a press conference. Were I standing at a terrorist attack site while shopping and accosted by the paparazzi for comment, I would be liable to be charged for contravening Armed Forces Council Instructions for not clearing with MINDEF PR before opening my opinionated mouth, though I believe circumstantially nobody in the armed forces would do it. But the rule still stands, even if I weren't prosecuted.
 

Now this is altogether several shades different from organising a press conference to air one's convictions over a perceived miscarriage of justice. This takes knowing full well what the rules say. It takes a subsequent electing to disregard those rules, for whatever reason. It also means either taking cognisance that there will be repercussions and being ready for those consequences, or worse, presuming that such consequences will die a natural death before their reverberations are audible.
 

A soldier cannot have an amnesiac lapse towards the principle of service before self. The military will not tolerate it any more than it will tolerate insubordination. Courts martial of the past dealing with insubordination have always ended with the accused losing his wager. The gravity of such an offense only gains mass as its committal tracks up the ranks, seeing that from commissioning as a Second Leftenant, officers must observe and enforce military law. Breaches of said law voids a soldier of whatever traits and qualities that made him a soldier in the first place. What may those be? First and foremost, it is the surrender of personal liberties. Following these will come the pledge of allegiance to King and Country, reticence and securing the nation's secrets in conjunction with her interests. This is a soldier's life. He is subject to civil law, but over and above that, not subsequently or consequently, military law. Transgressing military law never makes a hero out of an offender.
 

The court martial was never about the truth that Major Zaidi intended to spill. Besides the fact that many voters already reported the same, two other service personnel from Butterworth base also made police reports in conjunction with the adulterated indelible ink, but they were not charged with any offense. Therefore the court was about transgressing rules wilfully.
 

Consider this: a fighter pilot with all the right tactical qualifications is assigned the task of taking out a vital point, let's say, a power plant tucked away in the hills. It is to be conducted by night and with night vision goggles. At tea time, this fighter jock has an epiphany that so strikes his conscience that he decides to get dressed in full ceremonial regalia adorned with all his gallantry medals and collar decorations and calls a press conference to report that an underhand plot is afoot to destabilise another state. Would any of this constitute a national warrior? Many, many more deeds of courage go unsung actually.
 

A court martial is quite different from a civil sitting. Forgive me for using "we" by force of habit, but we do not have the luxury of being so large in number that the President of the Court and the accused are unacquainted from Adam. Indeed, we are intertwined. This can be useful, in that we know the character of the man whose fate we are presiding over. There is something rather special about soldiers. We know each other's worst secrets. We consider some of those amongst us as individuals we wouldn't trust the sanctity of our granny's knickers with. Yet because he is a soldier, we would brawl in the streets to protect or avenge him. We will have his back. And sometimes, we draw the line. Because much as we do not want the worst to befall one of us, there is something much larger we are duty bound to preserve. That in this instance, is the fitness of an officer to continue to keep his commission in service to His Majesty.
 

I will likely never know what could have led to all this. After all, the truth is the first casualty of war. None of us know if Major Zaidi in fact did meet with his Commanding Officer and was advised on other means of dealing with his grievances as an officer. He may have been trivialised and could not accept that his passions did not warrant the pursuit he deemed them fit for. None of us have found his courage questionable. However, our virtually scantily understood lives in the officer's corps in lame attempt at living as a organisation that should be beyond reproach amidst all the other injuries it has had to suffer thus far has been further tormented by the very people and parties who have publicly claimed to be defending a man of integrity while glossing over the fact that his integrity is not in question. Attention has been diverted from the fact that while we are a part of you, we must also stand apart from you as we serve an interest that will almost always be in conflict with our own, but we have not the liberty to take our grievances to the street.
 

Let the truth be told, that the military justice system is fair. It places no stock in fanfare or dramatics. If a senior officer is facing a court martial for striking a junior officer for instance, his sentiments or his temperament at the time of the incident, or provocation on the part of the junior officer does not alter the fact that an offence has been committed. The question of "guilt" then is strictly over whether he committed the offense or not, full stop, where striking (ill treatment of) a junior officer is an offence under the Armed Forces Act 1972.

 

 

Furthermore, in case it has eluded all and sundry, a soldier should be vigilant towards anyone, individual or group, who would so manipulate his grievances to drive him to choose against his fellow soldiers. This very method of picking on the already agonised in defeat to convince him that he is a victim of a corrupt and repressive government was used on us in the infancy of this nation for recruitment in a war that lasted 40-odd years in our jungles and terrorism in our streets and villages. Really, if anyone were interested in Major Zaidi's welfare and future, they would help him move on rather than reinforce his frustrations into irreversible bitterness. He deserves a fresh start or else he risks turning out like the many petulant others who have not got their way, left with little but an oversized axe to grind.

 

 

Therefore, without a foundation of good service in His Majesty's Armed Forces, public comments on this court martial which ignore the surrender of an individual's liberties when signing up to serve King and country, do little more than reflect ignorance over the uncompromising intricacies of military conduct. They do not enlighten anyone on military justice, nor serve the future interests of Major Zaidi.

 

 

I say with regret and with honesty, that I am not Major Zaidi. And neither are many amongst you.

Chambers

It is now the second week of the new year.

 

Leading up to Christmas, I was placed on a rush order of training programmes, starting with the AW139 Simulator training at PWNE Subang, followed by the type technical examination, then my recurrent aircrew medical check at Twin Towers and ending with the BOSET which entailed of course, HUET. Altogether, not accounting for ground school, that was two-and-a-half weeks in the city.

