Article - Stories from a Night Express Caravan Cargo Pilot - Romance by Bob Tilden

Stories from a Night Express Caravan Cargo Pilot

Romance

by Bob Tilden

I walked through shallow puddles of water as I made my way to the airplane. The sky was dull but not at all disagreeable, with passable visibility under a low overcast. For the first time in almost a month the temperature was above freezing, but a barely perceptible drizzle dampened the thrill. I regarded our two airplanes as I walked towards them in the fading light of late afternoon, and thought "there is no romance today".

The morning had dawned with the same gray sky that now hovered overhead, but the morning's drizzle froze to the airplanes and the taxiways. For the second time in the week, I had been stranded in Rochester for the day because of freezing rain, and that fact alone had made me a bit grumpy.

Sunset view from the cargo Caravan

I don't know if I subconsciously edited my thoughts about romance, but after the thought had passed through my mind, I was glad that I hadn't thought "the romance is gone". The thought of "gone" would have been ominous, but a temporary loss is understandable. Still, it was an alarming thought.

It had been a long time since a flight had made me feel like a little kid at Disneyland. It seemed that there had been an unending string of days where the earth disappeared shortly after takeoff and reappeared only a few minutes prior to landing. Some of those flights had been on top of the clouds, in starlight or bright sunlight, but maybe just a few minutes a day of sunshine aren't enough to keep my batteries charged.

This was sort of an unusual flight because we would be flying our planes empty, back to Elmira to pick up the evening load and return to Rochester with it. I thought that it was kind of neat to be able to jump into the plane and go, without waiting for loading or paperwork. It was almost as though I was in my own plane.

The last light of day had all but faded into night as I left the ground and climbed into the clouds. There was no romance; I just sat there doing some paperwork and watching the temperature drop as I gained altitude, expecting icing temperatures at any moment. After climbing through a mile of murky gray, just as the temperature dropped to freezing, I broke through the tops into a clear sky.

I had climbed from night into twilight. Above the layer of clouds was the last few minutes of the day's sunset, orange and red along the horizon and fading rapidly through the blues into black. To my left, a big orange moon had just cleared the cloud deck, and shined its light across the gleaming ocean of white below me. Orion the hunter, an evening constellation in the early fall, but a sunset constellation in the late spring, was almost overhead.

The sight of the day's last colors is something that we start to see in April, with our usual eight o'clock departure times. This evening was sort of an early preview, a reassurance that winter is not forever.. With Orion overhead at sunset, there was no mistaking February for April, but perhaps the spirits were sending me a small morsel to tide me until spring.

The seasons and their weather are a continuous ebb and flow, but the worst is past. The days are starting to gain strength and the force of each new winter blast will be dulled and shortened. Grass will green, birds will sing, and flowers will bloom. The world will be a safer place for romance.

*The author Bob Tilden flew a Caravan for a Night Express cargo company for 10 years and has also written a book, Gone Flyin'. To order it, visit goneflyin.com or search Gone Flyin' on ebay.com

- CaravanNation.com

Morning's Glories, Evening's Worries by Bob Tilden

Stories from a Night Express Caravan Cargo Pilot

Morning's Glories, Evening's Worries

By Bob Tilden

Each morning as I climb away from Newark, I wonder what sort of glory will be provided by the coming dawn. By the time that the sun actually rises I will be 150 miles away, but still I look at the day's first light in the northeast to see if the sky offers a hint. I watch, wait, and anticipate while daybreak moves into dawn.

As the sky brightened last Wednesday morning, I could see a cloud bank in the distant right. It was unusual in that it was a fairly regular deck of tightly grouped puffy clouds with a jagged ...almost saw-toothed... ridge of clouds at its far edge. The ridge contained small clouds that were profoundly vertical in nature; almost like miniature thunderheads. It became apparent that I was gradually converging with these clouds as I traveled northwest.

The sun makes a bright spot on the horizon as I cruise above puffy clouds at 8000ft.

I took several pictures as I flew along in the brightening sky, and by the time that I was crossing Canandaigua Lake, the cloud deck had melted into a thick haze below my altitude. The vertical clouds had crumbled too, but their remnants cast long shadows into the golden sunlight that had set the haze aglow. It was a fascinating sight, like pillared ruins standing in desert sands.

I knew that I was looking at the pretty side of bad news, but that was OK. There was talk of thunderstorms for that evening, and the sight of small clouds able to blow straight up at dawn is a confirmation that the atmosphere was becoming unstable. Wednesday was hazy, hot, and humid, and it was no surprise to see thunderstorms erupt in the late afternoon.

I had an uneventful 8 PM trip from Elmira to Rochester, but my 10 PM departure from Rochester was made in rain that was flanking a thunderstorm. I paralleled the easterly track of the storm until I could cut in front of it, and thought that my worries were over. The controller called to say that "the computer" had re-routed my flight over the Catskills rather than the Poconos, but that the storms in that area were dissipating rapidly. I flew on happily, with the assurance given by the controller.

