14 March 2023

Taken For Granite

 

Look! A helicopter with afterburners!

Swiftly have we arrived at the end of the contractual date for the northeast monsoon. Although the weather and trade winds remain characteristically NE, the Monsoon Contract ends on 15 March, and the company eases up on constantly being at the behest of clients signatory to said contract. Or....as in real life, not!! Yeah, we are at their behest, monsoon or no.

About the midway point of February till the beginning of March, the weather improved from apprehensive with promises of heavy thunderstorms both offshore and recovery to home base any time past 1400H, to scenically and dramatically romantic. Indeed there was one day towards the second week I was blessed with a day full of rainbows.

Being chased by rainbows, all the livelong day

I have been privileged to fly with a few captains with me in the copilot's seat as I am left hand seat qualified ever since my recent check ride. This allows the home base to pair me with a captain when copilots are unavailable due to illness, simulator training in the peninsula or courses thereat. 

I have found this to be quite revealing, giving me an insight as to whom amongst them want to play the instructor although they are not, and who sees themselves as standing shoulder to shoulder with me in spite of my cockpit flaws, which confessed or not, we all carry. No, these aren't traits of young captains alone. There are copilots who also want to play at being instructors while I'm in the right hand seat. I couldn't see all this when I was a mere copilot and no, not even as a captain. But flying as a left hand seat pilot has truly been amusingly enlightening.

Therefore my days have been anything but dull of late. I am realy beginning to enjoy this, although whenever I jump to the left hand seat, the first sortie takes some getting used to as I instinctively reach out my left hand to twiddle knobs and engage switches only to find that there are none, and I have to employ my right hand to fulfil my crew duites. This is something which is rather common across the board with all who are dual-seat qualified and so far it has made demands that I tweak my mental flying and planning for approaches offshore. 

It is good to see how I am such a creature of habit in expecting to see the helideck on my right when it will in fact be on my left. It is good that I have learned not to take my landing briefs to my partner pilots for granted, having to describe that my baulked landing at a helideck in case of emergencies will be to break right instead of breaking left. Yes, the prattling of this brief can happen the other way around too, when after a few days of flying left hand seat I return to the captain's seat. I am learning once again, that even at this stage, with one foot in the retirement grave, I must never take anything in flight for granted.

What else has been happening? Well, two RTBs, or turn back to base due to minor emergencies. The first was due to a generator failure at just about 30 miles out. Yes, the remaining generator can support the consumer loads of the aircraft by linking up through a tie-switch, but being 30 miles to home base and 70 miles to destination rig, plays other considerations as prudent. The second was radio failure on the overwatch frequency, also at about 20 miles outbound. In both cases, we elected being close to and returning to home base with all its attendant support as the better choice than possible costly and convoluted recovery at an offshore installation. The minor misadventure now and then is a polite wake up call to never walk to the cockpit thinking it's just another day in paradise.

Even if it is, let's not take that for granted.


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