XL Xmas tree at the Holiday Villa's lobby

It was back to Subang Jaya's Holiday Villa for my 8 days of simulator training at PWN Excellence. I'm sorry. I cannot unearth the meaning of that baffling acronym and I am certain it is in Italian. I heard the W is for Westland, as in Agusta-Westland 139.

 

Having spent two weeks in the Villa earlier during ground school at Agusta Westland Academy at Sapura Kencana's Hangar, I was quite at home and looking forward to the makcik's nasi lemak just across the junction from the villa. I must admit that this was the beginning of my winter weight gain, and my later return to Kerteh during the worst of the monsoon did not spell a rapid return to my pre-Christmas mass. Being surrounded by all the delights of the Klang Valley's delicacies, I made it a very festive Yuletide indeed.

 

But now, it was time to take a mighty leap into the dark of the simulator cockpit and see who would emerge victorious, moi or the nasty computer-aided aircraft simile.

 

I was at the gate of the simulator premises, within the perimeter fence of RMAF Subang, at 0500H. It was beginning to look like a parade joke. I was alone there, at the dead end of the road, face illuminated by the lights of my Elantra's instrument cluster, but no sign of anyone who would show up to open the gate. I was to learn over the next number of days, that the provost only opened up between 0530H and 0600H. To be fair, the provost changeover meant handing-over/taking-over briefs and guard dismounts. But the arrangement of my simulator slots by PWNE vis-à-vis gate opening times and the terse instructor assigned to me set the stage for pre-flight tension in my mind, which, as it was, already lumbered under performance anxiety over flying the new bird.

This is what pilots call the torture chamber. Pic from PWNE's website

My first three days in this beast tore my self esteem to shreds. I could barely hover, and my over-corrections were so laboured that I longed for an hour's Thai massage every day to assuage my sore muscles from my neck down to my feet arches. My 68-year old Italian instructor mocked my agonised grimaces and body posture in twisted struggle against the controls on all three axes, dragging my self-esteem to the basement of utter remorse.

 

I returned home to the villa at the end of the third day in no mood for a conversation with anyone. I was crushed by mental fatigue over summoning all I had gained over 21 years of helicopter flying seemingly gone to dust.

 

The fourth day, and my session started at 1200H to 1400H. I woke up at late morning and went deliberately early to the simulator centre. I was delighted to find that at 1100H, lunch was served for an eighteen ringgit fee, so I sat in the crew room slowly stuffing my face whilst watching a mindless documentary on the telly. My instructor turned up at 1130H for our pre-flight brief and we stepped into the torture chamber.

 

I was surprised to find the cursed contraption somewhat compliant to my control inputs this time around. My instructor began progressing me rapidly through the exercises, throwing tail rotor control failures and instrument approaches at me, and the two-hour session was concluded before I knew it. I suppose it wasn't just the simulator that had mellowed towards me. My instructor too, took on a change in personality. The post-flight brief this time shifted away from announcing the next sortie's schedule and ridding himself of me, to explaining the differences in go-around criteria between a precision approach and non-precision approach. I decided not to rock the boat by over-thinking this one. The remaining 5 days in the simulator were more enjoyable, with me looking forward to the next session and ultimately, the end of the course, with my instructor cheerfully saying, "Captain Jeffrey. You are still with us at the end of this course. Congratulations!!"

I'll just take it that it was a good thing.

Much relieved, I headed back to the villa to ponder the upcoming events. I was even feeling like my personal storm clouds were dissipating. My buoyant attitude was just my way of psyching up for the Type Technical exam coming up in haste at 1400H. I hit the showers and headed for the Malaysian Aviation Academy, confident that Garmin would get me there well before time.

There was a festive air at the examinations hall, as there were many acquaintances and friends taking DCA exams that were lined up for the day. The aviation community, it ironically appeared, was growing ever smaller even as it expanded. I made some new friends, and even discovered that my reputation had preceded me, undisputedly manifest when, after I introduced myself to a private pilot, he remarked, "So you're the one the other guys were talking about...." Thanks Colonel Fajim!

This is Christmas?

I endured the examination by sheer relief of discovering my preparations were adequate in averting blanking out when looking at the exam paper. Everything looked like I had read about it somewhere, and in due time I handed over my papers, knowing I could do no more about the inevitable outcome two weeks down the line.

A room, and a view!

I had three more days at the villa before having to pack up and move over to The Concorde, sitting in the heart of the city, and closer to my next training centre, Consist College, Ampang for Basic Offshore Safety Induction and Emergency Training. It was time to face my demons awaiting me in the form of another torture chamber: the helicopter simulator meant for HUET. I was in for a surprise after the first few lectures, because the instructors inspired such confidence in me that I was no longer morbidly afraid of underwater escape. Once they showed me that I could breathe using the apparatus, I was no longer frantic. I realised that apart from my perennial fear of water, my last HUET in 2011 saw me panic when my Emergency Breathing System failed and I took water into my lungs, leading to this sense of dread I felt when faced with HUET. Now that it was somewhat rationalised, I think that demon has been rebuked.

A Helicopter Underwater Escape Training simulator. Pic courtesy of TSTC's website.

The sea survival module ended on 24 Dec 2014. My arms were worn from the furious rowing during the human raft training. Being the only pilot in the course, whenever the instructors asked, "Who will jump into the pool first for winching?" or "Who wants to try this first?", there was this unanimous chant and turning of eyes and index fingers towards me phrased with "The captain will jump first!"

High waters

My return home was virtually uneventful, save for a hint of the horror of what hit Kuala Krai and Gua Musang reflected in the streams that had long burst their banks making the new highway home from Jabor look like a causeway.

Curtains drew to a dismal close on 2014.