Nasa Space Shuttle on a Cross Country Flight

Today, as I write this article for Flying Families, I consider that I’ve finally seen a shuttle launch, from my back garden! Now that I’m more based in Florida than Berkshire I can consider what the space shuttle pilots put in their log books. The shuttle recently landed on that long, long runway at Cape Canaveral. When I last saw that runway I was amazed at its length, so long in fact that from one end of the runway you can’t even see the other end (due to the Earth’s curvature). The question that would be uppermost in my mind after the excitement of a spaceflight would be “what should I put down in my log book?”.
Well if I was pilot in command, I can put that down as PIC or P1. The Co-Pilot can put down P2 time. Unless I was the Co-pilot acting as pilot in command, under the supervision of the pilot in command. In which case I can put it down PIC U/S or P1 U/S. That being true only if the acting pilot in command carried out all the duties of the pilot in command including the take off and landing and the log book is endorsed by the pilot in command to state that the pilot acting as pilot in command correctly carried out the duties of a pilot in command. Then I’d have to wonder whether a rocket blasting off from Cape Canaveral counts as a take off and if it did who was flying it?
To those of us who fly in the thin layer of atmosphere nearer to the ground the questions are not so tricky. Put P1 U/S if the instructor didn’t touch the controls at any point and has signed your log book at the end to confirm this. If you are undergoing a test of any kind then a successful test will be P1 U/S (signed log book and the time goes under the P1 column) and a failed test will be P1 U/T (the time goes under Dual column).
As an astronaut, the press conference would come next. Answering questions about space food, what was it like to be weightless etc etc. Then I’d get to wondering…Was it an International flight? After all my logbook will say I left Cape Canaveral and came back to Cape Canaveral; that’s a lot of circuit practice!

An FAA sectional section

Is this due to years of looking at CAA charts? Who knows. If you look on the example fragment of a sectional you’ll see an airport depicted. This is the magenta circle with bumps at the 3pm, 6pm, 9pm and the midday positions. The white line indicates the rough orientation of the runway. The fact the the circle is filled in indicates that is is a hard runway with a length between 1500 ft and 8069 ft. The colour magenta for this airport indicates that it does not have a control tower. If it were blue then the this would indicate that it did have a control tower. The tick marks around the outside indicate that services are available during normal working hours. What constitues normal working hours is accurately defined in the Airport Facilities Directory, but by default means 10am until 4pm Monday to Friday.

If the airport runway is outlined in solid color with no circle around it then this is a big runway (greater than 8069 ft. Seabases are shown with the magenta anchor inside a circle (the one on the chart, without a circle indicates it is for Emergenct seaplane operations only).

Abandoned runways are shown in the same way as on CAA charts with a cross through them. Strangely enough they are all magenta in color.

Military airfields are shown with a double circle either with the tabs around them, indicating they are civil / Military or withour indicating, you probably shouldn’t land there unless you’re flying an F-15.
Airfields with an “H” inside the circle indicate heliports. Aerodromes with a “U” inside the circle indicate “Unclassified”, i.e. Area 51 or aliens please land here. An “F” indicates an “Ultralight Flight Park”.

That’s about it for the actual symbols. Next time we look at the numbers which can be written in the vicinity of the aerodrome. There’s a lot of those!

Airplane Mayday

Those three words, the prefix to an emergency radio call, are often practised both in the USA and the UK. Despite the fact that the ICAO language is English this is based on a French phrase (“Me” “aidez” – contracted to M’aidez – help me) and even though Britain and the USA share a common language root, and both are signatories to the ICAO, they have differences in the standards used for their Mayday calls. These are sufficiently different that you could easily fail an FAA flight test by following the UK standard phraseology!

I was taught to remember the Mayday call with the acronym “RIP Louis Hoy”. I’m not sure who Louis Hoy was (I think he was the son of the narrator of the audio tape (yes tape) that I listened to on the way to the airfield during my training).

R – Reason
I – Intention
P – Position
L – Level
H – Heading

Naturally you prefix all this with the the station being called, your call sign and Mayday Mayday Mayday. An optional item is the level of experience of the pilot. I was always told to use tyro, which means in-experienced, which I certainly was at the time. So a typical UK mayday call could go something like:

“Mayday mayday mayday. Farnborough radar, golf golf hotel echo lima, Cessna 172, engine rough running. Intend forced landing, four miles south of Woodley, 2,300 feet descending, heading 160 degrees. Two POB. Tyro”.

Other optional items include endurance. In the USA the mandatory include weather and fuel remaining in minutes! A typical FAA mayday call would therefore be:

“Mayday mayday mayday. Kissimee tower, Cessna six eight zero zero, 172. Engine rough running, 10km visibility. Intend forced landing, four miles south of Epcot, 2,300 feet descending, 180 minutes fuel remaining, heading 160 degrees, 2 POB.”

Optional items include: ELT status (sqwawking; off; damaged, Visible landmarks (e.g Micky Mouse’s ears), aircraft colour (or color) and emergency equipment on board.

You see the similarities but as usual there are those nagging differences as well. So remember to keep track of the minutes of fuel in the USA and the colour of your aircraft. In the UK remember what tyro means and above all that in a real emergency you only need “mayday, mayday, mayday” and everybody will jump to help you!