teeks

I was supposed to see the ship today with my boss, who has to check all the radios, dscs, satellite systems etc are all worthy and certificate them as all working ‘good like’, but my bum had other ideas.

Went to the loo at around 2am, and stayed in there til 5am.  Not had bum gravy like that for ages, apologies for posting about it, but I had to get it off my chest.

And my legs, my arms, the walls etc.

Filed by admin at 1:53 pm under uk
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I seem to be saying November 23rd a lot lately. It’s a spooky coincidence when I think about it, considering that I’m leaving on that exact same date. It looks like I get to add a few more countries to my CV; under the section of ‘Countries that I have visited, even briefly. I drove through Germany once, but that doesnt count’ – namely Spain and Uruguay.

Uruguay looks like an insult that belongs on the school yard, or on a forum in a dark corner of the internet. URGAY, as it will be known has way too many u’s in its name for my liking. I’ll be flying from Madrid (I hope I get to see the Bernabeu Stadium) from the plane, and then onto Montevideo (pronounced monteh’veh’deh’o and not monteevidee’oh as someone muttered on the conference that shall remain nameless. Wasnt me btw, it was someone else. I use way too many brackets, gotta get out of that habit).

I meet up with the RRS Ernest ‘The Shack’ Shackleton, one of our ice-strengthened ships at Monte, and its a four day journey to the Falklands. We’ll probably stay at the Falklands for a few days to a week, and then head off to South Georgia and Signy for relief and pickups, and then to my home for the next 30 months – Halley. All in all the ship journey should take 4 weeks, and we’re scheduled to arrive at the ice shelf where Halley’s located on December 24th, and I think that’s the best Christmas present I’ll ever get.

I’ve promised myself that I’ll say something profound and emotional once I step onto the ice shelf, but I dont know what to say. It sounds clichéd and sentimental, but I’ve waited so long to do this, and I dont want to get lost in the moment. I want that memory to stay with me til I’m 93, and dying in the arms of my 15th wife. During sex. And she’s really enjoying it too. I’m not that bothered though, and secretly pining for wife number 12..

Filed by admin at 11:17 pm under uk
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As Tris (Rothera Coms Manager and Ray Mears + Bush Tucker Man love child) corrected me in the comments of my last post, I had my Civil Aviation Authority course last week, and man, talk about stupid.

I dont mean the course itself, and I dont mean the instructor either, Paul was easily the most helpful, knowledgeable and interesting instructor we’ve had to date, and I definitely dont mean the other students – I mean me. I did a really stupid mistake on the practical exam. Before we get to the exciting part though, more on the course itself.

CAA AG, or in laymens terms, Air Ground Radio operator. In retard terms, is planey talk bzzzzzzzz (run around the room with arms extended making that bzzzzz noise). Think Air Traffic Control, but nowhere near as responsible. Our jobs are simple – we provide an information service, but the data we provide is simple. I’m trying to stress the simple part here, because the info we provide is simple. We provide, when requested, the runway in use, the circuit of said runway, the wind speed and direction, the traffic information when relevant (other planes, fire engines, ice cream vans etc), air pressures over the aerodrome and we provide an emergency helping service in the event of a distress or an urgency. So we chat to the planes, but we never, and I mean NEVER tell them what to do. We give them the info, and they have to absorb it and act accordingly.

Easy as a piece of piecake. We ran scenarios and different situations for days with our instructor, slowly learning the flow and eventually getting to the stage where mistakes were uncommon, so we took the practical test. We sat in our booth, listened to the aircraft coming in (usually around 7, all at different stages of take off and landing) and provided the relevant information with the required responses. Then, an emergency is announced, and one of the aircraft transmits a Mayday, to which the correct response is ‘a/c callsign ROGER MAYDAY’ blah blah, and not RECEIVED Mayday. Received belongs in the marine world, and not the aviation world. ‘Received Mayday’ in the aviation world, during a test is an automatic fail. Guess who failed his practical exam? Its was meeeeee.

Paul, being the dude that he is allowed a resit in the afternoon, which I totally stomped (gnarly dude). We then sat the written exam on the following morning, and we were required to know the exact definitions of all the phraseology and wording – things like ‘BREAK BREAK = indicates a separation between messages transmitted to different aircraft in a busy environment’ and ‘FANSTOP = I am initiating a practice engine failure after take off’. WORD FOR WORD, and there’s loads of em! We even had to know the phonetic spelling of the phonetic alphabet. A = alfa = AL FAH, R= romeo = ROW ME OH etc. Anyways, I got the highest score in the test, so SUCK IT DOWN TRIS. AIT FIFE DAY SEE MAL FIFE erm, percent. Over.

Ticket Received – CAA AG Operator Cert

Filed by admin at 9:26 pm under training
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I’ll start updating this again, probably during the week.  I’ve got my CAA AG (Civilian Air Authority Air Ground) course starting on Monday, I’m sure that’ll provide ample content for exciting comments.

Filed by admin at 6:24 pm under uk
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