As I crossed Hancock, I passed into the next control sector, and things were different. This was a more easterly sector, closer to the action around the City. It was apparent that this sector was the twilight zone, where the Computer's projections were met by the facts of the weather. Some poor guy in a business turboprop wanted to turn right, around a storm, but the controller couldn't let him. Other planes were being given holding instructions.

I realized that the rest of this flight would be busy, because once planes start to hold, there is no guarantee of anything. Arrival could be delayed minutes or hours, and the hold could last so long that the plane would have to go someplace else for fuel before resuming the trip. Once you are given a hold, you have to know what sort of weather is around, what airports are available for refueling, and how long you can stay in the hold before you must break away.

I was just entering the sector, and as soon as the controller got the other planes settled into holds, he told me to return to Hancock and hold there. For the next half hour I flew race- track ovals ten miles on a side while I figured my options and listened to what was going on ahead of me. When I was released from the hold I was told that there would be no further delays, but shortly I was put into a stack of other company Caravans in a holding pattern near Port Jervis.

After fifteen minutes we were sent on our way one by one, a caravan of Caravans in a line heading for Newark's short runway. We landed, and the first guys helped the later arrivals tie their planes down, so that we could make the long walk to the freight terminal together. We laughed about the evening, exchanged the last 24 hours of Company gossip, and told the usual sorts of jokes on the way in.

We walked in long purposeful strides, anxious to close out the flights and sit down for a quick nap. After all, it was only three hours before time to take off and wonder what sort of glories will be provided by the coming dawn.

*The author Bob Tilden flew a Caravan for a Night Express cargo company for 10 years and has also written a book, Gone Flyin'. To order it, visit goneflyin.com or search Gone Flyin' on ebay.com

- CaravanNation.com

The Iceman Cometh by Bob Tilden

Stories from a Night Express Caravan Cargo Pilot

The Iceman Cometh

By Bob Tilden

It was a morning after a clear night had brought the first frost to many areas, but Syracuse laid under a blanket of lake- effect clouds and rain showers. The usual cruising altitude of 6000 feet was just above the cloud tops, in air that was well below freezing. The white expanse of clouds below me was not as flat as usual, and northeast of Ithaca, I had to tunnel through a ridge that crossed my path. As the clouds swallowed the airplane and blotted out the sun, I looked out to the leading edges of the wings and saw the season's first ice forming on the plane.

Near Ithaca the lake- effect clouds start to break up below and around me.

Continuing southwest towards Elmira, the lake- effect undercast disappeared, and I gazed at lush green grasses and green leafy hills. Islands of white frost floated among this landscape, filling the low areas that are sheltered from the breezes and accumulate cold air on clear autumn nights. Descending for landing, I passed two thousand feet over Odessa, and couldn't help but marvel how vibrant and vivid the world seemed in the early morning sun.

Part of this transformation is the result of cooler temperatures and increased rainfall, but every year there seems to be a sharp change in nature's world after the first frost. It is as though the trees and plants embrace their fates and make one last and glorious show before their souls are lifted to heaven. I see this from the plane, but it is an observation that I have made year after year with my feet on the ground.

As I descended lower and passed over the high ground south of Odessa, the iceman gave me a steely flash of his eye. I looked to my right just in time to see my shadow pass into a deep green alfalfa field. With the airplane directly between the sun and the dew covered leaves, the field filled with a shimmering silvery light, a cold metallic brilliance that was devoid of both color and life.

A cross section of our typical winter sky; a layer of clouds resides between 4000 - 6000 ft. whenever the wind is out of the northwest.

Gone for now are the scorching summer days when we could say with assurance "at least it won't snow today", and gone are the evenings when I can look at a forecast of bad visibility with low ceilings and say "that's OK, at least there won't be any ice." Whether we like winter or not, for the next six months we will be working to keep the iceman at bay.

*The author Bob Tilden flew a Caravan for a Night Express cargo company for 10 years and has also written a book, Gone Flyin'. To order it, visit goneflyin.com or search Gone Flyin' on ebay.com

- CaravanPilot.com

Glorious Springtime by Bob Tilden

Stories from a Night Express Caravan Cargo Pilot

Glorious Springtime

by Bob Tilden

Just as I have done for the last ten years, I have been pushing the calendar since January, trying to move winter out of the way. I have pushed the hands of the clock forward each afternoon and held them back each morning, and gradually seen the day lengths creep longer and longer as the weather has warmed. It is June now, and if only I could stop the calendar I would be delighted.

