July
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July 28th
Hello again. Hope everyone is enjoying what is left of this summer. I don’t know about everyone else but mine has been flying by. No pun intended, sorry. Things are starting to pick up around the hangar. We’ve been flying a bit more but the big thing for me is a trip up to Oshkosh, WI for the EAA fly-in.
One of the pilots is a partner in a 1965 Beech Bonanza. I went flying with him a couple weeks ago up into Oklahoma so I could become familiar with the aircraft. Even though the aircraft is 43 years old, the thing can cover some ground. We left out of Addison Airport (KADS) and landed on a little grass strip in southern Oklahoma about 15 minutes after takeoff. With its 300 hp engine we were cruising at 165 kts without even pushing the engine. This is the aircraft we are going to be flying all the way from Addison, just outside of Dallas, to Oshkosh, WI. The trip should take a little over 4 hours but the trick isn’t the flying all the way across the country, the challenge begins when we get about 70 nautical miles outside of Oshkosh. The EAA fly-in is the largest fly-in in the world and there are special, very specific instructions for the approach into the field. For example, the NOTAM states that aircraft approaching from the south will pass over a town called Fisk, and there will be controllers on the ground at that location to identify aircraft and give them the runway assignment. The only thing is, you tune in to listen, no talking back to the controller. They identify you by the type and color of your aircraft and then to acknowledge that you received the info you are to “rock your wings” Oshkosh will have three active runways with three aircraft landing on each runway at a time. There are three different colored dots painted on the runway and ATC will assign an aircraft one of the dots to land on. You can imagine that someone with minimal hours should not fly in there by him or herself. The pilot that I am traveling with has flown in there a multiple times so I’m pretty confident it’ll be an interesting trip.
July 14th
Well honestly the last couple weeks have been slow. We have found a couple of issues with the plane that came back from Gulfstream. Currently we have had an issue with the Flight Data Recorder not receiving power. We have been through all sorts of possible explanations over the past few days and still we can not find the problem. I even had to crawl up into the tail cone because no one else was small enough to fit and check out the little black box. We’ve also had problems with the galley sink not draining correctly because Gulfstream ran the drainage lines wrong somewhere along the line thus we’ve had to have some of the Gulfsteam techs come out and try and fix what should have been right to start.
In the name of corporate aviation we actually had a last minute pop up trip, which in all honesty was a miracle that we got the plane out as fast as we did. From the time the call came in from the CEO’s office to the time the engines spooled up, only about 1 hour and 45 minutes had passed. On a normal day it takes about 2 and ½ to three hours to get a plane fueled, stocked for the passengers and all the preflight actions done, but by the time the pilot’s showed we had the plane fueled and ready to go.
June
June 30th
Well another couple weeks have gone by with no major problems with any of the aircraft. To pick up where I left off, we were changing out the aileron cable on one of the GV. To do this we had to take a number of measurements along the flaps and ailerons at full deflection and at various flap settings. To help out the auxiliary hydraulic pump we used our hydraulic mule to provide hydraulic pressure to the systems. The job took a little over 3 hours to complete and the most time consuming part of it was getting all the readings.
All that week, a couple of our pilots were down at SimuFlight. SimuFlight is a large facility on DFW airport. Our pilots, who were participating in recurrent training, had been going through classes all week. The Friday that I was allowed to observe, the pilots were working on their Category II approaches. The simulators that SimuFlight provide for training are Category D full motion sims that many operators use for type ratings in various aircraft. The day started off with a flight out of Denver Intl. which, as soon as we passed through 3,000 ft AGL, the instructor failed one of the engines. It never does get old loosing an engine in a simulator. After completing two approaches our pilots switched and did the same thing. Then they flew over to Aspen and set up for the approach. Even in VFR conditions this approach is difficult because the glide slope is so steep. A normal approach has a 3 degree GS and the approach to Aspen is more like 6 degrees. For this approach the pilot has to set up really early, get the airplane slowed down and configured. If you expect to configure on a long final, good luck, you are going around, which in Aspen is another difficult maneuver. The best part of the day came as the pilots finished and it was my turn to try out the GV. The instructor dialed in Anchorage, Alaska and set me on runway 7L. As I familiarized myself with the cockpit and tried to set up the Heads Up Display (HUD), I realized that this was an extremely complex aircraft. I set the EPR to 1.17 and hit the autothrottle which from there on out took care of adjusting my throttle settings. We did a loop around the airport and set up for the ILS into the airport. I think the most amazing thing about this was how much information is provided through the HUD. Even on short final and flare it gives you the exact nose up attitude for a smooth landing every time. The second approach was very similar except this time it was at night in full IMC. Gulfstream has an advantage when it comes to this, the GV was equipped with a Forward Looking Infrared System. The FLIR is amazing when in IMC. It’s amazing how much sooner you can identify the runway and the surrounding area including terrain.
