BURNING LIES (Book 3 in the Border Watch series) is now a little over halfway and 50,000 words long!
Am I excited?
Yep!!!
And exhausted…
Tomorrow morning I conduct my last simulator session as a Check Captain on the Dash 8 -300.
Tomorrow night I will be celebrating not just going home after three years of living out of a suitcase, but also writing 50,000 words in the month of November.
There’s a bottle of vintage Moet that’s been hiding in the fridge for an occasion like this 😀
Thanks, Amanda! Hope you’re finding some time to write in the lead up to CHristmas!
Cathy, I’m not sure how I missed your comment but thanks for the laugh at 4.30 am when I’m supposed to be studying 🙂 You should write a book about your aviation adventures!!
Fantastic news and awesome achievement Helene… big hug and kiss to you!
Phillipa. Unlike Helene, who flies for a reputable outift. I flew older planes for a lot of small bush outfits, ans some companies where asking quewstions was not encourgaqed. These outfits tended to have a more “relaxed” view of the booze rules (some pilots were so relaxed they were comatose) some alos had a farily relaxed view of what constituted correct maintainance as well as triaing (“so what if you’ve never flown a Curtiss Commando, it’s got tewo engines, same as the Dc-3, go fly it”)
And as soon as you arer really comfortable with the 400 , Alan Joyce will announce the purchase of the Cseries!:)
Lol, Phillipa. The rules governing alcohol and flying used to required a pilot to have eight hours from their last drink to the time they touched the throttles in the aircraft. That could lead to some seriously inebriated souls in control of very heavy machinery after a big overnight… The rules recently changed and now required a zero blood alcohol. We are also randomly drug tested for everything from codeine to illegal substances.
Check and Training for me for the last three years has involved operating the high tech simulators we use for testing and training our pilots. Those sims are all in Sydney hence so much time away. Soon I’ll be back in an aircraft and flying anywhere on our network but predominantly out of Cairns 🙂
Well done on the 50,000 words – an awesome achievment for anyone, let alone someone who zips around the country like you do. I’m trying to decipher all this flight talk, but the phrase ‘bottle to the throttle’ kinda alarmed me!
What does leaving the training role mean? Do you still fly but only locally?
Cathy, I hope so on both counts! It will be nice to fly around the country knowing I can take enough fuel to cover all contingencies but I will miss the easy familiarity of the 300 🙂 I suspect it won’t be long until CS is a complete 400 base anyway.
Thanks Eleni! We’ve just had friends round for breakfast and it was lovely relaxing in the warmth with good company and good food! I’m sorry if I’ve missed posts from you before, but I had to free you from my spam folder!! (Who knew I even had such a thing…)
Sandy, fabulous news that your man is taking on the Senior Check position for the 400 – couldn’t have gone to a better man 🙂
And I just hope by 50,000 words stand up to editing at a later date!!
You will have made a diffence to a lot of crews, especially when those rad lights start flashing and you go “oh Sh**t”
Look foward to the 400, I have heard she is quite a bird
Congrats Helene!! Great effort with the 50K but also fantastic that you are going to be settled home again.
You can always go train on the 400 – I know someone who would love to have you on the team! 🙂
And congratulations on the word count, I am in awe of you.
Thanks Suzanne 🙂
Cathy, the old ‘bottle to throttle’ sure made for some interesting stories… I’m kind of relieved it’s zero these days!! Three shots of vodka would have laid me out on the floor at altitude 🙂
Thanks Karly. I’m a little sadder than I thought I would be at walking out of the sim building at Mascot. It’s been very rewarding feeling like some days I made a difference for a crew. On the upside, it will be wonderful to be home with hubbie and writing in the comfort of home:-)
BIG congrats for both momentous achievements Helene!! Yayyy you!!!
Go for it (just rmember the 12 hour rule !
Actually, whyen I was busgh flying DC-3s 4’sa and other superasnnuated heaps of skyjunk it was “no more than 5 drinks an hour before takeoff and donb’t drink wihtin 50 feet of the plane” 🙂 we had one guy–this was in Africa who needed three shots of Vodka to stop shaking.
Yah!! Well done. 🙂