Our late spring daylight lasts almost 16 hours, a span that was unimaginable just six months ago. Winter's air can smell crisp and fresh at best, and a winter evening can be splendid in its silence, but today the air is alive. The scents of a billion blossoms waft through the air, and our songbirds have returned to fill it with their songs. Life is good; I no longer find myself scanning the lead- gray winter sky at sunset, wondering of the stealthy ice- demon will visit upon my airplane as it flies through the gloomy night.

Airframe icing is predictable in that any flight through clouds at typical winter temperatures will cause ice to form on the plane. Some clouds are almost dry, some are quite juicy, and often there is an altitude that will be above, below, or in between the cloud layers. A thousand feet or a few miles can be the difference between severe ice and a "free pass", but you never know what awaits you. Whether to climb, descend, or change course is usually no more than an informed guess, which is why it is called "fishing". Ice, especially at night when clouds cannot be seen, is stealthy.

Thunderstorms, especially at night, are not stealthy. You can see where they are and where they aren't, and the airplane's radar can usually pick out trouble spots farther ahead Sometimes the storms sweep along in lines, usually driven by a cold front, or sometimes they will be triggered by localized heating of warm humid air and float along as cells, clusters, or short lines. Last week we had examples of all these different storms.
Much to my delight, I missed all of them, partially out of luck, but mostly because the locally generated storms start to die off as the sun drops towards the horizon. Without the sun's heat, the temperatures of the earth start to even out, and the strong updrafts that seed these storms diminish. Additionally, thunderstorms which are caused by colliding air masses, such as fronts, are always weaker and less volatile when the heat of the sun is not a factor.

Volatility, or the propensity for thunderstorms to form abruptly, is the scariest part of thunderstorm flying. Last Friday I watched the Weather Channel radar as the entire Tug Hill Plateau area lit up with thunderstorms well ahead of a line that was still well to the west. The whole area went from zero to red in twenty minutes; a pilot leaving Syracuse for the north country could have been very rudely surprised. One morning last year I watched the airplane's radar as my clear path around a cluster rapidly become a box canyon as storms developed on the outside flank and far ahead as well. There was no gracious way to avoid the weather, and I had to parallel the path upwind of the storms for quite a ways before I could get past safely.

The airplane's radar is more than a tool, it is a machine; its operation and interpretation must be learned and practiced. Sometimes it exaggerates the extent of the problem, sometimes it understates the problem, and sometimes it can actually lead you into the worst part of a storm. In any case, it only shows a narrow pie slice of the sky directly ahead of the plane, and once the rain really starts, our smaller radar units become useless. Properly used, it helps the pilot guess.

My choice between summer weather and winter weather? No doubt it is the same as yours. Thunderstorms might inconvenience us for a few hours or maybe not at all. Winter weather is a full time problem, from frozen plumbing, to balky cars, stinging wind, slippery roads, bottomless mud... and old bones that are no longer invigorated by the challenge.

Last week I was leisurely spreading a pile of driveway gravel. The still air was hazy, hot, and humid... but as I am now inclined to say, "at least it wasn't snowing". The air was filled with the fragrances of several flowering bushes, and the Oriole's song floated over the sparse midday conversations of the woodland birds. I thought of the last few weeks, getting on hands and knees to smell the first dandelions and daffodils, and later embracing the apple trees and lilacs. I delighted in the first robin's song, and waited patiently to hear the first arrivals of tohees, catbirds, and wood thrushes.

Time has marched its grand circle and brought us back to this wonderful place, but unfortunately it will continue its trek. For now though, like an old gray woodchuck, I am happy to look around, feel the sun, smell the breezes and say "I've made it through another winter!"



This picture doesn't really relate to the glory of springtime, but it shows what I was looking at as I skirted the storms that I mentioned. The picture is of the radio stack which is located in the center of the airplane's instrument panel. The left stack, from top down is the audio switching panel, the number 1 comm/ nav radio, the number 2 comm/ nav, and the radar display. The right stack is the GPS receiver, the ADF, the number 1 transponder, and the number 2 transponder.

The GPS is set to the pictoral display mode, where the current direction of flight is "straight up". There is a line that leans on a diagonal to the left; that is the straight line course from COATE intersection in northern New Jersey to the Lake Henry VOR northeast of Wilkes- Barre PA, my normal course. I have already turned about 10 degrees left of that course to avoid the storms

Looking at the radar display, the left- most thunderstorm cell (the red area) is right about where the diagonal line... my original course... would have taken me. I have already turned left to avoid it, but the yellow areas have erupted ahead of me on the new heading. Soon after this picture, I turned further left and watched the yellow areas fill with red centers. I flew west for thirty miles before turning north to regain my original northwest course.


The author Bob Tilden flew a Caravan for a Night Express cargo company for 10 years and has also written a book, Gone Flyin', to order it, visit goneflyin.com or search Gone Flyin' on ebay.com

- CaravanPilot.com