Well I have to get back to work but I’ll talk to everyone in a couple weeks and in the mean time. Have fun.
June 16
Hello from McKinney again. Well, through all the excitement of these journals and the job I completely forgot to tell everyone a little bit about myself. My name is Shane Bertrand (look me up on Facebook if you want). I am originally from Wisconsin but I have found myself in Dallas for the past 14 years or so. I came to Embry-Riddle in the Fall of 2006 to start my private pilot training and to study up for my degree. I came from an all guys private high school (Jesuit College Preparatory School) which one of the other journalists, Dodd Allen, also graduated from a year before me. I will be going into my Junior year at Embry-Riddle and if anyone is reading this as a freshman, time flies… no pun intended. Anyway enough about me…. A little more on the job.
Well we have done everything from changing a couple of the tires on the GIV which will be going off to presale soon (we hope) and, as I write this, we are preparing all the instructions for changing an aileron cable. I’m not sure what all this entails but judging by the amount of paper that we used to print off all the needed instructions… it’ll be a hefty job.
As per normal operations, we have had our work cut out for us with a schedule that gets more and more intense as the days go by. With corporate aviation, it’s not uncommon to find yourself at the hangar on a Sunday, which I had the pleasure of last week. It’s not all bad though, the leftovers from the flights are always good and if you are anything like me, you live off of leftovers as well.
Well I have got to get this wrapped up. I’ve got a lot of work cut of for me today. We’ve got the CEO going out to Savanna today and then onto to London, so I must attend to my duties. Have a good one and I’ll check back in a couple of weeks.
June 2
Well I have a new found appreciation for anyone who has ever had to service a lavatory of any aircraft. Our GV came in from London last week and it was my turn to take care of the lav. Unfortunate because the trip from London to McKinney is about 10 hours and with 4 passengers and a total of 4 crew, well enough said on that subject.
I have been hard at work training for my many duties at the hangar.  I have been through a series of videos outlining fueling, fuel farm management, sexual harassment (always a corporate favorite), and to top it off fire safety. I have been training with some of the pilots as well. The avionics systems on both the Gulfstream GIV and GV are complex with a Honeywell Flight Management System, RVSM capabilities and the various auto throttles, thrust reversers, and an MDAU for maintenance techs to figure out what is going wrong with the aircraft. The MDAU helps so much whenever a discrepancy comes up. For example, the GV came back with a failure of the left ice detection system. We were able to recreate the failure on the ground and later found out what the problem was. After going through some of the checklists and flows with one of the pilots, I was allowed to observe a test flight of the GIV. To give everyone an idea of how fast these corporate jets are on takeoff roll, our V1 was 119 knots, which if anyone is flying the Cessna… that’s faster than our cruise. At 130 knots the nose was just starting to come off the ground and before you knew what was going on we were climbing through 10,000 feet. The performance on the Gulfstreams are almost beyond words, thus I can barely manage to get this down on the computer.
One of our other aircraft is currently down at the Gulfstream hanger located at Love Field in Dallas. I was able to travel down there and take a little tour of the facility where they perform some of the major component changes as well as refurbishing the interior. We hope to have the aircraft back in service later this week, but when you have a team of people taking apart your aircraft; it often never gets back the way it needs to be so we have some work cut out for us over the next few days. Stay tuned and if you have any questions for me email me at shane.bertrand@eds.com and I will try and get back to you as soon as I can.
May
May 18, 2008
First a little background on EDS. Electronic Data Systems is a global company and is actually now HP-EDS (having recently been purchased by Hewlett-Packard). They are a computer systems company started by Ross Perot. I am lucky enough to work in the Flight Department located in McKinney, Texas. The hang a r houses three Gulfstream corporate jets: a G4, G5, and G550. Although most interns of my degree want to fly these aircraft, I will be working alongside the mechanics and helping to maintain them as well as observing some of the flights.
My first day went pretty smoothly, of course you have the paper work of any job, but for the most part it went smooth learning some of the finer points of working with Jet A. I will be partially responsible for the fueling of the aircraft and the refueling of the 5,000 gallon fuel truck, this is apart from the two 15,000 gallon fuel tanks the company also owns. The first part of the day we topped off the fuel truck with a meager 2,330 gallons which only took about half an hour.
The G5 had taken off earlier the previous day and was scheduled to come back the late that night. Coming into work on Friday, I learned that the Gulfstream had incurred a few discrepancies that required us to replace the galley’s oven and a few effect lights, so nothing major. The most I learned was when we went over all the systems throughout the aircraft. Prof. Garrett’s systems and components class sure did pay off.
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Name: Shane
